Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Will humans ever be viable for anything?

And will elves be nerfed?

Wits is a shite stat. I want classic difficulty to require optimization but I also wanna play Ifan as a rogue instead of a lame ass summoner. Humans seem worse at everything, really.

I'm just gonna assume the game will have a huge balance overhaul at release.

Ifan is an incredible rouge with an incredible damage output, and almost always goes first in my party. I have no clue what you are doing wrong.

He's saying that you'd better play rogue elf than human rogue. You'd better play anything with elf than human actually.

Wits is a very important attribute. Starting first is a huge help in winning fights.

You are exaggerating a lot with the humans weakness. I have Ifan as "Knight" and Lohse as "Ranger" and they are absolutely fine.

However, you are correct that elves are a bit too good overall. Getting skills from eating is very nice. Also getting a free ap in a fight is ... extremely nice. Too nice, as ap is the most precious resource ingame. I play a male elf as main and have Sebille as rogue. I do not use Flesh Sacrifice on my main and can feel the difference. It is extremely strong to have Flesh Sacrifice.

You want to Nerf a elf?... Have two elves

A single elf is great... but REALLY only one person gets to play a elf.

No it's not. It's a secondary attribute. You want to have your max in either finesse, strengh, intelligence depending on your character. But wits, no one will ever max it.
And since you can't put more than 30 points in one attribute, in the end, elf rogue will have 42 finesse where human can only have 40. That's 10% dmg lose.

And by saying :

You're missing the point. Maybe they're ok, but another race will do better. That's why the race are not balanced.

Flesh sacrifice without the damage increase would be enough but might seems flavourless if it is only a +1 ap skill...
I have no problem with Wits stat for humans, their passive gives them 5% crit chance overall (2 from wits and +3 from the trait itself)
So for rogues it's not useful since they do crit with backstab but for Crossbow, 2 hander or mages with proper trait this is valuable.

At 40 finesse, 2 extra makes virtually no difference. Even though it 'seems' to add 10% damage, you're already adding it to the +150% damage from +30 finesse, thus you're comparing 250% damage to 260% damage which is about a 4% difference overall. On the flipside, having an extra 5% crit chance can be good for a longer battle as you can crit more consistantly and if we assume you have 30% crit on both, 30% to 35% is a much bigger difference not including the benefit of added initiative. Basically, later into the game, stat bonuses become negligible and your better of being well rounded than dumping all of your attribute points into 1 attribute.

That being said, Flesh sacrifice is really good and the loss of constitution hardly compensates for that in my opinion.

My criticism on humans is a boring bartering bonus and an ability which is usless while playing with one-man-army solo or with a friend. As for attributes, humans are the only race which does not force you to play a specific class.

This is also a problem, racial shouldn't force you to play a specific class.


Oh come on, who the hell is going to put points in wits. Sure you want some for initiative, but that's about it. Just enough to have initiative. And crit isn't usefull on everyone, unlike the primary attribute. Don't forget that finesse also add 1% dodge...
So no, 30 to 35% crit isn't worth your primary attributes. Unless you have a specific build that require you to crit to work (not rogue cause they always crit from behind).

Posted this in Reddit, seems appropriate here too:

I'm not positive, but I believe encourage will be the best-scaling racial as the stat bonuses should increase as the game progresses, maybe hitting +4 or even +5 primary stats and con, which is damn good, especially with summons. Don't forget about the con, which effectively makes encourage a group heal that bypasses decaying touch and has an overheal effect for full-health chars.

Dwarf racial won't scale, lizard racial is terrible, one-dimensional, and int-dependent even if the damage scaling was increased, and the elf racial might actually get slightly worse as the game progresses if the constitution malus increases. A +4 stat encourage on 4 allies would easily exceed flesh sacrifice in overall value.

The +wits bonus is universally useful, unless you're avoiding wits altogether. And IMO wits benefits most from that small kind of bonus, since the difference between going first and last and +10% damage from +2 primary stat is far greater. Those 2 points in wits mean two less points you need to keep investing to go first, so more for your primary stat, so it basically cancels out the dex bonus for elves. I dislike how wits is kind of bad for rogues since crit chance is basically useless for them, but hopefully that will improved on release

Finally, bartering will always be useful (though still incomparable to flesh-eating).

So yeah, humans are probably the most balanced race.

Crit damage are multiplicative to your base damage so if you have base damage of:
10 - 20*2.40 (34 in Primary stat) = 24 - 48 Overall damage range so 36 per attack average.
10 - 20*2.20 (32 in Primary stat) = 22 - 44 Overall damage range and 33 average per attack but with the 5% crit chance to increase it averages out to 35.475... Marginally worse no ? And I was assuming the crit multiplier was 150% but as you increase 2H spec it goes up and some weapon already have higher crit multiplier than 150%.

