Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback More synergy between physical and magical schools

One of the reasons why people find full physical/ magical teams better than mixed team is because it's just way more efficient at focusing on a single armour type.

However, I believe the current armour system is fine. Full physical/ magical teams should be powerful, but at the cost of less efficiency.

The fix to improve mixed physical/ magical teams is to increase efficiency of mixing the 2 types of damage. Physical skill schools should contribute something to magical schools, and vice versa.

How physical schools can contribute to magical right now:
1. Weapons with bonus elemental damage
2. Skills that target magical armour but scales off physical attributes (Chloroform)
3. Elemental ranger bonus damage
4. Piercing damage that ignores armour type. Can finish off enemies that are almost killed by magic.

How magical schools can contribute to physical right now:
1. Skills that target physical armour but scales off int. (Necromancy)
2. Skills that have bonus effects based on physical armour (Cripple effect from Earth spells)

My suggestion is to increase the synergy between physical/ magical schools, like this:

1. Some scoundrel skills (e.g. Throwing knives) should provide small bonus damage to magical armour. To fit the shadowblade archetype. Scoundrel should remain the only school that can destroy magical armour but not doing magic damage.

2. Similarly, hunter skills should give a small piercing damage. To benefit the wayfarer archetype, hunter should be the king of doing direct vitality damage so wayfarer can target whatever armour he wants. Elemental ranger could use a slight buff as well, maybe somewhere around 40% of original damage as bonus elemental damage.

3. Warfare skills are fine because the damage types are based on weapons. Make weapons with elemental bonus more common will be good.

4. Chicken from polymorph should check with magic armour instead of physical.

5. Some spells that have physical components, such as fossil strike and hail attack, should destroy a small amount of physical armour as bonus (NOT replacing the elemental damage).

6. Summons should do physical damage, with bonus elemental damage based on summon types. Except totems that are obviously shooting magical projectiles.

With these improvements, you can expect that mixed physical/ magical teams will have a higher efficiency in taking down both armour types. On the other hand, full physical/ magical team will be more powerful and faster in taking down certain armour type, at the cost of wasted efficiency (wasted elemental bonus from weapons, wasted magical armour destruction from scoundrels, wasted spells that work on physical armour, etc.)

I don't have the energy to think about all that right now, but I'll disagree with point 6. The great thing about totems and summons is that you can make either physical or magical damage summons. Summon on blood or no-surface, and you get a pure physical damage dealer. Summon on an elemental surface and you get a pure magical damage dealer. You can already pick which armor type you want to focus on, changing elemental summons to physical with minor magic would make Summoners less flexible, not more.

Reply to your suggestions
1. So basically you want the scoundrel/rogue archetype to become this mix between physical and magical. As someone with a skewed opinion on the archetypes strength i'd find it slightly annoying because it removes alot of the value from crits.
2. This i agree with since the huntsman skill gives +5% highground and elemental arrows damage it works perfectly for dealing with both magical and physical.
3. At least 30% of the bows/crossbows i come across have elemental damage attached to them so im unsure on this
4. Hm i feel making it magical armor is slightly more advantageous for the skill because a mage with range would have an easier time chasing down the fleeing chicken than a melee fighter.
5. Whilst making a change like that is something i agree with such a thing may spawn a viable physical damage based mage.
6. totems are fine as they are since you can choose/build around certain elemental totems.

Until the melee / ranger characters start getting elemental damage weapons which is later in, I thought there was little to no synergy but around level 5 you start to see more.
As for Vitality damage its kind of crazy to ignore armors completely.

Rain of Blood does need to do Physical Armor damage for bleed check. Like chloroform does magic armor damage.
The Touch spells should do extra damage based on the weapon you are using.

Might as well just merge the 2 armor and become 1. Solves the issue.

I actually kinda like the idea of only one armor type, but in theory all equipment would need to give more armor to compensate (though not a LOT mroe armor.)

Could also supply a damage bonus against enemies who have both armors depleted.

IMO the best solution is just having encounters that punish you for devoting too heavily to one side or the other. Not to say they are impossible, just much more difficult. It rewards the player for building a well rounded team without pushing specialized teams off the table. The easiest way to do that is to simply give certain enemies (where appropriate) percentage mitigation against specific damage types or simply magic/physical. I generally don't recommend immunities, but for very specific instances, such as single element immunity, it might also be okay.

thats hard for the physical side of things since there is only two statuses that matter (knocked down and crippled). Easiest solution is to make the physical armor numbers so high its hard to even apply such statuses. Ofc a fight like this would provide incentive to play mages and a fight with opposite conditions would do the same. Only classes that are properly able to counteract this (i.e. a non-hybrid class) are rogue and ranger whom have a good variety of damage.

edit: tl;dr larian will have to work hard to give incentive to not play into one armor type whilst not making rogue and ranger op.

Do they? Is it?

I cant seem to see that same logic and i make sure my characters have a good amount of both, just more of one type depending on what role in a fight they will serve.

While my scoundrels have a mostly balanced mix.

I do play hybrid builds so maybe specialists approach that differently, although i dont see how that would be so useful or preferable.


As for armors themselves, i already suggested so im just repeating here - their defenses should be percentage based.

So some amount of damage to vitality should go through the moment each armor is not at 100%.
Just like elemental damage functions now.

While hard CC effects should be made softer for normal hits - while their hard CC effects should be kept for critical success strikes and hits.

It does enable you to ignore one pool of armor which is meaningful, but I don't think it's as big of a problem as it is being made out to be.

I dont see much point in ignoring one armor since that just leaves that character completely unprotected from opposite hard CC status effects. And besides, most gear has both so its easy to mix.

Enemies that have just one armor are the easiest to kill too.

They are talking about for offense, not defense. When attacking, chewing through only one of the armor pools rather than both is beneficial.

Yea he means you build your entire team around either physical DAMAGE or magic.

which makes complete sense in with the current Armor system. no point wasting damage on both Armour types.

Idk how they are going to fix the armor problem with the current system as it rewards dimensional play.

Ok, yeah, thats mostly true. Although it would be possible to ruin that kind of approach with encounters designed to account for it.

They can solve the armor by making armor work as percentage based Damage Reduction.
Just like elemental resistances work now.

And by differentiating status effects into softer CC and very rare critical success hard CC.

They should add a stat that applies similarly to physical damage rather than changing armor. Something like "Physical Resistance" would suffice to keep it simple and obvious.

This is actually quite a nice, simple idea. Not the only solution, but rewards taking down both armors. Not sure what the number would be, maybe 20% reduced resistances. Most of the time enemies who've lost both armors die really fast anyway, but this would make it even faster if you've gone to the effort to deplete both armors.

Yeah, that does sound like an interesting idea.