Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Balance magical and physical damage

Physical damage (PD) is more effective than magical damage (MD) in current game. One of the reason is the missing of physical resist (PR), while magical resist (MR) is >0.

My idea:
1. add PR to all creature (including player's characters);
2. the amount of physical armor (PA) and magical armor (MA) should be equal for most of the creatures, the difference between a tough physical defender (like a full armored warrior) and tough magical defender (like a pure magical creature) is they have higher physical resist (PR) or magical resist (MR);
3. when PA goes 0, half all MR; when MA goes 0, half all PR;
4. add one new talent called "armor breaker": if enemy has no PA, double damage to it's MA; if enemy has no MA, double damage to it's PA;

So the effective way to kill high PR low MR enemy:
1. break its MA first;
2. control it with magical status;
3. break its PA quickly with "armor breaker" to reduce MR further;
4. kill it with following MD.

A hybrid team could have one "armor breaker" with hybrid damage (like ranger with elemental arrows, or rouge with Chloroform/Gag Order skills, or mage with Necromancer+elemental skills);
Or 2 "armor breaker", one pure MD, one pure PD;

Pure PD team is hard for the game, blocked by some high PR enemies; while pure MD team still possible, since there are 5 types of MR, can focus on the lowest one.

I believe this idea can balance the game, introduce more team build, and increase the fun of battle.

Why should I bother breaking physical armor just to lower MR? The enemie already has low MR, so halfing it will hardly make a big difference. Put effort into breaking PA just to lower MR will just waste damage, even boss monster could hardly give a positive turn-out.

It would only make sense if PA/MA would be really low and PR/MR extremely high.

The "physical" resist is called dodging and it can be a little bit annoying when your read "miss" in a tough fight. If magical spells can miss entirely, we can discuss balancing.

Or better, leave it as it is.

Agreed, the damage is totally skewed. Magic is way too strong. Those superconductor mages are ridiculous!

Dodging is extremely rare though (which also makes most accuracy buffs worthless). If many fights featured 50%+ dodge enemies things would become more interesting. Dodge can be easily negated by some abilities like glitterdust though(that is worthless now because there are too few targets it's worth using on), so physical resist should also be a thing imo.

Besides, there are physical damage spells that do tons of damage and can't be dodged, like blood storm or grasp of the starved, which makes necromancer the highest damage archetype lategame no contest, so physical is just OP as a damage type.

I'm in class, so I don't have time to fully illustrate why you have no idea what you're talking about. Physical damage isn't 'stronger' because it has more limitations.

1. Most physical fighters have to close the gap constantly.
2. Their attacks don't apply status effects.
3. There are abilities in the game that totally negate a physical damage class.
4. They usually have to run through or navigate a bunch of annoying terrain effects.
5. Their attacks can miss completely resulting in a huge tempo loss of AP and time.

This is just the ones off of the top of my head, and even if there are more, this is more than enough justification of why it's pretty balanced. It sounds like you just have a problem with the Necromancer school than anything.

Actually this is not really true.

1. Gap closers are plenty, cheap, and many of them don't event cost you damage (e.g. blitz attack or backlash). You're also leaving out rangers who don't need to move at all.
2. Except they do apply one of the most powerful CCs in the game - knockdown. Some scoundrel skills also have status effects (these aren't great but just to point out)
3. Except enemies using these are almost non existent and even when you face them they're usually not that difficult to work around
4. No, see 1)
5. Except I can probably count the enemies you hit with less than 90% chance with the fingers on one hand. Also, dodge applies to elemental weapons (staves and wands) too.

What difficulty are you playing?

On Tactician there are plenty of opponents with evasive aura (which they don't have on Classic). This makes a pure physical more problematic.

You also have the demons in hall of Echos - one 100% immune to all magic and one 99% immune to physical.

Luckily for me (solo scoundrel) the skill Sawtooth Knife (unlike all the others) doesn't count as physical when it comes to resistances - it directly hits vitality even though the tooltip says piercing. That surely must be a bug assuming piercing damage is physical.

There are also the .

I would actually call those demons a case of Bad Design because it forces you to have both sources of damage on your main character without any warning that would be necessary.




I don't think it's a bug. I think it's perfectly intentional. Piercing Damage ignores all armor and resistances, that's it's whole thing. And it only matters for that one enemy in the entire game (can't target the M-you-know-whats with skills).

I play on tactician only. There are only a few enemies in the game with evasive aura, which is easily negated by stuff like glitterdust (if you actually equipped it) or medusa head (pertify nulifies dodge). Like up to the end of act 2 I only recall one(some black ring dude on advocate's island) having it and tbh I don't remember enemy stats very well after that cause everything just explodes at that point due to the silly scaling, but maybe there were a few more. There are enemies with elemental resistances in almost every single encounter, often pretty high resistances across the board. I think the game would be a lot more interesting with much higher number of high dodge enemies (not 90% but more like some common enemies having 25-50% dodge). Would actually give accuracy boosting abilities and runes some use.

