Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks Tanks and melee's seem absolutely pointless

when every AoE kills your own team members...

Started with 2 mages one pyro one earth, cleric, and tank.

Healer seems absolutely worthless ends up healing her self the whole time. Tanks sits in AoE's from mages or stands as far away as possible to be pretty useless.

Is the game designed to just run straight mage, straight ranged phys, or straight phys melee builds no AoE?

I am in Act one started two different profiles just trying to figure out what classes I like. Really find aoe from pyro neat but frustrating because of self damage to everyone in party.

Tanks are useless, just because of the fact that the AI will ignore them as much as possible.

Mixed damage groups are subpar from start. You don't need a straight ranged physical team, you can mix physical damage as much as you wish. Warfare as some of the strongest AoE and CC skills regarding physical anyway.

Heals in general are less helpful. Armor restoration is far more essential.

There are many possibilities, and just because hybrid parties aren't as optimal doesn't mean you can't beat the game with them, even on Tactician. All-physical parties definitely out-damage them, but if you want to mix up your team, you can.

Armor is everything: stripping it off the enemy as fast as possible and keeping yours up as much as possible. Don't focus your mages on the same enemy as your melee guys: focus them on stripping the enemies with the lowest magical armor and let your physical guys focus on the enemy mages and such that have low physical armor. Give all your companions a few options to do the opposite type of damage as they usually do. I'm tweaking a hybrid party and I've given my mages a couple of points in Necro and some Necro spells to do physical damage, and my melee guys have some skills that do magic damage (usually in Geo, but there are a few in other schools). That keeps everyone useful.

In Act 2 it'll become easier to mitigate AoE damage to your melee guys: gear with resistance to various elements will start dropping, and you'll come across more ingredients to make resistance potions. Although you will find some in Act 1--check out some recipes here.

For what it's worth, the most powerful party that I've found so far has actually forgone strength characters completely, but still runs a mix of physical and magical damage. Right now it's an aero/geo tank using wand/shield, a pyro/hydro mage using basically anything that gives good stats, a ranger/summoner, and a rogue/necromancer.

The rationale is that physical attackers suffer greatly from using a one-handed sword instead of a two-handed one, whereas a mage doesn't care that much if they have one wand instead of two. By and large the magical and physical damage sources focus down different targets; however, there's still a fair degree of flexibility (the archer can deal significant magic damage through Summoning without needing any Int; the mage can do a lot of buffing to support physical damage output, etc). Everybody takes a few cheap points in Polymorph for utility schools.

I was a frustrated noob and sucked when I posted. AoE dmg is definitely a big deal in Act 1 and gear is extremely important. My guys were 3/4 naked and what not dropping like flies. You can't do that at all in this game and even 1-2 level diff in gear can be a big deal.

Currently running two summoners a geo and pyro. Awesome group but I wish had made my summoners the utility skill guys and my mages with a different element because you run into scenarios where the whole boss fight against your elements or damage type and it makes impossible to beat. slowly buying scrolls for the other toons now.

I played my 1st run with a hybrid team on the highest difficulty and found melee characters the most powerful by far. Warfare is the best tree in the game. The best support tree is probably summon because it gives you yet another meat shield character with any attack type on the field in the level 10 incarnate.

It is true that the game is easier if you specialize. 4x physical is the most powerful team you can make. 4x elemental mages is the 2nd most powerful because magic damage is no where near as high as melee. Hybrid teams work but are not as efficient. There is only 1 fight in the entire game that has a physical immune enemy and its not a very hard one so as long as you can get past that fight, you can wipe the floor with the game with a 2 str melee and 2 dex archer setup + level 10 summon on each for harder fights.

I think it's great that this game has moved away from that boring old-school tank-oriented system. That kind of party composition got repetitive, everyone in the party was doing the same thing over and over again. Here many enemies can fly and teleport which keeps you guessing, and that's good because it forces you to diversify and not get suck in your old ways.

I like the variety of battles here. Before every fight I examine each enemy, i.e. armor and resistance types, and decide the best approach, which is different form one battle to the next. And I don't think, as some here suggest, that all physical, or all-anything party will do that well, because some enemies are much easier to kill with certain types of magic, than physical. If an enemy has 5x more physical armor than magic armor, why would I prefer all-phys party? I strip their magic right away and put them to sleep, or stun, or charm, etc. That's why I give all my guys a little bit of other attack types, so I can always focus my party on a given enemy weakness.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the combat and party system, which is more interesting than most old-school RPGs and even DOS1.

Warfare is still king. I am currently running an all 1H+shield party (the bouncing shields), combined with a pinch of magic here and there. This way the AI has got a hard time trying to decide whom to attack, because everyone has got almost the same values for armor.

melee pointless? i can understand the statements about tanks, but melee fighters, especially 2 handers, pull out absolutely crazy damage consistently throughout all 3 acts

remember to always give your mages spells like fortify/heart of steel/bone cage, and having the living armor talent on your melee characters is helpful for preventing CC when you don't have armor of frost available

Absolutely love this game. So addicted.

Alright so my favorite group so far is 2 magic necros (Warfare+Int+Wits for high phys damage high hydrosophist for heal damage) and 2 dual wield dagger scoundrel necros (for the extra decay and blood sucker (Warfare+Scoundrel+Wits+Finesse)).

Why? Because blood mages/cleric types are fuckin beast. Blood everywhere and piercing + phys damage for days. Yeah, the heals crit when used as damage.

