Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General My Group Dynamic. What do you Think? Any Advice?

I have done Trial and error for days now. I am about to escape the island and I want to know if these are good ideas before I respec.

All are level 7

Main Ifan- Currently rogue
Finess 20, Constitution 14, Memory 12
Dual Weild 5, Scoundrel 5
Thievery 3, Sneaking 1
Ingenious, Pet Pal, The Pawn,Thrifty

I plan to switch him to Ranger and have him be my barter guy.

Beast- Currently Fighter
Strength 16, Constitution 17
Single Handed 2 Warfare 5 Necromancer 1 Geomancer 1
Bartering 4
All Skilled Up, Dwarvern Guile, Opportunist, Sturdy

I don't plan on changing much, except making him my Lucky Charm guy for gear, since he is main tank, I am usually controlling him. I am considering taking off the necromancer for one of my others

Fane- Summoner
Int 16
Constitution 15
Memory 14
Hydro 2, Summoning 6
Loremaster 3
All Skilled up, Ingenious, Pet Pal, Undead

So I want to keep summoner, maybe do 1 point into hydro just for rain skill, and rest in Necromancer, just so I have necromancer (physical damage with my other teammates) Also I have no idea how he got Pet Pal because my Ifin will have that. I was going to also drop loremaster since you can identify at venders and replace with persuasion

(since he can be any race with his mask).

Sebille- Currently Ranger
Finesse 20, Wits 14, Memory 12
Ranged 5, Huntsman 3, Pyro 1
Lucky Charm 4
All Skilled Up, Ancestral Knowledge, Arrow Recovery, Corpse Eater

I plan to make Sebille my rogue (switch with my main) for obvious reasons (elf). Then I was going to put points into thievery to be my lock picker due to Ifan switching to Bartering.

This group in the current state is doing well with all physical damage, and I LOVE the summoner and ranger. What do you guys think?

Also note that in my current build and the build I am going to try I do not have a lot of Sneaking. I don't have Persuasion currently, that's why I wanted to use Fane for that (dropping Loremaster). Also is it good to not have Sneaking or Loremaster? Should I put a few sneaking points in my rogue? Is there anything else I may have missed?

Right now there's actually no reason to have points in dual wield and points in ranged. Instead, put those points into warfare. As an added benefit, it allows your melee weapon wielders to use knockdown CC skills like battle stomp. 2h fighter with poly is better in general than 1h fighter and you don't need to put points into constitution at all just stack physical armor with someone in the group who can cast armor of frost on you. Putting thievery on your undead character makes sense because they don't need lockpicks. Whoever has pet pal should be your persuasion guy and in general, this should be your summoner because summonings don't use intelligence so you can spread your attribute points and win persuasion checks more easily because of it.

So are you saying that instead of Ifan Ranger, Beast 1h Fighter (shield), Elf Rogue, and Fane Summoner, I should have what?

I still like the shield, its crazy good for armor

Shields are not that good for melee characters.

- Enemies will focus the weakest members of the group, and not the "tank", so what is the point of having crazy good armor if the rest of your team gets destroyed ?
- Taunt is a poor ability with bad range, bad duration, buggy AND it cannot bypass physical armor. So your only true "tanking" ability is pretty situational.
- 1h warrior outside of shield throw deals poor damages. Better just get a 2h warrior.

In short, you don't need a tank in this game, it's a wasted character slot.
The easiest way to protect your team is by destroying enemy's armor as fast as possible, only then you can alcually cc them : 2h warrior will destroy shield in 1-2 crit aa blows, while a 1h will need a tons more. The one who will help his team the most will be the strongest dps.

Shields are only good on mages right now, imo.

I was stuck at one part in the game on the guards near the black pits playing a knight ranger combo. I was two levels behind so the fight was quite difficult. I actually beat them once I gave my knight a shield and sword, which gave him a lot more armor and allowed him to use deflect. I actually beat them quite easily after switching to a sword and shield tbh, and after that I decided to run sword and shield for the rest of the game.

He definitely didn't do poor damage by any means, as I still put almost all his points into warfare and strength.

I experienced that too. Beast and Fane (fighter and summoner) both use shields on mine. I'm at the respec part though maybe I'll give it a try.

This is how I've made it work, my rogue is the only person who gets up close and personal, but I have abilities to make him jump in and out. Everyone else I keep at range as I run in with Beast, I pluck them off from afar. It's been working on me so far. Also I've actually used taunt quite a few times when a damaged enemy is going after a party member. Shield throw is good too.

My question though is what do you guys think about making Fane Summoner/Necromancer? Blood actually heals undead just like it does other races, so it works I think because it also does physical damage. Can anyone confirm that this is a good choice? I was doing summon/hydro and it sucked (I want to keep one in there for rain).

