Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Tactician mode feels busted

I had to restart because you apparently cannot change difficulty once changing to tactician mode. To be clear, there was no warning beforehand that it would lock me into it.

This is subjective I suppose, but this time around it feels very much like tactician mode was not thoroughly tested. I beat tactician mode in the first Original Sin, and it was rather difficult and rewarding to go through.

This time around It seems very unfun and challenging for all the wrong reasons, namely massively bloated stats against equipment and skills that are not anywhere near up to the task. I'm talking 10 or so damage weapons against 100+ health enemies at level 3 that two to three shot your poorly equipped early game characters.

The original Tactician mode in D:OS 1 was good because it changed enemy encounters to different ones so the same old tactics wouldn't work. Is it only just buffs to stats now? Stat bloat is a pretty uninteresting and unfun way of increasing difficulty.

Could be because you are trying to fight magisters in the prison, which is not something you should be doing at lvl 3... because you are in prison mate.

Yeah you should not engage magisters before level 3 and having level 3 weapons on everyone.

IIRC in the previous game you couldn't change to or from tactician (or honour) either. You only swap between explorer and classic. Perhaps it should warn you...

I've not got far enough to know if monsters are different yet.

I looked at Camp Boss Griff and various others across classic and tactician difficulty via loremaster/examine, main difference is that Vitality, Physical defense, Magic Defense, and damage of all NPCs get a passive 50% increase via difficulty setting buff. No other stats, talents, or traits appear to be different. Straight up 50%, so with stronger enemies that increase is bound to be massive.

Yeah tactician mode is not tactician at all.

+50% damage
+5 Ini
Extra health and armor.

Even at low level, the easiest way to defeat the enemies is the same cheesy method because the AIs were still horrible.

For example, I had an enemy ran across the map just to use recovery on my Fane because somehow he knows that guy is an undead.

Or if you set up an oil field on them and apply the slow (which goes through cc immune), they either

1) try to run through it and never get to act if they don't have a way to just jump right on you with a warfare skill

or

2) Try to run around it and run out of AP before doing anything.

The +5 ini is really ridiculous though and it forces me to recalculate how much Wit I need just to always go first. It's best you just start saving up level up points to use on demand after a quick reload.

Well, its not that they get a 50% increase of basic stats in tactician, but that in explorer mode (or whatever thats called) they get a 50% nerf, you see.

The glass is half full.

But it would be much nicer if they added something more to higher difficulties, rather then just that shitty nerf to the lowest.

Except some such obvious hiccups, the Ai did hold fairly well in ea version i played last. Not when compared to best imaginable but certainly when compared to any other RPG ever made. So im willing to cut a decent amount of slack there.

Classic mode had the default stat where if your wits is higher, chance is, you do have higher initive and will go first. Tactician is really just slapping +50% on them (you can see it says right there if you right click examine them) and it's really lame the 10 wit zombie can go before my 14 wit red prince.

If that's the case I might switch back to classic, as I want the best AI but not unnecessary slowing myself down.

Tactician is not only beefed up stats. The mobs also have more skills and perhaps more ap in some cases (?) and some idiosyncrasies. The turtles for example explode in fire if killed in Tactician. Cost me three of my party.

By and large I don't find it very balanced. Classic is a bit on the easy side while Tactician should be renamed "Burden and Fear". I restarted on Classic after some time because while Tactician can be fun in many fights, in some I can imagine it as extremely frustrating.

My only wish were a mod which allows you to change between Classic and Tactician. You can change to Tactician from Classic during campaign but you cannot go back of course.

Hoo boy, the bloated stat is real. I tried to go after Knilles at level 4 before I leave the place.

I had 37 physical armor + 97 health

The dude did 145 damage on the first turn and just 100-0 me.

First thought that comes to mind, "I need more wits so I can just perma knock down him. I will come back a level later"

The extra damage is so bad the game punishes you for dumping your stat on anything outside Wit. The forced "You Enemy You Enemy You" doesn't help much either.

I agree that I find Tactician not well balanced. The enemies get a huge boost to Initiative that you cannot overcome, and it seems like they just get a flat boost to HP / armor with no other real changes.

It maybe would have been possible if Scoundrel wasn't completely buried, but I think the mode is completely busted compared to DOSEE.

I'm going to reroll for the 3rd time and take my min-maxing even further too. From some more experiment, even if you do spec into Wit, the game now forces you to act in rotation so even if your wits are insanely high, your enemies will also get to act.

This means you now only need one char with a seriously high wit for the first strike. The rest just needs their wits to be above certain point to get them to act in order and you can spec into pure damage right after that.

Tactician mode is more like Cheese mode now. You have to savescum before opening any chest just to make sure you get the right magical loot you can use or you're going to have a very difficult time with cheap overbloated fights.

Thank you for the hints. Makes my decision yesterday to reroll on Classic feel a lot less bitter.

I am going to put my two cents in and say this is the exact last way I wanted tactition mode to function.

Yeah I didn't want tactition mode to pull the same cheap shots it did in the first game like spawn enemies right behind or right beside you... or those lightning zombies that had wonky stun mechanics.

Yet I didn't want this sort of bloating and slight adjustments.

What made some of the fights in tactition mode interesting was that they often changed how you approached a fight. An enemy might have a immunity aura, a new enemy that can teleport in a choke point, Enemies who lose their ability to be easily countered (Raincoat bombs).

