Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General About the game critique from players

I think you misunderstood the last part of my reply. I didn't mean ask the devs to make it that the armor system do X and Y when Z condition is triggered. I mean it more in the sense (for example): We want a more complex armor system, etc...

1. All physical teams are better. There is no "magic is better at AoE" and "physical is better at single target" for the majority of the encounters. Physical AoE actually outright kills, while magical AoE suffers penalties from resist types and doesn't actually excel unless you have a minimum of three enemies clumped together (which is rare actually).

2. Mass Effect? LOL. Mass Effect 2 was absolutely awful if you wanted to play as an Adept, and it was the worst change from the first game that did not have the double and triple layers of "health" that prevented your manipulation of the enemies. At least in that game though you had Warp and Warp explosions to quickly strip armor. There's nothing comparable to that in this game, especially with the high cooldowns.

3. Split teams in this game are bad. You can finish Classic easily enough with one, but you'll have a hell of a time in Tactician, and either going all physical or all magical is going to work out the best; with physical being the superior choice.



Not really an issue late game. The highest of any stat you need is 14 for gear, and you'll cap your primary stat long before end game. After that, the only thing really left is MEM (not really needed for most builds) and WIT (not really needed other than for Crit oriented builds). Sparing 1-4 points to wear non primary stat gear isn't a drawback. The main drawback is if that gear doesn't actually have enough extra stats or skills to really warrant using it for the armor bonuses alone. CON is useful if you want a shield, but that's all it's good for, and you'll still have a surplus of stat points near the end. Prior to that point it actually doesn't really matter all that much anyway. It doesn't matter until Act 4 when inflation gets out of hand.

@vometia/miaasma
I respect your goal to stay neutral, no question. The problem is, no action is also an action.
But just to be clear, I do not allege any malicious intend towards you. The first sentence was actually aimed in general and separate of the other part. Hoped I had made that clear, sry if not.

@miaasma

Agree with you mostly, but there is quite a bit of stuff where Larian actually already made their goals clear, for example the chain-cc, so how that system actually falls short in exactly that regard is quite well defined.
Additionally the question is what makes the system preferrable compared to the alternatives for the people that like a specific system. A vital point to investigate these aspects regarding their congruence. And that's where a lot of these comments are lacking.
So setting a certain set of aspects isn't irrelevant. Even if one does not agree with them.

There's nothing wrong with chain CC.

The current armour system is far from optimal and its glaringly obvious why, i am suprised they didn't see that. The idea of an armour system that require you to strip armour before u can CC is however exellent because DoS1 was completely broken in that regard. Rain-lightning and win until lvl 15, then it just became hailattack-arrowstorm and win.

What they should have done was to just make one armour that both physical and magic could dmg but made the armour pools bigger.

And yes, Adept was so horrible to play en ME2 on higher difficulties.

The armor system just penalizes casters more than simply needing to strip and then perform two actions before being able to CC too. Damage wise it's just really weak because spells don't grossly inflate with weapons like physical damage does.

From essentially level 8 and beyond, physical classes can outright strip armor normally in two attacks (or less) by outpacing the physical armor gains with physical damage. Meanwhile, caster damage seems fairly linear, staying well below the inflated magic armor in Acts 3 and 4, requiring Savage Sortilege and a large crit chance just to maybe start being able to strip magic armor in a comparable way, and it usually requires two crits in a row. Then of course there's also the lovely issue of elemental resists to go on top of the armor...

The game isn't remotely balanced. So what if buffs and heals are "useful"? You can go through the entire game without using anything other than a few potions as a full physical team. Magic damage in general is just very weak (outside of a rank 10 elementally infused Incarnate of course...), and you can't add 2x - 3x runes to your weapons that will increase the damage of your spells either.

On top of that, you have to pretty much super specialize in one school while also maybe being able to max a second right before end game if you want to have any kind of real damage. Meanwhile, all physical needs to do is max Warfare and they have a huge base to branch off from. Meteor Shower isn't the solution either.

that i do agree with. i think mages got the short end of the stick this time around

it doesn't help that mages can't consistently pump their main stat (int) to keep up with physical damage due to needing a ton of memory for all the spells they'll be using. in my experience physical damagers require less of this too

The armor system doesn't penalize anyone...

