Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Tactician mode feels busted

I am sorry if I am missing it but is this sarcasm?

If the above mentions of increased HP/Armor, initiative and Damage are true the 2 games could not be further apart.

Numbers you mention have doubled and if that's not different enough you factor in the fact that they hit like a train and act as if they had 5 more wits (base) without having to sacrifice damage, action points, or defense. And icing on the cake due to their 100% CC immunity armor (now 50% more of it) you cant CC them to thin numbers.

I am missing specifics but what has been described so far is nowhere in the same realm.

I have already added correction in my later posts. Wit wasn't really buffed, they just outright change how initiative work and make sure it works in rotation now so even if your team goes full wit, you will have to act in you-enemy-you-enemy order from highest ini member to lowest.

And of course this works heavily into the enemy favour because they are guaranteed to be able to deal heavy +50% damage with that tactician buff without having to sacrifice any points into wit. You will have to exploit this the same way they do now (Only one high wit to get your party going first, the rest spec into pure damage because they will get to act anyway so they can break those armor right on their turn)

I'm not saying that there is absolutely no room whatsoever for stat boosts on higher difficulties... but 50% is a hell of a lot larger than 20%. You also conveniently neglect to mention the +50% bonuses enemies get to physical/magical defense on top of the health buff, AND the +50% extra damage enemies do.

There were also a lot more obvious changes to encounters in D:OS 1 EE so the stat changes seemed less like the only real change.

So YES, it DOES sound different than D:OS 1. But thanks for the strawman argument.

The problem is much bigger in this case due to the radical changes of how armor mechanics function.

That has to be taken in consideration.

They changed so much coming from the first game. Most things feel pretty odd. Skills who were normal in the first now need source and other are now innate, Armor instead of Body Building/Willpower/Damage reduction, attributes that offer no real synergy therefore making mixed attribute skilltrees like scoundrel not fully effective, turning leadership into useless garbage, changing how AP work,... and probably other stuff.

That is much better, that could be the single easiest way to dominate in DOS1. IS the you-enemy-you-emeny chain set for all modes or just tactician? To me this is the way to do it.

I've been enjoying Tactician.

The big change I noticed is that my characters could be killed more easily, so how one approaches a fight and being able to kill enemies quickly is more important.

Sometimes enemies would have a new ability too, like the Immunity to Water aura on the Fire Slug Queen, although maybe any enemy buffs I noted may just be due to the patch and not Tactician exclusive, I can't say for sure.

It didn't seem hard to me and my playgroup, but we have played a lot in EA and are very familiar with the mechanics, fights, secrets, etc.

I also avoided Wits entirely. With no investment we still acted alongside the enemy but we were a lot stronger than Wits-stacking characters would be. I didn't know Wits had received such a big change since the EA, but this worked for us.

Of note, the entire team was based around physical damage, which is performing well in the current patch.

Simple stat inflation is a boring way to make content harder, but I would be very disappointed if Tactician mode was made easier. It doesn't seem like only a stat increase occurred here though.

The main problem is, that is not what we expected from Tactician mode? We expected fights with tweaks, fight that are a bit different than in classic and not fights with bloated stats like in old brawler games.

Sneak has early been nerfed into the ground it now costs 4 AP to use it in combat making in useless.

Has there been a definitive answer that Tactician mode doesn't affect AI or mobs?
It alludes that it does when you pick the option in game.

Here's what the difficulty settings do:

DOS2

EASY:

new entry "CasualPlayer"
type "Character"
data "ArmorBoost" "30"
data "MagicArmorBoost" "30"
data "Vitality" "50"
data "DamageBoost" "50"
data "Accuracy" "5"
data "Dodge" "5"

new entry "CasualNPC"
type "Character"
data "ArmorBoost" "-50"
data "MagicArmorBoost" "-50"
data "Vitality" "-40"
data "DamageBoost" "-50"
data "Accuracy" "-15"



NORMAL:

new entry "NormalPlayer"
type "Character"

new entry "NormalNPC"
type "Character"



