195 réponses à ce sujet

[Last Darkness]

Yrkoon wrote...

Ninjawaffle23 wrote...
If not, i guess i could always learn to like 2handers and just smash everything with my sword.

Well, I don't know how you guys are defining "tank", exactly, but in Origins, my 2-handed warriors made great tanks.  They're strength based, so that means they  easily wore the heaviest armor in the game--which allowed them to absorb more damage and draw more aggro than anyone else.   And that's to say nothing of their immunities to stun and knockdown


Also, one more thing.  I don't see how  the addition of a shield  makes a warrior a better tank.  In  Origins, Shields don't improve your armor rating, they improve your defense (by a very small amount, and perhaps your missile deflection, again, by a very  small amount)

HULK SMASH!  
no need to Tank dead enemies.

[Loc'n'lol]

HolyAvenger wrote...

My DA:O parties were always set up to have the tanks do the most damage. My S&S PC had like 33% of the entire party damage, Alistair had like 27% and Leli (archer) and Wynne (healer/magekiller) had much, much less.

Zevran, Morrigan or heck even Sten could have shamed your PC, though... :innocent:

[PsychoBlonde]

Ryzaki wrote...
Yes the whole warrior stands there and soaks up damage bores me. Honestly Warriors should have high DPS. Not as high as mages but they should be on par with rogues.

Actually, it's the mages who "should" have crap DPS--they have the most effective crowd control.

But, really, there are all sorts of effective tactics you can use.  I never bothered with having a "real" tank in Origins because I focused on devastating up-front damage and crowd control.  If you take the enemies down before they can DEAL damage, it doesn't matter how much damage YOU can TAKE.

That's one option.  You can go the standard "tank and spank" option where you have an aggro tank who sucks everything to them and soaks damage, the healer refreshing their health periodically, and the other 2 doing the damage.  In DA:O, however, the best-suited warrior to this job was the TWO-HANDED warrior because of Indomitable.  Immunity to stun and knockdown made them a far more effective tank than the sword-and-board, especially since their higher damage output made it easier for them to keep threat.  (Hate tanking: it works.  It gets used a lot in DDO because some bosses require an intimidation skill in the 70's or 80's in order to skill-tank them.  You haven't seen hate tanking at it's most hilarious until you've seen a warforged paladin tanking the Hound of Xoriat by using a solid fog clicky. )

  There are also different methods for tanking.  You can go the constitution method, where they just try to have more health than they take damage.  Or you can boost their defense to the sky so they aren't getting hit.  Or, you can boost their armor (mitigation).  Or you can do some combo of the three.

You can do the sneaky bollocks method where you pull a few mobs at a time, squish those, then move on.  If you do this, all you really need in your group is "DPS" types, because the point is to always outnumber your foes.  Whenever you step into combat, your very first action should always be to run right back out of the room/area/whatever.  When you're fighting a boss, you look for spots where you can stand and the boss can't get at you effectively--or you control whoever has aggro and run them around like a crazy thing while the rest of the group does damage.  Ranged ability is key for this type of player.

I generally alternate between 1 and 3 because I hate tanking and I don't like switching to a different character in order to run the tank for tactic 2.  If I was forced to have someone who could soak damage in Origins, I'd just have a mage throw force field around whoever was pulling the aggro and let the field eat the damage.  Or, if I needed an interrupt against mobs of foes, I'd just throw fireball at my mage's feet and send everything except Sten flying.  (Yes, even if it meant eating a bunch of fire damage.)

[HolyAvenger]

_Loc_N_lol_ wrote...

HolyAvenger wrote...

My DA:O parties were always set up to have the tanks do the most damage. My S&S PC had like 33% of the entire party damage, Alistair had like 27% and Leli (archer) and Wynne (healer/magekiller) had much, much less.

Zevran, Morrigan or heck even Sten could have shamed your PC, though... :innocent:

Yeah, probably. So? Some of us aren't into gaming by numbers, frankly

[HolyAvenger]

Graunt wrote...

That's not really proving anything.  You purposely setup your group so that everyone but the tank did mediocre damage.  I could do the same thing with my healer if I simply had everyone on hold while I let the healer nuke everything.  The companion damage is also almost always going to be much less if you aren't manually controlling their actions.

Which is why I don't understand the complaints. If you want your tanks to be the damage dealers in game, set up your party and tactics to do that...

