Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Criticize my 3 Mage/1 Hybrid Party

Hey guys, first a bit of background. I finally got to a point in the game where I feel like my party will be unable to progress unless I entirely respec, so instead of that I figured that I'd just start from scratch. Since you have to pick between an all physical or magical damage party, I'm sticking with magic, which I know is a bit weak at the moment but I just love casting spells! Anyway here's what I'm thinking for my new party, please let me know if I make any glaring mistakes or if you have any other thoughts about it:

1. Inquisitor, melee magic DPS, uses staves
Main attribute: Intelligence
Secondary attribute: Constitution
Primary Skills: Two-Handed, Pyro
Secondary Skills: Warfare, Aero, Necromancer
Civil Skills: Lucky Charm
Talents: Demon, Elemental Affinity, Executioner
Character: Red Prince

Basically this guy will sit up in front and deal as much damage as he can with basic attacks, as well as shorter range spells (like fire whip). He will also have some melee, magic based CC. Warfare and aero for mobility, necro for buffs and lifesteal. This guy will also be the main character. Since he will probably be standing in fire most of the time, we max fire resistance and get elemental affinity.

2. Warrior, hybrid summoner/physical DPS/support, uses 2 handed swords
Main Attribute: Strength/Constituion
Secondary attribute: Intelligence
Primary Skills: Summoning
Secondary Skills: Warfare, Necromancer, Hydro
Civil Skills: Bartering
Talents: Comeback Kid, Morning Person, Opportunist
Character: Fane

This character is the one I'm most unsure about. The problem is that I need at least one character who has a good amount of strength, because there literally quests in the game that require you to have it (All in the Family for example). Anyway the idea is max summoning to make them a hybrid, then in rare situations where the enemies have high magic armor/low physical armor, use offensive necro spells and blood incarnate/bone widow with basic attacks. Since he probably won't be doing much direct offensive, he will have a bunch of support/healing spells, making him more of a second support character.

3. Wizard, ranged magic DPS, uses shield/wand
Main Attribute: Intelligence
Secondary Attribute: None
Primary Skills: Pyro, Polymorph
Secondary Skills: Geo, Aero, Hydro
Civil Skills: Loremaster, Theivery
Talents: Glass Cannon, Savage Sorteliage, Far Out Man, The Pawn
Character: Sebile (for flesh sacrifice)

This person is the super heavy damage dealer, designed to strip enemies of magic armor as fast as possible. Focus on pyro, but have offensive magic spells for all 4 main schools for when magic resistance pops up. Use polymorph skin graft/apotheosis for maximum effect later. The wand/shield is to make sure that the enemy AI doesn't go after them, because I guess they always go after the person with the least armor. You lose about 10% crit chance, which I'm OK with. Will also have a few support spells for emergencies.

4. Priest, ranged magic support/summoning, uses shield/wand
Main Attribute: Intelligence
Secondary Attribute: Wits
Primary Skills: Summoning, Hydro
Secondary Skills: Aero, Geo, Pyro
Civil Skills: Persuasion (since he gets automatic pet pal)
Talents: Glass Cannon, Far Out Man, The Pawn
Character: Iban (since the summoning skill will help out his wolf)

This is the primary support character of the party. Since you don't really need a lot of points in the magic schools for support, this person is also a summoner. High wits to ensure they go first in battles, where he can buff everyone up and drop a summon. He will also have a fair number of damage/CC spells to function as a backup DPS character when he's not buffing, so int will need to be pretty high. Again, wand/sheild is chosen to make sure they have higher armor than the two front liners. When physical DPS is required for whatever reason, the summon can help out the warrior.

Anyway that's pretty much it, I'm still not quite sure on the character/civil skills combinations (is it a bad thing to not have the main character max persuasion?), or anything else really, but I could definitely use some feedback. Thanks!

Which one is the avatar....that one character you could fully customize.

I think you tried to grab to many magic schools here or maybe you just feel super confident about itemization + you have characters whose specializations overlap and outside of Summoning you shouldn't be doing that in my opinion.

The best spell casting party in the game is 1 element+summoning per party member and that is only if you are willing to respec later on.

No, that's emphatically incorrect. You should grab at least two different magical schools per character because of immunities.

EDIT: Additionally, the round-robin turn order means that if you're trying to set up a wombo-combo like Poison/Oil + Fire or Blood/Water + Electricity, it is more difficult to do so if you only go single-element, because you are counting on the enemy to leave the surface intact and not change it or simply move out of the way before your other teammates can unleash the second part of the combo.

You would also have to manage their initiative so that you don't have the air mage going before the water mage or the fire mage going before the geo mage. Multi-element mages can control the situation better without relying on the enemy not messing up your plans so much.

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You can also take summoning as a third school if you want, or even a third magic school - just don't expect to max all the schools.

