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Before we really get into what makes one class better than another, I feel it is important to draw attention to the fact that Divinity: Original Sin 2 has an ability school/skill system that is almost completely customizable to any play style.
The equipment and items a player starts out with depend on the class they choose. Your class or origin, in particular, has an impact on how you play Divinity Original Sin 2. Your background has different effects. While the full scope of these effects is unknown, it is certain that dialogue options and objectives will be impacted.
So before we jump into all the Divinity Original Sin 2 classes, we should probably go over the various skill schools, their strengths, and their weaknesses.
Divinity Original Sin 2 Abilities
Divinity: Original Sin 2 hosts ten unique ability schools from which to draw forth powerful attacks and devastating magic. Some abilities are individually stronger than others, some work best when combined with other schools, and some require excellent foresight and tactical awareness.
1. Aerotheurge
1. AerotheurgeThe Aerotheurge school focuses, unsurprisingly, on air magic. As you advance through the twenty-four spells and abilities in this school, you will find yourself throwing a lot of lightning bolts, manipulating your movement speed, and blinding your enemies.
Aerotheurge works extremely well in concert with Hydrosophist, as enemies who have had their magical armor stripped away and are standing in water, or have been given the status effect “wet” are susceptible to being stunned by the deadly bolts of electricity you will be hammering them with.
2. Geomancer
2. GeomancerGeomancer, again unsurprisingly, focuses on ground or earth magic. In this school you are going to find a considerable amount of oil and poison based abilities, armor fortification powers, and (to be honest) some of the worst Source skills in any school.
That being said, Geomancer is extremely powerful in combination with the Pyromancer school. The ability to create oil pools and poison clouds which can then be set on fire or detonated in a deadly explosion, is one of the most visually pleasing and effective ways to dispatch your foes.
3. Huntsman
3. Huntsman I am going to be completely honest here. While Huntsman is a powerful school, I am not particularly fond of archer based classes. I like my heroes to be firing magic or swinging melee weapons. That being said, Huntsman has some pretty good abilities even if you aren’t peppering your enemies with arrows. Let me just clarify that Huntsman is first and foremost a ranged combatant school. Most of the abilities revolve around dealing damage with, or causing status ailments with, arrows or quarrels.
It is sometimes worth grabbing a point of huntsman to pick up some disengagement abilities like Tactical Retreat, but other than that unless you are an archer this school is not for you. Oh, and one more thing, it has one of the most powerful source abilities in the game against large creatures, so long as long as you are standing right next to it.
4. Hydrosophist
4. HydrosophistWhen most people hear water magic I imagine they think about torrential rains, floods, blades of ice, or protective spells. If you thought that too, you are only partially right. Hydrosophist is almost a requirement for the game.
Most of the healing magics available are in this school, along with most of the magical armor fortification and protective spells, are only going to be available to you if you delve into this school. That’s not to say that this particular skill set doesn’t have a bite. You will also be hurling ice, making people wet and susceptible to lightning, and causing them to slip and fall. This school pairs extremely well with Aerotheurge.
5. Necromancer
5. NecromancerNormally when I see that a game has Necromantic Magic I am 100% going to play that class. Unfortunately this school is a little bit underwhelming in the whole “evil undead army” department of gameplay that many associate with Necromancers. This school does offer some neat bonuses, like the ability to steal life when attacking, summoning a mosquito swarm, raising a corpse bomb, and even making a giant bone spider.
Unfortunately these abilities are largely overshadowed by the abilities of other schools. Summoner does summoning better, Geomancer/Pyrokinetic does explosions better, and relying on life leeching in melee combat is very risky. This is honestly a school that you should only delve into if you absolutely must be a necromancer, or if you need the relatively important Blood Rain spell. It also has a spell called bone cage which can be very effective in fortifying your defenses as long as there are bodies around.
6. Polymorph
6. PolymorphHave you ever wanted to be a shape-shifter? I think most of us have at some point, unfortunately your dreams will not be made today. Polymorph in this game does allow a few parts of your anatomy to change, but you won’t be running around in bear form or singing broadway songs as a weird anthropomorphic nightmare feline.
What you will be doing is smacking people with fairly lethal tentacle arms, turning people into chickens, giving yourself wings, and a wide array of other cool support abilities. It is also notable that for every point you put into polymorph, you get an additional attribute point to put into strength or whatever you choose. It is an extremely versatile and powerful school and pairs well with scoundrel or warfare.
