Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Bone Widow needs to be nerfed

So I don't usually care much for balance in a singleplayer title. Quite the opposite, I believe that finding combinations and stronger skills that work well is part of the experience, but there is a difference between stronger and broken.

The Bone Widow is such a case, it costs just 3 action points, requires no source, but is an absolute tank, is incredibely mobile thanks to its burrow/teleport ability and deals an unreal amount of damage. At level 12 my bone widow has 2704 hp and 404 physical armor and deals 260 physical damage. Compare that to an incarnate champion, who has 660 hp and 202 phys/magic armor, who deals 160 damage.

Nothing else in the game deals this much damage, is this tanky and mobile, there is literally no reason to use something else, it is hilariously overpowered.

You say that till you realize that the incarnate champion does just as much damage as a bone widow does has magic armor so it doesn't get stunned frozen and other magic armor cc to death by anything stronger then a random scrub on the street also are you infusing your summon like your suppose to? Cause it gives you whirlwind battering rush ranged attack chameleon cloak back stab and all the different type surface infusions The bone widow is a nice tank for the necros but its definitely not the end all of all summons lol

if you buff the incarnate with the infusions its much stronger having around 700-800 magic and physical armor and +50% damage bonus from the infusions... and with the warp infusion the incarnate can teleport too.

Woah theres warp infusion? where?

I shouldn't have to put 6 action points into my incarnate to make it barely equivalent to the bone widow.

you get it at a higher level.. forget which.. there are 4 total infusions... power, farsight, warp, and shadow..

warp gives the incarnate tactical retreat and +15% dodge chance..

shadow gives it stealth and one of the scoundrel skills.. basically meaning the incarnate has a skill from every other skillset in the game.

So the summoner is supposed to summon an incarnate then spend all subsequent turns buffing it while the necro is free to summon his spider and do more productive stuff thereafter? Because that's what I'm getting from the replies to the OP so far.

That is another really fucking dumb design decision: having high summoning skills affects the stats of summons which are not part of the summon "tree", meaning that someone with high necromancer skill will have a really shitty bone widow with roughly 1.4k HP, while someone with high summon skill will have a 3k HP tank.

The whole game is so great, but it's dragged down by a buggy release and some really dumb design decisions, so easy to abuse character respec, complete lack of balance, what were they thinking?

You lose out on so many things to be able to have good summons.

And having multiple build that works in a single player game is actually good design. Some people lean toward Summoning tank while some like me will just abuse 4 turn total invulnerability with pure damage build instead. It allows people to experiment and do as they wish to legit beat the game without relying on bugs.

So from what I am reading, you need to have a heavy investment in both necro and summon... The necro summon is higher level than the level 1 incarnate so I expect it to have have better base stats once buffed by summoner passives. But the necro summon is not too great without those summoner points.

It actually makes sense to me. It just means you need to throw a ton of points into necro and summoner to achieve said build. I am not sure how great it is compared to spending the same amount on other trees. For example, I am pretty sure the summons dont hold a candle to a rogue/marksman in either damage or survivability. And you certainly wont have the utility of a mage using 2 other elemental types. Though I can see this easily replacing a tank but how long will it take for a summoner to be viable as a tank replacement? I am not sure honestly.

Incarnate can do all 6 damage types and have over 10 spells overall by itself, not to mention only charm spell in game is summoning spell. Also since you dont need to invest in any other damage stats, you can go full wits+constitution, paired with shield and all those summon support skills (rallying cry, soulmate) you will be both absolutely unkillable, and your summon will still deal shitton of damage. Although damage will be lower than specialized damage dealer, its versatility in damage types and overall survivability will greatly offset that imo.

Bone widow has great disadvantage in not having magical armor - but I think this could be remedied by magical shell from hydro atleast little bit?

God you whine so much dude.

SINGLE PLAYER GAME or co-op

nobody cares

God you are such a casual dude.

Even Singleplayer games need balance, why the fuck do you think they redesigned the first game a ton with the Enhanced Edition? You can't just ignore glaring flaws like this because "muh Singleplayer"

Summons really lack any use in terms of dmg later on. And from the values the TE posted I am rather sure he does play on "Explorer Mode".

The normal damage values for bone widdow are kinda low and the hp is also not this high.

Same goes for for Incarnations. It just goes to a meatshield really fast. I think with 12 in summon it does about ~80 dmg and has around 6xx hp if I remember right. The good thing is, you can summon 4 of them on top of like ~20 totems if every char has at least 1 in summoning.(no champions in this case but even the normal ones do around ~50 dmg and are good as an meatshield, to avoid a hit especially if you can taunt 4 times with just 1 point investment into summoning.)

Asking for Bone Widow to be balanced before something like Ranger dealing 1k damage per crit at level 15? Ha

I'm on tactician


I'm not making this up https://imgur.com/a/0dmN9
the lack of magic armor is nothing against having four times the HP and twice the armor, if you cast power infusion and teleport on the incarnate you will spend 4 AP instead of just 3, still have only 1/3rd of the total hitpoints and deal 100 less damage.

Some enemies starting at level 14 have Charm.
Go ahead and use the Bone widow if you want it to flip side.

Well 100 less damage is not that important, considering all the skills incarnate has to his disposal (and his usefulness for mage comps). And honestly, having shitton of armor and HP is useful only as far as this HP and armor is depleted. If you dont need them, they are just useless

Saldy I can't post any screenshot because I am not the host of my mp playthrough.(they really should make the chars bound to the account like in Baldurs Gate/NwN etc. not to the savefile. -.-) We have 2 ppl using the bonewiddow and tbh it never feels as useful as an elemental.

4x taunt and 4x extra knockdowns/heals/ae spells are just way better, at least in our setup.

And you summon and infuse them pre combat. If you play in mp you don't have to wait for spells from other chars. Everyone can just summon everything at the same time.

Edit: I was rather shocked when I started a sp game that you just can't switch to another char and summon totems/pets right away like in mp when everyone summons at the same time. You really have to wait until your first char finish his spells until your second/third/fourth char can summon his totems/pets. oO

With 4 players this ends in 4 summoned and fully infused incarnations/champions and around 12+ totems before the combat even starts. :p