Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Magic is weak/needs a buff and here's why.

To be more specific, magic damage dealers are weak and because of that, magic "debuff"ers are also weak. This is all in comparison to their offense counterparts which not only have good mobility and reasonable cc, but also deal alot more damage and scale better into late game. Let me explain.

The most noticeable difference is none of their abilities are affected by weapon damage. This by itself makes their damage output significantly worse and keeps them from applying crucial debuffs. It also makes no sense since wands and stalves are typically considered catalyst for magic and thus should amplify the affect of magic. There's also the factor of dealing with longer cooldowns that their physical counterparts and having less mobility options, and since positioning is so important to having a succesful fight this gives physical classes an upper hand (with Teleport being an exception, unique to only 1 class and an item pick up that can be used with anyone). The other big factor is the prevalence of elemental resistances and how common they are. Since debuffing an enemy relies on getting rid of their magic armor and there's no "lower resistance" spell so far, this gives mages another hurdle to overcome. While there are some special cases where enemies are weak to an element, its rare and requires that you're character has a weapon/spells that can take advantage of that vs where physical damage almost never has anything opposing it.

The exception to this is Necromancy which debuffs based on a lack of physical armor. While this does synergize well with Hydrophist, its primarily taken on physical classes as a secondary option due to the utility of having lifesteal on a heavy damage dealer.

While Teleport is overpowered, this doesn't compare to some of the broken stuff that physical classes have. Adrenaline gives 2 free ap immediately, Skin Graft resets all of your cooldowns (too bad mages don't have this), Snipe doubles you'r damage while sneaking, Mortal Blow does x5 damage while sneaking, Chameleon Cloak is a starting ability that gives invisibility, Overpower gets rid of the enemys physical armor, etc...

Basically, the only usefulness of magic is on a Hybrid build and any Magic only builds are not viable.