7. Pyrokinetic
7. PyrokineticPyrokinetic is one of the most important schools to put a point or two into, no matter what class you decide to go with. The reason for this is its two buffs, peace of mind, and haste, both of which are pretty vital in a lot of situations. Haste, as its name would imply, provides more AP each round of combat, which means you get to do more things and therefore dish out more damage or crowd control.
Peace of Mind protects and clears things like blindness, madness, enrage, charmed, and terrified. Other than those buffs, Pyro will allow you to hurl around fire like a boss. You will be hammering the enemy with fire lasers, fireballs, fire daggers, fire whips, you know… fire related things. This school pairs extremely well with geomancy.
8. Scoundrel
8. ScoundrelRogues are among my favorite Divinity Original Sin 2 classes to play in any setting. Scoundrel offers you the rogue experience in Divinity, but I should caution that a little more care needs to be observed. Scoundrels can dish out a lot of damage really fast, but their damage really relies on proper positioning and careful rationing of AP to ensure they can either hide or withdraw after their attack run.
Scoundrel’s have a habit of getting turned into a fine red mist regularly. That being said, if you can master this school you can cripple your enemies and deal a lot of damage. This school pairs extremely well with warfare and polymorph.
9. Summoning
9. SummoningBy far the most overpowered school in the game. If I were to suggest a school to new players looking for the easy button, this would be it. Summoning is not tied to any particular stat, which means you can pair it with literally anything. You can also summon totems that match any element you can target or physical totems if you target the ground or blood.
You will also be able to summon an incarnate, which becomes a ludicrously powerful death machine as soon as you get to level 10 in summoning. I could not recommend this school more for any player.
10. Warfare
10. WarfareWarfare is basically the fighter school of skills. Putting points into this school increases your physical damage, and all of its skills are built around physical damage or physical crowd control. It is a very powerful school, especially when it comes to taking down characters with high magical armor, but low physical armor.
The battle stomp and battering ram skills will be a staple of your crowd control rotation, and, if you use a shield, bouncing shield will allow you to Captain America your enemies to death. This school pairs well with Polymorph.
All Divinity Original Sin 2 Classes
NOT RECOMMENDED
1. BATTLEMAGE
While it sounds really cool, the Battlemage offers a bizarre mixture of attributes and abilities.
With +1 Strength, +1 Intelligence, and +1 Constitution, it makes an attempt to bolster both physical and magical damage, but in Divinity, this rarely works well. In general you want to focus your characters into physical or magical damage in order to destroy that particular type of armor as fast as possible and to apply debuffs to the enemy like knock down, stun, confusion, etc.
In terms of abilities, Battlemage will give you +1 Warfare, +1 Aerotheurge, and +1 Persuasion. The civil skills, like persuasion or loremaster, are important, but not the focus of this article. What is important is the mixture of magic and physical abilities. While you will definitely want to add in a few magical schools to your combat capabilities (as a physical combatant) or a few physical schools to your capabilities (as a magic combatant) trying to be a jack-of-all-trades does not really work well as a class focus.
The pre-chosen skills are also a little bit weird. Battering Ram is undeniably a great skill, offering some damage and the ability to knock enemies down in a line if their physical armor is depleted. Blinding radiance, is a decent ability, offering an AOE blind if the enemy’s magical armor is depleted. But the really weird choice is Shocking Touch. It does a fair amount of damage but requires you to be standing toe to toe with your opponent. This sort of removes the advantage of most magics in the game, which is the ability to dish out some punishment to your foes before they get to you.
Conclusion: Battlemage would work okay on lower difficulty levels where, to be honest, you can kind of play around with different combinations and still do fine. In higher difficulties you need to focus characters on either physical or magical damage. Hybrid characters perform significantly worse than their focused counterparts.
2. CLERIC
To assume the cleric is strictly a healer would be a mistake. I would describe this class more as a battle medic, offering some healing, but also being comfortable in the thick of battle. It does, however, include the most worthless (in my opinion) school, Necromancy.
With +1 Strength, +1 Intelligence, and +1 Constitution, the Cleric makes an attempt to be a hybrid character in a game that punishes hybridization. If you are looking for a strong healer, I would commit to intelligence and focus on magic and forego the battle healer archetype the game wants you to try.