Everyone does SOLID dps. Also I've used taunt quit a bit on the harder fights.

Summons worked well for me early game as Fane on Tactician due to elemental versatility and merely having more units on the field.

I liked [Summoner], [Shadowblade] x2, and misc. mage ([Enchanter] with some Pyro, 1 Summoning), and other support abilities).

Ofc it did poor damages in compare to a crit 2h warfare build. But I guess it's safer.

Healing in blood is meh, but necro is ok. For bone widow. 1600hp summon at lvl 9-10 is quite fun.

Looks perfectly fine to me. Actually, it almost looks like min/maxing since you are basically going with physical damage for everyone. This is a game that does not reward you for diversifying. You are better off with 4 identical characters (damage wise) than 4 differing ones. You can always mix and match social stuff but you get best results when all characters have either physical damage or all elemental though there are some enemies with high elemental resists but none are totally resistant to all elemental damage. I dont think i encountered anything immune to physical damage.

As for ranged vs warfare, I found ranged to be better in most fights because you almost always have places of high ground which are great to go to even if you didnt have the added ranged bonus. Warfare is fine too but ranged damage bonus is twice that of warfare plus crit chance which is also very nice. My ranged character was hitting as hard as my 2h warrior last game and she got to do it from safe distance and over a huge area. my warrior was good too but honestly you dont want everyone to be in melee range. You want people to split up.

Summons are very good in this game. The summoner infernal pet is amazing (in fact... 4 infernal pets sounds almost broken since summons are not powered by int...). For everyone else, get the spider which isnt great, but its an awesome blocker, with good durability and can add damage to boot. Dont forget elemental affinity to reduce the spider to 2AP (just cast blood rain prior or use cannibalize). This game is all about control. If you can block enemy movement in corridors, you will have an easier time. I should point out that without ice/aero mages, this will be very important. Poly offers 2 great control spells but one depends on reducing magic armor so its not as useful for you. Warfare has 2 great control spells. Add in skin graft and you are set. but hunter does not have much aside from pin down. Scoundrel is good too but again, needs magic armor reduced (for sleep). Again, I dont recommend 2 melee characters close together so if you go with 2, try to keep them apart if possible. There are tons of AoE in this game. Or if you can pump fire resist on the melees, you will be fine (tons of fire baddies).

I see this a bit different, for me the build does not look good. With the current stats system any physical damage char should be like this:

Warfare 10, rest ...

For ranger points in Huntsman are also nice because higher ground is quite often available and Huntsman increases any kind of damage, also magical and piercing damage.

Generally, don't put any points in weapons combat abilities as long as the school combat abilities are not maxed. A point in Warfare gives you more damage than a point in Twohanded or Dual Wielding. The second benefit of the weapons abilities you can get mostly from gear. Twohanded is ok for the higher crit damage, but only after Warfare is maxed.

A onehanded/shield warrior as tank is ok on Classic. The damage is manageable if you have several points in Hydrosophist and Geomancer for armor renewal skills. It feels a bit bad on Tactician because the enemy damage is too high to tank well and your own damage is neglectable. It's about a third of a twohanded warrior at best.

What I miss in your build is healing and support, especially armor renewal. Your big monster damage does not count that much, if your chars are charmed or taunted for several turns. I have some such skills on each of my chars (rogue, twohanded warrior, ranger, summoner), and my summoner has as many points in Hydro and Geo (and two in Aero) as I can afford. You don't have a custom char, so you have no access to Dome of Protection which aggravates your problems.

Why do you skip Polymorph? It gives good support and CC skills and goes especially nicely with rogue (f.e. Rupture Tendons + Chicken Claw, the eternal classic). I don't use Skin Graft but it would give you nice opportunities in some fights.

I miss the talent Hothead on the damage chars. You don't need it for a rogue but it is quite set for warrior and ranger. Crit chance is nice. My lvl 20 twohanded warrior f.e. has about 1700 damage with lvl 16-19 gear with 98% crit chance, and 98% is much better than 88%.

I don't think you understand what he's saying. He's not saying shields are bad, he's saying shields are bad for a melee warrior. You put shields on your spellcasters because then they will be targetted less by the AI and they will be able to prevent themselves from being CC'd. Since they are ranged combatants they will rarely have more than one enemy attacking them because of travel distance and because you'll spread out in combat to avoid AOE. IE - your 'healer archetype' should have a shield, your melee warrior should be 2h because the best defense is blowing away their physical armor and using battering ram or battle stomp to make them skip a turn entirely. Since 2h warrior is strength based he will naturally have high physical armor from gear, the shield is somewhat redundant. Additionally your 'healer' will be able to put magical and physical armor on your 2h warrior to prevent them from being chain CC'd and then they can save 'shields up' for their own defense.

^that, good explanation.