16 réponses à ce sujet

[Khavos]

My first full playthrough of the game I went Sword and Shield up until about 75% of the way through, and used the respec mod to try out Dual Wield.  Loved it.  The damage is insane, and with Champion, you actually have a bit of sorely-lacking crowd control.  I'm about to start a second playthrough, and as tempted as I am to go Dual Wield the entire game, I also feel like I should give Two-Hander a shot.  Unfortunately, it just seems like you attack far too slowly, and Sten and Oghren had atrocious miss rates when they were two-handing in my last playthrough, which really killed their damage potential.  

So how do you build a Two-Hand warrior and actually make it fun?  I'm never going to like the swinging-a-baseball-bat attack animations, but if the class at least plays well I might be able to tolerate it.

[Elhanan]

No expert here, but using both Sunder talents, as well as Pommel Strike for archers & mages helps sim the speed up a bit. I aquire more Willpower than than the norm, but getting Death Blow will help restore needed Stamina to utilize those Talents and more.

And when you gain the grip on 2H, it is far more fun than S&S, IMO.

[soteria]

It's my favorite warrior build, as it requires the most attention to get its best potential. You want to focus on raising strength and stick (mostly) with sunder arms early on, using pommel strike to reduce damage to yourself. Mighty Blow isn't that great, but it's something to use if you can spare the stamina. The main thing you want to watch out for when using 2h warrior specials is that you don't cancel your normal swings--immediately after landing a normal swing, hit sunder.

Also, indomitable is far and away your best special. Powerful swings isn't worth it early on. Precise striking probably is, if you have the stamina and talent points to spare.

[rayzorium]

Oh, wow. I've never played a 2H warrior, but now I think I might. Didn't know abilities interacted with the swing timer like that; 's like Burning Crusade all over again. It's a shame that none of the origins have a starting point in the tree.

[crossover.attack]

If you don't like the "baseball swing" animations, I am not sure you will ever really love it --- although the overhead smashes with a maul or battle axe on a prone opponent can make up for a lot. The fun of a 2H warrior (especially after playing as dual wield rogue or warrior) is to relax and one shot some guys, as opposed to the frantic momentum based attacks of a DW. However, coming straight off a DW, those attacks are going to feel painfully slow.

I'm about halfway through with my own 2H, after using a DW rogue last time around. It took a little while to adjust, but I am loving it now. As opposed to some other classes, there really is only one way to go ---- strength, strength, strength, etc. At least for the opening 10 levels or so... The talent choices work themselves out on their own. Most people are going to take the first tier of 2H talents right off the bat, then work the top row, then back down to the powerful swings talents (but only to be able to pick up two hand sweep as soon as you reach lvl 10), and then back up to top row of general warrior talents (bravery, etc.) until you reach lvl 10. After that finish off the 2nd row of 2H talents or invest in your 1st specialization (probably champion). Unlike some of the other classes, the path really opens up just one way with the min. lvl requirements for some of the talents. Just count of your levels ahead of time and you'll see the way to go. Also, it's hard to resist the respec mod to get the stupid point in the shield talents back.

As mentioned above, the trick is to alternate a regular swing with a skill. Hit the guy once normally, and as soon as it connects, spam a skill. That circumvents the "reloading" part of the swing animation, helps with your DPS, and conserves some stamina. My level 13 2H is hitting at 90% for the campaign. I can live with that. Other than a couple of points into cunning to bump coercion up, he's all strength. The one irritating factor that lives on is that sometimes your skill move will connect, but do no damage. I don't know what's the issue. I suppose something in the swing animation. It happens a lot in tight spaces or crowds. You can even mighty blow a guy, he receives the stun effect, but suffers no damage. The first place you'll probably notice that is back at Highever when you use sunder armor. Especially annoying when it happens on a stunned opponent. Still, I am enjoying it. The opening levels can be tedious (as with most classes after you've played through once), but it really started to get fun at the Tower of Ishal. Getting slapped by the ogre, staggering back, but not falling down and dying, and then stepping right back up to stun his ass for 8 seconds went a long way towards increasing my enjoyment.

