96 réponses à ce sujet

[Rykoth]

Primal for the win. My MageHawke uses Stonefist/Chain Lightning/Rock Armor, and can sometimes off-tank if he needs to.

[x-president]

Killjoy Cutter wrote...

Huh -- my mages seem to tear things apart very adeptly, to the point that I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to ever play an archer

Same.  My current mage is starting to dish out some dmg now.

[rumination888]

Killjoy Cutter wrote...

Based on what I've seen in the game, it looks like Cunning-based Defense tops out at 5% for non-rogues.   Is this actually the case?

The higher the enemy's level, the higher your cunning needs to be to see any actual increase in defense %. The stats in game reflect what your defense % is against an enemy equal to your level. The actual defense % cap is 80%.

[Stalky24]

Btw, anyone tried stacking bonus damage percentage? it seems you can pull nice numbers when you get like ~50% (+50% from elemental on fire)

[Killjoy Cutter]

rumination888 wrote...

Killjoy Cutter wrote...

Based on what I've seen in the game, it looks like Cunning-based Defense tops out at 5% for non-rogues.   Is this actually the case?

The higher the enemy's level, the higher your cunning needs to be to see any actual increase in defense %. The stats in game reflect what your defense % is against an enemy equal to your level. The actual defense % cap is 80%.

And the calculation is different for rogues?   (IE, the same cunning at the same level will give a rogue a higher Defense %) 

[Jman5]

NIghtmare on DAO was a total cakewalk compared to this. Hell on my 3rd playthrough with 2h warrior, I killedthe Archdemon by myself. Now, a single assassin will kill my entire team....

When you see the assassin stealth, back your weak characters up against a wall so he can't back stab you. He'll instead be forced to target one of your warriors like Avaline who should be able to tank the hit.

[rumination888]

Killjoy Cutter wrote...

And the calculation is different for rogues?   (IE, the same cunning at the same level will give a rogue a higher Defense %) 

I am 99.9% positive there's no difference.

Just to give you some perspective, my duelist rogue needed ~65 cunning to reach 80% defense against level 24 bosses.... and 40% of that defense came from duelist abilities.

[TcheQ]

Jman5 wrote...

NIghtmare on DAO was a total cakewalk compared to this. Hell on my 3rd playthrough with 2h warrior, I killedthe Archdemon by myself. Now, a single assassin will kill my entire team....

When you see the assassin stealth, back your weak characters up against a wall so he can't back stab you. He'll instead be forced to target one of your warriors like Avaline who should be able to tank the hit.

Oh that's a good idea, but what if they are using the insta-backstab or double-thrust (all these insta-kill)

I've switched to Isabela now that Carver is dead, and amped my three mages each with elemental weapons.  It helps!  Though tight spaces vs enemies who knock them over continually is a serious issue (Shade are a complete pain, fast attacks, knockback, spirit immunity).  I have to run Hawke away from every battle.  Isabela's +5% speed for friendship does wonders.

Now I just need the next impossible enemy to whine about.  Oh wait that's the Rage Demon and my +718 resistance to fire yet still gets penetrated. Sigh...

[termokanden]

x-president wrote...

soteria wrote...

No they're not good until you upgrade them. But they're great once you do. Bursting Arrow does two useful things:
1. Good damage on BRITTLE enemies. So it's good to combine with Cone of Cold for example.
2. Causes the obscured effect. This is useful in itself but great when combined with the Shadow tree so you can start disorienting enemies.

But doesn't bursting shot cause FF? What good is it to have an abilitiy that can obscure my allies when I'm also hitting them with damage?

I don't think it casues FF with obscure upgrade, but I'm not 100% sure.

OK first of all it doesn't say "nightmare only" in the title. Let's say we are playing on nightmare then. I am honestly not 100% sure about this, but it looks to me like it leaves a cloud of smoke that stays for a little while, and even if you enter AFTER the damage was done, you still get obscured.

The reason I'm not 100% sure about this is I was playing with Arcane Shield for a long time (I finally respecced out of it last night because it just isn't half as good as it says), and that effect makes everything else almost impossible to see

I saw some weird things last night anyway. Pretty sure I saw Assassinate deal 24k damage to one target. Doesn't matter because it was an instakill, but still that doesn't sound right. It was only dealing about 3k to enemies it couldn't kill. But I also saw Bursting Arrow deal 2400 damage to one BRITTLE target. Not bad damage for an AoE ability.

[Jman5]

I haven't played a rogue yet, so I know very little about their abilities. I just know that whenever I put my butt against a wall, he targets my warrior instead. If I don't I sometimes get 1-shotted.

Does it pause at the start of combat for you? I have this option checked and it's quite helpful for assessing what needs to be done.

