71 réponses à ce sujet

[endgamecutter]

After playing and hating the arcane warrior (it is a black mark on the archtype of the spellsword; and boring as hell) I decided it's time to make an enjoyable character to play through the entirety of the game instead of blowing through the storyline. Unfortunately, this time I have absolutely no idea WHAT to go as.

Warriors have always been my favorite archtype(not including spellsword, but they can burn in hell when it comes to DAO), as I love heavy armor, oversized weaponry and telling everyoe else to go **** themselves for needing to get ready with traps and ambushes and such to win a fight. The specializations are nice (or at least berserker and champion are, templars are bigots and reavers are masochists)  and I have all sorts of cool options for how to fight. Theres also the spirit knight thing from awakening that looks like a better attempt at the spellsword archtype, what with active abilities and all, so thats a point of interest. Problem is they lack the durability of warriors in other games, and the tricks of the other classes in DAO.

Rogues are decent, I guess. I never really bought in to the idea of needing to sneak up on someone to get any decent hits in. They have great skills though, and can pick locks, which is nice. Specs are decent, and I have a lot more customizability in terms of party as a rogue. I'm on a PS3 though, so both combat styles suffer, and I HATE backstabbing with a passion in DAO (I already struggle to even get to the enemy around my allies in melee, having to get BEHIND them is a nightmare).

Mages are awesome, if for no other reason than RPG makers seem to suck up to them like mages are their boss offering a sweet promotion or something. They can do just about ANYTHING either of the other classes can do, plus their own bag of maniacal plans (tricks are too small for them). They can have armor as an arcane warrior, have potions for their mana, unlike anyone else, and have cool special effects for just about everything they do. The problem here is that the only spec I can really take is arcane warrior. None of the other specs really suit me (I don't like using my health to kill people, thats what THEIR health is for. Healing defies my nature, and shifting sucks in this game), and if I have to sit through the goddamn mage origin one more time I'm going to kill someone.

I think I lean a bit towards the mage in this, but the origin is now painful, I feel unoriginal for being a mage AGAIN, I like my sword+armor, but arcane warrior disgraces that, and they always seem to do horribly when I play them, I have no idea why it is, but it's true. plus I DO want to try another class, despite the lack of cool abilities.

any tips? Also, I use a PS3, so factor in the differences of playing on a console when giving advice...and I intend to go on to awakening with this character.

[guytza]

Given the info in your post, I'd recommend warrior, specifically either DualWield or Sword and Shield depending on if you want to tank or not. Also, dont completely dismiss the reaver spec, frightening presence is a very good ability, essentially letting your warrior cast paralysis on an enemy.



Leading from the front feels right since your character when controlled will be at the point position of the party, and in Awakenings.....well....I wont spoil it, but I felt frankly godlike on my Champ/Reaver/Guardian Sword and Shield user.

[thavius_jr]

I played through the game my first time around as a warrior, and when I got awakening, I too was disappointed with the AW. I was looking at Dragonagenexus and I found a mod that allows any character to learn all the abilities in the game. I found it to be quite intriguing. Now I play as a Qunari warrior who can heal himself and cast buff spells on himself. Just food for thought.

[endgamecutter]

if it's not too much trouble, can you explain why you think dualwield/s&s would be good?

[Marso40]

One of the things I like about DAO is that I've found the rogue class to be wide open to a variety of builds, thanks in part to the skill trees and specializations available. A few of my rogues have been better warriors than some of my warriors.



To build a rogue warrior, start by giving them a strength of about 15, which is what is required to heft a steel sword. That's good enough to start, and then pump up dexterity for several levels and make sure you do the circle tower first for all the extra attribute points. Then start distributing points into primarily dex and str, back up by con and willpower (for stamina).



Give them lots of DW talents and pick up duelist asap, and if you are playing the 'woodsy' type then you have the option to make them a ranger as well. Believe me, a strong, healthy, high-dex DW rogue who eschews most of the 'rogue' talents in favor of fighting talents is going to be a force to be reckoned with at the mid to higher levels- no sneaking up on ANYTHING will be required to kick some ****.

[OrlesianWardenCommander]

Rogue deffiently. Although i like mages and warriors. Being a Rogue is more of a tatical choice.



There deadly at range and can cripple enemys, stunning them and using speed over raw power. The also can make poisons to further cripple enemies.



On top of that there good at finding traps and picking locks on chest.



So the smartest class to choose is the rogue. Although i play all the classes almost evenly rogue's i play a little bit more.

[endgamecutter]

when you say rogue is the smartest choice, do you mean in the terms of it's the best class evar, or that it relies on the player using a lot of tactics and such?

[mousestalker]

Awakening opened my eyes about rogues. Sigrun is technically a rogue, but she's an extraordinarily effective mini-tank.



