Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Game Balance : Melee is terrible

Melee is extremly strong ( close to OP in my Eyes ).
My Friend and myself play as a Warrior ( He ) and a Mage ( Me ).
The Difficulty is normal, but only because its a bit faster hard wasnt a problem either.
We are now Level 14 and we both have Lone Wolf und Class Cannon.
So we only have our 2 Characters instead of 4.
Thanks to Lone Wolf + Class Cannon Speed is useless. We both have 7 Speed ( 5 + 2 from Equipment ) -> 18 AP per Round ( more than enough ).
The Strategy is: He has a Two Handed Weapon and kills the enemy Mages und Archers instantly with 500-1000 Damage Noncrit ( 1000-2000 without Armor ) or 1500-3000 with a Crit.
I CC Enemys ( Fire Wind Earth Mage ) and Deal around 500-600 Damage Aoe with a Single Attack ( Way Less than him ).
BUT he can use Rage Mode ( + 50% Damage ) and i can use Oath on Destruction ( Level 1 Witchcraft Spell ) on him also +50% Damage -> Whooping 1000-2000 NON CRIT Autoattacks and he has 4 of them every Round.
And that Equals 1500-2500 Whirlwind Attacks und around 10K DMG with his Quadra Attack.
He can also Lower the Armor and Resistances of Bosses -> we nearly Instakill them.
+ Man at Arms Traits -> 50% Magic Resistance ( Mages are useless against him ). Thanks to this he has > 100% Fire Poison nearly every Magic Resistance -> I can heal him with my Fireballs and so do the Enemies.

BUT he cant tank Shit because Enemies dont focus him but me and im a Class Cannon with > 1500 Life thanks to a Maximum of 15 on every Stat.
So i have 15 Int ( skilled ) + 1 Know it all + 7 Equipment => 23 Int and he has around 14 Strength ( with Equipment ) and still deals Tons of more Single Target Damage.

And to the Tanking Problem -> Summon Elemental -> Elemental gets focused -> Heal it with your Spells -> Much WoW.

In the End im a Supporter and Aoe Damage Dealer as a Caster and a Melee is 110% pure Destruction on Everything everywhere.

Melee has no Weaknesses in this Game except for Range and thats were Featherfall comes in ( Port your Melee next to the Enemies ).
The Melees dont even need Spells to slaughter Everything but yeah they are way to weak...

Originally Posted by Darkraign

The Strategy is: He has a Two Handed Weapon

... how about 1Hand Weapon and Shield?

Honestly, I've yet to see my friend really have any issues with movement. At most, if he needs an enemy brought to him, using Aero's teleport to bring the enemy closer so he can use all his AP on attacks works perfectly well. Combine that with Pyro's Haste and he can kill an enemy in one round with just the auto attacks, he does so much damage with those alone.

One of the better tactics I've found is actually to teleport him directly into the middle of a group. He takes a bit of damage, but so do all the enemies. Then he throws out a spinning attack and tends to finish at least one or two normal enemies off. It's astoundingly effective. It's all about positioning and using the varied class abilities effectively. No one class is going to be good at everything. It's a lot easier to focus on way with each class and then put that to use by combining their strengths.

@Yogofu: 1 Hand + Shield = no Dmg but you can Tank a lot.
Shield on 5 + a good Shield = 50% Block Chance + the 50% Magic Resistance Trait -> You are nearly Indestructible. So look for a good Spot where Enemies cant Run around you and tank the Shit out of them.
You are not Supposed to do Damage with this.

@Campor: Thats exactly what i meant but Teleport does no Aoe Damage and later you get Featherfall which does the same but with Lower Cooldown ( 1 Turn for me ) and no damage for your friend.

Teleport does do some AoE, if you can angle to delivery right. If you pop someone directly next to someone else, the people getting dropped on get damaged as well as the person falling. It's one of my favourite ways to dispatch weaker units, by 'porting archers onto other archers or near-dead warriors. That's why we use it as a hard drop sort of deal for his Fighter- He drops in, does 100+ damage on the fall to an enemy or two, then pulls off the spin and does a couple hundred more to everyone around him. It's a lot of fun.

