I was looking for for Dual Wield builds online and saw your video first, and as I searched further I saw a site for checking builds, and it looked eerily similar to your character. Checked the site, then checked your channel name... and I was actually looking at your website. Good guide.
I've been testing a lot of warrior builds and got to say that that wave of force its very useful against crowds, does 800% wep damage x5 waves ... thats like 4000% damage, i just mop the floor with the crowds before they even get in mele range. as for tank, Defender it is a good buf indeed yet, after some crazy builds and rebuilds i took a look at a tank with combat/ranged 32 for Repulsion and Improved weapon enhancement which gives 12% bonus armor compared to soul of protection that only gives 8% bonus enhancement at lvl 1, so a lvl 20 ish weapon enhancement from blood assassin on a tank gives around 46% armor compared to nature fist that gives at lvl 20sh 24-26% bonus armor. Also you said something that you get less exp if you dont go for split exp between mele/nature or archer/combat caster, from what i know from DS1 and i think it also apply in DS2, when you lvl up your main class as full archer, mage or fighter, you also lvl up your main stat aka strength, dex or intellect splitting your exp between your main stat and the weapon of choice; where as if you lvl up in split discipline mention above you lvl up your 2x weapons choice and in the 2 stats that are lvling with them. so instead of having for example a full warrior champion lvl 100 with 100 strenght and 30 intellect (lets say), you get a lvl 100 mixed char with 85 strenght and 45 intellect or something ..... and to test this theory i unequip all items on my main char dualwild grand preserver fighter nature warrior lvl 78 and has str 221, dex 90, int 111 and compare it with Yoren lvl 74 champion almost full mele with 30 points nature that has str 249, dex 84 dex and 98 int ..... the diferences are not that great like in DS1 where 1 point in strength would effect your char in insane mods making you unable to wear some max lvl weapon for example, but if you want a overpowered tank lets say with max hp then going straight mele 1 to 100 would give the maximum amount of Strength, same for mages or archers, and a mixed char gets bonuses in 2 or 3 stats more often. Another thing about tank, you put some points in nature summoning for the shared bond, well, a warrior pet pet has around 300-600 hp so the damage shared its 9% of that health amount, also that pet on higher lvls will instant die when attacked by random monsters as for boss fights its hardly mentioning since your tank will spend half the fight re summoning the pet, where as for nature mage his pet can go to even 4000 hp insane damage and durability with a shared damage that can go to 50% of pet hp making your nature mage tankier then even a tank. For my tank warrior i put 1 point in crit and other damage dealing skills, max out as much as possible in his resilience skills or flat armor, hp, dodge, resistances skills and why: his damage is the lowest in game, even a nature mage pet does more damage then the tank, but his sustain and provoke will for sure save my party from dyeing in most of the high lvl fights or crowds.
Combat magic is basically not useful to physical damage builds unless you have someone able to decently cast "decay armor" at later levels in the game. Especially if your party in mainly physical damage dealers you may actually see a larger increase this way than by simply adding another physical damage dealer, (assuming your other 5 are physical damage dealers). One thing I did want to add to that I didn't hear commented on in the video but perhaps covered more on your webpage, was on the 2handed damage dealer. 2handed damage dealers have the longer single attack animations with exceptions of some long cast spells, the formula is similar though that just like the largest difference to adding casting speed is infact to longer cast spells, same goes for 2handed weapons synchronizing with alacrity from the dual wield tree. Dual wield animations are mid speed but are made up of 3 (or 4) minor animations that each shave a tiny bit of time off with alacrity. But with 2hand only having one long smooth animation, you will see the largest boost to speed when you take alacrity on your 2handed tanks (also elemental rage already increases attack speed on dual wield so at a certain point your absolutely right there is no benefit in piling too much more onto the animation as it can only get so fast). I strongly recommend to anyone taking 2handed damage/cc approach to invest a few points into alacrity until you get to see the desired result, it is kind of hysterical, watching your 2handed weapon swing faster than your tanks 1hand. As with equal deadly strike the single highest damage crits and brutal attack are from 2handed attacks due to their higher (single weapon) tooltips, you can pump out a surprising amount of single