Divinity: Original Sin 2

Divinity: Original Sin 2

Tempest Class (New Spear Skills)
Rihn 5 Oct, 2017 @ 1:19am
Thoughts on balance and overall design
I haven't tried every single skill in the mod but regardless this is just my overall thoughts as of right now. These opinions are based on Tactician difficulty because that's what I play.

Let me start off by saying that I am of the opinion that the default of the mod being piercing damage instead of physical brings up quite a few problems:

1. Balance is way harder because of the way the game was designed. The armour system and overall armour values makes it so monsters don't have that much vitality (there are exceptions but this is the general rule)
2. By making everything piercing to begin with you can't add skills that fit the theme such as:
Puncture: pierces target's armour and deals damage to vitality
Anyway, that part is debatable and it's up to people to decide how they play though.

Here's a quick review of what I think of the skill's current iteration:

- Jab: I though this skill was just another iteration of "All In" at first but after looking at it a little bit better it might just be fine the way it is. It's an attack with extra range and applies bleeding. It needs to do less damage though if it's going to stay at 2 AP otherwise it's just flat out better than All In.

- Deflective Stance: I always hated how limited you were in the warfare tree if you played a 2h character because you lose out deflect and bouncing shield so this is a nice addition. However, I think a better way of doing this would be to just have it be so that instead of deflecting you just have a high chance to dodge vs projectile-based attacks. I don't think you can ever deflect stuff with a spear but thematically spear-users are more nimble so dodging feels like a better way to do it while keeping it unique.
In that case maybe it should be named "Parry Stance" perhaps?

- Sweeping Slash: I think you could just do with reducing damage on this to be the same as an auto-attack, increase the cone so it's wider and goes slightly further and remove the bleed effect. For 2 AP that would be already good if you want to hit targets in front of you but wouldn't be worth it if you're just hitting one target.

- Piercing Thrust: I think this is mostly fine honestly. The damage values need to be tweaked so that it's slightly better than an auto-attack but otherwise it's fine if you position yourself accordingly. There's plenty of situations where I could hit at least two targets with this due to the extra range it provides. I don't know if bleeding should be in there but then again I don't think it should do nothing either because then it might be a bit too weak?

- Poisoned Strikes: This skill needs to be changed to somehow be more unique in my opinion because right now it's a copy paste of venom coating except it has lower cd and lasts longer.
Maybe it could add piercing damage for 1 or 2 turns and it could be called "Piercing Strikes"? (I'm going by the assumption of what I said at the very start of the post about damage type).
You could also just make it be an attack that applies the Acid effect.

- Necrotic Strikes: Suffers the same problemas as "Poisoned Strikes" but instead it's a copy paste of Vampiric Hunger with changed cd. With a name like this maybe it should just be an attack that adds decaying or disease instead?

- Wicked Spiral: I personally have very conflicting feelings about this skill. Upon further inspection I realize that yes it's basically a slightly higher range whirlwind for 3 AP cost with the benefit of adding CC but it has way too much damage for such a big AoE right now and being able to apply terrify in an area seems kind of broken to me considering how the status works.
The damage should be lowered and it should only terrify for 1 turn or just have another effect altogether such as Daze.

So far I haven't gotten any access to the rest of the skills but I will keep adding feedback as I progress in the game using this mod.


Last edited by Rihn; 5 Oct, 2017 @ 1:20am