staff melee and necromancee

[[VI] Lycan Lupgarou]

1. are there necro staves

2. if using a necro/elemental staff with warfare skills, is the damage done now
all the element?

3. how do u build a melee battlemage
that can be front line and deal good melee damage?

i was thinking of fextralifes eternal knight ,but go high int and use necro staff?

[Chaoslink]

1. No.

2. Yes, all Warfare skills will adapt to your equipped weapon and deal damage based on that. Poison a sword and the Battle Stomp skill gets some poison damage.

3. Pretty much the same way you build any mage, except you use a staff and you pick up some Warfare skills to cast. Pick up the combined weapon buff spells like Sparking Swings or Venom Coating to add more damage and just melee with magic damage. Use close range spells like Blinding Radiance, shocking touch, Medusa Head and that kind of thing.

- I don't know what the fextralife eternal knight is, but in my experience fextralife builds are built more for flavor than effectiveness. I don't know what they are most of the time, but I'm not usually a fan. If you want to link or describe a bit about the build here, I can offer more targeted advice on the build, otherwise we can discuss the build you have in mind here.

[Senki]

Fextralife's eternal warrior is just a normal Strength 2-handed build with poly and some necro spells on top of it which is probably one of his most ''normal'' or decent builds.

For a full high int melee mage though I would recommend going either for pyro or aero (or both but focus more on the aero side). Necromancers are better while being ranged and there's no physical staff because that's basically what 2-handed strength weapons are. Aero is designed for the kind of build you wanna go for with all the close range spells it has.

[[VI] Lycan Lupgarou]

ok-- so i want to use the staff to melee, but be more int than str.
is there a build somewhere you folks can link tat you would recommend?


thank u

[Senki]

https://fextralife.com/divinity-original-sin-2-build-guides-radiant-battlemage/

This is still done by fextralife and it's basically what I'm talking about, aero is good at being a melee mage kind of build. I would add closed circuit,apotheosis and other aero spells to it but it's a decent build to start with.

[gregfromthepeg]

One thing to note is that the staff's element should match your high magic skills - if your pyro is 1 and your aero is 7, an aero staff deals a fair bit more damage. It gets damage scaling from the element.

I like staff builds, but getting good staves matching your element can be a pain, especially in the first half. If you have two element schools, you double your chance of having a levelled staff that is good. I like having multi-element mages anyway, but I would do something like 2 aero :1 hydro ratio. Always try and get a good aero staff, but if you get stuck not finding one, you can use a hydro staff as a backup. This isn't required, but can help if you like actually attacking with your staff.

[Greenegg]

most warfare skills adapt to scale off their weapons main stat, so they'd scale off int if you're using a staff.

so basically just find a melee build, and replace int with strength, boom, you've got your build*

*well, you won't be able to wear str amror so you might be kinda squishy in melee range, so you might need to invest just enough into str to wear armor.


another thing to note is that if you're using a staff you'll rarely get the effect of knockdown from battlestomp for example. So warfare, even if they scale fine with staves, will still lose some of their potential.

[Godwoken Dovahkiin]

One thing to add, don't forget about Bull Horns, most melees need them early. If you make a Fire Battlemage you can use torturer and burn someone with ignition then bull rush doing fire damage (some bonus damage due to burning) with staff and set them bleeding. As Chaoslink said, Sparking Swings and Venom Coat increase your magical damage further, goes well with Warfare AOE skills and bull horns.

As far as elemental battlemage goes, Pyro Battlemage is the best IMO, next maybe geo, hydro and aero don't have a damage buff so you will have to rely on weaker sparks and venom coats or cast more spells than melee. There's a sort of STR build that uses sparking swings due to an item you get later on, with that idea I had another idea of using daggers + venom coat as geo increases it's damage and venom coat damage crits with backstab, could make a sort of poison BM Rogue, though not as damaging and optimal but could be fun to play.

As far as a melee physical battlemage, damage is not optimized, with a necro you want int to boost your skill damage and STR to boost melee, there is no reason to cast spells as a melee necro and necros don't have many damage spells, you're better off just going full INT and spam blood storm + grasp of the starved.

Pretty sure there's a sweet spot for melee/ranged for the build but I've not focused on necro much other than early game blood rain + decay + bloodsuck. It all depends on the focus, the other will be secondary not optimized damage but still decent damage, a 1 AP Mosquito Swarm or 2 AP Infect with Elemental Affinity could be a useful ranged attack. There is barely any difference between a 2H Warrior and a Melee Necro, only thing that change are buffs, but why use situational necro buffs when you have enrage.