Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General A thought exercise: Balance

Nono, I trust you. I finished EE classic mode with a single lone wolf mage, and did Tactician with two min maxed cheese mages. I still think I had an easier time with warriors (battering ram, rage, smack smack), but mages were certainly by far more fun. But that reminds me, I think the biggest change, which I forgot to mention, is the cooldown reduction from INT being gone. This means that the skills you do have are way harder to spam, and memory is really the only solution if you want to have a spam build like you did in the first game. Depending on whether stats influence CC chances or not in your proposal, this could spell the death of the CC mage, once low tier CC starts to fall of so hard that you're forced into using higher tier stuff, and then start running out of memory and end up with two cooldowns that are, once again, only likely to work, and only if you can get their magical armor down first. I have no doubt that once we get off of this poor prison colony island, and enemies start wearing real gear, magic armor is going to be a lot harder to chew through in a single turn. As it is, I already fear for the viability of my solo mage build. so I really hope that they either change memory in a big way, so as to allow mages to, uh... not perish in a gutter, as such a fate would consign them to... or they add in cooldown reduction again, so that we can more effectively use the few skills that we do have.
But I digress.

I too am interested to see what they do with AP, cooldowns, memory, etc. The idea I've heard most is that they should try a 1:1 ratio on memory to memory slots, but I'm not so sure about that, even if they do increase the slot cost of most skills. How would you change memory, if it were up to you?

Yeah the cooldown reduction and lack of spell spamming changed alot the dynamics this time around. And was probably the best thing they ever did in EE to not make magic literally break encounters over my knee. I don't care what anyone says; having the ability to deny every single enemy, up to and including bosses, a single turn or chance to ever hit you right after level 5? That's game breaking. Combat is no longer about combat tactics but just about how long it takes me to kill a particularly more meaty enemy no matter the level difference. Hell, I would thrown haste for 20AP and then just see experimenter with how I could have fun. At least you have to somewhat think with a warrior till end game. At which point both were overpowered. One denied the opponent ever having the ability to act and had field control and the other could OHKO everything and be effectively resistant to everything unless you were unlucky.

Funny thought: Place the two classes against each other and the mage would just keep teleporting the warrior away and raising ice walls in the way. And if the warrior magically got close there was invisibility and then summons followed by Drain Willpower and then stun. An infinite game of Tom and Jerry really. I imagine enough debuffs to lower resistances and then attacking with summons and spells after finally managing to CC the warrior would eventually win the day though. Depends on how high the resistances were. And I don't think warriors could be immune to poison unless they had Zombie at which point mage just uses Heal.

I find it odd that you'd think it was easier with the warriors, but it may just be a case of you remebering that in end game you could make yourself immune to most things and one shot everyone vs taking the slightly longer but far more cheesey and safe mage route and just deny a turn to everything. It's two different play styles.

And yeah, they really need to balance things so mages don't die.

One person mentioned decreasing memory costs for skill types based around ability level in a certain skill ability while also rehashing memory slots on many skills. On top of this would be fixing the broken stat system and pressuring fighters to need more Con and stuff. This way Mages can focus on raising spell school abilities and MEM & INT so they can generally have the most skills in the game and be like fragile wizards in past game and encouraging fighters to specialize more in their fighting skills and abilities and survivability.

Hmmm, I disagree. Phoenix Dive, Battering Ram. Mage is on the ground, warrior just goes smack. Invisibility? Whirlwind. You moved afterwards? K, bye.

It really is just cat and mouse. I think it would come down to initiative, honestly. Unless the warrior is too far to phoenix dive + battering ram, but that's kinda silly.

Well because the warrior is normally so item dependent it's easier to build initiative gear up on a mage which is why I'd assume they go first. And give far our man and teleport; it's not odd at all if the mage just keeps the warrior from effect range or uses one of the spells to make them immune to warrior CC like invulnerability or earth shield(?). On the other hand, of the fighter did indeed get a chance to go first, I could definitely see him trying and having a high chance at succeeding in ending the conflict before it began. Alternatively, a mage could just Drain and CC the warrior if he goes first if he wants.

First turn would basically win though. It's easy to imagine either or winning. Fight either kills mage round one or mage CC locks fighter for eternity till he dies while seething in impotent range round one to how ever long it takes him to die (more than likely three rounds average I think)

There's also the fact that mages generally take glasscannon for extra initiative too while warriors like to keep their health

Well that solves that mystery, then. FWIW, I always built tons of speed on my warriors, and gave them Bless to make up for their terrible to-hit, so if it were my build in particular, I could see it going first, is the reason I argue that he could indeed have the initiative.

Mah mah, everyone was god in one form or another end game. Too bad we can't test things like this arena mod though :P if we could all build our own characters from scratch and send them in with ideal gear it'd be fun as a side PvP thing.

lol though everyone would just build initiative at one point I think

Yee, or at least 1 more than whatever's "meta".

i like the idea of Enrage but it should give a debuff after that. Like in most of the D&D edition

Not that this is a bad idea, but it won't change anything - right now, you can slaughter every priority target while you're Raging. Getting a debuff when you only have trash enemies left to mop up won't matter.

Yeah, due to current broken battle mechanics the fight is over, before enraged runs out.