Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General questions about a few builds

Hello, Im making some builds more to enjoy and know every school of the game than to absolute-optimize the game (that will come later). Anyway I dont want to make something stupidly useless, so, this are my questions:

1 A pyro-aero-hydro mage is viable? I dont know why I find geo spells BORING (not just in this game in fact).

2 Should I put intelligence in my death knight? I mean, necro skills increase with intelligence. Also he is dealing very little damage, should I switch to two handed? What about dual wielding?

3 My summoning archer is doing A LOT of damage with his bow, I feel kinda useless its sumonning skills, maybe is a bad combination?

4 The polymorph-warrior is also doing lot of damage, but Im thinking on adding him aero to help the enemies get stunned easir with him and my mage (and for the lack of magic damage), any advise against this?

Please, help this newbie!

1) Aero and Hydro are a low damage and high CC combination, because of the armor system that it pretty weak in DOS2. Without earth fire can hardly max out it damage output, because there is less stuff to explode.

2) Shield throw is one of the strongest warrior skills in my opinion and armor up gives a lot of sustain. For my warriors are not main damage dealer, but those who keep the enemies down, after they lost their armor. Two-handed would probably offer best damage output, dual wield not as good, because some skills only use the main hand weapon.

3) Yeah, summoning on archer is quite pointless, archer class is probably the strongest in current system. Giving him a second class for other purpose than mobility or utility just makes him weaker.

4) A skill like Medusas head is far better in giving magical cc for those who lost magical armor also physical CC like knowdown is still the strongest cc in game. Air also often has the chance to hit your own guys, though a skill like teleport is always handy.

On which difficulty are you playing? You can relax a lot more on Classic than on Tactician.

Generally, the DOS2 combat system offers a lot of possible ways to achieve the goal. You have three dedicated physical damage dealers and one magical, and I don't like such combinations. But they can work, surely, don't care for my personal bias.

A "standard" combo for mages would be Pyro/Geo or Aero/Hydro. The former is the max damage variant, the latter is more about cc but can also generate big damage. Pyro together with Aero/Hydro can of course work but is not ideal in my opinion as you lose the explosive factor from oil + fire and some conditions ("wet" for example) are not the best for applying fire spells. But as I'm not an experienced elemental mage player I let more detailed answers to others.

For the "death knight", I don't know what this actually means, sorry. But you have Necro skills in, ok. Necro skills are not for big damage, they offer however a nice self heal and summons. Good for a tank. Mosquito Swarm is a decent damage spell. The biggest damage you do with Decaying Touch + healing. So you could combine it with Hydro, although that would be more a "Cleric" (my main started as such).
A knight is a weapon guy for me. Twohanded is big damage, so it is always a good choice. I have some Necro skills on my twohanded warrior but it is more a side effect. A Bone Widow here and there and some blood sucking can help to win. You could also use onehanded and shield, to profit from the huge benefits of a shield; onehanded is however meagre damage and unfortunately not worth it on higher levels and difficulties, but you had your Intelligence based Necro skills for damage. As weapon based points are multiplicative, put all points into Warfare. I would raise Intelligence more then Strength.
I really don't like dual wielding (which sane person would go to war with such a movie garbage?), but it may be also good for big damage in the game. Never tried it.

An archer/summoner combination is ok, but not the best in my point of view. You need all points in Summoner to make the pet really strong, so bow damage lacks a bit. Or you have bigger bow damage and a weak summon. I have a summoner in my party who sometimes uses a bow, sometimes shield and onehanded to be more resilient. But mostly she heals and is anti-cc, besides summoning.
As you lack magical damage in your party you should concentrate on summoning and let the summon do magical damage, to assist your mage. For me this seems better than to distract your warrior. Of course you then lack big ranged physical damage which can be bad in some encounters.
Edit: then you could also use your summoner with wand and shield, for magical additional damage and good protection.

A warrior with polymorph is straight forward. I would go with twohanded for big damage and nothing else. My twohanded warrior (Warfare/Necro/Poly) is my best damage dealer, with 97% crit chance or so, as far as I remember.


Some remarks:
- I use a purely physical damage group (twohanded warrior, rogue (my main, prior Cleric), ranger and summoner. This comes more from my general dislike of mages (in any game) than from cunning thoughts about the DOS2 damage system, but it fits. You need to get rid of physical or magical armor, not both on the same target. Therefore I would go two : two or pure damage in a group.
- In my opinion movement is perhaps not everything but quite a lot in DOS2 combat. Therefore I have such skills on all my chars, two at least per char.
- Healing comes in handy. My summoner has the most healing spells, but any of my other chars has at least one healing spell, too.

a couple of things

unless you're on lone wolf, your skills will be spread quite thin if you attempt to max out 3 different schools on the same character. you can give an aero/hydro character a level or two in pyro and/or geo for haste/peace of mind/fortify if you feel the need, but putting equal points in aero/hydro/geo or pyro will probably just harm your overall damage output. this is just my experience, it's possible your damage will still be fine if you get tons of int, but also keep in mind that doing 3 schools means memorizing even more spells, so you'll need to pump lots into memory as a result. in short, i wouldn't recommend doing this if you are not on lone wolf

with regards to the death knight, if he's currently on sword and shield then the damage output will be quite low early on (i don't know where you currently are in the game). bouncing shield will become okay once you equip a decent shield, but the rest of the damage output won't pick up until maybe mid to late act 2, coming completely online in act 3 (bouncing shield will be one of the highest damage skills in the game by this point). overall, a sword and shield character will likely never do as much damage as a two handed character, but the extra armor and stats a shield gives you is quite useful, becoming quite significant later on (though it's significant as early as fort joy on tactician when everyone's scrambling to get as much armor as possible). so it's a trade off that depends mostly on what other kinds of damage you have available to you. it's by no means a bad option though

If you are playing without lonewolf and want to spread your points between 3+ schools without losing much damage I suggest putting 3-5 in every elemental school you need and all extra points into polymorph. That way you can spend all attributes from poly into intelligence and wits which will affect all elements you use not just one. Also, Apotheosis is quite usefull sometimes, generally for elves.