Hello again Godwoken. So you’ve just turned on the game and seen the amount of character creation D:OS2 has to offer. You have the option of selecting one of the starting classes or you can create your own, but if you’re new to the game you might want to pick the first and safer option. Along with this, every recruitable companion can start as one of the 14 classes. Say you’ve started playing, got the jist of each class, but what are these talents? How do they help the build? What works best with the build? Luckily for you Godwoken my 300+ hours, and a lack of showering as a result, has allowed me to put together what talents work for each class to help you achieve Divinity.
Battle Mage
The Battle Mage, the love child of a taser and a barbarian..The Battle Mage sacrifices the possibility of a shield for another weapon, maximizing the damage output. As they focus on strength and intelligence, they have access to gear with high physical armor and high magical armor separately. If selected, you will have access to Warfare and Aerotheurge.
Top 5 Best Talents for Battle Mage:
- Parry Master - Lacking a shield means you won’t have the ability to replenish your armor with Shield Up. Parry Master justifies this loss by increasing your ability to dodge attacks by 10% as long as you are dual wielding.
- Comeback Kid - A frontline attacker will always be the first target. Comeback Kid gives you the ability to cheat death once a fight, letting you throw yourself into more risky situations.The fact you have the ability to survive a killing blow also puts less stress onto your healer.
- Living Armor - Living Armor regenerates your magic armor when you are healed. This reusable form of armor regeneration means you are more of a threat to magical enemies and lets you be more aggressive. This is also useful as a teammate with Hydrosophist doesn’t have to spend additional AP on healing you and your magic armor.
- Executioner - You will be throwing a lot of hits and potentially killing blows. Executioner lets you benefit from your kills and rewards you with more AP on the first kill of your turn, allowing you to cause more chaos.
- Picture of Health - Due to your lack of a shield, a high amount of health is useful for you to carry on the fight longer. Picture of Health gives you a 3% maximum health increase per point into Warfare.
Cleric
Nothing says a Cleric more than healing magic and a mace to crush someone’s skull with. As the Cleric, your job is to heal whilst providing melee support with your Hydrosophist and Necromancy skills. As you will be focusing on strength and intelligence like the Battle Mage, your armor variety is the same except you get a shield. Technically, every playable character is a Cleric since their God loves them enough to give them their power, you’re just the one that likes to dress the part.
Top 5 Best Talents for Cleric:
- Savage Sortilege - Most of the time your mace might not be needed but you might still want to put points into Single Handed for the increased chance of a critical hit. Savage Sortilege takes your critical chance and gives it to your spells, potentially empowering the damage you can do as a spellcaster.
- Far Out Man - The most important usage of this feature is the increase it gives to the range of your healing spells. Far Out Man increases the range of your skills and scrolls by 2 meters, letting you be useful from afar if the time requires it.
- Elemental Affinity - Often using Hydrosophist, you’ll be standing in water. This talent reduces the AP cost of spells that are related to the environment you're standing in, meaning standing in water lets you dish out more water based spells.
- Leech - If you’re not standing in water, you’ll be swimming in blood. Leech heals you 5% of your maximum health as you freely drain the bloody puddle you walk through. This saves up your healing spells for your allies.
- Mnemonic - Spellcasters will often have access to a lot of spells, meaning you may need a lot of memory slots to keep yourself open for most situations. Mnemonic gives you 3 for free.
Conjurer
Although not under the definition of a traditional support, the Conjurer is exactly that. With the ability to summon a powerful demon and totems of whatever element is available, the Conjurer is flexible. Unfortunately, not a lot of talents mix well with this class as nothing of your character transfers to your summons but this class still has a lot of potential when built correctly. The Incarnate is not a registered emotional support animal. Take this into consideration when applying for a property that does not state that it allows pets.
Top 5 Best Talents for Conjurer:
- All Skilled Up - Granting you an additional point in combat and civil abilities, this talent can spruce up the Conjurer. If you find you’re unable to summon your incarnate with the element you want, you can point a point into the related skill tree and gain the infusion spell to do it directly.
- Mnemonic - If you branch out into other skill trees, you will require extra memory. Summoning alone can give you 4 base infusions to upgrade your incarnate, nevermind the damage and support spells at your disposal.