That is simply not true. With the 35% damage buff on and buff from Witchcraft single target damage of melees skyrocket. Add in bully and some CC and it goes well beyond what mages can do.
Mages deal good AoE damage and single target damage, but usually suffer from high AP costs and their standard attack is weak costing 4 AP dealing low damage. Compare that to a well developed dagger rogue who attacks for 2 AP, dealing more damage and 100% crit chance while backstabbing which not only works right after exiting stealth but for the whole round plus it works on CCed targets.
Really people should appreciate the synergies in this game the various classes have with each other instead of making it another idiotic "most efficient" debate which was always highly subjective even back in Baldur's Gate 1+2.
Mages do not need a tank and melees do not need a mage. Ranger can be just as effective.

I Wish I saw these 2-3k Crits at level 19 with my 2h Warrior...

hah...


All this only means that Ai is working properly.

If it was falling for such cheap tactics then everyone could just repeat those few simple steps and play the whole game like that.

It doesnt so you cant. And thats how it should be.


All these effects you are complaining about, (Op and others) are actually created by yourself, repeatedly trying to apply the same dumb procedure to every single fight, every different enemy and every single hand crafted, unique combat encounter.


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also, whoever above is talking about shield and sword builds somehow NOT doing enough damage.... like, wtf? what mushrooms have you been smoking man? :P

:lol:

I have to really disagree on the melee is weak part. So far Madora my 2h Melee Character has been one of the stronges parts of my group. She simply charges the enemy and can 1 or 2 hit most really tough enemies on her own with her sword. My mage can not even compare to that. She hits for 100+ easily while the best spells for my mage usually hit for 50-80 and then have some tie cooldown. I saw her crit for 300.

Also melee does have some nice aoe ability. I witnessed Madora surrounded by 3 enemies, Whirlwind and 3 enemies lay bleeding at her feet.

I do feel that Rangers have the short stick tough. I see my brother using his bow and when he uses his ability he does maybe 30-40 damage 3x or his rikochet for 40 damage on all enemies. Feels a tad weak (however he sure than makes that up by his insane spider that tanks like mad and dishes out great damage ^^)

On the account of rogues, could not try one. It seems I killed the skill book vendor in the 1st floor of King Crabs Inn (was that the women that said casually she had some source magik?). Does anyone know any skillbook vendor for rogues other than the one in the king crab inn?

Rangers do have all those special arrows, which are as powerful as any spells so, its only natural that the basic damage isnt that high. Besides - to increase damage one needs to invest skills points into the weapon directly - and into the relevant attributes.

If one doesnt, one should not complain about not making maximum damage....

damage is still not the Problem as Melee. The Problem for me is that the Sword and Board way doesnt fit in a role. He cant tank because he cant bind enemys on him (he can block narrow paths but these are as rare as Legendary Item). A Character with 500HP, 50% Physical Resistance and 50% Omni Elemental Resistance is useless if the enemys dont attack him. 2H is superior in terms of Dealing Damage to EVERY single Class so a good skilled 2H can kill most enemys before they can get close to the Weaker Party members. a 1Hand and Shield cant do that damage and has the same Skills (no Shield specific things).

for me it feels like that Larian had really more fun to design the Mage *Classes*. we have 5 different Mage *classes* with different skills but only 2 Melee *classes* with 1 for Strenght and 1 for Dex. What the game needs for example is a *class* that has Sword and Board specific things (Shield Bash with base damage x 10-100% blockchance, a Charge that only can be used with 1H and Shield and more) and a different *class* for 1H and 2H (and maybe Dual Wield.. is Dual Wield even possible? cant check atm :P). Man at Arms alone doesnt fit the need for a Melee in my opinion. I hope we can mod this if Larian doesnt want to do it :P

Rangers are fine and really powerfull if you can make/find enough Arrows. With some Speed you can turn the Battlefield into Chaos in just 1 Turn.. its amazing but again i would love different Skills for Crossbows (like a Powershot that deals massive dmg to 1 Enemys or something like that).

I disagree with melee being terrible, it's the only thing I play in this game and it still seems to be rather powerful. It is a bit more balanced now than it was at one point in early access. I admit it was fun to get all of your skill ap costs to 3 or 4 for weapon based skills or 1 for all other skills by stacking str to 15 and wearing +str items to get it to the 18-20 range then just steamrolling entire screens full of mobs, but that was obviously overpowered. Of course the mage could also get most of his skills to 1 ap cost as well, but they just didn't scale as high as 2H weapons + berserk + that negative resists debuff. You could 1 shot all the bosses nearly as well as arrow spray (the op ranger skill that they replaced with ricochet and moved to high levels?) with that nonsense though it required oath + zerk + resist debuff when a ranger could just hop in and win (then wait for the long cooldown to do it again).

