Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks Tactician: Best tank builds?

[MINIMAL SPOILERS!]

Greetings, all!

I've heard people lament that D:OSII isn't a game where tanking is reliable. That may be true depending on your definition. My main definition of a tank is someone who can withstand a lot of damage/negative statuses, quickly and reliably get into/change position, and make enemies regret coming near him - all while deterring/preventing foes from hurting the rest of the party.

While driving today, I considered a Warfare/Necro/Retribution build and was curious what would be the best tank builds for this game.

Thankee!

X points in Warfare, because the CC and damage is great. This will be your main combat skill point dump.
2-3 points in Polymorph, because it's great; gives you an atrophy effect (tentacle), chicken claw, flight, heart of steel...
2 points in Huntsman, for the Tactical Withdraw, it's really good. Also, Huntsman book + Pyro book = Throw Explosive Trap. This spell is awesome; sure, you have to invest another point in Pyro, but you get Haste and Clear Mind as well for it.
1 point in Hydro, for Frost armour and healing.
1 point in Geo, for Fortify armour.
Maybe Aerothurge for Teleport and Nether Swap; helps with positioning.

That's about it. If you want to be extra tanky, use a shield and don't be Undead. Also, craft a cleanse wounds skill book by combining a cheap Hydro and Warfare book together.

Necro is okay, but stacking Warfare is more important. Retribution is really bad, don't use it, I can't stress this enough; it's so bad, lol. An amazing combo for 'thicc' enemies is: Fortify self + Heart of Steel + Overpower = Shatters their armour and deals damage, leaving them ripe for physical based CC effects like your Chicken Claw, Bull Charge, Battlestomp, etc.

Install a "Taunt" mod, so your spell will bypass physical armor (because an insult thrown at the mother of your enemy should NOT BOUNCE OFF HIS PHYSICAL ARMOR)

As for retribution, I think it's not that good for a team build : you need a lot of points into it to be worth it, and even with full points, enemies will still focus a lot the other members of your team. If you cc your enemies, they will not focus anyone, so retribution is useless in this case too.

Retribution should be ok on a LW character, for fun, but in a team ? I don't know really.

Retribution ius not worth investing points in, I had it all the way to 10 with my Lone Wolf and it's not that great.
If you want a real good tank and have a 4 man party, consider putting leadership on your tank and giving the rest of the party slightly more constitution than your tank.
The tank will not get the leadership bonuses but you can just give him the best armor (armour is much more important than constitution), this way your party will eventually come close to being immune to elemental damage and as long as the AI targets lower constitution they will target your tank. (he also has to be closer to the enemies melees to get targeted)

That definition does not exist in the game, not without modding it. Specifically, two parts of it: the part where you want to be able to withstand a lot of damage while also making enemies regret coming near you, and the part where you want to deter or prevent foes from hurting the rest of the party.

To withstand a lot of damage, you want a shield, but to make enemies regret coming near you you need a 2H weapon and Opportunist.

You can't do a lot about deterring or preventing foes from coming near the team, that's part of AI 2.0's focus on going after your squishier people and ignoring the tankier ones. Giving the squishy folks the Stench Talent might help a little, but that was recently nerfed a bit.

The closest thing to a tank is someone who goes all CON with a shield and takes Glass Cannon and Walk it Off. Glass Cannon is what draw the enemy attention, the high CON is what enables you to survive the attention, and Walk it Off is what helps keep you from being permanently useless.

High constitution is not good for a tank.
AI targets lower Con.
(Also Con doesn't actually make you tanky since without armor you get cced.)

Enemies will always CC your guys with glass cannon, so not much a tank can do about that. And taking it on the tank so he can take cc aggro seems ok, but meh.

A tank in this game for me is basically just the guy who has fortify, frost armor, and a few other buffs that other characters might also have like peace of mind. That and he has a shield and no glass cannon so he never dies. Other than that for me he was basically just my air mage.

There's no point in a "pure" tank, because he's obsolete to simply better team comps that dish out more damage.

I'm quite aware of that but the specific question here was how to build a tank despite the game's meta.

Alex: Starting in chapter 1, what build order do you advise? (What abilities should we take in what order?)