While "best" can be subjective and highly dependent on playstyle in Divinity: Original Sin 2, the Conjurer is often cited as one of the most powerful and beginner-friendly starting classes due to its ability to quickly scale and dominate encounters.
The Power of the Conjurer
The Conjurer stands out primarily because of its focus on the Summoning skill. This allows the player to conjure powerful allies, such as the Incarnate, and static totems that significantly boost party damage and survivability.
Key reasons the Conjurer is considered overpowered:
- Extra Party Members: Summons act as additional characters on the battlefield, increasing your action economy. They can soak up damage, draw enemy aggression, and contribute substantial damage.
- Scalability: The Summoning skill scales incredibly well, especially once it reaches level 10. At this point, your Incarnate transforms into the Incarnate Champion, gaining powerful new abilities and stats that make it a formidable force.
- Versatility: Summoners can pair well with any elemental skill. By casting a summoning spell on an elemental surface (like fire, water, or poison), your Incarnate gains properties and abilities of that element, adapting to various combat situations.
- Early Game Strength: The Conjurer comes online very quickly, providing a significant power spike early in the game, which can make challenging encounters much more manageable.
Understanding "Best" in Divinity Original Sin 2
Divinity: Original Sin 2 is renowned for its incredible build diversity and class flexibility. While a starting class provides initial skills and attributes, players are free to multiclass and mix abilities from various schools, making the ultimate "best" build highly personalized.
Factors influencing a "best" build:
- Party Composition: A balanced party with a mix of physical and magical damage, crowd control, and support is generally more effective.
- Player Preference: Some players prefer direct damage, others enjoy strategic crowd control, and some like to specialize in supporting their allies.
- Synergy: The true power in DOS2 comes from combining skills, talents, and equipment in synergistic ways. For example, a character focused on Warfare skills benefits from critical hits and damage multipliers, making Scoundrel a good secondary skill for adrenaline and critical chance.
- Character Race: Certain races offer unique racial abilities that can significantly enhance specific builds. For instance, Fane's "Time Warp" ability allows a character to take an extra turn, which can be devastatingly powerful on a high-damage burst build, regardless of starting class.
Other Powerful Archetypes and Builds
While the Conjurer offers a strong foundation, many other powerful builds emerge throughout the game:
- Two-Handed Warfare Builds: Focusing on Warfare and a two-handed weapon, these builds deliver massive physical damage, often enhanced with Polymorph skills for abilities like Tentacle Lash or Medusa Head.
- Critical Scoundrel/Warfare Rogue: Combining critical chance from Scoundrel with physical damage skills from Warfare (which boosts all physical damage, not just weapon damage) allows for incredibly high single-target burst damage.
- Elemental Mages: Specializing in skills like Aerotheurge (air/electricity) for stun locking enemies or Pyrokinetic (fire) for area-of-effect damage can clear battlefields efficiently, especially when paired with Geomancer for oil or poison surfaces.
- Necromancer/Warfare (Life Steal): Despite being a magic school, Necromancy skills deal physical damage. Pairing this with Warfare boosts damage, and the life steal mechanic of Necromancy can make characters incredibly durable.
Ultimately, while the Conjurer provides an exceptionally strong start and remains a powerful archetype throughout the game, Divinity: Original Sin 2 empowers players to craft their own dominant builds through clever synergy and understanding of its deep combat mechanics.