Rupture Tendons + Corrupted decay from melees (portal on all characters). Then turn the necros into Clerics and bombard them with healing dmg after you have softened them up with ranged necro skills if that is even needed. I use the heals from all lines with Blood Sucker doing twice the damage most of the time of the others. Blood sucker is awesome not only for healing your own guys but really doing heavy damage that ignore shields.

This also gives you 4 raised bloated corpses to use at your will which when they explode also leave blood everywhere on top of your blood rain. For saving the world my crew is really dark and evil looking, lol.

This play style is a lot of fun.

Don't forget you can also freeze and electrify blood and the cloud versions are nice. The damage of the electricity and rupture tendon is some serious stuff...

TIP: Combine your boots with nails so you don't slip on ice anymore. Watching characters try to get to you through narrow door ways or other choking points of frozen blood is entertaining.



Yeah as I said I was a complete noob and frustrated at start. I got it down now have made 3 very successful groups. Melee is definitely beast, but my magics are pretty awesome too.

I absolutely love the design and mechanics of this game. I can't wait to sink money into more kick starter campaigns from Larian.



Completely agree the whole trinity bs = boring gaming is inevitable. I think it is just a crutch for bad combat design.

Cute, how you are all missing the point. It is not about having a meat shield that just swallows up all damage. It about enemie control and having individual enemie behaviour. If all enemies behave the same and are equally smart, there is no difference in enemies. If a brainless zombie behaves like an elite assassin, they might look different but in reality they are just the same.

Also risky traits like Glasscannon are pretty pointless, if just every enemie will jump at you, as soon as you get in range.

Also if everything that matters in combat is damage output, were exactly is the 'variety'? Everything is in this game is about damage, attributes and skills. If it does not do high damage, is is hardly worth using, because without damage you don't get the armor down quick enough to even try to crowd control.

And if you don't understand, why full physical is superior to mixed setup, it just explains enough.

Physical builds are king because physical attacks only need to break through armor, while magic attacks are up against magic armor AND resistances. Most physical builds have enough knockdown/atrophy/polymorph/cripple skills available to keep numerous enemies helpless for the entire fight.

Tanks may not aggro enemies like in standard games, but they turn into amazing support characters. You can use them to shape the battlefield; teleport enemies around, heal, buff, knockdowns, provoke, etc. Since the tanks are mainly ignored in this game that toon will be free to support the team so your damage dealers can maximize their turns. Every build can be successful if you utilize those skills properly and have a viable strategy for the fight.

OS2 takes a step back in tactical insight in my book.

I don't want to see another game with the same armour system as this one.

Yeah I completely agree. It's very obvious resists + shield hamper magic's especially in beginning. I don't recommend magic for the first play through as it is far more tactical. I am currently rolling my fourth play through with 3 mages and a summoner/hydro. It sucks to have to sometimes respec for certain fights because both the magics you have gone into are high resists.

This is why I've avoided magic builds. Either you have to re-spec/skill swap every single fight OR you have to waste a ton of points in Memory. You've also got to keep spare weapons that have the element type you want for max damage. For me that doesn't add to the difficulty of the game, it just makes managing those characters annoying. Those closest I got to playing with magic effects was my archer that utilized the various arrows as the tactical situation warranted. It's probably the most versatile build in the game being able to do killer magic and physical damage.

A major bonus of strength based builds that is often overlooked is inventory size - especially when Lone Wolf-ing. I played a dual-mage Lone Wolf game and had annoyingly full bags all. The. Time. (2x100kg isn't a whole lot...), forcing me to either constantly return to base to vendor stuff off, or leave loot behind (something I find VERY hard to do *greedy bastard*). No such problems with my two handed warrior and his ranger sidekick. Fane alone can carry 780kg (lol), all the while one-shotting enemies in Arx with a single Overpower attack, or decimating entire groups on his own with Whirlwinds, Battlestomps, Blitz Attacks, and copious use of Adrenaline and Time Warp. Aetera spent her two turns of existence lying on her back (hur hur). Sallow Man never knew what hit him. Source Titan never got to move. Melee pointless? I beg to differ.

Now tanks, those do not work the way they do in, say, World of Warcraft. And I'm glad they don't. Why? Because the entire concept of the role makes no logical sense to begin with! Who in their right mind goes to attack the one enemy that is best suited to withstanding your attack, when you can just as well go for that squishy mage next to him? Y'know, the one that's hurting you more. The concept of sustained "tank aggro" may be a decent gameplay feature, but it is completely unrealistic. I like that enemies in this game aren't as stupid as their WoW counterparts. It helps immersion a lot.

I don't know, perhaps enemies that are not supposed to be very smart or even brainless, like zombies and probably most animals. Where is the immersion with highly intelligent zombies or when every enemie is just the same with a different skin?

Very true. Inventory size should not scale with specific attribute that may or may not be present in the party. Instead it should scale with some overall party stats, e.g. level, or some combination of all attributes in the party.

I play with a buddy of mine where we each take 2 char --- he uses that Beast npc (dwarf) and he is straight badass at lvl 15, so maybe it's a case where you just have to be patient on those guys.

I'm doing a solo run (only one character in the party; no companions) on Tactician mode. I'm running a warfare-based sword-and-board character. It's been going pretty well. I'm currently in Arx. Bouncing Shield gets pretty ridiculous. With a bunch of points in Necromancy and the Life Leech talent, I generally refill my vitality and magic armor each turn, and since I'm using Strength-based armor, I start each fight with a lot of physical armor. I haven't had to cheese a fight yet, either.

So, I'd say that neither melee-based nor tank characters are useless.