Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks Wand/Shield vs. Staff for Hydro/Geo Support

Hey folks, bit of a question for the mechanics-wizards here: I'm doing a hydro-geo mage build and I really love the bonus to shield and magic armor I get from using a shield with a wand, but I don't want to lower the numbers of armor/magic armor and perhaps healing I am able to provide to my companions. My question is thus: Do the values of my support spells, specifically spells that add armor or magic shield get effected by the use of a single wand/shield vs. a staff? If so, what is the effect of having two wands? If I wanted to optimize my support caster, do I need to focus on raw damage numbers on a staff, two wands.

Thanks!

If it scales with weapon, it will state right on the skill.

And sadly, spells don't. The difference in staff and shield is that later on, nearly every wand in the game stop giving points in talents. Staff still give them so if you want more damage and more covery, find a staff of your magic type.

Better to just go wand-shield though. Wand-wand gets high ranged basic and allow for easy combo (like fire wand + poison wand) but with a lot of stronger spells unlocked, you probably won't be using that.

Thanks for a quick and informative response, stranger. So - follow up question. For my fiancee who is doing a damage-focused savage-sortiledge human fire mage, would she be gaining the bonus to critical damage from adding points to two handed and using a staff with her spells? By your previous response, I assume the answer is, in fact, no. It seems counter-intuitive, though!

I mean, if that's the case, it frees her up to pick up another tree, perhaps polymorph for points into wits and great mobility, or even huntsman to try to stack +% damage from elevations.

Crit chance and damage works with it. Spell just have their own base damage that doesn't scale with weapon, but with level instead.

You won't really get to add much point into it though as Huntsman is way better in many situation. Only very few encounter really leave you with no way to get highground proc, which is very easy with Tactical retreat + The pawn.

If she really wants to deal damage, I suggest Aero as her 2nd school. Aero has chain lighting and Uncanny dodge will give her insane survivability to go with her staff since she won't have the extra protection from shield.

Just rush the school to level 5 to use the best spell. Huntsman 2 + aero 2 if you want to make the dodge thing an aura (Really good) and choose to either max Pyro first for maximum fire damage or go huntsman every spell will hurt too.

Excellent advice - thanks again. So is there a different set of mechanics for warfare and huntsman, or do those abilities function the same, i.e. no critical hits (maybe w/ savage sortiledge?), damage is set? It seems like those ones function more on weapon damage.. I've even read that you can use staves on warfare builds as long as you're using Int instead of strength and get the full benefit of those skills. Are you able to flesh out those mechanics?

Thanks again for taking the time to read and respond.

Your support character won't ever be using their wands/staff and Geo has some good damage/control spells (oil slow is really good and goes through magic armor) so my suggestion is to slap on a stat focused and and get the best shield you can at all times.

Toss two points into warfare via items or points and get deflection and shield toss. Shields up will restore a ton of shield with both hydro and geo, deflection gives you more bonus physical armor (cap increase too + reflects ranged projectiles) and stacks with fortify, and fortify, well, gives you even more armor.

This ends up making your mage incredibly tanky. In my current game I have an aero/geo mage with shield that wades through combat as if he were in plate because he can get himself to nearly 4k armor and I haven't even decided to memorize bonecage (more bonus armor) yet...

On top of all this reactive armor does high physical damage based on your current armor and shield throw is a 2 turn cool down damage ability that scales with your shield's armor stat... prioritizing my shield over wand it does more damage (almost 1k) than any of my two max point + bonus point school spells and is on a 2 turn cooldown... unlike every other spell ever.

Seriously, just Geo alone makes shield way better than staff or dual wand imo, and geo/hydro would be even more insane imo. Your mage will be the tankiest on the team, trust me, and still do some crazy damage while supporting (both geo and hydro have some good cc like cripple and slow).