[Loc'n'lol]

PsychoBlonde wrote...

Immunity to stun and knockdown made them a far more effective tank than the sword-and-board, especially since their higher damage output made it easier for them to keep threat.

That's VEEEEERY debatable, and I'll leave it at that but I disagree with every single one of these points.

[Ziggeh]

TJPags wrote...

However, I see the "tank" as essentially being skill-less - unless we want to count standing there and saying "nah-nah-nah" while people beat him to death as a skill.

Well certainly it doesn't take much effort to tank in DAO as much of the actual work is done through the initial investment of talents and gear and tactics setup and after this it's all pretty passive happy. But this is true of all the roles, as the idea is to let you choose which role to control and let the others get on with it if this is the manner in which you choose to play.

There's a balance to strike between this effect and making the roles engaging individually. It's one in which I personally felt origins fell too close to the passive side, but it does seem a major element of the DA2 reworking is attempting to redress this.

More generally speaking I find tanking one of the more complex roles within a games archetype system as it involves a good deal more multitasking and information processing. Guess we'll see how it goes.

[Lethys1]

Warriors actually do way too much damage IMO.  My dual wield warrior tank'd for me which shows some flaw in the system considering he was also my highest DPS character.

I never played as a rogue because I simply never saw a point to it, considering that the durability warrriors provide wasn't worth trading for some backstab crit damage or a few unique skills. 

[PsychoBlonde]

Ziggeh wrote...

There's a balance to strike between this effect and making the roles engaging individually. It's one in which I personally felt origins fell too close to the passive side, but it does seem a major element of the DA2 reworking is attempting to redress this.

If they'd gone more toward the active side, it would have been almost impossible to manage four people in a fight in any coherent way.

I still want them to let you have a meta-target and have quickbars for all 4 characters up at the same time.  (That and allow you to scroll through targets with keyboard keys--I love games where I can run a combat with both hands on the keyboard.)

[PsychoBlonde]

_Loc_N_lol_ wrote...

PsychoBlonde wrote...

Immunity to stun and knockdown made them a far more effective tank than the sword-and-board, especially since their higher damage output made it easier for them to keep threat.

That's VEEEEERY debatable, and I'll leave it at that but I disagree with every single one of these points.

Well, since you provide no information, I'm going to assume that you are absolutely incorrect in everything you think, EVER.  Cheers.

[Ziggeh]

PsychoBlonde wrote...

If they'd gone more toward the active side, it would have been almost impossible to manage four people in a fight in any coherent way.

True, certainly not without more complex tactical scripting, allowing the more active gameplay to be handled reasonably well by the ai.

[Schneidend]

PsychoBlonde wrote...

Immunity to stun and knockdown made them a far more effective tank than the sword-and-board, especially since their higher damage output made it easier for them to keep threat.

Sword-and-board gets knockdown immunity. And, with Threaten causing threat with every attack, and sword-and-board attacking more quickly, they're about the same.

Really, all sword-and-board lacks is stun immunity.

[Ziggeh]

Schneidend wrote...

PsychoBlonde wrote...

Immunity to stun and knockdown made them a far more effective tank than the sword-and-board, especially since their higher damage output made it easier for them to keep threat.

Sword-and-board gets knockdown immunity. And, with Threaten causing threat with every attack, and sword-and-board attacking more quickly, they're about the same.

Really, all sword-and-board lacks is stun immunity.

Eh, it's a little kinda situational, I think "who's best" depends on the enemy at hand and the level and gear of the characters. Certainly by the end, half the defensive talents are feeling pretty wasteful.

[Heretical]

My dual wielding warrior is pushing 50% of party damage, but he dies faster and cant hold threat nearly as well as my sword and board.

[Graunt]

Heretical wrote...

My dual wielding warrior is pushing 50% of party damage, but he dies faster and cant hold threat nearly as well as my sword and board.

And do you have him in actual tanking gear, or DPS gear?  Do you actually have Threaten activated, do you bother to use Taunt?  Does he have a high dex, or was it all str after around 26 dex?  If you have him setup exactly like a straight DPS character and use them as such, of course they are going to give you a different result.  The single largest survivability talent with a shield was Shield Wall, everything else seemed like a single talent chopped up to fit the talent rows.  As for threat; the shield abilities were good for quick burst generation, but then after you used them you had to rely on swinging one weapon. The best way to setup a "DPS tank" was to give them the best armor you could that had the highest stamina/armor and then just give them two "tanking" rings, a tanking belt and neck to cover resists and to add more health.

