Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Warfare and Polymorph things needing a fix

Just a few things I noticed and some ideas about making things better...

First off, warfare.

As we all know, warfare skills change their attribute scaling and damage type with the weapon the character uses, meaning if a character is using a fire staff for example, all warfare skills start doing fire damage and get a bonus from intellect. It's a nice attempt to give players more build options, but as it stands right now, it's just a fail attempt.

Why? because if you try making a 2handed staff magical fighter with warfare investing, the warfare ability passive is useless and not just that, but warfare skills secondary effects require you to drop the enemy PA which is just not happening with your character using a magical weapon.
It's a nice idea, but without enough synergy to be viable.

Solution? Leave warfare as a purely physical ability (str/finesse).

Now, as for polymorph...

Polymorph has some interesting skills and it's bonus of 1 free attribute per level suggests it was designed as an ability tree which could supplement any build - except every damaging skill from polymorph scales with STRENGTH!!! Seriously? Even medusa head which deals magical damage scales with strength...

Polymorph also has some great awesomness/badass potential - we get to fight npc's with a lot of cool (annoying) features like permanent evasion aura, permanent wings etc, but our godwoken character is gimped to having all these things for only a few turns per use (not saying we should have perma evasion aura or anything). If you look at wings, why would you bother with them when it costs 1ap to grow them and another ap to fly somwhere when you can grab tactical retreat from huntsman which repositions you for just 1ap AND gives you haste at the same time, or even use cloak and dagger? Sure, those two have much longer cooldowns, but still...

Why not make all morphs cost 0ap to cast like the bull head cost already is and make them permanent after casting so we can just toggle them on or off and make them overwrite one another since none of them are compatible with each other? Any tweaks needed after making morphs permanent (if any are actually needed) are not really rocket science to figure out.

Polymorph could really use some love - maybe make it's damaging abilities scale with all 3 main damage attributes to make it properly synergise with all builds? Because right now, polymorph has some interesting skills, but all in all feels just not worth investing into beyond 2-3 points just to grab a few useful utility skills here and there.

Yea Polymorph needs to scale like Warfare with Str/Fin/Int utility. Or every skill needs to be looked over and given the appropriate bonus scale depending on what resists it.

Medusa's Head in particular, Str scale, magical damage... lol what? I like the option on my Knight for this skill, but Warfare tree style scaling would be so much better.

I believe that Medusa Head scaling with Str is totally intended design. Much like how Chloroform scales with Fin, and Necromancy scales with Int.

We actually need more skills that have hybrid scaling to make hybrid party better, rather than restricting all physical to Str/Fin and all magical to Int. Pure phy/mag damage party is strong enough as it is.

Medusa head is a reward for players who make a good mixed physical/magical party (yes, it is very possible and viable if it's thoughtfully planned).

Btw, I just found a new mod in steam workshop that gives you the option to toggle on and off polymorph wings and bull horns. Sounds promising.

disagree with warfare...since i would like to play staff warrior on my next turn.
physical CC means nothing, since I could use warfare skill and then use any of magic to make CC

I've looked at some other threads on this forum and the word "hybrid" tends to pop up quite often. However, I haven't seen a single post whose author actually understood the meaning of the word (not trying to be condescending or anything).

Thing is, as it stands now, the only DOS2 skills that could be considered somewhat hybrid-ish are skills that scale with just char level and/or char level+their related ability.

A skill could be considered a hybrid only if it scaled with at least 2 separate attributes AT THE SAME TIME, which is not the case here. If we had that, then playing a class that for example invests equally into strength and intellect wouldn't feel like you've wasted half of your attributes. Such true hybrid skills would actually make people want to play a hybrid class for their combat performance instead of just role playing value.

And, July_chang, my argument about warfare with a staff...you just kinda confirmed it - see, warfare right now is nothing but a fail bait because it's scaling depends on the weapon type. So people get fooled into thinking it's the way to go to make a magical beat-stick character, but what you've failed to notice is that warfare ability gives you 5% extra PHYSICAL damage done per level invested into it, which is completely useless for the magical beat stick build.

