666 réponses à ce sujet

[Lynnith24]

I've played the game through on nightmare ending with a party of 3 mages, and it could not have possibly been easier by substituting a crappy warrior or rogue in. you're just wrong, sorry. also fighting groups of mages ain't so rough when you got 3 mages of your own.



Then check your difficulty becuase your not on nightmare with friendly fire or rather post your screen shot. Then again if you just played the main quest line and only did 30 percent of the game to beat it i could see this happening becuase alot of the harder fights are side quest lines. In nightmare Revants can two shot tanks and one shot mages by doing there ability to pull people over. So yes i could see you only doing what you have to to beat the game but i would like to see it post it on youtube and show us your mad skill on nightmare with 3 mages with friendly fire lol i would like to see it.

[Unbroken Lineage]

Kelston wrote...

Unbroken Lineage wrote...

Melee Fighter, Ranged Fighter, Damage Mage, Heal Mage. In what party-based fantasy RPG is this not the "default" party upon which the game is balanced? In what party-based fantasy RPG would you deviate from this default party, and not expect to have to compensate for your party's lack of balance with clever tactics, skillful item usage and applying some forethought to character builds?

No one is stopping you from playing on easy if you want to bring party members based on their conversation or looks or whatever.

Except a heal mage in DA:O is not prevented from loading up on the offensive capabilities of a damage mage. No cleric in D&D ever AoE'd a room down.

You keep using the red herring logical fallacy and dodging the main point, that's understandable since you only play mages. So not really sure what you're going on about with making the game challenging for you when you set yourself up to run a 3 mage party.

My PC is a crowd-control/debuff mage only.  I don't really do any damage unless I plink with my sword when someone low is nearby.  And I have Wynn fully specced for healing.  And I have Shale tanking and Zev shredding.

The game on Hard is challenging due to my party's lack of damage output.  I make up for this by fully utilizing my crowd control and debuffs.

Wynn is pretty good auto-running her custom tactics, and so is Shale in tank mode.  Zev needs lots of handholding.

How does my running a mage make anything I said about this subject any less true?

[chizow]

Unbroken Lineage wrote...

Mages use Lyrium Potions, Warriors and Rogues use Deep Mushrooms.

You can buy infinite Deep Mushrooms from the mildly insane trader in the Deep Roads.

It seems like many people don't know this.  This will change your life.  Do it.

Do you even bother filtering or verifying your posts before you hit the enter key?  Deep Mushrooms?  You do realize they restore ~10 Stamina each right?  You might as well advocate using Elfroot or Lyrium Dust instead of Health Poultices and Lyrium potions as a viable alternative.....

But this again is part of the problem, the lack of Stamina potions is a glaring omission in the game and part of the reason melee/physical damage characters fall so far behind magic users. 

[Schyzm]

Lynnith24 wrote...

I've played the game through on nightmare ending with a party of 3 mages, and it could not have possibly been easier by substituting a crappy warrior or rogue in. you're just wrong, sorry. also fighting groups of mages ain't so rough when you got 3 mages of your own.

Then check your difficulty becuase your not on nightmare with friendly fire or rather post your screen shot. Then again if you just played the main quest line and only did 30 percent of the game to beat it i could see this happening becuase alot of the harder fights are side quest lines. In nightmare Revants can two shot tanks and one shot mages by doing there ability to pull people over. So yes i could see you only doing what you have to to beat the game but i would like to see it post it on youtube and show us your mad skill on nightmare with 3 mages with friendly fire lol i would like to see it.

friendly fire isn't that big of a deal.  I have 3 forcefields so if poor little alistair is gna get nuked I just cloak in the warm embrace of invulnerability while annihilating everything around.  but even if I didn't I got heals and potions and even if alistair dies its not that big of a deal because he's pretty unimportant outside of his taunt talent.

revenants aren't hard, hex allows all sorts of magic to get through.  you can get pretty creative in annihilating them.

you can try yourself if you like, I'm not saying I'm that awesome of a player.  