You can get an arguably superior performance out of Whirlwind > Dual-Weapon Sweep and then focusing on your highest hitting single target activated abilities.  Similar/superior threat and much more damage.  It also depends on what your specializations are.  If you have Champion maxed out, you have a great "crowd control" option with Warcry, and if you took Templar, you have a "ranged taunt" for a group of enemies, and it was pretty good too if you were surrounded.  On my last playthrough in Awakenings (which was a joke in difficulty...), I thought my DW Spirit Warrior would take enough damage over my "real" tank that I'd find a legitimate reason to have a tank, but that was never the case.  My life almost never moved except on the hardest hitting bosses and it just proved how entirely worthless sword and board was.

Modifié par Graunt, 30 décembre 2010 - 03:56 .

[soteria]

Graunt wrote...

For quick bursts on single targets yes, for groups as small as 2-3 units no. Beyond 2-3 there's no comparison. I'm not even sure why you are using 2h as the base comparison anyway when everyone knows that 2h on average was garbage and it's not a matter of sword and shield being too strong, it's that 2h was just bad in general. If you were going to do damage as a Warrior you would go dual-wielding. Instead of fixing either the Rogue or the Warrior though, Bioware took the Blizzard approach and just gutted what was great about one class so another "shines".

You said SnS is "dead last." If what you meant was only that dual wield blows the other three options away, you should have said that, instead. Your opinion is that 2h was garbage. Not everyone agrees on that. Especially if you consider that this is the DA2 discussion thread and that dual-wield will not even be an option for warriors, the relative performance of 2h and SnS becomes a lot more relevant. I'm not sure why you brought dual-wield into the discussion.

[Maria Caliban]

Is it wrong that I've ignored much of what Graunt says and just defaulted to "Soteria knows what he's talking about?"

Modifié par Maria Caliban, 30 décembre 2010 - 12:27 .

[State_Of_Danile]

Peter Thomas wrote...

In general, a Warrior will be suited to a tanking type role. They have heavier armor by default (reducing physical damage) and, because their attacks are pretty much all melee, will be within the striking range of the enemy continuously. A Weapon and Shield Warrior is particularly well suited to tanking because they have the additional armor provided by their Shield.

The vast majority of talents (which can push a character towards DPS or tanking or elsewhere) can be used regardless of your type of weapon. You can choose talents to make a Two-Handed tank, or a Weapon and Shield DPS Warrior if you want. The key to dealing damage as a Warrior is to take advantage of their AoE attack radius. Both styles of Warrior weapon inflict the same approximate DPS to a single target, but because a Two-Handed weapon affects a wider arc with each attack, it is much more likely that it will hit multiple enemies than a Weapon and Shield weapon. This makes a Two-Handed Warrior inherently better at dealing damage (as a Weapon and Shield Warrior is inherently better at tanking). Though they may have an advantage one way or another, you can build a Warrior of either style any direction you want.

In terms of raw DPS, a Rogue is best against a single target. The damage numbers have been calculated in such a way, though, that a Warrior who hits about 2.5 enemies per swing (subject to balancing) will inflict more damage than a Rogue overall. By manipulating the positions and targets of your enemies, a Warrior can easily be one of the main DPSers in your party. The drawback is that a Warrior will take more damage (before armor absorption) in the process, since each individual enemy/source of damage takes longer to kill.

On the role of a tank in combat, basically it comes down to the fact that enemies attack and do damage as a result. The party, to survive an encounter, has to reduce that damage to a manageable level. One of the simplest ways to deal with that is to reduce their damage by having it go to the person who can absorb it best (the tank). That isn't the only way, though. Reducing the damage enemies do (before absorption) and reducing their rate of attack (either slowing or disabling crowd control effects) are also methods. Because of ability costs and cooldowns, as well as variations in how enemies approach the battle, those other methods are harder to use, requiring a lot more micromanagement. Additionally, to prevent locking with CC effects, tougher enemies are more resistant to those effects than weaker ones. Sure you can lock down critters with your abilities, but a boss? You'd have to be much more careful there.


