Dragon Age Tactics

[Tigranes]

My dwarf rogue is now level 13 and have done a bit over half of the game. Off the top of my head the base attributes (without item bonuses) are around 30 STR, 35 DEX, 23 CUN, and the rest at original levels. I've taken 3 levels of Conversation, 2 Stealing, 1 Poison and 4 Combat Training. I've also taken 2 assassin skills, the entire Evasion tree, the entire Lockpick tree, Deadly Fighting & Combat Movement, Stealth I, Dual-Wield (DW) swing, Flurry, Momentum, and the two passive DW bonus talents.

 

So obviously I'm beefing up STR/DEX to take advantage of the hotfixed daggers (0.5x str/0.5x dex), and they obviously help me wear hunky stuff and such. He's just designed to turn up momentum, use a couple of skills and run wildly around enemies hitting flanks with poisons on blades. In terms of attack efficiency I'd say he's similar to Shale and Alistair, a little better or worse depending on the type of enemies. He's less durable, of course.

 

I haven't used traps enough in any playthrough to say, I think they will be useful if you go all for it, but I'm a poisons man at the moment. Deathroot Extract is easy to make in bulks and the stun ability sometimes even gets bosses. I'd say its all very viable - you could potentially do a two-weapon build with a lot mroe emphasis on stealth (Stealth IV & 26 cunning beats 95% of enemies in game afaik) and thus use traps pretty well.

 

I've had nearly no party-wipes and the party is pretty effective - Shale/Alistair tanking, Morrigan hexing everyone to death and PC doing hsi circling. Misdirection Hex renders revenants and ogres basically helpless, Force Field/Crushing Prison is fairly useful and I havent had to take a single primal magic yet. I'm probably giong to take the thunder line now, Ice is clearly the best but requires a lot of micro when I want to mainly control the PC.

 

I've yet to use the tanks properly though, they just sort of march up and hack/slash. Now I'm in Denerim with lots of those

city encounters with the insane number of archers

I might try the force-field-tank-bait thing.

[Matthew Rorie]

I restarted my game after playing for about five hours with poison and I went to traps. Now I wish I had stuck with poison. Traps can be handy but they require a bit of foresight to use. But that's the same thing with poison; I always forgot to use them. I guess on Normal it doesn't really matter too much; with a bit of tactics there are rarely any encounters that require special skills.

[Asol]

I played a rogue game on a ps3 version at 'hard' diff

I avoided the dagger dex issue by building in the other direction after level 9-10 dex for the most expensive talent you plan to take then jack strength for swords and axes. Momentum and coup de grace are critical to sustained damage and line you up to have aoe attacks as well. I didn't bother with cunning and lethality. I went full ranger line and 1 assassin for mark and the crit. The pets can tank cc and overwhelm. This and stealth allowed an easy duel at landsmeet with no potions or anything. I used poisons for grenades and also the frost and stun coatings for weapons which complements the runes and coup de grace.

 

Character ended up seeming rather strong. The device points also payed out in the end sequence.

Edited November 21, 2009 by Asol

[Monte Carlo]

Has anybody played with a DW warrior build, how did it work out?

[Oner]

Has anybody played with a DW warrior build, how did it work out?

Really well, I couldn't spam my skills, but didn't need to anyway. If she didn't have to be the tank I would've raised her dexterity (40+~6 item bonus at the end) more. As mentioned earlier, I gave her 2 stunning runes to use with Topsider's Honor and Keening Blade(? the one Gaxkang drops) and damage runes, she could solo ogres easily.

Her specs were champion and berserker (which I didn't use).

While we're at it, isn't Berserk supposed to be a sustained ability? It looked like an activated self-buff to me.

 

Can't compare her to WMD magi since I didn't use them, but she was pretty effective.

[Purkake]

ITT: we learn to use web browsers.

 

Protip: ctrl+shift+t opens the last closed tab in Firefox and the middle mouse button open a link in a new tab

Edited November 21, 2009 by Purkake

[HoonDing]

I think in my next game I'm going to kill all mages in the Tower.

 

Anyone used them in the endgame? Worst. AI. Ever.

