How Should Armor Balance Look?

[makisekurisufcker]

For the enemy, it seems like mages and archers usually have high physical armor and lower magical armor and the inverse is true for fighters. Should I equip my characters (The Red Prince, Sebille, Ifan and Fane) the same way? Or should they be balanced?

[The HR Department]

Just use the best armour that's available that you can wear based upon each build. D:OS 2 works best when multiclassing to be able to use spells to replenish whatever armour you have available, for instance, a point in geomancer allows you to cast fortify, which can help with a mage build that tends to have lower physical armour. The same is true for movement and AP buffs. You only need to take a level or 2 to be able to use some of the most useful spells in the game.

[BOT]

in therms of group combo you can go 3 mage or physical and 1 support(archer/summon ect) or 4 mages / 4 physical .. that is the best.

but in thems of magic and physical armor healthbar .. you will notice that the enemys use sometimes a lot of magic and sometimes they are heavy physical based.. so.. so try to make it balanced if you are new.. because otherwise you die to a normal fireball.. ok maybe you dont die but your magic armor is gone and then you get CC mostly stuned same goes with physical armor.. if they can crack it to easy ..next you see an enemy archer will use knock-out/down arrow on you.

[Chaoslink]

Much of the time, balanced is best. Mages are really the only characters you should equip shields on because they cover their weakness of low physical armor the best and they really don’t need to use their weapon to attack, so the lower damage output doesn’t affect them much. For other characters, you can use talents and spells to help them overcome their weaker armor types, such as the Living Armor talent to replenish magic armor anytime they heal, then give that character points in Necromancy so they lifesteal passively, giving them passive magic armor.

Ultimately, magic armor is more important than physical armor is because you can rely on Uncanny Dodge and the aura version of the spell to reliably dodge most physical damage thrown at you.

However, most of the time you’ll be fine just wearing the armor your main attribute focuses on.

[makisekurisufcker]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Mages are really the only characters you should equip shields

Think so? I've built The Red Prince around single handed and using a sword and using Provoke when I can (It's mostly ineffective). Fane has been using two wands when his spells on are cool down. Would it be better to respec The Red Prince for two handed maybe? and just give Fane the shields for physical armor?

[makisekurisufcker]

Originally posted by The HR Department:

Just use the best armour that's available that you can wear based upon each build. D:OS 2 works best when multiclassing to be able to use spells to replenish whatever armour you have available, for instance, a point in geomancer allows you to cast fortify, which can help with a mage build that tends to have lower physical armour. The same is true for movement and AP buffs. You only need to take a level or 2 to be able to use some of the most useful spells in the game.

As far as multi-classing goes, how many "schools" should each character dip into? Most I have is three. I'm currently in Driftwood. Maybe one or two of my schools is to high and I need to spread out my skill points?

[makisekurisufcker]

Originally posted by BOT:

in therms of group combo you can go 3 mage or physical and 1 support(archer/summon ect) or 4 mages / 4 physical .. that is the best.

but in thems of magic and physical armor healthbar .. you will notice that the enemys use sometimes a lot of magic and sometimes they are heavy physical based.. so.. so try to make it balanced if you are new.. because otherwise you die to a normal fireball.. ok maybe you dont die but your magic armor is gone and then you get CC mostly stuned same goes with physical armor.. if they can crack it to easy ..next you see an enemy archer will use knock-out/down arrow on you.

Things like knockdown and stun that disrupt the turn are killing me a lot.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by GunSlinginOtaku:

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Mages are really the only characters you should equip shields

Think so? I've built The Red Prince around single handed and using a sword and using Provoke when I can (It's mostly ineffective). Fane has been using two wands when his spells on are cool down. Would it be better to respec The Red Prince for two handed maybe? and just give Fane the shields for physical armor?

Not much reason you should have to respec to swap to two handed. You shouldn't be investing weapon skills like Two Handed on any build most of the time. Warfare gives better return on investment per point nearly all the time. But yes, sword and board is probably the worst weapon setup the game offers. Using ambidextrous, you can probably make a one handed with empty off hand do better. The game favors offense over defense heavily, so a "tank" build really doesn't work well. You can force it, but you really have to build the whole team around it to make it work and even then its not that great.

