55 réponses à ce sujet

[Infiltrator.SF]

Is it just me or the dog is sub-par, performance wise in the group? He seems like a "poor man's choice" notably because, well, he can't get much gear diversity, and he has a limited amount of skills and customization.

Wouldn't having Sten or Wynne be more "effective" gameplay wise. Note that I said gameplay wise, I love him as a persona . The only place I felt dog was lacking was dragon fights.. he'd usually run in, scratch him a few times, and die.

[Martagin]

I found the dog not too useful in the lower levels, however when he gets some of his higher level skills he begins to shine. Most notably is his area stun and overwhelm

[MrGOH]

Very. I have a team with an elven rogue PC, Morrigan or Wynne and the Dog + Sten combo. The mage or Sten (and sometimes my rogue) generate more threat than Dog, so he slips in and chomps on the baddies while folks in armor take all the hits. He does decent damage and attacks fairly quickly. His CC abilities recharge quickly, too, making his talents the icing on the cake.

[Infiltrator.SF]

Martagin .. both of which are useless against Dragons

Modifié par Infiltrator.SF, 09 novembre 2009 - 02:36 .

[5Fists]

His group stun has saved me I don't know how many times, but he does prove rather useless sometimes.

[Naughtron]

My dog "Kaida" stays in my party quite often. I have been pumping points into ST and CON. She has an awesome ability that will AOE stun a group it has saved my party many a time. That and Shales Aura!

The dog is totally worth it.

[muniekk85]

He is fast. Once i have played last man (dog) standing with him and his regeneration food kiting monsters around Other time when things looked bad he was kiting monsters around while Liliana shooted them. So speed is for sure unique for him.

[Martagin]

And? If you want to go down the list alot of skills are useless against dragons!

[Ghandorian]

I find the dog more competent then that glass jawed Qunari.

[Martagin]

Stens no tank thats for sure, wasn't ever ment to be. Damned useful in a fight if used correctly however

[Branix]

I like Dog. He's my friend. I especially like it when he licks my face and gets me off the ground when I "almost" killed the bad guy.

[burner087]

My dog has not left camp since the day I arrived there.

[EricHVela]

He has always been the last one standing when any thing has gone wrong in an encounter. Many times, he's prevented a wipe by himself. His interaction with strange cats is pretty cool, too. The banter between him and the others (particularly Allistair and Morrighan) is cool.

Don't forget to talk to him in camp as you add people to your party pool.

[AzureDemon]

Indeed, the dog is awesome.

My next run will be on hardest difficulty with main mage (dunno specialization yet) alastair/shale, leliana and dog.

[Raxous]

One more in favour of Dog, you just can't beat his Group Stun skill against large groups. It recharges fast & can affect suprisingly high powered / "orange" enemies. He is also very fast and can single handedly savage / harass an opposing "team"'s backline / archers / mages whilst the rest of the party deals with the main aggro first.

[Naughtron]

A bit of a funny story:

My Dogs name in real life is Kaida. Kaida means "Little Dragon". My War Hound in game is named Kaida, and thus the story begins...



Over the weekend I was playing and got into a fight with a dragon. Kaida was sitting next to my desk during the fight. The dragon kills everyone in my party EXCEPT "Kaida"

"Kaida" gets the killing blow on the dragon

I gave real life Kaida some pats on the head and said "good girl"

now what i find truly funny is that "Kaida" means "little dragon" so therfore: Little Dragon killed a Dragon.

[redelephant]

Dog is perfect for mass-man-sized-creature battles (Redcliffe, Denerim). I tend to shout 'kill the emmissary' to him, and he just runs off around the group, stuns them, overwhelms the caster, kills it. This may get him KO'd as well, but raise him, put a two-silver scooby snack in there, and he's good to go. Behind their lines.



Useless against dragons, but what did you expect? It's a dog.

[TallMike]

The dog is usually the last one left standing because he doesn't generate enough damage to draw threat.

[Ace Attorney]

burner087 wrote...

My dog has not left camp since the day I arrived there.

This, and its sad. The dog is awesome but can't compete with other Tanks.

Modifié par T3hAnubis, 09 novembre 2009 - 05:09 .