So on average it's barely less good but becomes quickly better if you have a spec/weapon to utilize that.
Not mentioning having better chance to act first.

So no I do not believe +2 finesse (or int or str) point is inherently better than +2 Wit AND +3% Crit chance.

Now for the rogues being better as an Elf, I agree because the rogues have 100% crit change when they backstab so they don't need crit chance and flesh sacrifice if very good but otherwise I think the race are ok so far.

@Deadknight
I'm not sure how you did your math but with that example :

80-100 * 2.40 (34 in Primary stat) = 192 - 240 Overall damage range so 216 per attack average. In 100 hit, you do 21600 damage.
Now with 10% crit from +2 wits :
80-100 * 2.20 (32 in Primary stat) = 176 - 220 Overall damage range so 198 per attack average. In 90 hit without crit : 17820 damage and 10 with 1.5 crit : 2 970. Total dmg : 20790. average : 208
That's 3.9% more dmg for primary over wits. And again, finesse for instance gives % dodge. Strengh gives armor, for a tank late game it can be nice.
Not to mention that not everyone care about crit, you said rogue but not only. Mage don't really (even with talent it's 50% less), tank, summoner. That's a lot of possible character already.
And finally, I prefer having a constant dmg than RNG crit.

@Baardvark
It doesn't stack.

On a side note I don't really like that ability. Every others racial are something unique that only the character benefits from. Human racial cost 1 ap for the character and gives a bonus to everyone. Since all your party have it, it doesn't feel unique, for me at least.
Beside it was a warrior skill in DOS 1 and now it's for human only ? Meh.

Less than 4% increased damage considering only 150% Crit multiplier. It will overtime be better as your spec increases.

You basically said it was useless I say It is balanced can you can play with it Efficiently and be just as good and probably even stronger if your build is built toward that (2handed spec, specific weapons etc.) and you will act before.

Then if you don't like crit that is a different matter and you may not like Witness per say but the Human Passive is good enough for what it is and can even be better on the long run depending on your build.

It gives versatility in your build.
Elf would be more inclined to be rogues.
Lizard would prefer be mages
Dwarf more like Fighters
Humans, anything you want that can crit or if you want Higher turn order.

You may not like it but it also helps finding secrets.
And their Racial (AoE buff) is good for everyone. So to me, yeah Humans are viable.

And it will probably be my Main character Human 2Hander Knight (maybe with a bit of necromancy spec for the Shakle of pain and health recovery on damage inflicted that would work with crit too)

I'm not saying it stacks (with itself, as when another human casts it, you mean?), I'm saying it scales. I'm not sure how much, but it should be at least +3 per stat by the end game, possibly more.

I agree it's not very exciting. But it is decent.

I basically said it was worse than primary yes. And that it was good only with build oriented crit.



Elf would be hunter aswell. So it leaves what for human ? Oriented crit build only ?

The point is you can play whatever you want it's true. But your race will give you a bonus oriented to some of the class. And I said it was bad. Take lizard for example, good +2int for a warrior right ?
And Human having the worse bonus (wits), yes, you lose 4% even if you play a character that can crit, if not you lose 10%.


As for their aoe it's an okay ability. Elf is WAY better but ok.
Like is said I would prefer a new ability rather than some warrior ability from DOS 1...
The lizard one is cool, even if it's bad. You can breath fire like a dragon. But human, meh.

You're right it scales. Lvl 21 it's +3 strengh, finesse, int and +5 constitution (not sure why more in con).

I still don't like it tho. Even if it's good.

If you play the game with a min max point of view, yes the human might not be optimal unless you have a build tailored for it which is the point of min maxing and most game have very specific build you can hardly strait from if you want the optimal build.

However you'll still probably want a human in the party for the wits stats to find secrets in the world and for the stats increase of other party members.

So even if the human isn't the main Character and even if you want to min max you'll can still consider it as a support class since healing doesn't seem to scale with int but only Hydro spec.

I don't really see why the hate.
I like the human and I like to find the hidden object treasures and I like crit builds so they are a pretty solid choice for me.
And yes my Rogue will probably be an elf with the Human aoe buff she'll kick even more asses.

It's not about hate it's about pointing out something unbalanced so that Larian can fix it (if they're even reading this forum).

I think you miss the point. Did you read the thread title? I don't like to play drama queen.

If you think someone is not viable because he deals 4% less damage in a theoretical scenario, ok. There are some other aspects in the game which contribute more to victory in my opinion.

The differences between the races are minor. Any race can play any class. With a group of four Classic mode is rather easy and I think that also Tactitian will be possible. If you prefer to play with less group members, you can take two elves, if you think they are the only viable race.

I do not care at all for the racials. They are not very important, at least in the EA, and I bet they will not later too. For me they can remove all of them. If (male) humans wouldn't have a boring range of armor visuals and would look less fat, my main would be human.