Part 4: Farglow Arena - Combat Demonstration (Level 1 Skills)
Divinity 2 – Combat Demonstration, General Class Types, Level 1 Skills
Unarmed demo
Warrior Demo
Ranger Demo
Mage Demo
Priest Demo – Summon Undead
Priest Demo – Summon Ghost
For reasons of space and narrative flow, I moved the training arena part to its own update.
Farglow Arena
The Farglow arena is a natural arena split in two by a rocky formation. Sonja summons four goblins for us to fight – one ranged caster near the entrance, and three others in the second area (one caster, two melee). When killed they give 1 XP each, and sometimes they drop a bit of gold.
(If they’re summons, why does the gold persist? Is Sonja abducting them from some goblin village somewhere? That’s a funny image, actually.)
You can repeat the arena as much as you like. But don’t waste your time repeatedly grinding the enemies for the grand total of 4 XP. It will be much faster to get XP from moving on to the main part of the game. And yes, dying in the arena gives you a game over.
Warrior Combat
There are five schools of melee combat, simplified from the previous games. The styles are Unarmed, Single-Handed, Single-Handed with Shield, Two-Handed, and Dual Wielding. All of them are feasible to use, so choosing between them is a matter of personal preference.
Strength is the traditional attribute point associated with this, granting increased damage with normal melee weapons, resistance to melee attacks and physical status effects, and increased health regeneration.
However, weapons which do Magic-Type damage are common, and that is boosted by Intelligence, so it’s possible to make an Intelligence-based warrior instead of a Strength-based one. The advantage is that it gives you a higher resistance to magical attacks (which are common), and a higher regeneration rate for mana (useful mostly for a fighter-mage hybrid). The disadvantage is that your melee resistance and health regeneration are mostly based on Strength.
In previous games, fighting was useful, but dull to watch. There were very few unique moves for warriors, it was mostly just seeing the same animation over and over. This game provides some additional fighting moves, and there are multiple animations, making fighting fun to watch.
Power Builds for warriors typically pick one of the 5 weapon specializations, and maximize it, as well as Battle Rage, Bleed and Life Leech. If they make sure to increase their mana, they can also use Thousand Strikes as well.
VIDEO: Unarmed fighting (and secret Skill Book)
First, I’ll lose “Gawain’s ‘My First Sword’” to show off the Unarmed fighting style. Fortunately considering the giant amount of combat in the game, Larian made a variety of animations for the various moves.
Unarmed
– “Swords, axes, maces: you regard them all as silly extensions for the truest of melee weapons: your fists. Rather than presenting them with the taste of steel, you like to treat your opponents to your favourite home-made delicacy: a knuckle sandwich.”Damage Bonus: +5% -> 146%
Unarmed is not the most powerful weapon specialization, but I tried it out and it actually is effective even in the final dungeon of the game. I believe that is because the key factor for damage is your Strength value, not your weapon. Also, as your level increases, your base damage does as well, even with identical Strength scores. At the highest level, Unarmed Expertise offers a 146% increase to your unarmed damage.
In Divinity 2, once you get close to an enemy, they’re automatically targeted, and a bar appears at the top of the screen showing the name and level of the enemy, and a bar below showing their health. Almost all attack skills can only be used if there is an enemy in the bar, and using a skill with an enemy in the bar usually guarantees they’ll be hit by it.
Enemies are visible from farther away than you can target them, but you can’t actually injure them. Shooting them with a bow might attract their attention, but they can’t be hurt until they’re within range.
All enemies within the range of an AoE or weapon swing will take damage even if they aren’t the one which is targeted.
Combat in Divinity 2 is simple. It’s all in real-time. Dodging enemy attacks is based on the player’s ability to run, jump, or roll away (jump + left/right) from the enemy attacks. It’s not hard to simply dodge, the real trick is to dodge while actually inflicting damage to the enemy (You can’t really do that with a melee character). That bolt I dodged looks magical, but it count as a ranged attack, not a magical one. There is also the Evade skill, which is a passive skill that gives a chance that you will phase out of existence so an attack will miss.