[Ralsar]

Sending him off to "fetch" items is rather nifty, but of course that has little to do with combat.

[ninfan1]

I find Dog to be a bit of a swiss army knife. He's not pretty, but you can adapt him to be useful in most situations. The random drop nature of some of his "war paint" schemes is the only real hindrance, if you get a good one early he can be really powerful, but if you're forced to drop 5 gold just to bring him up to par in the early game, it can be a harder decision to make. He makes a nice counter-point to Shale, who you can specialize more than any other character save your own. If you're going to be using a group that doesn't have any of the mage enchanted weapons, he can be a totally viable option.



While it may seem a little cliche, he definitely works best as a companion to an archer, or some of the more Damage over Time based mage schools.



I'm sure if you're running certain group formats he can be really powerful, but he can also be a waste of a slot. I will also add this- while it could be entirely chance, I've noticed he tends to get hit less by friendly fire. It's also considerably cheaper to have him in your group, Mabari Crunch is a cheap recipe for any herbalist and the elfroot and mushrooms are everywhere. it doesn't even require a vial. Being that he only has 2 gear slots and doesn't share them with anyone else, it's also relatively easy to keep him in good shape equipment wise, though again- some of it comes down to luck as to what war paint patterns you find and when.



Something for the theorycrafters to look into is the formula for how his stats effect his damage. Since he can't equip a weapon, one would assume his stat scaling is different, that could make him potentially lethal with a high buffing group if it turned out to be true.

[Niten Ryu]

While dog is my fav NPC by far, he is not that useful in combat. His AoE stun and debuff last way too short amount of time vs. earthquake and it's painfully slow to heal him with treats in combat. Dog is much better then any of the rogues and about as same as templar tank but worse then rest of the warriors and much more worse when any of the mages (who are OP compared to anyone else in the game).

[Korva]

Wait, kaddis drops randomly? Bleh. I wish I'd gotten some off the Lothering bandits' dogs but no luck, and the three kaddis versions I found in shops are stupidly expensive for the little effect they have. My biggest gripes are really that the dog has: 1) No skills, why? Survival at least would have been great for him. 2) Very few talents and only 1 point every 3 levels which makes him slow and boring to improve. 3) Hard to come by equipment that feels very overpriced. So it's a bit of a letdown, especially since he also doesn't interact as much as I'd hoped. I still love him and my first character will continue to always have him by her side, but still ...

[ninfan1]

I'm pretty sure they drop, I know one character left Ostagar with 2 different schemes that none of my other characters who are past Ostagar have. I know I didn't do any stealing with that character so they weren't stolen....



I agree with the lack of skills, but like I said, it's all about group makeup. Some groups are really able to maximize him, and for others he's pretty much a wasted party slot. I haven't had the chance to mess around with various buffs to see if he gets better (or worse) scaling from them than any other party member, but I know in my party (player bard archer, Alistair, Wynne, and Dog "Kevin") He more than pulls his share, he's great (as mentioned) for running down archers and mages at the start of the fight, and still does respectable melee damage when he starts tearing into the horde of enemies on Al. If you're playing as an archer he's fantastic for helping you keep your distance from the target with knockdowns and stuns to fill in the gaps between pinning shots, and combined with suppression fire you can take down a very heavy armored/high health target long before it reaches you if you start at max longbow range and space out the stuns/snares/knockdowns.



As for being slow and boring to improve.... you could always wait until level 11-12 to start using him, that way you're past the halfway point to maxing him out. Since he doesn't seem to react to your decisions anywhere there's less impetus to start building favor with him as soon as possible for the buffs.



He'll never be " the best party member ever" but that doesn't make him bad. He's easily more useful than the basic spider or bear shapeshifting forms(I know, he can't switch out and be a mage...) and he's better than any of the ranger pets. He doesn't compare to shale as your "4th member", but that's more to do with how ridiculous shale can be if you build your group around him. He doesn't fill any primary role particularly well, but he's decent damage that can off-tank a couple ranged enemies without being too much of a hassle. I would guess the more mage-heavy your party is, the less likely he is to be a useful member, but I'm sure there's someone who can contradict that point of view convincingly.

[Brian Chung]

No one's casted Frost/Flame weapon with him in the party?