Larian Studios Forums Divinity II The Dragon Knight Saga / Flames of Vengeance (English) Help/Tips/Tricks Have the weapon styles been re balanced?

Is it just me remembering wrong or have the weapon styles, dual wield, 2 hand, sword and board etc been rebalanced in the latest patch?

I can't remember how big the off hand bonus was on dual wield but i know it was bigger then the main hand.

Anyway i need to do some testing but i am hoping this means all weapon stylers are equally viable now.

I like dual wield and all but it was silly how much better it was then everything else, mainly because of the extra damage enchant you could have.

Ok after some pretty un-scientific testing i came to the conclusion that the imbalance is still huge.

First i tried fighting the same mob's with for a set time with different weapon styles and adding up the total based on combat log, but that was very tedious.

I then just tried timing how long it took to kill the same mobs with the different styles.

When dual wielding it took me an average of 7-8 seconds to kill the test mob's
With single wield it took me an average of 9-10 seconds to kill same mob.
Sword and shield took me 10-12.
And two hander took me closer to 20 seconds.......
Unarmaed close around 20 also but it couldn't be bothered to test to much with that.

Of course this was just a quick test and weapon differences will of course make a pretty big difference.

Dual wield, single weapon and sword and board should be pretty accurate though because i used the same mainhand weapon in all cases, the dual wield of hand was a little worse then my main hand though so in theory if i had two of that weapon the difference would be even bigger.

My two handed weapon was the best i could find in shop and in my storage but i may have sold better ones.

I am not trying to be negative here, but i really wish larion would take the time to give the different styles bonuses that decrease the difference. Sacrificing 20% damage for using only one weapon, or close to 40% just to get a 5% defense bonus for wearing a shield just seems totally stupid. I am not even going to start with how much 2 handers suck.

Most games tend to make dual wield the damage style, because for some reason people tend to think it's a more damaging style, even if that has no real life basis. But at least in other games you usually get some sort of other benefit from using other styles.

If you sacrificed 40% damage for 40% extra defense, or extra crowd control or something it would be fine, but here it's all loss.

Sure it's a single player game so balance is not that important, but still it would be nice if choosing a style would not have such a huge impact on your damage.

Anyway i still love the game, just thought i would share my little test.

2 handers do not suck they kill multiple people around all at once. if you use dual wield the sacrifice is that you have a very narrow kill spot, and little to no defense compared most of other styles and if Larian could im sure they would fix the imbalance but come on how could you. One Wep is obviosly worse than 1 or none so the only fix would be to let you start out with each skill except for dual wield maxed out. Be real


oh wow sorry that ending sounded very hostile but it wasnt.

Good that you can enjoy 2 handed style even with it's gimpness, but somehow i doubt you have even tested out the different styles.

My testing was done at level 44 with all weapon expertise skills maxed. So i have no idea what your talking about in your post about maxing out all weapon skills except dual wield. The fix would be to add bigger bonuses to the other weapon expertise skills.

Obviously they would need to run simulations to figure out how big the difference is at different levels of expertise, but it is hardly impossible to fix. It is pretty simple math.

Well if you compare base on the old overpowered DKS enchantment formula, the damage difference might really be huge when comparing others styles to dual wield style, since level 10 enchantment could reach 100 damage extra, which mean 200 raw damage extra just from enchantment itself. I havent play FOV or doing any comparison in the DKS version yet, so I wont know how the end game weapons in FOV will be like.

But base on damage comparison I done before in the original ED, the conclusion is dual wield indeed provide a more stable damage output, where 2h damage output often fluctuate, due to the huge gap between its min and max damage. But the difference between 2 are not that much until double the killing time on the same mob. Comparison was done base on weapons in the same grade and similar level, as well as skill mastery level. This was tested with the earliest version of ED.

But with some later patches, there are some improvements on the 2h weapon, which provide 2h weapon aoe damage capability. Some tested and reported skill such as fatality, which by default a single target skill, will hit multiple targets if one is equipped with 2h sword. Same goes to normal swing from 2h sword as well.

The level 10 enchants are unchanged, they still provide 100 damage. I did my testing at level 44 on a save i had just before the anteluvian vaults, i went back to tower respecced and maxed out all weapon expertises, and only put points in life leech for survival purposes. I then found the best 2 hander i could and the best shield i could find and enchanted them with level 10 enchants to match the one handers i had.

I then proceeded to make a save in the vaults on the fight where bellegar keeps summoning the same mobs over and over.

I fought for ages with each style versus the same mobs, i did not use any specials i did not do any dodging or anything of the sort i just timed how long it took to kill one mob at a time. This worked great with all styles except 2 handed and unarmed. With 2 handed i died on first mob because i could not do enough damage to keep myself healed with life leech, and i died a lot so it was quite frustrating to test, but i did a lot of testing, and the kill time was indeed more then double the time of dual wield.

This was all tested on nightmare difficulty btw to keep fights as long as possible to get the most reliable results, and i did not want to put points into crit chance and bleed and stuff like that.

So in my mind there is no doubt that the damage bonuses for other weapon expertises need to be increased.

It could very well be that the differences are smaller at lower levels, but i did a little testing with my new pure mage, and even there with no skill points in either expertise, i still killed twice as fast at level 15 with 2 magic damage based one handers over a magic based 2 hander. This was pure melee, no spells used.

Also my mage of course dual wields even if he NEVER melee's, just because of the increased magic enchants.

And to the oae capability, sure it probably has a little bit better aoe capability but dual wield will still hit multiple mobs, and if i am surrounded by tons of mob's whirlwind is the way to go anyway. On normal difficulty two whirlwinds kill anything around you anyway.