You can jump backwards (not well at first, but it gets better later), but you can’t run backwards, only walk, so if you want to run away, you should turn around.
That flash and the exclamation mark beside the white 2 indicates that I landed a critical hit. Critical hits are rolled after your damage, and they increase it by 50%, plus the bonus from Heightened Reflexes (explained below). The red 2 is the damage I just took.
If people want, I can turn off those numbers, I don’t care either way.
I just used the skill Whirlwind, which hits all enemies around you and has a chance to knock them down.
Whirlwind
– “With the weapon you are wielding firmly clasped in your hands, you unleash a hurricane of steel by making a full circle jump that tears through any number of enemies around you. When your feet hit the ground again, only their bloody remnants bear witness to the destruction, while you, the very eye of the storm, remain untouched.”Mana Cost: 11 -> 63
Cooldown: 5 seconds -> 1 second
Bonus Damage (fixed): 1.5 -> 588.5
Knockdown Chance: 10% -> 52%
A lot of people always take this skill no matter what so they can open a lot of smashable containers all at once. As an AoE centered on the player, this skill is one of the exceptions to the “must have an enemy targeted” skills. I don’t use Whirlwind for breaking containers because there may not be things in there that I want to take right away. I’m not sure if there's a time limit for how long loot lasts once its out of the container, but it seems like there isn't.
There’s one thing you should not miss while in the training arena. Jump on top of these rocks (it may take several tries), and you’ll find…
… the first Skill Book of the game. There are a surprising number of them scattered throughout the game. These grant you one free skill point to use on whatever you want. I’ll use this point to show off all the other skills available at Level 1.
If you spend the skill point on Lockpick, you can open Alberic’s chest, but it has only generic loot, and I prefer to spend that point on a more useful skill.
VIDEO: Warrior Combat
I showed off the Whirlwind skill already, but here’s the Rush Attack skill.
Rush Attack
– “During a rush attack you lash out at a single opponent, which causes severe wounds and most likely stuns him. The attack works well as an initial assault on ranged enemies especially.”Mana Cost: 4 -> 25
Cooldown: 5 seconds
Damage Multiplier: 1x -> 4x
Knockdown Chance: 30% -> 100%
This is a must-have skill if you’re going to engage enemies in melee combat. You instantly close on your target, if you’re close enough to see their health bar. However, you only really need one point. This skill has the benefit of ignoring terrain. You can use it to reach enemies on ledges above you.
Another combat move available is the Jump Attack. This is always available, just jump and hit the attack key in mid-air. This works with Unarmed as well. At level 3 you can start putting skill points into Jump Attack to increase the power.
Your weapons travel through an arc, hitting anything in the way. I was targeting the goblin on the left (note the gold arrow over its head), but the arc of the swing also hit the one on the right, so they were both damaged. I believe this wasn’t originally the case with the German version release of ED, but it was later patched in.
Weapons Specializations
Single Handed
– “Following in the footsteps of an old battle tradition that believes in the unification of a warrior and his weapon, you opt to specialize in the wielding of a single one-handed weapon. Brandishing a light and highly maneuverable piece of deadly craftsmanship, you learn to ply it to a state of perfection that goes beyond other combinations of armament.”Damage Bonus: +2% -> 36%
This skills advantage is supposed to be that it is the fastest weapon skill, but since even the two-handers swing pretty quickly, it’s questionable. At its highest level, it offers a 36% damage bonus.