It's true that for maximum damage you have to backstab. The reality is that most opponents you fight while be low level grunts and you just need to mow through them to move on through the game. So stop worrying about backstabbery. Poisons and bombs are what really make the difference. Once you've boosted your stealth, you can use bombs without breaking out of sneak. The mobs may follow you for a bit, but they generally will not spot you. You can even use their movement to group them even tighter for maximum effectiveness.



Poison is even lovelier. I generally take one level in it (so I can use them) and spec either Lelianna or Zevran as a poisonmeister. There are a variety of poisons available. My personal favourites are the ones that stun. Deathroot is amazingly cheap and effective. Throw in swift salve and momentum and your rogue becomes a buzzsaw of death.



Or for a variation of the buzzsaw of death theme, you can make a dual weapon fighter and take one level of poison. You won't be able to bomb entire rooms out of stealth, but you will still be able to kill your foes.

[LyudmilaKatzen]

Rogues are kind of the best of all worlds, to me. Well okay you can't do any mage things, but you can do a lot of things a warrior can do plus some other very useful things warriors can't do, like disarm traps, pick locks, and unjam ballistae. You can still do dual wield, even dual with two swords. You can do archery. There are some light armors with reasonable armor ratings plus other perks so you're not doomed to being squishy. As mousestalker said you don't have to focus on backstabbing. My avatar character is a dual wield rogue who just charges right in beside her tank. I'll move around for backstabbing when I can but I don't worry about it that much. Turn Momentum on and you can just bulldoze over those darkspawn.

[Beerny]

Marso40 wrote...

One of the things I like about DAO is that I've found the rogue class to be wide open to a variety of builds, thanks in part to the skill trees and specializations available. A few of my rogues have been better warriors than some of my warriors.

To build a rogue warrior, start by giving them a strength of about 15, which is what is required to heft a steel sword. That's good enough to start, and then pump up dexterity for several levels and make sure you do the circle tower first for all the extra attribute points. Then start distributing points into primarily dex and str, back up by con and willpower (for stamina).

Give them lots of DW talents and pick up duelist asap, and if you are playing the 'woodsy' type then you have the option to make them a ranger as well. Believe me, a strong, healthy, high-dex DW rogue who eschews most of the 'rogue' talents in favor of fighting talents is going to be a force to be reckoned with at the mid to higher levels- no sneaking up on ANYTHING will be required to kick some ****.

Thats the info I was looking for!

Sir, you enlighten my day!

[endgamecutter]

Ironically, the stealth bombing point worsens the case of the rogue. If theres one thing I hate in a game, it's spending half the battle preparing my tricks and traps so I'll be ready for it. I have no issues with pulling, Pausing to set up some tactics, or anything else I may have to do in combat, but trucking around an inventory full of explosives, while cool sounding, would be way too tedious, in my opinion (even with full backpacks, I'm already struggling with inventory space as is.)

I always saw the rogue as the guy who sets up the ambush, or makes the traps, or whatever, and duelist is the only spec that I'd ever use if I didn't use backstabbing, which I would so I could feel justified in not choosing to be a warrior. Plus none of the talents look interesting, excluding weapon trees which don't count because warrior gets them too. The point of warrior rogue doesn't really fit either because warriors (in my opinion) have far better specs than rogues could ever hope for, and if I'm going to be a warrior of any sort, I may as well be a REAL warrior. (AW fits into this category, it may suck compared to other spellsword archetypes, but it's fun to be shiny and fade-y from all the buffs) So yeah, the rogue is mostly shot down. Redeemable in my eyes, true. But still currently looked down upon as something to drag along for the locked boxes.

[akselic]

not to be offensive but it does sound like your mind is allready made up...



rogues are too tedious (at least if you want to get the full effect out of them)

you've done a mage before



not like there's a whole lot left is there



A few things to think about though: first of all archery rogues are actually awsome in Awakening but it would take some patience to reach that far unless you decide to use mods.

Secondly you could try a mage that works as a full time caster, no arcane warrior spec, no massive armor (well unless you go for shapeshifter) and no insane survivability compaired to the other characters. You'll kill faster than anything but you will actually need to consider how to survive since a few monsters hitting you will actually hurt with little health and no heavy armor. My own full-caster mage was probably the most enjoyable of my characters throughout both origins and awakening.



And then your last remaining class the warrior:

If you go with this I strongly suggest a two hander. Not because it kills faster, in fact my own dual wielder probably did more damage per time consumed but there's no way in hell it could oppose my 2hander who had much more fun doing huge hits for insane amounts of damage, aoe stuff that not only hit all the mobs around me but also knocked them down and the fact that your weapon choise makes a bigger difference.