Yet so far I feel like tactition mode is the exact same game but everything was given a buff... but not in a way that makes me really change the way I've been playing.

---

Ultimately the most DAMNING thing about the New Tactition mode is that Divinity Origin Sin had a near perfect Tactition mode, at least in concept.

So this "Serviceable" version (for the first chapter, maybe it gets better later) would have been a fine addition had the first game not shown everyone how great a tactition mode can be.

I will still try to complete the game on Tactician mode though, just gonna have to take time and multiple rerolls to figure out all the changes for proper min/maxing.

If the enemy actually has no extra ini and the turn is always forced no matter how low your wits are now, I will just take it that Wits have been nerfed to oblivion to just +1% crit chance and just load on my damage stat so I can kill them before they kill me.

And I will just do everything to cheese them back because the game is trying to cheese me with exploding turtle anyway. Did you know you can sneak attack with a bow from high ground and if they don't see you, you can keep going and shoot up to 3 or even 4 shots before they even react? I did this to destroy the enemy at the gate with 4 magisters and just retreat after I get a kill when they spot me.

There was a post somewhere pre-release about the OPness of elves because of their ap abuse and free skills. And you know what? 4 elfs timewrap tactician incoming =_=

-1) They nerfed Corpse eater it no longer gives you "free skills", it is more like a free book
-2) Only Fane gets Timewarp and he is a undead human.

I notice the timewarp is a Fane-only thing which is great because it shouldn't be a skill given to anyone.

Elves also had their racial nerfed which was necessary.

The game is still a big "Who gets knocked down first" though.

-Early game money saving compared to other racel lul + 1 skills.

-1 free ap + 10% free damage at cost of basically nothing

I admit you have to use it smartly now, but it is still outrageously powerful compared to lizard's lul breath that cant even hit enemies above or below you.

Just saying the proposed broken build isn't QUITE as broken as it used to be.

Though to admit there are far more times I could use that +1 AP and damage than I'd need the breath.

breath is frankly useless after act 1. Heck, after you get your ranged tier 2 spells even, because you will be starting to abuse highgrounds and what not.

Breath also friendly fires incredibly badly and relies too much on positioning.

I made a mistake above, confused tactician for ea game classic difficulty versus explorer.
In this case the glass is half empty and those 50% buffs are cheap crap.

Wait till you get to see Knilles greet you with a 140 damage crit for a level 4 boss.

Unless you abuse save scumming or something on your high ini physical char (you only need 1 high ini char now) to just break his armor in one go with scummed crit to a knock down arrow, enjoy the "difficulty" of bloated stat the enemy has to offer.

I only fight Knilles when im one level above him and his crew.

Its not a mandatory fight so im not that concerned about that. I can come back to Knilles later. But, as i said in other thread, this reminds me of an early ea version where enemies were just too buffed to have any kind of normal gameplay.

I generally accept that enemies are much stronger then me in the prison, and i want it that way because i want to feel as if i am in a prison - which makes escape all that much more necessary.

Are you having those fights while your team is on the same level, or one bellow enemies? How does it feel if you are one level above enemy levels?

I have to chime in and say that EA Classic felt much better than current tactician. You felt that the enemy was the exact strength as you but they often outnumbered you. So you had to play well to overcome them.

Now tactician is basically fighting the above but they are faster and have 50% more HP/Armor. The fights were already often uphill battles like Niles, but now it's just basically suicide mode rather than tactician mode.

It's on the same level. On EA, I used to do it below with ease because of the extra Wit and even if Knilles does get to act, his damage wasn't that riduclous.

But the problem is right there on tactician, the damage. There's almost no source of damage mitigation in our game outside elemental so when a level 4 knilles can deal almost 150 damage in a single turn while everything else around that level deals 35-40, that's a big "wtf". There's no tactic in that, just "Can you CC him before he gets to act and kill one of you" unless you already have good gears.

Not to mention the fight forces the special silent monk to join in now.

That's ridiculous on principle. Neonivek has it right. Not only is a stat buff a shitty way of implementing Tactician, but this was a stretch goal! Larian specifically said they were spending time and money to add this up-front. It's especially galling because Tactician in D:OS 1 was a much more interesting implementation, and this is a major step back.

EDIT: Even if a mere stat boost was okay, +50% is FAR too big a stat boost to be reasonable to deal with in a game which is intended to be difficult by design in Classic.



Lizard Breath was always bad, Shed Skin would have been better, but Larian decided that they wanted fire breath and they're sticking with it.

About the 50% buff to enemies in Tactician, I believe that is very similar to what DOS:EE did as well, along with other changes to mob size and abilities. So EE wasn't some bastion of non-buffing ecstasy in Tact mode.

But as gamers I think over the years we've made it fairly clear to devs that we don't like difficulty that is based just on a multiplication factor of stats, unless the rewards made it worth it. It would be cool if Tactician exists with the new tactics and not the boosted stats. To me that makes a more interesting AI. I'm still glad they have this level, DOS1 imo never really had a very hard mode for those who like to game in that manner.

For Mods:
I know unpacking the files and editing a single file you could take these stat boosts out super easily in DOS1, without messing with the rest of the tactical changes. That seems like it would be a good one to have in DOS2 to. Actually going through a final run of DOS:EE with Epic Encounters mod, but I'll have to check out the mod section to see if we have an unpacker for Dos2.

A mod to go back and forth between Classic/Tactical would be nice, but perhaps there are programmatic reasons why that can't work.

