I get back to the game after the latest patch, and has been trying to build a physical/ magical hybrid. I have restarted the game for many times, and spent hours on the character creation screens. So far, all of my builds are good enough to work, but not great enough to be worthy of my main characters.

I LOVE playing hybrids in DOS1. And I got frustrated by not being able to make a great hybrid in DOS2. So, I begin to think why playing hybrids feel so bad in this game:

1. 5% damage scaling with primary attributes.
In DOS1, 1 point in your primary attribute (str/dex/int) raises damage of your skills by 5%, capping at 150%. (E.g. "Lacerate" stopped scaling after 18 Dex)
This is the same in DOS2, 5% damage increase for each point. I'm not sure if there's a cap for skill scaling.
However, instead of getting only 1 attribute point every 2 level. You now get 2 attribute point every level!!
This means skills are scaling much, much faster in DOS2. If you are a pure class, you can put so many points into your primary attributes that your skill damage will gain a massive boost. The boost is much greater than when you spread your points into different attributes for hybrid. This makes hybrids fall off extremely early.

2. Memory requirements
The main draw of playing a hybrid is that you can use many different skills from different schools.
In DOS1, you can put skill points into every single skill tress to gain more skill slots. And it's not even hard to get to level 3-4 in every skill tree to use the more powerful skills.
In DOS2, you now need to invest in memory in order to equip your skills. Hybrids already have a problem with limited attribute points. Memory requirement makes it even worse.
If you don't have enough memory to equip skills from different schools, why bother playing a hybrid?

These are my thoughts after playing for a while. Please note that I am still very early in the game, so I am not sure about whether hybrid equipment will make hybrids more viable. Any input or suggestion is welcome.

so tl;dr Attribute point inflation, % chance changes and the transition to memory. I agree with the points you made and have found that its more efficient to only have to put points into a character's primary attribute aswell as memory/wit.

I think it would help if you clearly defined what you mean by "hybrid". If you just mean mixing different skill schools, then there are tons of different builds that are viable. Simply pick 1 stat/weapon for damage and then just get utility abilities from other skill schools. E.g A Strength and 2-handed warrior who has a point in Aerothurge to teleport and Netherswap targets.

I'm assuming by Hybrid you mean being able to do both "physical" and "magical" damage effectively. E.g Swing a sword and then cast a Fireball, without being bad at either.
This is the main thing that mostly can't be done by a single character in the current build, at least without sacrificing a lot of damage to both types.

There's no good way to be good at two opposing things. You're making a trade-off on stats. For our Sword/Fireball example that would be Strength vs Int (Stats), 2-Handed vs Pyrokinetics (Skills), and possibly on a few talents too (Opportunity vs Far-out man).
The only current way a "hybrid" is valuable is if they primarily are good at doing damage one way, and just pick up extra utility from other Skills.
Of note, this is only a problem for damage dealing classes. Healers and utility classes actually don't suffer from this problem at all. For heals specifically, they scale off of either caster level (Restoration) or % max health of the target (First Aid), and the caster's skill in Hydrosophist (for a % multiplier), whereas utility skills will only scale their damage portion, if one even exists.

A few builds manage to get around the weirdness. For example, a Character using a Fire Staff, who stacks Intellect and Pyrokinetics can do a lot of Melee damage and use both Warfare abilities and Fire Spells effectively. This is because the stats/skills all fully buff the damage from both of these actions.
The damage isn't hybrid, however. All of the damage would be Fire (aside from special skills like Battle Stomp, which converts all of the damage to physical.)

Anyone with a bow/crossbow can have their full bow damage be physical or use a special arrow for their choice of element. Most people wouldn't think of a pure archer as a hybrid, but this class is naturally able to hybridize their damage-type easily.

Even if the three stats (Int/Str/Finesse) were condensed into 1 stat called Power, which increased all damage done, we'd still have this issue due to skill passive bonuses, although it wouldn't be as pronounced. E.g. a pure-class who had all ten points into a weapon skill vs a character who dumped those 10 points in Pyrokinetics instead. Although, because of the 10-point limit on skill caps, this may not undercut the utility gained from being more flexible.

I've been able to solo everything (No companions) in tactical mode as a hybrid so far with careful planning and prep my build is as hybrid as it gets (1 point in everything, high memory with as many skills as possible). Hybrids are better/stronger than DS1 as you don't have to level up each spell school for slots, its all memory. This allows you to be able to swap in/out what you need without having to dedicate points to a single skill school.