target damage with 2hand, whether you choose to invest in fist of stone or not is up to you. I did want to chime in with regards to wave of force as well, the strength of the ability is kind of multipurpose, a hybrid of single target and aoe damage which makes it a decent choice if you just don't want to swap powers, or if you really can manage to use it to its greatest strength. Its number of waves increase with each rank up (1,2,3) which makes it hit harder than whirling strike (if all of the attacks hit - minus the short stun) it works best when you have a mix bag of enemies, like some tankier ones that will eat up all the hits without wasting any, while on weaker monsters sometimes the 3rd wave kills them and the rest is wasted damage. They also travel a little distance, and work fantastically with larger targets, and if I'm not mistaken its one of the few powers that is sped up by alacrity as well so you don't sit there too long swinging out waves. The final thing I wanted to mention about waves of force is its one of the only useful recipients of Soul of Strength which you might already be using to boost your offensive fist of stone weapon enchantments, and it has a chance to be instantly renewed upon use, which leads to extra fun carnage :) Loved your video and learned something new as well, I actually have quite a reverence for War Cry as it has a very strong niche for killing bosses that cannot be feared in physical parties. Since they wont go running around like idiots after you use it, it really helps ramp up damage fast for physical parties/party members and also stacks with decay armor, you draw a surprisingly high amount of damage out of your party this way, enough even to offset using another power. What I did learn is that it isn't restricted to 2hand, which I thought was funny because I'm quite sure in the original game or at least one of the various patches, that it required a great weapon to use. This might actually give a tank a useful second power to use on bosses that are already fixated on the tank, as it can help bring more damage to the whole party, as well as providing guaranteed crits for a tank, whom probably doesn't have high crit chance at all. Really enjoyed your video! Final thought was that war cry has a decent synergy with ranged powers like thunderous shot, as long as you use gravity stone from a nature mage. Gravity stone is a decent power because it doesn't deal any damage and you can cast it on any mage who has the necessary points invested, or even fist of stones who have a free slot. If you drag all the characters together and use warcry on them, it becomes much more useful against trash mobs and such, especially tanky ones that can still get stunned because it prevents them from running away but still hits them with the major armor debuff, then when all clustered up, all your physical damage/powers hit so much harder on these clustered targets. Sometimes weak enough that a single aoe power with often be enough to crush them all at once!
I remember having a party built around curse that increased vulnerability to lightning and frost damage: dual wield warrior with elemental power, archer with lightning power, lightning combat mage with enough points in death magic for the corpse explosion power (it's simply that good), and frost mage with maxed gravity stone (for massive pull radius) and ivulnerability power for bossed.
That's a cool group-build idea! Would be rough when you run into lightning resistant mobs though, unless your characters were developed enough to be able to pivot to another magic school.
War Cry + Drown + Elemental Rage = Boss Killer even without critical hits or War Cry + Decoy Armor + Flurry = the same if you prefer range physical damage Gravity Stone + Corrosive Eruption + Brutal Attack/Take Aim = Oneshot Pack Devastator
Replaying it right now (after finshing the first one some weeks ago), holds up well on modern times tbh. Shame the performance is so terrible, i know my PC is ancient for modern standards (FX 4300 + GTX 650), but for Dungeon Siege standards it's a beast, FPS always hover between 35-55 no matter what settings i use, and it slowly degrades the more i play it, to a point were i get 15-20 FPS after 3-4 hours of playtime, tried every tweek, but to no avail. But at the end of the day, it doesn't botter me as much, this is not a super fast paced game were you need precise aiming and controls, so 30-55 FPS is totally playable.
still my fav game ever... so nostalgic... those jungles , deserts and forests...
I think lost ark drinks tons of this game. I lol so hard when i saw goblins in d3...... So "original" from blizzard
awesome, keep the game alive, it is so beautiful
I was looking for for Dual Wield builds online and saw your video first, and as I searched further I saw a site for checking builds, and it looked eerily similar to your character. Checked the site, then checked your channel name... and I was actually looking at your website. Good guide.
