Aerotheurge good?

[Hummingbird]

Is air magic any good/

[Berlin]

Yes. Ideally, you'll have all four elemental skills in your crew. I love aerothurge, there are some great spells.

https://divinityoriginalsin2.wiki.fextralife.com/Skills

[Xaphnir]

Aerotheurge is great for CCing enemies while still allowing them to be poisoned or set on fire, and it has some really good AoE damage. I've had a ton of fights where rain+chain lightning right at the start all but wins the fight for me

[Chaoslink]

Good damage, not the best but it has most of the best CC spells for magic. Great pairing with Hydro as you'll need the Rain spell to make Aero do its best.

[Hummingbird]

ty
Ok so im doing a battle mage build focusing on the magic side,
should i put any in strength, constitution or finesse? just increase intelligence loads

[Chaoslink]

Just Intelligence. You never want to mix damage scaling attributes in any build. Ever. Do not do this. It basically halves your damage. Con is also worthless aside from equipping shields.

[Hummingbird]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Just Intelligence. You never want to mix damage scaling attributes in any build. Ever. Do not do this. It basically halves your damage. Con is also worthless aside from equipping shields.

so youre saying mix everything, lol
seriously ty, i'll just do intel on my BMA

[Ash]

Air magic does have Teleportation, which is one of the best utility spells (sadly, it does physical damage despite scaling off Aeroteurge and Int) and Uncanny Evasion which will time and again save you from phys attackers. Nether Swap is also handy to have when you're standing in the flaming pit and there's enemy archer or mage above you.

[Gorwe]

If you want more skill viability, there are mods available. With that said, Aero don't really need anything. It's a good skill focused more on crowd control, but there's some good damage there too.

[Spawnling]

At some point, later in the game, you might consider minimal investment into strength or finesse. Just enough to mix armors.
Mage/Int Amor (that needs Int to wear) provides ~25% physical and 75% magical armor
Finesse Armor is split 50/50
Str Armor 75/25
If you find yourself in need of physical armor consider either to put a few points in str and add some str armor, or if you are not playing an elf some points in constitution to equip a shield.
But before doing that you can also put a point into Geo and learn Fortify (Hydro 1, Armor of Frost for additional magic armor). These spells scale with level and not int, so non-mages can use them effectively.

[icepac]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Just Intelligence. You never want to mix damage scaling attributes in any build. Ever. Do not do this. It basically halves your damage. Con is also worthless aside from equipping shields.

Did somebody do a little research into the enemy Physical / Magical armour variation ?
If the enemy has 3 times the magical armour then even half physical dmg is better than 100% magical damage no ?

So I know I've seen a lot of enemies with 200 / 33 Phys / Mage armour... In this case having the power to choose between physical dmg and magical would be more efficient.

Now of course if this distribution is only 10% cases and most cases it is near 50/50 distrib between Phys and Mag then by all mean focus on 1 type and not both...

2 cents

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by icepac:

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Just Intelligence. You never want to mix damage scaling attributes in any build. Ever. Do not do this. It basically halves your damage. Con is also worthless aside from equipping shields.

Did somebody do a little research into the enemy Physical / Magical armour variation ?
If the enemy has 3 times the magical armour then even half physical dmg is better than 100% magical damage no ?

So I know I've seen a lot of enemies with 200 / 33 Phys / Mage armour... In this case having the power to choose between physical dmg and magical would be more efficient.

Now of course if this distribution is only 10% cases and most cases it is near 50/50 distrib between Phys and Mag then by all mean focus on 1 type and not both...

2 cents

As far as one individual character is concerned, you don’t want to have that split. For the team as a whole it is very worth it to have access to both types of damage. You just don’t want a character splitting their attributes such that they’re only using half their stats on any given attack. If you invest half strength and half intelligence in one build, your character will have the stats of a level 6 character at level 12-14. You’d be stacking less off gear too. This damage loss isn’t made up by the versatility either as just splitting your team between damage types and focusing each character on one type works far better. The only time you hybridize is when you don’t have to split attributes to do it.

