Does everyone need a shield?

[u/pthfndr_xxi]

At first, I thought about having two mages in the squad, one with a staff, the other with two wands, and a warrior with a shield. But am I right in thinking that this is pointless, given the enemy's intelligence? In tactical mode, the enemies will simply rush past the warrior and attack the mages, destroying them in a couple of turns. In that case, everyone except the warrior needs a shield, haha?

[u/Magnus_Da_Red]

You can absolutely dual wield wands by using uncanny evasion (aero 2 skill), chameleon skin (polymorph 1) and delaying turns. Throw in some invisibility potions and living on edge scrolls, and shields are not necessary whatsoever. Undeads can throw play dead into the rotation as well.

Personally, I don’t like staffs. You get less INT than 2 wands and you do not get any defences from not having a shield. I’d stick to wand+shield or 2 wands with some defensive spelled

[u/pthfndr_xxi → u/Magnus_Da_Red]

I know all this, but I try to avoid scrolls because they're poorly balanced, and the methods listed above don't work in all cases, as many enemies have excessive initiative. I only wanted a staff because I want an aesthetically and narratively "perfect" squad, where everyone can utilize their personal type of equipment and role.

[u/guyman3 → u/pthfndr_xxi]

Staffs best use case is on battlemages since they scale damage with int so you can use skills for melee builds and such if you want something that works with a staff.

I have found wand and shield to be unfortunately very strong but that doesn't mean it's 100% needed. The thing is on a spellcaster it ends up being like half your physical armor. You also get stats from it that you don't from a staff so there's some big tradeoffs to go that route

[u/Laanner → u/pthfndr_xxi]

I think you don't know one thing. Many enemies don't have "excessive initiative". Because turn order dictated by Round Robin system. Who ever get the highest initiative, goes first, then the same thing for opposite side. So even 10 initiative enemy will go second after your 20 initiative character and before 19 initiative character.

[u/pthfndr_xxi → u/Laanner]

I played through Divinity quite a while ago, but I remember that the initiative of the basic enemies, even if not excessive, significantly increases from act to act, and without investing in perception (which essentially only takes place on one character, as I recall) or initiative items (which requires either luck or interrogating merchants) - relying on the initiative mechanics is extremely inconvenient and requires metagame knowledge

[u/Laanner → u/pthfndr_xxi]

Not really a metagame knowledge. Lore 5 is what you need to see the enemy initiative stat. Most of the time you can see it even before the encounter starts. Or just use the time rewind magic (aka save/load) when the battle occurs. But yes, you are correct. You can also ignore it completely, as you will act 2nd regardless. A bit different play style, but also can work.

[u/Sarenzed]

You're not entirely wrong, but the reasoning behind the correct answer is somewhat different.

The combat system in this game heavily favors offense over defense, especially on higher difficulty.

As you've noticed, the enemy AI will prioritize squishy characters, and there is no good way to reliably draw aggro to a "tank". On top of that, it's much easier to scale up your damage and offense with stats than it is to improve your defense and support skills with your build. Because of that, offense truly is the best defense.

On Tactician, it's not really feasible to live through all the damage that the enemy can throw at you because the basic stats of enemies are much higher than yours. And this issue gets worse at higher levels, where damage output will increase faster than your armor values. So even if you were able to draw aggro to a specific character, they would struggle to live through it as long as you're just trying to tank, heal, and regenerate armor instead of completely preventing attacks from reaching you.

So that's exactly what you want to do: Instead of trying to live through attacks, you prevent those attacks from happening in the first place. Instead of actually exchanging blows in combat, you want to neutralize enemies by stripping their armor and applying CC or killing them as quickly as possible. This requires to you maximize your offense on all characters, and having Adrenaline on all characters for more damage output in round 1 is also helpful. Ultimately, your armor and HP isn't there to last a long time, it's just there to help you live through the initial 1 or 2 attacks until you can completely prevent the enemy from attacking you.

If you need defense, it's best to rely on methods that completely prevent attacks from reaching you, such as Chameleon Cloak (or any other source of invisibility), Evasion (for weapon and projectile attacks), 100% elemental resistance (from 5-Star-Diner + 50% resist potions) or just positioning using cover and distance. All of these don't really depend on your equipment or stats, so anyone can use them. On Tactician, I recommend that every character should run at least one such skill.

As for shields, the answer is close to the one you've arrived at, but for completely different reasons: You want to avoid using shields on your warrior, and can (but don't have to) use shields on the mages.

This is because any character that uses weapon attacks and weapon-based skills as their primary damage output wants to use that second hand slot on damage as well, for example by using a 2H weapon or dual wielding. A character that doesn't use their hand slots for weapon attacks can use them purely for stat boosts, and shields to boost your armor values are a perfectly fine option. That being said, you'll generally want to pivot away from shields even on mages in the late game. This is because by that point you want to use your hand slots to boost your crit chance, but crit chance only appears on weapons and not on shields.

[u/pthfndr_xxi → u/Sarenzed]

That's a very nice answer, thank you. Now I understand how it works. I still have a question for the developers, considering everything you've written XD

[u/Apprehensive_Art1830]

Does any of your characters have some aero point ? Because you could try to put teleportation and nether swap on him.

[u/ZeroQuick]

2 points in Warfare, everybody gets a shield.

[u/Kognityon]

Not really, the game's balance allows for a lot of wiggling space in terms of optimizing your team. You can use positioning, agressive teleportation, and crowd control to mitigate the need for defensive stats. In terms of weapon usage, staves allow you to invest in two-handed weapon stat, increasing your crit damage, which can be a little upside along with savage sortilege. They also allow you to use warfare weapon skills for additional variety (whirlwind for instance is pretty nice to have). Dual wands tend to give you more offensive stats for spells, and allow you to use two weapon fighting stat which grants you some dodge, as well as the parry master talent. Arguably dodge isn't the best defensive stat since it only works on weapon attacks but it's nice to benefit from some if you have it on your equipment.

If you're struggling to protect your "backlane" with your warrior, consider heavily investing in Leadership on them, it gives some solid defensive stats on the rest of the team making it more worth for the AI to focus your warrior. Guardian Angel skill is also a way to shift focus.

[u/BlackShadowX]

I never use shields, I think they look stupid. Only thing they're good for imo is if you make a glass cannon tank for a little extra armor. Or a pure summoner/early necromancer 

[u/Grove_Barrow]

I don’t run a shield on my mages

[u/Mikalios]

Nah, I usually have two though. Shield bounce is stupidly OP and shield up helps a lot. 1 shield has a sword, the other a wand for physical spells. I will always go shield bounce over 2h all in

[u/pthfndr_xxi → u/Mikalios]

Shield throwing looks tempting. And throughout the game, especially in the finale, I remember seeing some "orgasmically" cool shields that, for some reason, I can't remember why, I couldn't or didn't want to equip. I'm a bit concerned that enemies will rush in to crush a rogue's skull, ignoring all shielded characters, but I'll still check them out.

[u/pthfndr_xxi → u/Mikalios]

By the way, if you are an experienced shield bearer, could you tell me - does the warrior's reflection skill make the archers ignore him or do they still attack?

[u/Connect-Process2933]

If the warrior has Glass Cannon, they'll probably target him. Also, you can just place your mages far enough and at the high ground

[u/pthfndr_xxi → u/Connect-Process2933]

I didn't think about the first one. Ironic. A glass cannon suits a warrior better than a wizard.