Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Magic is weak/needs a buff and here's why.

To be more specific, magic damage dealers are weak and because of that, magic "debuff"ers are also weak. This is all in comparison to their offense counterparts which not only have good mobility and reasonable cc, but also deal alot more damage and scale better into late game. Let me explain.

The most noticeable difference is none of their abilities are affected by weapon damage. This by itself makes their damage output significantly worse and keeps them from applying crucial debuffs. It also makes no sense since wands and stalves are typically considered catalyst for magic and thus should amplify the affect of magic. There's also the factor of dealing with longer cooldowns that their physical counterparts and having less mobility options, and since positioning is so important to having a succesful fight this gives physical classes an upper hand (with Teleport being an exception, unique to only 1 class and an item pick up that can be used with anyone). The other big factor is the prevalence of elemental resistances and how common they are. Since debuffing an enemy relies on getting rid of their magic armor and there's no "lower resistance" spell so far, this gives mages another hurdle to overcome. While there are some special cases where enemies are weak to an element, its rare and requires that you're character has a weapon/spells that can take advantage of that vs where physical damage almost never has anything opposing it.

The exception to this is Necromancy which debuffs based on a lack of physical armor. While this does synergize well with Hydrophist, its primarily taken on physical classes as a secondary option due to the utility of having lifesteal on a heavy damage dealer.

While Teleport is overpowered, this doesn't compare to some of the broken stuff that physical classes have. Adrenaline gives 2 free ap immediately, Skin Graft resets all of your cooldowns (too bad mages don't have this), Snipe doubles you'r damage while sneaking, Mortal Blow does x5 damage while sneaking, Chameleon Cloak is a starting ability that gives invisibility, Overpower gets rid of the enemys physical armor, etc...

Basically, the only usefulness of magic is on a Hybrid build and any Magic only builds are not viable.

I will start off by just pointing out that your entire assumption that mages are weak end game is entirely based upon the first 25% of the game. Hardly a fair point to make.

What? No. Right now mages destroy most fights. I am not sure what you are talking about for debuffers? Necromancy has decaying touch and shackles of pain. They can also cripple everything in a large aoe. They can slow everyone and reduce their ap regen that bypasses magic and physical armor. They apply dots, CC, charm, their utility is insane. I just re read your post and see you acknowledge necromancy's strength.

I will agree with your point about scaling based off of weapon damage. I think they scale better off of stats, but I could be wrong about that. However, I am guessing you have never used a poison mainhand and fire offhand with wands... That combo right there can do insane damage. It causes explosions, takes a %based chunk of an enemies HP AND causes a fire surface. It straight rips through magic armor like it wasn't even there ALL FOR 2 AP.

The cooldowns are longer in some cases. But are usually on par with the physical abilities. Also mages are far stronger in terms of positioning than warriors/rogues, because they don't have to move around the battlefield. Warriors are rogues are actually at a disadvantage than mages because they have to be so close to their enemies that they are in range of friendly fire, and enemies no longer have to waste AP moving to them to attack.

If you have loremaster you can see that a good majority of the physical type enemies have high physical resistances and lower elemental resistances. I feel this is a moot point.

This point is only valid if you assume that a mage can't/won't put a point into polymorph or scoundrel. If you build a strong mage you will absolutely put a point into both of those, to have access to those schools. Nothing in the game prevents you from choosing to do this so I am not sure why you feel like mages can diversify.

Again you are lumping a utility based skill set into a physical only club. Mages can choose this. If you say that a full magic build can't have access to this line of utility skills then you have to say that warriors and rogues can't either. Which doesn't make sense at all. I will absolutely agree with you that mortal blow is flat OP. Like damn... However, mages can make cursed fire, acid surfaces, cursed electrified steam clouds (like seriously OP). They can perma stun/kill entire groups of enemies with Acid Spores + any fire spell.

I will wholeheartedly(sp?) disagree with you on this.

I say this not to sound condescending so please please please don't take it that way. But I feel like you are not building a mage in an efficient way or aren't setting up their combos and CC very well. I think you have a few valid points but you make a lot of untrue assumptions.

25% of the game? Already?

Larian has stated a few times, can't find the source at the moment, that Act 1 is ~25% of the game, Act 2 is ~50%, and Act 3 is ~25%.

There is not much to add to your points.

I was about to start a thread that physical/melee chars are absolute crap in this game because they have to waste ap to move, have few aoe damage, have to cluster near enemies as victims for enemy aoe and frequently cc themselves by the eternal magical surface effects (how stupid are the better melee weapons that frequently deal additional magic damage, above all air damage??), but after reading your post I do not longer dare.

May be they are ok. As mages are.

I wouldn't call magic weak, but it does feel underwhelming.

Um.... :

1) Your point on diversifying kind of backs up the OPs point on needing to in order to get the most out of your build. Also, this can't be considered the same as a physical build, because they always diversify. The point is that a full on physical build has better skills than a magic one..

You might bring up utility, but.....

2) Magic armor makes alot of the utility pointless unless you want to build into the air tree.....which really sucks for feeling forced into and sucks out ability to diversify elsewhere.

3) No, the damage of a mage does NOT come out to be equal to min-maxed physical build. On average, if you're not thinking too hard about it...yeah, both can kill the enemy and you might notice too much difference, but for a power gamer? The gap gets way wide.