TL;DR - Tanks are nice, but not essential. Warriors can have higher effective DPS than Rogues if you use them right.

this is what i was hoping for for dragon age 2. like i said, in DA:O to me at least, it seemed sword and board warriors couldnt really do much on the offensive. I mean, i dont expect them to be able to take a ton of a damage and do ridiculous damage as well because that removes all the challenge, but the feeling that my sword and board warrior is doing more than just taking hits while everyone else does the work makes is very reassuring. and if it doesn't live up to me standards aw well. It's Bioware, i doubt they can do anything but make this game amazing.

Also, i love how you guys actually communicate with ur fans and tell them whats up. this is why bioware is like my favorite development team ever.

[Harid]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Is it wrong that I've ignored much of want Graunt says and just default to "Soteria knows what he's talking about?"

Given the fact that, in terms of Warrior, SnS was dead last at least in origins and awakening, in terms of generating damage, and while tanking issues  were fixed in awakening. . .it was awakening, any class can solo awakening, so who cares that they can tank better . .and most of what he's saying is correct. . .kinda, yeah.

I don't see the problem.  It took AI and SCS and tactics mods to actually make Baldur's Gate require tactics.  It's not like you died if you didn't have a sword and board tank in that game either.  I've always felt that Bioware tends to dumb down the tactics required in their games on purpose as not to frustrate gamers that are bad at setting up tactics.  They've never had games that really required more than 2 or so tactics, most of Baldur's gate is either crowd control with mages, have melee beat up enemies, or spam dispel on mage, have melee beat on them, and likewise, Dragon Age didn't require much in terms of tactics either, though everything tended to fall into. . .well the first Baldur's Gate tactic.

Modifié par Harid, 30 décembre 2010 - 05:31 .

[Blastback]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Schneidend wrote...

In PnP there most certainly is such thing as a tank. See above, it's just good strategy to minimize how many heals need to be cast.

I'd suggest that warriors in earlier games acted as meat shields instead of tanks. That is, they were expected to provide a buffer between the enemies and the more squishy party members, but didn't have many tools to do so. It wasn't until the concept of 'tanking' became popular that games began giving warriors a range of abilities and powers to manage aggro, automatically defend a companion, punish an opponent for not attacking them, etc.

I actually miss that. It forced the tank/meat shield to be not only able to take the hits, but to do a fair amount of damage to enemies to keep their attention. 

[Graunt]

soteria wrote...

Graunt wrote...
For quick bursts on single targets yes, for groups as small as 2-3 units no. Beyond 2-3 there's no comparison. I'm not even sure why you are using 2h as the base comparison anyway when everyone knows that 2h on average was garbage and it's not a matter of sword and shield being too strong, it's that 2h was just bad in general. If you were going to do damage as a Warrior you would go dual-wielding. Instead of fixing either the Rogue or the Warrior though, Bioware took the Blizzard approach and just gutted what was great about one class so another "shines".

You said SnS is "dead last." If what you meant was only that dual wield blows the other three options away, you should have said that, instead. Your opinion is that 2h was garbage. Not everyone agrees on that. Especially if you consider that this is the DA2 discussion thread and that dual-wield will not even be an option for warriors, the relative performance of 2h and SnS becomes a lot more relevant. I'm not sure why you brought dual-wield into the discussion.

I said that sword and shield was dead last, because it is in overall damage.  2h was garbage for what it was and what it should have been, but it was still better than sword and shield across the entire game. Maybe the misunderstanding is where I said it was garbage on average when all I meant was the closer to a single target you get it gets much worse.  Because for single target damage, 2h was garbage and any denying that isn't just a matter of opinion.  And I still stand by my opion that if you were going to do damage as a Warrior you would go dual-wielding.  2h could outperferm it under certain circumstances, but it could never close the overall gap and the only reason to play it is because you enjoy watching your character swing a large weapon, not because it's factually more damaging.

I also find it amusing that you're telling me to focus on DA2 when you yourself have made plenty of comments regarding DA.  The reason DA was brought up by me is because of the claims that sword and shield in DA was "too strong" when that's not even close to the truth.  It's also brought up because no one but Bioware knows exactly how sword and shield will actually play in DA2 so the only thing anyone can do is talk about the only experience they did have and that was in DA; and many do not want a repeat, especially when choice is being taken away.

Maria Caliban wrote...

Is it wrong that I've ignored much of want Graunt says and just default to "Soteria knows what he's talking about?"

Ignoring what I've said doesn't make him any less wrong.

