Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks Confused about Rogue build

So I want to play Rogue. A nasty backstabber dealing a lot of damage. I have been looking for Guides / forums on the internet they talk about the optimal build.

I understand there is no single build that is by far the best, but I'm confused.

Some People say I should max finesse. Others say I should max dual wield.

Some People say maxing Warfare is the way to go, others say scoundrel.

So what is your opinion ? I was thinking of getting 2 Poly / 2 Huntsman / 2 Warfare for CC / mobility and the rest in scoundrel and max finesse. But now I have no idea what to do ... Is it true that Warfare is better for damage output than finesse / duel wield ??

I've read Often that dual wield is inferior for damage output to the ones mentioned above. Then what is the Point of getting it at all ?

Thx for the help

For Attributes, Rogues should pump Finesse.
In terms of Abilities:

- Scoundrel should go to at least 2-5 for skills (it depends on whether the Level 3 and 5 Scoundrel Skill sound appealing to you). More points into Scoundrel will boost movement and your Critical damage from backstabbing.
- Warfare will boost all of the Rogue's physical damage, even the non-backstabbing components.
- Dual Wielding will boost their chance to dodge Physical attacks in addition to adding damage. It doesn't take much to get dodge change up to 50% or more, although it will require more shopping for gear.

Dodge-based Rogues are better if your character is a Dwarf, because Dwarves get a free 10% more Health and a free +5% chance to dodge.

Only daggers can backstab, and daggers are Finesse weapons, so naturally you want to bump up your Finesse if you want to run a backstabbing rogue build.

I'm not an expert on builds, but I'm going to tell you what I know. Among Warfare, Scoundrel, and Dual-Wielding, they all contribute to the damage output of a dual-wield rogue build. Dual-Wielding also increases your Dodge chance, so some people would invest in this ability when they want to run a Dodge build. If you're not doing that, it's probably not what you want to invest the most in. The consensus is that Warfare is THE one ability to rule them all as far as physical damage is concerned, due to the way the damage is calculated. If you're simply relying on basic attacks, then Warfare is the way to go, naturally. Scoundrel, on the other hand, increases your critical multiplier. So if you rely a lot on critical hits, Scoundrel would be good for you.

Since the signature of the backstabbing rogue build is to backstab and rely on critical hits, Scoundrel is the ability that would give you the sense of playing this particular kind of build. Now let's say you critical hit with every hit, and you have 12 points to spend in total. Then what is the difference between 10 Scoundrel 2 Warfare and 2 Scoundrel 10 Warfare - I don't know. You'd need to experiment yourself later in the game to know for sure. Of course, you need Scoundrel to use Scoundrel skills, and tier 3 skills require 3 Scoundrel.

As a reference, my assassin Sebille does 1003/503 damage when backstabbing with basic attacks with 5 Dual-Wielding, 14 Scoundrel, and 1 Warfare. She does 1133/564 damage with 5 Dual Wielding, 4 Scoundrel, and 11 Warfare. Tested on a naked Red Prince. So yeah, I guess Warfare does look like the one ability to rule them all. But then, as I said, Scoundrel is what gives me the feel of playing an assassin.

If you play rogue you will also need Polymorph for skills like Chameleon cloak. Spread your wings is probably nice to for more mobility.

Early one though playing backstabbing rogue will be probably pretty suicidal, probably should bow or crossbow at first, depending on difficulty.

Though not sure if scoundrel is such a damage machine, we used our rogue mainly as a jack of all trades. Archer out damage him by far, so most times he made early damage burst and went invis and later on helped keeping enemies down by applying knock down and finish them off too by backstabbing them.

I loved to play Scoundrel-Aerothurg in the first, but that got sadly totally ruined.

I played as a Scoundrel-Aerothurge for my Avatar. I called that variant the "Position Master" Rogue - using Netherswap, Teleport, Uncanny Evasion, Favorable Wind (early game).

There are also a few other Aero skills situationaly useful for a Rogue:
Smoke Cover could sometimes be helpful, Erratic Wisp I never really used but is theoretically helpful, Pressure Spike and Vaporize could be used sometimes to deal with certain surfaces or clouds (usually out of combat, though).

I find it awful that invisible is not in a rogue build

Very late to this thread, but all I can say is that I guess it matters what character you're using for your Rogue. My Fane Rogue was ridiculous, and early on it wasn't suicidal at all. Not only did he not have any mobility issues (with just Backlash, but there was also Cloak and Dagger and Adrenaline for early one-shots), but he could also "Fane Death" and not have to worry much at all about retaliation.

Other than that, it's sad to hear that Archers haven't changed much since I last played in November. They were easily the most dominant source of damage by far, and the game was already heavily skewed in favor of physical skills anyway.

I had Fane as rogues too, but fake death means, you can't do anything at all and get targeted as soon as you are 'alive' again. Fake death was my second option to avoid getting target in general not my second.

Though playing an undead in a non-undead team can by itself pretty tricky, even more if you are new to the game.


I haven't played for months either, never even finished the game, but as far as I read and remember, not that much got changed anyway in the meantime.

To answer the original question:

Attributes, when maxing out, do not compete with Skills (except Bigger and Better vs All-Skilled-UP and gear selection). So no worries there. Put points into other attributes due to equipment requirements (which are rather low) and constitution if you find yourself dying too often, and Wits may give you a bit of an advantage - damage-wise - way later on, but Finesse = main.

When it comes to Skills (i.e. Schools), there ARE competing approaches, that's where style of play comes in:

let's focus on damage:

character is wielding 2 daggers
Dual-Wielding (DW) and Warfare (WF).
10 DW
0 WF

Somewhere in the formula the damage will be multiplied by 50% for all normal attacks and weapon based skills while wielding 2 daggers due to DW, but neither Tentacle Lash (TL) nor Mosquito Swarm (MS) will be affected; the damage will be based on level (only matters if you use those Abilities).

0 DW
10 WF

Seemingly or according to most people in forums, at the end of the calculation, the damage will be multiplied by 50%... AND (apparently) both TL and MS will be improved (only matters if you use those Abilities).
All due to WF. The catch? you lose 10% dodging.

Why bother mix-matching? TL is Strength based and MS is Intelligence based so bleh! right?
Well, no TL hits HARD on higher levels, independant of weapon (correct me pls), and MS ignores obstacles as long as target is theoretically visible (no path to be blocked!).

A few other physical-damage based Abilities may have similar caveats.

When it comes to Wits and Scoundrel, or better said, critical chance and critical damage the story is quite subtle and not immediately apparent. If you're familiar with diagrams, this is much better than my word-salad:
https://goo.gl/images/3vggtg
You will notice optima appear along the general X=Y axis, it's based on another game, but the principle is the same.

So for sure mix your crit chance from gear/talents/Wits with critical damage from gear/Scoundrel/(Two-Handed if you're a warrior).