So to build a magical beat stick char, you have to max out 2handed ability and one magic ability (aerotheurge for example) and then pray to the RNGesus to give you a usable staff of the same magical element so that the weapon actually benefits from your points invested into a magical ability. And spend what remaining points you have for grabbing more magical utility - I don't know what is the achievable max char level in the game at the moment so I'm working under the assumption you can max out 2 abilities (20 points) and that you are left with 5-6 points after that - someone correct me if I'm wrong! Lone wolf characters are different for obvious reasons as they have a lot more leeway in their builds.

You argue that magical warfare is a noob trap because the warfare bonus for physical damage is useless for magical users.

Ok, so what about physical attackers who put points into Pyro to access Haste and Clear Mind? The bonus fire damage is useless too! And what about people who put 2 points to Aero just for teleport?

I guess Pyro and Aero for physical users are also noob traps and should be changed.

Yeah, you're somewhat right.

I went under the assumption that the idea was to spend 3-5 points in warfare to get everything rather than just spending 2 points to grab some skills and leaving it at that.

Either way, investing into a second magical ability tree after maxing 2handed would be far more beneficial because you are bound to come across an encounter where enemies are immune to your current/preferred/invested school of magic (god forbid you went for poison as your main element), where warfare investment would leave you with some non bonused warfare skills of a different element when you swap to a different staff.

My main point remains, it's obvious the devs wanted to give us options to make some interesting non-standard builds, but the potential synergy of different abilities and their attribute scalings is just sub par compared to some more traditional builds.

In the early stage of development I had noticed for every point invested in warfare there is a 5% bonus for Physical Armour Damage and for every point invested in Aero skill there is a 5% bonus for Magical Armour damage. It was shunned in the later stage. It was bit overpowering and but it will synergise with those playstyles where you want to wield a staff and invest some points in warfare simultaneously or want to wield a sword with aero skills. The bonus of 5% can be reduced to 3% per point invested.

Actually warfare isnt bad for a beatstick mage because it increases necro spell dmg. Warfare also give u Blitz and Phoenix dive wich are great to get in and use ur CQ spells. Started a lonewolf playthrough earlier today with a friend both playing undead beatstick mage and warfare+necro+geo and the living armour talent is just brutal. When we get higher and can get some crit gear and hothead and savage perk aswell as spells like earthquake and posion wave its going to get even more fun. Also as undead ur contamination spell will hit u aswell with a heal ontop of the necro bonus from all enemies hit u will be regening magic armour like mad.

Necro only has 3 direct damage skills not counting source skills and all 3 of them are single target skills. And if you are playing a beat stick mage, all of your damage is magical anyway so I don't know where you see warfare's usefulness in buffing necro (physical) damage.

As I mentioned before, lone wolf doesn't count.

You get double ability points and double attribute points (among other things) which basically allows you to do almost anything and still bulldoze through the game content (your necro life leech/living armour/geomancy build to outlast your enemies sounds somewhat interesting).



I had a look at game mods and there is a fair amount of those that are quite promising. Not only you already have permanent toggleable polymorph morphs (medusa head excluded for balance reasons), but you also have a mod for physical staves and wands as well as a mod that makes maces and clubs intellect based.

All of these are amazing game changers when it comes to planning your builds and they fix a ton of current build issues. I'd recommend those to everyone!

Lonewolf is the only way ive ever played DoS1 and DoS2 so its all i know. Lonewolf is stronger now then it was in DoS1 tho for sure.

I use physical dmg spells on enemies with high magical armour so i can CC them with warfare abilitys. The build is very fun u should try it, id use a 1h INT weapon and shield if there was a melee version for it (not using mods).

Sry for derailing a bit here just wanted to reply to ur post =)

In the Beta,Poly also used to scale based on the type of weapon you have equiped and it upsets me quite a bit to see that poly spells are now locked into str, but thematicaly it makes sense....you are using your transmuted body to attack,not the weapons.