Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Why armor is a failure and how to fix it

It took a little getting used to but I like how armor and CC work in DOS2. I disagree with those who have said it oversimplifies things; having to "set up" CC by breaking through the relevant armor first requires you to plan out moves between characters in a way that wasn't necessary in DOS1 where an elementalist with glass cannon could pretty much keep enemies on lock-down by themselves while the rest of the party cleaned house. I personally find myself putting a lot more thought into each move in DOS2 than I ever did in the first game.

I do agree that the downside of the system is that it heavily favors parties that focus solely on one damage/armor type. But I think the best solution to this isn't to change how armor works but rather to add some more skills to each ability school that give characters more flexibility in dealing with both armor types without having to hybridize between strength/finesse and intelligence (which has its own issues) and thus allow mixed parties to work together. Strength and finesse-focused characters need more skills like Chloroform that allow them to deal magic armor and/or piercing damage that scales off of their weapon attribute and to apply magic status effects so that they can help their magic damage-focused teammates against enemies with low magic armor. Likewise, intelligence-focused characters need some spells that allow them to deal physical/piercing damage that scales with intelligence and to apply physical status effects so they can help their physical damage-focused teammates against enemies with low physical armor.

Below are a few ideas for some skills like this, just off the top of my head.

Gust (Aerotheurge): A blast of wind that knocks down all characters in a wide arc in front of the caster. Resisted by physical armor. Basically Battlestomp with a wider cone of effect but no damage.

Implosion (Aerotheurge): Violently warp space in an area, dealing X physical damage to all characters in a 3m radius. Basically a physical damage version of Fireball.

Brittle Frost (Hydrosophist): Flash freeze an enemy's armor leaving it brittle. For the next 3 turns, the targeted enemy takes double damage to its physical armor.

Ice Spike (Hydrosophist): A spike of ice that pierces enemies in a line, dealing X piercing damage, Y cold damage, and applying chilled/frozen condition. Like Marksman's Fang but with the additional cold damage status effects.

Ice Fan (Hydrosophist): Change this skill to do a portion of its damage as piercing damage alongside the cold damage.

Melt Metal (Pyrokinetic): Destroy X% of a enemy's physical armor and deal an equivalent amount of fire damage to the target. I'm thinking along the lines of how Reactive Armor works in terms of % damage to physical armor, except you are using this on an enemy instead of yourself.

Searing Daggers (Pyrokinetic): Change this skill to do a portion of its damage as piercing damage alongside the fire damage.

Concussive Blow (Warfare): Bash an enemy in the head, dealing X physical damage, destroying Y magic armor, and setting sleeping (resisted by magic armor). Sort of like chloroform, but deals normal weapon attack physical damage alongside the magic armor damage and sleep effect. Limited to melee range. Hey, if chemically-induced unconsciousness counts as magic damage why not blunt-force-trauma-to-the-head-induced unconsciousness? Perhaps make this require a hammer.

Impale (Warfare): Lunge forward and skewer an enemy with your weapon, dealing X piercing damage and setting bleeding if the target does not have physical armor.
Requires a sword or spear. Basically functions like Sawtooth Knife, but instead of being backstab-compatible it gets an extra bit of movement, like a shorter ranged Battering Ram.

Imbue Arrow (Huntsman): Conjure an arrow of pure magic to shatter an enemy's magical defenses. Deals normal attack damage but to magic armor instead of physical armor.

Basically I think every ability school should have at least two or three skills like this that either do damage/CC effects to the opposite armor type of the main focus of the school or do piercing damage that ignores armor altogether. Obviously these would need to have the appropriate cooldowns and AP and Source costs to make them balanced; they shouldn't be spammable but should be there to give physical damage dealers some tools to help out the magic-damage dealing members of a party with magic armor, and vice versa, allowing mixed parties to be more viable. If every character had the potential for this kind of flexibility I personally don't think the armor system would be a problem at all. And ultimately I think adding a few more skills to each school is a much more reasonable ask for a patch post-release than trying to get Larian to overhaul the game's core systems.