Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback More synergy between physical and magical schools

One of the reasons why people find full physical/ magical teams better than mixed team is because it's just way more efficient at focusing on a single armour type.

However, I believe the current armour system is fine. Full physical/ magical teams should be powerful, but at the cost of less efficiency.

The fix to improve mixed physical/ magical teams is to increase efficiency of mixing the 2 types of damage. Physical skill schools should contribute something to magical schools, and vice versa.

How physical schools can contribute to magical right now:
1. Weapons with bonus elemental damage
2. Skills that target magical armour but scales off physical attributes (Chloroform)
3. Elemental ranger bonus damage
4. Piercing damage that ignores armour type. Can finish off enemies that are almost killed by magic.

How magical schools can contribute to physical right now:
1. Skills that target physical armour but scales off int. (Necromancy)
2. Skills that have bonus effects based on physical armour (Cripple effect from Earth spells)

My suggestion is to increase the synergy between physical/ magical schools, like this:

1. Some scoundrel skills (e.g. Throwing knives) should provide small bonus damage to magical armour. To fit the shadowblade archetype. Scoundrel should remain the only school that can destroy magical armour but not doing magic damage.

2. Similarly, hunter skills should give a small piercing damage. To benefit the wayfarer archetype, hunter should be the king of doing direct vitality damage so wayfarer can target whatever armour he wants. Elemental ranger could use a slight buff as well, maybe somewhere around 40% of original damage as bonus elemental damage.

3. Warfare skills are fine because the damage types are based on weapons. Make weapons with elemental bonus more common will be good.

4. Chicken from polymorph should check with magic armour instead of physical.

5. Some spells that have physical components, such as fossil strike and hail attack, should destroy a small amount of physical armour as bonus (NOT replacing the elemental damage).

6. Summons should do physical damage, with bonus elemental damage based on summon types. Except totems that are obviously shooting magical projectiles.

With these improvements, you can expect that mixed physical/ magical teams will have a higher efficiency in taking down both armour types. On the other hand, full physical/ magical team will be more powerful and faster in taking down certain armour type, at the cost of wasted efficiency (wasted elemental bonus from weapons, wasted magical armour destruction from scoundrels, wasted spells that work on physical armour, etc.)