Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General undead melee mage? anyone made something similar?

hi guys new here, finishing my first playthrough and already want to start a new one

im thinking my main to be an undead melee mage with necro, warfare and maybe some geo. I wanted to use a staff with poison. If this doesnt work what other suggestions do you guys have for an undead battlemage type build?

i was thinking things like

fortify
mend metal
poison skills from geo
living armour boosted by all the healing from necro skills
torturer talent along with executioner and battlestomp, battering ram
maybe even medusa head from polymorph

i also plan to have ifan to be a classic ranger, beast to be dual rouge and fane to back me up as an undead wizard using mostly spells

I wouldn't be too demanding of poison staff - others will work better until you find a good poison one then others will come up better until the next. The way I did it (albeit, not with an undead) was just in general. Robes when available, high magic defense, etc. I guess for an undead, you'll just have to go with a cowl head armor.

My main question wasn't equipment; it was which stats to build on since few are available (one devastating level 10+ like geomancy or two types not quite as strong, etc). I think I made my battle mage both too weak in melee and magic usage. How much memory compared to intelligence, warfare, and say, single-handed? For my battle mage, so many areas were needed that none got very high. Still, he's tougher then the average mage (for taking hits).

Actually, for the undead veiled status, the game does not make a distinction between varieties of equipment: any helmet will do for the helmet slot, etc. If undead had not been added so late in the development process it would have been better to add an extra flag to equipment to determine if it was visually concealing enough to count, but there wasn't enough time to do so.
Aesthetically, you may still want to go for cowls and other concealing armour (most are fine).

I just thought the cowl was the best fit for an undead - I guess it's the grim reaper image.

so i was kinda messing around a little bit and even though necro does heal you and regenerate magic armor with living armour talent, it is still pure damage to physical armor

since my first playthrough was on classic i already started this on tactician and mixing the damage types feels off since im going to be in melee range and could get overwhelmed fast if im not careful, high INT means my own physical armor is going to be low. Geo would help with all the physical armor buffs and maybe armor buff skill from polymorph too.

and yea undead with a cowl or hood just looks very fitting lol, hopefully next game will give you more options with appearance, armor sets, colors because for a game with so much detail customizing your outfit is pretty limited and gear is RNG too so.......

A melee Necromancy/Warfare build was found to be too OP in beta. Necromancy was healing twice as much as it is currently in game. That was made the build OP. The build is still great. I have been watch a D:OS2 play through and one of the two people have Fane as a companion and have been playing him Strength build sword and shield, going mostly Necromancy and Warfare. It works well with an undead. As you mention, two points into Geomancy is great for Fortify and Mend Metal. If you have enough points in Necromancy, you won't need poison to self heal. However, since you will have the two points invested, you might as well grab them just to be able to do some magic damage.
If you want to go Intelegence build with the character, things do get a bit tricky. Don't rely on a poison staff as you will face many undead in the game and it will heal them. Going with a build like that will be a bit tricky. Warfare will augment the damage you do, but you will still be doing magic damage while using a staff in melee. That means you will need to rely on others to strip physical armor off of opponents so Battle Stomp and Battering Ram will be useful. I don't want to discourage you from doing this, I am just warning you that a bit more party coordination will be needed. However, if you put that little bit of extra planning in, speaking from experience, it does work well in a split damage party.
I salute your out of the box thinking and wish you well on your new play through.

poison staff or even earth staff since i plan on investing heavily in geomancer tree. I will probably switch to a fire staff when fighting undead. warfare is going to be 2 or 3 points to get whirlwind and thick of the fight

I am thinking of giving fane some necro investment but not sure yet. My ifan and beast do so much physical damage already. I dont want to do another invest heavy in necro since i just did that now on my first playthrough. Fane is going to mostly back me up as a fellow undead and support the others as well while doing damage of his own.

I am going to be doing a ton of magic damage and also be up close so medusa head is looking really appealing. I havent messed with it that much but we will see how it turns out.

I have tried looking for undead builds but havent found much variety. Lots of pure necro/warfare builds which you do not have to be undead to use that. Lots of melee staff build with sparks which you dont need undead either and lots of undead geomancer mage buidls which is basically a traditional fane.

hopefully this doesnt make me quit tactician lol, lots of experience from bosses and enemies from my classic playthrough so yea

There nothing wrong with a geo/poison staff. Just keep a second staff on hand for when you fight undead.
Here is something you may wish to try, although it is more a ranged build than melee, it can still work in melee. I still recommend a couple points in Necromancy, then a point in Hydrosophist and then you can go nuts in Geomancy. With a point in Hydro and Necro you can get the skill Raining Blood. You can cast Raining Blood where you intend to start a fight, then cast Poison Dart into the blood. Now stand with one foot in the blood and one foot in the poison. As an undead, the one foot in the poison will keep you healing. In you have the Elemental Affinity talent, all of your Geo and Necro skills will cost one less action point to cast. This can allow you to go nuts with skills the first couple rounds of combat. If you don't want to do the Necro side, this all still works just doing Geomancy. You can use oil surface to get Elemental Affinity with Geomancy, but that will slow your movement and doesn't heal your undead like poison will. However, if you are going for Medusa Head you will need two points in Polymorph. This means you could use oil for Elemental Affinity and then take Spread you Wings to move around combat. Another useful Polymorph skill to move around in combat is Bull's Horns. With two points into Polymorph, you can also get Heart of Steel to regenerate your physical armor.

