Divinity: Original Sin II - Build Guide

PCGamer provide a build guide to help you optimise your characters in Divinity: Original Sin 2.

Hydrosophist

Effect: Increases all water damage you deal, and any vitality healing or magic armor restoration you cause.
Class presets it's included in: Cleric, Enchanter
Primary attribute: Intelligence
Primary damage type: Magic (water), healing

Water, ice, and healing are the Hydrosophist's tools. Use it to remove status effects, heal vitality, restore magic armor, freeze enemies, and negate fire attacks. Later on, you'll unlock abilities like Global Cooling, which chills all enemies around you while dealing water damage.

Pairs well with: Aerotheurge, Huntsman, Warfare, Necromancer, Summoning

The obvious pairing, which is the default pairing in the Enchanter class, is Aerotheurge, which deals in air and lightning attacks. Focus on both, and your Rain spell can both freeze chilled characters or stun electrified characters. That obvious synergy aside, putting points into Hydrosophist will increase any vitality healing skill, including the Huntsman's First Aid, so consider dropping a point or two in if you're healing a lot (or using healing abilities to target the undead). And if you're going to be blasting enemies with ice from a distance, gaining the high ground damage bonus from Huntsman isn't a bad deal, either.

As I mention under Warfare, Hydrosophist can be used in a fighter-healer combo who strikes a balance between physical and magic damage. For a more complicated combo, if your Hydrosophist or another character in your party has one point in both Geomancer and Polymorph, they can learn Turn to Oil, which turns water surfaces into oil. Combined with Rain, you can have all the oil you want for your pyro character to play with.

Alternatively, or at the same time, a point in Hydrosophist and Necromancer will let you learn Raining Blood—roughly the same as rain, but with blood, which Turn to Oil also affects. Blood can be absorbed for vitality with the Necromancer's Blood Sucker ability, too, and can be frozen. So if you want to make the ultimate healer, with magic and physical damage—this is the default Cleric class—consider a bit of a contradiction with Hydrosophist's gentle healing and Necromancer's gory life stealing.

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More information.

I'm playing the game on Tactician (the hard mode). And I honestly cannot remember the last time a turn-based game was as difficult as this - it's really refreshing!

I guess Classic mode will still be challenging to most.

That guide above definetly isn't ment for tactician.
For easy difficulty, okay, but for anything above, meh.

I don't do guides as like figuring things out myself … even if it means bumbling along. I play on explorer mode but still have party wipes now and then as well as the occasional death so its challenging enough for me.

I did find I tend to do way better with one simple tactic - split up when I can. Especially helpful with Magisters who may not be immediately hostile. I had a wipe last night just walking in to a group torturing some people and a fight started.

So on the next try I first split apart everyone and put the two mages high up. Then my main fighter where he would be of most use and my main guy, the rogue went and chatted with the main Magister. This time didn't lose a single person. They did teleport one of the mages (Lohse) but she has nether twist and was able to undo the enemies teleport.

Anyhow I am sure the game would be much easier if I wanted to spend hours studying tactics and doing a lot of reloading but the battles are long enough. I can deal with the occassional reload but since many fights can take up to 20 minutes isn't something I enjoy doing. I would only up the difficulty if things got real easy with no challenge (to me … I realize for others explorer mode is cakewalk and want tactician).

But I am picking up what spells cancel out bad effects, things to watch out for, and paying more attention to avoid friendly fire … which is almost impossible with my Air mage.

Seems there is always some blood or water on the ground and she is always electrifying someone in the party. It is one thing I disagree with on the short excerpt I read on the guide above. Water/Blood is too common and I often can't use my lightning based spells because of it. She resorts more to her summoning spells (love casting Incarnate Champion on water as then he gets a healing spell which is very useful … and Lohse has one point in water magic to get rain should it be needed, which it seldom is) and non-lighting based air spells.

@Wolf - also muddling along without a guide and getting badly battered quite often. But getting better ;-) I find that the biggest help for me is mobility- being able to move around the battlefield. Lohse (my main character) is a polymoph expert and uses fly to flap to places, also gave it to Fane and have phoenix dive for Red Prince (problem with that is that it sets fire where you land, which can be …explosively… bad). Sebille has her scoundrel teleport. I don't really use her as a huntsman, but now also gave her tactical retreat so she has another option to put space between herself and a heavy damager. These abilities have saved my life many times…now I just need to get my armour scores better. Seriously, how do magisters have such awesome ACs? Almost always way better than mine, at the same level. Yet when they are dead, no armour can be looted…If I kill them, I should get what they had no?

? Almost always way better than mine, at the same level. Yet when they are dead, no armour can be looted…If I kill them, I should get what they had no?

oh..do you mean the armor you stabbed, burned, fried, zapped, roasted, shredded, bludgeoned, dissolved, melted and sliced to get them out of it?

You did loot it. It was the pile of dust you ignored

Originally Posted by Wisdom
oh..do you mean the armor you stabbed, burned, fried, zapped, roasted, shredded, bludgeoned, dissolved, melted and sliced to get them out of it?

I suppose it would greatly depend on exactly how the poor sap was killed

If I stabbed him through the heart I'd expect his weapon, boots, helmet, and maybe his greaves all intact (limited to whatever he was actually wearing).

But I never expect any game to be that detailed. I do recall games (maybe the Gold Box D&D games?) where you got exactly what was expected. 99% of the stuff was total cr.ap though.

It's an interesting guide. I have the red prince built as a pure warfare character and I've been thinking of adding a point or two to polymorph. I've also been debating adding 2 points of huntsman to lohse, who is currently mixing areotheurge and hydrosophy. The ability to get tactical retreat would often be a life saver, and first aid isn't bad either both for healing and for curing statuses. Plus +10% damage from higher ground might do more to boost her attack spells than an extra +5% to air and water magic.

Red Prince in my game has the cat summon for easy "teleport". If he didn't, I'd consider gapclosing/escaping cheap spell from other schools early on him too.
Later in the game warfare based characters get phoenix dive where you can respec them fully into warfare/weapon.

I've already got phoenix dive with the red prince, movement abilities aren't why I was thinking of taking polymorph. I was looking at it more for some of the self buffs.

Plus I don't think I lose anything from taking a point of polymorph over a point of warfare. Warfare gives me a +5% damage boost. Polymorph gives me a stat point which can increase my strength giving me a +5% damage boost.