Single Handed With Shield
– “Those who engage in battle with sword and shield are sometimes scoffed by others on the premise that they are archaic and unimaginative. But they never take such criticisms to heart because they know very well that their strategy, classical and rather standard though it may be, is still one of the best set-ups a warrior may use: it perfectly combines offence and defence and, like no other, offers excellent chances to emerge from each battle alive and well.”Damage Bonus: +0% -> 84%
Shield Bonus: +5% -> 38%
There is no manual blocking in the game, a shield merely offers a boost in your armor. Still, it might be worth choosing this skill so you can benefit from enchantments on the shield and still get expertise damage.
This specialization grants some pretty excellent damage boosts, and an okay defence boost. In this game, however, defence isn’t very helpful. At its highest level it offers an 84% damage bonus and a 38% bonus, preferably to the shield's defence, although I've never tried.
Two Handed
– “No matter what some may say, combat isn’t pretty or subtle. You intend to prove that by swinging about swords long as a troll’s arm and hammers so ferocious they can reduce said creature’s head to a bloody pulp with one well-placed stroke. The advantages in battle are obvious, and more than that: you can never get lost in the woods, for you’ll always leave a track of limbs that works even better than the traditional breadcrumbs.”Damage Bonus: +1% -> 37%
The only two-handed weapons in the game are swords. Two-Handed swords offer a longer range, which means that in a crowd, a normal swing can hit more enemies than a smaller weapon. But this skill is considered to be underpowered. In theory, the higher maximum damage is supposed to compensate for the smaller damage increase this skill provides, but realistically, these weapons maximum damage isn’t all that impressive compared to single-handed ones. In the expansion, I bought what I thought was a really great two-handed weapon, but it was actually a one-hander. At its highest level it offers a 37% damage bonus.
Dual Wielding
– “Not many make such a fierce impression on the battlefield as those who swing a blade in each hand, so engulfing their immediate vicinity in a red wave of extinction. But even though these fighters may look like frenzied, blood-crazed savages, be not mistaken, for they are quite the opposite: cool-headed and disciplined. With good reason: wielding two weapons in combat demands intense training, and forgoing it has often led to unintended, self-inflicted facial reconstruction.”Damage Bonus - Main Hand: +1% -> +25%
Damage Bonus - Off Hand: -70% -> +25%
This is considered to be the most overpowered skill because two weapons mean that you can have double the enchantments. At first rank, there’s a -70% penalty to damage from the weapon in the off hand and only a 1% bonus to damage in the main hand, but that eventually disappears and at its highest level it offers a 50% bonus to damage in the off-hand and a 25% bonus to damage in the main hand.
Also, a bug is that when you hit an enemy, it uses the damage enchantments of both weapons TWICE, so if you have a +20 Melee Damage enchantment on one weapon, and +20 magic damage on the other weapon, when you hit an enemy, you do +40 melee damage and +40 magic damage. I suspect that this is because the initial German release didn’t take into account arc swings, so both damages were added together, and they forgot to take that out after arc swings were patched in.
VIDEO: Ranger Combat
Rangers use bows to engage the enemy. While they do low damage at first, they can use combat evasion to avoid damage from enemy attacks while still delivering their own blows. Like in Divine Divinity, rangers have infinite ammo.
Dexterity is the traditional attribute point associated with this. It grants increased resistance to ranged attacks, and increased damage from critical hits, which are quite important for rangers.
However, weapons which do Magic-Type damage are common, and that is boosted by Intelligence, so it’s possible to make an Intelligence-based ranger instead of a Dexterity-based one. The advantage is that it gives you a higher resistance to magical attacks (which are common), and a higher regeneration rate for mana, both of which are quite useful for a ranger. The disadvantage is that your ranged resistance and critical damage are reduced.
I don’t remember how useful bows were in Divine Divinity, but they were very useful in Beyond Divinity, the damage they did was on par or better than melee weapons. Of course, enemies tended to be weak in that game. In Divinity 2, Rangers have lost some of their early power, but they get it back eventually.
Power builds for rangers focus on Ranger Strength, Splitting Arrow, Explosive Arrow, and Way of the Ranger, as well as the warrior skill Death Blow.
