Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Theoretical - Strongest DPT Build

So I, like many people, was curious what the so called 'Most Powerful' build in the game would look like, so I did some research and personal testing for how the system runs the stats to calculate how hard you will hit.

I came up with some interesting conclusions:

- All Skills save Huntsman, Scoundrel, and 2h weapons (and only the crit portion) are Additive with your Attribute damage multiplier! This effectively means that, for example, 1 point of Warfare is, as far as your DPT is concerned, the exact same as 1 point of STR, at least for the skills they both apply to. Given the nature of diminishing returns, this means that to create a 'max DPT' build, stacking those skills that are additive with your Primary damage attribute is not optimal.

- Highground, and thus Huntsman, is Multiplicative with other damage modifiers! This means that this is a MUST HAVE for a Max DPT build.

- Crits are, logically, Multiplicative. This means that the Scoundrel and 2h Weapon skills alongside a 100%
crit setup are required for a max DPT build. 100%
crit is absolutely feasible with a three socket neck with 3 12% crit runes and a 20% crit weapon. Assuming Lone Wolf, and 20 in both 2h and Scoundrel, our crits will be dealing 350% damage, even without any gear boosting those stats further.

- Ambidextrous works with a 2h Weapon!

These findings had me come to the idea that the highest DPT build would in fact, be a Magic staff build! Not what most people would be expecting i'm sure given how magic is fairly looked down upon by the community!

Optimal talents would be Lone Wolf, Savage Sortilege,
Elemental Affinity, All Skilled up, Executioner, and Ambidextrous.

I mean, it is hard to argue against the math.

Base Spell Dmg x ((INT + Magic Skill Lvl) x 5%) x HighGround(20%Base + Huntsman Lvl x 5%) x Crit Damage (Chance = 1.0 x (50%Base + Scoundrel Lvl x 5% + 2h Weapon x 5%))

Assuming a Level 28 character (yes this is absurd, but we must go beyond!), the absolute minimum for this to work at it's highest potential, and 20 in 2h, scoundrel, and huntsman, you would be dealing at Least 2695% increased damage! Quite a bit higher once you add gear aside crit into the equation. You would be relying completely on gear for your required magic skill levels to be able to cast the actual spells though!

But of Course, we are not JUST looking for the most absurd damage multiplier we can find! We are looking for the Highest Damage Per Turn! For this, The usage of Executioner, Scrolls + Ambidextrous, Elemental Affinity, and the use of Adrenaline are needed! (for a single Turn, so no Time Warp is being considered) The combination of these allow for the most economical use of spells by first setting down Oil, and laying waste to your foes with Earth spells, setting aflame your oil and then going into fire spells. With mostly 1 cost scroll spells, and your personal spells reduced by your Affinity, well. Who knows just where you would stop?

Did I miss something, or do you think I might be right?

I really don't know much about this, but I thought everyone was saying that Warfare was too strong because it is NOT like the other skills....?

- Why do you put 20 points in warfare for a caster build exactly ? This will only boost your melee attacks with your staff. And it seems melee attacks are the opposite of your build (range, highground).
Maybe you should use those points in something useful ?

- You prefer to use a staff so you can use ambidextrous (for more fireballs and stuff I guess), but 2 wands will give you more stats potentially.

- What do you consider "per turn" exactly ? We are in a game where you can prepare a fight (oil on the ground, pre buffs, 2-3 shots of dual wands etc), that changes a lot of things. I guess for some reason you just care about damages IN COMBAT per turn.

- I see nothing about Apotheosis and Skin Graft in a topic about the biggest dpt, what's wrong ?

- I see nothing about Death Wish on low life.

And :

- If I remember, I saw a guy on youtube doing 100 000 damages in 1 shot with Grasp of the Starved (physical damages), so I guess it's already the best dpt in the game. And it was without Death Wish, without highground.


In fact I don't understand what you want to find : you want the strongest dpt ? By using oil + fire classic combo ?
But you can easily one shot people in end game with other combos. So you want to find the strongest damages in 1 blow ?

While there may be a number exercise in this sort of staff-battlemage idea, you're still contesting with elemental resistances and immunities, ignoring the exponential growth of physical-based damage, and are misinterpreting a few things (the removal of socket progression, damage calculations, bonus applications, etc).

If you want consistent optimized damage then a Crit-based 2H-STR LW is what you're after, with no real competition short of Source Spell burst damage.

Your formulas are wrong.

Also, you realize Huntsman and Scoundrel are both additive, right? Warfare is the only one that's multiplicative. Pretty significant oversight in your theorycrafting.

A for effort?

Highest damage..?
Grasp of the Starved, Savage Sortilege, and lots of points into scoundrel. Mostly due to a bug.
This is an image of me not breaking the damage cap but I did push it further and 5 of the 16 targets took no damage 'cause the damage was too.. low? Anyways damage cap is 2 billion, in this image I do about a billion:
https://imgur.com/a/XaV8Y

Damage cap is 2^31.

Anyhow I have no idea how people are testing stuff, since when I checked in controlled circumstances I found the following:

1) Attribute damage bonus and weapon type damage bonus are additive. (Int/str/fin and 2h/1h/ranged for example.)
2) Skill type damage bonus is, in all cases multiplicative.

