Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Pyromancer and Geomancer skill tree bonuses

Currently most of the skill trees are rather generic. That is, when you spec them, they give you a bonus that is generally useful regardless of your build. This gives you ton of flexibility throughout the game, which is awesome. You can use Aerotheurge bonus on basically any caster, necro on most characters, huntsman with any ranged attack i think including wands?, scoundrel on anyone that likes to move and likes crits.

However Pyromancer specifically gives bonuses to fire damage
and Geomancer specifically gives bonuses to poison damage

This creates a situation where these 2 schools become incompatible. If I get 25% bonus fire damage then why would I ever use another school for damage? Since I can only use either a fire spell or a poison spell at a time, speccing both is significantly disadvantageous. Sure I can spec Aero as well, but im sure as hell gonna be casting pyro spells with the Aero magic damage bonus. This effect is even more prominent when exploring options like warfare+geomancer or scoundrel+pyromancer. The effects just cant go together and you lose out.

I think it would be a little more fluid and allow for more legit build options if these 2 were genericified as well. Any ideas?

Lets go one step further!

Geomancy doesn't JUST do poison damage, it also does earth.

Anyhow one possible way to do it is one of them could just increase the damage or terrain you create or transform OR increase your DoT abilities.

Or heck make Fire give additional damage outright (like say... 5% per level) but only after 2 turns.

Hmm. Straight damage would compete with Aero and Warfare.
Ya maybe Earth increases all status effect damage?
Fire increases spell AOE?

I feel like those would feel a little more like creating a distinct play style that can be useful even if you want to switch it up. Rather than sticking your character to one path for the rest of the game

Spell AoE is a huge no no! AoE is Surgical. You cannot increase it with an immediate idea that it is better.

Maybe Fire lowers Friendly fire damage and gives your CCs a chance (or outright negates) to miss friendlies... including that created by hazards.

In my opinion the passive bonuses need to go and you should invest points into combat skills to get access to better combat abilities of that archetype. As it stands every hard hitter will be picking up necromancy just for the lifesteal. You could spend time and energy balancing them or just leave passive bonuses for gear + stats.

There should be unique talents that grant these kinds of bonuses that are only accessible with 4+ points in a school just like in DOS1.

Nah. Then you have arbitrary dipping points. Keep them the way they are but do consider changing the numbers or adding similar passive effects that scale.

Also, why would I bother with necromancy when I am more concerned about keeping my armor up or hitting harder to ensure I one shot things?

Why bother with Necromancy or Armor when can focus on going first and shutting down the enemy before they do anything.

Because some mobs die and sometimes causes environmental effects and you'll want to shrug them off when you're going on a killing spree. If you ever dip into health it means you're vulnerable to CC. Also, none of the non-civic skill points help you in going first. Your changes would alter that which is not necessarily a good thing.

What I'm getting at is in the current state of the game you can beat Early Access Classic without putting a single point into Necro/Armor/Con/Vit and that is without exploits like barrels or the blood rose elixir.

Yes, but if you were to run into an issue you would most likely dump points into armor/vit since CCs are the primary concern at the end of the day.

Though those stats probably need a boost.

Also, higher difficulties might require some points being put in there to prevent being alpha struck or having bad RNG with items while retaining the ability to play with any play style (within reason).

Well in fairness Armor and Vitality are total garbage and spending 0 points in them probably makes you stronger overall.

At Level 6, Lhose had 0 Vitality (total HP 192), 1 Magic Armor (total 49), 0 Physical armor (total 57). Putting 4 points into each of them:

HP: 192 -> 205
P. Arm.: 57 -> 65
M. Arm.: 49 -> 52

So 4 levels worth of points gives 13 more HP, 3 more magic armor, and 8 points more physical armor. A level 6 enemy does a LOT more than 21 damage a hit.

Yeah the values need to be adjusted, but then again because it's so bad gear might weigh those as fairly cheap so you'll end up with +4 and +6 when it should be +3.

With 2 points total from gear I am getting an extra 20 Magic Armor on Lohse. Then again my Lohse is also decked out in 262 Magic armor before buffs. After buffs, 2 points ends up yielding an extra 40 magic armor which is almost enough to cover one tick of environmental damage.