Poison Arrow
– “One of the more crafty, and at the same time nasty, abilities of the ranger is the coating of arrow tips in deadly poisons. Not only will the arrows wound their targets, they will keep inflicting pain as the venomous substance that entered their bodies courses ruinously through their veins.”Mana Cost: 4 -> 25
Cooldown: 5 seconds
Duration: 10 -> 3 seconds
Damage/second: 1 -> 619.5
Total Damage: 10 -> 1858.5
This hits enemies with poison which works over time. It’s not really powerful, but it’s what the Ranger gets to start off with. Undead don’t seem to take damage from poison, and they’re fairly common enemies early on as well as late-game.
Ranger Surprise
– “Any unfortunate creature you are hunting that is struck by a Ranger Surprise arrow does not only receive the full damage of the impact, but also has its resistances lowered, making it vulnerable for all kinds of other attacks. So what is the actual surprise? Why, death of course!”Mana Cost: 4 -> 25
Cooldown: 3 seconds
Duration: 20 seconds(?)
Enemy Melee Armour (fixed): -10 -> -80
Enemy Ranged Armour (fixed): -20 -> -90
Enemy Magic Armour (fixed): -5 -> -75
The other skill Rangers get to start off is this arrow-delivered debuff. Despite the description it does no damage at all. I’m not sure how long it lasts on the target, or if you can use it on multiple enemies. One use I’ve heard about is to for a melee character to hit a target with this, than switch to their melee weapon to take advantage of the lower defense. But in this game, defense doesn’t seem to matter much for either you OR your enemy, so I wouldn’t use this skill anyway.
VIDEO: Mage Combat
Wizards/Mages specialize in spells to destroy large numbers of enemies quickly with minimal danger. Combat evasion is also very helpful to them. Intelligence is their primary attribute; there is little benefit for them to pump points into Strength or Dexterity.
However, there are options that will let a mage engage in melee combat. There are a lot of magic-damage weapons which use Intelligence to increase the damage. There is also the Mana Leech skill (which only works in melee), and the Firewall skill offer options for a mage which can engage in melee combat. A melee-based mage might want to also choose a weapon specialization, because of the long cooldowns on their attack spells.
In Divine Divinity, the primary limitation on spellcasting was the speed at which you could click the mouse to cast the spell again. This somewhat unbalanced magic and made it super-powerful. In Beyond Divinity, the primary limitation on spellcasting was the fact that spells cost a completely insane amount of mana. This somewhat unbalanced magic and made it super-weak. In Divinity 2, the primary limitation on spellcasting is the existence of cooldown timers. Every single active skill has a cooldown timer before it can be used again. This is probably the most balanced magic has been in the series.
Power Builds for mages focus on Magic Missile, and one or two other offensive skills, as well as Way of the Battlemage, and Destruction.
Magic Missile
– “A magic missile is in essence a blast of raw magical energy that strikes the enemy in a few consecutive waves. Unless there are multiple enemies, for then the missile automatically targets several opponents. Like the fireball, the spell is as simple as it is lethal.”Mana Cost: 6 -> 45
Cooldown: 1 -> 1.5 seconds
Missiles: 1 -> 7
Damage/Missile: 6 -> 142
Total Damage: 6 -> 994
Magic Missile is the mage’s “spam” spell. It has a one-second cooldown, a low mana cost, and it has a limited seeking capability. The other mage spells have cooldowns of at least 15 seconds, so mages tend to use this constantly in combat.
This is a common spell for enemies to have later on, so you’ll need to time your movements to dodge from the seeking capability. This spell relies on multiple hits to let the damage build up, so it is not ideal for a melee-based wizard, because the enemies will also be getting hits of their own in.