I've also seen a 75% block chance with an orange elven shield (50% after upgrading with max smithing), 5 shield mastery (25%), and 5 smithing (not base mind you, get some + skill items, though I've seen skills now go over 5 with +skills so...) before they added item levels back then as well. It's probably still possible, but at what level I don't know. That made for an unkillable tank and with crafted + sharpened weapons he wasn't too terrible when it came to dealing damage either though 2h was clearly superior at that. Smithing and crafting are huge for melee builds imo. Honestly, the way the game is now I don't think sword and shield is worth it if you want to kill fast since the AP cost for skills is the same as using a 2H for much less damage.

What I can agree with is not liking the long cooldowns. Their reasoning for changing them was something along the lines of 'we don't want everyone using the same rotation of skills'. While that did seem to happen, now as a melee (sub level 10 at least) the game is basically all normal attack spamming. Why use dust devil or battering ram (yeah aoe + mobility line aoe + knockdown still has its uses situationally) for damage when I can put out 2 to 3 times as much damage with normal attacks for ap spent vs using those skills. I dread finding phoenix dive which used to cost me 1 ap with a 3~? turn cooldown, and seeing it be 5+ ap and 7~ turn cooldown or some nonsense. It won't see much use from me if that's the case. :\

This topic is the reason this game would have benefit greatly from having an import/export character function similar to Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gates, Icewind Dales, etc, or having a character respec option. I've had to start over several times due to my co-op partner hating the way his build was turning out compared to my OP melee self. After having 90~ hours of Cyseal from early access, I just want to get past it already. lol

Sword and Board is wonderful to disrupt ranged enemies. Whenever I charge into a group of them I almost always have their aggro.
Otherwise I just help my party with CC and buffs and of course deal tons of damage.
I am glad we got no MMO mechanics. Tank and spank is the most boring and idiotic fighting mechanic imo and one of the main reason I stopped raiding pretty early.

Well... After playing 30 hours in beta, and some 10 hours after it what can i say

Firstly I'm fond of rogue-type characters, and if it can do some magic - he is my favorite. So my setup is shadowblade + cleric and madora with jahan

And to tell the truth the madora is the top damage-dealer in this company with others being utility/buff/debuff machines
shadowblade: charm, stun, blind, desecration
cleric: resistance debuff, heal, encourage
mage: stun, teleport, heal
warrior: ultimate killing with dust devil and whirlwind

but I play on normal, don't know how it goes on hard

on a side note: is there some kind of savegame editor?

@Yogofu

What kind of ass backwards thinking is that?
A character is "useless" if the enemies dont attack him? what the F?

You attack them for chris sake!
Stop bloody thinking like youre playing a MMO and repeating the same thing over and over.
MAKE enemies attack your specific character if you want it so bad. If they dont - use it against them!

Btw, enemies attack anyone and everyone, ACTUALLY, so your complaint isnt atually real.
In my game my shield and sword guy gets the most attention - DEPENDING ON THE ENCOUNTER.



Why would that character "block" paths? Give him opportunist talent if you wnat him to take a swipe at passing enemies. Thats the most you can do in that regard.

2H is superior in dealing damage ONLY in YOUR game buddy. In mine they are about equal.
(because my heavily edited shadowblade uses a dagger and a shield - while being Strength based - imagine that eh?)

Besides, a 2H fighter properly specced SHOULD deal more damage then the usual shield and sword character.... BECAUSE THATS THE BLOODY POINT OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FULL OFFENSE AND DEFENSE/OFFENSE BUILD.

It just depends on what kind of specific builds you make and how you use them.

ITS YOUR FAULT. YOURE PLAYING BADLY with what youre given.

I dont mind people making actual real critiques but this just doesnt make any sense at all.


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- I would agree that cooldowns are in need or redesign and adjustments though. And i would love to see more skills added to make things more diverse.

Both for melees and ranged characters.