The only limitation necromancy has is the source point limitation on grasp and blood storm. Either 1 of the 2 is a 1 hit combat ender.

Yes, it is true.

1. When you only have 4 AP, spending your AP to close the distance is incredibly expensive. You rattle off the only 2 abilities that deal direct damage as some kind of evidence that's the norm. What you don't mention, and this is the best part, is that they 4 turn cooldowns and do less damage and/or don't have you placed in the spot you were hoping to be in and still make you susceptible to terrain effects.

2. No, they don't. That's the entire point of the ability is to apply that status, it doesn't come free and requires you to be in a specific range as it doesn't benefit from high ground and can be nullified due to elevation. The most powerful CC is charm, then madness, a polymorph and finally to a lesser extent, terrify. Not fuckin' battlestomp... Which is literally only like, what, 2 abilities? Lmao! Get real.

3. Do you play on Honour mode? I doubt it, judging from your (lame) excuses on why physical based abilities are harder to use.

4. You're a clown. Play a rogue and try to navigate a big battle's clusterfuck to try and line up backstabs. But sure, see #1.

5. Are you a Lovecraftianesque eldritch horror? Otherwise, there's no way you have that many fingers. Again, probably your experience on Explorer mode or whatever you play on. As a melee main in this game, I have to run a venom gemstone in my amulet at all times no matter what to mitigate my chances of missing constantly. I literally cannot replace my amulet, even if it's better in every conceivable stat, because it doesn't have an open slot. Even with a large venom rune, my chances to hit are typically 95 percent or thereabouts.

You kids keep bringing up how shit magic is and blah, blah, blah, but you guys never mention how versatile, how much cleave, the range advantage, the god-tier bonuses from height, the mitigation available, the nightmare maze you can make for AI to navigate with terrain and how many statuses are woven into each spell. Nor do you make any mention of how melee classes basically MUST have points put into these schools for the mandatory buffs.

But yeah, magic is bad and physical is too stronk. Smh. What a bad joke.



Piercing is exactly what it says it is - piercing, true damage.



They really are stupid as fuck.

I love how people resort to insults when they run out of arguments. Yes, I did 1 tactician and 1 honour playthrough (although the honour one was LW, so kinda easier, but it's not a problem to do it once you know the game in any case, it's not XCOM where you can be screwed by extreme rng or anything).

1. There are many more gap closers, I've only listed 2 as an example. And minor repositioning is easily done via the Pawn, which is 0 AP. Backlash does 50% damage for its 1 AP which is as efficient as normal attack, blitz does 140% if it hits 2 enemies. You only take 1 tick from terrain effects when respositioning with teleports which is pretty negligible. You also still don't acknowledge the existence of rangers who don't give a shit. As for cooldowns, in most battles you would only need to teleport a couple of times before its over.

2. Charm is stronger than knockdown but battlestomp is aoe (if we talk just about abilities) and does pretty high damage. Charm is single target, no damage, 3 AP (if we don't consider consumables, which I never felt a pressing need to use and there are physical ones as well). There's also chicken claw if we count hard CC vs physical armor. That's usually plenty of hard CC for one character. Statuses on magic abilities are also not "free" or is Charm free with 0 damage and 3 AP? The only free statuses come from elemental weapons proccing their element on the ground surface below target and these only somewhat compensate for the lower base damage.

3. Yes, I do, and abilities negating physical damage on enemies are super rare. 40% elemental resist is a norm on tank mobs later on. Dodge aura is like a couple of unique mobs in the whole game?

4. I've played rogue and it's extremely easy with The Pawn, Duck Duck Goose and all the relocation abilities. Tactical retreat doesn't even really cost you AP since it gives 1 back next turn. Also, the "extremely annoying terrain effects" aren't even a big deal in the 2nd half of the game since their damage scales poorly compared to your armor.

5. And I've never used venom gemstones (everyone is using fire for crits) and never had any issues with the game. You usually have 90+ hitchance vs most things. Enemies that actually have decent dodge like earlygame silent monks are super rare. I also run hothead on most characters eventually, so that might help a bit.


Very nice way to talk about developers, I'm sure they will listen to your polite and intelligent feedback. Carry on.


TL;DR go away troll

Talking about the fights themselves, not the devs.

But, it's interesting you jump straight to them. Which is implying they've listened at all, which they haven't really. Nor have they even openly discussed a variety of major issues with the game in any thread, in any context, anywhere on the forum. They have yet to defend their decisions to run with a lot of the changes and have actually double downed on them by punishing players for trying to use mods to fix them.

