Physical and Magical Builds Viable?

[OntologicalWeevil]

Hello!

Is it possible to create a scoundrel/warfare/huntsman + magical build? And to make it work?

For single characters. one character using both for example scound. and hydro.

[Chaoslink]

You mean a mixed party? Or a single character doing both. Because it isn’t clear which you mean and the answer varies widely depending on which.

[OntologicalWeevil]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

You mean a mixed party? Or a single character doing both. Because it isn’t clear which you mean and the answer varies widely depending on which.

edited, thanks for headsup

[Chaoslink]

If you want to build a hybrid character, one that does both physical and magic damage, you’ll be much weaker in both overall. The problem lies in the weapon choice. If you intend to use the weapon, you need the proper attribute for that weapon. Problem is, magic pretty much entirely runs off intelligence. This means that your damage is always going to be low as you won’t be stacking just one attribute. The ONLY build that does this naturally is the staff wielding battlemage. Staffs are melee weapons that scale off intelligence, but being a melee weapon, warfare skills work with them and scale using their stats. However, those warfare skills will be dealing magic damage, not physical. This means the knockdown effect isn’t going to be all that useful on abilities like battlestomp. The build itself is pretty much your average mage though as you don’t generally use the staff much for melee and it is essentially just a stat holder. It also justifies putting points into two handed for the crit buff.

Any other builds trying to merge physical and magic damage skills don’t generally work well, at least for damage. Other than a memory main that learns everything they can from every skill tree and works as a sort of utility/battlefield support, dealing little damage but supporting the team through buffs and status effects and clearing surfaces as needed (or creating them), there really isn’t a reason to do both.

[OntologicalWeevil]

A dagger wielding mage can use some scoundrel spells because some scoundrel spells if they scale off intell? Such as gag order?

[EvilShuckle]

A hybrid character is perfectly fine. Probably more useful than one of a single type. While the damage is almost the same, with mixed output you have far more options to choose from and you can damage based on the opponents lowest defense.

In order to make use of either of these defenses, I generally hybrid characters. Hybrid is generally great because you unlock a whole set of new spells by building hybrid. Thats why a magical attacker + physical attacker is worse than two hybrids.

These hybrid spells (google combination spells) are only available by combining two skill books, one of a magical output and one of a physical one.

About what chaoslink said: necromancy, for instance, requires intellect but does physical damage. Absolutely perfect for hybrid. Sure, the points in warfare are wasted when you use magic output. so I'd keep that low but any intellect will do greatly.

Whether you want a specific type of hybrid it is worth checking out the combination spells first. Scoundrel and hydro is pretty interesting because that creates a spell where you receive 50% of the damage you deal as health. It is tricky because on regular tactician you want to avoid taking any health damage because you could be cc-locked otherwise. However when you play with a difficulty bloat, for instance, its unavoidable to take a lot of damage, so any healing is welcome.

Couple it with the talent that turns healing into magic resistance and you got yourself an amazing tank.

A piece of advice though: Building hybrids is mostly practical for lone wolves, because you have quite a lot of points to spend. Non-lone wolves dont have that many points to spare so it's better to focus on as little as possible in order to still be effective. Hybrid necro + magic is still great though and hydro + scoundrel or so is fine because its only 2. But putting points in everything isn't so great.

[Qiox]

Originally posted by Zaareish:

Hello!

Is it possible to create a scoundrel/warfare/huntsman + magical build? And to make it work?

For single characters. one character using both for example scound. and hydro.

Yes.

I did a solo run through the game on Tactical difficulty with a jack-of-all trades hybrid, just for fun. I used mainly warefare and scoundral abilites for doing damage, but also had points in all the elemental magics for utility and buff spellls. I had around 25 int at end game to make those buffs pretty usefull.

Could self buff my phys and magic armour to 13,000 each on my 1st turn, along with 21,000 life. Was using Fane, and had the extra turn source ability and would use that right away so that the buff turn was essentially free.

Also had points in Poly and Necro.

It was fun and not hard at all. Totally viable.

[CrazyMLC]

Warfare increases all physical damage, so it'd actually increase the damage of Necromancer spells. That's a large part of why it's a very strong option for battle"mages".

You could also focus on physical damage and just grab spells from various schools to get whatever buffs you want, like Firebrand, Haste, Venom Coating, Sparking Swings, Fortify, Armor of Frost, Flaming Tongues, maybe some heals, etc.

