Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback CC/Armor/General Balancing

So seems like in the current state of the game as long as you can go first and have [Rage], [Adrenaline] and [Flesh Sacrifice] on your characters it becomes an automatic win. With how CC works, taking down enemy physical armor allows you to perma CC them and even chain CC if you have a lot of melee characters with [Warfare]. This also makes some Attributes like [Const]/[Int] subpar as compared to [Wits] (the best one imo) or even [Str]/[Fin] depending on your weapon choice.

So to fix this I'd propose making it so that Physical/Magic Armor Reduces Physical/Magic damage taken respectively and reduces the chance of status effects against you respectively (Bleed/Cripple/Knocked Downed etc for physical armor and Poison/Burn/Frozen etc for magical armor).

That being said, I do also believe that the current Attributes need to be revised and changed somewhat, as follows:

1) Strength = +5% damage with Physical based weapons, +1% Crit. multiplier.
2) Finesse = +5% damage with Finesse based weapons,
+1% Crit. Chance.
3) Intelligence = +5% damage with Int. based weapons,
+1% Chance to inflict Status Effect (physical/magic)
4) Constitution = +7% Health (or more), +1% Chance to block attacks (requires melee weapon, bonus for shields)
5) Memory = +1 ability slot, every 7 memory reduce cooldowns for spells by 1 (maybe higher memory requirement depends really on max lvl for balancing purposes)
6) Wits = +1 initiative, +1% Dodge chance.

Seeing as Attributes have changed this would also require Battle Talents to change somewhat, as follows:

Offensive:
1) Single Handed = +5% damage, +5% block chance, +5% accuracy.
2)Dual Handed = +5% damage, +5% Dodge chance, +5% accuracy.
3) Two Handed = +10% damage, +5% accuracy.
4) Ranged = +5% damage, +5% accuracy, +2% Sight.

Defensive:
1) Leadership = (same with increased range and maybe more bonuses)
2) Perseverance = After getting afflicted with a status effect, increase your health, physical/magic armor by 2% per point.
3) Pain Reflection = (same)

Skills:
1) Aeorothurge = +10% damage with Aero skills, +1% movement speed.
2) Geomancy = +5% damage with Geo skills, +2% physical armor.
3) Huntsman = (same with 1% movement speed.)
4) Hydromancy = +10% healing, +2% magic armor.
5) Pyromancy = +5% damage with Pyro skills, +1% chance to inflict status effects.
6) Necromancy = (same, since now you wouldn't have physical/magic armor to go through)
7) Scoundrel = +5% damage with scoundrel skills, +1% Dodge chance.
8) Warfare = + 5% damage with Warfare skills, +1% chance to block attacks.

Block/Dodge would only work vs Melee and against non "AOE" skills (ex. would work vs [Blitz] but not vs [Battle Stomp] etc.)

Now this is just my thoughts and quick draft on how i think the game might be more balance and is in no way an absolute representation of how i think the game should be. Welcome all criticism and/or discussion.

Strength: good
Finesse: bad since crit chance is terrible on dual-wield rogues
int: If they decide to include +% chance for status this would work
Constitution: good
Memory: A powerful buff that should only apply to memory through levelling and exclude gear
Wits: I made the same suggestion http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=599917&page=1 and the consensus was mixed

Single-handed: good but lower block chance and accuracy to 2%
Dual wielding: good but lower dodge chance and accuracy to 2%
2-handed: lower accuracy to 2%
Range: Remove accuracy and increase sight to 4% (rangers have access to track)

Aero: bad but the movespeed addition is good
rest are fine
This is just my 2 cents

Finesse: the reasons I put +1% Crit. Chance is that I'd also consider changing Talents. Even though I didn't post it here because I haven't thought of all the talents and their implications, I was thinking of changing [Back-stabber] to +25% (or more) Crit. chance when attacking from behind, not requiring Daggers.

For Accuracy and Block/Dodge chance %numbers, I was just trying to find an arbitrary number but yes 2% might be more balanced.

Ranged: While they do have access to [Mark] which removes Dodge chance, it wouldn't remove block chance which is why I put it there.

Aero: Can't really find something to make it better maybe 1% status effect as well since they do have Stun and Blind?

Sooooooo.....we're back to talking about how a Dice Roll for chance on status effects coming back in some form, such as we had in Div:OS, is better than a straight up No Armor = Perma CC?

Man, we keep coming full circle to that; this is why'd I'd simply like them to try bringing back the old defensive stats for an iteration and seeing how it's received. Just don't make them as effective as last time since we do have the armor system.

EDIT: Does leadership effect yourself as well as teammates?

I'm currently replaying D:OS1. It's very fun but the only thing I hate about combat is how winner is decided by a dice roll of CC landing/not landing. For me as long as there are hard CC any randomness is not fun because combat feels luck based instead of skill based.

@Alanta:
Well, that's the thing -> no chance factor means CC wins everything. The armor system helps, but just makes it from a pure dice roll into a pure resource game. Moment armor is gone, fight is lost and HP bar just extends a near pointless exercise in pain for the loser.

