Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Can you help me customize my Battle Mage?

Hello everyone-

I've really been enjoying playing Divinity 2. However, the depth of options has left me feeling a little overwhelmed. I've gotten to a point where I have a good grasp of the basics, but am feeling lost how to improve my team's cohesion. I'm hoping some of you will be able to make some concrete suggestions.

The biggest headache I have right now is overall group synergy, specifically relating to my Battle Mage. At the start of the game, I basically just joined up with the first 3 players I ran across, so the team I ended up with is:

1) Custom character (hunter)
2) Red Prince (fighter)
3) Sebille (rogue)
4) Beast (battle mage)

I didn't really think to much about whether this was a "balanced" mix of roles, I just went with it. Now, further into the game, I'm just a little lost about how to integrate the Battle Mage, what kind of build would work best with the other 3 characters, all of which seem more obvious as to how to play. I use Red Prince as a tank and lead attacker, I coordinate Sybill to sneak in and attack, and my hunter attacks from range.

The battle mage, however, is a bit of a mystery to me. After reading a number of online commentaries I dumped most of his skill points into aerothurge and hydrosophist, but I'm frequently annoyed at the AOE status effects impacting my team members - specifically Red Prince and Sebille, who have no choice but to get up close with enemies. I just am not sure how to make the best use of this class in tandem with the other 3 characters.

So, for the people who have experience with this - does a battle mage even make sense for this group considering the other players? What school should I focus on that would work with them? Is there a build that makes the Battle Mage into more of a single-target damage dealer? Or is that beside the point for the class?
Or should I respec beast to a different class altogether? I would appreciate any insight into this! Thank you in advance!

A hydro-aero specialist is more of a nuker/supporter than a "battle-mage", since hydro-aero is strong in burst magic damage and crowd-control, plus healing.

I've never had a battle-mage kind of character, but that role usually means being good at magic and brawn in equal measure. So you probably want to get skills that boost armor, like Fortify and Armour of Frost, and a few other higher levels skills. In general any skill that helps the character sustain more damage in combat without needing a support to buff them.

As for (melee) weapons, you can either go for staves which do magical damage or normal weapons that do physical damage. Using physical weapons means you'd want to invest points in STR to make your physical attacks count. Using staves means you can skip STR and have more points to spend on INT, which boost both magic skills and basic attack damage. You can still be a "battle-mage", even when you do only magical damage. Keep in mind that you can use many Warfare skills with staves, but your damage would be magical, and since most Warfare skills incur physical penalties (like knockdown or crippled), you don't have a very strong synergy this way. But it does work; when an enemy has no armor left, anything goes.

So one idea for a battle-mage would be physical weapons, something like Warfare (65%) Geo (20%) Hydro (15%), STR or FIN (75%) INT (25%). The magic counterpart of this is the one in which you invest only in INT and the elemental schools, and use staves.

Or you can certainly do something like Warfare (50%) Pyro (50%), STR/FIN (60%) INT (20%) CON (20%), just to be flashy, if you already have a supporter/healer in the group.

Another option is to invest in Necromancy and go full physical damage. Necromancer + Warfare is a common idea, since Necromancer deals physical damage, which is boosted by Warfare. This is the typical life-stealing melee build. Depending on the weapon you're using you can invest in either STR or FIN, aside from INT. Although. this might not be your idea of a battle-mage, depending on whether you consider Necromancer traditional magic or not.

There are a few types of battlemages. If you have trouble doing much damage with your battlemage, you're probably in category 1 or 4.

-The most useless battlemage ever:
You want to be able to deal both physical damage and magic damage? This is the kind that decided that splitting points between physical damage skills/attributes and magical is a good idea. 2 mixed "battlemage" like this is half as good as a pair of mage+warrior, in terms of total damage dealt; even if you find a situation in which only, say, physical damage is needed, having a focused physical damage dealer do everything the 2 of your mixed "battlemage" do while the focused mage skips their turn is slightly better than having 2 mixed "battlemage", as the focused physical damage dealer at least does the damage in a single turn instead of across 2 turns.

-The not really a battlemage:
Went pure intelligence with no warfare, holds a stave, spams spells, and only use the stave for when you ran out of cooldowns. It's a powerful build, it's easy to use, but while you might fancy yourself a battle mage, you're really just a normal mage.

-The tankmage
Build like a normal strength warrior, with a few points in geomancer for buffs and crowd controls (fortify, mend armor, earthquake, earth spikes, reactive armor). Mainly build warfare and one handed, do only physical damage and negligible earth damage, spam knockdowns slows and cripples, and basically be a nuisance to your enemy. Don't expect to actually do a lot of damage tho.



-The actually good battlemage:
2~3 points in warfare, the rest in two-handed and pyrokinetic, and focus the entire build around sparking swings. Equip a fire stave, proc loads of sparks with each whirlwind/onslaught/battering ram/battle stomp/blitz attack/crippling blow, and deal mostly fire damage. You'll be a mostly fire damage dealer, otherwise you won't do much damage. If you play it right, over half of your damage will be from the sparks. This is one of the builds that does the most damage in the game until lvl 16 where 3 source skills break the balance.

