I felt like the widow was too good - as a dedicated summoner, it annoyed me that for a good chunk of the game (since we picked up Bone Widow) that thing was doing more damage than my summoned incarnate and had tons more health. Sure, I could infuse my guy with cool powers, and he had magic armor (a big problem for the Widow, tbh) but that sucker was hitting like a truck and way too good to not use every time you could, the mark of a broken skill.
Sure - IF you were a dedicated summoner. Kinda like IF you are a dedicated two hander you will deal a lot of damage, and IF you are a dedicated dual wielder you can deal a ton of damage. Isn’t that what the game wants you to do? Specialize and deal the most damage? Next they will nerf warfare since its pretty good. Then scoundrel skills.
Its a single player game - its allowed to have good skills! Not everything has to be “equal” in these. It has to matter what you do, choose and use.
Let me explain better. My guy, with 10 (+2) in summoning was far less impressive than @ShivaX with his minimal investment in Necromancy and 0 points in Summoning when the Widow would hit the ground. It did more damage, had more health (much more), and its only draw back was a lack of magic armor. It also seemed to have a shorter cooldown, but I’m unsure about that.
Also the Widow has a handy teleport, which the Incarnate only has late in the game with a second skill.
The Incarnate though, can be used in a multitude of situations, letting YOU choose what kind of damage it should do, and what special abilities it has. If the enemy has much phsyical armor, you choose one type of incarnete - magical armor, another type - one who is easy to hit with fire? You make a fire incarnate.
The Widow can ONLY hit, and its VERY easy to disable , since it has no magic armor. trade-offs! But now? If the nerf is too big, its a useless skill.
My widow was great, but was also routinly disabled by scoundrel skills.
Edit: oh - and a level 10 incarnate? That kicks all kinds of ass! The moment I got that one, it was all over for the enemy.
Reduced survivability and base damage of Bone Widow
It sounds like it’s just not going to have crazy 12,000 health or whatever it had at level 20, while my incarnate would have 4,000 or so, and maybe less armor. The thing was also hitting for double the incranate damage, which is more than making up for versatility.
Larian does tend to be a little kneejerk with their nerfs. I actually didn’t like the EE version of DOS1 as much as the original because of some of the nerfs/changes they made.
Spoiler:
So I slept with a prostitute but it was a setup to steal ALL my gear, and fighting Lohar to get it back was impossible because I really don’t understand the turn order.
Fight starts, Lohar moves, then every enemy moves once, my main char moves once, every enemy gets another move…surprise surprise my party is dead.
I was tempted to reload (as in not just reload trying the fight again) but I have decided to push on. My naked character went back to the boat, used the mirror and is now speccing finesse skills because all she could get hold off were 2 daggers.
I’m not very amused right now, especially as I already did Lohar a favour by finding the information about Mordus.
I’m going to level myself up, get stronger, and beat the shade out of Lohar. Revenge will be mine.
I’m thinking about this game, and just popped in and saw these posts on difficulty. What difficulty do you play on? This is one thing I can’t tolerate in games these days (wandering around, dying repeatedly in trying to identify the ‘optimal path’). Is this common in the game. To be perfectly honest, I want RPG games to be about as challenging as Witcher 3 on Normal, which is “you die if you make a blatant mistake, once in awhile on boss-type enemies, but otherwise pretty easy”.
Thoughts?
That’s odd. I have seen it far too often where not all of your party enters combat, there are some that are out of range and don’t get to participate. You have to click on them and move them closer, but then the game gives them the lowest initiative so they act last. It sucks. One way to counter it for a combat you know you’re about to have is to have everyone sneak. That way by the time you’re spotted and combat starts everyone should be close enough to participate.
All my guys were there in combat.
Thinking it over again, and I think I know what was going on.
Lohar has some warfare skills, including bulrush I believe, which wiped out all my guys’ armour on the first turn. Lohar moved first, knocked 100 armour off my guys, fight over.
Not a initiative thing perse, but irritating nonetheless.
I would say yes it is.
I find the lack of firm guidance refreshing. In the first game doing areas in the wrong order meant instant death, but DOS2 is a bit more forgiving.
I’d wager that no-one who is complaining about the difficulty here is playing on the easiest Explorer mode. Pure conjecture of course. :)
The Bone Widow was OP as hell.
With like 3 points in Necro it was way stronger than an incarnate with 10 points. The no magic armor was a big weakness in that it would often get chain CC’d but you could summon it next to a guy and do a ton of damage, usually before they could even go once.
At the end of the game I had I think 5 points in Necro and the thing had 14k health and hit for nearly 2k. And it could eat people to become a lot stronger than that, I just rarely did because it didn’t need to. Plus it only took one memory slot.
Agreed. Bone Widow was insane with only a few points in Necro. When the actual Summoner was less useful than the Necro at summoning, there’s an issue.
The level scaling on it was just broken, especially near the end.
I think I gained one level, no points in Necro and it gained like 3k health and 300 damage per hit.
Well, I’d say yes & no.
I play on the normal setting - which I think is the one just up from easy.
You really have every opportunity (in most cases) to back away from a confrontation as you can mouse over them & see their levels and their strengths. I fight way less than what I see because I just choose a different path. My frustration is that this game is a time-warp enough as it is, and this just adds even more hours. OTOH, I am opening up parts of the map, so it’s not all wasted.
In some cases you don’t have a choice or you are misled - for example, close to driftwood in the 2nd Act, there is a lizard who is about to be hung. I mouse over, the executioner she’s a level 9 (my party is 9) and it’s only her & one other. I engage her and two level 12’s pop out of nowhere. I was pissed off and just save-scummed (I found out later with high enough persuasion you can convince her to just leave and avoid the fight altogether).
+1 level can go either way depending upon their skills and if you can get set up properly for the fight - preferably I get my archer on high ground and my two melee’s separated from each other and I can typically handle it - but if they have some stupid magic like diseased that doesn’t allow me to heal, then it can get dicey.
Overall even though I have my complaints, I’m still playing the heck out of it.
Plus you can also flee from battle, rather than die and reload.
I’ve got 144 hours into this game and just restarted again because I want to perfect my party further. GOTY for me without a doubt.
Hah! thats what I am about to do as well.
Can I ask what you want your party setup to be? I actually like mine right now, but feel Fane as a two-handed warrior is too fragile because spells like Restore and First Aid messes him up massively, and there is no easy way to heal him. Mostly because of all the fire constantly.
My main is Beast as a battle cleric/main tank, primarily warfare & hydrosophist. Sebille is a death knight wielding a 2H. Ifan ranger, and the Red Prince as an elemental wizard.
My previous party was by no means bad, but I had 2 mages and no real tank. This is working out a lot better so far (level 6).