Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Witchcraft

I think I've managed to pinpoint my problem with Witchcraft: it's spectacularly lackluster.

The problem I see with Witchcraft is that for a school of debuffs, it's not really that impressive. The melee range of some the debuffs is virtually suicide for a non-melee mage, and for a school that seems to be built around the theme of death, undeath and entropy there's a spectacular lack of of undead-lockdown spells.

What I've seen of the higher tiers of Witchcraft doesn't really impress me. Death Punch does not pack the same amount of awe and mystique the elemental schools do. Compare Meteor and Earthquake, for example, with Death Punch, and you'll see what I mean. Despite the name, Death Punch does not actually kill, it just does crushing damage.

These are my suggestions for the Witchcraft school: improve the range of debuffs (or a least make the ranged versions available slightly early), improve the kind of utilities you want Witchcraft to bring to the table, and give Witchcraft more offensive spells. Bloodletting, in particular, is useless against anything undead, which are like 75% of the enemies in Cyseal.

Some spell suggestions:

Lifedrinker (Level 19, Int 14, AP cost really really high): You disrupt living foes with a blast of entropic shadow, forcing every enemy within the range of the spell to immediately suffer 50% of their HP as shadow damage. In addition, you and your companions are healed by half of the damage done.

Reaper's Bond (Level 8, Int 8, AP cost something): You forge a bond between two targets of your choice. Whenever one of the targets suffers damage, the other immediately suffers half the damage dealt.

Quench the Spirit (Level 14, Int 12, AP cost something): Your target immediately dies unless a Bodybuilding check is successful.

Disrupt Undeath (Level 3, Int 7, AP something): You attack the bonds holding a target undead together, weakening it and causing it to suffer x% more damage from attacks.

Command Undead (Level 5, Int 8, AP something): Unless the undead succeeds on a Willpower save, it falls under your control until the spell ends.

Entropic Hunger (Level 4, Int...you get the picture): The target suffers x-y shadow damage each turn for z turns. If the target dies before the spell ends, the hunger leaps to the closest target within 10m.

Those are just ideas, mind you, and can be adjusted. I'd just like to see Witchcraft be as impressive as the other mage schools...and maybe it should be renamed. There's already a 'Witch' preset, so maybe Witchcraft should be renamed Nethermancy/Umbral Magic/Entropy/Thanatology (study of death).

It's not a big surprise that Witchcraft is less refined than the other schools. It was only added in for the beta, so pretty late in development.

I have not played a witch in a while, so I can't speak about balance issues in the current version with much credibility. I'll try and have to find the time.

I believe that the idea behind witches is to make them more of a supporting caster than a damage dealer. The debuffs they get make them a class better paired with a melee attacker. The intent is to make them a buffer/debuffer. While the Witch preset does come with Earth for some buffs, the Witchcraft spell school definitely is lacking in the buff department (it only has Resurrect and Oath of Malediction if I recall).


I also have an idea for a spell:

Sacrificial Healing (Level 4, AP 7-8, Cooldown 20 turns): The Witch sacrifices [30-50%] (TBD) of her maximum health, then heals an ally for that amount (EDIT: Or maybe half that amount). Cannot self-target, cannot use below [30-50%] Health. The idea is a variation on healing - it can heal for a bunch, but it also puts the witch at greater risk as well. The skill will need massive adjustment, because at current health levels it will heal a lot, and there are other healing skills and methods it needs balancing against.


Lifedrinker is way overpowered, even if it is a level 19 spell (an AoE which takes enemies to half health AND heals your party for what will be a ton of HP (since enemy HP is a LOT higher than player HP)!). I like the idea of Reaper's Bond. The others I'm less sure about. I do not like Quench the Spirit. Command Undead is impossible to do at this time, as enemies do not have race as one of their attributes, so that can't be used to determine if a spell affects them. I'm not sure what's going on with Shadow/Black Rock/Tenebrium or how special it is.

Honestly though, I think we're at the point where we're not going to see new spells ready for the release version. I have thought this before though, and was wrong. Probably new skills/spells will have to happen in patches/expansions after release.

How about this; instead of a flat hp% decrease, Lifedrinker just deals an amount of shadow damage with the healing component. It should be on par with the other high level spells, though.

I see Quench the Spirit as sort of the logical progression of the Witchcraft school, from slowly weakening the target to simply killing it outright. Perhaps instead of that, it could be something like this:

Quench the Spirit: Deals x-y shadow damage to one opponent. If the opponent dies as a result of the damage, an undead warrior is created from the target's remains within 2 turns.

Good ideas and suggestions.

Would be very nice to see enemies use those too.

Thanks.

I do think that Witchcraft needs more damaging spells, though. There are only 2 in the entire school, with a 12+ level gap between them. Even Water has more damage spells, and Water has healing, a con buff, one of the best group-friendly synergies in the game (Rain + Blitzbolt/Lightning Strike/Chain Lightning, laugh, murder everything), a summon and debuffs.

Unless the devs really want Witchcraft to be used only for Oath of Desecration and maybe the summons (which is pathetically weak compared to the fire summon, the spider and the ice summon), it's kind of difficult to play it as anything other than "give the melee damage buffs and watch the bodies fly". The short range of the debuffs make it unfeasible as a debuff specialist, since that means your wizard has to actually get up close with the mobs. Hell, Rain trivializes Witchcraft debuffs in the entire fire section of the cemetery, and trying to debuff a boss is suicide.

Even worse is that the only ranged damage dealing witchcraft spell in the game so far is garbage compared to its elemental counterparts, because the undead don't bleed and undead are 75% of Cyseal's enemies. I'm not even sure why Death Punch is part of Witchcraft, it's basically punching something really hard.

So you haven't seen the higher level summons and the vampiric attack spell they're working on?

Summon Undead Decapitator and Vampiric Touch (which is basically another melee spell) aren't much to be enthused about.