Warriors: Can be difficult at first, long cooldowns and inflexible, they are designed for damage mitigation rather than damage. Talents like Leech, comeback kid, bully, opportunist should be your goal. Just because strength is very restrictive does not mean you should not invest in some intelligence to be able to cast some basic utility skills. Tactical Retreat, haste, invisibility will also help your survivability.

What you'll want to do is to either equip them with a shield or a two-handed weapon and throw them out in front but still close to your enemies, never rush all the way out. This way you'll enemies are likely to hit the warrior rather than your other classes, and any that try to pass will get smacked with attacks of opportunity. A shield will provide further defence and a two-handed will cause more damage with these attacks. As for secondary abilities you may chose a few healing spells, environmental triggers like flare, self-immolation, rain etc they cost little and will always help you complete your tactics without having to invest in intelligence. Skills like Destroy Summon, haste need no maintenance as they will serve their purpose even at low levels, you won't need to purchase a stronger version of it later on, (thus requiring more intelligence) and since their low-level, you can endure the penalty of not having the required intelligence or witchcraft level as your not supposed to be using them every turn anyway.

Rangers: Simple and straight forward so long as you plan your moves ahead. Don't use unnecessary moves, invest in some special arrows and this class can become very deadly. Rogue skills like haste, can help you attack more often. Charm and trip can deal with enemies that got too close, invisibility if all else fails. With these in place you can move to use talents such as glass cannon if you're feeling daring. You'll want talents like Arrow Recovery. Beyond heal, and perhaps a few elemental triggers (flare, blitz bolt) or bleeding if, you don't like wasting arrows, magic is not really needed.

Keep on the back and know your enemy, placing a fire arrow on top of group of enemies and then shooting say a zombie will cause massive explosions as they bleed poison. Bows with elements can cause CC every turn as enemies bleed it gets electrified or frozen. With the help of a wizard or another ranger you can truly make some powerful combos.

Rogue: They can be difficult if you don't count all your AP and plan. Rogues are extremely flexible and you can make whatever you want with them. Focus on their dexterity and sneaky abilities, you'll want talents like backstab, leech, comeback kid, elemental affinity. (Guerrilla doubles your attack while sneaking, but I'm not sure it counts for being invisible as well or only in sneaking[which you may as well ignore unless you dedicate a lot of points into sneaking])

A true rogue counts their moves before acting, backstabbing a target behind enemy lines, charming, tripping, stunning a bleeding and then returning to the group with invisibility or tactical retreat, leaving the enemy in chaos. However given their nature you can replace their disruptive skills with anything really. You can make a Ninja by using some magic & summons coupled with melee letting you disrupt the battle field, ice pillars, self-immolation, charm (charmed enemies can be hit by holding CTRL). It also bodes well with air skills giving you further invisibility and battle controlling abilities like teleport. You may want to be more of a scout, healing and using your bow and invisibility to draw individuals out of the group or just full on Rogue. Just remember attacks of opportunity by enemies are marked on the floor, so you know when and where it will happen, use this to get behind enemies for backstabs.

Wizards: This is the easiest class, just stay back and throw whatever magic you got at the enemies. You have a limited number of spells, remember to keep the balance between utility, healing and damage. From here you can create whatever sort of Wizard you want, all magics benefit from intelligence and you can easily cycle between spells while they cooldown. Talents like elemental affinity will decrease the cost of your spells if an enemy mage decides to fight back can be useful, the rest is up to your imagination.

Wizards are the backbone of all your decisions, whether to cast rain upon your warrior and stun him along with all the enemy or use a elemental shield, whether you teleport your rogue back to the group after he got a little carried away or sacrifice him with a meteor shower, whether to heal or set environmental hazards for your archer. Mages are the sticky glue of the group, hey, with great power comes great responsibility. Despite wielding quiet powerful magic, you'll find yourself supporting your team with skills like rain, healing, summons, tornado and stunning enemies more often than you think.

