I did a quick search of the forum to see what other people might have solo'd with while I was away, and found several Rogue and Mage solos, and a single Warrior solo by Timortis. After reading the exhaustive thread by Timortis, and seeing that he was now doing no-potion NM solos, I figured I would too.
When I stopped playing DA back in December, I was becoming intrigued by the notion of the "unkillable warrior". I don't recall why I was doing it, but I had loaded an old NM party save near the Witherfang fight, I think maybe as part of some research I was doing for one of my NM rogue playthroughs. I had re-equipped Alistair with better armor, and thrown him into the dungeon crawl leading up to Witherfang, namely the fight vs all those werewolves. I remembered everyone being killed except for Alistair, and him being surrounded by a bunch of werewolves dealing only 1 damage. Mind you, this is with no attempt made to optimize his equipment, I just threw some massive armor on him and went through the Brecilian Temple to get to Witherfang.
This was a single, brief, fond memory of this conception of the "unkillable warrior" I had when I was pondering what to restart DA as. I had already exhausted the fun of playing practically every Rogue build, and was generally exhausted with the use of Combat Stealth to manage more difficult solos. This concept of a no-potion NM solo held my interest, but I thought that if I had Lifegiver and Stealth, how is that really any different from using potions? If need be, you just stealth and sit around waiting for your health to regen. Is that really in the spirit of a no-potion solo? Well, regardless, I had enough of using stealth, specifically Combat Stealth, and decided I would try something new.
The idea of the mage NM solo was, well suffice to say, not terribly interesting to me. I spent enough time abusing overpowered mage spells in my party playthroughs, and after having read the patch notes from 1.02 and 1.03, seeing several mage spells nerfed, I didn't want to go down that road of potential disappointment.
With all that in mind, I decided to delve back into the idea of the "unkillable warrior", to see if I could actually make it pan out. One complaint I had from a previous NM solo, was the use of the dog+mother for the Human Noble origin playthrough as Rogue, but the conclusion that it was otherwise impossible to do without them. Well, this time around, I was going to go into this NM solo as somewhat of a purist, with the following rules:
1) No potions.
2) No compansions, ever. If you have no choice but to bring one along (human origin, branka fight, etc.), you leave them at the start of the map in the "hold" pattern, so as to ensure they do not contribute at all to the fight.
3) No use of compansion skills.
4) Nightmare difficulty.
The idea I was attempting to accomplish was simple, create the most defensive warrior I could, while skewing attributes towards strength to ensure at least decent damage output. I immediately went onto the DA Wiki and other sites via google search, to see what other people thought about the "tank warrior". I read a lot about the 2h warrior, and how good Indomitable was. But indomitable doesn't give me armor. DW doesn't give armor, and it doesn't give knockdown immunity, so I think my choice was clear: 1h + shield.
On the topic of specializations, I knew Templar was a core of my build, as I couldn't live without Knight Commander's Armor and it's 40% spell resistance. Beyond that, I was and am still up in the air about the second specialization.
Berserker gives health regen, strength and damage, but has a penalty to stamina regen. (which I've actually come to rely pretty heavily on for damage output)
Reaver gives constitution, physical resistance, a heal (although this is borderline breaking the no-potion rule) and a damage output boost at lower health. (which I find myself at half the time)
Champion gives attack and defense bonus, as well as an AoE attack debuff and knockdown.
Incorporating one of these into my build would need to accomplish the following:
1) Fill any gaps in my build, namely defense, health (regen or total health) and damage output.
2) Not hinder the goal of the build, which is to be as survivable as possible.
To me, I'm thinking it should be either Reaver or Champion. Reaver would give me a boost to damage output at lower life, which I do eventually get to a lot. The con is useful, but the physical resistance is not so much, as what do I really have to resist when I'm immune to knockdowns? It does help on the occasional stun. I'm really at odds with the heal, if I can't use potions, even a single one, why is it ok to use a heal? Is it because it's on a longer-than-potion cooldown? Is it because I had to use a talent point to get it?
On the flip side, Champion didn't really offer me all that much. The attack and defense bonuses are nice, defense especially as most of my defense comes from equipment, not dexterity. The AoE weaken/knockdown is great, because it essentially gives me an even bigger boost to defense, and with high strength gives me a short period of effective invulnerability, as everyone is sitting on their butts. The extra willpower is nice too, as I can always use more stamina to spam my talents early before I become reliant on regen.