For your mage, which your team should ideally have two of, you should invest a bit heavy in memory early on and try to have enough spells that you rarely need to attack with weapons and after the first act basically never attack with them again. Mage weapons fall into two categories, weapon and shield for a more durable mage, good for casters that get in close to use the closer range spells, or you instead dip a few points in strength and get a two handed axe or something that has 20% baseline crit then use the Savage Sortilege talent for spell crit.

[makisekurisufcker]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Originally posted by GunSlinginOtaku:

Think so? I've built The Red Prince around single handed and using a sword and using Provoke when I can (It's mostly ineffective). Fane has been using two wands when his spells on are cool down. Would it be better to respec The Red Prince for two handed maybe? and just give Fane the shields for physical armor?

Not much reason you should have to respec to swap to two handed. You shouldn't be investing weapon skills like Two Handed on any build most of the time. Warfare gives better return on investment per point nearly all the time. But yes, sword and board is probably the worst weapon setup the game offers. Using ambidextrous, you can probably make a one handed with empty off hand do better. The game favors offense over defense heavily, so a "tank" build really doesn't work well. You can force it, but you really have to build the whole team around it to make it work and even then its not that great.

For your mage, which your team should ideally have two of, you should invest a bit heavy in memory early on and try to have enough spells that you rarely need to attack with weapons and after the first act basically never attack with them again. Mage weapons fall into two categories, weapon and shield for a more durable mage, good for casters that get in close to use the closer range spells, or you instead dip a few points in strength and get a two handed axe or something that has 20% baseline crit then use the Savage Sortilege talent for spell crit.

Oh, I have 2 currently in one handed so that shouldn't be an issue, I thought I had way more. Sebille, on the other hand has 4 in dual wielding, would it be better to spread that into Warfare/Scoundrel? I'm in act 2.

Yeah, I figured if all my mage cool downs are active, I don't have enough spells, memory should be okay but I think I need to pick up some more spell books.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by GunSlinginOtaku:

Originally posted by The HR Department:

Just use the best armour that's available that you can wear based upon each build. D:OS 2 works best when multiclassing to be able to use spells to replenish whatever armour you have available, for instance, a point in geomancer allows you to cast fortify, which can help with a mage build that tends to have lower physical armour. The same is true for movement and AP buffs. You only need to take a level or 2 to be able to use some of the most useful spells in the game.

As far as multi-classing goes, how many "schools" should each character dip into? Most I have is three. I'm currently in Driftwood. Maybe one or two of my schools is to high and I need to spread out my skill points?

The basic outline I usually offer new players is to have:
-1 primary skill you get to 10 early, always Warfare if your primary damage is physical.
-1 secondary skill you take 2 points in to learn your spells, such as Scoundrel for rogues. This is usually a secondary element for mages that compliments your primary one such as Geo if you main Pyro.
-2 or 3 tertiaries that you take for specific spells. This can be a 1 point dip for things like Adrenaline from Scoundrel, 2 point dip for Teleport/Uncanny Dodge from Aero and so on. You can try to take spell crafting into account for these skills, meaning physical builds typically consider one of the elements and mages consider physical skills . This is because crafted spells mix one of the element skills with non-element skills to create the new spell. You don't have to do this, but its a consideration.

So ideally you'd have the two main ones with 2-3 dips.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by GunSlinginOtaku:

Oh, I have 2 currently in one handed so that shouldn't be an issue, I thought I had way more. Sebille, on the other hand has 4 in dual wielding, would it be better to spread that into Warfare/Scoundrel? I'm in act 2.

Yeah, I figured if all my mage cool downs are active, I don't have enough spells, memory should be okay but I think I need to pick up some more spell books.

Yeah, transfer those into Warfare. You only need 2 points in the skill you get your skillbooks for. 3 at level 16 for the new spells that drop then and 5 if you want the Source "Ultimate" spell for that skill, though not all are really worth it.

[makisekurisufcker]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Originally posted by GunSlinginOtaku:

As far as multi-classing goes, how many "schools" should each character dip into? Most I have is three. I'm currently in Driftwood. Maybe one or two of my schools is to high and I need to spread out my skill points?