Hybrids disclaimer: You can mix these classes as much as you want but always remember the objective of your class. It is easy to start going too far with the intelligence on a warrior or rogue but it will only hurt you in the long run. Don't try to be a jack of all trades, be a master at least at what you do whether that be tanking, disruption, damage-dealing or support.

Feel free to leave down any thoughts or questions.

Delete this part, Warriors get the highest damage in the game (or roughly the same as Rogue).
Nobody should ever see Warriors as "tanks" in this game, they are your main damage dealers.

Eh, debatable. Warriors do mostly damage to one enemy, which can miss. While rangers and wizards can do ridiculous damage with their elemental combos. They're also most effective blocking the enemy's way and benefit from using heavy armour which is tied in with Strength. Maybe in late game they may become stronger but then again, this is just a tutorial for those starting out. I don't quiet think they are "the main damage dealers" unless you care to prove me wrong

Can't speak for the very end game but at level 14 my warriors are by far my heaviest damage dealers. Put Oath and Rage on one and cast Flurry and I'll take off half a boss' health bar in one attack. Whirlwind frequently just flat out one shots whole groups of enemies.

Tanking role is non existent in this game due to the lack of Taunt or AoE Taunt. You may have the best mitigation, but its almost useless when no one hits you and instead wipe your party members first before ganging on you, which by that time mitigation will not save you from 8v1 gangbang. Its disappointing, i even started a Cleric Tank only to realize how futile Tanking in this game is. In fact playing as a tank is technically gimping your entire party.

Warrior in DPS role on other hand is crazy dmg. Whirlwind, Flurry, Dust Devil, Lower Resistance is instant kill for group of mobs or heavy dmg to a Boss. Downside is the high cooldown. Warrior is more of a burst DPS while Mages and their combos are consistent DPS(they have enough skills to rotate cooldowns).

Tanks with opportunist can tank really well, the AI hates leaving your melee range, then its all down to positioning, you need to stop them from getting past you to your squishies

Anybody using 1h+shield? Is this any good?

I have 2 warriors, lvl 12.
One is 2h, other 1h+shield and I cant really see any point in using 1h at all. Seems to have no real usage as damage from enemies can`t be focused on him and 2 handed is quite "tanky" as well. Also 2-hander has much bigger radius for attacks of opportunity.

Can I respec a character somewhere later in the game?

You can respec but all your skills will be wiped, so make sure you grab extra skillbooks that you want to relearn for later

Original Sin is actually made to be a classless game. Therefore what is usually called "hybrids" is the default kind of character building and the whole game is made around that.

Being Jack of all trades is literally what Original Sin is made for.

That got a bit distorted in the end, unfortunately, due to some decisions at the last moment which werent the best possible ones, but that doesnt change the fact that the game is made to be played with jack of all trades.

I agree, hybrids are essentially your "classes."

If you want a "paladin", you would want man-at-arms
+ bless, fortify (geo)
+ water of life (hydro)

If you want an "assassin", you would want scoundrel
+ desecration (witchcraft)
+ invisibility (aero)

If you want a "ranger" with pets, you would want marksmanship
+ spider, wolf (geo)
+ rain (hydro)

Thats if you want to create some sort of a class at all.

If you dont, you can just pick whatever skills you want - as many as you want and play like that. I certainly do and the gameplay is just fine.

Basically, you can play a focused "class" or you can play as any kind of mix of skills jack of all trades. My point being, there is really no reason to limit yourself to some sort of pure class - unless you really want to.

Currently you cannot use Trip with a non-dagger weapon equipped. The skill book does not state this, but if you actually learn the skill and try to use it with a bow or crossbow, the skill is grayed out and the game informs you that you need a dagger to use it.

I also would strongly encourage players to avoid magic with an archer and rely on the special arrows instead. If you don't have at least one archer to use up your special arrows, then all those arrows are is some extra gold. Use 'em or lose 'em.

No need to "avoid magic" with an archer.

Some magic skills align perfectly with an archer.

