Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Spears and their peculiar posistion

Hello everybody.

This is my first post here. So lets get to it.

I believe that most skills and weapons are balanced out one way or not. However, I do not think that the same can be said about spears / polearms. These seems to be put in a rather peculiar position. One could say an uncomfortable position.

Whilst I believe that most of you know why that is, I will still touch upon why I think so.

Spears and Polearms are Finesse based weapons much like Daggers and cross/bows. This means that spears gains bonus from Finesse. The main problems arise:

1. Spears and polearms relies on the Warfare skills to be effective, that in turn relies on Strenght

2. Daggers and Cross/bows each has their own special set of Finesse based skills which makes them viable. Spears does not have that luxury.

This leaves spears in a vulnerable position as they are worse than other two-handed weapons and lacks synergi with any specific skills.

I think this should be remedied somehow.
One solution could be to make it a strength based weapon. Another solution could be to give Spears their own special skills, which define them better. I mean, Whirvelwind matches a sword better than a spear.
The skills could be more defensively made as Spears and Polearms tend to be more defensive than a sword which is more of an offensive weapon.

Edit: I talked to my brother, whom I play the game with, about this.

One way to make a class around spears could be to keep it in finesse, but instead of Shield Up and All In it could have a Javelin throw.
Further more spears could have other javelin based skills, which makes it somewhat of a hybrid class - naturally with focus on the melee part.

TLDR: Spears are finesse based, but that does not benefit the weapon as all its skills are strength based. Possible solutions in the end.

Pretty sure most warefare skills scale on whatever your weapons scales with. I haven't checked myself but I've seen/read about plenty of people saying that things like whirldwind scales with int when using a staff eg. Should work the same with spear I'd think.

[quote=Elidan]Pretty sure most warefare skills scale on whatever your weapons scales with. I haven't checked myself but I've seen/read about plenty of people saying that things like whirldwind scales with int when using a staff eg. Should work the same with spear I'd think. [/quote]

I might be wrong and works differently, but most of the Warfare skills says "receives bonus from strength".

http://divinityoriginalsin2.wiki.fextralife.com/Battle+Stomp

Warfare skills receive bonus from different attributes, depending on what kind of weapon you're using.

Ignore if the tooltip says strength, it definitely scales from the weapon's attribute, even if it's a staff.

I love spears. Their range has been a huge asset in my latest playthrough, where I'm playing a crit-ranger and a crit-knight as lone-wolves. It's longer than any other two-handed weapon.

Thread title: "Spears and their peculiar position" ... In the dumpster.

Warfare scales off of the scaling of your weapon. If the tool-tip says strength, you're using a one-handed melee weapon or two-handed non-spear/staff. It changes dynamically based off of that alone. Try it, next time you have a chance, you'll see what I'm saying.

Spears are trash and so are staves. I'm currently a warfare staff user on my 2nd Honour mode campaign, because it's just hilarious. Without that, staves are trash.

Not sure why spears and polearms are finesse weapons, these are supposed to be quite large and heavy weapons and, from RP concept, I am not sure how a low strength person can even manage to wield them with any kind of efficiency or precision.

Warefare abilities that im currently using on my rogue are finese based so i guess its viable to make a finess warrior and put a spear on him. With a couple of points into str so he can wear heavy armor (or not) and wits i think you can make something good. It it doesnt work you can always respec. In fact i will give it a try myself!