-The not really good battlemage:
Exact same as the actually good battlemage except you use a stave that's not fire damage and/or not use sparking swings. And yes, going venom coating lands you in this category too. For other staves, the problem is that you won't be able to just dump points in pyrokinetic for damage increase across the board, and splitting points between 2 elements is just weakening both. As for not going sparking swings... you'll basically be a normal knight that does magic damage. While that may not sound bad, most enemies don't have physical resistance, but most have some form of elemental resistances, so you deal a lot less damage than a normal knight. And you won't be able to knockdown enemies because you don't break physical armor.


P.S. Sparking swing only crits if you have savage sortilege.

Given that you have 3 physical damage characters, I would recommend just going with a full physical damage party. It doesn't matter how much physical armor a mob/monster has if 4 characters are focusing to go through it.

Doing this, Abao's tankmage is a fantastic option and would be a perfect fit for your party. The Warfare/Geo suggestion is more of a base fighter build and works well. A lone point into Pyro can be useful to light all of the oil on fire if you need to do some magical damage. This is good for sword and board Battlemages. Because you already have Red Prince set up as a fighter, there are a couple other good options that will both fit in well with the party.

Alternatively, you can still go more of a traditional Battlemage by doing a strength build with a focus on Warfare and just a couple points in Aero. This allows access to Uncanny Evasion and with a point in Scoudrel will open up Smoke Cover as well. These 2 spells are useful for a 2 handed Battlemage or Dual Wielding Battlemage. Dual Wielding get more interesting later into act 2 as you can max out Warfare, and start dumping to Dual Wielding to get your Dodge up. Choose gear wisely and a dwarf (Beast in this case) can get Dodging up above a 30% chance with little effort. Add in those 2 defensive Aero spells and your Battlemage gets pretty difficult to even hit let alone take down.

Yet another, less traditional option for your Battlemage would be an intelligence/Necro build. With high intelligence Decaying Touch and Mosquito Swarm do LOTS of physical damage. As you will be burning through Physical Armor you still want a couple points into Warfare. This will allow not only the CCs from Battle Stomp and Battering Ram but also Bouncing Shield and Deflective Barrier to do some more physical damage. This build will require sword and board set up. Also, a point in Hydro and/or Huntsman is useful to get the most out of Decaying Touch when it does get past armor. Hydro also opens up Raining Blood synergies with Blood Sucker. Interestingly a point in Pyro works well here. This allows crafting of Corpse Explosion (Necro/Pyro), which does good physical damage. Yes, the combat system is versatile enough that even an intelligence build can be a physical damage power house. You won't be relying on auto attacks, so the wand that does the most damage will be your choice.

All three of the above builds are melee, physical damage builds. As such, they would round out your group well as a full physical damage party, which is a solid group set up.



Abao's Pyro Battlemage is a fantastic build which can be tons of fun, but is doing magical damage while the rest of your party is doing physical and as such may never burn through the magical armor of opponents to do actual damage to their health bars. That would leave this type of Battlemage really only doing CC with Battle Stomp and Battering Ram after the rest of the party has stripped off physical armor. So, while overall it is a fantastic build, it likely won't fit your party make up. This build is ideal for either a full magic damage party or a mixed damage party. A mix party would have 2 magic damage and 2 physical. I would highly recommend doing another play through when your current one is done and making a party that would make the most of the Pyro Battlemage.
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Ok I actually built a battlemage with sparks earlier to test out how good it is as more than just theory crafting, and I have something more to add to my little "build" earlier.

Sparking Swings ->Sparkmaster

Weapon damage doesn't really matter, the spark doesn't just do over half your damage, it does 90% of your damage. I suggest high crit weapons with long reach for early mid game, and once you get to Arx buy the Air damage staff from the Unnamed elf for permanent Thick of the Fight buff. I was critting for 3k damage per spark with 83% crit rate on a lvl 18 lone wolf battlemage, which is 10k total damage per target hit (3 spark hits, and ~1k from the actual staff attack). It's ridiculously powerful, as long as there are more than 4 enemies in the fight (not necessarily in reach of your weapon, mind you. The sparks fly FAR) it's much stronger than even meteor storm in terms of damage per AP. My Meteor Storm on the same stats/buffs does something like 6k damage to targets in the dead center, which is less damage even if there's 4 targets all clumped up in the dead center to take most of the meteor hits, than a single whirlwind with sparkmaster.

This is one of the greatest build in terms of AOE damage, second only to apotheosis + double pyroclastic eruption (that shit is broken) or mass corpse explosion with loads of imported ammunition (way too cheesy for my liking). You can spam any other 3 SP skills all day and not do nearly as much damage as Sparkmaster builds.

Is enough to punch through magic armor and deal good damage even without lone wolf and being the only magic damage dealer as long as you have your other characters cast a couple teleports for your battlemage, Downside is that when there's only a single enemy left, the sparks don't trigger and you have to rely on pyro skills (hence the meteor storm) or teammates.

Paladin:

Max Strength.
Throw a couple of points into memory or choose the mnemonic talent
Rest into Wits(memory if you need more)
Strength based armor only
Strength based weapon two handed
Focus on Warfare and Hydro
Pick only spells that buff/regenerate magic armor, or that heal you and your team.( don't need intelligence to improve heals or buffs and don't forget to combine a warfare skill with a hydro spell to get cleanse wounds which removes decay and diseased, effects you will encounter a lot.)

If you are wanting to creating a physical team with a battle-mage, this is your best bet.