Still looks like I'll want a speed mod to mozy around in the world a bit quicker.

Auto-heal out of combat is a QoL feature mod I like to.

Edit: Noticed the EE unpacker works, seems like there should be a very quick and easy way to knock the stats boosts off in Tactician mode.

Yup, sick and tired of the same cheap trick over the years sold as something it isnt.
Sick and tired of those marketing lies in general, sick and tired of double speak.

Anyway, maybe the stat buffs could be kept at 25% so it doesnt turn out there is no difference in Ai, enemy composition or anything else between the difficulty tiers. Although of course it would be best if someone would go over every enemy and maybe buff only specific ones where it would make sense from a narrative angle.

I would also like to win lottery today.

I just had an encounter vs a group of magisters.
One of them had an evasive aura but instead of 1 or 2 turns he had that permanetly giving everyone +90% dodge chance.

How are supposed to beat that?

Well I guess that's one way to force people into using magic AoE.

Or teleport him out of the group.

Teleporting him out of the group if it even would work, wouldn't help as in the End he would still remain and you can't kill him.

Physical Aoe also doesn't work


But I have to admit that I didn'nt bother much as i just solved it per a conversation option.

From what I'm abusing atm with prebuff and so on

Burn-my-eye +20% Accuracy (Prebuff and later mid buff)
Slow -30% dodge
Flanking -20% dodge

You're stuck using those to really hit him and will probably have to abuse retreat cheese as well just to take down his teammate down.

When does this fight happen? I'm on my 3rd reroll for proper min-max so I'm not that far out of Fort Joy yet.

I ran into the same issue, luckily I figured out maybe tactician wasn't for me only an hour and a half in before having to restart on classic. I thought you could change difficulty after starting the game but I learned the hard way that with tactician you can't. Would be nice to get that as part of the difficulty description, kinda like how honor mode tells you that there is only one save.

in the Gallows first town ones you are of the ship, part of the powerful awakening quest line

It will be awhile before I get there then since I'm trying to abuse everything I can to have loads of money and gear when I do finish act 1.

Interesting enough.... Scoundrel no longer has a stealth skill. You're stuck getting metamorphosis for it now.

That's kinda disappointing. They removed a skill from a certain tree just to put it in another tree without a single care about the synergy the tree originally had. Now half of the moves are unusable because they require you to be in stealth. You can also no longer stealth steal so there's no use for the scoundrel tree anymore after level 1.

Sneak is available to every character. Invisibility is only another way to avoid detection.

Back in D:OS (EE), NPCs received a 20% buff to their health in Tactician mode. Also, in Classic mode players receive a 15% buff to their health (which was lost when choosing Tactician Mode instead, making the gulf between NPC and player health even larger). NPCs also had access to more skills and abilities in Tactician mode.

I think there were also bonuses/penalties to hit chance, but don't quote me on that.

That doesn't sound too different from what's being reported in this thread for D:OS 2, does it?

I am sorry if I am missing it but is this sarcasm?

If the above mentions of increased HP/Armor, initiative and Damage are true the 2 games could not be further apart.

Numbers you mention have doubled and if that's not different enough you factor in the fact that they hit like a train and act as if they had 5 more wits (base) without having to sacrifice damage, action points, or defense. And icing on the cake due to their 100% CC immunity armor (now 50% more of it) you cant CC them to thin numbers.

I am missing specifics but what has been described so far is nowhere in the same realm.

I have already added correction in my later posts. Wit wasn't really buffed, they just outright change how initiative work and make sure it works in rotation now so even if your team goes full wit, you will have to act in you-enemy-you-enemy order from highest ini member to lowest.

And of course this works heavily into the enemy favour because they are guaranteed to be able to deal heavy +50% damage with that tactician buff without having to sacrifice any points into wit. You will have to exploit this the same way they do now (Only one high wit to get your party going first, the rest spec into pure damage because they will get to act anyway so they can break those armor right on their turn)

I'm not saying that there is absolutely no room whatsoever for stat boosts on higher difficulties... but 50% is a hell of a lot larger than 20%. You also conveniently neglect to mention the +50% bonuses enemies get to physical/magical defense on top of the health buff, AND the +50% extra damage enemies do.

There were also a lot more obvious changes to encounters in D:OS 1 EE so the stat changes seemed less like the only real change.

So YES, it DOES sound different than D:OS 1. But thanks for the strawman argument.

The problem is much bigger in this case due to the radical changes of how armor mechanics function.

That has to be taken in consideration.

They changed so much coming from the first game. Most things feel pretty odd. Skills who were normal in the first now need source and other are now innate, Armor instead of Body Building/Willpower/Damage reduction, attributes that offer no real synergy therefore making mixed attribute skilltrees like scoundrel not fully effective, turning leadership into useless garbage, changing how AP work,... and probably other stuff.

That is much better, that could be the single easiest way to dominate in DOS1. IS the you-enemy-you-emeny chain set for all modes or just tactician? To me this is the way to do it.

I've been enjoying Tactician.

The big change I noticed is that my characters could be killed more easily, so how one approaches a fight and being able to kill enemies quickly is more important.

Sometimes enemies would have a new ability too, like the Immunity to Water aura on the Fire Slug Queen, although maybe any enemy buffs I noted may just be due to the patch and not Tactician exclusive, I can't say for sure.