Additionally, just because something might be the most efficient way (and I disagree that single-element mages are at all efficient), doesn't mean it'll be the most fun. There's no need to run 4 summoners.

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Now that said, while it's okay to splash a few points into different schools, I think 5 schools is too much. If nothing else, the Memory requirements alone will be fairly substantial if you want to actually use those schools. You can probably handle three schools with a very limited splash. Also the more schools you splash into, the more onorous your Memory requirements will be.

You did have a reason, but I still have to question the utility of a single high-STR character in a party of mages. It might be better on occasion to use Peace of Mind and Strength potions for the things you need to open. But if you think you can manage it, go ahead.

Thanks for the feedback! You're right about immunities, that's pretty much the reason I'm starting from scratch. I'm kind of banking on items that give bonus points to skills to round those schools out. I'm using the reduce bloat mod so that items I pick up don't become obsolete in 1-2 levels, so that should help out. I'm not totally sold on the strength character either, but I'd rather do that then hope I can get all the way to 18 strength or whatever solely with spells/potions.

It sounds like I'm not as off as I thought I was. I'm going to go ahead and give this party a shot, see how it works for me. Thanks again!

Edit: The inquisitor will be the main character (love the red prince). Also the summoner/strength DPS will have two handed also, forgot about that.

I recomended Summoning+single element,because it is better at covering Immunities than investing in a second magic school. If as a single element+summoner mage you get a +1 Necro ring than you qualify for Blood infusion. After you get Blood Infusion with the necro,all you have to do is switch between the native elemental infusion and blood infusion.

If you want more infusions,you can go find gear with +1 in the desired area. The game plan is that you get escapist on all 4 mages,proc the encounter,run only to come back with properly attuned Champion Incarnates.

Also there is one way you can make a high str warrior work in a party of mages - poly+geo,buff that Medusa Head to high heaven.

Edit:I will also asume you don't like the 4 summoner route so I will leave here this alternate party setting.

Red Prince:Pyro+two handed str to qualify for plate armor,int for damage and gear that boosts aero and warfare to 2 for teleportation spells and whirlwind (best aoe damage spell for melee mages,scales with staff damage). +Pyro gear over +two haded gear,because your starting pyro will be ghimped by 1. You start your character with Bull Rush (best mobility spell for melee mages at character creation) and Chameleon Cloak

Beast:Poly+Geo,he will start off as a Poly and you will have to use the mirror to get rid off his +2 fin and move it to intelect. If you find the recepe for Earth damage Runes,then your priority will be to have them crafted for the Beasts weapons. The best part about Poly is that all skills can be cast with double wands, but I would recomend 2 str weapons with earth damage (runes) to kill mages and rangers faster.

Loshe:Geo+Hydro,start off as Cleric,then build up geo for armor restore, with her as the healer,she will strugle trying to beat the party when her demon goes crazy. Don't give her too many attack spells.

Sebile:Summoner+Warfare. Her totems and incarnates will take care of dealing magic damage,let Sebile auto attack with a bow to her heart's content. The only warfare skill you will ever need is Rage for her bow,totems and incarnates to crit. +Necro gear for more utility skills will be a boon. You could sacrifice a point from warfare to get poly for bull rush (which I think can still be cast with a bow equiped,for mobility) and chameleon cloak.

Hey! Why not try to use an elemental ranger instead of hybrid summoner/physical DPS/support? After the initial fort joy hurdle, the elemental arrows are easy to come by, and they can interact well with your other magic users. Plus later on you get some neat ones that explode/freeze, poison cloud etc. And you can make a boatload of charm arrows fairly early, right at the start of driftwood (earlier even in act 1 if you are lucky to find ONE honey jar as those are reused with a beehive instead of getting consumed, when crafting arrows)

The drawback will be lacking a str based character, and relying on special arrows instead of huntsman skills, but I think it would be interesting to see how ranger does as a magic damage dealer instead of a physical one that everyone praises it for.

Just an idea!

You're making your characters do way too much, they are all hybrids and you're over-complicating them. This also isnt a real pure magic party.