Always thought a combination of the two would be best and that the chance to resist could be lowered due to the presence of armor.

For me ideal solution would be to make armor to only block CC but not damage. And introduce skills that target armor instead of HP. Then players would have to choose between blocking armor and applying CC and simply killing the enemy. Zero randomness involved but CC is not the only way to go.

Problem with that is that it wouldn't change much.

For weaker enemies, just kill them.

For stronger enemies or anything posing a challenge? Just do what you already do. Break the armor and then CC to death.

The problem here is simple: You should not be able to perma CC something to death with a chain of abilities. They should have some recourse for letting them escape the chain or something.

Now, that could be tied to specific abilties/actions:
IE, take a turn to pat yourself down to undue fire.
IE, take a turn to try and ground yourself after being shocked (this would have to be something with a cost (probably HP since your trying to act while electrocuted), would only be a chance to undue the shock (cause you ARE shocked and this is hard as fuck to do), and could only be attempted after the first turn of being shocked)

At this point, Perseverance could be a skill that helps one act calmly and grit through these actions; increasing chance at success and mitigating damage from attempting.

This would also increase the importance of CON as it would be what allows someone to more easily deal with status effects while eating the cost.

They could attempt to have a separate action tied to each and every status effect to help mitigate effects. But that's alot to add, balance, and focus on at this time.

....In essence, a complete chess like attitude towards everything with action -> reaction and strategic decision making in battle is certainly possible....just a terribly impractical thing for the most part and I don't know how long they want to spend on this aspect for other things.

I liked how it was done in Epic Encounters mod: after a hard CC breaks enemy becomes immune to that type of CC for a few turns.

Being able to CC lock also depends on how easy it is to break armor. If my suggestion is implemented it won't be affected by direct damage anymore. So the only attacks affecting armor would be skills like chloroform. If such skills had long cooldowns and all bosses had preservance it'd be quite hard to perma-CC enemies.

Not so sure about any of the ideas in the OP, but it's clear to me that hard CC currently basically breaks the game and is almost impossible to balance. More randomness could return if hard CC was mostly eliminated.

Knockdown should take 1 or 2 AP to stand up from, but while knocked down you take extra physical damage and a lot of damage if you fall into surfaces.

Stun could probably just be as simple as -1 AP recovery and reduces your hit chance or something. Even -1 AP is a big limit to your actions. Perhaps it also makes you unable to gain additional AP recovery (from haste or adrenaline for example) until the stun is removed.

Charm could make the target only spend up to 2 AP attacking a friendly target (or otherwise wasting that AP moving in position to attack them.) This would make it much more dynamic -- do you spend your remaining AP to move out of position to avoid attacking your ally on the next turn? Use your more powerful abilities on enemies to avoid casting them on your allies?

Other than that, the other softer cc in the game is manageable. Blind is an example of good CC that changes your strategy rather than negating your capacity to do anything at all.

Perseverance probably just needs to activate from more statuses. Am I correct that it returns 5% armor per point after being hard cc'd? If so, it's main problem is it just doesn't have much effect until you have 5+ points in it (compared to something like pain reflection, necromancy or even leadership). 10% armor recovery per point maybe is too much (or is it already that much?), meaning you'd recover all your armor with 10 points in perseverance. Seems damn strong on a tank. Could even stun your tank yourself and then magic shell them for essentially a full heal.

I'm not sure if Perseverance works with every hard cc, I think it works with 2 magical hard cc and 2 physical, not sure if those are all possible. And yes it gives 5% per point. My main issue is, it works only in those specific cases: all armor gone and hard cc, so only if the fight goes kind of bad. If you are fighting well and never get cc'd the points put into perseverance are just wasted. Prolonging the fight because you have lower damage. Pain reflection at least works always, so it always gives you a gain. Also if Perseverance triggers it means you most likely lost 1 or 2 turns because of the hard cc.

Also you need to level it early to get it high enough fast, but in the early game you have hardly any armor and therefore it is even more useless.


Regarding the other stuff the issue remains: to cc first remains the core mechanic, the just removed the RNG and made it more grindy, because you have to deplete the armor first. Also the made teamwork of magic and physical users much harder, because both sides have to deplete their kind of armor first. Going either full physical team or full magical team are therefore kind of forced mechanics.

For me and my friend the armor system also kind of removed a huge amount of excitement. if you succeeded a role you were happy, if you failed you were not and needed to go for a different plan. You also needed to check you enemies, to figure out who would react better for which kind of cc. Now it feels more like a puzzle and not a battle.

Also increasing Body Building and Willpower gave you a better feeling of your hero getting stronger, because he was harder to knock out. Now he is just a growing onion. Also Glasscannon got kind of unusable, before all with the new AI.

The lesser feeling for growth of character also partly caused by the new AP system. And this new system also made skills like Adrenalin to strong? The just changed to much, I feel: The grapics are the same and the skills themselves are pretty much the same, but everything else is totally different now. (except some skills are now only usable with source points)

Risk management is part of ANY strateg decision. However, the process should be set to allow comeback. e.g. hard cc are The problem. That is The most design issue in the first game. The design flaw of Too much CC AND random. Unfortunately Larians designers decided to keep hard cc chain as a trademark and eliminate randomness.