If you have 2 damage types, for example Air and Phys on 1 weapon, the phys will be scaled by phys scaling and the air will be scaled by Aerothurge.

I am hearing all sorts of bs about warfare being the only multiplier and I finally got around to checking it and all skill types are multipliers.

Flesh Sacrifice, Death Wish and Thick of the Fight: They are additive with each other. Additive with Attributes and Weapon Type for basic attacks and any skill that scales off of weapon damage. Multiplicative with Attributes and Weapon Type for any skill that does not (mainly spells).

Crit damage is a multiplier.

Therefor, the best way to allocate statistics is the following:

1) Dump all Attribute points into your damage stat, followed by wits, with enough points allocated into memory to use all the spells you wish to use.
2) Put enough points into the different spell schools to use all the spells you wish the character to use. For example, put 1 point into pyrokinetic for peace of mind etc.
3) Dump all the remaining points into the primary damage type you are scaling, for example warfare for a phys toon or necromancer. If you are a rogue, don't put points into scoundrel beyond what you need to use your skills until your warfare damage bonus is equal to your crit sev and then distribute them equally. This is assuming you are backstabbing for 100% crit.
4) Once you have maxed your damage type skill, if you are a spellcaster, put the remaining points into scoundrel, or polymorph, depending on your ratio of crit chance to crit multiplier. The points you put into poly would go into wits. If you use any type of weapon for your primary damage type then invest into that weapons skill tree.

Then, in terms of min/maxing the following is true:
1) Elf is BiS race for everyone.
2) Tea is OP. For a max damage in 1 turn combo you need tea.
3) Apotheosis is a must.
4) Skin Graft is a must.
5) If you allow precasting of abilities, you should precast haste and probably peace of mind.
6) If you are a phys spellcaster, you should either dual wield swords or use a sword and a shield. Reason being because you cannot roll warfare onto wands and you can get warfare on swords and shields. Yeah, I know, weird. Spellcaster using swords.
7) Your build has to be physical for max damage, since monsters do not have phys resistance but they do have elemental resistance.
8) There are a bunch of plot specific things you should do to modify your attributes which I won't mention to not spoil the story.
9) Tea is a must.
10) Did I mention tea?

I will use a phys necro build for the example, on an elf with precast haste and peace of mind. Obviously lone wolf, to maximize attributes. You need to have low phys armour and hp so that enemies can get you to 0 quickly to take advantage of Death Wish.

Start turn with 7/8 AP:
1) Cloak and Dagger to largest group of enemies (6 AP)
2) Adrenaline (8 AP)
3) Tea x2 (8 AP)
4) Apotheosis (7 AP)
5) Inner Demon (6 AP)
6) Flesh Sacrifice (7 AP)
7) Teleport 1 outlying enemy close to the largest pack (6 AP)
8) Living on the Edge (5 AP)
9) Move so that enemies attack of opportunity you and reduce your HP really low. (4 AP)
10) If you are still not on 0, skills that inflict self damage until you have 2 AP left. (2 AP)
11) Skin Graft (1 AP)
12) Adrenaline+Flesh Sacrifice (4 AP)
13) Death Wish (3 AP)
14) Thick of the Fight (2 AP)
15) Blood Storm (1 AP)
16) If anything somehow survived that Blood Storm, then cast Grasp of the Starved.

This is significantly overkill for anything in the entire game, but whatever. It is min/maxed to some extent.

Death wish is not additive with attributes.

Tested with 50 Fin, 10 Warfare, 11 Aerothurge and 10 points in 2 handed:

No Death Wish:


Death Wish:


Expected Result for additive bonus: 1256*(1(base)+2(Fin)+0.5(2handed)+1(Death Wish)=4.5)/(1(base)+2(Fin)+0.5(2handed)=3.5) = 1614.85714286

Actual Result:

1614-1692.

That seems additive to me.

I play on the steam version, with the game fully up to date.

*edit* Upon Further testing it appears Death Wish is additive with attributes when your skill in question has any relation to weapon damage and is multiplicative when it does not. So for any melee builds or bow builds, Death Wish is Additive and for spellcasters it is not. Will update my post.

While you are at it, can you respec to 50 int and check the damage change on your spells? This is leading me to believe that death wish is additive with finesse but not additive with int, which is really weird.

I did and found that if you are using skills that scale off weapon damage, it is additive and if you are using spells it is multiplicative. Regardless if I used Str or Fin, or a Staff, if the skill used the weapon damage it was additive, but if it did not it multiplied.

Also, I checked Thick of the Fight and Flesh Sacrifice further and the same is true lol. For melee they are additive for spells they are multiplicative.

Thanks for the further testing, and I'm glad that I played a spell caster then, lol.

Phys damage has the advantage of no Phys resistance, which is why necromancer is so OP lol... Spell type scaling with multiplicative buffs but no downside of resistances.

Yea, but I think elemental damage still has it's place thanks to aoe, as for necro source skills, it's just overtuned and buggy atm, when I tried grasp it was sometimes hitting for 2 x or higher than regular damage for no reason. Probably gonna be fixed along with reactive shot and such.