Fireball
– “Like a minature Sun that burns the flesh from your enemies bodies, you can hurl a single ball of fire towards an unfortunate foe from the tips of your fingers. Whereas many a wizard will acknowledge this as a basic spell, none will make the mistake of underestimating its deadly force”Mana Cost: 14 -> 107
Cooldown: 15 seconds
Damage: 8 -> 1858
Radius: 5 -> 12
Burn Chance: 1% -> 20%
This spell can be powerful once you crank it up to high levels. Unfortunately, the radius is low at first, and the cooldown is 15 seconds and doesn’t decrease. Instead of being a primary spell, you fire this off every 15 seconds to complement your magic missile barrage. It isn't as fast as a ranger’s Explosive Arrow, but with enough points, this skill becomes almost an instant win button, with the huge radius and high damage it has.
Priest Skills – Level 1
The priest class wasn’t really intended to be played as a primary class. There is no priest skill trainer in Farglow. DKS did added the priest option for creating a new expansion character. The priest skills are all either summons, support, or debuff skills. They have no attack skills except the summons. The preset priest class includes Magic Missile as an offensive skill.
There are two priest skills available at level 1. There is no priest trainer in Farglow, so I had to get the skill book to try them out. They are both summoning spells. Unfortunately, the game only lets you have one summon out at a time, which makes the possibility of a summoner character extremely difficult. You could use one when the other dies, but that would eat up a lot of early skill points for something only up half the time. Summons have a long cooldown timer, which starts after they die, expire or are dismissed, so you can’t have the same one up all the time.
VIDEO: Priest Skill – Summon Undead
Summon Undead
– “The dead. What are they good for besides pushing up daisies? Those with a taste for the darker side of magic will answer that question with this particular spell. For the dead, when brought back to life, will do anything for their master, including battle. Especially battle, in fact.”Mana Cost: 22 -> 178
Cooldown: 30 seconds
Duration: 180 -> 460 seconds
Summon Level: 1 -> 40
This is the offensive summon. The undead shoots fireballs at enemies and also engages them in melee combat. I suppose it would work well enough, but early on the other summon would likely be more useful for survival. I tried this out late-game, putting as many points into it as I could, and I was unimpressed with the damage it did to the weak enemies in the bonus dungeon.
If you were wondering, the shots from the goblin and undead just pass right through each other and hit the intended target.
VIDEO: Priest Skill – Summon Ghost
For this video I used the adjustable slider to crank the difficulty up to Nightmare, so that I would get hurt. You can adjust the slider at any time during the game, although it probably won’t have an effect on the enemies you’ve already engaged in combat.
Summon Ghost
– “Ghosts are restless beings. Terrible in appearance they haunt us, instil us with numbing fear. So why, some Mage must have thought, should we not call them to our aid in combat? And a wise thought it was, because ever since then many a wizard has treated his foes to one final nightmare from which they never woke.”Mana Cost: 22 -> 178
Cooldown: 90 seconds
Duration: 60 -> 200 seconds
Summon Level: 1 -> 40
This is the defensive summon. It casts a spell which can heal you, and it is the only healing spell you can have until level 15 (Healing). I believe that higher levels increase the healing powers of the ghost. I tried it out with a late-game character and it healed at least 600 HP with a single cast. The mana cost is also quite low compared to Healing. For the sake of completeness, I should mention that it can shoot energy balls at enemies, but it does maybe one-third of the already near-useless damage that the Summon Undead does. Do not get this for dealing damage, it will not work.
The downsides are obvious, though. You’re relying on the ghost’s AI to decide when to heal you, the ghost can be targeted and killed, and there’s a 90 second cooldown before you can re-summon the ghost.
Overall, it’s probably not a bad choice, but there are better ones.
Dragon Slayer skills
Most of the Dragon Slayer skills have already been mentioned, but there are three left, so I may as well describe those here.