It didn't seem hard to me and my playgroup, but we have played a lot in EA and are very familiar with the mechanics, fights, secrets, etc.

I also avoided Wits entirely. With no investment we still acted alongside the enemy but we were a lot stronger than Wits-stacking characters would be. I didn't know Wits had received such a big change since the EA, but this worked for us.

Of note, the entire team was based around physical damage, which is performing well in the current patch.

Simple stat inflation is a boring way to make content harder, but I would be very disappointed if Tactician mode was made easier. It doesn't seem like only a stat increase occurred here though.

The main problem is, that is not what we expected from Tactician mode? We expected fights with tweaks, fight that are a bit different than in classic and not fights with bloated stats like in old brawler games.

Sneak has early been nerfed into the ground it now costs 4 AP to use it in combat making in useless.

Has there been a definitive answer that Tactician mode doesn't affect AI or mobs?
It alludes that it does when you pick the option in game.

Here's what the difficulty settings do:

DOS2

EASY:

new entry "CasualPlayer"
type "Character"
data "ArmorBoost" "30"
data "MagicArmorBoost" "30"
data "Vitality" "50"
data "DamageBoost" "50"
data "Accuracy" "5"
data "Dodge" "5"

new entry "CasualNPC"
type "Character"
data "ArmorBoost" "-50"
data "MagicArmorBoost" "-50"
data "Vitality" "-40"
data "DamageBoost" "-50"
data "Accuracy" "-15"



NORMAL:

new entry "NormalPlayer"
type "Character"

new entry "NormalNPC"
type "Character"



HARD:

new entry "HardcorePlayer"
type "Character"

new entry "HardcoreNPC"
type "Character"
data "ArmorBoost" "50"
data "MagicArmorBoost" "50"
data "Vitality" "50"
data "DamageBoost" "50"
data "Accuracy" "10"



DOS EE Settings:

EASY:

new entry "CasualPlayer"
type "Character"
data "Vitality" "80"
data "ChanceToHitBoost" "30"


new entry "CasualNPC"
type "Character"
data "Vitality" "-50"
data "ChanceToHitBoost" "-25"


NORMAL:

new entry "NormalPlayer"
type "Character"
data "Vitality" "15"

new entry "NormalNPC"
type "Character"


HARD:

new entry "HardcorePlayer"
type "Character"


new entry "HardcoreNPC"
type "Character"
data "Vitality" "20"
data "ChanceToHitBoost" "20"

Well, they're not wrong that it changes the AI if they get new skills to toy with and that the extra damage make them to take certain action instead. After all, most games do not have specific AI for every character, they just use the same generic AI that make them take certain action if they have X health, Y damage or Z skill in a pattern.

And from the look at how they try everything they can to avoid the oil puddle I set pre-fight to perma slow all of them and how often it cause them to just cancel their turn, I say that's the case.

If anyone wants to kick this into action, it works the same as DOS:EE.

You can download the extracted Character.txt file here:
http://www.filedropper.com/character

Edit it with Notepad or Notepad ++ variant. See post above for area to modify, for example:
new entry "HardcoreNPC" section

Save it here: You will need to create a few sub directories
..\Divinity Original Sin 2\Data\Public\Shared\Stats\Generated\Data

Start the game, there will be a warning about a modified version, run it and you can see the changes in Vitality for example using before/after.

If there was some type of consensus with the settings, it would be easy enough to re-pak it and make it an "official" mod.

I didn't play the EA at all, so I have no frame on context about Tactician mode. I chose to play it here it because D:OS EE became boring on Classic at mid levels and onward, and even on Tactician a little later. I've tried to keep the spoilers really low so there will still be some challenge in the game as I go. I've even made my group roughly 2x physical 2x magic as well, with very little overlap in abilities. So all that said, I really hope I don't screw myself and have to start over. So far @ level 4 I've just found I need to fight things my level or lower.

I've been playing DOS2's tactician mode for 15-20 hours. I've been browsing the Larian/Steam forums every now and then while I was playing and I've seen plenty of people complain about the difficulty mode. I didn't pay too much attention to the complaints as I was doing relatively fine myself, but now I find myself getting less excited every time I get into a new fight.
At first I could live with enemies being significantly stronger than in the early access version. I mean, it is to be expected considering I'm playing on a higher difficulty mode, but now I've reached the point where I feel the damage numbers simply are overinflated to the point where it adds nothing but tedium to the encounters.

I've played and beat DOSEE's tactician mode multiple times and honour mode a single team, trying out a new party setup every playthrough. While I don't personally considering D:OS1's skill schools too balanced it was still possible to get through the game with almost any setup or build.
In DOS2 I decided to go in with the same party setup I beat the early access version with: a 2h melee warrior, a scoundrel, a huntsman with supplementary hydro/aero magic and a geo/pyro/aero magic user. Now, a couple of hours into act 2 I've had to rebuild the latter two into pure physical damage dealers and I've had to give healing and magic/physical armour restoration spells to almost all four of my characters. In my most recent fight I came across a level 10 void enemy that dealt 400 damage with its basic attacks. Most of my characters have around 500 health and between 50 and 150 physical armour. I spend most of the fight replenishing my warrior and occasionally my scoundrel's health and both armour types because they were the only ones capable of actually dealing sufficient damage against the monster. Even though I kept the boss stunned as much as I possibly could it was also accompanied by five (?) lesser enemies that each could two-hit my characters' armour and constantly stun/curse them.
In the act 1 fight again Alexander half of my party members would frequently go from having 100% of either their physical or magic armour up to losing half of their health to a single attack because the damage is so absurdly inflated that no armour can keep up with it unless you spend at least 2 out of 4 AP every turn replenishing your own armour.