You might argue that mages get to attack multiple targets at once vs single target focus of warriors and stuff, but if anything the first game has taught us that it's way more efficient to completely kill one target rather just hurt multiple ones.

This is markedly suppose to be because mages get utility and combos....but again....all that magic armor.

4) Resistances are actually pretty common

All together this tends to make magic builds very.....

...this.

Not nonviable....not weak per se....just not very appealing when you can make a warrior that's easier to spec for higher difficulties with half the effort.

Ideally, different archetypes shouldn't feel that different in funness and power. Thus, i guess, the call for buffs.

EDIT:

Also, 25% is a pretty good snapshot of the game. If the gap between two builds is there at the end of 25% I don't see it closing going forward. Only widening.

The only that wouldn't happen is if there was a few mage centrist skills or items that were unreasonably OP ... which presents the problem of making players than build around them instead of just having fun.

Thanks AJ. This is also due to the uncertainness of damage formulas.

I prefer having Magical damage only scale with level stat and or skill proficiency instead of having the same exact mechanic as fighter.

First I think this is more immersive that casters don't rely on equipment to be efficient (they still need stat bonuses but don't rely on their weapon.), as opposed as Melee who always need to get the best weapon to be at their peak efficiency but chances are you won't change weapon every level so to me it balances out.

If you want a wizard scaling with weapon, you can dual wand (as it has been mentioned above poison+fire) to shred magical armor and then cast your awesome spells. But I am perfectly fine with casters not having spells scaling off weapons.
It also gives you flexibility to switch your wand or staff to different elemental attack without completely screwing your spell damages, because I doubt all your wand would be of equal strength.

Facing skeletons? Damn I have to remove my poison wand for a the fire one which 3 level lower, all your spells loosing effectiveness

So rogues and warriors can diversify, but a mage cannot? That argument doesn't make sense at all. So a warrior can put skills into necromancy, geomancy, air (aeromancy? I can never remember), polymorph, and pyromancy and get a few select fantastic skills, but a mage can not put points into warfare, scoundrel, huntsman, or polymorph? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. ANY character that focuses on one single skill set is going to be weaker than a character diversifies and that has access to more skills. Even an OP elf rogue becomes more powerful when the put points into other skill sets.



And physical armor prevents warriors and rogues from inflicting damage on vitality, it goes both ways. Also you do not need to spec into air just like you don't need to spec heavily into warfare to remove physical armor. To say that magic armor makes utility useless isn't accurate.

In geomancy you can spike a large area cause massive damage, create an oil surface, cripple and slow all enemies inside of that area AND IT BYPASSES ARMOR. If there is any kind of a fire surface nearby you then cause a chain reaction explosion. You can then hit someone with poison dart causing huge poison damage, and another AOE explosion.

In air you have teleport (self explanatory), favorable winds, and netherswap.

In pyromancy you have burn my eyes (probably the best buff in the game), haste (0AP gives you more AP and speed), and if you started your geomancy combo with spikes you can follow it up with combustion and basically nuke everyone.

Necromancy there is blood rain, shackles of pain, and decaying touch (godly), blood sucker

Hydrophist you can heal, rain, freeze everything, large aoe ice damage, Ice Armor (soooo good)

Summoning has.... summoning has.... Im still messing around with summoning I'm feeling pretty underwhelmed by it truthfully. But the totems utility appears underwhelming until you figure out how to position them and creating surfaces. The dimensional bolt is a bit like using Russian roulette magic, it is great for creating a surface to call out your totems and particular pets. The pets have some good utility and if they survive the fights duration are actually one of the best damage/AP abilities in the game. Since most fights are 1 to 2 rounds in classic mode it does feel underpowered.



I disagree. A mage has a different focus than a "min-maxed physical build" typically a warrior/rogue is going to do single target dmg and do very well at it. While a mage is going to do aoe damage and battlefield control. For burst damage I don't think anyone disagrees a rogue has the best single target opener in the game, but that also puts the rogue at risk to be focused by the enemy.



Again, I disagree. The first game taught us especially at higher difficulties it is much more efficient to to control the battlefield and use the enemies against each other, charm, etc. The more enemies you can control or disable the less of a threat the remaining enemies are. I do agree with you about focusing one target than trying to chip away several at a time. But right now in Act 1 you can aoe most groups down to nothing in one turn.

Very true, and so is blunt, slashing, and piercing resistance. There is almost always a weakness however.

It is much easier to build a warrior, or a rogue, requires less thinking and is easier to know where to place your points. And I will concede that on single targets a rogue, or a ranger is probably better. I feel like warriors and mages are similar in single target damage, with a warrior having a slight advantage. But I am also ok with that. There is more risk to a rogue, and a warrior when they are damaging their enemies, and there should be a reward for that risk. Otherwise you wouldn't ever bring a rogue or a warrior.



If you remember the first game each class was strong and weak at different times in the game, so I feel fairly confident in my original statement of saying it is unfair to say mages are weak endgame. We just don't know. Also what is your definition of strong? Each type of character you make will be strong or weak depending on your playstyle and your preference.



I think I understand what you are saying here. Again depends on your playstyle. Your fun is not necessarily the same as my fun. If Larian wants to buff mages, I'm ok with that too. I do feel like rogues will be nerfed on release, and I think Skin Graft is probably going to be a source ability. It is just too good right now.

That isn't true.
So many games have some case where you need a certain skill/trait or whatever to break a certain point in which the build becomes online.