[izariluneh]

To make the game more interesting i would put a cooldown on potions (1 min for example), All mage AoE CC should affect group members and the area affected way more smaller.The CC itself for all classes should be less powerful. I am playing on hard mode (70 hours and still counting) and the first 50 hours have been hard and challenging, but now when my mage has access to last tier CC spells, i can cast a couple of spells and watch the fight on auto attack while smoking a cigar. In the other hand my rogue archer should have more dps.

[Unbroken Lineage]

chizow wrote...

Unbroken Lineage wrote...

Mages use Lyrium Potions, Warriors and Rogues use Deep Mushrooms.

You can buy infinite Deep Mushrooms from the mildly insane trader in the Deep Roads.

It seems like many people don't know this.  This will change your life.  Do it.

Do you even bother filtering or verifying your posts before you hit the enter key?  Deep Mushrooms?  You do realize they restore ~10 Stamina each right?  You might as well advocate using Elfroot or Lyrium Dust instead of Health Poultices and Lyrium potions as a viable alternative.....

But this again is part of the problem, the lack of Stamina potions is a glaring omission in the game and part of the reason melee/physical damage characters fall so far behind magic users. 

Agreed, that's a bummer.

Modifié par Unbroken Lineage, 16 novembre 2009 - 06:39 .

[chizow]

Endarken wrote...

I think stamina costs should be reduced by at least 75%. There is already a cooldown timer built in so you can't spam certain abilities.

Then spells like rejuv would actually have a use.

Let's look at your typical rogue - you have 10 active abilities, maybe 14+ with specializations.

How many can you use during a fight? 2, maybe 3.

I guess I know what the first mod will be.

This is really one of the key arguments here.  All the mage apologists need not take the imbalance complaints as a personal affront on the OP-ness of their mages, people just want the glaring imbalances and design flaws in the game addressed so that physical damage characters are a viable alternative to mages. 

No one wants mages nerfed because that simply means you will have an even greater reliance on mages than you currently do for healing/CC/AoE/DPS/buff/debuffing/tanking/raising/[everything].  People simply want the clearly underwhelming abilities and game mechanics for melee/physical characters buffed so that melee characters are a more viable alternative to that 2nd or 3rd mage so that its not an exercise in futility and frustration....

[Spura]

Skellimancer wrote...

Its infuriating just how powerful mages are.

The annoying part is when people say its lore and mages are rare, yet all monster groups have a mage.

No they don't. Not even 10% of encounters has a spellcaster. Stop lying.

[Haexpane]

Spura wrote...

Skellimancer wrote...

Its infuriating just how powerful mages are.

The annoying part is when people say its lore and mages are rare, yet all monster groups have a mage.

No they don't. Not even 10% of encounters has a spellcaster. Stop lying.

Well, you go into dorf town, you fight dorfs, they constantly talk about how dorfs can't cast spells, and then boom, spells start hitting you... (elf/human hired mage hand)

So even in a place where they should be zero mages, there are still mages. Yes most encounters have few mages and mostly yard trash melee/range but still, there are mages everywhere in the game.

I have 2 templars tho so mages are no big deal.

[Spura]

Haexpane wrote...

So even in a place where they should be zero mages, there are still mages. Yes most encounters have few mages and mostly yard trash melee/range but still, there are mages everywhere in the game.

No. Most encounters have 0 mages. Not a few mages. 0 mages.

[wcholcombe]

I don't get the unbalanced for melee characters bit. I am currently charging through the deep roads at lvl 16 with a DPS 2 handed sword PC, Ohgren, Shale, and Sten. We are chewing up darkspawn and flat out destroyed that last pair of ogres near the Legion of Dead temple. Technically speaking I don't even think our group has a tank? Shale goes after the mages and we destroy everything else. Lots of Poultices used and a fair number of injury kits, but I am having a blast.



Oh yeah and Shale, Sten, PC, and Wehn owned broken circle.



I am actually finding the game somewhat easier without mages. Don't have someone to worry about protecting from melees.