I've been testing a lot of warrior builds and got to say that that wave of force its very useful against crowds, does 800% wep damage x5 waves ... thats like 4000% damage, i just mop the floor with the crowds before they even get in mele range. as for tank, Defender it is a good buf indeed yet, after some crazy builds and rebuilds i took a look at a tank with combat/ranged 32 for Repulsion and Improved weapon enhancement which gives 12% bonus armor compared to soul of protection that only gives 8% bonus enhancement at lvl 1, so a lvl 20 ish weapon enhancement from blood assassin on a tank gives around 46% armor compared to nature fist that gives at lvl 20sh 24-26% bonus armor.
Also you said something that you get less exp if you dont go for split exp between mele/nature or archer/combat caster, from what i know from DS1 and i think it also apply in DS2, when you lvl up your main class as full archer, mage or fighter, you also lvl up your main stat aka strength, dex or intellect splitting your exp between your main stat and the weapon of choice; where as if you lvl up in split discipline mention above you lvl up your 2x weapons choice and in the 2 stats that are lvling with them. so instead of having for example a full warrior champion lvl 100 with 100 strenght and 30 intellect (lets say), you get a lvl 100 mixed char with 85 strenght and 45 intellect or something ..... and to test this theory i unequip all items on my main char dualwild grand preserver fighter nature warrior lvl 78 and has str 221, dex 90, int 111 and compare it with Yoren lvl 74 champion almost full mele with 30 points nature that has str 249, dex 84 dex and 98 int ..... the diferences are not that great like in DS1 where 1 point in strength would effect your char in insane mods making you unable to wear some max lvl weapon for example, but if you want a overpowered tank lets say with max hp then going straight mele 1 to 100 would give the maximum amount of Strength, same for mages or archers, and a mixed char gets bonuses in 2 or 3 stats more often.
Another thing about tank, you put some points in nature summoning for the shared bond, well, a warrior pet pet has around 300-600 hp so the damage shared its 9% of that health amount, also that pet on higher lvls will instant die when attacked by random monsters as for boss fights its hardly mentioning since your tank will spend half the fight re summoning the pet, where as for nature mage his pet can go to even 4000 hp insane damage and durability with a shared damage that can go to 50% of pet hp making your nature mage tankier then even a tank.
For my tank warrior i put 1 point in crit and other damage dealing skills, max out as much as possible in his resilience skills or flat armor, hp, dodge, resistances skills and why: his damage is the lowest in game, even a nature mage pet does more damage then the tank, but his sustain and provoke will for sure save my party from dyeing in most of the high lvl fights or crowds.
Combat magic is basically not useful to physical damage builds unless you have someone able to decently cast "decay armor" at later levels in the game. Especially if your party in mainly physical damage dealers you may actually see a larger increase this way than by simply adding another physical damage dealer, (assuming your other 5 are physical damage dealers). One thing I did want to add to that I didn't hear commented on in the video but perhaps covered more on your webpage, was on the 2handed damage dealer. 2handed damage dealers have the longer single attack animations with exceptions of some long cast spells, the formula is similar though that just like the largest difference to adding casting speed is infact to longer cast spells, same goes for 2handed weapons synchronizing with alacrity from the dual wield tree. Dual wield animations are mid speed but are made up of 3 (or 4) minor animations that each shave a tiny bit of time off with alacrity. But with 2hand only having one long smooth animation, you will see the largest boost to speed when you take alacrity on your 2handed tanks (also elemental rage already increases attack speed on dual wield so at a certain point your absolutely right there is no benefit in piling too much more onto the animation as it can only get so fast). I strongly recommend to anyone taking 2handed damage/cc approach to invest a few points into alacrity until you get to see the desired result, it is kind of hysterical, watching your 2handed weapon swing faster than your tanks 1hand. As with equal deadly strike the single highest damage crits and brutal attack are from 2handed attacks due to their higher (single weapon) tooltips, you can pump out a surprising amount of single target damage with 2hand, whether you choose to invest in fist of stone or not is up to you. I did want to chime in with regards to wave of force as well, the strength of the ability is kind of multipurpose, a hybrid