Skills/Talents that are meh/useless

[Silames]

For example I currently find blood sucker as well as leech to be relatively useless. Leech is meh in combat, and is useless for healing after combat if you have literally any alternative source of renewable healing. And I find blood sucker to not be as effective as many of the other heals, I.e. first aid gives stat buffs, and regeneration cures poison and burning, while to my knowledge blood sucker does no such thing. I'm hoping the devs will make at least minor tweaks to some of these, as leech is literally useless atm. Anyone else know of any obsolete or underwhelming skills/talents?

[Dr.Fumetastic]

As for talents: Bigger and Better;why pick it over All Skilled Up( which isn't that useful of a talent either) when you can put a point into Poly with it and gain an attribute point and still have a skill point left( not to mention that one singular point is not worth a talent).
Ice King/Demon; I think they need to give significantly higher resistances by themselves to be decent and maybe remove negative aspects of burning and frozen statuses once you hit a certain resistance.
As for skills: Retribution I feel like it doesn't give you enough for a point investment to be worth it.
Perserverance; Restores way to little to be of any use unless you put in a huge amout of points in which case you gimp your character in other ways.

[Death]

Blood sucker is an amazing skill if used offensively, put it on a melee hero together with decaying touch and rain of blood. As soon as an enemies physical armor is depleted you use decaying touch and rain of blood on him. He is now standing in a huge puddle of blood, use bloodsucker on him for absolutely massive damage.

[Silames]

Originally posted by Death:

Blood sucker is an amazing skill if used offensively, put it on a melee hero together with decaying touch and rain of blood. As soon as an enemies physical armor is depleted you use decaying touch and rain of blood on him. He is now standing in a huge puddle of blood, use bloodsucker on him for absolutely massive damage.

But you could also be more effecient and just use first aid, which after the damage buff from decaying touch should do about half their hp flat, no matter their max hp

[Death]

Blood sucker usually kills the enemy in question immediately.

[Silames]

Originally posted by Death:

Blood sucker usually kills the enemy in question immediately.

Lol okay, later ima take decaying touch plus blood sucker/first aid to Slane the dragon, we'll see which has more damage potential

[deadsanta]

I find most shocking spells to be borderline "useless" in the sense that everything conducts electricity forever in this game, so that blood pool underneath you will stun you next turn, and last forever outside of combat, forcing me to do "cleanup" with terrain clearing spells like battlestomp.

[kbot]

Originally posted by Silames:

Originally posted by Death:

Blood sucker usually kills the enemy in question immediately.

Lol okay, later ima take decaying touch plus blood sucker/first aid to Slane the dragon, we'll see which has more damage potential

Death is right, though. Excluding some giant hp sponges (e.g., Shane), decaying touch+blood sucker nearly, or outright, kills targets, while first aid/decaying touch does like, 45% of total hps. It's just more annoying to set up.

[Silames]

Originally posted by kbot:

Originally posted by Silames:

Lol okay, later ima take decaying touch plus blood sucker/first aid to Slane the dragon, we'll see which has more damage potential

Death is right, though. Excluding some giant hp sponges (e.g., Shane), decaying touch+blood sucker nearly, or outright, kills targets, while first aid/decaying touch does like, 45% of total hps. It's just more annoying to set up.

But as we go on in the game, such flat #'s WILL fall behind in comparison. The kraken for example has 24k hp, tell me what your blood sucker is gonna do to that. The higher the level, the more "hp sponges" there will be

[Batailleuse]

Originally posted by kbot:

Originally posted by Silames:

Lol okay, later ima take decaying touch plus blood sucker/first aid to Slane the dragon, we'll see which has more damage potential

Death is right, though. Excluding some giant hp sponges (e.g., Shane), decaying touch+blood sucker nearly, or outright, kills targets, while first aid/decaying touch does like, 45% of total hps. It's just more annoying to set up.