I am noticing this too as I progress through the game. It was going pretty well. Lone wolf, just me and my lover Ifan. Then idk what happened but it snowballed when I hit level 11.

I was going to make a separate thread about my build but since you guys are discussing armor, this seems like the place to get an explanation for some things I am confused on:

1. What does intelligence affect? I had a tanky enchantress that was doing way better than the rest of my party (used to have 3 followers). Then around level 11, it wasn't working.

2. Do necromancy or polymorph get boosts from weapons? Strength? What about summons?

Thank you if you guys can help me, like I said it was challenging and going well, then it's like I fell off a cliff all of a sudden. ???

First of all, I'm sorry if it's hard to understand this LONG post, English is not my native tongue, but I will do my best.

I do not "discuss the validity of the initial claim", I am new to this forum, but you'll should publish this type of thread in "Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Comments" no ?
Maybe moderator could make a main thread listing/sorting all those suggestions/feedbacks because so many points, this thread will get messy if you try to argue about evrything at the same time.
But thanks to you, i couldn't chose wich one of the 10 previous post i should answer.
Please admin / mod, give us a "logistic thread"

Well, that's aside, it feel like people missing something, i don't know if it's sort of taboo but many problem come from the attribute system itself. I didn't read all topics, maybe i miss it.

The feeling i'm playing a different game than level/game designer, just look at the npc attibuts archetype, surely based on archetype close to those on GM mode. that creates many consequences.

How did they expect npc to have more intiative than player loyal to this new "min/max religion" if they put 20% of their points in useless attributs (ranger with INT and STR ...) instead of wits for example.
And i don't think they got legendary weapon/ring with +4 initiative, that's too much.
Sure they all get one shot before they could play.
And now they use this new virtual initiative turn order to FORCE balancing, creating some strange mechanic where ennemy CC this turn, playing after you removing CC, play before you next turn and use CC against you.
npc (noob build like my first game) vs player (optimized build after you failed to go foward in tactician mode)
I don't know if it's the only reason for this choice, and i really want to understand.
sorry dev, but i must be honest, this is the current situation, even if for me, that "min/max religion" is the worst thing in this game, i hate it.

because attribut system is bad, CONS scales bad, i'm part of people that doesn't understand why it doesn't scale with armor as well. that's make it worthless..
Why a ranger should not max STR, putting more strengh could increase the range, alowing better possition, and better scale with balistik shot. Why all magical elemental damage don't stack with INT, what if i want to make a huntsman/pyro with high magique damage on basic attack using fire embuing ?
The best part is when i learn that in this game design, shrek could make summons strong like dumbledore (sorry for the metaphore and spoiler), well shrek was right to put all in CONS, in the end dumbledore is dead.

Maybe they should first keep their promise of "full creativity", but i feel like changing this right after the release will put even more confusion in players head.

But since attributs influence all the game, they need to choseto change soon and then fix it or put half hearted fix like this virtual initiative turn order and maybe change it in the next extension or worst ... D:OS 3 if people still have faith (and i hope larian will continue to release other version of this awesome serie)
Even if it will be hard to change it now for the main story, Larian should let the choice for the gm mode, putting a real initiative turn order and let modder to change attribut bonus/scaling in gm/arena mode.

i will not give all possibilities about attribut bonus for each combat ability/style ... each one should have his on thread.

About armor, i love the current system on the paper. But because magical damage seems weaker than physical damage, i feel like dev failed to proove the viability of this system. So far i only played on tactician mode, but i expected some weakness on ennemy magic resistance, and not a 0% for water resistance on a primordial fire voidling. I got outplayed by this tatics making my mage really useless since their fire basic attack heal more than my spell, fortunately, i got bone widow with me.