For a sake of game and playfull soul make rather opposite-- >>> Admit that randomness certain throws is part of a game, but remove hard cc.

At this point, we can peacefully go back to Willpower/Bodybuilding system. Replace hard cc by soft cc then add third defensive roll based on Dex (reflex saving throw.)

Pokemon style magic combat based on base "physical" skill like ranged pain reflection, magic defense bubble skill or perseverance replace some more believable skills like active defense (by weapon, armor, skill) passive defense by armor quality. Base active defense should have like one attack per round, then passive only defense is used. When you are trained then more active dfences per round could be performed. Warrior who has all his attack skills AOE splashes is a mage (or Pikachu) not warrior. Craziness like on demand Rage is a ... out of designer's sanity. Rage the mind status - need to be activated by pain which is made by enemy with a certain chance.

I would say, graphics is more generic. Less soul, less style but more technical quality. I Agree that reduced AP is a way how to rip apart working system. The game/combat systems burned all good but new added weird casual JRPG feel.

I would really like to see redo current casual JRPG style to a classic European RPG with flavor of Ad&D,Fallout (1,2), Pillars of Eternity style.

Good thread. I haven’t played the game since the initial release, but I’ve been following the progress – the patches etc – and they’re clearly acting on the feedback (durability gone), as well as pushing some interesting, generally well-received ideas, such as the new AI.

With this level of polish, it would be a shame for all the dialogue around CC to go to waste. I feel it’s the last big problem. But I wouldn’t want to see it simply ditched or transformed. I’ve said it before and will say it again that I believe the armour system is perfect for tackling it, but it just needs to be more evolved.

I wrote a thread with a culmination of my ideas on ‘elemental armour/elemental HP’: http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=70903&Number=594307#Post594307. There was no take up, so I assume it was either too long or people didn’t like it.

That said, I still believe it’s a simple idea and works with the most innovative system in D:OS, which is the elemental powers and surfaces. I think this system simply needs to be developed further, so that CC remains as it is but there’s more strategy involved in using it effectively.

Some of the other solutions I’ve read involve removing the CC lockdown effects and make it more of a stat killer: negative statues etc. Yes, this would work, but it’s too familiar from other RPGs. There’s no innovation in it, and this game succeeds on the new ideas it brings to the table.

I’d really love to learn modding and go implement the elemental armour/elemental HP myself, just to have a proof of concept that could be tested through gameplay. But given the nature of any kind of development, I suspect it’s too time-consuming for what I want to do. We’ve had to develop with Angular2 lately in work – on the surface, it’s just a framework: in reality, it’s an entirely new language. Game dev must be infinitely more painful to 'just pick up', so for now all I’ve got are the words…

I like the removal of RNG from CC but chain CC is a problem.

Why can't there just be a 1-2 round buff, after you're hit by a form of CC, rendering you immune to it (like Darkest Dungeon with stuns)? I.e. you're hit by knockdown, immune to knock down next two rounds after?

I honestly don't understand how CC is a problem right now unless you are purposely adding constraints like refusing to flee, refusing to use rez scrolls, making sure all chars in party get XP from every kill, etc. Even then, I still didn't think CC was a problem. With a party of 4, even in Classic, it is not that hard. It might take one or two wipes for you to get an idea of how to better position your party and prioritize targets, but that's about it. Also, you know you can pickpocket CC items like grenades and arrowheads right? That reduces the CC characters to just mages, which have low physical armor.

I am not really deep into the strategies of dos2, i did beat the original sin 1 on hardest difficulty tho.
After about 25 houres of playing i feel like the new armour/magicarmour system is not really making the game better. I like that it reduces the random factor but the fights feel really strange since i won if i managed to reduce the armour to zero and i lost if i did not (during the first one or 2 turns). Health doesnt matter at all since i can cc them all day long (with spending only a small amount of ability points) if the have no armour left.
Since i not super deep into the game i dont recommend any solutions but i read some in this thread which already sound very good.

The problem isn't players dying, but that combat is too easy for players against AI.

Why would anyone be invested in a tactical turn based RPG when there's no real tactics needed cause it's so easy?

And you honestly just highlighted one of the problems with Armour system with how easy it is to tailor a team for a known enemy type.



And this experience is the root of all these issues.

What change of strategy does Blind prompt other than "be useless for 3 turns"? Blinded enemies often act as though they're hard CC'd.

I don't disagree with the rest of your post but Blind is probably one of the most frustrating statuses in the game, especially given how many enemies have it.

Self-buff or drink potions,use self-aoe attacks like whirlwind, or move right next to an ally to buff them, or just reposition in general. Blind enemies could use some better AI for sure. Maybe you could have a 1m more range while blind to give it a tad more leeway, but I think it works pretty well. I don't see how it's more frustrating than something like Knockdown or Stun that gives you no recourse whatsoever. Knockdown and stun are probably more common than blind in my experience, especially considering you can easily stun yourself.

miss post sorry.