If you have already tried this or have knowledge, do chime in. I'm asking ya now, nicely. Don't make me ask you not nicely...
So based on my theorycrafting, there are two definitely hugely glaring problems with doing an All-Archer (or almost All-Archer Party):
CCCs
Running such a staggered party setup means lack of CCCs. If you go total Archer Party, then there's...nil. If you run a mage instead, then you can reliably use Disoriented Combos, which means...upped Spirit Bolt, upped Stonefist, and double-upped Walking Bomb. The only Brittle combo worth abusing would be double upped Assassinate, for insane damage. It may actually be safer to abuse Walking Bomb in this setup since you don't have a tank to KO via friendly fire. But yeah, there is very little in terms of CC.
I don't know if the relative dearth of CCCs will be a terrible problem, given Rogue DPS. I don't see many dudes lasting too long under focused fire, so it's mostly a race against time and a bit of kiting, probably.
CC, Threat Management, Survivability
So, no tank. Yup. And maybe no mage. Double yup. So how to CC, how to manage threat?
Solely considering your archers, I'd say you resolve CC through use of Sabotage abilities (Fog, Chaos, Flask, etc), double Decoys (via Rogue Hawke, Sebastien), trying (yes, trying because I know it's not terribly reliable) to get Dog to tank. Personally I'm of the opinion that Dog would be absolutely necessary. Dog likes to charge first into battle, meaning he normally accumulates the initial threat, giving your archers the seriously important initial seconds to knock off a lot of dudes, or knock off those pesky assassins and mages (which I think an all-archer party would be really good at given the insane single-target DPS).
And how to manage threat? It'll be easy for Hawke himself given the abilities from the Shadow tree (helloooooo, Inconspicuous), but I think the easy answer for all the archers is simply Stealth. One character taking heat? STEALTH! Everyone taking too much flak? STEALTH PARTIES!!!! Stealth, then kite your butt really far away to give you the space you need to take guys down. STEALTH PARTIES!!!! obviously don't really work if you decide to go with a Mage as your 4th, but I think whichever mage you pick should be able to CC so you can still kite away reasonably well (Mind Blast, Glyphs, Sleep, Entropic Cloud, etc etc etc).
Normal threat management talents like Goad are really bad for this party composition. Goading enemies from one squishy to the next seems to be...counter-productive and undesirable to me. I also don't think Dog can seriously tank enough to warrant targeting him with Goad.
For surviving I think a general rule may be to abuse Obscure as much as possible. 100% defense seems reasonable to me, especially when you're talking about a bunch of squishies which means that little defense boost may be the difference with life and death.
And yeah, kiting. I feel like it's 100% unavoidable. Deal with it since going with an all-archer party is probably not the way the game was designed.
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Planning the Builds
Skills
For all the archers: leave the archery trees untouched. Not worth the skill point investment. You'll likely end up with higher DPS auto-attacking than spamming talents. The only exception is obviously Assassinate or times when you really want to lock down or eliminate a guy (read: assassins and mages).
Hawke should spend most of the points in his specializations, like any good Rogue should. All rogues need Stealth (and preferably the Stealthy Running upgrade) to be able to shed some threat when necessary. The non-Hawke rogues need their unique trees and go heavily into Sabotage for what CC abilities there are. (at least two instances of Chaos and Fog should be enough to manage battles).
If you choose to run a mage, then it'd best be support with some DPS. Primal tree seems to be good, as is the Elemental tree. Elemental tree is reasonable because normal mooks are really vulnerable to fire (rumination888 has a video proving this for mages, and Cold is good vs. a variety of bosses and dudes (i.e. dragons, Rock Wraiths of doom). Also, since you're all ranged there's no threat of friendly fire, which means the Elemental tree is in business. I think really you could just respec your mage based on what you think you'll see in terms of enemy makeup.
Sample builds (off the top of my head):
Hawke
Varric
Sebastien
Isabela
Anders: Primal
Merrill: Primal
Anders: Elemental
Merrill: Elemental
Party Composition
Hawke
Varric
Sebastien
(????)
if you want a pure archer approach, then the obvious answer is to fill out Isabela. Now normally Isabela is trash (and trashy...ba-dum tsch!) but with a bow and some pretty solid passives, I feel like she won't be half-bad. But the other option is to run a mage in the last slot, which means either Merrill or Anders. Merrill is going to be probably the more DPS/CC option, given the generally helpful Entropy tree, Hemorrhage, and Blood Mage capabilites for offensive power. Anders is going to be more of a support/buffbot, given his natural healing ability and the Creation tree, giving Valiant Aura and Haste, but the only real CC would be Glyphs and Petrify.
I think the smartest choice of the three would be Anders, as I don't know if the whole shebang would be manageable without Haste and Valiant Aura speeding up killing, and with Healing to bail you out of tight spots. But, Anders is a chach, so there's that. Merrill next, the Entropy tree gives a good set of lockdowns and debuffs (Hex of Torment is really, really good) but lacks Healing and Haste. Then Isabela last because it's simply not as flexible as the other setups. But if you've got the set for attempting such a feat, I'd give you major, major points.
Of course, another option would be to run a mage Hawke and with Varric, Isabela, and Sebastien. You'd probably have a lot more options available that way (sheer amount of skill points, specializations). But A. you'd likely be buff-botting which isn't as fun as tearing the dudes up yourself, and B. that's not the point of this guide. So there's that.
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I'm going to try to convert my DW rogue into an archer if/once I figure out if this is doable, or test when I find the time to log on some hours. So fire away! (ok, terrible pun)
Modifié par ezrafetch, 25 mars 2011 - 04:42 .
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