Intelligence = the best place to invest?

[skyhrg]

So I wanted a strong melee character with some geomancer, but if I invest in mostly const and strength, does the spell become virtually worthless as time goes on?

I wanted to diversify my characters' special abilities. Should my mage learn all the spell, since I'm investing all the intelligence points unto her?

My characters are:

1. Ranger -> huntsman, finesse,
2. Melee -> strength, const
3. Mage -> intelligence, memory,
4. Rogue -> scoundrel, finesse

[BlazeRomulus]

There are spells that don't rely on INT to be good, such as buffs (Fortify, Mend etc.) Also, Warfare works with both finesse and str (and INT?), depends which is higher.

[THE AVERAGE]

Warfare doesn't do anything for INT. It simply increases the damage of some Necromancy spells that are physical and scale with INT. But the scaling you get isn't enough of a boost to consider them a viable source of damage anyway.

Anyway, don't bother investing in CON other than what you need for gear requirements. Armor > CON in this game, and you get enough health from leveling up and gear anyway. For both your Rogue and Warrior:

You raise Warfare to 10 first and only put points into Scoundrel to hit the requirements for skills. After hitting 10 in Warfare start raising Two-Handed for a Warrior.

As Blaze said, there are spells that don't scale with stats that you can use that also have a relatively low investment (up to two points in Geo, Hydro or Necro). You can't really make a hybrid in this game that is "okay" with melee and "okay" with damaging spells in which they are going to be anywhere remotely as good as a more focused melee or caster. Split damage in this game is bad, and you need to be able to do as much as possible to a single armor type.

[Ceredh]

You also want Warfare for the ranger. I level Intelligence on my physical damage chars only to be able to wear all armor. Otherwise it is of no great use. I like to have support skills on all chars but Intelligence increases healing or such only marginally. My rogue has Fortify, Frost Armor and Restoration, my twohanded warrior has First Aid (and Tactical Retreat of course) as well as my ranger who also has Peace of Mind and Haste. My summoner has most of the support skills.

Your mage is a bit of an outsider in the group. The ranger can deal magical damage, but not as well as physical. I presume you go mainly against the physical armor? Then your mage might be support and Intelligence is not of such great importance as it mainly increases damage. More important are points in school combat abilities. You want points in Hydrosophist and Geomancer for armor renewal above all. And healing and removing statuses. Some in Aerotheurge for Teleport and Evasion skills.

[skyhrg]

I always thought having the option to dps down either physical or magic was best - but do you guys think that optimizing my party for dpsing just one of the two is the better option?

[Arteas Naur]

your call - i had 3 melee chars and 1 mage. And tbh mage could alone nuke enemy magic armor and half hp in one turn (and get CC on enemy- freeze or stun)

[Carcosa]

I would change your mage to a summoner. You can give a point in necro for swarm (physical damage spell) and raise bloated corpse. Make all your totems and summons from regular ground or blood (no fire, water etc). You can also give them a point in schools with good level 1 buffs that don't scale with int such as fortify, frost armor etc. Same with hydro and healing. This way all four of your characters will do physical damage.

I've tried the pure mage/buffer role and the summoner is just better as a lot of times you will be buffing people who don't need buffs simply because you have nothing better to do as a mage buffer.

[[SOTI] IKilled007]

Your Ranger wants Ranged (Bow Damage), Hunter (Height Damage), Warfare (Physical Damage), and Scoundrel (Crit Damage) + Finesse (Damage). Intelligence helps for some of the proc damages if you want something besides physical damage on your weapon, too.

[THE AVERAGE]

Originally posted by Buff:

Your Ranger wants Ranged (Bow Damage), Hunter (Height Damage), Warfare (Physical Damage), and Scoundrel (Crit Damage) + Finesse (Damage). Intelligence helps for some of the proc damages if you want something besides physical damage on your weapon, too.

No, a Ranger doesn't want Ranged Weapon. At least not initially. You max Warfare first, grabbing Huntsman and Scoundrel as needed and once that's done only then do you put anything into Ranged Weapon. This largely depends on how often you're finding it difficult to actually put elevation to use in many encounters.

Huntsman will always do more damage than Ranged Weapon at elevation, but many fights either don't allow you to get elevated (which means you'll only benefit with Sky Shot), or you waste too much AP to get situated. For flat footed encounters Ranged Weapon is better, but then so is Scoundrel, and that also offers a movement bonus.

There's also 0 reason to raise INT on a physical class for any kind of elemental bonus on a weapon. You get more of a boost by raising the school of that element anyway. Besides that, not only are the elemental damage bonuses typically weak, split damage in this game is bad. It's better to have a weapon that has a 260 physical average than it is one that has a 240 average with 30-40 elemental on top of it. Elemental as an addition is only helpful once armor is stripped, and armor gets stripped faster doing more damage with the damage type that matches.