Modifié par crossover.attack, 03 août 2010 - 06:19 .

[Khavos]

crossover.attack wrote...

If you don't like the "baseball swing" animations, I am not sure you will ever really love it --- although the overhead smashes with a maul or battle axe on a prone opponent can make up for a lot. The fun of a 2H warrior (especially after playing as dual wield rogue or warrior) is to relax and one shot some guys, as opposed to the frantic momentum based attacks of a DW. However, coming straight off a DW, those attacks are going to feel painfully slow.

I'm about halfway through with my own 2H, after using a DW rogue last time around. It took a little while to adjust, but I am loving it now. As opposed to some other classes, there really is only one way to go ---- strength, strength, strength, etc. At least for the opening 10 levels or so... The talent choices work themselves out on their own. Most people are going to take the first tier of 2H talents right off the bat, then work the top row, then back down to the powerful swings talents (but only to be able to pick up two hand sweep as soon as you reach lvl 10), and then back up to top row of general warrior talents (bravery, etc.) until you reach lvl 10. After that finish off the 2nd row of 2H talents or invest in your 1st specialization (probably champion). Unlike some of the other classes, the path really opens up just one way with the min. lvl requirements for some of the talents. Just count of your levels ahead of time and you'll see the way to go. Also, it's hard to resist the respec mod to get the stupid point in the shield talents back.

As mentioned above, the trick is to alternate a regular swing with a skill. Hit the guy once normally, and as soon as it connects, spam a skill. That circumvents the "reloading" part of the swing animation, helps with your DPS, and conserves some stamina. My level 13 2H is hitting at 90% for the campaign. I can live with that. Other than a couple of points into cunning to bump coercion up, he's all strength. The one irritating factor that lives on is that sometimes your skill move will connect, but do no damage. I don't know what's the issue. I suppose something in the swing animation. It happens a lot in tight spaces or crowds. You can even mighty blow a guy, he receives the stun effect, but suffers no damage. The first place you'll probably notice that is back at Highever when you use sunder armor. Especially annoying when it happens on a stunned opponent. Still, I am enjoying it. The opening levels can be tedious (as with most classes after you've played through once), but it really started to get fun at the Tower of Ishal. Getting slapped by the ogre, staggering back, but not falling down and dying, and then stepping right back up to stun his ass for 8 seconds went a long way towards increasing my enjoyment.

Yeah.  Honestly, I'd probably be more easily brought on board if the attack animations were decent.

The other thing is that my DW warrior ended up having pretty decent defense on Hard, and was even more durable in medium armor than a tanking Alistair in full plate.  A lot of that was the fact that a lot of good gear has Dodge on it, but he also just chainsaws through stuff so fast that unless he's stunned he's going to kill any five enemies before they manage to chip into his health.  2H survivability seems atrocious even with Indomitable.  Since I'm trying out Nightmare with no healbot, that seems like it'd be an issue.

I dunno.  I might give it a shot, but all that CC potential just doesn't seem to make up for achingly slow attacks with animations that look like an eight year old girl playing T-ball.  

Edit: Also, I tend to stick with medium armor, as I think the plain, simple scale mail is the best-looking set in the game.  Massive just looks absurd to me.  So I toss the WC armor set stats on a set of scale mail and mod it into the game.  I might be giving myself a MASSIVE advantage with fatigue, but it doesn't seem like it, since I'm basically trading a hell of a lot of armor for slightly more available stamina.  Either way, I'm told that 2H simply will not work without Massive, or at least couldn't possibly work in Medium.  

Modifié par Khavos, 04 août 2010 - 01:19 .

[crossover.attack]

I think it can be done in medium armor, for the most part anyway. There are obviously a few situations in the game where you will want the massive because attacks cannot be avoided and you need the padding. Still, I haven't died yet halfway through and I haven't put on anything heavier than medium. Although, I am playing on Hard, not nightmare. Theoretically, you are suppose to attract less attention in the lighter armors, and if your careful about charging in before the tank engages agro, I think it's workable all the way through. Besides, once you get into your flow about lvl 8, regular enemies get stunned or knocked down on the first shot and rarely live for a third. You should always have a plan for the bosses anyway, and while possible it's preferable that it doesn't involve you 1 v. 1. You may need a dedicated healer/buff mage instead of a damage queen.