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You mean the lvl10 damage enchantment is the only 1 remain at 100 damage even after the new patch, where others rank damage had already being balanced? I not too sure on the latest patch as havent try it out yet. Didnt touch the game much lately. As mentioned earlier, 200 raw damage extra in specs will provide quite some differences in term of damage output.

I havent actually try creating a spell caster before, so no idea if magical damage enchantment will affect spell damage output. But from what I notice, passives like destruction doesnt seem to affect the magical damage portion part of weapon in the status screen.

Not sure about destruction will have to respec to check, but magic enchantment works on spells, and int works on weapons magic damage, just like str does for melee. I just got a 75 magic damage two hander and its adds 90points of damage to each missile on magic missile spell. It has no int or anything so kind of wondering where the extra 15 points of damage are coming from, I decided to just use a two hander with her, cause dual wield with two of those enchants just makes the game too easy, even on nightmare. Lost a hundred mana from my old maces too, but yeah i want a challenge this time. I have very little hit points so i get killed in two hits, but i kill so fast so it's really exciting. Very different plays style from warrior.

Rank 9 is still 75 damage as well. Rank 8 is 50 damage instead of 80, though. But the Rank 1 is now 2, Rank 2 is now 4 damage.

Dropping low rank enchantment damage doesnt help much on the imbalance part to be honest, as lvl9 enchantment already can be access around lvl20. If old enchantment in ED being use again, then we can have a more challenging game, as lvl10 damage enchantment only provide 27 damage extra. Damage gap between dual wield vs 1 handed / 2 handed sword wont be as bad as now.

Yeah, I found a Rank 9 damage enchantment at level 20, shortly before the Battle Tower boss fight. I've NEVER had that boss fight end that fast and easily before. Same story with Lord John and Lady Kara, it took mere seconds to kill them. Leaving high rank enchantments intact isn't solving anything.

The old Ego Draconis enchantment system wasn't very good either. It made Rank 10 enchantments COMPLETELY and TOTALLY pointless, because it gave exactly 3 more damage than Rank 9.

Before the patch I was hoping the enchantments could be cut in half:
Rank 1 = +5 damage
Rank 2 = +10 damage
...
Rank 8 = +40 damage
Rank 9 = +45 damage
Rank 10 = +60 damage

They'd still be worth using at the time you found them, but they wouldn't get super-overpowering.

Yeah i agree i think the enchants are way overboard, the problem from what i gather is they beefed em up because people complained about the difficulty. So nerfing them too much would probably cause an outcry by a lot of people. At least we can choose to use or not use them.

If it is the enchantments creating the imbalance between the styles, my best suggestion would be to disable damage enchants on offhand weapons. I have not checked to see if that actually makes a big enough difference though. I never played the original ego draconis, so i don't really know how it was back then, but from what i have read it was still a bit unbalanced.

I still think the best approach is to increase bonuses to the other expertise skills though. That way you can choose a style you prefer and know you won't be gimping yourself. And then just make a choice if you are going to use the best enchants or not.

Even with shabby enchantments in the original ED, the character will still be over power near the end game when you fully utilize all your charms, eventhough the overpower situation is not as bad as compare to the current enchantment. If my memory serve me well, I didnt even use any damage charms on my dual wield warrior, and still capable to 1 hit ko the divine with thousand strike. All 3 stats are able to reach close to 100 at around lvl35 with the help of charms, using ulthring set.

By the way how the nightmare mode doing? Does it over at least some challenge now?

Yeah nightmare is good as a caster at least, i buildt a glass cannon on purpose. My base health is about 350 at 30 something, about 600 with gear. Two rush attacks or a rush attack and a strong magic/ranged attack will kill me outright. So it's all about constantly moving about and finding cover, i can't stand in the open fighting. Need to pull mobs around corners and stuff. Some boss fights in small rooms are extremely hard and takes a lot of reloads, even normal fights go wrong if i don't have cover to go behind.

It would be a lot easier if i buildt my health high though. I have only played my warrior while testing the balance of styles, and that still seemed pretty easy, but yeah you will find yourself with low health quite often even with a 100 vitality at end game. However i think melee will be extremely tough in lower levels on nightmare.

I started out on nightmare with my mage, but i turned it down until i got to about level 12 or so. The fight's themselves are a lot of fun those levels, but you always end up with low health and with no regen it's was just too much downtime for me. I actually ran out of food and drink is why i had to to turn down the difficulty on those levels. If they had a way to regen to full health/mana out of combat it would be prefectly viable as long as you dont mind picking up a bow. Melee is impossible on low levels on nightmare.

I am sure some people will claim they do it all melee, but i can't see how it's viable. Unless you like using potions. I only use potions for boss fight or out of combat regen myself.

Also it seems like nightmare does not just affect damage/hitpoints it seems enemies use there good abilities a lot more often. They spam heals and special attacks a lot more it seems. Could just be my imagination but yeah..

Good to hear that at least there some challenges with the newly implemented nightmare mode.

I think it really depends on how one play the game with melee in nightmare mode. And its quite normal to equip a bow and shoot an arrow to pull a mob or two out from the group to finish them off with melee attack, which I dont think is against playing as melee. Even well equipped, charge blindly into a huge group wasnt a wise choice to me, unless one enjoy spamming potions non stop, or really being stuck in some small room, eg like boss fight.

Guess I will restart the game again in nightmare mode once getting my hands back on it with the new patch. Should be more fun.