Encumbrance
– “Adventurers often have the tendency to accumulate loot with greater diligence than a squirrel that is storing nuts for winter. It is therefore not a bad idea to train your back-pack stuffing capabilities, because a good packer can carry around a lot more booty!”Items in Backpack: 100 -> 180
It is a bad idea to put points into this skill, because it only lets you carry more items. Items in your inventory can’t be put into other containers, so you have to destroy or sell them if you need more room. Careful consideration of what you want to pick up will be more helpful than wasting a skill point on this. The biggest users of inventory space are crafting/alchemy components and potions.
One permanent point is invested in this skill, and you start with a capacity of 100 items, and maxed out at fifth rank you can carry 180. At the start, you’ll want to spend skill points on helpful things, and halfway through the game, this skill becomes entirely worthless. There is no level requirement for investing points into this.
Lockpick
– “When you encounter a bolted door, a chest secured tightly by a big padlock, you itch to find out what is behind that door and in that chest. You know you do. By adding this skill to your repertoire, your curiosity will soon be satisfied and perhaps your coin purse as well.”One of the more useful non-combat skills, this lets you open locked doors and chests. Enemies in the game rarely drop items, so most of your treasure wil come from containers, making this very useful. You should max this out, but you can take your time about it. I waited until about level 17 to get this to Rank 5. There is no ownership in the game, so feel free to rob everyone’s houses in front of their faces. They won’t notice or care. There is no level requirement for investing points into this.
Wisdom
– “Having studied warfare not only as a series of forceful skills, moves and abilities, but also as an art, the insight you gain after every battle is greater than that of others. You therefore advance more quickly upon the ladder of veterancy and success.”Bonus XP: 2% -> 30%
This skill is actually first available once you reach level 3, but I’m putting it in with the rest of the Dragon Slayer skills for now. It increases the amount of experience you get from anything which grants experience, and it explicitly tells you how much Wisdom contributed.
It’s not really worthwhile to put points into this; you might get two extra levels if you put in 15 skill points – maybe. I do hold on to any +Wisdom items and put them on before turning in quests.
Unarmed demo
Warrior Demo
Ranger Demo
Mage Demo
Priest Demo – Summon Undead
Priest Demo – Summon Ghost
This is also as good place as any to explain how attributes work in this game, because they define what our character is better at than skills.
Divinity 2 Attributes
Divinity 2 has five primary attributes (called stats in-game): Vitality, Spirit, Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence. Those are the ones you can put stat points into at level-up, and all of them have a hard cap of 100.
It also has six secondary attributes: Melee Resistance, Ranged Resistance, Magic Resistance, Conditioned Body, Heightened Reflexes, and Indomitable Will. Those ones are affected indirectly by the primary attributes, and all of them have a hard cap of 75%
Primary Attributes
When you level up, your health and mana each go up by 7, and you get 4 points to distribute among these. These points cannot be removed or reallocated, so it’s recommended that you decide what your character wants to focus on (Melee/Ranged/Magic) and put most of your points towards that. While at a certain point, you can relocate your skill points any way you want, you can’t change how your attributes are set up, so switching from a ranger with high Dexterity and low Strength to an fighter will make a less-than-effective fighter..
In a change from the older games in the series, all primary attributes have a hard cap of 100 points, including bonuses from items. Any additional points are wasted, and since you cannot reallocate stat points, it’s a good idea to be conservative if you’re planning to use the best set items in the game once Flames of Vengeance arrives.
Vitality is a measure of how much health you have. Each point you put in increases your health by 7, and when you level up your health automatically goes up by 7. Fall below zero and you die. Points into this will help you survive, but aren’t required to survive. Health regenerates over time at a rate based on your strength, the passive Regenerate skill, and direct bonuses from items. In a change from previous games, there is no longer Stamina to worry about. It has a cap of 100. It’s up to the individual whether they want to invest into vitality or not. I typically don’t.
Spirit is a measure of how much mana you have. Each point you put in increases your mana by 7, and when you level up your mana automatically goes up by 7. Mana is used by your skills. Mana regenerates over time at a rate based on your Intelligence, and direct bonuses from items. It has a cap of 100.
