Current Events > Witcher 3 - Which skills should I focus on?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I've played a bit of it before, but now I'm going to start over and really dive into the game. I have to say that I didn't like that magic too much, so I guess I'll go more of a melee build and maybe that one magic that helps convince people in dialogues and controls the mind

Sun And Stars seems like a given and I hear Alchemy is really good in this game, but what about combat? Is the Crossbow something that is really good and needed to put skills into?

Any thoughts would be nice to hear
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First recommendation: play on the hardest or second to hardest difficulty. It will encourage you to avoid dominant strategies.

The Crossbow unfortunately has not been as useful on any difficulty except underwater (if you are a madman like me and explore every question mark in skellige).

I recommend crossbow and alchemy if you want to be a slower player and if you don't intend to 100% everything.

I recommend Quen and Axii if you want to play through faster and more aggressive.

I was gonna say magic...
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Alchemy can make you super OP. I reccomend putting points into light combat and maxing out your persuasion magic skill. The game isn't hard so it isn't a big deal.
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Kerred posted...

First recommendation: play on the hardest or second to hardest difficulty. It will encourage you to avoid dominant strategies.

The Crossbow unfortunately has not been as useful on any difficulty except underwater if you are a madman like me and explore every question mark in skellige.

I recommend crossbow and alchemy if you want to be a slower/prepared player and if you don't intend to 100% everything.

Whatever you do its best to keep focused on your skills due to the limited skill slots (and makes resetting your skill tree a viable option if you spread your choices out too thin).

Okay, thanks

Squall28 posted...

I was gonna say magic...

I just don't like how yo switch between them with the opposite shoulder buttons. To cast it it's R1 and to Switch magic it's L2. It's just strange to me. (I don't know if those are the actual buttons, but they are opposite like that)
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Game is too easy with melee/quen build, even on Death March.
The 0 damage taken while rolling/dodging skill is OP.

The magic shield spell is OP, upgrade it first and then play the game on EZ mode
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Romulox28 posted...

The magic shield spell is OP, upgrade it first and then play the game on EZ mode

Ah, I forgot about the Shield one. Yeah, I don't mind the defense magics to help me out

What about Path of the X? The ones that focus on Light/Medium/Heavy Armors? I'm sure Medium is terrible just like in every other game, right?
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Okay, I have no issue trying out the magic system again. It's been a long time, maybe I'll get used to it this time

Thanks, everyone, for the suggestions.
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quen roll slash
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Quen's great until you get to the DLC and find out they apparently don't want it to be good and introduce various enemies/attacks that just arbitrarily bypass it.

Still worth using overall.

I went with a magic/alchemy mix and I was regularly killing enemies so much higher level than me I couldn't even see what their level is, on the second hardest difficulty, and later the hardest.

You should try to warm up to using magic because it's mostly not a primary combat style, it's more like some tools in your Batman Utility Belt to use in specific circumstances.

Igni as was said is good for crowd control, but it has a greater benefit: if you can set enemies on fire with it, the damage this does is the best way generally to kill enemies way beyond you that would take like 20 minutes to kill with melee. Damage over time is a colossus-slayer of sorts in this game. I forget if bleeding was too, but certainly poison as well. Most enemies aren't immune to all 3. They nerfed the alt cast to the point it's largely not useful unless your ignite chance for base Igni is too low against a high level enemy and you want to do SOME reliable damage but as you progress your ignite chance will be high enough that there's no point keeping it.

Quen of course is pretty apparent why it's useful, but also keep in mind the alt cast that can heal you which is mighty handy.

Yrden sucks for almost the entire game but is still nearly mandatory against wraiths, not that you need to really invest into it to make use of it for that though (but when you can get grandmaster griffin armor at the endgame, then it becomes a big deal).

Aard is very useful for dispatching trash enemies that are trying to swarm you with one hit kill stabs when they're knocked down, and the alt cast can be used as an even better crowd control as you can cast it faster, or as an assistance for melee by staggering scary enemies regularly while you smack them in between. Great friend of meleeing big enemies.

Axii or whatever it's called, there are a few enemies it is really useful on but largely I found it the least useful, for combat. Even turning an enemy on your side just seemed kinda underwhelming, though also fun, because the AI is just sorta dumb. Definitely wouldn't prioritise this for combat at least.

In Witcher 3, the game honestly feels like the level/strength of enemy placement was done with little to no thought of progression/coherency, so you will run into a lot of stuff that can easily wreck you and you can barely do anything about it. If you want to be able to handle those encounters, which is very possible, alchemy and magic is definitely the way to go, because they can get very strong. I remember there's a... Crap what are they called. Decoctions? There's one of those, that consumes some stamina on a strong attack or something, and makes your hit, do damage proportional to a % of their current max health. This is incredibly useful for dealing with an enemy who you can handle in melee, but they're just SO tanky, and immune to DoTs. Stuff like that, DoTs, and Quen to round things out and make sure you can take a hit, you can take on just about anything.

Alchemy indeed gets to be very strong, but magic is more just for specialised use purposes. However, in the last DLC things get introduced that makes magic quite a bit more. But that's nothing to concern over any...week soon.
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depends on the difficulty

on easy, just use swords

hard, alchemy is necessary
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Between all the potions and decoctions and stuff, Geralt basically is swords and sorcery Batman.
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fire810 posted...

hard, alchemy is necessary

It's not.
You basically don't need a single non-melee skill to complete the game on death march, easily.

While I don't have experience with a melee focus, to me it looked like you'd basically become pretty OP no matter what you focused on, so long as you built yourself properly and weren't wasteful.
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Tmk posted...

While I don't have experience with a melee focus, to me it looked like you'd basically become pretty OP no matter what you focused on, so long as you built yourself properly and weren't wasteful.

True, get a witcher set that boosts your build and you're good to go.

Play on death march, and figure it out from there.
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Tmk posted...

Yrden sucks for almost the entire game but is still nearly mandatory against wraiths, not that you need to really invest into it to make use of it for that though (but when you can get grandmaster griffin armor at the endgame, then it becomes a big deal).

Moon Dust bombs. Superior Moon Dust is a free win.
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For magic, the bare minimum I would suggest is the Axii skill that unlocks additional dialogue options, and the first skill to upgrade Quen.

The rest depends on the difficulty you're playing. If you're playing death march, I would focus on alchemy. Any of the other difficulties id suggest a sword/Melee build.

If you do go alchemy, both tolerance skills are a must. Personally I used a potion/bomb build for death march. The efficiency perk along with the perk that increases damage and cluster bombs can be pretty OP.

I've never really fucked with the orange/yellow tree in any of my play throughs. The perks are forgettable and none benefit from mutagens.
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TheBiggerWiggle posted...

I've never really fucked with the orange/yellow tree in any of my play throughs. The perks are forgettable and none benefit from mutagens.

Medium armor has a perk that increases stamina regen very dramatically, and that is pretty ridiculous. Nothing else scales particularly well, though.
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the_rowan posted...

GunmaN1905 posted...

Game is too easy with melee/quen build, even on Death March.
The 0 damage taken while rolling/dodging skill is OP.

AFAIK this skill is not needed at all. You can just mash dodge (not roll) and you'll dodge everything anyway.

Yea, but this thing is one of the rare broken things they haven't fixed.
You can basically roll into the enemy attack, take 0 damage because you're rolling and hit them when their attack ends.