Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General You can build good mages that can outdo 2H Melee

It only makes sense under certain game plans, but under the current meta it is very much a bad idea - stupid idea even.

Why would you give the enemy a chance to do anything when you can win in one turn or cripple the entire team in one turn.

You're literally tossing away initiative and advantage because 2AP and 1SP is too much for you. So, again, most builds will eat the cost.

Armor of Eternals can begin to be crafted around level 14 and you can make about 7 of them by end-game

It grants stun and shock immune one of the best plates in-game, crafting scales to level made

If the char you want to cast time warp on goes after Fane (which can be easily arranged as apart from having 1 high ini char you just care about ini for turn order) you're only giving turn to 1 enemy, which is hardly a problem. You can only "win in one turn" with timewarping yourself if you're lonewolf or lategame anyway, in full party your Fane won't be strong enough to do that with just 1.5 or 1.66(if glasscannon) turns he has left for a while. And lategame if your main damage dealer mage goes right after Fane a good combo would be timewarp + haste on the mage with Fane and then apotheosis + nukes with mage. This indeeed allows you to "win in one turn" quite often and won't be possible with Fane himself unless he has something to source vamp, furher reducing his remaining AP. Otherwise you're just trading 1 SP for 2-4(glasscannon) extra AP on Fane, which isn't bad but hardly amazing.

You're deliberately shorting yourself and you've already lost in terms of exchange because you're giving the opposing team a turn versus having any chance of denying the enemy team a turn. So, your AP comparison doesn't really work out and the risk/reward makes virtually no sense under many circumstances.

You can win in one turn, or reach your objectives, in one turn by the time you reach Reaper's Coast. Most glass cannon builds will be able to CC the most dangerous target or take out several opponents with that Time Warp. You're literally saying that spending 2AP to deny, at minimum, one enemy and up to the entire encounter's worth is not a good trade.

Also, you Apotheosis first to reduce the cost of all actives to 0 and then use Time Warp. But in Reaper's Coast you start off every fight with one source if you put some thought or effort into it. So, why not? When you're in Act 2 having 13AP or more means that any targets caught by Fane will not have a chance to act that turn. The extra AP is pretty critical to re-positioning targets with teleport, netherswap, etc. You do plenty of damage and enough to CC almost any target by 8 (enemies relative to you).

Having Fane not go first would require your game plan to account for a lot more, have more points of failure, and would overall lose to the former where as having Fane has no draw back in the current meta. Having Fane not go first also means your entire party is not using Fane to his maximum potential either in which case we don't have much to discuss because we're looking at different parameters.

You're seriously arguing against the meta right now and saying that it is more efficient to leave enemies up and running to do their thing when you could have easily taken them down. God forbid your primary damage dealer gets hailstormed to death because you allowed them to take a turn. Or, if you were in a pvp situation and decided to let the enemy take a turn and they vaporize you for it.

Wait, wait.. since when is it ever more optimal to let someone take a turn?

If letting 1 enemy take a turn ruins your game plan I don't know what to tell you. With decent items they won't even break your armor. You must be running around in rags if you get "hailstormed to death" above level 4 (where you don't have time warp anyway, unless you're willing to break you collar and then sneak out of fort joy to get source, which is way more trouble than what it's worth). Having Fane go first can allow you to CC an extra target maybe, but again not much more since we're looking at 2-4 extra AP in essence. He also indeed should go first and use timewarp + haste on your #2 character, who will get same 13 AP (5x2 + flesh sacrifice + adrenaline) even without any glasscannon gimmicks (which are again more trouble than what it's worth low level imo since you're not dealing enough damage to kill/CC everything turn 1 all the time yet). If you're high level enough so that Fane can take out everyone or at least several enemies on top of the ini ladder going first with glasscannon (cause 8-9 AP without glasscannon most likely won't do the trick) then yeah, it's technically better to have him timewarp himself to not take any damage, but at this point it's pretty irrelevant anyway. And please don't even mention "pvp" for this game.

I mean ideally you can deliberately make sure your #2 goes right after Fane by giving both of them high enough initiative if you can manage to itemize for it.

That way at least you can time warp your #2 and not have to worry about getting vamped or nuked in between.

I modded out all elemental resistance from the game for my all mage team, and things are dying about as fast as I'd expect on an all physical team. The CC is still pretty weak, though.

There is still a challenge in RPGs that are "easy," though, and that is the challenge of efficiency. Pokemon is a very easy game, you can beat it with literally any permutation of Pokemon. But you can definitely optimize you team to beat the game better.

Think of it like a speed run. For a speed run, the question isn't "will he beat the game?" That's only a goal by proxy. The actual goal is some other, meta-level achievement: beating it faster than other people.

I can confirm we play different variants of pokemon in that case. I play a variant called Pokemon Showdown where all the pokemon ever created are thrown toghether for you to browse through and create your ultimate team. Because there are so many monsters in that 1 game, the community had to create leagues, which are meta sets that dictate which pokemons can be used in your team comp and which are banned because they are either OP or Underpowered for their specific league and going cross league with pokemons is an easy way to get stomped....like really hard.

Also if we are just talking about single player rpg versions of Pokemon,where unlike showdown you CAN pump health potions in your monsters like crazy.....there is a limit to how much you can steam roll through the game...resistances in that game simply do not allow for that kind of bull....I mean you can beat a water pokemon with a rock pokemon,but only if that water pokemon uses electric attacks and has a speed advantage over the water pokemon,otherwise it will be a very painfull fight for the rock pokemon.

