Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks Solo Retaliation Build

I might be wrong, but from what I experienced, environmental effects does not trigger retribution. More than once I had my character be hit by oil (fossil strike) while standing in fire and I'd take both earth and fire damage, whereas the enemy would only take earth damage back.

I also used teleportation on an enemy and threw him on top of a high retribution enemy, causing both to take physical damage. Since the primary target didn't have retribution, I didn't take any retribution damage

That is exactly why I said it's a bug and clearly not as design or at least it is a design flaw.
Now as I mentioned I am not entirely sure from what I understand from decaying touch, I would think it only affect spells that are actually healing spells. So healing from element would not be affected just like necromancy healing effect aren't.

So either they change it to make it that the enemy always get damaged or they just prevent the healing in these situation.

I wouldn't say it's a bug, it's probably just a design flaw. Maybe the devs thought that if you hit with a fire spell, a character with retribution would "splash the fire back", and since that creature heals with fire, it'd heal by hitting you. It makes sense, but on the mechanical level, it makes the build unfeasible (at least on a solo gameplay), specially because it's not something you can deactivate: it means you're spending combat points that actually work in favor of your enemy.

I'm willing to test this build on the tactician mode when the game is released, but I'll be frustrated if it works like this. Maybe that's the price you pay for being a one-trick-pony.

That is exactly my point.
I am fine saying in some circumstances that spec has no effect, ... Fine but not if it works against you.
Especially since you have no way to turn it off nor any counter (assuming decaying touch doesn't affect this).

Now about the definition between design flaw and bug we could go on about it but I understand what you mean and agree to a certain extent (Isn't a design flaw a bug in the design? etc.)

I also don't see it as a bug.
It's like saying I want to play solo while only using fire spells and complaining that some oppoents are immune to fire.

People should not expect that a game works for rules the set on themself and rather will have to adept or wait for a mod.

And yes I know that many won't like my point of few but for me that's part of the "scrup mentality".
(http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win)

That is actually very different because you don't have to use your fire spells. But you can't prevent your retaliation from happening. This is a big difference.

Not only that but if that remains as is, the spec is really not worth spending points on. Meaning you have an underused spec at best. Do you want to have a spec line that you will never use ? I personally don't care I just won't use it but if the dev develop a spec line nobody uses, why bother implementing it ? Illusion of choice ? I doubt it.
And that is very different from your "scrub mentality".

It actually works. You can create a character with the zombie talent and then cast Decaying Touch on yourself. Then poison will damage you. I used a Decaying Touch scroll on a slug to test it, and they damaged themselves on my Retaliation.

Decaying Touch just doesn't help Undead with actual healing spells.

Yeah. Environmental Damage doesn't cause any kind of Retaliation, just the initial damage if it was caused by some kind of attack. I can walk through fields of fire and my Retaliation doesn't trigger.

There is one definite moment where Retribution interfered with a quest, though. When Gawin teleports you, Retribution triggers and starts a fight with him.

Ha well good enough. Then it not as bad as I anticipated.

Let me explain why I don't see any major issue with how the retaliation works.

Retaliation can be very powerful, it's especially useful against squeshy high dmg enemies.
Combined with LoneWolf I can see some of them even killing themself with 1hit.
On the flipside you have encounters where retaliations makes fights harder.
Like the one described earlier.

And now to the important point, I don't think that any fight will be unwinnable with a full retaliation build.
If that's not the case than I agree it needs to be changed.

However you might will be forced to use some spells/skills to deal dmg in certain situations.

Since another player just confirm the contrary of what I was thinking, Decaying touch does work in the situation.
The only problem I had was, you had no option to circumvent it. But it was proven wrong, so I no longer care.
I still find the situation very funny however.

Yeah. I am going to run a Solo Retaliation build on Tactician when the game officially comes out. I'll post my results here as well.

I definitely expect I'll need to come up with creative solutions to a few enemies. But that's part of the fun!

There is also a funny interaction where leadership can become bad for you.

When you get a resistance above 100% fire starts to heal and so on.

So let's say you have 60% fire resistance and gain +50% resistance from leadership.
You then walk into fire and get burning because it will heal you and magic armor doesn't prevent good effects. However now you move away from your allie with leadership (or get teleported away) than the burning starts to dmg you.
Would you have walked through the fire with your only 60% resistance your magic armor could have blocked burning.

Except here the solution is more than obvious. Get back to your leader, scrub!

More obvious: Leadership sucks at current EA state. 5 m is far to low to be of any use, and the leader itself gets even nothing from it.

100% Agree with you.
In fact all defense skills looks like there was not much thought put into them and even less testing.

They should work better on how environmental or status effects might trigger combat. For example, there was this one time I challenged the first two thugs in Fort Joy and Ifan (IA) accidentaly hit Lohse in the back when he used Marksman's Fang. Lohse became an enemy, now I can't recrute her as a companion. After reloading, I finished the fight with Dragon's Breath, leaving a burning ground. Since the fight was over, Ifan wanted to go to his "default" position, causing him to get burning. After a few seconds burning, his attitude lowered enough so he started a fight against me.

Both those two scenarios were absurd, out of my control and greatly impact the game for the rest of it. I feel like there should be a way to talk to people who started a fight with you, maybe convince it was an accident, or let them know they are the ones who walked into the damn fire.

Fights become extremely boring with high retribution. Most enemies who are squishy high damage dealers won't even try to hit you. I've been through several fights that most enemies just pass their turns. Maybe, not only the retribution itself has some intrinsic problems, but the AI is too binary when analyzing it. They'd rather pass their turn (or sometimes attack random civilians) than attacking a high retribution character. I've never been in a fight where an enemy one shot themselves, they are way too careful about this. The enemies just start casting all buff and defensive skills.

Yeah. I can only remember two times where an enemy suicided themselves on my Retribution. They almost always go defensive and try to heal/buff themselves if they are close to death. Or sometimes just run away, and I have go to chase them down. =P

Retaliation is good design, reflecting damage should reflect the same damage type that was dealt.
Of course surface damage doesn't do anything, since you can't hurt the floor.

Every time you specialize your character, any advantage you acquire is at the cost of a disadvantage elsewhere; the bigger the advantage, the bigger the disadvantage should be.

Enemies healing themselves by attacking you is hardly a serious problem anyway. Since when does the enemy healing themselves prevent you from killing them? Especially since healing doesn't heal armor, and it's the first that takes out the armor of the other that typically wins.

At least you will get a taunt now as it seems, making it viable again?