Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks Need help on Party construction[First time player]

Hey everyone,

So, this game is fantastic. I played for about 5 hours before figuring out what I want to run on Classical difficulty. A 4-man Necro/Poison/Summon with buffs party. I was thinking of

PC (Undead human) - 10 Summon/10 Geo/ 2 Necro

Fane - 1 Geo/5 Necro/8 Warfare/8 2h

Red Prince - 10 Necro/10 Warfare/2 Pyro (Necro Caster)

Ifan - 2 Aero/10 Hydro/3 Necro/7 Geo

Is this viable at all or am I going to get crushed? Any suggestions? I'm basically lost at the moment beyond having an idea of what I want to run.

Thanks!

What do you mean by Necro Caster with 10 warfare? that seems bad.

So i finished this game on Tactican mode aaand from my experience i'll tell you that:

Shields are useless untill you can manage your phsyichal armor boosts (fortify etc) you just lose damage.

Necro is not that good since you recover only when dealing damage straight to health (if you have 10Necro Mage, he will heal only after he breaks magical armor, if you have Necro Melee he will heal only after he breaks psychical armor) so its not that efficent.

Summoner is efficent, but trust me you gonna get bored as f... playing this 1 thing class :P

I recommend you picking either full psychical team, or 2 psychical (1 melee 1 ranged) with 2 magical characters and a lot of CC (means stuns etc) because without CC you will get crushed later in game.

Last thing:
2x Lone Wolf is easier than 4x party since with 2 characters you only need gear for 2 characters that means you got 2 good geared characters instead of 4 running in bad gear, and Lone Wolf is damn powerful perk.

Necro with warfare is actually fantastic, due to warfare multiplying physical damage, and necro is largely physical.

For casters, shields are most certainly not useless. They are a great source of armor for squishies. If you are using your off hand on casters for something like a wand, you are spending your action points inefficiently.

Your builds look reasonable, I would agree with seb however that summoning can get boring if you don't take a variety of summons. dropping down some of that Geo to pick up other elemental / summoning books might be more fun.

Well few things:
1/ Necro only heal when you damage enemies' health. So if you can't break their physical / magical armor fast enough, there's no point. I also found armor buff and heal from Geo / Hydro skills are more useful than necro heal since armor also protect you from enemies stun lock and debuffs. Some weapons also have life steal % on them, so Necro heal is not that desirable. It does have some cool, useful skills like summoning bone widow, bone armor, blood sucker, but I wouldn't bother to get it past rank 3. Late game gears also have skills rank on them (eg: Necro+1 / Pyro + 1.... etc) so you can just shop for necro gears instead.

2/ Have a mix party, but focus on one type of damage is more desirable because physical and magical armor work separately. Crowd control is extremely important (for physical, you have knock down; and stun / frozen for magical), but these can only be applied to enemies when their respective armor is down, so focus on 1 type of damage / crowd control. Personally I go with 3 / 1 ratio (3 physical, 1 magic support for example).

3/ Enemies AI are pretty good, and they will likely go after members with lower armor, so tank with shields are not really useful. However, wand + shield combo is very viable for supporting mage since heal and buffs scale with characters and skills level, not with int. So having a shield on mage support boost their armor and help them survive / resist enemies debuffs.

4/ I love Summoning because based on the surface you summon your incarnate on, it can deal physical or different elemental magical damage. You will also have access to Dominate mind, which turn an enemy into your ally. You can add hydro / geo buffs and go full support. Though it's pretty boring as your incarnate / other party members will do most of the attacking. Still, having one of these in party make the game so much easier.

In the end, play the game and test several builds and find out which one suit you best.
Classic is not that difficult, so you have plenty of room to wiggle.
An example of party I've beaten the game with on tactician:

- 2 handed weapon user (2h / Warfare / Necro rank 3 / Pyro rank 1) -> deal heavy physical damage, knock down, can summon Bone Widow, Bone Cage, Haste buffs.
- Wand / shield mage support (Summoning max / Hydro / Geo ) ->Summon Incarnate champion, Dominate Mind, various physical and magical armor buffs and heal. Aero for teleportation is optional.
- Bow / Crossbow wayfarer (Ranged / Hydro / Geo / Aero / huntsman) -> Ranged Physical damage, off-heal / armor buffs, lots of special arrows to support team in any situation.
- Optional physical damage dealer of choice, preferably also have knock down, high dam rogue to cut through physical armor. My personal favorite is Finese spear user with Warfare / Poly / Rogue -> Extremely mobile with various teleportation skills, longer range melee attacks than other physical weapons, can knock down, or turn enemies into chicken.

On Classic most is viable. On Tactician I find your party not optimal, but maybe it works. I have a pure physical damage party and Necro meanwhile only on one member, a twohanded warrior. It is not that important to have, but it shines in some situations, for example if immobilized most of the fight, when you can use Moskito Swarm as ranged and raise a Bone Widow or Boated Corpse.

Necromancy is not the best damage school per se, it's more a support for physical damage dealers. For big damage you can use it together with heals (per Decaying Touch). The best support char in the game would btw be a Necro/Hydro/Geo combi in my opinion.

I had a Cleric at start as main, so a combi of Necromancy and Hydrosophist. It is nice damage if you get close for Decaying Touch plus a heal. It's much worse however than in the EA where Decaying Touch was an 1 ap skill and healing on decaying persons was much more damage than now. I also found a better use for my healing spells a bit later in game, I use it for ... healing (and removing statuses). I respecced to a Warfare/Geo/Hydro tank, then finally to a Warfare/Scoundrel/Poly rogue.
If you have Necro on all your chars and can set 4 times Decaying Touch, you can deal big bam damage with several Healing Rituals. However you maybe have a hard time to reduce physical armor fast enough.

A combination of Necro with Pyro makes not that much sense for me, as Necro deals mainly physical and Pyro magical damage. Pyrokinetic is best bundled with Geomancy for poison + fire is big damage.

You can use Blood Rain only with a Necro/Hydro combi, but you can take the Bloated Corpse as a substitute to create big blood surfaces.

BTW, don't put points into weapon combat abilities before you maxed the school combat abilities. A point in Warfare gives you more (physical) damage than a point in Twohanded for example.

On classic play whatever the fuck you like.

On tactician play whatever the fuck you like, just cheese more.
Any build is ok really, this game is not hard enough to consider the sentence "is my build viable ?"

I finished it on tactician with a suboptimal team, weak af.
I'm doing fine with warfare necro 2h.... etc

If you want easy life, just go with 2 lone wolves.