[Chaoslink]

It’s important to note that armor isn’t created equally. Take the post a few above, armor isn’t 75/25 really and finesse isn’t 50/50. Finesse is more 55/45 and added together is only about 83% the armor of pure INT/STR. The same works for enemies, even ones with more balanced armor still favors physical a bit. This is somewhat balanced by magic resistances, but overall armor tends to lean higher on the physical side. That said, many fights offer a disproportionate amount of physical focused or magic focused enemies, meaning that some fights will favor a more magic focused team and some favor a physical focus. Overall, you’re better off with a balanced setup with characters focusing on one type of damage individually, but as a team you balance between types. This way you’re not weakening the characters individually by trying to hybridize their damage, but you still have access to both types of damage throughout the fight.

[icepac]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

As far as one individual character is concerned, you don’t want to have that split. For the team as a whole it is very worth it to have access to both types of damage. You just don’t want a character splitting their attributes such that they’re only using half their stats on any given attack. If you invest half strength and half intelligence in one build, your character will have the stats of a level 6 character at level 12-14. You’d be stacking less off gear too. This damage loss isn’t made up by the versatility either as just splitting your team between damage types and focusing each character on one type works far better. The only time you hybridize is when you don’t have to split attributes to do it.

I completely agree with your math / fact...
However your dmg doesn't exist in a vacuum...

Do we agree that the goal of battle in this game is to whittle armour so we can CC the opposition. Because once your enemy is in red then it's basically game over for them. Right ?

If that's the case then what I am saying is that it doesn't matter if you are doing 50% of max dmg if you are attacking 20% of total armour vs somebody doing 100% dmg against 80% armour (assuming a 20% / 80% armour distribution here)

Now for the argument that you should basically have dmg type specialist, the issue becomes target acquisition and selection :
- Can you attack the target that has the armour type you are specialising against ?
- Will the target you are attacking the next in line on the enemy round to attack ? If not then you are giving a free pass to the enemy to either CC you or undo (part of) the dmg you're doing before you get a chance to kill / cc

If the answer to this is always yes (and I'd like to know how you can organise your team for that) then by all mean go for it...

Otherwise you are actually being less efficient...

2 cents

[Yojo0o]

Originally posted by icepac:

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

As far as one individual character is concerned, you don’t want to have that split. For the team as a whole it is very worth it to have access to both types of damage. You just don’t want a character splitting their attributes such that they’re only using half their stats on any given attack. If you invest half strength and half intelligence in one build, your character will have the stats of a level 6 character at level 12-14. You’d be stacking less off gear too. This damage loss isn’t made up by the versatility either as just splitting your team between damage types and focusing each character on one type works far better. The only time you hybridize is when you don’t have to split attributes to do it.

I completely agree with your math / fact...
However your dmg doesn't exist in a vacuum...

Do we agree that the goal of battle in this game is to whittle armour so we can CC the opposition. Because once your enemy is in red then it's basically game over for them. Right ?

If that's the case then what I am saying is that it doesn't matter if you are doing 50% of max dmg if you are attacking 20% of total armour vs somebody doing 100% dmg against 80% armour (assuming a 20% / 80% armour distribution here)

Now for the argument that you should basically have dmg type specialist, the issue becomes target acquisition and selection :
- Can you attack the target that has the armour type you are specialising against ?
- Will the target you are attacking the next in line on the enemy round to attack ? If not then you are giving a free pass to the enemy to either CC you or undo (part of) the dmg you're doing before you get a chance to kill / cc

If the answer to this is always yes (and I'd like to know how you can organise your team for that) then by all mean go for it...

Otherwise you are actually being less efficient...

2 cents

Except this kinda assumes that there's only one viable target, which is rarely the case.

If an enemy is much more vulnerable to physical damage than to magical, I'm not going to use my wizard's backup physical damage option to hurt them incrementally, I'm just going to throw a fireball at a different enemy. I'll trust the physical damage dealers of the party to handle the enemy in question.

[Yojo0o]

Originally posted by Kitsune:

Is air magic any good/

It's the school of DOS2 magic that I'd trust the most to get the job done, with its combination of damage and crowd control. I've solo'd the game with an Aerothurge successfully, and I wouldn't want to try that with a different school of magic.