[egervari]

Endarken wrote...

Ok here is the deal. I have a level 21 melee rogue with daggers.

I turn on Momentum & Dueling.
Half my stamina is now tied up.

I use Dirty Fighting once.
I use whirlwind once.

I'm now out of stamina.

Wynne casts rejuv on me, and then mass rejuv.

I get to use Dirty Fighting one more time.

Guess how many other skills I have - 8+ melee skills I can't use. Maybe if I had 100 willpower. That's insane though.

I guess to me, it seems broken. The only way my character can damage something is through autoattack because I have to save what little stamina I do have for an interrupt when an ogre is pounding someone or a character is being overpowered on the ground.

Mages can pop lyrium potions. I can't do @#%#. It's pretty annoying.

Here is my party build
Me 21 Rogue Dagger user
Wynne healing & earthquake + petrify
Alistair - tank (at least he does well since he just has to have threaten & shield stuff going)
Leliana - Another rogue. I get to use the aoe stun that lasts for 2 seconds. Oh yea and then after she uses that plus 1 more skill she is out of stamina for the rest of the fight.

Here's another thing I don't like - Have a mage character, stand at range and kill the boss. Have a melee character, they are now susceptible to all sorts of aoe melee abilities.

This is why i switched my rogue to do more crit/backstabbing. Once I got the assassin spec (which I wish I got many levels earlier by giving the gifts to the assassin party member I wasn't using to get him to teach it to me)... things got a lot better.

Getting the first 3 skills and putting your rogue behind a target that is already aggro'd by the tank will do a lot of single-target damage. We're talking 35-40 damage every hit. I just leave duelist and momemtum on, and use mark of death when I can (and then expect much more damage). Even though I'm level 19, I'm trying to aim for lethality, which I suspect will raise the damage even more.

Having the chance to respec or do it all over again, I'd put my points in slightly different spots. I did put about 20 or 25 in strength, and that was a mistake - I'd put more in dex or cunning. I'd plan it to put only enough strength for gear requirements. I think for melee dps, this is really good, and much better than the Two-handed weapon styles that oghrem and sten use. I also put more points into willpower, which was a waste.

Is it still better than mages? Not really, but you get a lot of damage for free this way and don't need stamina. Then you can just riposte and the like when needed for stuns.

Modifié par egervari, 16 novembre 2009 - 07:31 .

[egervari]

Endarken wrote...

Here's another thing I noticed, at least on normal difficulty. By level 10 I have the most powerful armor in the game equipped, or have the ability to wear it. Maybe by lvl 12 I guess at the latest. Enemy's skills and their gear goes up drastically but my tank (Alistair) stops scaling past lvl 12 or so once he has his defense abilities. After that point there is really nothing I can do, it seems a bit silly. It's like getting a set of +1 armor in AD&D and that is the best at the time but then suddenly the enemies are using +5 longswords & have +5 plate armor, while you are stuck with +1 armor.

The increase in damage taken just scales dramatically.

Yeah, I am kind of scared that I'm level 18/19 now and I still haven't faced the optional dragon bosses... they might be harder and not easier.

[egervari]

Endarken wrote...

Ok, let's look at stat requirements then for a rogue.

You need 20 strength for armor, high dex, cunning, and now you can put points into willpower. Ok, how much? If you put in 20 more points of willpower, ok you can use 2 more abilities ONCE. and you've just lost a ton of damage & defense.

the fact is, the rogue skills don't do more damage than going low willpower / passive attack boosts, so it isn't worth putting more into willpower to begin with.

This also brings up the point that mages only need magic and willpower (mostly magic) to be successful, whereas the rogue needs almost all the skills, spreading themselves too thin. Add on the stamina problems... and the weaker skills compared to top mage abilities... and yeah, these characters are totally imbalanced.

[addiction21]

Haexpane wrote...

Spura wrote...

Skellimancer wrote...

Its infuriating just how powerful mages are.

The annoying part is when people say its lore and mages are rare, yet all monster groups have a mage.