[rav]

Originally posted by THE AVERAGE DD Pawn:

Warfare doesn't do anything for INT. It simply increases the damage of some Necromancy spells that are physical and scale with INT. But the scaling you get isn't enough of a boost to consider them a viable source of damage anyway.

If you use a wand or other int based weapon, warfare skills also scale with int instead of str or dex but i dont know how good the scaling is

[THE AVERAGE]

Originally posted by rav:

Originally posted by THE AVERAGE DD Pawn:

Warfare doesn't do anything for INT. It simply increases the damage of some Necromancy spells that are physical and scale with INT. But the scaling you get isn't enough of a boost to consider them a viable source of damage anyway.

If you use a wand or other int based weapon, warfare skills also scale with int instead of str or dex but i dont know how good the scaling is

Warfare skills scale with whatever weapon you're using. The stat isn't relevant aside from the fact that the weapon you're actually using scales with said stat. It's just a tooltip issue. The actual Warfare damage bonus you get for physical attacks has nothing to do with that however. Separate things.

e.g. Whirlwind with an all Air damage staff will increase the damage you do with the skill the higher your INT and Aero rank. It also scales with your level. The +5% physical damage bonus you get per point in Warfare doesn't change it at all though. Necromancy is also similar, but it *does* get a boost from the Warfare bonus. Problem is, the physical base is already very small that this boost doesn't make any difference.

Edit: To clarify the concerns about how well a mixed damage team performs; it's 100% fine on Classic. If you're going to go that route though you need it to be evenly mixed. Have 2x Physical damage dealers and 2x Elemental (or even 1x Summoner who can switch between the two roles, but then have them as your healer/buffer and the other elemental as a pure Pyro/Geo/Crit focused build). It's just that 4x Physical or 4x Elemental will work "better" (physical being dominant).

[Gintoki Sakata]

Originally posted by skyhrg:

So I wanted a strong melee character with some geomancer, but if I invest in mostly const and strength, does the spell become virtually worthless as time goes on?

I wanted to diversify my characters' special abilities. Should my mage learn all the spell, since I'm investing all the intelligence points unto her?

My characters are:

1. Ranger -> huntsman, finesse,
2. Melee -> strength, const
3. Mage -> intelligence, memory,
4. Rogue -> scoundrel, finesse

Since this game lacks sorely at character building lemme give you best optimized option

Ranger / Rouge : Warfare , fineness followed by everything else .
Melee : Wareface , strenge ( picture of health )
Mage : Sit in a corner buffing/healing physical damage dealers because reistances .

[kricket]

I put togeather a calculator to help with all this. I'll be optimizing it, and making some dummy buttons in the days to come.

www.irodemine.com/divinity2/damage.php

[corisai]

Originally posted by mOj:

Mage : Sit in a corner buffing/healing physical damage dealers because reistances .

Then respec into crit-based build somewhere between 12-15 lvl, when you get access to 3-source spells too - and simply one-shot everything, because whos need melees :)

Seriously, try it. While physicals source spells mostly crap, magical are amazing.

[skyhrg]

Ok, I think I'm gonna stick with 3 physical 1 magical/buff/summoner build and respec whenever I want. I didn't think of maxing out warfare before huntsman though.

This decision is simply because I really want to know the magical side of the game too and for flexibility. I'm playing on tactical but with the 20% increase patch, as opposed to the normal 50% increase.

[Gintoki Sakata]

Originally posted by corisai:

Originally posted by mOj:

Mage : Sit in a corner buffing/healing physical damage dealers because reistances .

Then respec into crit-based build somewhere between 12-15 lvl, when you get access to 3-source spells too - and simply one-shot everything, because whos need melees :)

Seriously, try it. While physicals source spells mostly crap, magical are amazing.

I did with that sword from nameless isles and it falls so short to physical damage because of one big reason : Elemental resists . Most enemies have some sort of weakness or defense from respective resists where as phy is just stupid straight number , if it says 20 k its 20k whereas an enemy can easily have 100% + of all elemental resists when they chug large resistance potion ( only seen 1 or 2 do them ) which creates another problem of getting more then 3 type of skills.

Now any non lonewolf mage will already be struggling with point investment due to stupid memory requirement and int to scale dmg and wits in this case for a meager amount of crit chance. Even then i will have to change around my source skills on each fight before even going into it .
Where as my ranger has 10 skills and 1 shots everything . Yes even braccas Rex / Kraken / fully buffed adhramahlik. So no mage is not an option unless the whole group is dedicated spell caster which will struggle compared to a decent 3 phys 1 enchanter setup.

One way to possibly solve is to add in stuff like add magical armor based off int and physical armor based of con but thats besides the point.