I have absolutely nothing against the +1 Hydrosophist ability point in this build. It offers the Cleric the ability to take the vital Restoration skill, which will be your go-to heal spell for a good chunk of the game. The +1 Necromancer ability, however, is extremely situational and does not help your healing capabilities all that much. Necromancy allows you to heal on hit in combat, but as you will be splitting your focus between physical and magical damage, this will be situational and not as effective as it would be for focused physical damage characters. The +1 Bartering civil skill is fine, but you can decide on which civil skills are important to you and change it accordingly.
The pre-chosen skills for this class are okay at best. Restoration, as mentioned above, is very useful, and will offer you the ability to heal your non-undead companions. Blood sucker is an extraordinarily situational skill for the beginning of the game, where you barely have any abilities to use. It allows an individual to use blood surfaces around them to heal their wounds, but this requires there to be blood surfaces around, which isn’t uncommon, but adds a strategic requirement to an already limited set of skills. Decaying touch can be a pretty useful tool. Along with it’s damage, it also sets Decay on the enemy, which makes healing spells hurt them, as if they were undead. In combination with your own healing magic, this can be deadly.
Conclusion: Cleric is an attempt at a hybrid physical and magical character. It would work okay on lower difficulties, but on higher difficulties you are going to want to focus on either intelligence or strength, and not both. This means either your healing or combat prowess will suffer and your character will be less effective overall because of this. If you are looking for a healer that can dish out some damage, I would say lose the necromancy, pick up Aerotheurge, drop the strength, and focus on intelligence.
3. INQUISITOR
The inquisitor is another attempt at a hybrid character that offers a weird combination of attributes, abilities, and skills, that I don’t find to be that intuitive or useful.
The attributes of the Inquisitor seem to follow those of other hybrid Divinity Original 2 classes. Mixing intelligence and strength at +1 each, and a +1 constitution to keep you in the fight a little bit longer. The problem with mixing intelligence and strength is that you will always be just average. You won’t be able to do great physical damage, nor will you be able to do great magical damage. This mixed style of combat is actually punished by the game, as some of the harder fights rely heavily on your ability to break either magical or physical defenses to apply debuffs.
The abilities of the Inquisitor are actually okay. Warfare and Necromancy can be a decent combination, though Necromancy is actually a pretty weak ability school in general. Life steal can be useful if you build your character around high damage output, relying on Necromantic healing to keep you alive. The inquisitor starts with +1 in both of these schools, as well as +1 Telekinesis, which I find to be a truly entertaining civil ability.
The inquisitor base skills are not the best. Battering Ram is pretty useful for damage and knock down. Blood sucker is not particularly useful and you will honestly probably forget all about it rather quickly. You would be much better off taking Battle Stomp. Mosquito swarm can actually do a lot of physical damage, but requires a high intelligence to do so.
Conclusion: In the early stages of the game this class can excel in physical damage, but it will quickly become overshadowed by more specialized builds. Hybrid characters have diminishing utility compared to their focused counterparts and you would be better off either making a strength/finesse-based physical character or intelligence-based magical character than one that tries to do both.
4. METAMORPH
The metamorph is a truly bizarre class that has the potential to be good, but the preset stats are just not well thought out in my opinion.
In looking at the attributes, I feel the need to point out that mixing strength and finesse is just a bad idea all around. While it is possible to make decent finesse/strength hybrid characters, it requires very careful character building, odd skill combinations, and advanced tactics and positioning. It also requires warfare and scoundrel to pull off effectively. The Metamorph has none of these things and puts +2 into both strength and finesse. Now this may offer some initial adaptability in which weapons you can use, as both finesse and strength based weapons are open to you, it also has the drawback of stopping you from being really good with one or the other. I would seriously consider either going for finesse or strength, but not both. Pick one and dump a couple points into your constitution to stay alive longer.
The abilities of the Metamorph are actually pretty decent. +1 to polymorph gives you access to some pretty fun early game skills, and the +1 two-handed weapon skill will give you some additional damage. There are both finesse and strength based two-handed weapons, especially in the early game, but go for one or the other… not both.
Two of the three pre-chosen skills are amazing. Chicken Claw has the ability to turn your enemy into a chicken for several turns (assuming their physical armor was depleted), and is one of the funniest and most useful crowd control skills in the game. Tentacle Lash sets atrophy on physical armor depleted enemies and does a lot of damage, making it one of your most commonly used abilities. Bull horns, however, are just okay at best. You can charge enemies and gore them, but I would instead go for chameleon cloak, which can get you out of some really dangerous situations.