I didn't take the oppotunity to play to D:OS 1, but i saw CC used RNG and ignored armor back then. Some people on other thread argues about RNG and his place in tactics. If it was D&D (like i used to played as gm with my friends) i certainly use RNG. But can't imagine myself taking my white board and trying to confirm the optimal decision (ok i abuse a bit). But still the current system feel "one way" fight, the first who destroy ennemy armor chain CC and control the pace because there so much CC instead of cleansing spell.
My opinion is to add new status :
- When you still have some physical armor, if you "absorb" a CC you get a debuff that will allow in the same turn the next CC, normally blocked, will get through the armor, damage still absorbed by the armor. (or maybe you need 2 CC blocked, the third goes through)
- same mechanics for magical armor but separatly.
- When you are CC, you get immunity to this status for some turn, that mean you couldn't get CC two turn in a row by knockdown, forcing player to find other CC status for chaining.

+ :
* more tactical, use CC before armor depletion or after ?
* alow to CC ennemy with insane armor
* a little harder to chain CC
* allow you to finally let the armor scale with CONS without making CC impossible to hit

- :
* it's a bad idea to build 4 warfare abusing ram and battle stomp
* need to both magic and physical CC for more CC capabilities
* maybe more, but since it's my idea it's hard to find

And there's still so much more, but peoples already talk about it.

There are certainly quite a lot of topics about similar subjects (or, indeed, the same one) and though there's some merit to merging them, I think it may result in some people feeling that they're not getting their own say: so pros and cons, really. With the way discussions have progressed, I'd just go for the most recent, as you've done.

Topics like this seem to straddle both general discussion and feedback so I generally leave them be unless they're conspicuously in the wrong place...

The me comparison was aimed at the simple similarity that in both games, no defence means you become vulnerable and maintaining that defence is core to the gameplay. I don't care about any opinions on quality of the games, the ideas of how defences are handled are the same. While it's less pronounced, aggression should be divided based on strengths and weaknesses.

I don't particularly care about the balance of tactical mode. If you think physical shreds the game, that's more to do with encounter design than anything. You're not being counter played, that's it. Dos didnt do it any better, infact it was worse for it. The system exists to pushback on the dumping attacks and preying strategy. In theory, you don't get dumped on in the first few rounds and have a chance to fight.

The entire game doesn't need to be changed because hard mode can be gamed and endgame leaves you strong. If you end up wearing a mix of armours, thennot only are you admitting that you need both and mixed damage is a real threat, but you have less of an armour than someone who specialised.

I don't know how you think that physical is better at aoe when magic can easily and routinely dump large damage puddles everywhere that also inflict status effects. The simple act of making someone wet lowers resistance and that's not something armour protects you from.. granted, magic damage is lower on an individual target, but there's more instances to apply it.

I think physical is better at AoE, because it is. Elemental puddles matter 0% until armor is stripped and even then it still requires more actions to get similar results as to what a physical class can do. Arrow Storm > basically everything elemental. It doesn't just strip armor and cause CC, it outright kills almost everything that it hits. It's also very easy to Battle Stomp the armor off of a few enemies AND knock them down with one action.

The other reason physical is better at "AoE" is because in the majority of encounters, enemies are not bunched up together and almost exclusively come in pairs at most. About the only time you ever end up with more than two enemies in close enough proximity before spell AoE matters is when you're taking too long to actually kill them. When you have a group of two enemies, at least one of them is going to outright be killed on the round of any given physical character (especially true if it's a Ranger). Not so when it's a caster. Two enemies and two Rangers equals two dead enemies. Two enemies and two casters equals maybe two burning enemies, where the burning effect isn't going to be enough to kill them.

Also, unless you're an all ranged team, planting fire or shock effects all over the ground isn't really all that helpful. It impedes your own team just as much.

Before commenting on these things, it's helpful to actually have experience with them and not just theorycrafting. Play the game all the way through with 2x Rangers and 2x anything else that's physical (can even be a third Ranger), then try doing the same thing on your next playthrough with 4x non Summoning elemental casters. The difference is night and day. Even four Rogues, who have arguably the weakest AoE (they can use the same Warfare abilities, but at lesser effectiveness than what a Two-Handed build can) will have a much easier time. Backlash > Rupture Tendons > Chicken essentially kills any non major boss enemy in the game.

All weapon based skill (usually require weapon equipped) depend on damage of the basic attack. If you let your your mouse on the damage value you will see the details and all bonuses, and there is a lot.

Most of the skill scale with level directly and get multiplicators.
Sometime it get the multiplicator of an attribute, if it does, it's precised in tooltips.

