Divinity Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

[DraQ]

Spoiler

Swen, what are you trying to tell us?

Can't break what's already broken.

Makes sense.

 

[sullynathan]

First time, I went to the prisoner and tried opening the gate and failed to convince the guard then killed him.

Second time, I opened the gate and let out the prisoner and we beat the guard together and he turned on me so I killed him and looted the key and opened other doors.

Third time, I convinced the guard with a new character and didn't let out the prisoner but I didn't get a key either.

Is there a way to get the key by convincing the guard or must you kill him?

 

[NJClaw]

I'm playing D:OS 2 for the first time and, after 15 hours, I have to say I expected a lot worse.

I have seen everyone and their mothers shit-talk the armor system, but I can't understand why. Maybe it gets worse over time, but at least during the first act it's just a gimmick to attack different enemies with different moves and to force the player to focus on the right enemy with each character. I can't understand the widespread hatred for this specific detail. I need someone to enlighten me on this one.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I have seen everyone and their mothers shit-talk the armor system, but I can't understand why.

they're retarded

 

[Lacrymas]

I can't understand the widespread hatred for this specific detail. I need someone to enlighten me on this one.

It encourages damage stacking and it denies you the CC they gave out like candy. Pure damage is the only solution to any combat encounter.

 

[NJClaw]

I have seen everyone and their mothers shit-talk the armor system, but I can't understand why.

they're retarded

Generally I agree on justifying everything with the retardedness of people (myself included), but there must be something behind the rampant hatred for D:OS 2 armor system.

Maybe I'm blind and I can't see the problem, but to me it just seems a very quick and simple way to add an additional thin layer of complexity to a combat system that, at its core, is as simple as it gets. Influenced by countless opinions expressed over and over on this forum, I expected never-ending encounters where you had to slowly chip away defences after defences just to see them instantly replenished. Instead, in the worst case, you need two rounds to take down an enemy. I just escaped from Fort Joy and I can count on the fingers of one hand the encounters that lasted more than three rounds: Griff, the second group of skeletons in the Withermoore's Soul Jar quest and the group of magisters where the paladin joins your side.

I expect it to get worse, but, at least for the first 8 levels, the armor problem is just a myth.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I have seen everyone and their mothers shit-talk the armor system, but I can't understand why.

they're retarded

Generally I agree on justifying everything with the retardedness of people (myself included), but there must be something behind the rampant hatred for D:OS 2 armor system.

Maybe I'm blind and I can't see the problem, but to me it just seems a very quick and simple way to add an additional thin layer of complexity to a combat system that, at its core, is as simple as it gets. Influenced by countless opinions expressed over and over on this forum, I expected never-ending encounters where you had to slowly chip away defences after defences just to see them instantly replenished. Instead, in the worst case, you need two rounds to take down an enemy. I just escaped from Fort Joy and I can count on the fingers of one hand the encounters that lasted more than three rounds: Griff, the second group of skeletons in the Withermoore's Soul Jar quest and the group of magisters where the paladin joins your side.

I expect it to get worse, but, at least for the first 8 levels, the armor problem is just a myth.

They're upset that they can't just CC everything immediately in the first round like in D:OS1

 

[Lacrymas]

I agree CC was a problem in D:OS1, but the solution was not armor, it was fewer CC abilities and casting times.

 

[NJClaw]

I can't understand the widespread hatred for this specific detail. I need someone to enlighten me on this one.

It encourages damage stacking and it denies you the CC they gave out like candy. Pure damage is the only solution to any combat encounter.

I'm playing on Classic difficulty and I can't say I've experienced this. Usually, two skills are enough to take down the shield and consequently apply statuses on the enemy: with the first one you damage the shield and create a "puddle", with the second one you break the shield and apply the status.

To me, it seems far more balanced than the first game, where you could control with statuses every single enemy in every single encounter for the entirety of the fight. At least, here you have to strip their defence before perma-stunlocking them.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm playing on Classic difficulty

Dishonorbru!
Restart on tactician.

 

[Lacrymas]

I'm playing on Classic difficulty and I can't say I've experienced this. Usually, two skills are enough to take down the shield and consequently apply statuses on the enemy: with the first one you damage the shield and create a "puddle", with the second one you break the shield and apply the status.

To me, it seems far more balanced than the first game, where you could control with statuses every single enemy in every single encounter for the entirety of the fight. At least, here you have to strip their defence before perma-stunlocking them.

It's a ridiculous solution and it only targets the symptom, not the disease. Even if it was 100% balanced and thought-through in every single encounter, it's still an inelegant design decision that could've been handled better. I suggest using the armor to "saving throw" mod maybe.

 

[Silly Germans]

I can't understand the widespread hatred for this specific detail. I need someone to enlighten me on this one.