[Spider]

So obviously I'm beefing up STR/DEX to take advantage of the hotfixed daggers (0.5x str/0.5x dex), and they obviously help me wear hunky stuff and such. He's just designed to turn up momentum, use a couple of skills and run wildly around enemies hitting flanks with poisons on blades. In terms of attack efficiency I'd say he's similar to Shale and Alistair, a little better or worse depending on the type of enemies. He's less durable, of course.

 

If you're going with the daggers, wouldn't it make sense to skip strength and put everything in cunning and dex? Isn't that basically what Lethality is for in the first place?

 

Anyway, here is my character:

http://social.bioware.com/playerprofile.ph...e=dragonage1_pc

 

I'm going with DW mastery, so I can use big weapons in both hands. I've just gotten it too (I guess the character didn't upload last time I played, so it's one more level). I'm building the character to be combat efficient while not losing out on lockpicking, which means I've totally skipped stealth as of now, but might get some points in there eventually. I want to have the assassin tree, which'll be next, and possibly the diabloist tree as well. When my cunning gets high enough, I'll probably pick up Lethality as well. And I haven't really felt lika I need stealth, so it'll probably never be a factor.

 

From a min/max point of view, I accidentally put one point too many in dex. I'm going to add duelist as my second specialization, which would add one more dexpoint. Since I have no use for more than 36 that bums me out a little (I just had no idea how the points you got in the Fade would be distributed). But it's no big deal really.

 

This character packs a mean punch. Would be even meaner if I used poisons a bit more frequently. Momentum is possibly the best talent in the game (not counting spells), and that entire tree is just win.

 

I'm not a fan of traps, so that just isn't a factor. Shale does the tanking, Morrigan the crowd control (not so much damage, more keeping enemies from hurting me. Well, she does do a fair bit of damage as well) and the fourth slot is currently Wynne's, but is switched around a little depending on what I'm currently doing.

 

The character is a bit frail, but can usually be kept out of harms way with taunt and Cone of Cold. And it needs to stay mobile.

[jaguars4ever]

Anyone here have a good tactic/gambit setup for Shale?

 

What do you want him to do? He's the character I control the most, as my tank, so I don't have many tactics set up for him. Just to attack the lowest health enemy (should probably change this to closest), with all the other party members targeting his target. Simple!

Awesome. I was kinda hoping I could get him to do all those epic area attacks that he has without actually controlling him, but they seem too spread out over different modes, and he doesn't really have too many tactic slots. Guess manual control it'll have to be.

[~Di]

CTRL+F

 

 

Holy cow, thats handy. Why am I just now learning this?

 

Huh? What does that do? Never mind... I just checked it out. Not sure how I would use it, though.

Edited November 22, 2009 by ~Di

[Purkake]

 

Oh you people, I just don't know.

Edited November 22, 2009 by Purkake

[Tigranes]

If you're going with the daggers, wouldn't it make sense to skip strength and put everything in cunning and dex? Isn't that basically what Lethality is for in the first place?

 

You'd have to put some on STR anyway for item requirements. otherwise, yes, you could - I'm not really sure why I didn't. I wonder how it woudl compare. DId you go down that path?

[Spider]

No, I'm wielding two swords, so I need a fair bit of strength (31 for the best swords) and dex is useless other than as a prerequsite for talents. So 31 Str (including item bonuses here) and 36 Dex is where it's at for me. The rest in cunning.

 

Possibly some willpower, because stamina runs out fast. We'll see. Maybe mass rejuvenation will help once I remember to cast it.

 

What items does the dagger build use that requires strength?

[Monte Carlo]

Am now playing a rogue and getting to grips with the build - to make it enjoyable you have to be sooooo discriminating with skill choices. This isn't the case with the warrior (choose a weapon style, armour up, go kill things) or mage (choose spells, glug lyrium potions, go kill things).

 

I'm going dual wielding with poison for now. I'm going to start throwing in stealth and I like coercion to make things go my way. I have also noticed new (non-persuade) dialogue trees which must be my high Cunning score coming into play, which is nice to see. Am pumping Strength (will stop when I can wield best melee weapons), Dex (will stop at 36) and Cunning (which I am going to pump, along with Willpower - my skills burn stamina very quickly).

