Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks 2 handed weapons and warrior

I've been doing a bit more experimenting on this, and in-practice Warfare with Staves isn't doing as well as I had theorized.

A couple of reasons:

1. The statuses applied by Warfare Skills are all blocked by Physical Armor, and most damage being done is Magical so enemies never get Knocked Down or become Crippled.
2. Enemy resistance proved more troublesome than I thought. Some enemies have resistance to every element, few enemies have any elemental weakness, and enemies often have one or two high resistances or an immunity. Mage weapons are double penalized here as they can also be dodged. If using Staves for your damage, be sure to have 2 or 3 different elements you can swap to as-needed.
3. My favorite Warfare Skill, Battle Stomp, isn't very effective for Staff users. For a regular Physical Warrior the damage is High, long range AoE, and usually applies Knockdown to a couple of enemies. For a Staff, the damage is still all Physical (even though its based off the weapon's damage, it gets converted). Since it's the only attack a Staff Warrior has to hit Physical, it is likely not enough to remove the Physical Armor entirely and then all follow-up attacks will hit Magic Armor. So you either use it and hit both types of armor, or you avoid it and lose one of the best Warfare skills.

The option of the ranged attack has been nice. It makes kiting a lot easier. However, I have to kite more than if I was just stronger or could Knockdown.