Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Wits Crit and Backstabbing

Ok, so Wits seem like a good option for a rogue in a character building way, but the stat max/min and math don't reflect this.

As it is, Wits are best on a melee warrior or archer because they can benefit from both the crit and the perception bonus.

Rogues get automatic crits while backstabbing, so the crit stat is quite useless on them.

Perhaps you can give a 50% bonus damage on backstabbing with finesse weapons, and still let crit apply.

This way the stat does not go to waste in a mathematical way, and I can still feel like I am building true to the character.

I think this is a pretty good idea. I also wouldn't mind them adding a bit of crit damage onto wit as its not very appealing of a stat as is. With rage and backstab currently generating automatic crits, getting addition crit% isn't as important of a stat on its own.

I absolutely agree with the opening post. If you're trying to max damage on a rogue wits just isn't an option. Also, for every point you put in wits you're going to lose a few percentage on your finesse skills which makes it all the more unappealing. I'd love to see a change here

The shortfalls of using Wits with Backstab are present for users of the skill Rage as well, which also grants 100% crit chance.

Wits isn't even a good damage option if you weren't going to use Rage/Backstab.
At lvl 5, Wits adds a 0.5% chance to crit. At the base 50% crit damage, that's a 0.25% damage increase for the first point.
The same point at level 5 gives a 3% damage boost if put into your primary Stat. 3% = 0.25%*12
It takes 12 points of Wits to match the damage gain of 1 point of main-stat! Think about how bad that is.
And even if it was 12 times better, it would still be useless in the presence of Rage or Backstabbing.

Now, Wits also adds initiative (at the same rate it gives crit chance, 0.5 per point @lvl5). Now, acting before the enemy in combat is in-fact really nice. However, Wits gives initiative in decreasing amounts, and gear offers large static amounts (+2 on green items). This means gearing for initiative is a much better option than points in Wits.
Also, any points in initiative past the point of being fastest are completely wasted, and the boosted initiative will be useless if it isn't enough of a bonus to surpass an opponent's score too. So, it's all or nothing, and it's a moving target (due to stat decay from level-ups)!

The only other combat bonus from Wits (hinted at in its description) is that it "raises Magic Armor". I don't believe this occurs. I had a level 7 character with 136 Magic Armor and 10 Wits. By increasing Wits to 20 via the Clear-Mind buff, no increase to Magic Armor occurred.

In conclusion, stat points spent in Wits are almost always better spent elsewhere. While gaining initiative this way can help in the absence of gear, one is more likely to gimp their character by repeatedly investing in this stat.

The problem with current stats-system remains: Getting closer to level 10 pretty all stats lose they worthyness. Sure, wits will still help with finding traps and hidden objects and battle stats will still increase hit chance I guess, but otherwise they totally lose they worth in combat. Because all benefits per level are getting closer and closer to + 0.1% per point. Only Wits starts earlier with it.

Only stats that aren't affected from this problem are:
- Memory: stays the same
- Constitution: HP per point increases per level (from +17 at 6 to +22 at 8 for example)

This issue needs to be solved, otherwise stats just turn meaningless overtime. Having 31 Int feels hardly impressive at level 8 with a damage boost of 9% or something like that.

Yeah, the stat-decay system is unfun. I imagine it's in-place to help devs bound player strength in an effort for content later in the game to still be a challenge. This should be done in a way that is more psychologically acceptable than weakening the stats every level.

However, the problems with Wits would still exist even if the stats weren't decaying.
Chiefly;
Wits crit component is obsoleted by Backstab and Rage.
Wits crit component is useless for spells (without a particular talent, and even then, only at half value)
Wits is much weaker than main stat at all levels.

Crit was never the important part about Wits in my opinion.

The most important part is initiative, wich at current state get crippled already at level 3 sadly and perception for hidden secret to dig and trap. Honestly I have no idea, why wits has a deminishing turn out but you get +1 initiative per level you gained.

Rage is a missbalanced spell that needs fixing and backstabbing was always there, regarding the fact that daggers aren't the strongest weapons, this part is probably still fine.

I just hope, they will fix the stat decay pretty soon, so we can start the real testing. The core system is so fat off, that discussing balancing details is hardly usefull. Becausing fixing the core system will change pretty everything anyway, I guess.

Yeah, obviously crit currently isn't the important part, that's the whole point. But I think it would be more interesting if it was an important part. Addressing the shortcomings with Wits in regard to crit would make the stat more interesting.

If the only combat benefit to Wits is that you get the first action ahead of your opponent then it eventually won't be worth the continued cost to maintain it. At some point all of those required points to just go first could all be dumped into health or more damage. Even without stat-decay enemies would still likely require continued investment in Wits to outspeed them.

And just because Backstabs couldn't crit in DoS 1 doesn't mean it has to be that way now. Why not, if it makes the gameplay more interesting?

I just think that the crit portion of the stat being useless to all classes isn't interesting. Even being just useless to daggers and mages still feels unnecessarily restrictive (and anyone using Rage, until that gets nerfed). It's not like there are other meaningful stats to consider investing in. One puts just-enough memory to get necessary abilities, then all else in main stat. Even Constitution is boring as Armors are the more significant portion of survivability (due to their Status resisting component).