[endgamecutter]

I've always wondered why people say the Arcane Warrior has insane survivability. Maybe I built it poorly (which I doubt, I looked up the guide on it and followed most of the advice) but I died within seconds of a fight starting unless I used blood wound, in which case I would die a couple seconds after they stopped twitching. I saw no evidence of this "insane survivability." just chugging health poultices every three seconds and dying every four. I'd ask what I did wrong, but since I don't have the build data anymore (lost from a trophy error, stupid PS3) but I'd still like to know where they get this seeming inability to die. So far my conclusion is shimmering shield, which I never used because it wore off really quickly and took my ability to crushing prison things, which was always a fun opener (if only it lasted long enough for me to mop up the mobs).

Anyway, straight damage mage is an option to consider. I'd probably still take arcane warrior due to a lack of other things to take, plus being a metal covered artillery cannon sounds fun...and I could take up the sword if things got desperate.

Side question: Just how overpowered is massacre in awakenings? I can see it ending the game in origins, but I haven't played awakenings yet. Sounds hilarious to use though, confronted by an army? BOOM, now theres just a couple generals.

Other than that, two handed is also considerable, any build tips for any of the three things I have mentioned in this post? (recap, arcane warrior, mainly about where its durability comes from, blaster mage, and two hand warrior).

[Fool9]

I enjoyed being an arcane warrior spirit healer just for the lols ha ha ha

[Wicked 702]

endgamecutter wrote...

I've always wondered why people say the Arcane Warrior has insane survivability. Maybe I built it poorly (which I doubt, I looked up the guide on it and followed most of the advice) but I died within seconds of a fight starting unless I used blood wound, in which case I would die a couple seconds after they stopped twitching. I saw no evidence of this "insane survivability." just chugging health poultices every three seconds and dying every four. I'd ask what I did wrong, but since I don't have the build data anymore (lost from a trophy error, stupid PS3) but I'd still like to know where they get this seeming inability to die. So far my conclusion is shimmering shield, which I never used because it wore off really quickly and took my ability to crushing prison things, which was always a fun opener (if only it lasted long enough for me to mop up the mobs).

Anyway, straight damage mage is an option to consider. I'd probably still take arcane warrior due to a lack of other things to take, plus being a metal covered artillery cannon sounds fun...and I could take up the sword if things got desperate.

Side question: Just how overpowered is massacre in awakenings? I can see it ending the game in origins, but I haven't played awakenings yet. Sounds hilarious to use though, confronted by an army? BOOM, now theres just a couple generals.

Other than that, two handed is also considerable, any build tips for any of the three things I have mentioned in this post? (recap, arcane warrior, mainly about where its durability comes from, blaster mage, and two hand warrior).

Fairly easy to explain. My level 13 arcane warrior uses rock armor, arcane shield, and miasma. With that and some heavy armor, I have an armor rating of 41 and a defense of 88. In the rare cases that something actually hits me (high defense), the damage is reduced to like 4-8 points total (high armor). Only mass area spells give me trouble.

[endgamecutter]

and that worked? Maybe I forgot to add rock armor or something, because I was most certainly NOT taking damage in the single digits.

anyway, one question on the two handed warrior, how does talent spam work? I know it's using talents one after another to keep up a chain of faster, stronger hits in, but I've always wondered if the cooldowns worked well for it. Will I be able to spam indefinately as long as my stamina holds out, or will I need to autoattack for a time when my cooldowns fail me? Also, how does the 2-handed damage stack up next to dual wield? I always imagined hast/momentum as horrifically slaughtering enemies at blinding speeds so that the rate of finding new targets would make me forget about the tedium of autoattack, but I don't really know if the extra damage would be worth losing the knockbacks and immunities of being the black knight (so I use cliche's to catagorize the talent trees, sue me.)

and again, blaster mage info would be nice too, probably would have a bit of CC as well, since crushing prison is easier to hit an enemy mage with. Also, would archery be a good choice on a console? The cluster**** of melee combat can be hard to work with, and they seem to have some nice talents (scattershot, it's like 2h sweep, but ranged!).

Modifié par endgamecutter, 23 avril 2010 - 02:01 .

[Loc'n'lol]

Talent spam : you'll have to autoattack at the beginning because you don't have enough talents, but once you get both sunders, mighty blow, pommel strike, you should almost always have something ready.



Dual wield : haste + momentum does not work. Momentum+dual striking (or momentum alone for a backstabbing rogue) buries anything else in terms of damage output.

[akselic]

the idea of a blaster mage is simple if you think about it, look at the talents and pick things that hurt mobs/hit hard such as fireball, inferno, storm of the century (combination of doing blizzard and tempest while having spell might active) and the single target spells you get while going for those in the primal tree. Spirit tree is also awsome with crushing prison and mana clash (which in all honesty feels like cheating.. 1shotting mages before they can see you) and my personal favorite the walking bomb line.