 

Thoughts:

 

* Dual sweep is a great early game tactic for two weapons, I didn't realise it was a crowd control skill

 

* Terrain... I've found that in the overland maps there are more possibilities for choke-points / height advantage than in dungeons. Shields to the fore to suck it up and I lurk about finishing bad guys off

 

* Is there, for the love of god, anything worth actually stealing in a locked chest in the whole of Ferelden?

 

* Solo-ing this game with a rogue on normal would be a massive challenge, don't think I could be bothered

 

* Bombs - I've said it before but bombs are under-used and are really cool early game life savers - backstab, bomb, dual weapon sweep = crowd control win on minor darkspawn, wolves, spiders etc.

 

Anyhow, I now don't need Imoen Chick or Zorro Elf so I can hire two good warriors and a mage and do the game properly this time, and yes I am re-speccing all the NPCs to suit my style.

 

Cheers

MC

[Oner]

* Is there, for the love of god, anything worth actually stealing in a locked chest in the whole of Ferelden?

Lategame veridium armor/weapons. Nice profit.

[alanschu]

Through looting and stealing stuff, I at one point maxed out at 250g or so (this ignores the fact that I actively purchased things throughout my playthrough).

[HoonDing]

* Is there, for the love of god, anything worth actually stealing in a locked chest in the whole of Ferelden?

Love letters.

 

...

 

Oh, wait.

[Gromnir]

We'll see. Maybe mass rejuvenation will help once I remember to cast it.

 

maybe you will have better luck with that than did Gromnir. seemed like a wasted spell. got about as much use out of it as we did regeneration.

 

on our first playthrough, we gave our 2-h warrior willpower = constitution... and we probably shoulda' gone higher on the willpower. you can always potion-up for health, but is no potion for stamina.

 

"Anyhow, I now don't need Imoen Chick or Zorro Elf so I can hire two good warriors and a mage and do the game properly this time, and yes I am sorcerer.gif re-speccing all the NPCs to suit my style."

 

re-spec has equal impact on game as does moving difficulty slider... the original difficulty slider.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited November 22, 2009 by Gromnir

[Volourn]

All I gots to say is my mages (both Wynne and Morri) were almost useless versus the end boss. So much so, I just let them die, and I had my PC tank the thing with a bunch of elven archers/mages to help. It resisted any of their cool spells and any damage they caused was laughable. Mind you, my warrior didn't do much more damage but at leats he can take a hit and survive the breath weapon. *shrug*

[HoonDing]

If you play them wrong, of course they're useless.

[Asol]

All I gots to say is my mages (both Wynne and Morri) were almost useless versus the end boss. So much so, I just let them die, and I had my PC tank the thing with a bunch of elven archers/mages to help. It resisted any of their cool spells and any damage they caused was laughable. Mind you, my warrior didn't do much more damage but at leats he can take a hit and survive the breath weapon. *shrug*

 

Your rogues are fine defense boils down to saying L2rogue over and over, now your mages are fine defense is starting to revolve around playing like a spaz. Just admit the class balance is borked and leave it at that.

[Oner]

We'll see. Maybe mass rejuvenation will help once I remember to cast it.

 

maybe you will have better luck with that than did Gromnir. seemed like a wasted spell. got about as much use out of it as we did regeneration.

I found regeneration pretty useful. Casting it on an almost dead character isn't the best idea, but it can save the day.

[HoonDing]

Are DW warriors viable?

 

How high should they raise strength & dexterity? My sword & board only needed dexterity 26 for Tier 4 talents, but dual-wielders need 36... so is it worth it buffing both strength (best heavy armour needs 42) & dexterity and focus less on constitution (there is of course the Lifegiver ring)?

[Oner]

There's my warrior in my sig. He was the tank and DD in one person. Did most of the party damage till endgame.

[Monte Carlo]

Am playing tower of Ishar as a commando mission, trying to use all stealth opportunities with my rogue. Most fun moment so far was using Dog as bait for the darkspawn, then my stealhed character letting rip with the ballistae on the second floor. Dog, having passed basic training, is capable of ballista gunnery and we took out the hurlock infantry before closing in on the archers for the kill.

 

Good fun, OK you are playing the game much more slowly and filling up your inventory insanely fast, but that seems to be the rogue way in this game.