Focusing on Pyro can work as well. Pyrokinetic has a lot of damage and buffs, but it lacks hard cc. That's something Warfare and Polymorph can both make up for.
Opportunist + Sparking Swings + Firebrand + Flaming Tongues gives you a lot of area denial, so your first turn in fights would probably amount to putting those buffs on yourself and Phoenix Diving into the fight, cutting off some chokepoint. You can use a spear for this because of their increased range, or just use another two-handed if you find a good one, or just use a staff if the enemy is weak to fire.

[meiam]

Check spell scaling too, a lot of them don't scale from stats (like hydro healing only scale from level and hydro skill or summoning not gaining anything from stats).

That being said a pure character will always outperform an hybrid (ie here hybrid being someone who sprinkle everywhere, whereas a pure can still place a point or two to get some key skill) simply because focusing on one damage type is simply better. Similarly if you split your point between int and str at any one time you'll only be able to benefit from one, making the rest wasted. Hybrid gain flexibility but the memory system will limit how many skill you can have at one time anyway (and heavily investing in memory just make you weaker overall) and anyway most types of skill exist in more than one tree (for example healing is not just in hydro, it exist in summoning, archer, nerco...).

[Qiox]

Originally posted by meiam:

Similarly if you split your point between int and str at any one time you'll only be able to benefit from one, making the rest wasted.

Not exactly. Many buffs are greatly strengthened by high int. Even if you are a str based sword swinger for your damage, having higher int as well can really help buff you up for the fight.

On my solo hybrid run my ending stats were aproximately:

40 strength
20 finesse
25 int
40 con
25 memory
30 wits

Crit chance was 80% using a two-handed sword.

It is quite fun to have almost everything available to use.

[OntologicalWeevil]

Originally posted by Qiox:

Originally posted by meiam:

Similarly if you split your point between int and str at any one time you'll only be able to benefit from one, making the rest wasted.

Not exactly. Many buffs are greatly strengthened by high int. Even if you are a str based sword swinger for your damage, having higher int as well can really help buff you up for the fight.

On my solo hybrid run my ending stats were aproximately:

40 strength
20 finesse
25 int
40 con
25 memory
30 wits

Crit chance was 80% using a two-handed sword.

It is quite fun to have almost everything available to use.

were you using lone wolf?

[Qiox]

Originally posted by Zaareish:

Originally posted by Qiox:

Not exactly. Many buffs are greatly strengthened by high int. Even if you are a str based sword swinger for your damage, having higher int as well can really help buff you up for the fight.

On my solo hybrid run my ending stats were aproximately:

40 strength
20 finesse
25 int
40 con
25 memory
30 wits

Crit chance was 80% using a two-handed sword.

It is quite fun to have almost everything available to use.

were you using lone wolf?

Yes. I have not yet tried to do a solo run without Lone Wolf.

[OntologicalWeevil]

You probably could do one without it, but you'd best have a lot of persuasion to avoid difficult fights.

[meiam]

Originally posted by Qiox:

Originally posted by meiam:

Similarly if you split your point between int and str at any one time you'll only be able to benefit from one, making the rest wasted.

Not exactly. Many buffs are greatly strengthened by high int. Even if you are a str based sword swinger for your damage, having higher int as well can really help buff you up for the fight.

While buff are strengthen, you still have to give up the 5% you'd get from spending it in your primary stats, on top of that you have to cast the buff (rather than attacking) and buff aren't always available. Focus is the way to go, I have no doubt your character would have been far more effective with 55 str and 10 int.

[Qiox]

Originally posted by meiam:

Originally posted by Qiox:

Not exactly. Many buffs are greatly strengthened by high int. Even if you are a str based sword swinger for your damage, having higher int as well can really help buff you up for the fight.

While buff are strengthen, you still have to give up the 5% you'd get from spending it in your primary stats, on top of that you have to cast the buff (rather than attacking) and buff aren't always available. Focus is the way to go, I have no doubt your character would have been far more effective with 55 str and 10 int.

Evidently you were not paying attention to the topic of discussion.

The question was not about creating the most effective, or OP build possible.

The question was if a hybrid is a viable build or not.

Since the game can easily be beaten on tactical with a hybrid, the answer to that question is of course yes.

Making points that are irrelevant to answering that question are of course irrelevant points.

And my point remains on topic. Having an investment in int and in str is not at all times a waste. It is in fact the specific thing which makes the build in question, a hybrid, both effective and viable.