In short - Hybrids work, memory is what makes it work. The synergy/number of skills hybrids can do makes up for their slightly lower damage, its a fair trade off.

Thats the Point. I don't understand the Critique. This isn't an Hack'N'Slay, this is an RPG, with an proper Ruleset. Means if you mix together things you have to accept that you won't make as much damage as someone who fokus on specific damage-type (like as example Soldier on Phys), and that would be pretty illogical to begin with. I mean why should someone who train his whole life with an Sword be weaker as someone who try to be an allrounder and learn from everything a bit. The thing which makes Hybrid still so valuable is, how differently you can act on in different situation. As Knight as example, i've to stick on physical damage, while an Battlemage can physical attack, but also have some elemental Magic... So yeah, suma sumarum: Hybrids are how they are supposed to be. If you choose to mix up things, you have to life with the downsides as well, otherwise if they try they to fix that, Pure Classes would be in disadvantage...

Neither the synergy nor the amount of skills is worth the damage malus on a Hybrid. Especially since the non magic skillschools now all feature dex/str based sword techniques that look and work like actual magical spells. And don't forget Hybrids have to actually spend more points in Memory too, completely leading the initial thought of implementation ad absurdum.

The only reason to build a hybrid is roleplay. They have no mechanical advantage. They're always weaker.

With the Poison/Fire damage "bug/exploit" there is no reason to do anything but run that or a full dex rogue. No other class can output the kind of damage that these two can.

Don't even get me started on how stupidly overpowered teleportation is and how MANDATORY it is to have it on all 4 members.

Why would you run hybrid? To make unique and equally viable builds. Hybrids do not exist to compete in terms of damage. Hybrids are the utility "Bag of Tricks" in your party that will ALWAYS have useful turns. I ALWAYS take Necromancy and max it on my frontliners. NEVER dying and being there to apply CC is too valuable when compared to having a few more points of damage. Blood Rain, Blood Sucker and Mosquito Swarm, even when not going into int, are absurdly powerful tools. Being able to cast Blood Rain on yourself, clear all surface problems, and then suck it all up for an almost 0-100% heal every 3 turns is stupidly good.

In addition, Memory will ONLY be an issue in the early game (1-4). After this point, almost all rings from vendors and helms contain 2 or more memory. Hybrid IS viable, just not as your DPS.

I honestly think hybrids do work, but you have to pick skills properly. Which is where I have issue, because of how limiting memory can be. I get that they don't want you to be as broken as in OS1, but having to go into a menu to select new skills for a fight you're having trouble with kinda breaks the game flow for me. I don't want to have to just get new things to beat a fight, I want to be able to beat it because I fought better that time. In OS1 a lot of it was rng, but now it isn't.

I'm not saying go back to OS1 where you can basically have as many skills as you want. I just want a little boost. Something like putting a point into a skill gives you a memory slot that is only usable by that school. Idk how viable that would be to implement this far along into development but I think it's a neat idea. Or if you have 3 or more schools skilled up you get an extra universal memory slot. A talent that gives more memory slots (not just points) maybe? I'm not a game designer so these might end up breaking some builds. I just feel really limited by memory in the current form and would like a little help with hybrids as far as number of skills you can have active at a time.

I found it a lot easier to build a character to either do damage to physical or magical armor, not both. If I want utility, then I'll give a character a support role where they just heal or cc.

Sorry, I wasn't clear on my initial post because I was writing it in a hurry.

This is a more elaborate explanation on my view on hybrid:

1. By hybrid, I mean true physical/magical hybrid with stats spread between 2 primary attributes. (i.e. shadowblade, battlemage, wayfarer)

This was how some of the most powerful builds are made in DOS1
Such as this dual wield wizard build: http://www.tihie.com/divinity-original-sin-ee/2-power-build-dual-wielding-grenade-wizard

In the example DOS1 hybrid build, points were spread across THREE attributes (str/dex/int). This worked because attribute points are RARE. Instead of getting a lot of innate attribute points, you got most of them from equipment. And it was easy to hit the soft attribute cap, after which certain skills stopped scaling.

This no longer happens in DOS2, because everyone's got so many innate attribute points that pure builds scale way too much faster than hybrids.


2. Yes, hybrids are supposed to be weaker than pure class in terms of damage, but have more versatility as a trade off.

However, the armor system makes the life of hybrids much harder.

In DOS1, you can make a battlemage. The battle starts off with the hybrid throwing long range spells at the enemy. Since there's not armor system, even though the magical damage is weak, it still HURTS the enemy, with a decent percentage of landing the CC. You feel like the hybrid is contributing to the fight.