For any elemental damage it seems to scale with the corresponding combat ability
Geomancer give more physical armor from skills & potions
Hyfrosophist give more vitality and magical armor from skills & potions

There is many reason why physical skill and basic beguin to deal more damage.
* more combat ability improve the damage
* since it scale directly with the weapon, usage of epic or higher quality item allow more output.
* surface effect scale on the level of the caster only, it does not gain extra damage from intelligence
* non-weapon skill don't critical if you don't get savage spell talent
* weapon critical damage multiplicator scale with the weapon level (i don't know for the spell, i didn't check)

necromancy or polymorph does not scale with weapon. Some skill scale with attribute, read the tooltip. If it's missing that mean it scale only with level and maybe some comabt ability :
for example, heart of steel from polymorph should scale with geomancer shield multiplicator.
Mosquitos swarm heal from necro should scale with hydrosophist heal multiplicator.

I hope it will help you.

Elemental damage can scale with weapons too. It's called using a staff and smacking people with it.

Elemental puddles can matter such as Wet providing a debuff or improving AP efficiency which in turn improves damage per AP which... you get the idea.

Plenty of screen shots showing 10k+ damage on spells which means you're pretty much one shotting everything anyways.

Really, the weakest thing about elemental damage is that some things are just immune to certain elements and you have no such immunity for physical outside of evasion aura which can be negated by Web or indirect fire GG.

Most of the alleged problems you people face is not due to the framework but due to the implementation.

A warrior with about 4k damage probably can deal over 10k damage with critical autoattacks.

Also being able to deal tons of damage does not prove anything. Everything can deal tons of damage in the endgame, because tons of damage is the only matter of character progression.

But it does not change, that physical damage has it far easier to deal tons of damage.

P. S.: Pretty sad that tons of damage is not an exageration in this game...

This is quite helpful, thank you kind sir.

You're comparing end game source required spell to a level 1 sorc cast rain and then attacking with a earth or lighting wand and thinking, "hmmmm there's some disparity here", but also ignoring the ease of access to mass aoe.

Physical has the advantage of having double damage bonuses from a weapon skill and warfare, the primary physical skills also confer their own bonuses.but it can't do damage to people for just walking. It can't block los, heal armour efficiently, or just dump on people.

There's more tactics involved with magic for sure, but there's also more tactical possibilities. It's not as clear cut as just use physical. Your life is undeniably easier with magic as some people are weak to it and you don't need max rank source powers to do it.

And why are you excluding summoners? They're part of the game they help a caster be a flexible contributer to any party.

Wait, are people saying magic is bad again? Guess I'll have to write a guide again and prove them wrong, I already sense so many powerful combinations coming out of magic schools, even excluding summoner.

As for the armor system, it's not the best sure, but it does have one advantage that I don't see many mention often, it's the opposite of rng, which was the reason it was implemented, which is why I believe the "return to saving throw", "percentile saving throw" was never even taken consideration because that goes against the initial philosophy. The armor system is to make it so when players die, they can't blame it on luck like xcom2, but simply accept the fact that they failed, and make it so that people don't need to reload because they failed a 99% stun, or simply, savescum. I appreciate how the game doesn't encourage savescum in any way.

The only problem with the armor system I see is the fact that it doesn't encourage having both physical and magic damage at the same time, but what people fail to realize is that, a lot of physical skills remove magic armor and schools like necro, poly, often scale int to deal physical damage, and the fact that some enemies have way higher type of one armor than another, for example, windego, her physical armor is like 24 while her magic armor is like 200, which encourages the player to use physical damage on her.

tldr I think the armor system is fine, and I wouldn't come up with a better solution and I haven't seen anyone come up with any.

Here's a quick point that a lot of people neglect: RNG is not an inherently bad thing.

RNG utilized well is usually based around the concept of 'Risk Management', in which you strategize around factors not completely in your control, attempt to stack odds in your favor, and account for the impact of potential failures. Games like BloodBowl, X-Com, and Darkest Dungeon utilize the concept to deliver excellent gameplay; and even when it is not a core design concept it is still very important to recognize and work with in games that are not wholly deterministic.