I haven't been a huge fan of DOS2's armour system ever since I first discovered it, but during the EA version I could live with its restrictions and rules because they also applied to the enemies. Sure, they could break my armour and turn me into a pincushion, but I could do the exact same to them. On tactician mode I can hardly leave a dent in their armour before they (with a single spell) has depleted my armour and half of my health. The worst part is that even if I do manage to break down their armour I still have to rely on a lucky dice roll to determine if I end up dealing damage to them.
Even though the game says I have a 90% chance to hit the enemy it feels a lot more like 50% - I thought the entire idea behind the new armour system was to remove the uncertainty and RNG-based nature behind attacks and status effects?

DOS1EE's tactician mode did at certain times increase the difficulty in questionable ways, namely by adding elemental immunities to some encounters, creating additional enemy spawns and giving the enemies increased initiative. Some of those were annoying at times but at least they actually added something new to the encounters. So far in DOS2 they've just made the enemies hit harder. I'm pretty sure I can count the amount of encounters where tactician mode actually added something new [when compared to the early access classic mode version] on a single hand. My approach to most of the fights is the exact same as it was during the beta, except this time I spend more time buffing myself because the enemies get the luxury of ignoring my armour because of their increased damage.

I can't even bring a token mage anymore because it's ten times more efficient to simply stack one armour type. Furthermore half of the stats seem to have been either changed or dumped down. Initiative/Wits is seemingly completely pointless because the combat turns are decided differently (?) now. Many of the skill bonuses have been changed to plain 5% damage increases, removing the potential depth the older stats had.

Considering Larian claim(ed) to be 'reading it all' based on a sticky on this part of the forums it confuses me that Tactician mode was allowed to be shipped in this state, especially considering the numerous complaints about the armour, stats system and a lot more.

Seems to me they could instantly fix it by setting the boost numbers to 20% (like EE). I would assume HardcoreNPC is the AI flag, if that actually changes AI.

Wonder why they decided to crank up everything by 50% instead of EE's 20%. Some players (like me) have to play on the hardest difficulties, but currently finding it a chore as I get near the end of Act One.

tactician mode should have been delayed until a bit after release. the reason OS1 had a good tactician mode is because they were able to study the fights enough and tune them to be difficult in a fair way. that isn't the case here.

That does not fix the issue in slightest. Fights in Tactician should be different, not only harder in numbers. Fights in Tactician were different, not always that much, but here and there more than enough. Just increasing the stats does make it harder, but not more tactician, at least not in the way as we expected it.

I'm a big fan of a good challenge but it's sounding like I'm gonna want to restart my playthrough right now to classic and just enjoy the story and familiarize with the skills. I'm still in act 1 and am not struggling much, but I'm getting the feeling that i'm just not going to have fun after act 1.

Throwback to diablo 3 release act 2 on inferno, lmao.

A this point, the most "Tactical" approach in this mode now is to oil every possible surface to block the enemy route before you begins any fight. It's amazing how it can completely bug and forces enemy to end their turn after using one or two ranged attack. If they're melee with a ranged attack/spell, they just stop the turn right after using their ranged attacks like Knilles just using Mosquito swarm and stopping the movement entirely because there's an oil field in front of him.

Tactician mode is unbalanced, at the early levels specifically. The difference in armor and damage levels mean the AI can CC our party left and right when we are still trying to have any effect. There is nothing tactical about that it just means half our skills do nothing but damage which is retardedly low when compared to enemies with armor levels equal to our characters total health.

The outnumbered fights can be done, but the houdmaster and arena fights are idiotic. It takes multiple rounds of the whole party just to get through armor while one hit takes out our armor and they can then CC away.

DOS Tactician is difficult but it is indeed tactical with it being more mobs, but with just buffs with DOS2's armor mechanic its stupid and frustrating.

Changing my perspective, I'm actually enjoying tactician mode now.

It's a mode where you do whatever you can to not win fights but to beat the game itself.
You need to know exactly where to go to make the early game easy (Houndmaster Crossbow + Ancient sword + Migo stuffs + extra magic loots OP) and once you have all the gears, it becomes a game of manipulating the map to manipulate the AIs. The game is still fun and challenging in its own way as long as you avoid using game breaking exploits like "Side-line Mage" and "Infinite Turn".

And? The core problem remains, it's still has nothing to do with 'tactic' ^^

I found out that respeccing your characters doesn't delete the abilities they've learned so I changed my 1½ mages into pure archers with only a couple of geo spells for the oil effects. It's going slightly better now but the fact that I 'need' to do this is utter rubbish, especially considering a part of the appeal of DOS1's tactician mode (at least to me) was that despite the difficulty you could still use any party setup as long as you remained within reasonable boundaries.

Manipulating the enemy AI is actually a tactic especially when you consider how key targets will rekt your team in a few hits now.

So while it is disappointing, the mode still forces you to change how you play to deal with the bloated stats. For example, Judge Orivand battle must be taken from right in front of him so you have 2 turns to act (the purged elf will spend it first) and in that 2nd turn, unless you have godly gears, you will have to knock him down or his 53 damage battle stomp will likely knock down your whole team.