Modifié par Graunt, 30 décembre 2010 - 07:04 .

[soteria]

Maria wrote...

Is it wrong that I've ignored much of want Graunt says and just default to "Soteria knows what he's talking about?"

Thanks for the vote of confidence. I have been known to be wrong, though.

Graunt wrote...

I said that sword and shield was dead last, because it is in overall damage. 2h was garbage for what it was and what it should have been, but it was still better than sword and shield across the entire game. Maybe the misunderstanding is where I said it was garbage on average when all I meant was the closer to a single target you get it gets much worse. Because for single target damage, 2h was garbage and any denying that isn't just a matter of opinion.

Ah, but it is a matter of opinion. You're talking about this as though the goal of the game is to do the most damage in a single run or to play the build that does the most damage. And here I thought the goal was to enjoy a given playthrough! Jokes aside, I'm sympathetic to the people who feel like they have to play the "best" build every time, but their need has no bearing on how the rest of us should view the game.

I figured the purpose of a 2h warrior was to have a tough warrior that killed stuff fast and was fun to play. In my and others' opinions, it did just that.

If we want to talk about facts, no, SnS is not "dead last." Source. With "full buffs," SnS autoattack is better than 2h autoattack. Ugh, why did you make me say that? Pummel and Overpower have about slightly lower DPS than Sunder. Before taking Momentum into account, SnS strength with Veshaille is almost as good as DW strength with Starfang/Veshaille. Of course, Momentum was bugged...

Unfortunately, DW proved much better at killing stuff because Momentum was broken and the entire game favored small, fast weapons, but that doesn't make 2h garbage. I guess if you see DW as the ideal or target spec, then sure, the other three specs may seem like garbage. If, on the other hand, you recognize that it benefited from a few bugs and design flaws and was arguably brokenly overpowered, things change. I would only call a spec garbage if it really couldn't do what it was supposed to do. It's possible that what I think a spec is supposed to do differs from your opinion.

TLDR: 2h, SnS, and to a lesser extent archery don't do stupidly low damage. DW does stupidly high damage.

I also find it amusing that you're telling me to focus on DA2 when you yourself have made plenty of comments regarding DA. The reason DA was brought up by me is because of the claims that sword and shield in DA was "too strong" when that's not even close to the truth. It's also brought up because no one but Bioware knows exactly how sword and shield will actually play in DA2 so the only thing anyone can do is talk about the only experience they did have and that was in DA; and many do not want a repeat, especially when choice is being taken away.

Oh, I didn't say to focus on DA2. Re-read what I said: the discussion should be relevant to DA2. In that context, how SnS and 2h measured up to each other is more relevant than how fast a DW warrior could kill stuff in DA:O. I wouldn't agree with the people who thought SnS was too strong, but it was certainly strong. My guess is, you've never tried to build a strength SnS warrior and use him for damage? Or, at least, not for more than a few minutes before going back to DW? From what they've said about DA2, it looks like building an offensive SnS warrior will be possible again--that's relevant. Building a DW warrior won't be.

[Yrkoon]

Graunt wrote...
 Maybe the misunderstanding is where I said it was garbage on average when all I meant was the closer to a single target you get it gets much worse.  Because for single target damage, 2h was garbage and any denying that isn't just a matter of opinion.  

Not to derail the topic completely, but you're stating an opinion as fact here.  What, exactly, makes you think 2-handers are garbage vs. single targets?    I ask because this  opinion of yours is so far from the truth, that it almost sounds like sarcasm.  2-handers are the only  melee class that can stun lock a single target while chaining criticals.   And once that happens, any discussion about  'who does more damage?'  becomes pointless, because  any  correctly built 2 hander will succeed in bringing that single target down to 0 health during  the aforementioned stun lock.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 30 décembre 2010 - 11:56 .

[Maria Caliban]

Graunt wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...

Is it wrong that I've ignored much of want Graunt says and just default to "Soteria knows what he's talking about?"

Ignoring what I've said doesn't make him any less wrong.

Whether he or you are right or wrong, either full or partially, doesn't actually matter in regards to my question. I assume that something of what you say is right but also that more of what he says is right.

In truth, I've read very little of what both of you have had to say as the conversation was meaningless to me. However, right now I'm installing DA:O and will start what I hope will be my second full playthrough. I now have reason to read your posts so I now have reason to evaluate how I'm interpreting the information.