- Far Out Man - This also upgrades your summoning spells. Being able to summon the right elemental totem can turn the tables on your opponent. The less AP you need to spend on movement, the more you can spend on providing support. A higher range gives that opportunity to you.
- Glass Cannon - Glass Cannon changes your character immensely. Although your armor will no longer protect you from statuses, you start every turn with max AP. The enemy’s main focus will be on your incarnate or totems so as long as you stay out of sight, your new weakness will be irrelevant. The starting turn of a summoner can cost a high amount of AP so starting a fight and instantly summoning a fully powered incarnate provides your team with a big advantage.
- Ambidextrous - If you only use a single wand or a staff, you can use this talent to decrease the AP of grenades and scrolls. If you hoard both, even better. You can suddenly be able to cast more spells and crowd control effects than anyone, whilst giving your summons elemental surfaces to be summoned on.
Enchanter
The mixture of Hydrosophist and Aerotheurge makes this class almost essential as water can be shocked to provide a wide area stun effect. The Enchanter centers around their intelligence, granting you the best possible magic armor whilst sacrificing any high form of physical armor. With the priority in intelligence, you’ll always have the high magic damage that you need to work within your role. Pick this class if you’re more the type to cheer your friends on as they do everything you wish you could do.
Top 5 Best Talents for Enchanter:
- Elemental Affinity - Yet again, you’ll often be in water a lot,saving your AP for your more supportive aspects. The AP you’re saving on your Hydrosophist skills also allows you to throw out water/electric combos more efficiently.
- Far Out Man - Much like the other casters on this list, extra range is essential. If the extra 2 meters means you can pour rain all over a group of enemies and shock them without injuring your allies, even better.
- Savage Sortilege - Since Hydrosophist gives you healing capabilities that can heal over time or heal multiple at once, you may want to boost your damage. The increased critical chance makes your limited damage capabilities even better.
- Ice King - You may often damage yourself somehow with your water skills. Ice King reduces the damage you take from water-based attacks by 15% but gives you a 15% fire weakness. I’m sure with the amount of water you can control, fire won’t be much of a problem.
- Mnemonic - As this character works off a combination of spells that have long cooldowns, extra memory slots give you spells you can use to not leave you completely unprotected.
Fighter
Foregoing any possibility of magical damage, the Fighter is pure physical damage. You will be working up and close into the face of battle. With your big shield and even bigger armor, you’ll primarily use your Warfare expertise to paint the floor with the enemy and more importantly, protect your allies. As a parent, I can confirm bouncing a shield off a few Magisters is a great way to deal with that post bedtime stress.
Top 5 Best Talents for Fighter:
- Picture of Health - As the shield of the team, you need to increase your health to be more viable in your role. Since you will only be focusing on Warfare, this talent will do wonders for your health.
- Opportunist - If an enemy leaves your melee range, Opportunist gives you a free swing. The ability to dish out free hits with such physical might may be what saves your healer’s life.
- Executioner - Opportunist and Executioner actually go perfectly together. If an enemy is killed with Opportunist, the bonus AP is given to you on your next free turn. Since this kill wasn’t on your turn, you can take advantage of the talent again with your next kill.
- Walk It Off - As your team will rely on you as the first line of defense, you’ll need to be resistant to whatever ails you. Walk It Off reduces any statuses you receive by a turn, meaning most statuses will only take you out of the battle for a single round of combat.
- Comeback Kid - The ability to break against the laws of death for the sake of an ally is the meaning of the shield. Giving you back 20% of your health is good, but if you build your Fighter correctly, that 20% can be a lot.
Inquisitor
Master of melee combat and the ability to be their own healer, the Inquisitor uses the combination of Warfare and Necromancy to be an undying weapon. With a high damage output, they take advantage of the lifesteal Necromancy brings. The important thing for anyone playing the Inquisitor to remember is to utilize this properly, they must play offensively. You are a one man inquisition that no one will expect. Your two chief weapons are fear and surprise. I think there’s a third somewhere?
Top 5 Best Talents for Inquisitor:
- Parry Master - As another dual wielding class, the ability to dodge is always important. If you dodge an attack that may kill you, it just means on your next turn you can beat them until you're back to full health.
- Executioner - Warfare and Executioner go hand-in-hand, especially with Necromancy. Benefitting off one’s death is fitting for a necromantic warrior but also gives you more chances to steal your foe’s lifeforce.