You do have to consider the game is as casual and simple as it can be so don't expect them to add any crazy tactics into the game. There's no game changing debuff and buff that you have to keep in mind of and always cleanse. It's just "You get CC'd, you lose. They get CC'd, you win".

well I've gotten all the way to level 12 with a summoner fighter/geo tank fighter/aero/hydro tank and a ranger I mostly just used smart tactics; ie don't forget you can run away and come back after you kill one and even go run heal and join the fight mid battle haha, I love the new respect cause you can fine tune your build and get rid of points you used to survive early game only real fight I had trouble with was the end of 1 act on the boat going to act 2

If you're going to go that far to beat the game, might as well just go all out and abuse rejoining mid battle for infinite turn until they fix it.

It's kinda sad the whole "Kill one, escape" is still in the game. They need to make it so that retreat is not possible if you used your AP on something outside movement (so no hit -> retreat or super long jump -> retreat) and that you need at least 2 AP for it. Also track who retreated so if they rejoin the fight, they cannot get another round of action until the turn is over.

Honestly If you've ever played the epic encounters mod for dos 1 ee its pretty much the same level as this except they cant 75% resist all cc and they mod had enemy level scaling as well lol haha it's not that hard :P

Also they change how far away you need to be to escape now it's not like the first one you can escape with people right next to you; also I usually don't need to run away I've only done it a couple times

Yeah just get wiped from Alexander fight. My 285 armor 365 hp tank got one shotted from backlashing Gheist. Don't know if it's possible without cheesing your way.

that is just as cancerious as early access where you have to win on turn one to get CCed to oblivion

The game adds way to remove some of the CC yet forget to add spells that grant immunity to those CC.

We really need more defensive magic in this game that isn't just "Gain Armor" or "Gain Magic armor". A pure anti-cc abiltiy would have been nice, like "Stand your ground" for shield user where it creates a cover for teammate so projectile can't get through to them and prevent stuff like "Battering ram" from dashing right through.

It was fine in early access because the numbers were reasonably adjusted and you had just as many ways to avoid and/or getting out of crowd control effects as you had ways to inflict them.
This isn't the case now because the enemies deal so much damage they completely bypass your armour anyway and at the same time have additional armour themselves so you will have to stack one damage type and focus fire one or two enemies at a time while simultaneously spending half of your turn recovering from whatever your enemies are throwing at you.

Well on the bright side, they completely broke thievery again that a single person with thievery gear is enough to rob a person completely. I used to cycle between 3 to 4 people to steal with sneak but now, I only need one because at level 6 with 3 thievery and 1 from glove, that 2.4k gold total stealing really go a loooonggg way.

No, thats just manipulating enemy Ai. Its a meta shtick, which is used and abused outside of the game and its gameplay, which makes the internal game mechanics and gameplay mostly pointless.

Its a meta strategy abuse, not a tactic.

What does this do and what should i edit?
That file in the game directory? Or do i copy this file you posted and paste it into the appropriate directory?

I should edit only the "hardcoreNPC"?
What do i edit to lower their hp bloat and armor bloat?

As for the consensus, Ill make the fing consensus myself.

HP or vitality should be only 10% higher. If even that, so we can really see if there are any other changes that make anything more tactical.

Armors should not change at all from classic.
The mechanic is a cancer anyway.


edit:

this section needs to be edited?

HARD:

new entry "HardcorePlayer"
type "Character"

new entry "HardcoreNPC"
type "Character"
data "ArmorBoost" "50"
data "MagicArmorBoost" "50"
data "Vitality" "50"
data "DamageBoost" "50"
data "Accuracy" "10"


ok then, so


HARD:

new entry "HardcorePlayer"
type "Character"

new entry "HardcoreNPC"
type "Character"
data "ArmorBoost" "0"
data "MagicArmorBoost" "0"
data "Vitality" "0"
data "DamageBoost" "0"
data "Accuracy" "0"

hows this?

Or do i just delete those last five entries alltogether?

I'm enjoying tactician. I never played DOS2 in classic mode (i only tested classes during the beta cause i didn't want spoilers), and i decided to go straight with tactician.
I struggled a lot at the beginning cause at level 3 with no gear you can't do anything, but i liked that i had to avoid every fight trying to get exp and loot in some ways.

Everything changed after i managed to kill Kniles. And to manage to do that at level 4 with shit gear (i had only one decent char, my rogue had 2 lvl2 shivs) i had to know exaclty what positions to play, craft the correct arrows and food, abuse every combo of spells i had, etc.. I think that's tactician enough

After that i got lvl5, good loot and now i can play the swamp like a normal game. Also it feels so rewarding when you get good gear in this mode, cause it makes so much difference.

It's a turn-based game. You can't expect it to have insane tactical approach.

Just look at games like Fire Emblem which is considered to be one of the harder Turn-based strat game. What is the entire game strat and tactics about? Manipulating AI so they don't run across the map to kill you in 2 hits with a perma death while making sure you obtain the best result from that.

Pretty much every turn-based game has the same optimal strat too. "Stack damage, act first, CC people in order and beat them before they can deal any damage". It just so happens that the terrible armor system is further flawed and punish people for not min-max to high heaven in its most bloated mode. (Which really should be the case anyway but losing an entire role because of it is kinda lame.)