Thing is you really need enough phys dps to break armor in split second ... every time on every turn and/or enough resist to survive 4 turns between decays.

its not that hard to setup, at least not with a necropriest summoner team

by that i mean, necro 1, hydro 1, hunt 1, summoner the rest

you dont need stats except Const/Wits because ALL heal are LVL dependent and never benefit from any stats except HYDRO and all pets depends on SUMMON only.

and full CON/WITS means you have insane HP pool and always go first.

Take decaying touch,
as heal you get : first aid, restoration, rallying cry and blood sucker

you pick all the summons

pick blood rain

dont forget to take Glass canon on all 4 toons.

Summon 4x pets on blood, wreck physical armor with them,
summon blood totems everywhere every turn that do Phys and drop puddle of blood.

you can take the healing bolt spell that team heal ... its pretty useful to heal pets/totems and party members alike. since you picked glass canon you will often get burn/poisoned so its useful to get that.


see an ennemy going out of armor, rush it, cast decay and blood sucker /rallying cry its dead. you can do that 4 times.

Rallying cry actually is also way superior to blood sucker in a 4 summoner team. both defensively and offensively. simply because of the sheer amount of summon there will be around and the fact that rallying cry heals x HP and regen y magic armor PER pet in a radius around the target.(also the x and y portion gets higher with level) and the radius is pretty huge compared to blood sucker.


when you meet a boss, melt his armor, go decay ... double first aid, battle is over.

If you wanna cheese and be unbeatable, take 2 dude put them high leadership, put everyone with dualwielding and the +10% dodge while doing so. (double leadership is to avoid NPC going zerk on your only leader, because thats what happen if you only take one all NPC suddently target him because he doesnt have the crazy resistance so he becomes easy picking) either that or take a Shield ... that also works wonders.

Congrats now your 4 main have 50%+ dodge and 50%+ all elemental resist and all your pets/totem also have high resits.

Later on you can even Curse the Blood to make it automatically decay Ennemies in it, and thats means that when game is released, you wont depend on decay skill with 4 turn cd... you can start with it and when theres blood everywhere you just make it curse and everyone will be ready to install kill with heal.

enjoy

PS: at some point you'll need to invest a point or two in a main stats to actually be able to use a weapon ... but thats it.

[NevecOneUp]

So much ways to abuse op abilities i see above. Classic difficulty will turn into easy mode just by using decaying touch. Maybe it's fair on tactical, but i won't play on it anyway. I think larian should reduce decaying touch damage from 175% to 100%, so it will just counter healing abilities, not being main way to deal damage.

[Meowella]

The biggest issue with Talents in Divinity (both 1 and 2) are how they have created no real direction with them, but attempted to "put in some cool stuff". The entire Talent system needs an overhaul to give it focus.

There is more than a single direction they could choose to go with these, for example:

1) Talents are specific.
By choosing this option, they remove the focus on "general talents which appeal to everyone" and create a smaller focus, either created to modify an existing direction or simply to help support it so you can get a power boost down the line. An example of this in D:OS 1 was a Talent designed to reduce the AP cost of bow shots by 1. Pretty much a no-brainer if you used a bow.
Examples of modifying a direction would be to remake the "mastery" talents, such as Ice King, and limit a player to a single one which could do the following:
Pyromania - Increase all fire damage dealt by 20% but reduce other elemental damage by 10% Increase your maximum fire resistance by 25%. You receive 50% less damage from burning but take 50% more damage from water spells.
This would make the Talent a useful focus tool, without forcing a player to take it or be weak.
Sneak Attacker - You deal 10% less damage to enemies who are facing you. Your attacks on a foe who is flanked count as behind the target for the purposes of backstab. (A small potential damage loss for no direct damage gain is weak to some but strong to others).

2) Talents are generic.
By choosing this option, they remove the "talents which support a build" such as Backstabber, and only have talents that can be taken by anyone regardless of class or focus.
Petpal (which really shouldn't be a talent anyway) or 10% chance to evade are common examples of this, ones which apply simple bonuses to any character.