The basic outline I usually offer new players is to have:
-1 primary skill you get to 10 early, always Warfare if your primary damage is physical.
-1 secondary skill you take 2 points in to learn your spells, such as Scoundrel for rogues. This is usually a secondary element for mages that compliments your primary one such as Geo if you main Pyro.
-2 or 3 tertiaries that you take for specific spells. This can be a 1 point dip for things like Adrenaline from Scoundrel, 2 point dip for Teleport/Uncanny Dodge from Aero and so on. You can try to take spell crafting into account for these skills, meaning physical builds typically consider one of the elements and mages consider physical skills . This is because crafted spells mix one of the element skills with non-element skills to create the new spell. You don't have to do this, but its a consideration.

So ideally you'd have the two main ones with 2-3 dips.

Awesome, thanks I'll give this a shot!

[makisekurisufcker]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Originally posted by GunSlinginOtaku:

Oh, I have 2 currently in one handed so that shouldn't be an issue, I thought I had way more. Sebille, on the other hand has 4 in dual wielding, would it be better to spread that into Warfare/Scoundrel? I'm in act 2.

Yeah, I figured if all my mage cool downs are active, I don't have enough spells, memory should be okay but I think I need to pick up some more spell books.

Yeah, transfer those into Warfare. You only need 2 points in the skill you get your skillbooks for. 3 at level 16 for the new spells that drop then and 5 if you want the Source "Ultimate" spell for that skill, though not all are really worth it.

What about attributes? I assume 90% of points should go into the relevant category (Strength for physical fighters, intelligence for mages, etc) and of course plenty of memory for mages and constitution for fighters?

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by GunSlinginOtaku:

What about attributes? I assume 90% of points should go into the relevant category (Strength for physical fighters, intelligence for mages, etc) and of course plenty of memory for mages and constitution for fighters?

No Constitution on anyone unless you're meeting the equip requirements for shields. Con is basically worthless per point compared to anything else.

Most of your points should be in the main attribute, yes. You need to invest 30 points to cap the attribute to 40. You want to cap that before level 20. With 2 points to invest per level, that means that 15 levels ideally should only invest in that main attribute. That said, some builds want Memory. I usually would say by the end of act 1, level 8, mages should have about 7-9 points invested in memory and physical attackers want about 5-6 usually. This can be from the Mnemonic talent if needed, just consider later respecing that talent out because there's better options. Same for Bigger and Better, alright early, but there are better options later on. I think the only one of those talents you might keep long term is All Skilled up for certain civil skills, but that's a niche one.

Early on, scaling doesn't really make a huge difference, so you can afford to sacrifice more INT/STR/FIN early on than you can later. By around level 10-12 you want to start really pumping your scaling as hard as you can and consider removing talents that bumped up a stat like Mnemonic for something else, letting the passive memory slots you gain every other level carry your slots, or invested memory, rather than relying on talents.

[Chaoslink]

Note, a lot of this is min/max talk. You don't have to follow this stuff to succeed. You just want to understand what it looks like and only diverge a little bit if you want to have good performance. Just know that the more you deviate, the less likely your build is going to perform well.

An all CON build for instance, has no damage. This lack of damage lowers the threat the AI sees them as and therefore leads to them not attacking that character. The best "tank" builds are actually really squishy, because squish entices the AI to attack them. You then use immunities, resistances and other mitigation to protect that character instead of making them beefy.

[makisekurisufcker]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Note, a lot of this is min/max talk. You don't have to follow this stuff to succeed. You just want to understand what it looks like and only diverge a little bit if you want to have good performance. Just know that the more you deviate, the less likely your build is going to perform well.

An all CON build for instance, has no damage. This lack of damage lowers the threat the AI sees them as and therefore leads to them not attacking that character. The best "tank" builds are actually really squishy, because squish entices the AI to attack them. You then use immunities, resistances and other mitigation to protect that character instead of making them beefy.

Yeah that makes sense. I am struggling though, playing on Classic Mode, most battles I win just barely, in fact, to proceed I had to pickpocket a lot of Resurrection scrolls so I feel my builds are fundamentally flawed. So at least with the input here I have a better of idea of what's a good or bad way to go about it without having to make super meta builds.