[termokanden]

Trefecka wrote...

Pinning shot seems to have a really low disorient/pin chance. I've been mainly using it as a damage skill :S

Sorry but I have to comment on this one as well. The problem I have with that ability is how it has a low chance of working against any of the really dangerous enemies because they are NOT normal. It doesn't even pin 100% of the time against normal enemies. As an archer rogue you have to either lose damage by investing in willpower or manage your stamina properly. You just can't afford to use a marginal ability like this.

I can't think of many situations where it wouldn't be better to use Bursting Arrow or Archer's Lance. Of course Assassinate is ALWAYS a better use of your time. Decoy too. I just don't have room to use Pinning Shot, and so I don't even upgrade it anymore.

Sorta off topic, but I have a question about bursting arrow's obscure upgrade. Does that have any use at all on nightmare? Afaik obscure is a buff for your party, which means you have to aim the bursting arrow ontop of your party to get the obscure buff right? And since bursting arrow FF's.....has anyone actually experimented with it to see how it works?

Depends. I need to test whether I'm right about what I posted above. If the cloud still obscures you after the damage is done, it's useful. If not, then obviously you can skip that upgrade for nightmare difficulty.

[Graunt]

Jman5 wrote...

NIghtmare on DAO was a total cakewalk compared to this. Hell on my 3rd playthrough with 2h warrior, I killedthe Archdemon by myself. Now, a single assassin will kill my entire team....

When you see the assassin stealth, back your weak characters up against a wall so he can't back stab you. He'll instead be forced to target one of your warriors like Avaline who should be able to tank the hit.

This doesn't actually work, and I'm not sure who started this rumor.  Even when you have all of your characters backed up against the wall, the Assassin will appear in front of you and proceed to FACE STAB and take off the same amount of health as if they appeared behind you.  I've been dealing with this for the last hour or so.  

What's even worse is that sometimes the game "cheats" and the Assassin will be running directly towards you and then appear behind you without any of the vanishing animation or anything.  They also have a tendancy to do the flip-kick interrupt right as you're Shield Bashing them and then restealth even if they just came out of stealth.

They didn't give me any trouble after I picked up Gravitic, but before level 10 they are terrible, even with all of the other interrupt abilities at your disposal.

I can't think of many situations where it wouldn't be better to use
Bursting Arrow or Archer's Lance. Of course Assassinate is ALWAYS a
better use of your time. Decoy too. I just don't have room to use
Pinning Shot, and so I don't even upgrade it anymore.

Bursting Arrow has pitiful damage on Nightmare and Archer's Lance does FF and requires you to constantly move your group around the archer.  If you try moving your archer away to setup the shot, typically by the time he gets to a good position the group has already moved and you'll be lucky to hit 1-2.  Pinning shot in that case is much better.

Modifié par Graunt, 14 mars 2011 - 07:10 .

[Graunt]

m14567 wrote...

Graunt wrote...

...

This doesn't actually work, and I'm not sure who started this rumor.  Even when you have all of your characters backed up against the wall, the Assassin will appear in front of you and proceed to FACE STAB and take off the same amount of health as if they appeared behind you.  I've been dealing with this for the last hour or so.  What's even worse is that sometimes the game "cheats" and the Assassin will be running directly towards you and then appear behind you without any of the vanishing animation or anything.  They also have a tendancy to do the flip-kick interrupt right as you're Shield Bashing them and then restealth even if they just came out of stealth.
...

It does work pretty reliably for me.  I'd say about 80% of the time. I'm assuming it is intentional and not some wierd bug.

Like I just said, I just spent an hour dealing with them on a stupid mission that bugged out twice on me because I ended up Shield Bashing the Assassin into the floor, so I had to restart.  Not once did backing up against the wall prevent him from taking off 75% health from everyone but the tank.  He would just appear in front of them and not care.  I'm not saying it never ever works, because I've seen it work sometimes, but it's definitely not reliable, because not all of their huge hitting attacks need to be from the back.

Modifié par Graunt, 14 mars 2011 - 07:13 .

[rabidhellhound]

I've come to learn when dealing with assasins that if they vanish before I get the chance to stun them somehow, just throw up an AoE right around me (granted, on nightmare this may be a problem). It usually hits those ****holes and knocks them out of stealth so that I can cheap hit them with something myself. Does it waste an AoE? Probably, but it also saves my but because I know exactly who they are going after when they disappear.

[Jman5]

Graunt wrote...

Jman5 wrote...

NIghtmare on DAO was a total cakewalk compared to this. Hell on my 3rd playthrough with 2h warrior, I killedthe Archdemon by myself. Now, a single assassin will kill my entire team....