No they don't. Not even 10% of encounters has a spellcaster. Stop lying.

Well, you go into dorf town, you fight dorfs, they constantly talk about how dorfs can't cast spells, and then boom, spells start hitting you... (elf/human hired mage hand)

So even in a place where they should be zero mages, there are still mages. Yes most encounters have few mages and mostly yard trash melee/range but still, there are mages everywhere in the game.

I have 2 templars tho so mages are no big deal.

Just because dwarfs cant use magic does not mean they refuse magic user's entry into their city.  Just saying its kinda faulty logic imho.

[egervari]

TileToad wrote...

Sirronald555 wrote...

Sigh, ****g WoW has destroyed the minds of gamers. Seriously. If it isn't catered to casuals then everyone says it is either too hard or unblanced. There is no such thing as a balance issue in a single player game. Period.

Every single rpg since the dawn of time has been centered around a specific make-up. Tank, thief, mage and heals. If you choose to play the game with a different makeup then YOU are the one unblancing it NOT the games makers. if you play through this game with a tank, rogue wizard and healer then you will see how perfectly balanced it is (especially in the sense of the characters actually playing "roles" kinda like what the abbreviation RPG means...imagine that). Of course you also should taker the time to think out where you allocate your points at lvling up (aww shucks, no cookie cutter specs that you can copy off a WoW board).

Instead of whining, play the game and enjoy it. Best dam RPG that has come around in a long time and all the spoiled kiddies gotta whine cause they can't blast through it rolling their faces on the keyboard with any old motley assortment of characters.


Suppose I will edit this before someone trolls my "every rpg since the dawn of time" remark. Sure there are some that don't use the cookie cutter group makeup, but MANY MANY do and it has always been the perfect setup.

I've never played WoW, or any other MMORPG for that matter but did play a crapload of RPG's, strategy and management games and I'm telling you this game is not balanced correctly.
I also don't understand your reasoning that single player games don't need any balancing. The game mechanics set up the rules and the rules in turn determine your influence within the game. Therefore, balancing these rules is crucial for interesting gameplay.

I'm also perplexed by your statement that you can't be flexible with party members since it will unbalance the game. Apparently we're all forced to take the exact setup you stated. Perhaps they shouldn't have put in more NPC's to play with as it might confuse people into thinking that there are more options.

Your idea of how a RPG game should be sounds rigid, frustratingly difficult, and not very fun at all. Perhaps you're the one with the WoW mindset here where leveling up your character (allocating your points) is all that really matters.

I 100% agree with all of this.

To Sirronald555... WOW has nothing to do with it. A lot of rpgs have had similar failings where stacking up on one class produces better results. It's okay to have a small imbalance... but in dragon age, it's pretty glaring. 

Not only is the party setup to have 2 mages, it pushes the character to make a mage over a rogue or a warrior. It also pushes the character to pick wynne and morrigan pretty much every playthrough. The only variation is what warrior/rogue you decide to bring... that is, if you care to bring any at all.

People are seriously soloing the content on hard difficulties with a mage. People can tank better with a mage than they can with a warrior. You can pretty much do everything better than a warrior or rogue except for pick locks, steal, etc., which as far as I know, it's a lot more non-essential in dragon age than it was in baldur's gate (which had fantastic loot in chests and unique pick pockets). I can't comment too much on the pick pockets, but I have yet to open a locked chest that had a good item in it. 

[Starhaus]

I find that melee is not that hard if you have enough health potions. The raw damage from just your weapon usually is quite enough to take down anything, mostly without the use of any talents. Just be sure you have good armor and a high constitution. Just increase strength and dexteritiy to the minimum necessary to wield the best weapons, armor, and meet your skill and talent requirements. Any remaining points should go into constitution and willpower.

[egervari]

Starhaus wrote...

I find that melee is not that hard if you have enough health potions. The raw damage from just your weapon usually is quite enough to take down anything, mostly without the use of any talents. Just be sure you have good armor and a high constitution. Just increase strength and dexteritiy to the minimum necessary to wield the best weapons, armor, and meet your skill and talent requirements. Any remaining points should go into constitution and willpower.

