Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Help the new guy with his build?

I haven't done more than looked at the character creation screen, but this weekend I will begin playing, so I've started planning my character, but I have no idea what I'm doing really.

My plan is to make a dark knight'ish type of character. The plan is to go melee with Two-Handed Weapons and really go offensive with a lot of Str/Wit for Dmg/Crit, and combine this with Necromancer to gain sustain through life steal. I will play multiplayer with two other guys, so no Lone Wolf.

I will start out with Warfare/Necromancer. Later I will pick up Two-Handed Weapons and Polymorph. I will pump most points into Warfare quickly to gain a damage boost, and put some points into Necromancer to gain life steal, blood drain, and to create blood. Polymorph will be added at some point since this seems to go well with a physical based character to add some utility. These four skills will be my primary focuses.

Other than general feedback on the viability of this build, I do have some specific questions as well, that I hope someone knowledgeable can answer:

1) Since I'm going very offensive, I want to choose Human for the crit chance. However, Fane is undead and has the same crit chance bonus. I'm thinking since undead don't bleed, the Leech talent will lose a lot of its value. However, I will be able to heal from any poison based attacks instead. This, combined with leech, would mean that both blood AND poison would heal me. This leads me to believe that playing Fane would be the best choice. Which race is better, really? Am I missing something important?

2) Will I be able to sustain myself enough from the passive Necromancer life drain? How much does the drain % increase as you put more points in it? It seems to start at 10% but I don't know how much each additional point will give me.

3) Is Retribution worth it? Will Necromancer heal me from damage caused by Retribution?

4) I haven't been able to find any information about armor. Are there armor types in this game such as cloth/leather/plate? Will I gimp my damage if I decide to go offensive while wearing plate? I'm thinking Overpower would be a good skill to combine high armored plate with an offensive play style and Necromancer, since getting that armor down quick and easy allows me to steal life. Am I missing something important when it comes to armor?

5) Any other tips or advice?

It sounds like you have a solid plan already but I will try to offer some tips. Either you did not mention or I missed which difficulty you plan to play so I will assume tactician.

1) Keep in mind that your enemies and your allies will bleed (if not undead of course). If you go the undead route you could make use of a skill that allows you to create blood surfaces. However, once the build is up and running you could just simply attack to regain substantial health so it's definitely not required. Creating a blood surface would allow you to perform a clutch heal or heal when you cannot attack an enemy. And it's a very low investment skill so I don't see why I wouldn't use it personally (mostly because it's very useful in the worst situations).

Choose the race that best suits your characters theme IMHO. You will not struggle because of your race choice. I would only remind you that undead characters are damaged by healing spells from both allies and enemies. However, the up side is that if your enemies are using healing on you that's less healing available to your enemies. Just something to keep in mind, you will be fine no matter which race you choose.

2) Combat skills cap out at 10 (not including bonuses from gear). The leech from Necromancer increases at a linear 10% per level. As far as sustain the build is definitely viable but like any build it takes time and effort to reach that point.

3) IMHO Retribution will be wasted points with 1 or more allies by your side. You simply don't get hit enough to make the point investment worth it. If you play solo you can get a nice return when you are fighting 4+ enemies but even then it's usually split damage being returned (if you have say 2 physical and 2 magic enemies attacking you). If you have a character who can do both physical damage and magical damage you can take advantage of this but if you do purely physical damage the return is lower. You could argue that even solo there are better investments (and there are if you go strictly by the numbers). You will get a much better return by investing in your direct damage (and thus your self-healing) such as two-handed or even better Warfare. Keep in mind that two-handed damage increases additively and that Warfare damage increases multiplicatively (as denoted by the tooltips).

No, you will not heal from Retribution damage. Retribution caps out at 50% (not including gear bonuses).