When you see the assassin stealth, back your weak characters up against a wall so he can't back stab you. He'll instead be forced to target one of your warriors like Avaline who should be able to tank the hit.

This doesn't actually work, and I'm not sure who started this rumor.  Even when you have all of your characters backed up against the wall, the Assassin will appear in front of you and proceed to FACE STAB and take off the same amount of health as if they appeared behind you.  I've been dealing with this for the last hour or so.  

What's even worse is that sometimes the game "cheats" and the Assassin will be running directly towards you and then appear behind you without any of the vanishing animation or anything.  They also have a tendancy to do the flip-kick interrupt right as you're Shield Bashing them and then restealth even if they just came out of stealth.

They didn't give me any trouble after I picked up Gravitic, but before level 10 they are terrible, even with all of the other interrupt abilities at your disposal.

I'm not going to try to explain how exactly it works because I don't play a rogue or understand how the assassin AI works. I just know that when I leave a mage or varric sitting in the middle of a room there is a good chance the assassin will backstab KO them. When I run Varric and mage up against the wall the assassin targets someone else.

It's possible that the AI prioritizes characters with their backs exposed. You seem to indicate that what you do is run everything up against a wall. Next time just run your weak guys back.

I don't know why it works, but it does. I didn't read this anywhere or hear some rumor from some guy on the internet. I just was getting really annoyed that my DPS kept getting 1-shotted in the back by assassins. So I tried protecting their backs and I never had a problem with it again.

Modifié par Jman5, 14 mars 2011 - 10:11 .

[termokanden]

Graunt wrote...

Bursting Arrow has pitiful damage on Nightmare and Archer's Lance does FF and requires you to constantly move your group around the archer.  If you try moving your archer away to setup the shot, typically by the time he gets to a good position the group has already moved and you'll be lucky to hit 1-2.  Pinning shot in that case is much better.

I don't have that much of a problem using Archer's Lance. I also sometimes use Decoy to set up a good shot.

Bursting Arrow pretty much needs a combo in any case to do decent damage. Does it still do poor damage then on Nightmare?

But Pinning Shot I am still not convinced about. I can do the same damage by autoattacking because it's slightly faster. So if I am not guaranteed to pin or disorient someone, I just don't see why I should be wasting the stamina. It's not like DAO - here I actually run out of stamina very fast.

[Rhys1984]

I found using ice powers from elemental, top of the primal tree and armour, so stone fist and petrify, and a fair whack of the entropy tree helped me immensley on shutting down the battlefield.
in combination i went force mage as well.
you wont do much damage, but you will assist your allies significantly. i also had elemental weapons and shields up once id exhausted my mana a tad.
you can actually become a dps machine but i feel merril and anders can handle that a lot better, especially down the vengeance wing and merrils blood magic splashing.

[Graunt]

Jman5 wrote...

I'm not going to try to explain how exactly it works because I don't play a rogue or understand how the assassin AI works. I just know that when I leave a mage or varric sitting in the middle of a room there is a good chance the assassin will backstab KO them. When I run Varric and mage up against the wall the assassin targets someone else.

It's possible that the AI prioritizes characters with their backs exposed. You seem to indicate that what you do is run everything up against a wall. Next time just run your weak guys back.

I don't know why it works, but it does. I didn't read this anywhere or hear some rumor from some guy on the internet. I just was getting really annoyed that my DPS kept getting 1-shotted in the back by assassins. So I tried protecting their backs and I never had a problem with it again.

Congrats on finding a scripting bug.  Wanna hear another that's extremely annoying and completely random?  On my first Mage playthrough I never had any problems switching characters in the middle of combat and quickly casting a spell.  Now, every single goddamn time I try this, my Mages will stop, spin their staves around for 3-4 seconds and then START to cast.  This makes it so they keep missing 99% of the stagger attempts anymore and it's ridiculous.  It doesn't matter if they were attacking, standing still or anything, they do it every time now.  Plus on my first playthrough, if I had a tactic setup to cast a spell on a staggered target, they would literally do it a split second after the stagger.  Now they don't, they usually cast it after it wears off.

Modifié par Graunt, 14 mars 2011 - 11:42 .

[Atilius the Hun]

Thanks Mike. I was looking to build a mage on my second play through and now have a better idea on how to do it.

[Cstriker01]

Okay so I stayed elemental and I love it. I'm rocking my frost and fire with pyromancer for the +25% and horror for CC, Crushing prison, and i'm planning on getting Torment hex, walking bomb, and spirit bolt for more single target dps. So far, loving it! Mages are pure awesomeness.

I did take blood mage instead of force mage to get hemorage and blood control for CC. Does anyone know how well those two blood mage abilities fair?

May get sleep too, not sure yet.