- Torturer - Necromancy gives you spells like Mosquito Swarm, which causes bleeding. Torturer lets you deliver such statuses whilst ignoring the armor attribute of the target and increases the duration.
- Leech - Characters hit with bleed effects actually drop more blood, making this talent tie the build together to make you more self-sufficient.
- Walk It Off - What better to wrap up this self healing beast of damage dealer than the ability to handle negative effects better. Walk It Off also reduces the duration of the Restoration spell’s duration but the Inquisitor’s lifestealing makes this drawback irrelevant.
Knight
The Knight is about being the spearhead of the team. The first one into the fight, the last one standing. Another pure Warfare class that focuses more on dealing damage than taking it. This class uses two handed weapons for the highest potential physical damage one blow. Unfortunately, there is no dragon in a dungeon to slay, so a big teleporting alligator on a beach will have to do.
Top 5 Best Talents for Knight:
- Opportunist - As we discussed earlier, a free hit is always perfect for a character with a high damage output except the attack only uses the primary hand weapon. For a Knight, your primary handed weapon is your two handed greatsword.
- Executioner - With the higher physical damage output than most classes on this list, Executioner really shines thanks to Opportunist
- Picture of Health - The one drawback to this class is the priority of strength, sacrificing potential points that could go into constitution. The decision to focus on hitting rather than being able to take a hit makes this talent almost a requirement to last in a fight.
- Morning Person - Using a resurrection scroll requires 3AP and only gives you a portion of your health back, meaning more AP is wasted to keep you alive. Morning Person means you are revived with a full health bar, letting you jump back into a fight fresh and ready to go.
- Five-Star Diner - Food is a far cheaper option to potions but heals considerably less. Five-Star Diner doubles the potential healing and stat bonuses from food, making it worth a lot more than the gold you’ve paid for it. Most food requires a single AP to consume, keeping you perfectly healthy for a cheap cost.
Metamorph
Metamorph is an adaptable wild card of a class. As a Metamorph, you can provide control around the battlefield with skills like Summon Oily Blob and Terrain Transmutation. You can also use the power of animals to morph into a force of nature. With skills like Spread your Wings or Medusa Head, you can essentially change the tide of battle with a well played strategy. The main drawback is the lack of access to magic armor, but your potential for damage from your boosts to finesse and strength make up for it. The main skill tree of the class, Polymorph, gives you additional attribute points for each point invested, meaning you can give yourself extra intelligence if you want to use better magic armor. You’re picking this because you love animals don’t you?
Top 5 Best Talents for Metamorph:
- Opportunist - Like any melee class, the free hit can either give you the kill or make a kill for the next active character a lot easier.
- What a Rush - When you are below half your health, this talent gives you more AP each turn to use. Even as much as 1 more AP a turn can open this character up to an array of skills to help your team achieve victory.
- Comeback Kid - As a purely melee build without much focus on constitution, Comeback Kid will give you more confidence in your character’s capabilities of surviving long enough to pull off a maneuver to change the fight completely.
- Far Out Man - Most Polymorph skills are ranged, including the flight ability Spread Wings gives you. Using something like Tentacle Lash to render the enemy archer useless can give your other frontline allies more of a chance .
- Leech - As blood is spilling everywhere, your healer may be under a lot of stress. At early levels especially, they will be lacking healing spells so if a melee character can be self-sufficient, you’ll be their lifesaver.
Ranger
You are an archer with a twist. As Huntsman gives you the damage, Pyrokinetic can provide you with status buff spells. As buff spells don’t scale with your intelligence, you can follow the class traditionally with only putting points into finesse and wits. The wits end of the class is due to wanting to go first in initiative to quickly buff your team, starting the fight powered up. The Ranger is the group sniper with high damaging multi-target attacks. I bet you’re going to play this archer with a lot of stealth, am I right Dragonborn?
Top 5 Best Talents for Ranger:
- Arrow Recovery - Because you naturally lack the ability to use magical attacks, you can use special arrows. The issue is they can run out quicker than you realize, especially if the fight really needs you to use them often. Arrow Recovery helps by giving you a chance of instantly returning that arrow to you for free, saving you from going back to the archery vendor after each fight.
- Living Armor - Because you lack any form of high protection, Living Armor will make up for it. As a Huntsman, you gain the healing skill First Aid, meaning you can also give yourself magic armor.