Conclusion: A really weird hybrid attempt. Pick strength or finesse, not both. Other than that, it is a very fun starting class, though it does require maybe a little more tactical consideration than some of the other Divinity Original Sin 2 classes.
5. Wayfarer
Ranged classes already have enough problems without trying to make them some sort of weird hybrid. Quite simply, I do not like the Wayfarer and find it to be far less effective than a focused magic class or the ranger class for focused physical damage.
Like other hybrid classes the Wayfarer splits its points between two primary attributes, which, in this case, are finesse and intelligence. While it does have +2 finesse, which is fine, it also adds +1 to intelligence. I know that the point of this is to try and create a class with adaptable physical and magical damage, but it does not work that well. I would honestly drop the point of intelligence and put it into finesse for extra raw finesse damage or into constitution for survivability.
In terms of abilities, combining huntsman and geomancer is a poor choice. Geomancy works well specifically with Pyrokinetics. Huntsman offers largely physical damage, while Geomancy deals largely magical damage. The problem with having both is that you will find your damage being split between taking out physical defenses and magical defenses, meaning it will take you an extra long amount of time before you can start doing actual damage to your enemy’s health bar. Bartering is fine, but a decent civil skill choice doesn’t solve the primary problem of this class.
The Wayfarer’s skills are pretty okay. Pin down is a powerful Huntsman ability which can stop the enemy from moving by setting “Cripple” as long as the enemy’s physical defenses are depleted. Fossil strike is okay for spreading some oil to slow the enemy and Elemental Arrows are also pretty okay. The whole class just feels underwhelming even if it is meant to offer some battlefield control in the form of slows and halts.
Conclusion: I would 100% not recommend this class. There are better Divinity Original Sin 2 classes out there and if you want to play a ranged character just choose ranger. It is superior in almost every way.
6. Witch
The Witch is another hybrid class with some serious problems, most of which revolve around it being ineffective in battle.
The Witch provides +1 finesse and +1 intelligence, splitting the character between two primary damage stats, and therefore splitting the damage potential. The +1 constitution is fine for survivability, but does not solve the problem that splitting between two damage types is not really a good strategy. Either dump the intelligence and go +2 finesse or dump the finesse and go +2 intelligence.
Scoundrel is already an ability school that requires some care and attention, and combining it with the underwhelming necromancer ability school is problematic. Scoundrel is focused on high physical damage and debuffs for survival while necromancer is focused on debuffs requiring magical defenses to be depleted. The fact that you start with +1 in each of these abilities means you will be either hoping your teammates can lower the magical defenses of your enemies or that your scoundrel skills will be sufficient.
In terms of skills, the Witch has three skills which don’t help it very much. Chloroform is a great scoundrel skill if you can break the magic armor of your enemy, which would be fine if your necromancer skills weren’t strictly physical damage. Mosquito Swarm and Raise Bloated Corpse are decent physical damage abilities, which would be a benefit if the Witch started with backlash or some throwing knife to augment the physical damage.
Conclusion: This class is just a mess. It offers no focus between physical or magical attacks and ends up being ineffective at both. Choose almost any other class if you want to have a more powerful combination of abilities.
RECOMMENDED
7Conjurer
Conjurer is the most powerful starting class, but it does something monumentally stupid with its abilities, which I will explain below. This is the summoner class and, as summoning is ruthlessly overpowered, expect to defeat your enemies with relative ease.
The attributes for the Conjurer are just fine, +1 strength, and +2 constitution. Summoning does not benefit from any particular attribute, so having extra hit points and carrying capacity works great. Depending on whether you want to focus on magical damage or physical damage, you could drop the strength for intelligence, but to be fair, most of your combat capability is going to come from your totems and incarnate.
The abilities for the Conjurer are mildly annoying to say the least. Leadership can be okay, but it should not be something you take at the beginning of the game under any circumstances. Quite simply I would recommend you edit out the leadership and place two points into summoning. Your summons are going to carry you through most of the game, and you will want to get to level 10 summoning as fast as possible. Don’t waste an attribute point on leadership in the early stages of the game. The +1 Loremaster skill is decent enough. If you prefer a different civil skill changing it isn’t a big deal.
