20 réponses à ce sujet

[Nug Pie]

It's bad enough on nightmare that a party with 2 fighters and 2 mages is no more than 6 rogue backstabs from death, especially when it's impossible to kill the rogue that quickly, even ignoring all the other stuff running around the battlefield.


I'm in a close-quarters fight atm, and the usual trick of waiting for the rogue to hide, then running away, waiting for their hide to wear off, is almost impossible to pull off.

So I've pulled it off a couple of times, rogue is down 1/2, but my fighter, who has the rogue's attention, is down to 1/2 health.  I've already used my mage's heal and 1 of each of the 2 heal potion types just to get that far.

I make a mistake, the rogue backstabs me, I die, it's all over.


Well, fair enough.  However, I had gone into a corner and turned around.  The rogue un-hides in front of me, then magically teleports behind me instantaneously to backstab me.  This has happened several times now.  That can't possibly be correct.

It also makes half the strategy pointless when the game just cheats to obviate your careful strategies.

[Waltzingbear]

Get more health so you can survive a backstab if it's not a crit.
It's surely not Impossible to kill them outright. You need to use the right abilities.
Get Stonewall or Barrier for your warrior or mage and then you don't have to run for full 10 seconds, just move your other companions stand before them and after about three seconds use it to not take any damage from the backstab.

The last shouldn't be a problem if you just burn him fast as you should. It sucks true, but there's no use complaining about it.

[nicodeemus327]

Kill faster. I'm serious. Not trying to be a jerk. Make sure both of your mages are hitting on the rogue's elemental weakness. That will increase their damage significantly (possibly 2 - 3 times more damage). Chain crowd control the rogue so it can't vanish and steal potions. Use activated abilities for tons of burst with cross class combos. Stagger + Chain Lightning can work very well.

[Nug Pie]

 I swapped out that pirate chick in white, who's essentially useless, and brought back the sword-and-board girl and beat the thing through a combo of various stuns.

Still, the backstab seems broken.  They backflip and disappear, and I run and am well away when they re-appear.  I attack from far away.  My fighter runs up with pommel stun queued as the attak.  They run 5-8 steps to close, the rogue, visible, approaches, then, suddenly teleports through me instantaneously to right behind me, the other side of me, the other direction from what I was running, and backstabs me.

This is reproducible.


Sorry, but that is badly designed and way effed up.  Just registering my displeasure, FWIW.

Modifié par Nug Pie, 24 mars 2011 - 07:26 .

[kayangelus]

They are using an ability called back-stab. An ability that you can also get as a rogue, that essentially teleports the rogue to behind the target for an attack.

Anyways, first off your party should not be killable in a matter of 6 backstabs. Even my mage hawke can take at least one backstab from rogues. Get a sword-and-board tank, and there is an upkeep ability for them, that with upgrade, gives -25% damage, +25% damage resist from front, and +50% damage resist from behind. There are two passives, one that makes them immune to extra damage from crits, and one that makes them immune to flanking. Do a roughly 1:1 between con and strength. Maybe will here and there, and just have the sword and board cast taunt every so often. That character will literally be able to stand in the middle of a crowd of enemies, including some assassins backstabbing them, without going down so long as there are no magic casters.

Also, if you have 2 mages in the party, unless there are more than 2 assassins about, you really should not be giving them a chance to stealth. Mages have a number of spells that stun a single target (horror, petrify, etc.), and you could go for some that knocks targets off their feet. The task of a mage isn't to kill faster. Their task is to crowd control, heal, and weaken enemies so a rogue/tank can nuke them.

[CerealWar]

Once I got assassinate on my archer, I would brittle the rogues with Petrification. Then I'd assassinate for some ludicrous damage (20k on the low end, 48.5k at the highest) and giggle. However, before I respecced as an assassin, I had to kite the rogues around until their stealth ran out. Then pummel them with stonefist and ccs. Aveline was only able to get shield bashes off if the rogue was just recovering from a stun while Aveline was in mid animation. Otherwise, the rogue would just vanish through the shield bash. It got pretty hairy on the triple elite assassin encounter. D:

[Vormaerin]

Nug Pie wrote...



This is reproducible.

Yeah, I reproduce it on my own Hawke (who is a rogue) all the time.  Big guy tries to hit me, I teleport behind him to do lot of damage and avoid his attack.

[nicodeemus327]

Nug Pie wrote...

 I swapped out that pirate chick in white, who's essentially useless, and brought back the sword-and-board girl and beat the thing through a combo of various stuns.

