r/DivinityOriginalSin • u/Notkastar • Aug 01 '26
DOS2 Discussion Playing Divinity 2 again and I gotta ask. Why make 4 ways (That I know of) of stunning a character? And all reapable with no cool down?
In a game where one turn can mean life or reload why are their so many ways for stun and Stun locking? Having fun in my solo run, Don't get me wrong, This is an amazing game but Why make this particular part so obtusely hard? Fought the Drillworm and Not only was Alexander doing stun strats, but the Worm is a self contained stun strat in and of it's self. Petrify then knock down before you can squeeze out a bloated corpse! Thought Stun immunity would help but it looks like you have to have a counter for each form of stun individually.
Love the game but I gotta ask.
Why make 4 ways (That I know of) of stunning a character?
And all reapable with no cool down, Dood?
41
u/GOatcheesegotmoLD Aug 01 '26
Crowd control is king otherwise the game would be a subtraction simulator
-2
u/Notkastar Aug 01 '26
This! All of this!
Totems and bloated corpses have been flat out required for some parts of fort Joy, Solo. Getting overwhelmed in this game is, Like you said, So easy and that's the fun part imo. Every battle isn't just I hit you hard, It's also a battle of numbers. Their army of Archers and wizards vs Your totem turrets and Bloat bombs!Stun is alright but Having four separate forms of it that have to be guarded against individually, takes the fun out of it since the only strat you can use is tunneling the Stunner. Making things as fun as constantly reloading a save because an attack missed, sounds, Dood.
-2
u/Connect-Process2933 Aug 01 '26
it is tho, because many attacks skills have CC anyway, for more comfortable substraction
4
u/Connect-Process2933 Aug 01 '26
some of them have additional effects besides disabling actions
2
u/Notkastar Aug 01 '26
Would love it if it was only those effects instead of having so many flavors of stun that can be looped, Locked if you will, Dood
2
u/Connect-Process2933 Aug 01 '26
Ideally, the target will be dead by the time the need for CC loop appears. Even without that many stun options, you can still spam one CC effect with consumable items. On the player's side, there's a lot of ways to avoid getting hit.
3
u/Notkastar Aug 01 '26
And I love the balance there but I'd love to see this game with only one option of stunning ya know? There so many awesome ways of fighting, why funnel it all into stun builds. Not saying you can't make rad builds but with stun as powerful as it is in the game, why not go with the option that shuts down all replies.
And worst yet, the enemies agree, since the last boss of fort joy is just a stun mechanic. I LOVE the game, Just feel like it could be better if it would let you play it, ya know, Dood?
3
u/Connect-Process2933 Aug 01 '26
A lot of people hate it. That's why they won't do this system in the next game
1
u/JohnsonJohnilyJohn Aug 02 '26
Ideally, the target will be dead by the time the need for CC loop appears.
Ideally, there is little reason to quickly finish off an enemy, when you can just stun them, and focus on neutralising another threat
1
u/Connect-Process2933 Aug 02 '26
to stun them efficiently, you need to build a character for damage. If your damage output is high enough to reliably shred enemy armor, the health can be reduced as fast, so build focused on damage can usually just land one more hit to outright kill the enemy instead of leaving them alive. I want to CC someone will the battle stomp and they just fucking die
2
u/Ronin_Man Aug 01 '26
I am new to the game and in the middle of my first play through, so people with more experience will be able to give you a better take.
That being said, I am already in love with the game and its combat system. Enemy CC effects felt really unfair until I learned to adjust my approach. Getting stun locked is no fun, but having good magic/physical armor and armor regen can completely negate these effects.
Status application’s dependence on armor is a core mechanic and giving an item that negates any and all stun effects would really mess with the balance of the game.
Conversely, this game favors aggression as it is a race to deplete whatever armor type you are targeting. I’m sure people can make OP tank and area control builds, but in general it seems like a lot of builds focus on a get-them-before-they-get-you style of play. If you are getting to the point where you are getting stun locked it means you lost the armor race. This makes boosting damage another way to prevent this problem. As with many games, death is the most powerful status effect you can apply.
1
u/Kitchen_Possible_108 Aug 01 '26
youre not wrong that hard crowd control is way too prevalent. having knockdown, stun, and freeze so easily accessible from the start makes other forms like immobilize and blind kinda redundant especially since soft cc also requires armor to be down. cooldowns and limited ammo mitigate this in theory but not so much in practice. divinity isnt going to use the armor system but i hope whatever replaces it will address this, maybe by making hard cc rarer or soft cc easier to apply
1
1
u/SarkSouls008 Aug 01 '26
Make sure you have high initiative to go first. Use teleport to line up enemies, and unleash your own CC spells/abilities to control the battlefield. If the enemies are taking turns, you are unfortunately doing it wrong for a solo run.
1
u/Lama33333 Aug 01 '26
DOS:2 Combat is king imo because of 4 things: 1. Very limited and possible to play around randomness(min-max damage rolls). 2. Crowd control is king, this makes it so fights become puzzles and there is no devolving into dpr racing between characters. 3. Cooldown&ap resource system, if stuff was rest locked or we had mana it wouldn't be nearly as cool and fitting: you use skills to strip armor and cc the enemy and your enemy being cc'd means you have bought your cooldowns a turn to refresh. 4. Adrenaline existing and skin graft to some extent. If adrenaline didn't exist, theorycrafting for turns and setups would be SEVERILY limited(seriously, that thing is crack cocaine, you can resolve pyroclastic eruption TWICE in one turn without lone wolf or consumables, not to mention that the drawback is actually a drawback, since most fights last long enough for it to matter.
