“A warrior needs to know when to attack with the ferociousness of the tiger and when to take a hedgehog-like defensive stance. When in a jam, this skill will provisionally take away some of your offensive powers, but transfer them to your defensive energies.
„—skill description
Defensive Posture is a Warrior skill that can be used by the Dragon Knight in Divinity II: Dragon Knight Saga.
Description[]
Defensive Posture is a active Warrior skill that allows the Knight to greatly boost their armour at the cost of their damage. This skill can be cast with any weapon in hand.
Note: These values apply to your melee and ranged values like worn armor (with diminishing returns); they are not added directly to the resistance values. The higher your base armor, the lower the final damage resistance increase will be when these values are added.
e.g. With 18.16% damage resistance, +42 armor will yield 44.57% damage resistance; an 28.41% increase. At 57.56% damage resistance, +42 armor will yield 65.97% damage resistance an 8.41% increase.
Something to keep in mind with "diminishing returns" like these is that diminishing numbers doesn't necessarily mean diminishing effectiveness. Given 1,000 hp (for easy numbers), 60% damage reduction means the player will take 40% of incoming damage, surviving a blow up to ~2,500. Increasing that by 6% to the cap may not seem like much, but now the player will survive up to 2,940 damage... a 17% increase in damage necessary for a kill. Likewise, a damage reduction increase from 71% to 75% (if the cap went that high) would be "diminishing returns" of only a 4% increase, but actually allows the player to survive 16% more damage taken. Defensive Posture will always be useful and give roughly the same survivability bonus until it pushes your damage reduction past the cap of 66% (where more becomes literally useless).
Parameters[]
| Skill Level | Melee and Ranged Armor Bonus | Melee and Ranged Damage (%) ** | Duration (seconds) | Mana Cost | Cooldown (seconds) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | - 20 | 30 | 27 | 30 |
| 2 | 6 | - 15 | 60 | 39 | 30 |
| 3 | 9 | - 10 | 90 | 51 | 30 |
| 4 | 12 | - 5 | 120 | 63 | 30 |
| 5 | 15 | 0 | 240 | 75 | 30 |
| 6 | 18 | + 2 | 240 | 87 | 30 |
| 7 | 21 | + 4 | 240 | 99 | 30 |
| 8 | 24 | + 6 | 240 | 111 | 30 |
| 9 | 27 | + 8 | 240 | 123 | 30 |
| 10 | 30 | + 10 | 240 | 135 | 30 |
| 11 | 33 | + 12 | 240 | 147 | 30 |
| 12 | 36 | + 14 | 240 | 159 | 30 |
| 13 | 39 | + 16 | 240 | 171 | 30 |
| 14 | 42 * | + 18 | 240 | 183 | 30 |
| 15 | 45 | + 20 | 240 | 195 | 30 |
Notes[]
- (*) = If you have 58% melee and ranged damage resistance before using this skill the 42 armor from this skill will put you at the cap of 66% damage reduction for both types of damage resistance!
- (**) = This skill is poorly described by the game. The Melee and Ranged Damage "penalty" is actually a bonus. The negative “bonus” values reduce your damage but after level 5 this skill boosts your ranged and melee damage! Also, that's not a typo, the last level goes from +18% damage to +0% damage; DON'T purchase the last point! This was confirmed in a live test, each level of this skill has been tested with ranged and melee weapons which had physical and magical damage.
- Additional Note: The damage bonus only applies to physical damage. A bow with 100 physical and 200 magical damage for example will only apply the bonus (or hindrance) to the physical 100 physical damage; the magic (blue numbers) will not be effected.