Still, the backstab seems broken.  They backflip and disappear, and I run and am well away when they re-appear.  I attack from far away.  My fighter runs up with pommel stun queued as the attak.  They run 5-8 steps to close, the rogue, visible, approaches, then, suddenly teleports through me instantaneously to right behind me, the other side of me, the other direction from what I was running, and backstabs me.

This is reproducible.


Sorry, but that is badly designed and way effed up.  Just registering my displeasure, FWIW.

I don't mind it. You have to deal with the backstab one way or another. You can't just run away and pretend it will go away. Thankfully they give you the tools to deal with the rogue.

[Zan Mura]

Nug Pie wrote...

Well, fair enough.  However, I had gone into a corner and turned around.  The rogue un-hides in front of me, then magically teleports behind me instantaneously to backstab me.  This has happened several times now.  That can't possibly be correct.

It also makes half the strategy pointless when the game just cheats to obviate your careful strategies.

There are issues, yes, but not the ones you imagine. Understand that I mean no offense by this, but by your tactics and words in the OP, you clearly don't have the necessary experience to make claims about cheating and whatnot (for instance, a normal backstab even from a player rogue works by going into melee range, then teleporting behind them to stab them in the back, there's nothing unusual here... which an experienced player would know). Yet, anyhow.

Aside from a few exceptions, the best way to take down a rogue is not to run from it. In a peanutshell, consider these tips:

Rogues typically attack based on proximity, keep your tank close to them and they will attack the tank. The only exception to this is for example a mage who gathers threat through healing or by causing too much damage. The second a rogue appears, focus fire and lock them. Merrill or Anders can get Petrify early. That's a great anti assassin / boss tool. Horror also works well, though for a much shorter time. Use CCC's (cross class combos) as often as you can, for instance by using Shield Bash STAGGER + Chain Lightning / Crushing Prison. The game doesn't typically combine several difficult elements into one. If there are rogues, there will be less enemy waves, no mages, etc things that make prioritizing targets easy. Just forget about the rest and take the rogues down one at a time, maybe fire a taunt with your tank to make sure the stray mobs leave other party members alone.

In addition, there are ways to smoke a rogue out. A Cone of Cold, Tremor, or any damaging AoE when they're stealthed will force them out. A Tremor is basically a 100% guarantee since the rogue will remain stationary for a while after stealthing, and if your tank was just on them, you can smoke them out the instant they vanish.

Standing back first to the wall works too, which is something you can do if you know who the rogue is going for. They will still attack but without getting to your back, their damage is cut to a pathetic glancing blow pretty much. Surprise rogues can force a reload every now and then, but once you know to expect them, they really aren't much of a threat at all if you just react accordingly.

[Colma]

I've had an easier time dealing with assassins in a solo NM run as a mage. Probably because I know who he's going for and can just kite until he reappears...hard to do with a full party.

[SuicidalBaby]

kayangelus wrote...

They are using an ability called back-stab. An ability that you can also get as a rogue, that essentially teleports the rogue to behind the target for an attack.

If anything, the ability the rogues are utilizing is Twin Fangs, not backstab. Two totally different mechanics.

The task of a mage isn't to kill faster. Their task is to crowd control, heal, and weaken enemies so a rogue/tank can nuke them.

Should work on your mage build. I one shot staggered elite rogues in act 1 on the regular. *poof* Seems pretty fast to me.

[The Baconer]

You know, currently I'm on my first DAII Nightmare run, my rage has been continuously building up, and now it's hit a peak on the Brekker fight.

Okay, when you're dealing with rogues you need to carefully manage your team to tactically dish out the pain and remove them as quickly as possible. All right, no problem, tactical gameplay is one of the reasons I play Dragon Age.

Enemy rogues can also quickly annihilate even the sturdiest members of your party with their backstab ability. Well, that makes sense right? They're rogues.

Oh, they steal your potions too? Okay, I think we're kind of pushing it here, but nothing that can't be solved with more tactics!

What? You're saying that they also have tons of health, can chainstun all of your weaker characters while being unaffected by force themselves, and get frickin' invincibility frames whenever they use their smokebomb ability? I'm sorry, that's just pure, distilled, straight up fake difficulty right there. Slap them with any status effects and they'll just disappear into thin air, all while absorbing your combo-chaining abilities. Use Gravitic Ring on them? Sorry; it doesn't matter how slow their smokebomb animation is when they're still invincible while doing it.

So it's bull, but I can deal with it. You have to deal with it alot in this game when you're playing on Nightmare. Of course, two or three rogues at once is my limit. But what happens when we take this fake difficulty, throw down 4+ Rogues for us to fight all at once and mix it with DA2's 'Another Wave'™ formula, and you get the steaming pile of **** that is the Brekker fight. Honestly, even my standard Rogue-killing combo isn't working, since apparenlty they can just ignore Paralyze. I'm not even kidding, I'll cast the spell, there's no "Resisted!" message, and they've even got the Brittle status effect, but they'll keep on jumping around like nothing ever happened. Seriously Bioware, this is just garbage.