Again, there's a lot of problems with this. Putting any points in willpower is pointless. You have to put TONS of points just to get 1 more ability in the battle. It's just not worth it, especially for the long battles which is where you would ideally need a lot more stamina and yet don't have access to it. The rejuv spells are terrible as well, and they don't give enough to allow you cast many abilities during a long fight either - perhaps 1 extra skill when it is all said and done.  Those points are much better spent in the prime stat.

Strength and dex are probably the most important for any melee dps. Rogues for example need dex in the 55 to 60 at least, and depending on specialization, you need a high cunning as well instead of strength.

Gear actually gets worse as you go up in levels. The best tier 6/7 armors in the game still aren't good enough to tank with, and it actually seems to get worse. This causes people to use force field spells instead, because the armor class is absolutely worthless. Ironically, heal spells can't keep up with the damage in any tough fight, which makes mages come to the rescue again.

At some point you realize just disabling all the enemies is superior to tanking and taking damage, and melee classes just don't do that very well. Actually, they don't do it at all. 

The raw damage of the weapons is irrelevant if you die before you even approach the enemy. The problem isn't damage if you are running the right spec - it's being able to use it. A mage could just disable the enemies and kill one by one really slowly and have a better chance at surviving the encounter than a warrior with their all-mighty weapons. And since mages actually can do aoe damage and spell combos, they actually do more damage anyway.

Pretty much everything you said is the opposite of what actually works :/

[egervari]

I'd also like to point out that in the collector's edition of the prima guide, it outright states in the interview that the bioware folks preferred mages and used at least 2 in a party all the time. That's how they rolled, and so that's what they focused on. I just read that.

I don't think this has anything to lore, and it probably has a lot more to do with what the developers thought was cool. Balancing probably din't enter their mind much as their 2+ mage party is probably what they tested with.

Modifié par egervari, 16 novembre 2009 - 07:53 .

[sandokas]

Well, it was the same on Baldur's Gate. It's a pitty that you don't have a free mage origin as your main character because the game is clearly intended to do at least 1 walk and a reroll as mage due to the diferent spells available.

[scyld]

I made a thread about this and everyone said "no ur wrong mages r not 2 powerful and rouges n' waryors r fine."



And now that someone ELSE makes a thread about it... suddenly it is recognized as a real problem.



That's my life =/

[Starhaus]

I remember in some earlier NWN games there were ways in which a player could fix some skill and talent skill-point distribution problems mid to late game. That makes sense as a solution since some people don't want to replay the game just to fix the mistakes they made at the start. Since this game requires slightly different strategies and it takes awhile to figure out exactly which skills are the must-haves, allowing people to rebalance those skill points later, maybe in a one-time fixit quest, would be a great idea.

[egervari]

sandokas wrote...

Well, it was the same on Baldur's Gate. It's a pitty that you don't have a free mage origin as your main character because the game is clearly intended to do at least 1 walk and a reroll as mage due to the diferent spells available.

Totally agree. It's 100% clear that the best character to play in this game is a mage as the main character. Getting a fresh start while you know exactly what spells to pick would produce a far superior mage to everything.

Baldur's Gate 2 had saving graces. Fighters and rogues and bards (well that bladedancer kit... I forget the name) and paladins were all much needed classes in that game. Yes, the mage was powerful, but more than half of the characters were useful and interesting. I can remember the inquisitor dispelling everything in sight with carsomyr +5... man, that was fantastic.

I remember korgan shredding everything up as a basic berseker. That was a character that was good most of the way through the game - duel-weilding axe of unyielding and crom fayer  

Rogues were powerful because they could use any item. Many of the kits were very powerful.

Clerics (I guess mages in this game) were very good classes, and well worth taking along for the trip.

Monks were freaking rediculous.

While some classes like rangers and basic druids were mediocre, there were still uses for Archers or Berserker/Druids that faired extremely well.

