Larian Banner: Baldur's Gate Patch 9
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Benny89 Offline OP
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This is repost of my reddit post: After 160h- why I dislike new armor...s the game and blocks its full potential


At first I was amazed of how huge DOS2 is and how many skills, builds and crazy combos it has. At first with my wife I was like "ok, you go full mage couse you love them (my wife) and I will go full warrior as always (well, thats me :P ). So we jumped to Classic at first (my wife is not hardcore while I am so it was nice middle ground) and we played. Something was then off for me later when I was killing everything around like champ while she was struggling to feel useful at all.

But we finished, then I played second time alone this time. I wanted to make some original build but then in like 20h inside 2nd playthrough where I restarted game over and over I realized that:

I. Whole build/skill system is bottlenecked by armor system and its stupid elemental resistances vs no physical resistances.

II. I mean: Doing INT/STR build for Hydro/Warfare? Sound good one paper? Yes? Sounds awesome? Sure, why not, I like ice magic and swords, lets do it!

But does it work? No. Why? Armor system. If you divine your dmg between physical and magic- you basicelly waste that dmage. The first armor you break- you should just follow with CC and dmg there and finish enemy, not take yet another attempt to break his second armor.

Attacking with Warfare skill to break their armor then freezeing them and shattering with Stomp?? LETS DO IT! No? No. Why? Because both target different armor and its just no go.

III. It actually makes me not want to play game anymore. I mean in BG2 I played SHIT TONS of hours and I still go back over years. Why? The gameplay feels like you can always do something and it will work.

Cleric magic with Warrior? Sure. Thief/Mage/Warrior- of course. Mage/Cleric- go ahead. Warrior/Summoner- yeah, whats the problem? Everything deals damage so no problem.

IV. However because of armor system in the end I feel more restricted in DOS2 than in other RPGs. Lets take Skyrim- Tho Handed with Destruction- sure. Archer with Restoration and Protection- yup.

V. But here- you either go 100% physical or you go 100% elemental (I mean per character). Even per party its better although you have some mix here. There is TONS of possible builds (LIKE TOOOONS!)- yet none is really possible to work without choring yourself through fights and armor system.

Who wanted to do Rogue with Dagger and lighting magic? Well, me for example. But its just stupid. Not to mention if you don't invest in WITS you also put yourself in worse position.

VI. The armor system should be changed to ONE armor, called just Armor/Shield, whatever. To let the builds fly.

My Final Thoughts:

Right now I am just bored of creating new char/making build. Its either STR/FIN with WITS or INT with WITS and if it physical its ALWAYS: Polymorphy, Necro, Aero, Scour 1-3 points for same skills over and over or Elemental with AGAIN- poly, Necro, Aero, Scour 1-3 for support abilities becasue THAT IS ALL WHAT WE CAN DO.

Everything else is just dream that we try to make come true, but it just doesn't work well. You can play it, sure, same as you can eat raw chicken. But you still prefer to cook it well, no? Why force yourself to prepare worse dish of you can make it better?

Also you know why LW feels so broken? One of the reasons is you will pump either main stat plus WITS so dmage scalling skyrockets later. But now imagine you take Lone Wolf so you can make that FIN/INT/WITS Assassin/Aero build with dagger backstabbing and lightnings striking? Scalling would not skyrocket, yet you'd have a lot of fun. But armor system says "that is stupid, why would you do that?".

Please Larian- change that system to ONE armor type. Adjust resistances so physical is no longer king, but that dual armor system is no good. It blocks sooo many possible builds and playstyles...

Just my opinion guys, don't get hard on me. Just started to play in BG2 Thief/Cleric. Why? Cause I can.

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Well...your warrior can use staff.

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Originally Posted by rk47
Well...your warrior can use staff.


Sure he can, but he won't be able to use any kind of warrior CC that way. Also as far as I know a staff does less damage than 2-handed physical weapons, also because of resistances.

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Benny89 Offline OP
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Originally Posted by rk47
Well...your warrior can use staff.


Yes well, and then I can't use Knockdowns because it targets different armor type... So there goes my RAM, Stomp and Cripple..

Same is when I build Summoner (not stat investment needed) and want to run around with Sword or any other physical weapon- unless I will ONLY summon Blood infused Incarnate all the time- I will again just put myself on disadvantage all the time

Because in theory the whole build system is super open, but in reality- its restricted by armor system.

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There is a mod in the steam workshop called armor based saving throws that fixes this. :) It gives a chance per % armor the enemy has rather than a guaranteed block on the CC. So you can actually CC someone with full armor if you get lucky.

I think you will enjoy the game much more with this mod. There are several other mods that come in useful that are easy to install with the click of a button through steam for people who love making many builds like me. I use a mod called skillful that gives you a vendor in every town with every skill book.

I felt your pain, and found a way around it :)

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Nice to see another fellow hardcore player of the Baldur's Gate games. Funny, while playing DOS2, the thought of returning to BG2 later for another playthrough would come to my mind from time to time. I just love the BG games to death.

It's just like you said, in the BG games, pretty much anything goes. The vanilla games are way too easy and there are too many exploits, but if you install the core mods that overhaul skill/spell/item systems and balance everything throughout, it's still "anything goes", if you're decent at the games. 4 casters, 1 assassin, 1 archer, no tank? No problem. Full bruiser team? Not a big deal. You always have the tools to handle any kind of situation, and never feel like, these fights are particularly tough if you go with this particular team comp. You simply have to handle the situation differently. This is but one of the things I love about these games.

