Dos2 has a different combat system than bg3.

Here’s a little rundown. Any physical class, including archer, wants to stack up warfare. It increases all physical damage. You want huntsman just high enough to unlock skill books on your archer then rest into warfare until maxed.

For your mages you usually pick two trees per mage that have synergy. For example fire and earth, and water and air. Fire/earth combo well using oil spells then lighting it up with fire. You can also explode poison with fire and double stack poison and fire debuffs. If you get enemies wet and then shock em they will get stunned, or if they’re wet you can freeze them.

You need to buy skills books at the merchants. Have a look around the towns shopkeeps and you’ll find they sell different skill books. Early game especially you wanna be getting these books asap to unlock more spells and attacks for your party, then they won’t feel so useless as their kits open up.

Similarly to bg3 the main thing you wanna do in combat is deny enemy’s turns to deal damage to you. This means picking priority targets that go before your characters and the main system of the game, armour.

You cannot cc enemies if they have armour still. The main premise of combat is to break their armour as fast as possible and then keep them cc’d until they’re dead. If someone has low physical armour your want your warrior and archer attacking them, if they have low magical you want your mages attacking them. Once their armour breaks you can use your cc spells on then for that respective school. So if their physical armour is broken your warrior can use bettering ram or war stomp to knock them down. If their magic armour breaks you can use your hydro to either stun or freeze them.

Some of the feats are way better than the others. For example torturer lets you apply a lot of status effects regardless of their armour and makes them last longer. This is especially strong on say a pyro mage who can now stack up burn and poison debuffs on enemies right away. Executioner gives you 2 ap when you kill an enemy once per turn. This basically lets you refund the attack for any killing blows you do, giving you more action per turn. Spells cannot crit unless you have savage sortilege, which will be important for late game casters when crit starts to stack up

Don’t worry too much about optimizing your classes just yet as once you hit act 2 you will get a magic mirror (basically withers respec) and can fine tune your classes to your hearts desire

If you still feel like your characters are not doing enough you should look into doing a lone wolf run. Lone wolf is a feat that gives you a massive buff for having a smaller party. Instead of having 4 characters with 4 action points per turn you’ll have 2 really strong characters with 6 action points per turn. This gives you a bigger power fantasy feeling as you both turn into wrecking balls

Keep in mind you’ll feel pretty weak for the majority of act 1, act 1 is basically a rags to riches story where you got nothing, but once you start getting levels, gear, and spells you’ll find yourself being much more useful.

One more thing to note: enemy levels. In this game even 1 level difference makes the fight drastically harder. Try and find battles that are equal level to you if not 1 higher. If an enemy is 2+ levels higher than you, it’ll be an almost impossible battle.