In DOS2, you can also make a battlemage. The battle starts off with using long range spells. Surprise! Blocked by armor! No chance of CC, only a tiny potion of the armor is destroyed, which the enemy is gonna regenerate next term. It feels like a waste of turn.


3. Hybrids can work, with a full team of support

I once made a battlemage using the preset skills. It works, because I have 2 teammates blasting through magical armors, then the battlemage charge in and stun the enemies with armor down. Afterward, the battlemage melee attacks, taking down a small percentage of physical armor while my magical teammates are killing the same dude with fire. Now the battlemage feels useless.

In a sense, hybrid works in the full team with good support. However, he is very dependent on his teammates, and cannot stand on his own.



It's good to know that hybrids, even solo, can beat the game.

The problem is, though, that for a casual player who doesn't calculate for everything. It FEELS bad to have a hybrid. Maybe this is my problem. I don't like having a character who relies so much on other teammates to burst down armor before he can contribute.

It just feels bad to see your pure ranger/ pure mage destroying everything from afar, while your battlemage struggles to land the CC and gets beaten to death.

Hybrid works a lot better once you notice that even though there isn't a point of Diminishing returns, each point is worth less than the previous one to the whole.

The first point is a 5% boost. The 10th point is a 2.5% boost. The 20th point a single percent.

If you actually try out Hybrids instead of trying to do the math. You will see that they do indeed work, and do so just fine, even when you put 0 points in their primary attribute or if you do a mix.

There are few niches in which a hibrid build that is good at both spellcasting and fighting in melee.

I have been experimenting with a couple of custom dwarves over 2 playthroughs and discovered that Str/Int hibrids that use sword and board in conjunction with necromancy and warfare can become very tanky due to the fact that intelect buffs the amount of magical armor they get as well as the damage from certain necromancer spells such as mosquito swarm.

One of my best main characters was a thieving battlemage lizzard with bull rush, mosquito swarm and chameleon cloak as my starting skills; 11 in wits,10 in the rest,12 in str and int. I was able to steal very early most of skill tomes I needed with relative ease and the free point in persuasion helped me dodge jail on several ocasions (it was hilarious,really)

Im playing with hybrids all the time, whole team. Didnt notice any big problems.

Of course they wont be as strong in single abilities or skills as pure builds, but you have diversity of options instead.

In very early game yes...in late game. Hybrids are much stronger.

Would be easy to cap attributes to 1 point per level. Then everyone can invest in two things. That could be Strength and Constitution for the tanks, or Strength and Intelligence for the hybrids, or any other option.

You can already invest in 2 things anyway if you want. That is what a hybrid is. Your suggestion is to force everyone to make everything a hybrid.

You can "beat" everything in this game (up until now) without putting a single point in anything after what you start with. A few 5% here or there is nothing.

If I want to put all my points into FIN as an archer then I should be able to. Why should I put a single point in anything else? That is the point of such a game is it not?

Play hybrid if you want (it works for me). Or don't.

I just completed an act 1 play through with Sabille and Lohse as full Dex backstabbing rogues, Red as a heavy armour Geo/Hydro/Warfare tank utility, and Ifan as a dual wand Hydro/Aero heavy armour cleric.

Worked well. Red and Ibram took on tanking/offtanking duties with crowd control mixed in, using Telekinesis to drag targets behind them for Sabille and Lohse to safely shred a couple at a time, neither of them used sneak or invisibility during fights.

Moving forward into act 2 I could easily see myself spreading Lohse and Sabille into some schools of magic to give me access to increased utility spells, or even some warfare for the crowd control/mobility spells in there too.

Yes, exactly! Though, not exactly Strength/Dexterity/Intelligence. Those that want to Hybrid absolutely can, while those who want to single class can Intelligence/Memory or whatever. This way, nobody is putting all their points into a single stat.

I agree, mostly. And it's even a lot worse with for example summoning.
Summoning is really weak, for various reasons I stated long ago, and at best has a role as a small addon to other skills. Sadly even this role it cannot fulfill for the here stated reason of the missing possibility to combine stuff properly.
Right now hybrids only work for completely static skills, like teleport or adrenaline for example.

Really wish Larian would attend to all this stuff...

Summoning doesn't scale off of any of the stats, only total level and ranks in the summoning skill. So Summoning, which is a great support skill, works great for almost any hybrid build in my opinion.

Hybrids work just fine. Ran through again with these two characters and spread their combat skills out even harder this time and it worked even better. Having a larger array of skills available is quite beneficial for utility characters.

