Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Is there any reason to level up pyro?

It increases your fire damage by 5%, but wouldn't a point in polymorph with a point in int increase all your int based damage by 5%, including your fire damage? Unless the increased fire damage would also apply to the burn damage they take and increase the amount they take when they walk over your fire surfaces then maybe it's a more fair trade off. Anyone know whether the int increases damage enemies take from surfaces and dots or not? Or even if the points in fire increases those things?

Not sure if pyro or int increases the surface damage but aero bonus definitely does, it's best to increase aero bonus for a mage anyway, and yes it seems like there is no reason to choose pyro bonus over poly.

Yeah I didn't even mention aero because while it does seem flat out better (10% increase vs shields with all magic damage vs just 5% general fire damage) at least it was somewhat different, where as polymorph is the same 5% general damage buff but with more than just fire.

Reminds me of the situation with levelling dual-wielding vs finesse. The first one provides damage for one thing whilst the other provides damage across the board. Only reason i can see to level either of them is when you hit the limit of the better one

I thought that Red prince would benefit from it because of his Fire breath skill, even though the description says it is based on Intelligence for damage.

Is it?

Maybe the stats are like they are so so you make a Pyro hybrid while not being forced to invest heavily to Int?

Generally i think all skills should have more different effects on several stats and skills, (elemental resistances or resistance to that same skill used by enemy), rather then just one, and that importance of attributes should be toned down a bit in balance.

I think the biggest thing skills need is a higher level cost for higher level spells. So fireball would take 2 or 3 pyro or else it would cost more ap to use. This would be an easy way to give more meaningful decision to your choices without as much need for it to be as balanced, unlike now where they all give only stats for leveling them up.

So I think the idea is that the bonus from your pyrokinetics multiplies with your int bonus. So for example, If you have 20 int (50% damage bonus) and 5 pyro (25% fire), on a 100 damage attack, you'd deal:

(100 x 1.50 X 1.25) = 100 x 1.87 = 187 damage.

Whereas all those points put into polymorph and into int would give you simply:

100 x 1.75 = 175 damage.

With 30 int and 10 pyro, you'll deal 2.00 x 1.50 = 3x more damage, rather than 2.5x more damage with pure int.

Hence, going into both pyro and int is better than pure int. This should be the same with huntsman and dex, the 5% bonus from high ground multiplying with your dex bonus (AND your weapon bonus, I believe).

If I have this correct (someone verify please), Larian should make this more clear somehow. On first glance Pyro does seem completely inferior to intelligence, but when understanding it can actually add more damage, it makes more sense.

That would be one effect that could be added to skills, yes.

But not the only thing effect skills should have. I think it would be better if skills would have several such relatively smaller effects, which attributes would give bonuses to.