Furthermore, all skills can be combined with all other skills - as i just said above the game is made for any kind of jack of all trades - ACTUALLY.

Additionally, you dont need to have any skill points in the Marksman skill to use a bow and those special arrows.

If a character has enough dexterity to wield a bow - that character can use it and the special arrows.
Archery - Marksman skill is not necessary for that at all. Its just that a character build made for that will be more precise and a bit more effective at it.

- fact: you cant really miss with special arrows. They always hit. (and that should be changed)

It isn't a matter of ability points, it's a matter of attribute points. You'd need enough Dexterity for the bow, and enough Intelligence for the spells... and not much left over for Constitution, Speed, or Perception.

I guess it's worth pointing out that I'm the sort who switched the difficulty setting to "Hard" as soon as I noticed it existed. The Hard penalty is less health (from +15% to -25%, so about one third of Normal health), which makes Constitution and Speed more important, the latter due to the reduced viability of the Glass Cannon talent (-75% health is brutal). Actually, Initiative in general becomes more important too; if you strike first, you have better odds of survival.

Could you people stop exaggerating so much? My Madora has to be healed more than anyone else and her Comeback Kid talent pops every other fight regardless of my healing.
None of my other characters soak up that much damage.
And yes the damage mitigation is important and just because the enemies are not completely retarded like in MMOs gluing to a single characer who factually poses the least threat from a logical standpoint (damage output) doesn't mean there is no need for tanking or rather you need to utilize your CC and proper positioning to get some fire on you.

Fortify + Absorb works wonders on Madora. Summons like the Decapitator also work wonders, that thing has health by the truckload.

Yes? So?


Not really true. You will have less in any specific attribute but you will have enough overall.

Plus, there is enough equipment and items that boost various attributes so you can make up the difference more or less easily.

Ive been playing jack of all trades since the start, and went through the beta with just two characters, without Lone wolf and glass cannon talents which are just cheats.

It all works fine.

Pure "class" or rather, a focused build will have its specific skill and attribute higher then the jack but jack will be more diverse. If im taking Madora i keep her focused most of the time, just so i can see the differences. Which isnt that big. But when i gave her one level of magic skill she became a killing machine.

With additional feature of being able to cherry pick and change the spells someone has learned.


It only comes down to what any player wants to do or prefers, personally.

For me, Jacks are much more fun and interesting, for someone else a focused build is better.

This is what I mean, if you go too wide you'll end up being mediocre at everything. You cannot be a powerful mage AND a powerful warrior AND a ranger since you have to split between intelligence, dexterity and strength.

I know my warrior is by far the largest single target DPS I have. level 7 and he's hitting for upto 300ish hp a swing on some enemies.

No you can't be an all powerful mage and a warrior and a ranger at the same time, but you can be a very efficient and effective hybrid. What you lose in a couple of stat points you gain in skill diversity. That's how it has been in many games. Pure theoretical power or versatility, you can't have both. This isn't a new concept.

No it's not debatable.
A properly used Warrior can dish out more AoE and Single target than Ranger/Mage unless there are very specific conditions i.e. some environmental stuff or objects boosting damage, but they usually get destroyed once you use them.

If you had played a proper Warrior extensively you'd know, anyone here can tell you the same thing.

Well either my ranger, rogue and wizard are too strong or I haven't had enough luck with the skillbook rolls. My warrior withstands amazing damage and covers for my other characters but it does not do the same amount of damage. While a warrior will do 300 dmg per turn to one enemy a Wizard can do 350 with a simple spell like teleport and use a minor spell afterwards. Elemental spells deal just as much damage and leave enemies open to damage when they walk over the hazard or to a combo explosion by my next character.

to sum:
Yeah warrior does good direct damage mostly to single enemies as skills have huge cooldowns and with a chance to miss. A Wizard does nearly the same damage, never misses and leaves enemies open to environmental hazard and combos. If they were damage dealers they would hands-down destroy the field but they don't... spells like hail storm do. They're far more useful blocking the enemies way and dealing damage in the process.