At this point, I have a feeling that people expect this game to have some real-time factor tactic in its tactician mode, which is not there because Divinity combat is NOT in real-time unless you exploit it with the mage side-line so one can buff in real time while everyone else still act in turn. The most you can do is cleanse those knock down, freeze, shocked and so.

The huge difference is: In Fire Emblem you use combat mechanics: That is tactical gameplay. In D:OS you can use out of combat mechanics, that is often not tactical anymore, it is just abuse of the flaws of the core game mechanic.

ITT: Hard more is hard, please make hard mode easy.

Nope, you are totally missing the point.

And you can tell when something is a clear exploit and when something is not.

For example, armor system is terrible but it's a part of the game that is not an exploit.

Neither is setting up the field so you have the advantage.

Meanwhile, hitting their buddies while they are talking so the boss don't join the fight or rejoining the fight in real time for infinite turn ? That's an exploit.

I remember playing a game of Last Remnant where I always use the best moves to beat harder bosses and people just go into E-peen contest, calling strong moves "exploits" for some reason.

Everyone has their own definition of fun and tactical so there's no reason trying to push it on other. I will agree that Tactical mode bloated stat is horrible and should just be labeled as "hard mode" but I will take what I am given and see if it can be cleared anyway without me outright breaking the game with stuff that I know will certainly be fixed.

This is not at all what people are saying. They are saying that it's hard in a way which is uninteresting and very poorly implemented. This especially stands out when compared to Tactician mode of the PREVIOUS GAME IN THE SERIES which was done very well in a way which was challenging AND interesting.

Perhaps this was just inevitable because the previous game's Tactician difficulty was good because it was designed based on many hours of feedback from players, feedback which they simply didn't have past the end of Act I.

Lol wut?

First of all nobody mentioned anything about "insane" anything, so dont strawman your arguments.

Second off all, importance of tactics is exactly what TB systems are all about - because they negate player skills influence on the gameplay itself - because character skills take precedence over player twitch skills.

Player handles the meta strategic levels and decisions - characters handle the in game tactical performance.
Thats what Tb systems and RPG are.

The other version of this approach are action games, or other kinds of hybrids in which player twicth skills take precedence over game mechanics.

And no, there is no "everyones opinion about what is tactics is equally valid" - thats absurd nonsense.
Else me eating a banana or taking a walk is a tactic.

There is no such insane absolute relativism about it.

You and anyone else can enjoy this tactician mode, nobody is saying you shouldnt - but these mechanics are not tactical, except very, very indirectly through meta strategic decisions made outside of the game world - and thats not tactic. Thats cheesing.

But then you take a look at the current state of act 1 and realise they hardly even bothered changing anything despite having one year's worth of feedback, playtesting and player submitted logs. I'm fairly certain I can count the amount of encounters where the enemies clearly had new abilities or mechanics such as an aura buff on one hand. Similarly I can't remember a single time where I ran into a fight that featured additional enemies like tactician in DOS:1. I realise that whether or not adding more enemies counts as a proper way of increasing difficulty is an entirely different discussion, but it still adds something to the fight that's more than just a flat stat increase.

The Devs may be "reading it all" but that doesnt mean they will do something with it.
Its a nice marketing shtick which all videogame companies use.

Naturally not all suggestions and ideas can be taken, but thats not what anyone would want anyway. Over time some of the suggestions and critiques do crystalize but... then you have the necessities of game development itself and in cases where there is a big feature bloat... some things get left behind.

I cant criticize or complain about co-op, or GM mode or the moding editor, but one thing that is sticking out are full voiceovers which are again - done most of all as a marketing tool, not something majority of players really want or appreciate. Sure you can see a few posts here and there saying they like it, but even those players dont listen to all of the voiceovers and regularly skip them, especially when playing again.

You can considering both eating a banana or taking a walk as a tactic if you want if the topic is about taking a diet. On the other hand, if it's about playing the game, it's not. It's either wrong or right depending on the situation.

But to consider a method that is already doable in the game that will likely not be removed cheesing? At this point, you're putting personal feeling over the point of tactical plays, mechanical prowess.

It's like the discussion I had before with prefight buffs and pre emp first. Some of the people here called them cheesing and should not be used but those are legit strat in any turn-based game that has real time out-of-combat movement.

At this point, everyone might as well discuss what should be called and not be called tactical plays before we even discuss what tactical mode should be about.

Thats just ridiculous absurd nonsense.

And thats what people regularly succumb to when they try to make their enjoyment of something extra special.

I guess i would now need to explain how eating a banana or taking a walk have fuck all to do with any diet, but just the fact you pull that nonsense means you are out of your mind and cannot be reasoned with anymore.


No, thats what you are doing. Projection.

And now you can only go into more and more absurdities to try and forcibly prove your nonsensical absurd opinion is somehow true - which cannot be done, because it simply isnt.



False equivalence fallacy.



No, we really dont need to "discuss" anything more.

Maybe I should have bloated my persuasion stat instead of accepting the changes they stick with and just try to enjoy the game, huh?

The thing is, tactician mode in D:OS EE was ridiculously easy. So they made it harder.

For me exploits are such things, that defy logic and exploit the way how AI works.

Preparing an ambush in which you want to lure the enemies: tactic
Sneaking in the camp and plastering everything with explosive barrels: exploit

Killing a minion out of sight of all others: tactic
Keeping the Boss in talk, while you slaughter his minions in his sight: exploit


Honestly, I don't care that much, how people exploit to win, I'm just pretty disappointet once more, like many squels falling short to their predecessor.