It encourages damage stacking and it denies you the CC they gave out like candy. Pure damage is the only solution to any combat encounter.

How does it deny the CC ? If anything it makes it 100 % clear when you are able to disable a target. If anything it completely removes the chance to fail a CC. I don't mind the armor system but it made the game easier in my opinion since it becomes easier to predict what will happen.

 

[Black]

I have seen everyone and their mothers shit-talk the armor system, but I can't understand why

You know how fantasy rpgs usually advocate for some balance between physical and magical firepower in your party?
DOS 2 doesn't, you're better off stacking all physical or all magic damage. It's boring.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I have seen everyone and their mothers shit-talk the armor system, but I can't understand why

You know how fantasy rpgs usually advocate for some balance between physical and magical firepower in your party?
DOS 2 doesn't, you're better off stacking all physical or all magic damage. It's boring.

What? It does the complete opposite.
yeah just stack one type then encounter enemies with high armor vs that type. Derp.

You guys realize you don't have to have all your party members attacking the same enemy, right? I'm trying to understand your thought processes here.

 

[Black]

You guys realize you don't have to have all your party members attacking the same enemy

It kills them faster.

You typically have enemies with either high physical or high magic armor and most encounters contain both types of enemies.

And you still are far better off stacking one or the other type of damage instead of spreading. Did a rogue/ranger run on tactical or whatever it's called, it wasn't even close.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

It kills them faster.

no?
Most fights will have enemies of both armor types, very few fights will reward stacking a single damage type.

 

[Lyre Mors]

My biggest problem with it, which started for me around the 15-20 hour mark, is that you couldn't effect the status of your opponents until the point in the battle where there were only a few more turns left. So it felt like the first 1/2 - 3/4 of a battle was busting down a wall of HP sponge, then when you could finally use the fun stuff, the battle was nearing it's end.

I've posted earlier in this thread, but the armor-based saving throws mod helped alleviate and almost eliminate the problem for me. Highly recommend it.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Stacking a single damage type sure would explain all the autistic screeching against armor tbh.

 

[NJClaw]

I'm playing on Classic difficulty

Dishonorbru!
Restart on tactician.

Before I can increase the difficulty I need to master the system, so I probably need at least to reach high level skills. Right now, I'm allocating level up points almost at random because I really don't know what I'm doing. Classic difficulty is a breeze 90% of the times even with pseudo-random builds, but it still manages to offer the occasional punishing encounter.

 

[Sharpedge]

I have seen everyone and their mothers shit-talk the armor system, but I can't understand why

You know how fantasy rpgs usually advocate for some balance between physical and magical firepower in your party?
DOS 2 doesn't, you're better off stacking all physical or all magic damage. It's boring.

What? It does the complete opposite.
yeah just stack one type then encounter enemies with high armor vs that type. Derp.

You guys realize you don't have to have all your party members attacking the same enemy, right? I'm trying to understand your thought processes here.

I really enjoyed combat in D:OS 2, but it does have a lot of problems including the one pointed out there. That issue is a symptom of multiple things brought together though. Here are a list of (mechanical) problems with combat in D:OS 2:

1. There are only 1 or 2 enemies in the game which have physical resistances.
2. The armour system encourages stacking all in in a single damage type (physical or magical) because it is inefficient to stack damage of 2 types.
3. The 3 point (as well of some of the 1 and 2 point) source skills were not designed with the content of the game in mind.
4. They give you source points basically for free when they give you source vampirism, turning the "rare resource" into something spammable.
5. The initiative system making initiative a dump stat.

The net result of these problems is that, after the first act (once enemies start gaining higher resistance values), stacking physical damage becomes the be all and end all most efficient way to fight. Aside from thematic bosses which have outright immunity to some damage types, most enemies in the game that matter have some degree of elemental resistances (>50%). Not only this, but although it would make "sense" for fights to contain enemies that have varying amounts of physical and magical armour and you would, initially guess that they do, they actually do not. Here are some examples (major plot spoilers for anyone that cares):

Spoiler

Final Fight:

The Doctor:

What I found after taking the time to inspect enemies was that in reality, most of the time enemies have roughly even magic and physical armour, with 1 or 2 edge cases where they will have 1 type of armour extremely different from another. In the cases where armour values were heavily skewed, there were no "major" battles. As a result of this, for all intents and purposes, for any fight that matters in the game you would be better off stacking a single damage type (and most of the time, that damage type would ideally be physical).