@Triumph, I like the idea of utility and having lots of options - it plays to the heart and spirit of DOS for me - the strategy. Seeing the lay of the land and baking up a delicious answer to the problem with the spices in your pantry.

But your examples don't look all that "hybrid" to me, or maybe I'm defining it differently. You still look heavily invested in reducing magic armor and attacking their health pool that way. I'm relatively new to the game, so feel free to explain it to me. I see a sword/shield, dual wands, and a whole lot of intelligence across the board. Lots of magic skill investment ... nothing in scoundrel/huntsman ... Warfare, I assume for the superb mobility it offers ... how are you reducing physical armor? Am I underestimating retaliation that much?

Again, I totally agree utility is fun and viable, but the heart of the problem for my first playthrough was physical/magic armor's penalties against hybrids. Levels 1-4, you can analyze and say "oh, he has no/weak XTYPE armor, I have an answer for that!" But by 5-8, it was like "I need to recommit my cards to either physical or magical" and that worked out much better. Which eventually led to relatively one-trick pony strategies as less and less options became available and I became more invested in the road I picked.

To me, you went magic. You reduce magic armor, you CC/buff/survive the enemy until you've overcome them. Not in a glass cannon way for sure, but certainly in a magic way. If that's hybrid, well I can't tell you how to define it, only that I think of hybrid as "I can adapt to physical or magic" not "I have utility abilities." Utility is something I think physical or magical both have (knock downs/mobility for physical, endless CC for magical).

Overall, I agree with many of the points here. You shouldn't any more be forced to hybrid than punished for it. A classic warrior or wizard can be a lot of fun, and it is after all an RPG. While I already posted on why I think the attribute system is incredibly flawed, I'll say I think the crux of the hybrid issue will still remain due to how magic/physical armor currently work.

The answer is you make the hybrid characters go last. Red and Iffan are paired with 2 Rogues, so if they need to attack something through physical armour they wait for the rogues to go first and strip the armour off targets before following up with abilities like Stomp, Charge, and their physical attacks.

If Red wants to combo attack spells you make him go after Iffan, as with Aero 3 and explosive wand combo he shreds magic armour pretty quickly.

Red in this picture is also built as a tank rather than DPS, if I wanted to adjust his build for more raw attack DPS he'd be equipped with a two handed weapon and the 3 points in Retribution would be moved to Two Handed weapons.

Ahhhh ok, I thought you were two manning it (sorry, with so many people trying to solo act 1, two-manning it seemed reasonable). That makes a lot more sense now. Two rogues would completely answer the physical, and you have two strong magic (and utility) to flex and follow up, or go the magic route.

I'm willing to try it again. I will say it didn't work for me the first play through, but now I have a much better idea of how the system works. That being said, I wish there was an option to respec a bit of the ways into Act 1. I tried experimenting and ended up with a sub-par tank/warrior, a sub-par mage/buffer, a murderous rogue, and a sub-par summoner-turned-archer when summoning just felt useless (around level 6). Maybe it was the poor specing that forced me to fully commit to one type of damage or the other, as anythign resembling a balanced party had already gone out the window by that point.

So I just completed a run through act 1 trying the builds almost exactly like you suggested. It was crazy effective. Exactly how I wanted to play, where I felt I had creative solutions to each fight.

Problem is that while it can be made to work, it's just not as effective as overspecialization

That is literally true in every video game, except in some hybrid builds straight up DO NOT work.
They work here. They're maybe 'sub optimal', but they WORK.

It is true that it's in all games, but there's a problem when the difference feels so very very large.

Edit:
To give a comparable, if skewed example -> You can beat Dark Souls with a basic dagger, but this is heavily frowned upon because it's so woefully inefficient compared to any other weapon that you might as well be doing 1 damage for every 100 of theirs.

Something being viable and something being balanced are two very different things. The difference in specialization and hybrids shouldn't be nearly as wide as it is and specialization should have some kind of trade off, but it doesn't really feel that way.

Hybrid builds aren't mean to work. You can only acquire so many stats and you're meant to specialize in certain trees and abilities that have synergy with eachother.

There's a reason you have a party of 4. Instead of having every member be a hybrid, you specialize roles so that your party itself is hybrid and versatile. I'm completely fine with that.

From a fantasy perspective I love the idea of a battlemage, but from a gameplay perspective it makes complete sense why it's not a powerful option in a game like this. Though, for the record, it CAN work, it's just far from optimal.