of single target and aoe damage which makes it a decent choice if you just don't want to swap powers, or if you really can manage to use it to its greatest strength. Its number of waves increase with each rank up (1,2,3) which makes it hit harder than whirling strike (if all of the attacks hit - minus the short stun) it works best when you have a mix bag of enemies, like some tankier ones that will eat up all the hits without wasting any, while on weaker monsters sometimes the 3rd wave kills them and the rest is wasted damage. They also travel a little distance, and work fantastically with larger targets, and if I'm not mistaken its one of the few powers that is sped up by alacrity as well so you don't sit there too long swinging out waves. The final thing I wanted to mention about waves of force is its one of the only useful recipients of Soul of Strength which you might already be using to boost your offensive fist of stone weapon enchantments, and it has a chance to be instantly renewed upon use, which leads to extra fun carnage :)
Loved your video and learned something new as well, I actually have quite a reverence for War Cry as it has a very strong niche for killing bosses that cannot be feared in physical parties. Since they wont go running around like idiots after you use it, it really helps ramp up damage fast for physical parties/party members and also stacks with decay armor, you draw a surprisingly high amount of damage out of your party this way, enough even to offset using another power. What I did learn is that it isn't restricted to 2hand, which I thought was funny because I'm quite sure in the original game or at least one of the various patches, that it required a great weapon to use. This might actually give a tank a useful second power to use on bosses that are already fixated on the tank, as it can help bring more damage to the whole party, as well as providing guaranteed crits for a tank, whom probably doesn't have high crit chance at all. Really enjoyed your video!
Final thought was that war cry has a decent synergy with ranged powers like thunderous shot, as long as you use gravity stone from a nature mage. Gravity stone is a decent power because it doesn't deal any damage and you can cast it on any mage who has the necessary points invested, or even fist of stones who have a free slot. If you drag all the characters together and use warcry on them, it becomes much more useful against trash mobs and such, especially tanky ones that can still get stunned because it prevents them from running away but still hits them with the major armor debuff, then when all clustered up, all your physical damage/powers hit so much harder on these clustered targets. Sometimes weak enough that a single aoe power with often be enough to crush them all at once!
I remember having a party built around curse that increased vulnerability to lightning and frost damage: dual wield warrior with elemental power, archer with lightning power, lightning combat mage with enough points in death magic for the corpse explosion power (it's simply that good), and frost mage with maxed gravity stone (for massive pull radius) and ivulnerability power for bossed.
That's a cool group-build idea! Would be rough when you run into lightning resistant mobs though, unless your characters were developed enough to be able to pivot to another magic school.
Elemental Rage is by far the best ability for dual wield no matter normal mobs or bosses, even mor for bosses the dmg output is insane
War Cry + Drown + Elemental Rage = Boss Killer even without critical hits
or War Cry + Decoy Armor + Flurry = the same if you prefer range physical damage
Gravity Stone + Corrosive Eruption + Brutal Attack/Take Aim = Oneshot Pack Devastator
video was great help, Thanks!
could u make video on what class does most damage?
Nice video. Shame there's not much said about the two-handed builds and how to balance them out to their max potential.
ds2 in 2021! XD
ds2 in 2022! XD
ds2 in 2024! see you next year lol
here I am in 2023
Replaying it right now (after finshing the first one some weeks ago), holds up well on modern times tbh.
Shame the performance is so terrible, i know my PC is ancient for modern standards (FX 4300 + GTX 650), but for Dungeon Siege standards it's a beast, FPS always hover between 35-55 no matter what settings i use, and it slowly degrades the more i play it, to a point were i get 15-20 FPS after 3-4 hours of playtime, tried every tweek, but to no avail.
But at the end of the day, it doesn't botter me as much, this is not a super fast paced game were you need precise aiming and controls, so 30-55 FPS is totally playable.
@@brandonuzumakiyou can get a patch that fixes FPS
Hey you site is down :(
yea, unfortunately we had about a 3hr outage today. First time it's been down in years. Apologies for that!
@@AlmarWinfield no worries just glad you're Still active. Thanks for that :)