HARD:

new entry "HardcorePlayer"
type "Character"

new entry "HardcoreNPC"
type "Character"
data "ArmorBoost" "50"
data "MagicArmorBoost" "50"
data "Vitality" "50"
data "DamageBoost" "50"
data "Accuracy" "10"



DOS EE Settings:

EASY:

new entry "CasualPlayer"
type "Character"
data "Vitality" "80"
data "ChanceToHitBoost" "30"


new entry "CasualNPC"
type "Character"
data "Vitality" "-50"
data "ChanceToHitBoost" "-25"


NORMAL:

new entry "NormalPlayer"
type "Character"
data "Vitality" "15"

new entry "NormalNPC"
type "Character"


HARD:

new entry "HardcorePlayer"
type "Character"


new entry "HardcoreNPC"
type "Character"
data "Vitality" "20"
data "ChanceToHitBoost" "20"

Well, they're not wrong that it changes the AI if they get new skills to toy with and that the extra damage make them to take certain action instead. After all, most games do not have specific AI for every character, they just use the same generic AI that make them take certain action if they have X health, Y damage or Z skill in a pattern.

And from the look at how they try everything they can to avoid the oil puddle I set pre-fight to perma slow all of them and how often it cause them to just cancel their turn, I say that's the case.

If anyone wants to kick this into action, it works the same as DOS:EE.

You can download the extracted Character.txt file here:
http://www.filedropper.com/character

Edit it with Notepad or Notepad ++ variant. See post above for area to modify, for example:
new entry "HardcoreNPC" section

Save it here: You will need to create a few sub directories
..\Divinity Original Sin 2\Data\Public\Shared\Stats\Generated\Data

Start the game, there will be a warning about a modified version, run it and you can see the changes in Vitality for example using before/after.

If there was some type of consensus with the settings, it would be easy enough to re-pak it and make it an "official" mod.

I didn't play the EA at all, so I have no frame on context about Tactician mode. I chose to play it here it because D:OS EE became boring on Classic at mid levels and onward, and even on Tactician a little later. I've tried to keep the spoilers really low so there will still be some challenge in the game as I go. I've even made my group roughly 2x physical 2x magic as well, with very little overlap in abilities. So all that said, I really hope I don't screw myself and have to start over. So far @ level 4 I've just found I need to fight things my level or lower.

I've been playing DOS2's tactician mode for 15-20 hours. I've been browsing the Larian/Steam forums every now and then while I was playing and I've seen plenty of people complain about the difficulty mode. I didn't pay too much attention to the complaints as I was doing relatively fine myself, but now I find myself getting less excited every time I get into a new fight.
At first I could live with enemies being significantly stronger than in the early access version. I mean, it is to be expected considering I'm playing on a higher difficulty mode, but now I've reached the point where I feel the damage numbers simply are overinflated to the point where it adds nothing but tedium to the encounters.

I've played and beat DOSEE's tactician mode multiple times and honour mode a single team, trying out a new party setup every playthrough. While I don't personally considering D:OS1's skill schools too balanced it was still possible to get through the game with almost any setup or build.
In DOS2 I decided to go in with the same party setup I beat the early access version with: a 2h melee warrior, a scoundrel, a huntsman with supplementary hydro/aero magic and a geo/pyro/aero magic user. Now, a couple of hours into act 2 I've had to rebuild the latter two into pure physical damage dealers and I've had to give healing and magic/physical armour restoration spells to almost all four of my characters. In my most recent fight I came across a level 10 void enemy that dealt 400 damage with its basic attacks. Most of my characters have around 500 health and between 50 and 150 physical armour. I spend most of the fight replenishing my warrior and occasionally my scoundrel's health and both armour types because they were the only ones capable of actually dealing sufficient damage against the monster. Even though I kept the boss stunned as much as I possibly could it was also accompanied by five (?) lesser enemies that each could two-hit my characters' armour and constantly stun/curse them.
In the act 1 fight again Alexander half of my party members would frequently go from having 100% of either their physical or magic armour up to losing half of their health to a single attack because the damage is so absurdly inflated that no armour can keep up with it unless you spend at least 2 out of 4 AP every turn replenishing your own armour.