As you can see theres quite a lot to chose from and it also gives you some personal freedom weather you want CC like you asked or anything from the entropy tree (myself I tend to let my allies do hexes for me affliction hex specially making things die faster)



For stat points I advise taking a bit more willpower than you normally would because you'll be eating through mana fast and unless you want to be on a constant potionspam then a bigger manapool will help there, all the rest in magic naturally as you aren't making any sort of defensive mage.



For specializations I suggest blood mage which works as a nice helper when you get low on mana and has some extra cc and you really shouldn't have that many leftover talentpoints for a second tree so the choise between spirit healer (2 magic and minor health regen) or AW if you really want to use heavier armor is yours.



Once you get going you'll figure the spells you end up using most yourself, theres so many that you won't be using all of them all the time and some do stand out better than most. Fireball tends to be one of my top used simple because its fast to cast and not only damages but also knocks full groups of enemies down. The best fun is creative use of virulent and normal walking bomb in conjunction with force field to create tons of carnage, just be wary of yourself and your party members

[MistySun]

I always play as a mage....i just love magic...besides i'm useless with a sword.

[Sutebe]

I like playing as an Arcane Warrior. They have a good deal of flexibility. In a pinch, I can crowd control powerful single targets with Crushing Prison or Petrify, deal with groups with a spell like Fireball or Blood Wound(not technically an Arcane Warrior spell but still worth noting), make myself hard to kill by activating Shimmering Shield, and instantly dealing with casters with Mana Clash.

Of course, I could do most of these things without being an Arcane Warrior, but I always found myself at odds with casting damage spells. "Ugh, Winter's Grasp does 40 damage when a single melee swing from Sten does more then that for none of the cost." At the end of your mana bar, it's nice to have something to swing which costs nothing and does just as much damage.

Also:

endgamecutter wrote...
if I have to sit through the goddamn
mage origin one more time I'm going to kill someone.

Play through it once, only spend the starting skill/stat/talent points you are given at the beginning, save the rest. Get your character to level 7, exit Lothering, make a template save in your party camp. Now you never have to go through the Origin story again and you can make whatever you want.

Modifié par Sutebe, 23 avril 2010 - 12:13 .

[Unrefined-Nemesis]

Based on what you written.



Go warrior since it seems to be your favourite class.



You might want to try the destructive built of a dual wielding warrior with berserker and reaver specializations. You can solo the entire game with a decent built based on the specializations.

[Thorbecke]

Play as a ranged rogue; it's a great support role, with some nice possible varieties, and if you go Ranger, it'll give you an additional party member for cc. No backstabbing required.

[Hechicera]

For you I'd go a Berzerker/Champ or Berzerker/Templar 2-Hand person. Make Wynn get haste, slow speed is the 2-handers bane. I found it boring tactically, but you find setting too many tactics tedious. It has the rest, big weapons, big armor, warrior survival and can be in your face.



They actually make decent crowd control and mage killers with the simple knockdown. Sure death of 1000 cuts is more dps, but the two-hander was more about being in a mage's face and less about making the bosses bar go down faster. Mages that are on their butt then dead before they stand are rather harmless. You can off-tank as needed too.



The Warden's Keep two abilities help with attack speed and crowd control too.



Champ buffs are nice for the other melees, Templar reinforces the anti-mage use of the two-hander. Berzerker I would keep, Berzerk + Bloodthirst (from DLC) is nice with a two-hander.

[OrlesianWardenCommander]

Ranger/Bard/Legionare: Rogue



Extra party member plus increased attack power for all party members and legionare for magic and damage resistance but you dont even need it in awakening lmao.



Champion/Guardian/Templar/:Warrior



Templar for magic/mental resistance and area cleanse



Champion for boosted attack power



Guardian for defending your weaker allies



Bloodmage/Spirithealer/Battlemage:Mage



Blood mage for control over enemies and increase in spell power



Battle mage for hand of winter cause that spell just kicks ass



Spirit healer to heal team mates and keep them alive in tight spots

[Surango]

The stealth isn't really needed and you never even need one point in that to be effective. My rogue carries a few poisons around for stunning and both her daggers have a paralyze rune attached to them. This combo with coup de grace lets you "back stab" a lot more often with either stuns from poison or paralysis from the daggers. My main poison is concentrated deathroot. Fleshrot later in the game.

Granted, my rogue did take stealth, mostly because I like taking out those damned mages first before they fire off, well, anything. Stealth stab + riposte = one mage penned in the dead book. And honestly, I didn't like any of the awakening specs for rogue so I took bard to be assassin/duelist/bard. Dueling with keen defense, I wound up becoming the tank. (140 defense or so)

Modifié par Surango, 24 avril 2010 - 04:05 .