The pre-chosen skills for Conjurer are almost correct. Conjure Incarnate and Elemental Totem will be your most commonly used skills, and are basically the bread and butter of your class. The Dimensional Bolt, however, is practically worthless. Swap it out for Farsight Infusion and thank me later.
Conclusion: Conjurer is the best starting class without question. I would make a few tweaks to improve its early game capabilities, but otherwise you could do a lot worse for a pre-made character.
8 Enchanter
The Enchanter is one of the two best designed magical damage characters in the class list, along with the wizard. Focusing on Air and Water magic, this class will offer you moderate to high damage with powerful crowd control capabilities.
The attributes for the Enchanter are actually pretty great. +2 intelligence will provide some much needed love for the damage of your spells, and the +1 constitution will keep you alive a little bit longer. I honestly think this is a perfectly acceptable attribute distribution and have no concerns with it.
The abilities for the Enchanter are similarly pretty good. +1 Aerotheurge and +1 Hydrosophist will allow you access to your initial spells and you can either focus on one or the other, or both, as you level up. As Aerotheurge and Hydrosophist work quite well in concert, this is a solid choice for people who want to play a magic class.
The pre-chosen skills for Enchanter are also great. Rain may not seem that important on the surface, but the ability to make enemies wet (queue laughter) is important when the follow up is electrical damage that can stun them or even turn an entire puddle into a lightning fueled stun trap. Hail Strike does quite a bit of damage and can make icy surfaces which can cause enemies to slip (they can also make you slip so be careful). Electrical Discharge will be your go-to lightning spell for the early states of the game. It provides a pretty good amount of damage and can stun enemies that are wet.
Conclusion: Enchanter should be your go-to if you want to be a water or air bender… I mean wizard… This class offers powerful offensive magical damage, crowd control capabilities, and a few defensive spells you can pick up as you go.
9 Fighter
The Fighter tends to lean more towards defensive abilities than offensive abilities. It is not necessarily a bad class, but there are better ability combinations out there. That being said, if you are looking for a character to serve as a tank, this is probably the choice for you.
The attributes for Fighter are generally pretty good. +1 strength will increase your carrying capacity and give you a bonus to your physical damage. +2 constitution will give you extra hit points, and keep you alive a little longer. I don’t have any real concerns regarding the attribute spread for this class.
The abilities are where I have a couple of small concerns. The +1 to Geomancer does include some decent abilities for melee combatants, like Fortify. But compared to Shields Up, which comes with most shields, and some polymorph skills, it almost feels like a waste to go into an ability school that you will only use one or two skills from. +1 Warfare is completely fine and expected for a melee class, so I have no concerns regarding it. You will also be getting +1 Bartering, but you can change your civil skill to whatever you want it to be.
The pre-chosen skills for fighters are pretty decent. Bouncing Shield can do a lot of damage and scales with the defensive values of your shield. Battle Stomp offers a cone-shaped damage effect that can knock down enemies with depleted physical armor. It will be one of your most used abilities as a fighter. Fortify is also a decent skill if you are dead set on using a pre-set character with no edits.
Conclusion: I would personally ditch geomancy and put that point into polymorph. Polymorph has a lot of skills that work in concert with high strength and with warfare in general. Even if you don’t change anything about this class, it is a pretty okay start for new players though
10 Knight
The knight is the premier physical damage front-line character. It is probably the best choice for a melee damage dealer if you want to wade into battle with a big weapon to do a lot of physical damage.
The attributes of the knight are perfectly distributed for its role. +2 strength will give your attacks some serious force, especially in the early game, and the +1 constitution will let you stay in the fray for a little longer.
The abilities of the knight are also great for its role. +1 warfare will allow you access to some pretty powerful skills, and the +1 two-handed will increase the damage and critical modifier of your mighty two-handed weapon that you should definitely be using.
The skills chosen for the Knight are probably the best for physical damage in the entire class list. With the devastating Battle Stomp and Battering Ram to offer some damage and knock down crowd control, and the Crippling Blow to deal a bunch of damage and setting the “Crippled” status effect, you will be mowing down anyone who dares stand in your way.
Conclusion: The best physical-damage class. If you are new to the game and just want to smack people in the face with a giant weapon, pick this class. Pair this with polymorph as you level up for even more utility, mobility, and damage.