Even if you don't want you use Necro skills with the build, I still recommend putting two points in to Necromancy. First, as you've already mentioned, this gives you a bit of self heal from attacks. Second if you combine a Geomancy skill book and a Necromancy skill book you get the skill Corrosive Touch. This is a one AP skill that will set acid on a target for two turns. During these two turns, the target will lose physical armor based your characters level and intelligence. Unfortunately, it does come with a hefty 5 turn cool down. If one of the two skill books is a source skill it will create a book for Corrosive Spray instead, which is a cone AoE instead of a touch skill. However, this requires two points in both Necromacy and Geomancy to use. When used it consumes a point of source and two AP. This seems like something that will fit what you want to do with Fane. Finally, I would still recommend picking up Mosiquito Swarm. Healing an undead can be tricky and the self heal for Mosquito Swarm is great for a character with high intelligence. Try going without it first. If Fane is getting killed then, pick it up to help keep him alive.

Keep in mind, part of the enjoyment of replaying the game is to have fun with different builds. Keep working with this one as you can make almost anything work. I had to play around with things quite a bit to get a witch build I thought was true to the preset. At first the build didn't play quite the way I wanted, however, as I got to higher level and had more points to develop the character, by level 13 or 14 it was doing what I wanted it to. The point is to keep a goal in mind with your build. It may take some levels to get it to play exactly the way you want it to, but when it does, it will all be worth it.

ok thanks, lots of valuable info right there

if anyone cast mosquito swarm on undead it heals them? what about blood sucker, i heard it heals undead? does damage to people who have decay? does bone cage scale with geomancy?

If Fane cast Mosquito Swarm on anyone, he will heal himself. Mosquito Swarm is a damage/self heal skill. Blood Sucker heals undead as well as everyone else. If you choose to do Blood Rain, the blood could be used to heal Fane.

I had to do some playing around and have only done this in the Definitive Edition. Any healing on a character with decay on them, should injure them. I tested this on a lich character (undead elf, Summoner + Necro + Geo) I have. Indeed when I put decay on the character and then cast Blood Sucker, the character lost health. The same can be said, if an undead is decaying, poison will injure them. However, while decaying, the lich cast Mosiquito Swarm on a different character and be healed from Mosquito Swarm. Either that is not working as intended or Mosquito Swarm is a quite powerful little spell.

I read something that stated all physical armor skills scale off Geomancy. Thus even a Necro skill like Bone Cage and the Poly skill Heart of Steel will both scale off of Geomancy. Likewise, all magical armor skills scale off of Hydrosophist.

All this talk about decaying made me remember the skill Decaying Touch. If you choose to have a melee character with intelligence as the primary attribute, Decaying Touch is practically a must learn. Actually, that makes a fantastic combo with Corrosive Touch and Blood Sucker if you have an opponent standing in a pool of blood. Just use Corrosive Touch (1 AP), then Decaying Touch (2 AP) and follow it up with Blood Sucker (1 AP) if you were able to set decaying. That is a total of only 4 AP and the Blood Sucker at the end should do some nice damage. Oh wait, if you are in the pool of blood with your target and have Elemental Affinity, that combo will only be 3 AP. Yes, I did test this out with my lich character and it worked great.

By the way, thank you! Without you starting this thread, I would never have thought of that combo. While it doesn't do the magic damage you want for the character, it fits within the build and does crazy damage. Blood Sucker doubles as a self heal and party support, so it should already be on your bar for the build you have in mind. That means you are really only dedicating 2 memory points to have this option available. Other than that the rest can go into party support and magic damage skills.

lol your welcome, i wanted my 2nd run with tactician to be really different from my first run with classic. i figured undead would be fun to try

Anytips on healing with mixed party. My lohse on my first playthrough saved us many times with mass cleanse wounds source orb on her weapons. Im not going to be able to use that anymore since my undead would get wrecked. healing ritual might be a problem too.

One i thought was really interesting was starting the game on the ship there was a bunch of empty potion bottles and a toxic barrel. i was able to craft a ton of poison potions which were then crafted into several large poison potions.

Undead is always a bit tricky the first time you play them. Be ready, in the heat of battle everyone messes up and forgets and panic heals their undead, killing them. You will kick yourself when you do it, but laugh about it later or maybe laugh when it does happen. After a couple times, you should remember not to. There is an advantage of playing undead. The game will likely attack your undead in ways you hadn't thought of. This is a nice challenge and will help you in future battles against undead.

In a mixed party, feel free to spread the support around. Fane should be able to cover physical armor. Have another character with some points in Hydrosophist for heals and magic armor. It doesn't hurt to have a second character to have a point in Geomancy and Hydrosophist in case the primary character with this gets CCed. In the case of Hydrosophist, Fane makes a good back up for this having spent a point to get Raining Blood. Now you just need someone else to put a point or two in Geomancy to be the back up for that.