Where else can you go now anyway? The only other choice would be one the multiple mage variations. Although, slinging fireballs can be entertaining.

[Khavos]

Well, the other option would be going back to Sword and Shield and actually playing that out beyond level 6 or so. From what I understand, a full strength S&S build actually does respectable damage, and the history major in me dies a little every time I use absurdly ahistorical dual wielding, and dies only a little slower at the thought of only slightly less ahistorical two-handing.



I dunno. I think I just really spoiled myself by playing the bulk of the game as DW.

[rayzorium]

What's ahistorical about it? It's Thedas, not Europe or anywhere on Earth. =P



No, seriously though - is dual wielding/2-handing a modern thing and largely unheard of in historical times?

[Last Darkness]

Newbie Two hander Mistakes

#1 Letting them auto attack everything. You never want this you want to always be spamming skills.

#2 Not boosting their attack scores through buffs early on so they can actualy hit stuff reliably.

#3 Dont use elemental damage runes in a two hand sword, use passives. +Resistance is good.

#4 Dont use Berserker Spec, it dosnt sync well with two hander at all.

#5 Not getting Deathblow as soon as possible.

#6 Generaly you want to put every point you get per level up into Str. Add some to Will/Cun as needed for Feats and Stamina.

#7 Running their Twohander as the controlled party member first into fights during early game.



Spec advice, Champion/Reaver is the general cookie cutter build. Its only downside is Rally which draws stamina constantly. Ive grown to like Templar/Reaver as time goes by though as this allows for some unique strategies. (Holy Smite+Two hand Sweep+Aura of Pain can be scary good)

[beancounter501]

rayzorium wrote...

What's ahistorical about it? It's Thedas, not Europe or anywhere on Earth. =P

No, seriously though - is dual wielding/2-handing a modern thing and largely unheard of in historical times?

Two Handed Weapons, Sword and Shield, Single One hand Sword and Polearms were very common on the battlefield. Dual Welding was not really seen on any battlefield. Sure there are few exceptions, but none of the successful armies every used them. Since no one alive today is really a true expert or has had any experience in fighting a large scale non-gunpowder sword battle you have to defer to what people did in the past. Which would tell you it sucks and is total fantasy. Or those ancient Buddhist monks you see on some bad Kong-Fu movies could have conquered the world if they wanted to.

[mousestalker]

Massively OT, but if you want the best possible pre gunpowder army possible, you'd want a mix of Welsh longbowmen, Spanish swordsmen, Swiss pikes and Byzantine Cataphracts. That would give you the best possible pre gunpowder combined arms army. The Welsh had longbows and a blend of (mostly) axes and swords. The Spanish used a shorter sword than you would think with a shield. The Swiss had very long spears (pikes) with daggers and swords. The cataphracts were just awesome on a horse with swords, lances, and bows. They could fight mounted or dismounted.



Or you could go for an all Mongol army.



With DA:O you can only come close to playing the first two. There are no pikes in the game and there are no horses.

[Sallul]

How about the spartans? (No not some stupid 300 reference) Wasn't the phalanx one of the single most successful hand to hand formations of all time?

[mousestalker]

Sub them in for the swiss.

[Khavos]

rayzorium wrote...

What's ahistorical about it? It's Thedas, not Europe or anywhere on Earth. =P

No, seriously though - is dual wielding/2-handing a modern thing and largely unheard of in historical times?

Dual wielding is, at least in a Western medieval context, ahistorical.    

Two-handing existed, but two-handing with a greatsword as long as yourself was a rather late medieval concept and used in a pretty specialized way. 

Modifié par Khavos, 04 août 2010 - 03:19 .

[nikki191]

two handed swords were used alot of the time to break up pike formations. it suprises me that rpg's tend to concentrate on swords, when the simple spear was the most common weaponfor millenia

Modifié par nikki191, 04 août 2010 - 03:25 .