Personally, I would rather support both, where there is a better selection of both general and specific talents, but ultimately it depends how much time the creators have to put into this.

If we are expected to take 5 Talents by the time we complete the game, then we really need 5 options which are not mundane or banal, forcing us to consider what we want as opposed to "there's nothing better to take, which occurred at level 15 in the original I felt).

[Silames]

Originally posted by Phill:

The biggest issue with Talents in Divinity (both 1 and 2) are how they have created no real direction with them, but attempted to "put in some cool stuff". The entire Talent system needs an overhaul to give it focus.

There is more than a single direction they could choose to go with these, for example:

1) Talents are specific.
By choosing this option, they remove the focus on "general talents which appeal to everyone" and create a smaller focus, either created to modify an existing direction or simply to help support it so you can get a power boost down the line. An example of this in D:OS 1 was a Talent designed to reduce the AP cost of bow shots by 1. Pretty much a no-brainer if you used a bow.
Examples of modifying a direction would be to remake the "mastery" talents, such as Ice King, and limit a player to a single one which could do the following:
Pyromania - Increase all fire damage dealt by 20% but reduce other elemental damage by 10% Increase your maximum fire resistance by 25%. You receive 50% less damage from burning but take 50% more damage from water spells.
This would make the Talent a useful focus tool, without forcing a player to take it or be weak.
Sneak Attacker - You deal 10% less damage to enemies who are facing you. Your attacks on a foe who is flanked count as behind the target for the purposes of backstab. (A small potential damage loss for no direct damage gain is weak to some but strong to others).

2) Talents are generic.
By choosing this option, they remove the "talents which support a build" such as Backstabber, and only have talents that can be taken by anyone regardless of class or focus.
Petpal (which really shouldn't be a talent anyway) or 10% chance to evade are common examples of this, ones which apply simple bonuses to any character.

Personally, I would rather support both, where there is a better selection of both general and specific talents, but ultimately it depends how much time the creators have to put into this.

If we are expected to take 5 Talents by the time we complete the game, then we really need 5 options which are not mundane or banal, forcing us to consider what we want as opposed to "there's nothing better to take, which occurred at level 15 in the original I felt).

+1

[kbot]

Originally posted by Silames:

Originally posted by kbot:

Death is right, though. Excluding some giant hp sponges (e.g., Shane), decaying touch+blood sucker nearly, or outright, kills targets, while first aid/decaying touch does like, 45% of total hps. It's just more annoying to set up.

But as we go on in the game, such flat #'s WILL fall behind in comparison. The kraken for example has 24k hp, tell me what your blood sucker is gonna do to that. The higher the level, the more "hp sponges" there will be

So I'll hit the krarken with decaying touch/first aid, and one shot some high prioty add with decaying touch/blood sucker. They're not mutually exclusive and one doesn't invalidate the other.

Right now decaying touch/blood sucker is scaling faster than any flat spell in the game that doesn't rely on source and certain hijincs. At a point level wise where decaying touch/blood sucker can do 150, your fireball or whatever does like, 42. "If" blood sucker isn't good enough direct damage at high levels, at this rate,I don't want to know how poorly pyromancer skills will stack up.

[Balalaika]

Originally posted by kbot:

Originally posted by Silames:

Lol okay, later ima take decaying touch plus blood sucker/first aid to Slane the dragon, we'll see which has more damage potential

Death is right, though. Excluding some giant hp sponges (e.g., Shane), decaying touch+blood sucker nearly, or outright, kills targets, while first aid/decaying touch does like, 45% of total hps. It's just more annoying to set up.

It may be a great as an offensive spell but its ♥♥♥♥ when u need it to heal. If you dont roll initiative. By the time u break armor. A. U dead. B. Enemy dead. Proper melee build will take 50% armor and bypass the rest to hit for 20-30% hp on first attack. By that point doing the whole blood/decay set up is busy work.