Other things to think about are potions and scrolls. Spreading some potions of physical and magic armor around the group can allow characters to take care of their own emergency armor needs. Don't be afraid to use healing (poison, in Fane's case) potions to recover health. Spreading some Fortify and Armor of Frost scrolls around the group helps as if someone does get CCed, another character can use a scroll on them. The four scrolls I like to spread around my party are Fortify, Armor of Frost (these already mentioned), Restoration and Piece of Mind. These four cover the majority of problems that will pop up. OK. I do spread around some Resurrection scrolls as well.

The biggest change when you go to tactician is that opponents will have more health and armor. This will make it a bit harder to CC them. Because they tend to survive a bit longer, some opponents may do things you didn't see during your classic run. They have the same options in both difficulty settings, but on classic they tend to go down quick enough you don't see everything they can do. As such, there are a couple fights that may catch you by surprise. However, that is part of the fun of upping the difficulty. For the most part, that most difficult fights are still the most difficult fights e.g. Bishop Alexander fight at the end of Fort Joy.

The only other advice I would give is that you may wish to delay getting into combat below level 4 unless you have overwhelming numbers, say in the case of Griff's two thugs by Ifan and Elodi when first get into Fort Joy, there you have 6 v 2. Gear will matter a bit more on Tactician, so explore a bit first and should be able to find some gear.

Heck, even when the main character isn't undead, the AI really likes to go after Fane (at least the way I've been building him).

oh almost forgot do the two handed swords that have elements get a damage bonus from someone that has a ton of INT if they have enough STR to wield it?

Is that what they were going for when making some melee weapons have elemental damage?

Can you invest just a few points in STR and wield lets say a two hander with air damage but you character has 30 INT?

Weapons are broken up this way.

Magical Damage : Wands, Staffs, Bow using elemental arrows
Physical Damage : Everything Else

Yes, your int character can use a two handed sword/axe. However, it will do physical damage, not magical. If the sword/axe has elemental damage on it, it gets augmented by your proficiency in the elemental ability. For example a two handed sword with bonus poison damage, would do physical damage, augmented by your strength and skill in warefare and any skill you have in Two Handed. It would also do magical damage from the bonus poison damage. Because you are focusing Geomancy, the bonus poison damage will be augmented by your skill level in Geomancy.

In your case, being and INT based character, you are most likely best off going staff, dual wand or wand and shield. However, you would need to go with staff if you intend to use any Warfare skills like Battering Ram and Battle Stomp.

ok thanks for all your info so far, i will stick to staves then. any other two hander like divine sparks which is strictly elemental damage?

UPDATE, I did not know medusa head range was so wide. I do not even have far out man. It works a little weird too. You get an aura once activated but you have to do secondary attack on same turn otherwise it goes away? not sure about it, sometimes i have access to second attack and sometimes no

Enemies stripped of magic armor are completely CC'ed. They also take extra damage from earth spells and gain a big defense to fire. So yea this build not too combo friendly with a pyro but works extremely well with a geo build. Medusa also grants you +1 geo once activated.

Fort joy pretty much done and just fought dallis. I did not know for such a hard battle you gain mediocre exp but i guess it makes sense since they both escape.

Battle was frustrating at first, i reloaded several times. I did not feel bad about cheesing it eventually. I set up oil barrels and poison ones smack in the middle. I put some reinforced crates from poison frog area behind the two magister knights so they cannot escape and flank me.

The reinforced crates have like 6k hp lol! The fire was not gonna make a dent. It worked perfectly after initial explosion. They had to walk forward into more fire if they wanted to attack me.

Undead Medusa build did most of the work, she had death wish, peace of mind and the usual buffs. First aid hurts undead lol but gives the rested stat boost, my ifan was my ranger helping me out. I teleported dallis far away and by the time alex got close enough, ifan rushed him with shock and poison arrows. The magisters died trying to get out of fire.

The 2 gheists glitched i think? After everyone died or left, the fire ran out, my resources were kinda depleted so i ran away, I came back and the ghiests were completely inactive?? i attacked them and they just wouldnt move? they just took the damage which ended up being a free 4k exp

oh and this is what i have so far

starting out in character creation take 1 geo, 1 warfare to take executioner talent

for initial stats pump INT, for skills take fortify, poison dart, fossil strike

Level 1: 13 INT, 1 Warfare, 1 Geomancer, Executioner
Level 2: 16 INT, 1 Poly
Level 3: 18 INT, 1 scoundrel, 13 Memory, Mnemonic
Level 4: 21 INT, 2 Poly - ready for medusa head
Level 5: 23 INT, 2 Geomancer

Hopefully i can update this further if work and life permit me to finish this build. I am on tactician too.

My skills are the earth and poison spells from geo tree. Adrenaline from scoundrel. MEDUSA from Poly obviously, really cool it shows up in fort joy. Battle stomp and battering do have their uses, especially if you have a dedicated physical damage teammate. I have ifan as a ranger and beast as a dual rouge. My fane is my support mage.