This game doesn't have anything close to that kind of flexibility. In this game, mages do everything, and the difference between mages and everyone else are vast.

Modifié par egervari, 16 novembre 2009 - 08:09 .

[Setu_Firestorm]

I've found that the battles were pretty easy until I reached Lv13-ish, and that's when it came time to strategize if one wanted to survive. Firstly, like any tank would know, always take out the casters FIRST. Especially in this game, casters are so damned OP that whether or not you take them out first can greatly influence between a victory or a wipe.

The best strategy I've found is to have everyone hold position when you're sure there's going to be an attack, send the tank forward, have him pull some mobs back to the party, and burn them there. That has so far worked miracles for me. Other tip would be to save often, just in case you're about to unknowingly walk into a slaughter.

Aside from that, the one boss that I had THE hardest time on was the Broodmother in the Deep Roads. I chose to ally with the dwarves last, so my party was all mid-teens by this time, and the ONLY way I was able to beat her was to play Wynne and manually pass out heals while Ridael (my main character; city elf warrior), Zevran, and Oghren did their own thing on her. The fight seemed nearly impossible trying to play it as my character, but when I switched to the role of Wynne as healer, it became doable.

So my overall point is: when things in this game seem to be impossible to achieve, just try a different strategy. Oddly enough, strategy plays a significant part in survival, especially in this game. It makes QUITE a difference.

Modifié par Setu_Firestorm, 16 novembre 2009 - 08:12 .

[egervari]

Setu_Firestorm wrote...

I've found that the battles were pretty easy until I reached Lv13-ish, and that's when it came time to strategize if one wanted to survive. Firstly, like any tank would know, always take out the casters FIRST. Especially in this game, casters are so damned OP that whether or not you take them out first can greatly influence between a victory or a wipe.

The best strategy I've found is to have everyone hold position when you're sure there's going to be an attack, send the tank forward, have him pull some mobs back to the party, and burn them there. That has so far worked miracles for me. Other tip would be to save often, just in case you're about to unknowingly walk into a slaughter.

Aside from that, the one boss that I had THE hardest time on was the Broodmother in the Deep Roads. I chose to ally with the dwarves last, so my party was all mid-teens by this time, and the ONLY way I was able to beat her was to play Wynne and manually pass out heals while Ridael (my main character; city elf warrior), Zevran, and Oghren did their own thing on her. The fight seemed nearly impossible trying to play it as my character, but when I switched to the role of Wynne as healer, it became doable.

So my overall point is: when things in this game seem to be impossible to achieve, just try a different strategy. Oddly enough, strategy plays a significant part in survival, especially in this game. It makes QUITE a difference.

It is interesting that you found that battle hard, because as much as I complain the damn mages, I did that battle just fine

I don't think anyone here fails to understand that we need to take out the mages first. This is pretty clear. The problem is that melee characters just don't cut it, and if a player has only wynne with a limited spell selections to figure things out... well... it's going to be a bumpy, unpredictable ride.

The solution I ended running with was using the spirit chain - mind blast -> force field -> telekinetic weapons -> prison. The prison spell stops a mage for 30 seconds or a minute. I can't remember the time, but it's a really long time It seems to work on everything and anything except for bosses.

Force field can help in those rare cases where you have 12 enemies hitting your tank after a taunt. It's not necessary for most fights though.

I find that putting a tactic for mind blast when 3 or more enemies surround the caster works okay. I don't think the stun effect is anything fantastic - it's only 1 second or so. So it's not enough to knock out a mage or anything so your melee characters can run up to it to kill it. Nope... it's not that kind of spell. It does stop a big group from harassing at the beginning and can give you some time to kill a key target or get your bearings or just wait for important heals to finish their cooldowns.

Sometimes the pull strategy works, and I know I use it if I can pull non-mage mobs first so I can tackle the mages with less mobs surrounding them. Sometimes though that's not possible due to cutscene battles where they lock the doors behind you and stuff like that :/

Modifié par egervari, 16 novembre 2009 - 08:20 .