4) There are multiple armor types like you mentioned and they each offer differing ratios of physical armor to magical armor. You can wear whichever armor you choose with no penalty but keep in mind the synergies with your Combat abilities and skills that you choose to use. For example, points into Geomancer will increase the amount of armor restored to your character via skills and potions (only your skills and potions mind you).

If, for example, you wear armor that is heavy on the physical armor, it may be prudent to have yourself or someone in the party buffing your magical armor which would be your weakness. The various status ailments and debuffs can only apply when your physical armor or magical armor is depleted. Sometimes this is ok, sometimes it means you get stunned/frozen/etc. to death. Plan accordingly.

Overpower would be useful for a heavy physical armor character. It is not the only skill available for this type of character either. There is a popular option in the Geomancy skill tree.


5) You seem to have thought your character through well enough that you could easily have a lot of fun and just adapt as you go. Play the game and have fun!

Thank you so much. Those are some very thorough answers.

I believe I will go with Fane. I feel the advantage of being healed by poison is more valuable than not being able to bleed (although I'm not sure just how valuable that is though).

Regarding Geomancy, aren't those skills going to be incredibly weak without Intelligence?

Geomancy and Hydrosophist on a Warfare char are above all for armor renewal. Intelligence here is not of great help, points in Geo and Hydro count more. It is important to have skills which give you physical and magical armor back, more important than skills to heal. For a support you need both of course. Maybe one of your colleagues has Hydro and Geo, but I like to have armor renewal on two chars and a healing/anti-CC spell on any char. It would however fit better on a char with shield.

I have a onehanded/shield warrior with Warfare/Geo/Hydro/Poly and a two-handed warrior with Warfare/Necro. For the latter, I have to admit that Necro as the combi is an intriguing idea, but I do not use it much. The amount of healing from damage is not that decisive. You can raise a Bone Widow or a Bloated Corpse (good skill, just 1 ap) to have another source of damage and you can explode the Bloated Corpse to create a big blood surface to heal (a lot) with Blood Sucker, if you do not want to add Hydro for Blood Rain. And you can use Moskito Swarm as a ranged skill which also heals.

But usually you deal damage and fights are quite often over so soon that you could get rid of Necro without even that much a loss.

Same for Polymorph, it's not that important. I used Chicken Claw one time till lvl 17, as far as I remember. The most used spell is Tentacle Lash if the range is too great for a melee hit. Tactical Retreat or Cloak and Dagger are better in my opinion than Spread Your Wings (although you can use the latter skill in several turns), and with points in Scroundrel you can get The Pawn as talent. I cannot count the fights in which my melee was 3 ap away to hit. With The Pawn (free 1 ap movement) I could have hit with two skills. It cannot however be used together with Executioner, so you have to choose.

Your decisison to put points into Warfare first is a wise one. School abilities are multiplicative while weapon abilities are only additive. So you get more from a point in Warfare then a point in two-handed.

I would only advice to take Fane (or any other origin) if one in your group uses a custom character. Firstly, undeads are ugly as hell. But maybe less subjective, a custom char has Dome of Protection as 1 point source skill, and that skill is glorious, as it gives your party big numbers of both physical and magical armor back for three turns.

Thank you. Good advice!

Now I'm unsure again which race I should go with. Maybe a custom undead would be best then?

I see that the Living Armor talent restores Magic Armor when healing. Would this work with Necromancer? I.e. could I hit things and restore both Vitality and Magic Armor through the Necromancer healing?

Regarding Bloated Corpse. Wouldn't this require Summoner to scale, since you summon something? Wouldn't it also scale with Intelligence? Not sure if it would be very good on a Strength based character without Summoner.

Finally, how many points do you get to spend? I will probably run very thin with Warfare, Necromancer, Two-Handed and Polymorph as well as a point or two into Hydrosophist, Geomancer and Scoundrel. I do see the usefulness of unlocking the abilities though, but I don't want to gimp myself by spreading too thin.

Sorry for so many questions but I like to perfect my characters as much as possible and making mistakes will only make me want to restart.