50% more on every stat is just cheap for a hard mord and also questionable resonable, even more because of how armor system works.

Harder in a boring, un-fun, poorly thought-out way.

Since you said DOS EE tactician was challenging, while it was actually stupidly easy, I'm going to assume you are not very good at the game. Therefore, your opinion on DOS2 tactician difficulty doesn't really mean much. For people like you there is always explorer mode, while those who don't have problems beating the game do not have the option of increasing the difficulty.

Er, I was asking a question, not proclaiming doctrine. Take it down a notch, Reaction-Rick.

Stop being an arrogant asshole.

SUBJECT:
If anyone wants to kick this into action, it works the same as DOS:EE.

You can download the extracted Character.txt file here:
http://www.filedropper.com/character

Edit it with Notepad or Notepad ++ variant. See post above for area to modify, for example:
new entry "HardcoreNPC" section

Save it here:
You will need to create a few sub directories
..\Divinity Original Sin 2\Data\Public\Shared\Stats\Generated\Data

Start the game, there will be a warning about a modified version, run it and you can see the changes in Vitality for example using before/after.

Q:
What does this do and what should i edit?

A:
The goal is to adjust the stat boost NPC's get in Tactician mode.

Q:
That file in the game directory? Or do i copy this file you posted and paste it into the appropriate directory?

A:
Yes copy that. Go to your game directory, however as you drill down the sub folders will no longer exist, add those in as shown here. ..\Divinity Original Sin 2\Data\Public\Shared\Stats\Generated\Data

Once copied in here, edit the file.

Q:
I should edit only the "hardcoreNPC"?
What do i edit to lower their hp bloat and armor bloat?

A:
Yes. You can edit what you like, but the topic is NPC hp/armor bloat etc.

Q:
ok then, so

HARD:

new entry "HardcorePlayer"
type "Character"

new entry "HardcoreNPC"
type "Character"
data "ArmorBoost" "0"
data "MagicArmorBoost" "0"
data "Vitality" "0"
data "DamageBoost" "0"
data "Accuracy" "0"

hows this?

Or do i just delete those last five entries alltogether?

A:
You can do either, set to 0 or remove the line.

I also suggest you go into HardcorePlayer and add:
data "Vitality" "100"

Check your Vitality before, then do this whole step above, run the game and check vitality after, it should be noticeably higher. This is to make sure this mod has kicked and you done it right. Then when it is working, exit, remove the Players Vitality 100 and play the game with adjusted NPC stats.

This is all based on if Tactician mode is more than just stat boosts. I don't think that has been clearly answered. If is it just a stat boost, play another difficulty level then.


Q to RAZE: Are you able to confirm Tactician mode is just stat boosts or is their additional AI behaviors, mob formations, etc? Thanks.

I always have say this but most people seem to refuse to understand it.

Fun is subjective.

The lack of gear and skill really is the major reason the mode leaves such a bad impression but with proper build, the mode is actually more fun than classic because even with the extra stat and damage, your characters are still way stronger than all the normal enemies.

The game becomes a puzzle game on how to deal with all the key targets based on what they're capable of, something that will never happen on Classic because enemies are too weak.

You remove that damage bonus and bosses can gank up on you and you won't even come close to dying.

Also, in case anyone is still worrying about perma CC.

Certain buffs can be used to negate CC now.

Rested (use the bed) can be used to prevent first turn knock down.

There are also necklaces that prevent cc (I got a mage necklace with Immune Stunned).

There are also drinks that grant you CC immunity made from that CC immune flower.

Turns out you still have a major advantage even in the CC battle on Tactician.

Yeah its all subjective, everything is relative, bananas are also airplanes, its all a matter of opinion.
Especially when the difference is whether you can win a fight by cheesing or not. If you can cheese it and you start winning suddenly the "tactics" are great! But if youre losing then tactics are bad. Right-e-o.
Larian should hire you as a tactical developer.

This is not a tactical mode, this is HP, Damage and Armor bloat mode.

Until further notice or additional rebalancing and patches.


Anyway, much appreciated Horroscope.
Just wanted to be clear on what and where.

Ill try that very thing and see if i can notice any difference, playing on normal classic and "HP/Damage/Armor bloat mode"

The advantage are all on your side. If you still considered prebuff, sneak attack and using proper protection with dedicated person to prevent the CC battle, that's your fault now, not the game.

So if you still get rekt after level 3, it's time to just admit your build is bad or that you are bad at the game. Enemies, even without buffs, are WEAKER than you especially with the change they made to wit and turn rotation so you can put every point you get into damage and 20 str laugh at your enemeis because the enemies still get something like 14 int 13 con 12 finesse on their warriors with the auto distribution the game uses.

Don't just call everything "Cheesy" because you can't accept that it's a legit method that requires absolutely no overlooked exploit to be used. It's like asking for a fist fight in a ghetto and screaming that it's unfair the enemies have knives and poison.

Again, absurd and nonsensical comparisons you pull out of your behind.
Also dumb, because you can have no idea how i am playing or how much im losing or winning.

Enemies cannot be fundamentally weaker then me if we are using the same mechanics, dumbass. And i went through all encounters just fine in ea, where situation was much the same as now in some earlier versions.

Havent even started playing the full game yet, so you are simply a retard now.

And i have no wish to play a game for retards, using retarded cheese and exploits against bloated enemies.
You enjoy it and call yourself great tactician.