I'm level 10 now, so I've got time to think it over, but I'm leaning towards Champion, as I don't really like the "gray area" that Reaver's heal brings to my NM solo rules. (no potion)
On the topic of equipment, this is what I have in mind:
Helmet: Bergen's Honor (highest armor) / Helm of Honnleath (good armor, boost to defense/damage from stats)
Body: Knight Commander's Armor (40% spell resistance)
Hands: Gloves of Diligence (highest armor/defense) / Ancient Elven Gloves (decent armor, 4% spell resistance)
Feet: Boots of Diligence (highest armor/defense)
Neck: The Spellward (30% spell resistance)
Belt: Andruil's Blessing (stats, stam regen)
Ring 1: Lifegiver (con, health regen)
Ring 2: Key to the City (4% magic resistance, stats)
Weapon: Starfang (dex for defense, damage)
Shield: Duncan's Shield/Warden Shield (2nd best defense, 15 stam, stam regen) / Fade Wall (3rd best defense, stam regen, 25 stam) / Howe's Shield (best defense, no stam regen, -10 stam) / Havard's Aegis (4% spell resistance)
Obviously I'm still up in the air about the shield and gloves. Without considering either, I have 74% resistance. With runes on my weapon, I can easily get that to 94%. Gloves and Shield can put that to 100%, or with one of them 98%. I'm most tempted to use neither, and stick with 94% or maybe even a little less in order to add more damage to my weapon. In most scenarios, I do not think that having 100% spell resistance is necessary. Even in the scenarios where having it is critical (Gaxkang, crushing prison fights), having 100% is not necessary to pass the fight.
One thing I have come to learn is that in lieu of ridiculously high defense (that you might expect from a pure dex build), armor is absolutely critical. For this solo warrior, I found that having high armor early was necessary to pass a number of fights without using potions. Armor is one of those things that when stacked with a high priority (using as much +armor from equipment as possible, and the highest armor values as possible) that it becomes extremely powerful. It is easy to substitute defense (the ability to dodge hits) with armor, because what really is the difference between taking 0 or 1 damage from everything, and those attacks outright missing? Very little, considering health regen on equipment. I find that with high armor, decent defense, good health and health regen that I spend the majority of my fights at very close to full health.
The one problem with relying on armor vs defense, is that inevitably you come against enemies that have good armor penetration or just outright deal enough damage to overcome your health regen. So far, and I've only achieved level 10 on this solo run, these individuals are so few and far between that you can focus on them and ignores all of the others that are stuck dealing 0 or 1 damage. Whether this can be sustained long term is still up in the air, and one of the things that I hope to receive feedback on. If you encountered several enemies that could either penetrate your armor to a good degree, or just did enough damage to counter your health regen, then I may have to consider rethinking this build entirely. Until that time comes, I have to assume that the reliance on armor is solid.
But, from the first 10 levels, it seems that this is very viable. Damage output seems to be decent, especially if you grab Starfang early, and with the emphasis on strength over con or dex, it should remain good throughout the game. I was able to breeze through the Human Noble origin with little to no reloading at all, even without dog+mother. The emphasis on early shield talents made most fights trivial, and you get a decent starting shield+sword from the armory to keep you happy until you can acquire something for the long term. Shield Wall is very solid for the long term, and gives good boosts to everything this build is about. Since I can completely neglect the second line of warrior talents (that focus on attack rating), I have an abundance of talent points. At level 10, I think I have 4-5 points unspent, simply because I do not need/want the Templar talents I could acquire at this point, and because I've focused on Persuasion early and could not acquire the 4th tier talents for 1h+shield. I predict having some talent points leftover that I may be able to use to dip into either DW or 2h talents later in the game, depending on how I feel abotu Templar abilities in the long term.
So there you have it. I have no idea if people even care about NM solos this far after the release of DA:O, but half of this stuff is still new to me, since I took a 6 month break from the game. Hopefully a handful of people will have some good feedback to consider before I solidify my build.
Modifié par T0rin3, 14 juin 2010 - 05:06 .
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