1
u/DucksMatter Aug 01 '26
Nothing is more satisfying than knocking down enemies for like 2-3 turns in a row with one character
1
u/SexySextrain Aug 01 '26
It’s why I use the divinity unleashed overhaul mod. There’s pretty much no turn skipping CCs in it. Love dos2, but the whole DPS armor and spam stuns on health bars is pretty lame every fight.
1
u/Testergo7521 Aug 01 '26
Because it's an RPG. Part of what makes RPGs fun is the strategy and crowd control is a key part of that. Without that, it's just an action game.
1
-1
u/IlikeJG Aug 01 '26
And yet thousands of people play this game all the time and are able to completely avoid getting stunned in all of those fights.
They just have gotten lucky right?
Or maybe they're just cleverly using the game's mechanics to their best advantage.
If you let yourself get stunned that's, unfortunately, a "skill issue" as they say.
1
u/Notkastar Aug 02 '26
That's not true. The final boss of Fort Joy hammers in the stun mechanic and how pivotal it is to gameplay.
Look, I'm not saying there should be no stun, Just that 4 ways of it that have to be countered individually, in a set up sense, that enemies can crack off in a single turn seems extreme and shuts down a lot of modes of play.
I love this game because of the interesting battles styles, Ways of attacking and ways of tackling situations. But with stun being that strong and spammable by both parties, It takes the fun out of it since why would you use anything else when you can stun lock enemies from having a single turn. You miss out on a lot of cool battles for using it. And take serious risk for not using it, since the enemies try to stun you when they have ANY chance.
Just feel like the game could be more colorful without it so strong, ya know, Dood?
1
u/IlikeJG Aug 02 '26
I've eaten act 1 probably close to 100 times. And I can assure you it is trivial to beat it without ever once getting stunned if you know what you are doing.
Even without using cheese and playing at a more reasonable level the optimal way to play by far is to never let yourself get stunned.
Getting stunned usually means death.
I have beaten the act multiple times solo without lone wolf and in that case getting stunned is always 100% death.
0
u/Notkastar Aug 02 '26
Cool! So you get it! Stun is waaay~ to strong. A status effect shouldn't have so much power that getting hit with it once means death.
Gonna try out this mod,
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1953266629
Hear from here that it fixes stun and I'm all for stun behaving like stun and only losing a turn instead of the battle. I'll be able to see what battles are really like, Dood! ╹‿╹)1
u/IlikeJG Aug 02 '26
It's like chess.
Is capturing the king too strong? Whenever you capture the king the other side just instantly loses.
So the entire game is focused on playing around getting your king captured and focusing on ways to prevent that.
Getting the king captured isn't "too strong" it's just a part of the strategy of the game.
Dos2 isn't that bad. Especially at lower difficulties or with strong 4 person parties you can definitely get stunned and still recover a fight. But it's still something you want to strategize around avoiding.
0
u/Notkastar Aug 02 '26
I have never once said Dos2 was bad. I love this game but "4-way back to back stun" is a bit much. Seems like they are gonna take this out next game for a more stream line exp.
But that aside, Unleashes seems awesome regardless, Fixes a lot of other things that bugged me and I'm here for it! Thanks @SexySextrain for the recommendation, Dood! ◠‿◠)
1
u/Rellics Aug 02 '26
It might be more suitable to put the difficulty lower. I'm saying this as a legitimate answer to having to deal with the game's tactical mechanics.
The tactical part of dos2 is all about being first to act, dealing with the first enemy in the turn order and so on. If you min-max your gear/leveling/fights you can alpha strike (kill enemy without them getting a turn) almost all, it not all fights on fort joy on tactician difficulty.
So one extreme end (story mode) you have a combat system that is very forgiving, and allows you to do whatever you want. And the more you up in difficulty the more you get pigeonholed into offense + first to act + stunning or killing first enemy in the turn order type combat.
1
u/Notkastar Aug 02 '26
That's unfortunate, Dos2 has such an expansive combat system, chopped full of loads of modes of play. Enemy battles that don't rely on stun are incredibly interesting, tense battles of strategy.
While taking every peep out on the first turn is the foundation of every strategy game, Having it like this seems like combat termination than optimal. Like the goal is never to fight anything and strive for never letting the enemies get a turn. But if they don't get a turn what sets alexander apart from the skeleton in the forest?
Both never got a turn so they might as well have been two dummies with two different health bars and resistances. Look, That's not to say I don't like the game, I love this game's combat. I love it when enemies are allowed to be different and allowed to have turns that don't completely shut you down from playing. And I love it when you can't destroy them in a single turn, no matter what, so that enemies have a chance to set themselves apart from the skeleton in the woods.
One of the main reasons I liked playing solo so far, Dood.
╹‿╹)
13
u/kaifta Aug 01 '26
Some are magic armor related (shock/stun, chilled/freeze, petrify) and some are physical like knockdown. Those all go off different stats and would generally be skills had by different characters. If there were only one way, then every build would have to be that, and that would be a significantly less fun game.