Yes a Character that is supposed to soak damage is useless if the enemys doesnt attack him.

wait really? I CAN ATTACK ENEMYS? HOW? I DIDNT KNOW THAT! NOW IT ALL MAKES SENSE! how stupid are you?

i dont want to bind all 5+ enemys on my *Tank*. Usually if the enemy group is moving i wait for 2 possible dangerous Character to be close togheter so my Battering Ram can hit them (if 1 or 2 Enemys are in the path its even better). If the enemys are knocked down the fight is usually over. BUT if they resist the knockdown i expect them to atleast attack the guy thats in front of them since it makes sense.. who wants to have a Guy with a Weapon in his hand in his back? Problem here: If the enemys ignore my tank as usual (dunno what i do wrong here) they run so far away that my Tank with his heavy Armor cant get in range. Yes opportunity helps (thanks to the 7 Gods for that). And it is possible to block Paths with a Character so enemys are forced to attack him or take a long way around him.




How is it even possible that a 1H can deal as much damage as a 2H? I didnt try Shadowblade that much but this looks like another Balance Problem.. 2H should be Superior all the time on the same EXP and Gear Level since they sacrifice a shitload of Defensive. But almost every game has this Issue if the Choice is given (in almost every RPG the 1H + Shield Combo can deal the same and in some cases even more dmg as a Pure 2H but they have additional defense thanks to the shield dunno why Devs cant handle this :P).

how many FUCKING TIMES DO I HAVE TO WRITE THIS? DAMAGE! IS! NOT! THE! FUCKING! PROBLEM!


but still noone could explain me why Summoned Pets can actually *Tank* since they draw a shitload of aggro... whelp i will try it a few hours more with my 3m an party and if that doesnt work (i will try to use the help i got here) i will reroll

@Hiver: The KI is working? Where exactly?
Pets instantly get aggro when Summoned and the KI uses everything on them. EVERYTHING.
Oh you Summonend your Fire Elemental? Lets Burn it to Death with my Fire Arrows. Hmm didnt work maybe i should cast a Fireball? Hmm didnt work. How about a Fire Arrow...

Even more my Mage gets way more Aggro then our Melee. ( We think its because he has lower Armor and Health -> more Aggro ), because Pets have even Lower Health + Armor -> Even more Aggro.

The Main Problem is: 1 Hand + Shield < 2 Hand because:
- 2 Hand has more Damage
- Shield makes you more tanky -> less Aggro ( which can be good ! )
- You have to Skill 1 Hand and Shield and Man at Arms instead of just 2 Handed + Man at Arms!
So you have to invest more Skillpoints for the best Results!

An Easy Fix would be making a new Warrior Tree or Two: One with 2 Handed Skills for more DMG and one for 1 Handed + Shield Skills for something else like CC.
This would also give the new Possibility of playing with 2 Handed and one Handed Weapons.
You could switch between them when your Skills are on Cooldown and use the others.
Like a Dex Based Character can with Daggers and Bows.

The new CC Spells could be Simple Stuns or even better something like the Ram but you also move the Enemies.

To the less Aggro can be good part:
BIG Enemies or Small Ways. You can Block the Ways and the KI still tries to attack the Mage instead of the Melee so they do one of two Things:
1) Looking for another way longer Way
2) Doing nothing at all!

Instead the KI should Attack the Tank but they dont.


Also another Reason why Tanks are useless:
You can mostly Instakill Ranged Enemies and you can abuse the Melee KI.
Surround yourself with Fire -> Enemies dont want to get burned -> they do nothing.

Since when can summons tank? They die in one round under focus fire.

So what? I have 18 AP every Round and 1 Round Cooldown -> Just Summon a new one.
Also Damage is no Problem ( Thanks to Healing Spells ). The Problems are Special Arrows and CC Magic and the Summons tank them perfectly fine ^^

Melee underpowered? You are kidding me.

My melee guys are lvl 12 or so and there is a skill that deals like 1000 damage up to 2000 if you count criticals.

And that is WITHOUT Rage and Oath.
With Rage and Oath (+100% damage) it doubles.
With Rage+Oath+Bully it's 150% damage on a knocked down/slowed/cripple opponent.

Whirlwind also plows through entire groups; try casting mass slow/knockdown on a crowd then Ram+WW them with your melee w/ bully, it's AoE oneshot.

As for being vulnerable to your own damage fields it's just a matter of planning/thinking out your strat.
When you start combat, first you artillery them with your mage/archer and put your meleers on reserve to build up AP, in the second turn you buff the melees (Bless, Oath, Rage, etc) and BAM BOOM BIFF BARF KABOOM TEN THOUSAND DAMAGE ENEMY WIPED OFF THE CHARTS.

They also have an heal that basically heals 80% of your life.