Thoughts?

The combat and non-combat skills have been nicely segmented thus far. I wonder if it would be worth changing the "seein' hidden stuff" stat to be incorporated as part of thievery rather then a primary attribute?

That is a great idea! I really like this.

I too loved the introduction of Civil abilities having their own points.

A backstab is a crit. A crit that crits even more, sounds a bit ridiculous and also would be hard to balance. Backstabbing is a guaranteed crit, the normally crit will still be necessary for case, where you can't get into a backstabbing position.

Honestly I don't like the forced separation. It makes you much more dependant on good items because social points are totally scarce. I prefered to have the freedom to decide, if I want to put my points in my combat stuff or into my social stuff.

And as already somebody mentioned, leadership for example would be in reality more likely a combat skill, not a social skill. There is no 'social' benefit coming from leadership. And sneaking is at least part wise a combat skill as well, either for exploiting it in combat self or for using it to preset an ambush. Loremaster as well is partwise combat, because you need it to examine your enemies.

The more I think about, hardly any of those skill is really social. Only Persuasion and Bartering influence real socialising actions. Everything else is more utility based, I would say.

I think the min/maxer in me appreciates the segmentation the most. When I play a rogue I find it particularly hard to choose anything over more damage because I like playing my rogues more like assassins. A lot of the civil abilities do have utility but dont really directly effect your damage (apart from leadership), which I personally appreciate.

Maybe leadership should be incorporated into wits (might need to change wits to a different name), and the find shineys put somewhere else?

The issue I see is that Rogues will be Backstabbing most of the time, and if those hits can't benefit from Crit Chance then anything that increases crit chance will have very low appeal (Why put points into a stat that only helps in a situation that rarely occurs?).
As a suggestion, perhaps crit chance could increase critical damage in the case of a Backstab. I mostly don't like that half of the stat value of Wits is wasted.

I don't feel like the balancing would be hard at all.
Crit Chance can be given out at a balanced rate for its own DPS purposes. I'd say it already is, aside from that fact that everyone gets it for free with Rage. Also, Backstab is already balanced around Daggers having a lower base damage than other weapons. Making other sources of Crit do nothing is just extra punishment.
If Backstabs can't crit it will just force players to pump alternative DPS increasing stats, avoid gear with Wits in favor of Finesse, use alternate skills, etc. In other words, it'll be a pain and reduce viable playstyles, but likely won't reduce overall power too much.

And as far as the thematic element, I doubt all stab wounds to the back are of equal severity. I'd wager a person could live through many, and others would be... critical.

Wits as a battle stat makes sense, because one of the most important parts to combat is out thinking your opponent. This is not intelligence, wits is very suitable as a combat stat.

I'd love to see some tactical skills play off of wits, such as chance to trip/dodge/disarm/counter-attack/blocking...

As for backstabs, the idea behind this is that we don't anticipate or protect ourselves from behind as well, and someone with small blades can hit some more critical areas of our biology a lot easier.

Initiative is a good call to be linked to wits, crit is also suitable but useless, and perception is critical as an out of combat stat.

The problem is that, choosing a party member to suffer in combat, just so that you have someone with perception is not very fun design.

Backstabbing should provide a damage bonus based on the wits stat (rather than ignoring it).

I'd like to see some abilities directly scale off of wit.

Wits could add debuff resistance. This would both make it more useful and help address the CC issue. Maybe also add crit damage reduction, which would help address the Enrage issue (although simultaneously hurting itself as a stat a bit).

I didn't think much of it before, but after reading this thread, Wits does seem pretty weak. I could just favor gear with Initiative on it and put the stat points somewhere useful instead. Maybe if it didn't scale down with level so much, or at all.

Misdirect: causes the enemy to search around for hidden combatants until they find one, even if there are any. Search radius affected by wits.

Bamboozle: causes an enemy's grenades to be switched to slices of cheese. The quality of the cheese is affected by wits.

Fluster: If your wits are higher than the target's wits, causes the enemy to mistake you for an ally.

Hypochondria: forces the enemy to chug a potion, any potion, and end their turn. Wits increases the likelihood that the potion has a negative effect.

Vex: disables AI interaction with ladders for a turn. Wits determines if they try to use the stairs or not.

Consternate: causes the enemy to forget its directive, and default to swinging wildly. Good for disabling an enemy's abilities though magic armor. Wits affects whether the enemy is able to target allies or not.

Solopsism: if your wits are higher than the target's intelligence, they enter a trance during which they undergo an existential crisis.

They also need to do something about buffs that increase stats. Even putting points into wit for traps and hidden object becomes useless when you can just pop burn my eyes and gain a whopping +10 wit at lvl 7~. More than enough to find anything hidden. These buffs only scale harder as you level. Encourage, for example, gives so many free stats.

Burn My Eyes works great for this when you have the presence of mind to do it, but it's very slow to do this all the time, so you're still bound to miss something.