- Mnemonic - Huntsman has a lot of skills you’ll desire as an archer, the last thing you want is deciding if you’d rather a buff spell from Pyrokinetic or another arrow based attack. Mnemonic can also be brilliant if you want to use those free slots for special skills like Curse or Bless.
- Demon - Your affinity to fire can give you fire resistance. This plus Living Armor can make you practically pointless to attack for a fire-based enemy.
- Elemental Ranger - Do you want to increase the damage of your basic attack? This talent delivers bonus damage based on the element your target is standing in. If they are standing in blood, the arrow deals extra physical damage.
Rogue
The Rogue is such a universally known class amongst anyone who has played an RPG. A master of stealth and a major inconvenience for anyone who can’t see the invisible, the Rogue is a pure Scoundrel class. Scoundrel increases your critical hit damage but also increases your movement speed per AP ridiculous. An amazing way to build a warrior that’s a bit too socially awkward.
Top 5 Best Talents for Rogue:
- The Pawn - Although the class gives you a lot of extra speed, Scoundrel’s exclusive talent almost increases it even further. The Pawn gives you an AP’s worth of movement free every turn, meaning you can put more of your precious action points into assassinating that annoying archer.
- Parry Master - As a fragile character, you will want to get hit as little as possible. Unless you can guarantee getting in and out without taking damage, the bonus to dodging really helps.
- Torturer - The Rogue has access to skills that deliver harmful effects such as Ruptured Tendons. Ruptured Tendons makes your target take damage for every step of movement they make. If a condition like that can ignore physical armor, you can easily remove a dangerous enemy from the battlefield
- Guerilla - What is an assassin without their sneak attack. Guerilla reduces the cost of sneaking to 1AP but also increases your sneak attack damage by nearly half. Although it only works with backstabs and basic attacks, this is perfect for if you get in and out.
- Glass Cannon - Although you may become weak to status effects, your massive amount of extra movement and cheap abilities means your large amount of AP can give you so much to do. Glass Cannon works well with Guerilla as you are then guaranteed to deliver successful sneak attacks and have the AP to escape melee range unharmed.
Shadowblade
Much like the Rogue, the Shadowblade is a powerful assassin that can eliminate the enemy’s essential team members whilst being able to deliver harmful effects. The combination of Necromancy, Scoundrel and Polymorph gives you the use of invisibility and high maneuverability. This class is especially deadly for the famous combination of Ruptured Tendons and Chicken Claw. As Ruptured Tendons deal damage every time the victim moves, Chicken Claw turns them into a chicken including their behavior. The only thing a chicken will do on their turn is run around, potentially killing anyone afflicted before recovering. If you turn someone into a chicken and they lay an egg, would it be illegal to fry it?
Top 5 Best Talents for Shadowblade:
- Guerilla - Although Guerilla doesn’t work whilst invisible, the ability of a sneak attack is one of the best ways to start a fight or finish one quickly.
- Parry Master - This dual wielding class can also be fragile. If you’re caught in an unlucky situation with no way to get out, Parry Master can save your life until you have a way of escaping.
- Hot Head - Whilst you have full health, you have additional critical chance and extra accuracy. With the amount of damage you can already dish out with this class, all you need is being able to hit.
- What a Rush - If you’re unlucky, you may get hit a lot. The extra AP can be what you need for a safe escape or kill the enemy giving you trouble
- Comeback Kid - This talent works well with What a Rush since you’ll still be below half health, making you abuse that extra AP more.
Wayfarer
The Wayfarer is a magical archer that aims to never take a hit. Acting as a sort of skirmisher for the party, you will be shooting from afar and being able to get away when they get too close thanks to your Huntsman skills. The best way for you to take advantage of this build is to play an undead character. Geomancy gives you the ability to throw around poison, the substance that can heal you. Just be very careful of the clean up costs if you spill oil on private property.
Top 5 Best Talents for Wayfarer:
- Arrow Recovery - Arrow Recovery assists with your ability to be a nuisance, regaining useful arrows like the famous Knockdown Arrow or fire arrows to ignite your poison.
- Elemental Archer - As your Geomancy increases your poison damage, Elemental Archer means if you hit an enemy standing in poison, the damage will be increased even further.
- Far Out Man - Far Out Man is always required for a character with ranged expertise. The extra range also allows you to hit ranged enemies without being a target yourself.