You might think that this is an important stat to invest in for wizards, but it’s actually more useful for rangers. This is because the mana regeneration bonus from intelligence helps a lot to keep mages from running out of mana. Points in Spirit tend to be more useful for heavy-magic builds which have Dexterity or Strength as the primary attribute. Rangers need it because their most useful skills (“Splitting Arrow” and “Explosive Arrow”) have very short cooldowns. Warriors who want to use the mana-heavy “Thousand Strikes” skill will want some points into this as well.
Strength determines the damage you do in melee attacks, it affects the resistance to melee attacks, it affects your health regen rate, and it provides a 1:1 bonus to Conditioned Body.
Dexterity determines the damage you do with ranged attacks, it affects the resistance to ranged attacks, and it provides a 1:1 bonus to Heightened Reflexes. Each point of Dexterity increases your ranged damage by 0.5%. In a change from previous games, all dodging and evasion is manually done by the player (or not), so this no longer affects your ability to dodge attacks. It has a cap of 100.
Intelligence determines the damage you do with spells and magic-damage melee attacks, it affects the resistance to magic, it affects your mana regen rate, and it provides a 1:1 bonus to Indomitable Will. Each point of Intelligence increases your magic damage by 0.5%. As stated above, this does not increase the amount of mana you have, Spirit does that. It has a cap of 100.
In Ego Draconis, some equipment had attribute requirements, so getting to 15 in all primaries was helpful. That’s been completely removed in DKS. But getting them all to 10 or 15 still isn’t a bad idea because they contribute to your damage resistance.
Secondary Attributes
Weapon Damage - is the amount of damage you do with your currently equipped weapon (or lack thereof, in the case of Unarmed). Unintuitively, it actually goes up automatically as you level up, even without putting points into your damage-increasing attributes. Magic Damage is tracked separately and is listed in blue beside the normal damage (white).
- Level 1 base Unarmed damage: 1-1
- Level 2 base Unarmed damage: 2-2
- Level 3 base Unarmed damage: 3-3
- Level 4 base Unarmed damage: 4-5
- Level 5 base Unarmed damage: 5-6
Melee Resistance / Ranged Resistance / Magic Resistance are complicated formulas which take the individual ratings from your armour, whatever bonuses from skills and potions are active, and your attribute scores. The numbers beside these are your damage reduction. More is of course better, but don’t worry too much about this, because armour isn’t really going to do much good anyway.
The formula is something like this: Each point of armour from actual armour is worth one point, so a helmet with +5 to Melee Armour gives you a full 5 armour points. Each point from the associated stat is worth 0.4 armour points, so putting 5 points into Strength will give you 2 armour points.
Resistances max out at 66%, which means you're only taking 33% of the damage you would take if your armour rating was 0%.
Conditioned Body reduces the duration of physical status effects: Bleed, Burn, Poison and Polymorph. It is based on your Strength score and any bonuses. It’s a simple calculation: Add your strength and any bonuses from items. I’m not sure if any enemy can even inflict the Bleed status on you. This only affects the duration. The damage per second and the chance of being afflicted by a status are not affected. It has a cap of 75%.
Heightened Reflexes increases the damage when you score a critical hit. That’s it. It does not increase your chance of performing a critical hit. Your chance of performing a critical hit is based on your weapon, and direct modifiers from items. It is based on your Dexterity and any bonuses from items. The formula for critical hit damage is (150 + (150 * HR%))% - so that with a 10% HR stat, it would look like (150 + (150 * 0.1)) = (150 + 15) = 165% damage. Maxed out, critical hits should do 262.5% damage. It has a cap of 75%.
Indomitable Will determines your resistance to magical status effects: Curse, Fear, Polymorph, Ranger Surprise and Stun. It is based on your Intelligence and any bonuses from items. It only affects your chance to be affected. It does not reduce the duration or the effect it has if you fail the to resist. It has a cap of 75%.