As far as D:OS2 is concerned, personally, I suppose it was fortunate that I didn't decide to go with any hybrid kind of build from the get-go. In fact, I tried to imitate to some extent a Baldur's Gate-style party, if I can have only four members. A dedicated glass cannon assassin, a dual-wielding bruiser, and two dedicated casters. Then as I progressed I just automatically adjusted to the game's combat system, I guess. Just finished the game earlier, and my team comp turned out to work pretty well overall, I'd say.

I totally see your point, but like I said, it was fortunate for me that I was never really bugged by this particular issue. Maybe I'll try a hybrid build and see what it's like on my second playthrough of this game. Or maybe I should go back to BG2 first...

Last edited by Try2Handing; 09/10/17 11:49 AM.

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The new armor system is an interesting approach to things but I do not like it at all either. I would have much preferred the classic save/resistance system that could depend on your attributes/armor/skills etc.

In this system armor simply blocks ALL effects, I do not know if it "adds" to resistance but it does not seem like it, it seems like if you have armor you are immune to effects resisted by that armor. This makes it such that for a big portion of every battle all skills are pretty much simple damage dealers, things get interesting when armors are broken/low. The battlefield turns into a mess of elemental effects since the primary goal is to break armor.

I do not like the action point restrictions either, and I absolutely hate the source point system.

Combat in DoS:EE was much much better. you could make more flexible characters, depending on the encounter you could switch characters from damage dealers to support and focus on certain elemental effects, you know asses the battlefield and make a plan.

DoS II combat is like an armor breaking race amidst elemental havoc, why move away from a dangerous surface when you have loads of armor and waste a couple valuable AP when you can instead spend that AP on breaking your opponents armor and effectively eliminate them since they will be CC'ed to death without armor.

And lets be honest here Baldur's Gate 2 is undeniably the finest among its kind, although I prefer 3.5th edition D&D mechanics, BG:2 shines with its voice acting, writing, atmosphere, those beautiful 2D backgrounds/maps, villains, characters, main story etc. etc. all the new Kickstarter RPG's have not come close to that.

I played them all, Pillars (a massive disappointment on my part), Divinity o. S. EE, Tyranny (not a KS game), The New Torment. Divinity has a different atmosphere and mechanics so I would not really compare, I hold DoS: EE in high regard since it was a lot of fun to play and had a way lesser budget than these other kickstarters.

What I noticed though is that all these new Kickstarters try to do way too much and end up doing less. PoE tries way too hard to set up an interesting world with a story and ends up being a dull Welsh-English mashup with a seriously boring atmosphere. The new Torment tries too hard to be cryptic and weird and ended up with not having a well established main story. I see Tyranny as an experimental approach, it is pretty good but feels half done.

Lets get to DoS:II, I think DoS:II seems to be trying to hard to add more effects, more interactions, more features, and ends up having a worse combat mechanic than the first. Seriously guys, the game has a lot of bugs, the vanilla camera is horrible, you insist on not providing a console, or god forbid, a human readable editable save game so that we can fix minor issues on the go (even after converted to XML your save game format is not friendly on the eyes, e.g. I can fix some things, but cannot figure out how to fix character portraits messed up after respec mirror).

But, these are minor problems, the most important thing is that I have the choice to choose a Cello or an Oud for my character music highlight instrument, and a GM custom adventure system, and a cocky narrator that I silence to eternity, GREAT!

This custom adventure GM stuff has been tried before, it quickly becomes obsolete and everyone forgets about it, I do not understand why everyone tries to be intersting and different nowadays rather than trying to get the core things solid.

Get your main plot, characters,story, writing, and combat to perfection, you can do bells and whistles later.

Last edited by Meldar; 09/10/17 05:51 PM.
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There were things that came up especially during early game that made me question the new combat. Like, physical armor blocking taunt? How does that make sense? Or, because armor blocks all cc's, but once it's down, you can stun-lock target to death. This is especially true when you're facing few enemies, since you don't have to spread out your cc's. So certain fights are way too easy even when your opponents are supposedly elite rank. Ryker, Zaleskar, for example. Or Ryker's spider on the 2nd floor. Or Murga in Driftwood Arena. Or even Mordus. You would be like, this guy is pretty tough, and can kill you fast, too, but hey he has only 2k phys armor, if you go ham in the first turn and break it, then all's left to do is do whack at the guy until he's dead.

With this reasoning, you can see that, a resistance/difficulty check system makes a lot more sense. Elite ranked enemies should be very hard to cc'd, or maybe immune to specific cc's. This, in turn, would mean there is the need to have a deeper, more complicated array of defensive abilities. Since you can no longer cc enemies with ease, you need to be able to survive their offense. Certain protections need to be able to protect you against specific effects FOR AS LONG AS THEY ARE ACTIVE. Not a one-by-one cancellation, like Clear-Minded canceled by Mad, then you have to cast Clear Mind again, just to block the next Charm or something. And then these protections can be brought down by other spells, and so on.


Last edited by Try2Handing; 09/10/17 11:00 PM.

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