- Duck Duck Goose - A Huntsman exclusive talent. Duck Duck Goose allows you to dodge usually painful opportunity attacks.
- Mnemonic - The increased memory slots lets you take advantage of the massive spell list Geomancy and Huntsman gives you.
Witch
A rogue with a touch of necromancy, the Witch is a dexterous menace with high damage from your necromancy spells that abuses the Necromancy skill tree’s lifesteal. Add on to the disabling capabilities of Scoundrel, this means you can use the weaker enemies as basically free potions. A shockingly self-sufficient but fragile build that takes advantage of the amount of chaos created from both Scoundrel and Necromancy. If you play D&D, you may know this as the rogue character that always has an edgy backstory.
Top 5 Best Talents for Witch:
- The Pawn - Despite the amount of movement Scoundrel already gives you, the additional free movement allows you more room for offensive strategy.
- Leech - To increase the self-healing of the character, the ability to drink blood gives you more reason to play as offensive as the character suggests.
- Savage Sortilege - Why have a lifesteal based character when you’re not hitting hard enough? The critical hits of your spells means more health for yourself.
- Far Out Man - As you lack the maximum health to survive rounds surrounded by enemies, additional range lets you play offensively whilst risking your life.
- Torturer - Both Scoundrel and Necromancy have their own skills that can cause damaging statuses like bleeding. Torturer allows you to go from just another spellcaster to a magical menace.
Wizard
The Wizard is almost like your bog standard mage from any other RPG game. You can throw powerful spells, have access to different elements, but also be able to assist with the party. Geomancy and Pyrokinetic is a combo barely anyone ignores with their AoE capability. Being able to throw down a pool of poison or oil and setting it aflame is by far an acceptable choice for dealing with waves of enemies. Be careful giving yourself a title, as accidentally calling yourself the Wizard of the Coast does not mean you’re resistant to lawsuits.
Top 5 Best Talents for Wizard:
- Mnemonic - Both Pyrokinetic and Geomancy have a large spell list that consist of support spells too. The extra memory slots remove the choice forced on you between support and damage.
- Far Out Man - Has the use of this talent with any spellcaster been discussed enough in this article?
- Savage Sortilege - The Wizard’s main role is to damage large groups of enemies for your party to pick off, the ability to critically hit big groups maximizes your use in your role.
- Demon - Often, you will get burnt when playing with fire. You may want to at least make sure you’re burnt less than who you’re trying to burn yourself.
- Elemental Affinity - Due to the amount of elements you’re playing with, the field may be filled with different surfaces. Whether you end up in poison, oil or fire, the negative effects of each may be worth it if you can unleash more spells per turn.
In Conclusion
When building any kind of character, you must consider how you can strengthen their areas of speciality but also to minimize the effects of their weaknesses. Of course, some talents will always benefit certain kinds of characters like Far Out Man for anyone that can damage at range or Comeback Kid for your melee fighters. What’s more important is for you to swap around different talents to fit your characters. Everyone builds theirs differently. For example, if you notice your Knight barely gets below half health, maybe swap Comeback Kid for a talent that doesn’t feel as wasted. Thank you again for taking your time to read Godwoken, good luck on your path to Divinity.
Also be sure to read:
- [Top 10] Divinity: Original Sin 2 Best Builds That Are Powerful
- [Top 15] Divinity: Original Sin 2 Best Weapons That Are Powerful (And How To Get Them)
- [Top 15] Best Turn-Based Games With Fun Combat and Adventure
- Divinity Original Sin 2 Best Damage Builds [Top 5]
- Top 5 Divinity Original Sin 2 Best Party Composition
- [Top 10] Divinity Original Sin 2 Best Armor And How To Get Them
- Divinity Original Sin 2 Best Fane Builds [Top 3]
- Divinity Original Sin 2 Difficulty Explained - Which To Choose
- Divinity Original Sin 2 Best Civil Abilities
- Divinity Original Sin 2 Best Archer Builds [Top 3]
- DoS2 Best Companions - Who Should You Choose?
- [Top 10] Divinity Original Sin 2 Best Talents
- Top 5 Divinity Original Sin 2 Best Bow And How To Get Them
- Top 5 Divinity Original Sin 2 Best Amulets And How To Get Them
- [Top 15] Divinity Original Sin 2 Best Skills