11 Ranger
The Ranger is the better of the two ranged classes in Divinity: OS 2. It offers access to better skills and has a more focused set of abilities than that of the Wayfarer.
The attributes for the ranger are perfectly fine. +2 finesse is really the way you want to go for a ranged combatant offering increased damage with finesse based weapons and skills. The +1 constitution, as mentioned a few times already will keep you alive longer. There are really no concerns regarding the attribute spread for this class.
The ability choices for Ranger are also pretty decent. +1 Huntsman offers you access to a few potent ranged abilities, and is something you will want to keep investing your points into as you level up. Pyrokinetic, however, is something you should only ever need to put one point into. The skills you need from pyrokinetic are simply peace of mind and haste. As a finesse based character you will not be putting enough points into intelligence to make full use of the array of deadly Pyrokinetic spells, but almost every character in the game needs haste and peace of mind.
The skill choices for the ranger are also pretty decent, with one exception. All three of the pre-selected skills are useful. Elemental Arrows will allow you to imbue your shots with an elemental effect depending on what ground elements are near you. Ricochet can bounce your shots to additional targets, assuming they are close enough to each other. Peace of mind can clear and protect against an array of status effects.
That said, you should get rid of elemental arrows and take Haste. Haste is probably the most required spell in the game. The ability to get it at the beginning of the game cannot be overstated.
Conclusion: A really solid ranged class. Get rid of elemental arrows and take haste to make it even better.
12 Rogue
The rogue is a very fun, but generally more advanced class to play. Rogues have a habit of dying really fast. To play this class effectively, you are going to have to get used to careful positioning and also retreating.
The attribute spread for the rogue is perfectly fine. +2 finesse for additional attack damage is exactly what you want as a damage-dealer. The +1 constitution will maybe help you live for a couple of seconds longer, maybe.
In terms of abilities, the Rogue’s are exactly what you would expect. +1 scoundrel for increased critical damage, and movement speed. +1 sneaking, to try and get into combat unseen, and +1 dual wielding because you are going to want to dish out as much punishment with your daggers as you can before getting turned into paste. It should be noted that a lot of the damage capability of the rogue comes from critical hits, specifically by backstabbing. You are going to want to focus on increasing your critical damage multiplier and by backstabbing whenever you can help it.
The skills of this class are mostly great, with one exception. Adrenaline is an amazing opener skill, granting you two additional AP. This isn’t without its drawbacks though, as you will be down two AP on your next turn, but it can allow you to open combat with a massive amount of damage and possibly even remove an entire enemy from the fight. Backlash will be one of your most used abilities, as it is basically a 1 ap cost backstab, that also acts as a teleport. Throwing Knives are just okay. They are one of your only options for a ranged backstab as a rogue, but you will probably replace it with something else in the future.
Conclusion: For people who understand the risks of leather armor in melee and can carefully position their characters for maximum damage, this is the class for you.
13 Shadowblade
Maybe being a generic rogue isn’t for you and instead you want to go down the path of the assassin. While it is pretty similar to the rogue, there are a few variations in this class that offer increased versatility and lethality.
The most noticeable difference between the Rogue and the Shadowblade, are the attribute distributions. Like the rogue, the Shadowblade offers +2 finesse, which is vital for damage. The Shadowblade drops the +1 constitution, lowering its survivability for +2 wits. Wits offer critical chance and initiative. My problem with this particular build is that aside from the initiative bonus, wits are a terrible attribute for Scoundrel based classes. You should be dealing critical hits on a regular basis due to backstab and increasing your critical chance from non-backstab attacks is almost pointless. I would honestly re-distribute wits into finesse and constitution.
The Shadowblade offers +1 to Scoundrel, which is standard for dagger-based Divinity Original Sin 2 classes. It also offers +1 polymorph which I absolutely love. There are a lot of great abilities in polymorph to keep an assassin alive, and I think polymorph works extremely well with Scoundrel. Thievery is the civil skill chosen by the devs, and I think it is a good choice. You can change your civil skill if you feel another one would suit your playstyle better though.
In terms of skills, the Shadowblade has some pretty good ones. Backlash acts as a one AP teleport and backstab, allowing you to close with your enemies for a minimal cost. Chameleon Cloak will allow you to get out of a bad situation if you need to. Chicken Claw is by far one of the funnest abilities in the game, turning your enemy into a helpless chicken so long as their physical armor was depleted when you used the ability.