I haven't been a huge fan of DOS2's armour system ever since I first discovered it, but during the EA version I could live with its restrictions and rules because they also applied to the enemies. Sure, they could break my armour and turn me into a pincushion, but I could do the exact same to them. On tactician mode I can hardly leave a dent in their armour before they (with a single spell) has depleted my armour and half of my health. The worst part is that even if I do manage to break down their armour I still have to rely on a lucky dice roll to determine if I end up dealing damage to them.
Even though the game says I have a 90% chance to hit the enemy it feels a lot more like 50% - I thought the entire idea behind the new armour system was to remove the uncertainty and RNG-based nature behind attacks and status effects?

DOS1EE's tactician mode did at certain times increase the difficulty in questionable ways, namely by adding elemental immunities to some encounters, creating additional enemy spawns and giving the enemies increased initiative. Some of those were annoying at times but at least they actually added something new to the encounters. So far in DOS2 they've just made the enemies hit harder. I'm pretty sure I can count the amount of encounters where tactician mode actually added something new [when compared to the early access classic mode version] on a single hand. My approach to most of the fights is the exact same as it was during the beta, except this time I spend more time buffing myself because the enemies get the luxury of ignoring my armour because of their increased damage.

I can't even bring a token mage anymore because it's ten times more efficient to simply stack one armour type. Furthermore half of the stats seem to have been either changed or dumped down. Initiative/Wits is seemingly completely pointless because the combat turns are decided differently (?) now. Many of the skill bonuses have been changed to plain 5% damage increases, removing the potential depth the older stats had.

Considering Larian claim(ed) to be 'reading it all' based on a sticky on this part of the forums it confuses me that Tactician mode was allowed to be shipped in this state, especially considering the numerous complaints about the armour, stats system and a lot more.

Seems to me they could instantly fix it by setting the boost numbers to 20% (like EE). I would assume HardcoreNPC is the AI flag, if that actually changes AI.

Wonder why they decided to crank up everything by 50% instead of EE's 20%. Some players (like me) have to play on the hardest difficulties, but currently finding it a chore as I get near the end of Act One.

tactician mode should have been delayed until a bit after release. the reason OS1 had a good tactician mode is because they were able to study the fights enough and tune them to be difficult in a fair way. that isn't the case here.

That does not fix the issue in slightest. Fights in Tactician should be different, not only harder in numbers. Fights in Tactician were different, not always that much, but here and there more than enough. Just increasing the stats does make it harder, but not more tactician, at least not in the way as we expected it.

I'm a big fan of a good challenge but it's sounding like I'm gonna want to restart my playthrough right now to classic and just enjoy the story and familiarize with the skills. I'm still in act 1 and am not struggling much, but I'm getting the feeling that i'm just not going to have fun after act 1.

Throwback to diablo 3 release act 2 on inferno, lmao.

A this point, the most "Tactical" approach in this mode now is to oil every possible surface to block the enemy route before you begins any fight. It's amazing how it can completely bug and forces enemy to end their turn after using one or two ranged attack. If they're melee with a ranged attack/spell, they just stop the turn right after using their ranged attacks like Knilles just using Mosquito swarm and stopping the movement entirely because there's an oil field in front of him.

Tactician mode is unbalanced, at the early levels specifically. The difference in armor and damage levels mean the AI can CC our party left and right when we are still trying to have any effect. There is nothing tactical about that it just means half our skills do nothing but damage which is retardedly low when compared to enemies with armor levels equal to our characters total health.

The outnumbered fights can be done, but the houdmaster and arena fights are idiotic. It takes multiple rounds of the whole party just to get through armor while one hit takes out our armor and they can then CC away.

DOS Tactician is difficult but it is indeed tactical with it being more mobs, but with just buffs with DOS2's armor mechanic its stupid and frustrating.