[Zan Mura]

Gravitic ring does matter, actually. You just need some form of AoE to smoke them out of the stealth when they enter it. Tempest is good, since it doesn't cause FF. Fire Storm too, since you're likely picking it up anyway on the way to element mastery and its 100% freeze chance for those BRITTLE CCC's.

But I do agree out of general principle, I don't like different rulesets for the enemy and myself. Their invincible stealth animation just doesn't compute for me, I have played an entire game through with my rogue and I STILL can't fit it through my head that my stealth does not share the same invincibility. The potion thing doesn't matter as you seem to practically always find potions on the bodies of rogues who stole one from you.

[SuicidalBaby]

ive never had tempest work to unstealth a rogue... mind blast is more effective at breaking their stealth. and dont give me that, "you're not doing it right" BS ive covered the group pre and post stealth with no results.
pinning shot/horror/glyph o para, stagger, upgraded chain lightning = 1 dead rogue.
nightmare @ lvl 9, 27 mag, staff of parlath, during finders keepers:
final group upstairs:
1920 dmg to assassin
1895 dmg to reaver

been doing proportionaly the same damage since lvl 6.

Modifié par SuicidialBaby, 25 mars 2011 - 09:01 .

[Zan Mura]

Well I'll admit I never actually used Tempest myself, just estimated it should work since Cone of Cold / Tremor / Fire Storm (naturally combined with Gravitic Ring, otherwise it's useless) etc all do. Those three all being things that I use on a regular basis. Logical conclusion being that if Tempest doesn't work, then damage alone isn't enough to knock them out of stealth, you need to physically be able to paralyse / knockback / knockdown them.

And yes, I will give you this BS because myself and a lot of others have found tactics that reduce rogues to common trash with only slight margin for error. We're not playing a different game so if one group has a problem and the other doesn't, chances are the first group is doing something wrong.

[Invalidcode]

Damage from enemy Backstab is pretty random, Aveline gets one shot sometimes (Yes she is at full health + up-to-date gears + immune to flanking & crit). Sometimes they can't even kill Varric/Isabela on NM.

CC them to death and/or use burst damage.

[kayangelus]

On hard at least, chain lightning seems to work in knocking assassins out of stealth. You just need to hit someone with it who is close to them, while they are in stealth.

[Xanfaus]

kayangelus wrote...

On hard at least, chain lightning seems to work in knocking assassins out of stealth. You just need to hit someone with it who is close to them, while they are in stealth.

I actually had this happen for the first time last night. Anders used chain lighting to hit one of the mobs I STAGGERED and a rogue that I had stunned with shield pummel (who proceeded to immediately teleport/go invisible after the "stunned" message popped up) got hit with some of the collateral damage and was consequently knocked out of stealth.

This was the first and only time I had successfully knocked a rogue out of stealth over 2 (and a half) characters, 60+ hours, and playing casual through hard.

[SuicidalBaby]

Zan Mura wrote...

Well I'll admit I never actually used Tempest myself, just estimated it should work since Cone of Cold / Tremor / Fire Storm (naturally combined with Gravitic Ring, otherwise it's useless) etc all do. Those three all being things that I use on a regular basis. Logical conclusion being that if Tempest doesn't work, then damage alone isn't enough to knock them out of stealth, you need to physically be able to paralyse / knockback / knockdown them.

And yes, I will give you this BS because myself and a lot of others have found tactics that reduce rogues to common trash with only slight margin for error. We're not playing a different game so if one group has a problem and the other doesn't, chances are the first group is doing something wrong.

physical or elemental force is one component that effects stealthed enemies is seems. cone's debuff in association seems to trigger it as well. I find Fist of the Maker works well with its near instint cast speed.

the "bs" I was referencing had to do with tempest only, thought that was clear. wtf are you going on about? immagined issues? youre applying other issues to my post. 2 subjects there, tempest, which you admit a lack of knowldge, and owning rogues. what the hell do those 2 things have to do with your little speech. misread much?


dont get indignant and try to tear through it now.

Modifié par SuicidialBaby, 25 mars 2011 - 11:01 .

[Zan Mura]

Uhh what? Imagined issues & my speech? Wth are you on about? Is this yet another internet tough guy wannabe routine or am I just too drunk to know the difference? You know what, don't bother responding.

[SuicidalBaby]

ohhh kaayy buddy, calm down with the wild ideas