Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks Backstab vs abilities

I'm re-rolling an assassin right now and it got me thinking, when is it more preferable to backstab vs using normal damaging abilities with my daggers?

I'm playing with an elf so basically I have:
Flesh sacrifice
Adrenaline
Throwing knife
Backlash
Flurry

Thanks

You can backstab with any ability based on weapon damage. Whirlwind, for example.

It is ALWAYS preferable to backstab. The damage increase is substantial.

My Scoundrel could usually outright kill one enemy on his first turn using backstab; Backlash over them (backstab attack), then Throwing Knife from behind for another backstab (best damage skill I've seen, seems to completely destroy all phys armor, 2/3rd's of magic armor and does 70% of their health damage too), then Flesh Sacrifice and a regular backstab.

Once I got the talent "The Pawn", which is 1AP free movement per turn, it makes setting up backstabs even easier if things like Backlash are on CD.

Yeah after some hours playing I figured that scoundrel is indeed op :')

Honestly this is mainly due to Throwing Knives.
If it did the same damages as the tooltips suggest (which is the same damages as Backslash) the rogue would be still strong but more balanced. That's why I am fairly convinced this is a bug.

This is actually incorrect. You can only backstab with abilities that say "Can backstab." Otherwise it defaults to your normal crit chance. I thought the same as you until I was trying out a piercing build with serrated blade and realized it never backstabs.

I suppose you mean Sawtooth Knife. I don't remember my own experience with this skill, but if it does not backstab, it could be explained either by the fact that it does not scale with weapon or it has a specific damage type (piercing).

Whirlwind still backstabs as most other Warfare skills do.

Yes you are correct about the name. It does scale with weapon damage. It is piercing damage, but it most definitely crits. You can force a crit with Enrage if you want to check for yourself. Also rangers piercing attack crits as well, so I am not sure where you are getting the info about type of damage aspect.

I have just tried cripple with 2 daggers and yes it does backstab as strange as that may seems and it even backstabs the other enemies in range even if they didn't have their back turned.
It's like cripples carrries the crit or backstab effect from the target to everyone else in the area.

Now would think this is a bug and I would only think specific skills could backstab instead.

I was wrong. There are other abilities that allow for backstabs, it is not all of the abilities though. It seems like crippling blow, whirlwind, and I swear I saw blitz attack backstab'd last night but I couldn't seem to reproduce it. I still can not get Sawtooth blade to backstab. It may be my imagination but mortal blow also did not backstab. Perhaps giving an ability 1250% damage may be a bit much though lol.

I am faily sure Mortal blow does backstab. I don't really count how many times I killed the voidworm on the beach with only one mortal blow, ... 750% damage minimum !

I tried to kill the witch in the cave with mortal blow while standing in the back stab cone and never got it to work. I am working on an Act 1 guide, so I will try again on this play through and test it again.

I might be wrong mais maybe the Critical Stab did not display but I'll try again to save right before doing the mortal strike it feels like it does more damage but I did not compare the numbers so I'll double check later.

I actually just did it with both Sawtooth knife and Mortal blow.
They both showed critical damage increase when in the back.

I only tried each once so there are damage variance but we can clearly see the backstab does affect every skill.
Sawtooth Knife Regular: 86
Sawtooth Knife Backstab: 190

Mortal blow Regular: 462
Mortal blow Backstab: 1031

That's pretty clear to me.
(I had a 215% crit damage main hand)

Just a question, if you have a dagger mainhand and a sword of hand to both work with backstab or does the sword scale from your basic crit chance instead?