It all depends on gear and what other abilities are out there. So if I spent 4 levels putting points into magic armor and stacked it with my current gear I would have 85 extra buffed at 6 points at level 8. That's not bad at all.

If you are getting +80 from those... it usually indicates that the enemies do that much more damage as well.

And if they are not, then that extra 80 is still useless to you.

That's why I said they need to be adjusted, at level 7-8 with decent gear it the bonus is nearly enough to absorb an extra hit. Generally, gear will outstrip anything mobs can throw at you so towards the mid game it'll probably be enough to absorb 2-3 hits.

I would be pretty cautious about increasing those values without seeing how gear ends up scaling towards mid and late game.

This is mainly to demonstrate that the following statement is untrue: 'Well in fairness Armor and Vitality are total garbage and spending 0 points in them probably makes you stronger overall.'

Also don't suggest that having extra armor left over from an attack is useless because it means the difference between being able to react or being CC'd.

But you didn't... The 80 when you have 400 (yes I remember!)... Is nothing.

You don't understand the situation it's why you say it's nothing. Plenty of context in which it is valuable. If you play the game you should understand when that 80 is valuable and when it is not, if you think it isn't valuable 100% of the time then you need to play some more.

It is a trick advertisers use.

For example saying a burger is 2.5% off means nothing...

But "Buy this burger and earn 200 travel points!" suddenly it sounds like a huge freeken deal. (by the by this is a real life example)

The number is large... But you are dealing with inflation. It means just as much at the end of the game as it did near the start.

Which is basically what is happening here. "No the 4% isn't small because that is 80 points! and 80 points is a large number!"

I dislike this idea of genericity.
I prefered the school system.

No I stand by the statement 100% because math.

Here is my Lhose at level 6, wearing the best equipment I had on me which wasn't in use by someone else:

INT = 19
CON = 12
MEM = 12 + 2 = 14
WIT = 12

HP = 209
P. Arm. = 57
M. Arm. = 53 + (53 * 0.07) = 65

I took the Talent "All Skilled Up" to give me an extra Ability point, bringing my total free points up to 4. I had 1 point in Magic Armor already for a 7 percent boost. Putting those 4 ability points into...
...Vitality boosted my HP by 14 points from 209 to 223 HP.
...Physical Armor boosted my Physical armor by 8 points, from 57 to 65.
...Magical Armor boosted my Magic armor by 4 points, from 65 to 69.

(I'll note that 1 point in CON boosts HP by 17 points. In other words, 4 levels of ability points into Vitality is worth less than 0.5 levels worth of attribute points invested into Constitution.)

I then found an encounter with Level 6 enemies and I sent Lhose in alone. That was not to see if she was to survive (that would be impossible), it was just the fastest and simplest way to get some numbers on the enemy damage. [Square Brackets] denote DoT/Surface damage, which I'm not counting for the average.

Test one (+14 Vitality from base)
The enemies did...
...physical damage of 47, 79, 19, 22. Average = 42.
...magic damage of 26, [31], [40], [33], 62, 16, 54, [20], 46, 62. Average = 44.

Lhose survived until her turn without being CC'ed, which allowed me to boost her HP with Encourage and heal herself with Restoration so she could last a bit longer.


Test 2 (+4 Magic Armor from base)
The enemies did...
...physical damage of 54, 74, 20, 78, 97. Average = 65
...magic damage of 26, [33].

This time they used different abilities and Lhose was knocked down and stunned, getting no turns.


Test 3 (+8 Physical Armor from base)
The enemies did...
...physical damage of 45, 79, 21, 75, 130. Average = 70
...magic damage of 26, [33]


This is with 4 ability points invested by level 6 (5 total in the case of Magic armor). Averages aren't going to be that useful since there's usually 4 people in a fight, but just look at the raw damage numbers. 14 HP/8 Physical armor/4 Magical armor.

In conclusion, points into Vitality and Armor only make a difference if you have so much already that you don't really need it, and therefore, those skills are not useful to invest in.

I kinda agree.
In order to make the skills as generic as possible they got... well... extremely generic. Fairly useless. Uninteresting. Spending combat points isn't fun. The only reason why necromancy is so useful since it's pretty much bugged, triggering for everything (each weapon, spell, surface, effect) causing way more heal than intended. The rest, not worth it I think.

I much rather have them be their own class again and interesting to buy than boringly generic.