If you are looking to do more damage and are less concerned about survival, you can sub in Adrenaline for more burst DPS or with Tentacle Lash for some hard-hitting physical punishment instead of Chameleon Cloak.
Conclusion: Scoundrel and polymorph work really well together. I would honestly consider this to be a better “rogue” class than the rogue.
14 Wizard
The Wizard is the more damaging, but less crowd control focused variant of the Enchanter. It is also one of the best designed classes, focusing on raw elemental damage.
With +2 intelligence and +1 constitution you will be unleashing a hellstorm of punishing magical damage, while having a little more survivability yourself. This is a pretty standard and balanced attribute distribution for magic-wielding classes, and I have absolutely no concerns about it.
The Wizard, much like its Enchanter counterpart, focuses on two complementary ability schools. Pyrokinetic and Geomancer skills work very well together. The poison and oil that is part of many Geomancer skills can be set aflame or exploded by well placed pyrokinetic skills, and you should be able to deal a lot of damage to your enemies with this combination.
In terms of skills, the three pre-selected are okay. Fossil Strike does a fair bit of damage and lays down a pool of oil for your follow up fire skill of choice. Searing Daggers will most likely fill that role as it sends three damaging fiery bolts of magic at your enemy and can set oil aflame. The final skill, Ignition, is pretty good, but will quickly become overshadowed by other abilities. It unleashes a wave of fire that will damage all enemies in a radius around you and set all flammable surfaces aflame. This can be very useful, but in all honesty I would set it aside for Haste or possibly Peace of Mind, but that’s just me.
Conclusion: If you want to set people and places on fire, this is the class for you.
What Should You Pick?
I decided to include this section in order to showcase which class fits into which role. I am also going to note any edits I feel are important to make those classes function better than the pre-chosen attributes, abilities, and skills. The Divinity Original Sin 2 classes that don’t really need editing simply won’t have changes noted
- Sword and Board: If you want to stand on the front line, choose the Fighter. Lose geomancy and pick up polymorph. Put the extra point into strength and take Battle Stomp, Bouncing Shield, and Tentacle Lash.
- Two-Weapon Fighter: The Knight fills this role pretty well. There are no real edits necessary for this particular class.
- Two-Handed Fighter: Interestingly, the Knight can almost fill this role as well. Simply drop two-handed weapon for dual-wielding and jam a weapon into your offhand.
- Backstab: I am going to tentatively say that Shadowblade is better than rogue for this role. Definitely lose the points in wits and put an extra point into finesse and one into constitution. You can honestly leave the ability and skills alone because they are pretty well chosen.
- Ranged: The Ranger is the best ranged damage class by far. The best thing you could do is lose elemental arrows for haste and don’t put any more points into pyro as you level up. Otherwise it is a pretty solid class.
- Crowd Control Magic: The Enchanter is the best choice for early game crowd control. Its ability to do pretty significant water and lightning damage, combined with the chance to make enemies slip or be stunned are pretty great.
- Damaging Magic: The Wizard is the best choice for raw magical damage. Geomancy and Pyrokinetic magics work really well together and they are generally higher in terms of raw damage than Hydrosophist and Aerotheurge spells. I would get rid of Ignition for Haste at least initially. You should be able to buy the spell book for ignition in Fort Joy anyway. But be ready for the quests on it, especially in prison.
- Healing: The Enchanter is actually a great choice for healing. As it already has high intelligence and Hydrosophist points you can simply swap out Rain for Restoration. Nothing else really needs to change.
- Summoning: The Conjurer is the obvious choice for a summoner, but needs a few edits to really shine. First of all drop leadership and put your second point into summoning. Then you are going to want to drop Dimensional Bolt and take Farsight Infusion. Summon an Incarnate, give it farsight infusion, and then spend your time summoning countless totems to ruin the lives of your enemies.
This brings us to the end of our Divinity Original Sin 2 classes list for today. If you have any other fun class ideas you like or ability combinations that work really well together let us know below!
Eltimar
Contributor
I was introduced to the world of gaming at a pretty young age. My dad would invite his friends over, and they would descend into the basement for hours. At first, I was too young to really grasp the games they were playing; Dungeons and Dragons, Ravenloft, Greyhawk. But it was when they began to shift their focus to computer games, that I became really interested.