I meant the 3 Source Hydrosophist ability that can either CC or wipe your party depending on positioning and RNG of how the crystals fall on you. So, fuck that shit.

The PvP was an example of how idiotic it would be to let someone have a turn when both parties are geared towards high lethality. You're letting high value targets act before you do.

Fane, with scrolls, can grab 2 other targets and with Time Warp and glass cannon you're almost guaranteed that 3 targets will be CC'd, 4 is usually the case since at least one of the mobs is usually next to another in AoE range.

So... again, I don't really see why you would let the enemy have a chance when you can deny them the entire field.

Ini goes by round robin, the other party does get to go regardless of your initiative value of the second character if I recall correctly.

I never used scrolls or any consumables for that matter, the game is not difficult enough for that on tactician. Yeah I guess you can craft a bunch of tp scrolls and with empty hand + wand and that "scrolls cost less AP" talent to teleport pretty much the whole screen of enemies together and then nuke them with something. Do you need it? No. Yes, init goes round robin, so a single enemy will get their turn between your #1 and #2. Did it ever cause me any problems? No. If you're so worried about that single enemy doing something to your party (lol) you can still have up to 6 AP to deal with him on Fane's turn after spending 3 AP (haste + timewarp) to boost your #2, that's more than enough to blackshroud + web him if all else fails even if you can't break his armor and CC him for these 6 AP, which is rarely the case.

Scrolls, is that even a thing?

Efficiency is not by itself a challenge.

Just because in one fight I could have done it 2 minutes quicker using one skill instead of another is not a challenge. Its just a time sink.

Efficiency can be a challenge, when failing to be efficient leads to failure or detriment, but it doesn't in Divinity 2s case. The game is so easy it doesn't matter if you're efficient or not, you wont lose, so there is no challenge.

The the issue here is that the OP is claiming mages can outdo physical DPS characters, and thats false because of this element system.

If physical damage had a crushing/pierce/slashing resistance on top of physical armor then he would be right. But you cant escape math, as long as magic has element resistances and physical doesn't then physical will always win.

Your logic is still utterly retarded you realize that? You're still giving the chance of something happening versus reducing the chance to zero. Why would I risk being Meteored when I can ensure that it doesn't happen and take out 2-3+ mobs with me on my first turn? Why would I want to memorize Blackshroud and Web when I can just cluster and kill or do a hard CC on all of them? You're taking extra steps and letting them have a chance to recover however large or small. You can't justify that.

If we're being fucking lazy, then Fane + Time Warp turn one. Grats, you proved my point. Less clicks, less characters to bother with, less everything.

If we're not being lazy, and we're being optimal, then again Fane + Time Warp turn one with more clicks, and more set up time.

At the end of the day because of how the game is, if you're playing by the meta, there's no reason not to have Fane go first. If you're playing suboptimal, which by the way you are, then sure fuck it. Anything goes.

There's 0 chance of anything happening if you CC the enemy #1, which you have 100% chance to accomplish. And no, you won't get oneshot if you're being lazy and do not, we must be playing different games. But just in case, you can. And Shroud + Web is aoe hard CC which ignores armor for 3 AP, it is the ultimate aoe hard CC, because the enemies can move and can't target anything outside melee so at best they can heal themselves. 99.9% of the time you won't need it (if you're at the point you can CC 3-4 enemies with 13 AP surely you can CC 1 with 6) and can just use some normal CC but since the argument is in purely theoretical area at this point where hypothetical enemies are 1shotting your party it is going to work even if the enemy has 100k magic armor and is immune to all damage. But I'm just wasting my time arguing with you since you're clearly not capable of civil discussion and probably think you're way smarter than you actually are.

You must think that I am calling you an idiot, while I am tempted to, I am saying that your logic is idiotic, and everyone makes blunders. So, with that said, your logic is fucking retarded and we really have nothing to further discuss after this.

The bottom line is you're arguing that letting the enemy have a turn is better than not letting the enemy have a turn.

Furthermore, with this kind of idiocy you're reducing your options in turn one; you don't even get the choice to elect for a 13 AP opener.

Even your suggestion for a fall back can be improved by taking the 13 AP opener, you can move more targets into web and shroud. Gasp.

Like I said, your logic is fucking retarded with double emphasis on fucking. So, let's close the book on that sad chapter and move on.

If the enemie can do nothing, the battle is as pointless as a 1/0 turn win in Magic the Gathering.

Quit posting this sort of stuff. Stick to the topic and be polite.

That's more of a scaling issue than anything and not necessarily applicable. Primary problem with that is gear scaling in general after level 17 or so is just crazy, and physical class' skills scale in damage with their weapons, while spell damage has no similar scaling.

Resistances are a problem, but the biggest issue between phyiscal and elemental is the lack of comparable scaling. There is none. In the earlier portions of the game resistances are the biggest problem, and in the later portions, gear inflation is.

Also, regarding Time Warp: Fane on Fane always, especially if you're using Glass Cannon. An extra, uninterrupted turn for 2AP? There's no real decision here. If a solitary elite/boss is stunned, that's a different story, but also a lot less likely in the first place.

It has been argued that spells do/are supposed to scale with Inteligence,but resistances screw you over. Also it is possibe for Battlemages to get a staff and the whirlwind skill to do absurd amounts of damage to magic armour.

Also would your answer change for non glass/wolf Fane?