Act 1 of the game is where the combat really shines, the fights are well thought out and reasonably balanced and the power scaling in the game hasn't gone so far as to allow you to completely trivialize everything. Midway through act 2 though, you really do need to limit yourself in order for fights to not be completely trivial. Recently I played through the game with a friend of mine coop and in order to keep the game's combat interesting throughout, we had to ban the following:

Spoiler

• Lone Wolf
• Glass Cannon
• Savage Sortilege
  
• Elemental Affinity
• Executioner
  
• Warfare
• Necromancy
• 3 point source skills
• Tea
• Fane's Source power
• Elf Racial

Its a long list, but they all contribute towards ruining the combat experience.

 

[Tigranes]

It kills them faster.

no?
Most fights will have enemies of both armor types, very few fights will reward stacking a single damage type.

One thing I remember is that sure, you could have a magic dude and physical dude and they could target different enemies and stuff. But when you get to a tough fight, enemies will also have plenty of ways to restore their armour.

So unless you can focus fire to smash one guys' armour, CC them, and kill them very quickly, you're just stuck in a loop. You smash the phys guy armour & CC him, but the magic guy steps in to heal that armour back, and vice versa.

In quite a few cases, you end up stacking and going hard on magic armour even if the dude has a lot of magic armour, because you just need to focus fire and finish one guy. Due to the ease with which armour can be restored, in a tough fight, any combatant that remains alive in any shape exponentially increases the difficulty.

I played on whatever was hard mode with 2 dudes, though, so I assume it feels very different on normal w/ 4.

 

[NJClaw]

I have seen everyone and their mothers shit-talk the armor system, but I can't understand why

You know how fantasy rpgs usually advocate for some balance between physical and magical firepower in your party?
DOS 2 doesn't, you're better off stacking all physical or all magic damage. It's boring.

Right now I have two characters with high magic and low-medium physical damage potential (a Geomancer/Pyromancer/Necromancer and an Aerotheourge/Hydrosophist/Summoner) and two characters with high physical and low-medium magic damage potential (a Warfare/Polymorph and a Warfare/Huntsman/Scoundrel). Usually, I find myself focusing two different targets with two characters each. The low-medium damage choice is still useful for the rare occasion when I need an extra attack to take down an enemy. I don't think focusing a single enemy would be more optimal, because with this approach I can disable two or more enemies on the first round instead of just taking one down. But, again, I really don't know what I'm doing, so maybe I'm doing everything wrong.

 

[Silly Germans]

I have seen everyone and their mothers shit-talk the armor system, but I can't understand why

You know how fantasy rpgs usually advocate for some balance between physical and magical firepower in your party?
DOS 2 doesn't, you're better off stacking all physical or all magic damage. It's boring.

Right now I have two characters with high magic and low-medium physical damage potential (a Geomancer/Pyromancer/Necromancer and an Aerotheourge/Hydrosophist/Summoner) and two characters with high physical and low-medium magic damage potential (a Warfare/Polymorph and a Warfare/Huntsman/Scoundrel). Usually, I find myself focusing two different targets with two characters each. The low-medium damage choice is still useful for the rare occasion when I need an extra attack to take down an enemy. I don't think focusing a single enemy would be more optimal, because with this approach I can disable two or more enemies on the first round instead of just taking one down. But, again, I really don't know what I'm doing, so maybe I'm doing everything wrong.

That is very similar to how i played the game and it worked perfectly fine throughout the whole game. I never did dual lone wolf, which is pretty much the only case where i think that you need to go for one damage type.

 

[Sharpedge]

I have seen everyone and their mothers shit-talk the armor system, but I can't understand why

You know how fantasy rpgs usually advocate for some balance between physical and magical firepower in your party?
DOS 2 doesn't, you're better off stacking all physical or all magic damage. It's boring.

Right now I have two characters with high magic and low-medium physical damage potential (a Geomancer/Pyromancer/Necromancer and an Aerotheourge/Hydrosophist/Summoner) and two characters with high physical and low-medium magic damage potential (a Warfare/Polymorph and a Warfare/Huntsman/Scoundrel). Usually, I find myself focusing two different targets with two characters each. The low-medium damage choice is still useful for the rare occasion when I need an extra attack to take down an enemy. I don't think focusing a single enemy would be more optimal, because with this approach I can disable two or more enemies on the first round instead of just taking one down. But, again, I really don't know what I'm doing, so maybe I'm doing everything wrong.

That is very similar to how i played the game and it worked perfectly fine throughout the whole game. I never did dual lone wolf, which is pretty much the only case where i think that you need to go for one damage type.

Dual Lone Wolf is the easiest the game gets. Any combination works in Dual Lone Wolf. In order from hardest to easiest its Solo, no LW -> 2 man, no LW -> 3 man -> Solo, LW -> Party of 4 -> LW party of 2. There is no circumstance aside from solo where you need to go 1 damage type, but it is optimal.

 

[Black]

Fuck off.