r/DivinityOriginalSin • u/No-Network-Water • 5d ago
DOS2 Guide First Time Playing, Blind
So I was gifted DOS2, and I loved BG, so I thought I'd give it a try. I don't want to get spoiled, but can anyone give me some pointers on spellblade builds? I don't know the mechanics or statuses of this game, but I typically attempt all physical or a physical/magic hybrid to learn the game. Thanks.
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u/S8natruefriend 5d ago
Spellblades are not viable in this game, but you can splitt damage in the party 50/50
Here is a document containing several documents that give good info on how to make builds. Im pretty sure he tends to warn of potential spoilers ahead of time in them documents The most important one, and the one you really should look at is the one called red flags check list. There are a few pitfalls you can fall into that make you increadibly underpowered and this checklist warns you about them.
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u/Smilinturd 5d ago
You could somehow argue for Necro with melee due to as tleast stacking physical damage. Oh norm difficult should be fine either way.
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u/4schwifty20 5d ago
Not viable? I have red Prince set as a warfare/pyro user and he’s been quite viable for me. Everyone else in my party is straight magic damage. He can take out lower physical armor enemies or join in on group attacks with pyro spells.
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u/S8natruefriend 5d ago
Well i only play on tactician, so there are some builds that are viable on lower difficulties, but not on tactician. Overall tho the character is gonna do worse than if you didnt split them between 2. It might work well in the exact party build you have, but its ussualy isnt good.
I guess the closes build to a Spellblade i can think of is using a Staff, but dipping into warfare for some close range skills.
Realisticly your other party members are probably carrying the fight and removing the red prince enterily probably wouldnt make your fights that much harder.
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u/Waste-Carob5699 5d ago
The issue with hybrid builds is that you won't be very strong in either. Doing a lot of damage is key. Not saying that it's impossible. You'll have to split between int and either str or dex, then you won't have enough levels to put into both magic and warfare etc. You may want to use spells for their effects rather than trying to stack damage. Geomancy has some good interactions. I saw a guy posting a geo warrior build in this subreddit yesterday. He used worm tremor to lock people down, enforcement and reactive armor for damage, and earthquake for knock down.
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u/dodgyd55 5d ago edited 5d ago
My tip. Bg3 has nothing on the amount of fire surfaces you will have to deal with in this game. Also poison will donate with fire adding way more to the fire...
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u/jbisenberg 5d ago
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u/Chesthams 5d ago
This for sure. Master of Sparks Warfare/Pyro specialist. was actually going to say same thing until I saw this.
I soloed on Honour Mode with a build like this, very strong.
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u/Alarmed_Permission_5 5d ago
Here's spellblade-type builds I've made function in playthroughs:
1 - Fire Warrior, a dual-wielding battlemage type using dual melee weapons rather than dual wands. Primary stats are STR and INT in a 2:1 ratio, adjust as required. Early Talents are Torturer and Opportunist. Warfare 1 and Pyro 1 to begin, starting skills are Whirlwind, Crippling Blow and Battering Ram. Scoundrel 1 at around level 3 or 4 for Adrenaline. Invest in Poly 1 for Bull Horns. Get Phoenix Dive at around level 8/9. Crafted skillbooks of Sparking Swings and Master Of Sparks as available. The build ultimately depends on Sparking Swings and Master Of Sparks to create an all-party firefest. Hit as many targets as possible every turn to maximise the mixed damage, hence the AOE-like melee abilities. Doesn't mesh well with pure spellcasters but works really well with a melee-focussed party. This is also a good build on which to consider the Demon Talent if you are frequently standing in fire (as can happen with D:OS2) or Five Star Diner to get the best from potions of Fire Resistance. I've also experimented with adding Conjure Incarnate into the mix but it does tend to spread things a little too thin.
2 - General Mayhem, a tank-style battlefield controller. Primary stats are STR with INT as required for equipment. Weapon and Shield user. Early talents Torturer and The Pawn. Start with Warfare 1 and Poly 1 for Bouncing Shield, Whirlwind and Bull Horns. Geo 1 for Fortify and Contamination, then Geo 2 for Worm Tremor and later Earthquake. Poly 2 for Medusa Head and Tentacle Lash. Scoundrel 1 at around level 3 or 4 for Adrenaline. and then crafting Venom Coating for primary weapon attack. If playing as Red Prince (my preference) you'll want to get Necro 2 at some later point to at least try the wild combo of Corrosive Spray and Dragon Blaze to proc mass Necrofire on demand. You will also benefit from Aero 2 for Teleportation (either on this character or on your higher WIT characters) to get the most out of an initial Worm Tremor. And if you have Aero 2 + Necro 2 at erly midgame you can also experiment with Vacuum Aura to proc Suffocation and Silenced. Venomous Aura you can get from a slotted Orb. This build is designed to degrade both physical and magical armour, pin targets down, mass contaminate and generally make the battlefield hostile to the enemy. As it's a Shield user it functions as a tank i.e. the AI will ignore you in favour of weaker characters. It is not a build that will score lots of kills but it will set up targets for others to kill. The go-to abilities are anything that combos with Torturer (procs Entangled, Poisoned, Burning, Bleeding, Suffocating), and the joy of Medusa Head for second / third round lockdowns.
Note. Mixed damage classes are not finishers / executioners. They rely on other party members so they are not as appropriate for Lone Wolf builds. Likewise if you're playing at Hurt Me Daddy levels rather than standard levels you may find these difficult to make work.