Some points
- You only need 14 STR to do quest checks. You also only need 14 STR for STR armor if you want survivability.
- You dont need CON on your other characters at all. That being said you can take it if you want, but in moderation. Armor is more important than HP.
- Never take weapon skills. Skills are multiplicative, weapon skills are not. i.e. A point in Warfare grants you a bigger damage boost than 2Hander.
- Do not take warfare on your magic party
- Do not spread out skill points across four magic trees for your DPS
- No summoning. Period. Its an easy crutch. If you do take it then the character should be 10 Summoning/2 Necro for Summons and Bone Widow and he should only focus on that.
- No Wits, it does not help with who goes first since this initiation system is a mess. Unless you know what you're doing for a crit build.
- You do not need any physical damage at all.
- You only need 1 support character, and they should have Geo/Hydro.
- Taking 2hander is a waste. You wont be melee attacking, and it will only give more damage to spells on characters who primary weapon is scaling into their ability as well. In other words its just an over-complication, likely going to be over sighted and leading to massive DPS drops.
- Do not take glass cannon. Your character will be focused, CCed and die. The minor AP boost is not worth it. Glass cannon is something that should only be on a character who cant get targeted like Scoundrels.
- Comeback kid is begging for failure. A talent that helps you deal more damage or survive while you're alive (like Living Armor) is more valuable than one that only works when you die, and just postpones inevitability. You shouldn't be letting characters get that low in the first place.
- Living Armor on everyone
- No Opportunist on your magic pure party
- No Morning Person
- Savage on every DPS
- Far Out on everyone

The fact is if you want to be efficient your party will look like this

1. CON only, exception for memory. Geo/Hydro maxed. Entirely a buffer/debuffer/CC remover. Can take Pyro/Aero/Necro for 1/2 points for other buffs. Shield. Does not deal damage.
2. Three DPS characters. INT only, exception for memory. Each with Poly Invis, and Scoundrel/Huntsman escapes. Best combos are;
Pyro/Aero; works because both are high DPS, with lots of AoE on self skills. You may want 14 STR here for STR armor since they are in the thick of the fight.
Pyro/Geo; Poison and Fire, obviously work together.
Aero/Hydro; Water and Lightning, obviously work together
Geo/Pyro; Poison and Fire again, but focused on poison/earth more-so than fire.

You should get to 10 on the main skill first, with 2 points on the secondary so they are still viable for fighting element immune enemies. Assuming you max out both skills (which you probably wont) then Huntsman is next best thing for more damage. You will already be spreading yourself thin by putting points into Poly/Scoundrel/Huntsman for utility abilities, which you should do.

Thats literally it. The above will let you breeze through the game and never face a single challenge. The problem with Divinity 2 is it lacks depth, and once you know the mechanics simplicity is king. Taking something that's hybrid can work, it can be fun, but it isnt good in comparison to a focused character. Your support can keep everyone alive, and deal with all debuffs. Your DPS will be dealing so much damage that the enemy will be dead before they can get into a long fight. And the shorter the fight the easier it is for you.

I've used a str based summoner in a mage party because I needed a pack mule. Unless you're comfortable with constantly managing your stash I would recommend to have one (plus you need someone to open these sarcophagi). He should also be the luck guy so that he loots everything.

I would advise against going 2h with him since he won't do all that much damage. Instead go sword + shield, ignore warfare except for maybe bouncing shield and get all the support spells like haste, armor spells, etc (try to get elemental skills from gear until you're summoning 10). Put most points into str and con.

For elemental mages you have an option of maxing 1 skill and getting summoning and/or some support skills for times when your damage type does not work or spreading out in 3 or even 4 schools and maxing your damage with crits instead. The latter approach is more viable lategame since you'll likely get a lot of points in all schools just from gear and also you'll finally be able to get a decent crit chance. I would still recommend having teleport and netherswap on everyone.

This point is irrelevant to a mage-party since Warfare does literally nothing to boost the damage of wands and staves. Two-Handed DOES boost staves, although you are correct that it does not do enough to be a great investment.

I keep Warfare gear on my battlemage for access to Whirlwind which does the most Magic Armour damage in a 360 degree radious as it takes into account int bonus AND weapon damage - since we are talking staves here,if the element of the staff matches that of your main magic school,then to determine weapon damage we take into account bonuses from int,main school of magic and 2 handed. (I don't use two handed on my battlemage though,but I did test it to see how high the damage goes)

Awesome post, thank you for the info! Few thoughts:

1. I thought the STR check for sarcophagi was 18? Never really tested it so could be totally wrong on that one.
2. What weapons do you recommend on each of the 3 DPS chars? Dual wands? Do you ever need to be worried about having a wand shortage with 6-7 wands in play?
3. Thank you for the info on warfare+two handed, it sounds like if you're not going to max two handed and warfare then its best to just stick with warfare.
4. About glass cannon... I should have figured out that the AI magically knows I have that talent. I figured they were just targeting my mages since they had low armor. I'll have to respec out of it once I'm done with Act I.
5. Shouldn't you have at least 1 character with wits for detecting stuff? At least if the game is anything like DOS: EE.

You've given me a lot to think about. I might actually go ahead and restart the game 1 final time, since I'm not even out of Fort Joy yet.

Edit: Man that really sucks about glass cannon being worthless. That means that if my DPS wanted to cast something like hail strike on the first turn, they would have only 1 AP point left over . It also doesn't seem like the "no psychic enemies" mod completely removes this. I can see why lone wolf builds are so popular...

