Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback My review of the presets

This is where summoning becomes such an easy topic for me to mock. It's supposed to be used for a spell caster but gains no benefit from investing in the one stat which directly influences the powers of your spells and your ability to learn and understand incantations (rp perspective).

One could substitute this fault with points in loremaster and wits which could dub from a roleplaying perspective that from a roleplaying perspective you are a decent student of magic, but from a practical stand point that 1 point in Finesse can be made usefull like error3 said,however the 2 points in Intelect and lack of points in Wits within this preset, really make's it terrible at summoning stuff as fast as possible - with little paths to branch out - I stand by my guns here +2 wits and +1 con would be the way to go, for the conjurer preset because it keeps all 4 races competent summoners.

I believe the reason why Conjuror has intelligence is because Conjuration combos rather well off of the elemental skills.

There are elemental skills which do not require Intelect to be good - these skills are global cooling,rain,contamination,blood rain and ignition.

With +2 Wits and +1 Int the preset can become more flexible, retain it's potential to be paired with elemental skills and it make's it easier for all races who start with conjurer to go into melee and range - at the cost of killing your head start toward building a bow wielding mage.

As the preset is now there are the following disadvantages for the companions

dwarf companion (not yet released) - great stat line for a tank but the lack of wits make's him useless at summoning things as fast as possible (the purpose of the conjurer skill set up) and has different pathways than human and elven conjurers.
Like the crappy lizzard conjurer he needs to have his skill set remade from scratch until they can be put back on the spell tab because your stats are good enough to support both melee combat and summoning stuff (for me this translates as having a wits stat as big as your strenght stat).

human companion - rubish stats, the racials bonuses are the only things that make this better than a lizzard conjurer and from level 2 onwards it should be as good as a elven companion at summoning stuff as fast as possible

elf companion - very workable,you just need to get 1 level to fix the crappy Wits stat.Like the human it's only viable path ways are bow wielding summoner and a mage adept at using elemental and summoning magic

lizzard companion - utter rubish,should be avoided at all cost, unless you are able to remake his skill kit literaly from 0, until you get to a point where you can make the skills gained from the preset work for you.

In fairness, you are complaining about 2 stat points you feel are misplaced, one in FIN and one in INT. It's not ideal, and your suggestion of +2 WIT, +1 INT (or +1 CON) would probably be better, but in the grand scheme of things, it's just 2 attribute points. You get that much per level, and it's not that hard to get that much from gear.

Starting out with 10 WIT does not automatically make the Summoner class complete garbage.

I just rolled up a new Human Conjuror, and changed their starting stats to be +2 WIT and +1 INT, giving them 14 WIT at level 1. Summoning stuff "as fast as possible" does not work like you apparently think it does. Even if you start first, neither the Incarnates, nor the totems act until the next turn.

The enemies will always get a chance to act on that turn, and then on the next turn the Incarnates and Totems can act (assuming they are still alive). The Totems and Incarnates WIT/Initiative seems to be 12 + 2/level for the Totems and 10 + 2/level for the Incarnates, and it is not affected by the WIT or Summoning skill of the caster.

Acting before the enemies lets you place your summons, but the summons themselves will not do anything until the following turn, so the enemies will get to act at least once before the totems or incarnates do regardless of how fast the Summoner is.

The advantage of starting first and out pacing your opponents is that you get to drop off your incarnate in a position where it can "hopefully" get in some attacks of opportunity as the enemies charge in and soak up some damage for the party. The disadvantage of doing things this way is that your summons won't last until the start of the next turn and that should be fine, because it's one turn in which the opponents did not harm your party members.

At 10 wits you just use the incarnate to prevent enemies from fleeing by summoning it behing the enemies - but this strategy is more suitable for high wits conjurers because the incarnate could in theory land some hits of opportunities while the opponent is runing away. The disadvantage of doing things this way is that this strategem works best with conjurers that can fight in melee range not for back row casters.

For a backrow caster an Incarnate is like a panic button you hit so that the thing you summon can land some attacks of oportunity - my point is, you used incarnates and totems as primary damage dealers,when in fact they are utility skills aimed at hampering opponents escape and charge tactics. With the right party compositions and surface applications the incarnate can also serve as a source of healing (ice incarnates get heal, poison incarnates heal zombies).