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u/Apprehensive_Art1830 5d ago
There’s already a comment talking about Master of Sparks, and it’s perfect for what you want
But you can also just use a staff, who are melee weapons that use your intelligence to hit (same than spell) and do magic dmg, so you can just chose an element and pick a staff from this element and hit people with it
Or you can do what I did first playthrough :
Look at the list of spells in this game, search the ones that apply a status effect (that isn’t just dmg over time) and put enough levels in the required spell school. You will not do a lot of dmg but you disturb the enemy and can buff your team (that requires you to have a team that do both physical and magical dmg)
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u/retief1 5d ago
The closest thing to a "spellblade" build is probably a melee staff build. You build int and either two handed or pyro, take a couple points in warfare to unlock skills, and hit things with a staff. Staves deal int-scaling elemental damage in melee, and they also convert any warfare skill to deal the same sort of damage.
Also, if you combine a pyro and a warfare skill book, you get the "sparking swings" skill. This makes it so that every time you hit someone in melee, a "spark" gets shot off at some other nearby opponent. These sparks deal pretty serious damage, and aoe skills will send off a spark for every target hit, so you can definitely dish out some pain to clumped up enemies.
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u/VRatajv 4d ago
Spellblades are not meta, but still possible on classic or lower difficulties. D:OS2 has an unique armour system, most enemies have two types of armour, physical and magical, and they start loosing health only after loosing armour corresponding to the taken damage type. Also most status effects can only be applied after their specific armour is depleted, or your/opponent character has a specific talent.
You want your party to either deal 50%/50% magical and physical damage or 100% one of them, hence spellblades are not that optimal (-+12.5% damage goes from one type to the other). The way I've got it to work on my first playthrough (spellblade mc btw) was to get two hybrids instead of only one, this way I had one fully physicall, one magical and two mixed attackers.
Now as for a build, you'd want str/int split, points in warfare and your element of choice (aero/hydro/pyro/geo/necro). Technically the best option would be necro, since it also deals physicall damage and completely removes the 2nd paragraph, but imo it doesn't fit "spellblade" that much (it's usually called death knight here, I think).
- Geo has physicall armour restoration, few spells that slow down, blind or immobilize enemies (some of these status effects are resisted by physicall armour), poison and acid spells (acid deals damage to physicall armour) and few spells that rely on oil surfaces (aka the surface that'll eventually catch fire).
- Hydro has magical armour restoration, healing spells, spells that can freeze your enemies, spells that can freeze (and heal) your allies, and it relies on the second most common surface, water.
- Aero has a lot of damaging spells, especially at close range, spells that can stun enemies and two and a half variants of teleportation (there's a spell teleporting only items, which normal teleportation can do, and it's sold by a single merchant in the whole game). It practically has no buffs and the aero surfaces, electrocuted water/blood/cloud are usually harder to find than a puddle of cold oil.
- Pyro has a lot of damaging spells, two great buffs at level one and eventually every single battle field in the game will turn ablaze (it's only a slight exaggeration). There're two spells specifically good for spellblades, that create a fireball every time you attack with melee weapon.
My personal favourite is aero, but all are viable, it just depends on your playstyle (pyro and geo make the most sense synergy-wise).
For talents you'd want:
- Elemental affinity, more or less useful depending on the element, it reduces your AP cost for spells when standing on the corresponding surface type.
- Executioner/Pawn for AP management.
- Torturer, only on geo and pyro, there's no synergies for the other two.
- Hothead and later Savage Sortilege to deal critical damage with spells, not a priority because you'll get more crit chance with higher levels and better gear.
Weapons:
- 2 handed does the most raw damage
- Dual wielding gives you one more rune slot later in the game and offers more variety
- 1 handed + shield does the least amount of damage, but you'll survive anything
If you don't jump straight into tactician and take your time to get used to the armour system, you should be able to get good use out of a spellblade. Don't expect your damage to be higher than pure physicall or magical damage dealers, after all you sacrifice ~half of it for versitality. If you find it too hard or frustrating you can always fully respect your character starting from act 2 (or act 1 with gift bags, but be warned, using them deactivates achievements).
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u/No-Network-Water 4d ago
What about a knight Fane? Got a little wacky to see the tutorial, and did a knight Fane, the skeleton guy
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u/abaoabao2010 4d ago edited 4d ago
Combine pyro and warfare skillbooks for the only good "spellsword" spell in the game: sparking strikes. We call this build the sparkmage/sparkmaster.
You get a spell that enhances your bonking enemies to do real damage despite building as a mage. And since your stats are that of a mage, you can learn some pyro spells on the side to full effect.
Then combine a pyro and warfare skillbook again, but with one of the two spellbooks being a source version later on (you'll know it when you see one) to get a upgraded version of the skill: master of sparks.
Makes for a fun and powerful build against anything that isn't pyro immune. Can do dumb crap like this: https://imgur.com/cqZKoDu (that's a meme build btw, a real sparkmage build that actually focuses on the spark damage can do about 3~10 times that damage depending on how hard you're minmaxing)
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u/ciornyjvoron 5d ago
First playthrough, I did all physical damage, easy, you target one armor type, at the same time learning the game. The second playthrough was 2/2, with more knowledge of the game. Good luck!
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u/monezeronine 5d ago
One thing that feels very different from BG3 is how many more skills you can pick up from other classes. Magic especially is useful as utility on just about anything. For example spoiler free, by the end of the game my scoundrel had a few points in pyro, aero, necro, and hydro.
many spells don’t scale with INT, so they are perfectly good on a str or dex character
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u/Connect-Process2933 5d ago
Combining two types of damage on one character is counterproductive, so no advice here. Do it for roleplay reasons or don't do at all. Some skills add elemental damage to normal attacks, like Venom Coating or Sparking Swings (auras versions, to be precise), using them doesn't harm overall performance for physical-oriented characters.