Ok so here is what my latest party looks like:

1. Inquisitor, melee Pyro/Aero DPS, uses staves
Main attribute: Intelligence
Secondary attribute: Strength
Primary Skill: Pyro
Secondary Skills: Warfare, Aero, Necromancer
Civil Skills: Lucky Charm
Talents: Demon, Elemental Affinity, Executioner, Living Armor
Character: Red Prince

2. Cleric, ranged Hydro/Geo support, uses shield/wand
Main Attribute: Constituion
Secondary attribute: Wits
Primary Skills: Hydro/Geo
Secondary Skills: Pyro, Polymorph
Civil Skills: Bartering
Talents: Far Out Man, Living Armor
Character: Fane

3. Wizard, ranged Pyro/Geo DPS, uses 2 wand
Main Attribute: Intelligence
Secondary Attribute: None
Primary Skill: Pyro
Secondary Skills: Geo, Polymorph, Scoundrel
Civil Skills: Loremaster, Theivery
Talents: Far Out Man, Savage Sorteliage, Living Armor, The Pawn
Character: Sebile (for flesh sacrifice)

4. Wizard, ranged Hydro/Aero DPS, uses 2 wand
Main Attribute: Intelligence
Secondary Attribute: None
Primary Skill: Hydro
Secondary Skills: Aero, Polymorph, Scoundrel
Civil Skills: Persuasion (since he gets automatic pet pal)
Talents: Far Out Man, Savage Sorteliage, Living Armor, The Pawn
Character: Ifan

A lot more cookie cutter than before, but without being able to use Glass Cannon this is the only way I can see of getting enough DPS out. Thanks again for the help guys, much appreciated!

Chopteeth, the game isn't that hard that we have to make sure the chars are perfect and you can resepc as you learn the game mechanics more. What do I think about your group... We'll you're not min-maxing and your making a team you want to play and it will work! If you want something hard, then you will need to mod, then these decisions become a lot more relevant. I'm playing an all-around group, dabbles in a lot of schools, as Items allow you to do that as well. And I pick and choose what I need as a I go and play with it. One rule I put down, is almost all skills... only one character can use it, so each feels different vs 4 that are equals exploiting and the game has been moderate in difficulty.

My one suggestion though is this and it is too late... only play one-hero per run. To me it gets a bit messy with taking them all. Give them their own solo voice.

Part of me loves having a team that is very personalized and custom, but in the end I'd rather have a party that can just slaughter every single encounter in the game with minimal effort. The really nice thing about DOS:EE is that you could do both, but this game just doesn't seem to be that way. I attribute this to two reasons:
1. The armor system. This pigeonholes you into either having a party that goes full magic or full physical damage if you want to excel.
2. How skill points are distributed. DOS:EE encouraged you to spend points in several schools, because trying to build a single school up was expensive (example a level 5 skill cost 5 skill points). DOS 2 encourages maxing 1 or 2 skills to get the full utilization out of the points you get.
Hopefully Larian can work out some fixes to this issue in the EE version (assuming that's a thing), because my latest party is very strong but doesn't really feel that unique. I would have totally stuck with my first party, though, if it wasn't for the Glass Cannon psychic AI nonsense, that still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

1. Im pretty sure 14 STR is enough, but if its not just TP back to the boat and respec to 18. But I would not leave a character at 18 STR because thats 4 points that could go somewhere more useful.
2. Think of staffs as extra damage, and wands for their status effects. Two lightning wands against an unarmored enemy is an instant stun, or two ice, ect. Staffs have higher DPS so your skills/staff attack will be better. Use both, in whatever amount you want.
5. Yes, again its about 14 wits. I would put that on one of your DPS characters.

Glass cannon works on characters who are not going to be targeted like I said, rogues and such. If you want more AP to do a combo you can always take adrenaline on your mages as well, or skip a turn while invis so you can combo the next turn.

On Ifan the wizzard I would like to point out one thing...you don't need high hydro at all for the dps. You could go Aero and use water ballons/grenades which are a safer option (in my opinion) for creating wet surfaces. Another safe route for creating safe water surfaces to electrocute is ice fan into ignition,that costs 4 ap but has the value of 3 water grenades. With Ifan you are better of going max summoner, 2 aero, 1 scoundrel and 1 necro,with gear that buffs summoning and aero and if you want greedy and love high risks you could go 1 wand+grenadier talent

Also I once had Sebile as a cleric and if you get con to 16,that was enough for to manage the con penalty of her blood sacrifice while under statuses that reduce condition and not lose my shield in combat...so what you should be getting for a cleric is 14 str (for high lvl plate armours),14 con (16 if elf) and lots of Int (because +wits and +ini gear are common like fish and chips in the uk) and that Int also counts towards how much armor your spells restore, if my understanding of the game is correct.

Also,I have to ask,why at least 1 Necromancer on Red Prince,is it just for passive heals?