I actually like a low-wits Conjurer.

For an optimal fight, you will already summon and double infusion buff your incarnate before the fight, and maybe 2 Totems too.

The Summons have high-enough initiative that they will almost always be first in the turn order.

By having the summoner go last, there will be no enemies acting between the time you summon a Totem/Incarnate and the time it gets to act (they will be placed 1st in the next turn-order). This is very helpful because your totems will be guaranteed at least 1 attack before they can be attacked or enemies can move away from them.

By giving up on trying to be first, your Conjurer will have several extra stat points to spend elsewhere too. You'll essentially be 1 turn behind enemies, but having several points more stats for the duration of combat is probably more valuable.
This is especially true considering how easy it is to have an Incarnate run in and ranged attack to start a fight. By doing this, enemies will be so far from your team that they will have to use all of their movement just getting in range.

Also, if you're stacking several points of Summoning and regularly reapplying Infusions for the armor bonuses, enemies will have a very tough time killing your Incarnate. The full 10 points of Summoning will double the armors granted to your Incarnate from all sources, in addition to the damage increase.
By pre-summoning your Incarnate you'll also have the Incarnate cooldown back up already the moment they die, if enemies can even kill them, as well as having a second set of Infusion casts ready to immediately refresh any of their lost armor! A Blood Incarnate will be even better at surviving as it gains a large self-heal that doubles as a single-target nuke.

I like how our different aproaches have lead too such different results - unlike you I use my summons as disposable objects to mitigate the damage done vs my party members,I put them in positions where they get destroyed first so that the high damage abilities of opponents get burnt on the summons.

To be more specificaly I consider totems to be good at blocking the range of arrows and lighting bolts, but are not as good as preventing oponents from geting close to your backrow and the exact oposite applies to the incarnate, which I deem bad for blocking arrow and spell paths because of it's high cooldown in combat.

With my backrow conjurer I used Loshe as the base and replaced dimensional bolt with rain and have strugled at times with placing the totems in such a way to get most value from them,but have mananged to compensate with being able to summon a water infused incarnate to act as a obstacle vs enemies who try to rush my backrow guys and apply some healing as well.

I decided to take a closer look at the presets because I had to start a new game. I decided to make a Death Knight character (Knight preset, except abilities changed to Warfare, Necro, Telekinesis. Skills changed to Rage, Bloodsucker, Mosquito Swarm. Talent changed to Morning Person.) I wasn't sure what classes should go alongside it, so I looked at the presets.

I noticed that of the 14 presets, there are FOUR which all are INT +2, CON. (Enchanter, Inquisitor, Witch, Wizard). I think that Wizard and maybe Enchanter could go to INT +2 and WIT.

Geo and Necro appear on presets 4 times each, which is especially annoying in the case of Geo, because any Geo preset comes with the GODAWFUL Contamination for no good reason.


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I have not found it very useful to use Totems beside enemies - even just for distraction purposes, because there are almost always more enemies than player characters, and while attacking totems does waste some enemy AP, proportionally-speaking, it wastes more party AP than enemy.

An Incarnate which dies before getting to act is not how I would use it for similar reasons. It takes 6 more turns before I can summon another Incarnate. That's an incredibly inefficient method, considering that the typical enemy skills will come off of cooldown well before I can re-summon.

I play more of a Totem-using Summoner, placing my totems far away from enemies so that they can attack and not be easily destroyed.

Contamination is only good for the witch preset simply because it's the only viable choice for a healer if you run an all zombie party - blood rain + contamination is a briliant aoe heal.

Also, Inquisitor is a broken preset, that only works on the not yet released dwarf companion.Hopefully, Inquisitor gets updated to something practical.

From my perspective the best update for a Inquisitor is Aero/Poly because of the depth these schools of magic bring to the universe of D:OS 2, especialy when put toghether,because that means, that creatures like the Beast from the tv series Magicians are common place within the military and possibly civilian/adventurer setting of the world of Rivelon.

For those who didn't see this tv series, the Beast is a spellcaster who caused mutations within his body to increase his body's ability to store and channel spellpower and create advanced spells - this is very easily translated in game with the free stats we gain from investing in Poly.