As for your rebuttal, you talk from the point-of-view as a Lone Wolf player. There are not more than two that do damage, you're just lying now. Unless you're (for some reason) counting Phoenix Dive, which... Are you kidding me?

You talk about 90+ hit-chance and then just previously talk about how physical damage is OP. Missing 10% of the time is disastrous for non-LW players. Missing half of your AP in your turn due to accuracy is devastating. How you can sit there and ignore that is baffling to me.

Run out of arguments? I just wrote you a pretty good sized wall in your quote and you call me a troll; yet, you complain about MY 'insults'. Grow up, lol. You have no idea what a troll is and treat it like some buzzword.

Wow, half-way though this thread I gave up. Too long posts, too much hating.

Not everything must be perfectly equal. If you think physical damage is superior, then think of it as easy mode.

Also, are there enemies with physical weakness? I sure think that a lot of mobs have one or two magical weaknesses.

@Alexstrasza:
I've played both LW and non LW, although I've only played non LW on tactician, but I'm pretty confident I could do non LW honour as well after 2 playthroughs, the game is not that difficult if you know the fights, since pretty much all reloads come from being unprepared (and the 2nd half of the game is just steamrolling everything anyway if you have decent builds). I just don't want to go for another playthrough with the current state of combat balance, cause it's pretty damn boring unless you somehow artificially challenge yourself I guess. I never said that LW is not easier, it is, and it's one of the other things I'd like to see nerfed.

I usually communicate politely, but don't expect people to treat you nicely if you start throwing around words like "clown" or "kid" for no reason.

I could respond to your other comments, but I don't think we can have a productive conversation here, so let's agree to disagree.

And if you think devs are not listening, why are you even spending time on this forum and especially in the feedback section, when it's a complete waste?

Trust me, LW playthroughs are a breeze. I beat the game on a 4-man Honour Mode playthrough and every fight is intense. LW makes the game boring, it's actually crazy. I seriously recommend to you to try it out, especially with some friends. Listening to your friends over VoIP scream with anticipation (and often begging the NPCs to not kill one of us, LOL) is extraordinary. 4-man is what the game was definitely balanced around.



A girl was having a bad day, what can I say? There's SO MANY threads on this subject and it gets tiring hearing the same complaints over and over again; use the search function, holy smokes. I never cried that I wanted to be treated nicely - not once. Again, never implied that; just pointed out your contradiction about you complaining. It's the Internet, people will get salty for a variety of reasons, it's the spice of life.

Although, I have to say, 'clown' and 'kid' are hardly insults. Unless you're a child clown and are triggered by this. In which case, are you kidding me? It's not like I told you to go fuck yourself.

Never said it was a waste, don't put words in my mouth. I just said they don't care. It's still interesting to hear new ideas and discuss what changes we like, even if they never get implemented or heard by the development team. They stated they "truly appreciate" our feedback, but not enough to grace us with a logical or even mathematical theorem on why their way is the best way.

Okay; agreed. Was fun hearing your thoughts, even though you didn't fully actualize all of my content, I understand I get too 'spicy'.



Too long posts? Get lost, tbh.
Too much hating? That was maybe, maybe 5% of the content.
Mustn't be perfectly equal? Uh, it's called balance. If no one chooses option B, then what's the point in it even being developed if you don't care enough to make it work?

No one cares if you can't handle reading and intense debate. It's the Internet and you're on a forum, why are you even here? What did you expect? Rhetorical, I don't care.

I'll stick here what I wrote somewhere else about elemental damage. Keep in mind, heavy spoilers in this post so skip it if you don't want fight spoilers.



TL;DR you need to do much less phys damage than elemental damage to kill stuff. In theory, if you focus specific mobs elemental damage should have a place (at least that is the argument that pro elemental damage players use) but in practise it is not true for any major fights if you loremaster inspect mob stats.

Phys resistance should definitely be a thing and its pretty easy to show phys damage is superior to magic damage due to the lack of it. And just in case mrs know it all asks me who I am to comment on this thread, yes I have beat the game in honour mode, once in a party of 4, once in a party of 1 and failed it 6 times due to a bug during ships defense where malady does not spawn below deck. I have also completed it 3 times in tactician mode. I have played elemental spellcasters, rogues, melee phys toons and necromancers but have not played rangers because I don't like playing chars with bows.

i think that physical damage is probably stronger overall due to the omnipresence of high resistances to some (or sometimes all) types of magic

i don't think anyone should reasonably call physical damage dealers "easy mode" because of this though. the disparity is really not that big and magic users have access to stuff like summoning and necromancy for bosses with high magic resistances. even if one is a little stronger than the other, there are ways to play either (quite a few of them in fact) that allow you to play through the game on tactician without too much trouble

there's no need for this kind of pissing contest