15 réponses à ce sujet

[Kaylord]

So here it is: I am playing on hard mode, second play though. My party: Hawke-archer, Fenris, Merril, Varric. I have 10 healing potions.

The ancient rock wraith just destroys me. I dodge all his area attacks behind pillars, sometimes someone cannot dodge his rolling ball in time, which is usually directly followed up by this rather far reaching slashing attack. After countless tries, I have him down to 1/3 live. Then about 12 adds spawn and just stun and electrocute the entire party. I get maybe three or four down, then my party is dead.

What am I doing wrong? Or do I just have the wrong party for his?

This is so annoying, I seldom saw such a badly balanced boss fights. All the battles before were cakewalk with said party, and then something like this just completely destroys the flow of the game! I cannot even just switch out party members, having to replay the whole section for that. AAAAAARRRRRGH!!!!!

Modifié par Kaylord, 19 avril 2011 - 08:30 .

[IN1]

Use the search function, please. There is a crapload of threads dedicated to ARW strategies.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

Click here for a relevant thread.

[neeeiiil]

Get some Lightning warding runes on your armour.
Rock wraiths are weak against cold and spirit, there are staffs that do spirit or cold damage, you can also get cold runes. Also it will take more damage when it is collapsed in the middle of the room so plant a firestorm and hail of arrows on it.

Anders would be a better choice than Merrill Because of his revive ability. Or have them both with cold spells and ditch Fenris.

Of course you will have restart the from high town for all that.

[Kaylord]

Those guides always have Anders with them. I hate Anders.

Yeah, that´s what I feared. Without Anders or being a healing mage, with this party setup it seems to be nigh impossible. Without Anders, it makes no sense to bring Bethany, but mum did not want that, so that´s a no go.

[nickan1022]

I have a lot of questions about your builds and tactics, but let's start with Fenris. By level 10-12 you should have his scythe and other 2h skills. When the 12 spawn, they spawn in a sort of box around him. While your party is huddled behind the pillar waiting for the big flash phase to end, you should be prepping Fenris with his burst skills (ideally you have Cleave and such). As soon as the little wraiths spawn, target the 3 in a row that appear on his side. The spawning animation usually takes a few seconds. As soon as you see the red dots appear or the red target rings appear, charge Fenris into the first of the three, then scythe through them. The scythe plus one or two swings should kill those three before they are even done spawning. Then charge into each one in succession, dishing out a whirlwind or mighty blow as appropriate, but charging at each set as fast as you can. Have your other guys focus fire down the other spawns in the opposite side of Fenris' path and kind of "meet him in the middle".

Okay, that said, you haven't taken Anders, and so you're missing Heal, Aid Allies, Haste, and Glyph of Paralysis, as well as other goodies. Your party is set up as DPS-heavy (glass-cannon-ish) and this fight can punish that party makeup. This isn't to say it's not a viable strategy. If you're going to use lots of DPS, you have to make sure you have the talents to burst it fast enough to take down the spawns before you get zapped.

Also, you need to get good at recognizing his attack shifts and patterns. When he starts to roll as a ball, pause immediately and get the chars in his path out of the way with a move command (don't take the time to move them manually).

[Apathy1989]

No one has creation tree in that list, so I imagine thats your main problem.

To be honest I find the rock wraith fight to be infuriatingly boring. Its constant movement to get your support out of the powerballs range, and constant knockdowns for the tank. You cannot disable or control it, and its attacks have stupid range so cannot be avoided.

I think your probably just royally screwed with that group setup against it, you need anders around despite him not wanting to goto the deep roads.

So either load back before you went to the deep roads, or drop difficulty down.

[Kaylord]

nickan, thanks for the hints. May group really feel like a glass cannon now, even though Fenris has 20% damage reduction, and I hate being reduced to that crappy WOW-combat mechanics (tank - healer- dualism) which seem to have taken over all RPG and CRPGs nowadays.

apathy, most boss fights in DA2 seem crappy to me, as you have to resort eiter to the "who has more potions"-game or cheese the AI. Boring? Well, for me very annoying since it strains my immersion quite a bit.

Fenris maybe the key; he is not skilled vanguard yet. I made better use of whirlwind/spirit pulse combinations and beefed up his survivability with extra 10% damage resistance. Regardless, it is difficult enough to keep Fenris alive until those 12 spawn. Without heal spells, he gets constantly smashed by the ARW, and the cooldown on the potions is too long to compensate. I assured his survival by having him attack alternately with dog. Regardless, his livebar is not very high at the beginning of the 12 spawn. With the earlier 2 spawns, I used focus fire so each spawn fell within a second. With 12 spawns, it means 12 seconds and that time is enough to kill at least one party member. So next time, I should really do a perfect fight with almost no potion use until those 12 spawn. Each party member can then heal up with potions once, which should then prove long enough to destroy all 12.

This party setup is a lot of fun everywhere else, but here it surpasses frustration. I hate giving up.

[mr_afk]

Kaylord wrote...

This party setup is a lot of fun everywhere else, but here it surpasses frustration. I hate giving up.

Well given that it is possible to solo the ARW on nightmare with just an archer it definately is possible with your party setup. Probably quite challenging, but that's where the greatest rewards/enjoyment come from right?

Basically, without a healer you don't want to get into a melee hitting contest with the ARW. No matter your damage reduction, getting damaged and only having potions as a means to heal = dead.
Therefore you should probably switch your focus to your ranged party members.
I'm not sure what the ARW does on hard, but for your party setup you'll basically want to avoid having any contract with it while it's walking or rolling around - e.g. kite with whichever member it chases while the others do some ranged damage. This means that you'll probably be leaving fenris hiding in a corner somewhere. (btw, quite obvious but it's worth mentioning to spread your party out - ie. using hold and microing. Getting two or so members trapped in a corner is a good way to go from almost winning to losing this fight)

When it collapses into a pile of rubble and all those profane spawn, get fenris in there to soak up all the electric bolts while you focus fire to kill them all. When they're all dead (and hopefully you're not), go hack at the ARW for a little bit more until it reforms itself and either becomes a rolling ball of doom or a wannabe autobot (transformers reference). And then, joy of joys you get to repeat the running around avoiding it stage.
note: if you've built fenris as a complete glass cannon (e.g. no con), then I'm not sure what you can do. Those electric bolts impart a brief stun if you have a low fortitude (e.g. rogues and mages) so using fenris to free your ranged dps to actually do their dps is the ideal goal. But if fenris is getting stunned...... well, just use the dog. It actually is the best tank. Just hide behind the pillar for a few additional seconds (so the dog picks up all the aggro) then focus fire on each profane one at a time.

The very inital stage (where it stands up throwing lightning bolts at your party) will probably the most hit and miss part, as if you're unlucky he might manage to zap your party to death before you injure it enough to make it run away and hide in the middle. Either way just try unload as much dps on it in that initial stage (using your dog and potions) while spreading out your ranged attackers so they don't all get fried at the same time. Once you pass that stage you'll be effectively relying on your ranged attackers (and your ability to move them out of harms way) which can take a while (an exercise in patience I guess).

If you don't have any maker's sighs I suppose you can't respec for it so there's no point me recommending builds etc. Good luck, hope this helps

p.s. and NEXT time, bring anders along so you can get heals and haste and finish the fight so much quicker that you'll wonder what made you decide to not bring him the first time! 

Modifié par mr_afk, 19 avril 2011 - 08:24 .

[Kaylord]

mr_afk, thanks for the encouragement!

I still haven´t figured out the ARW´s ranged attack. He shoots out lighting bolts with aoe when there is no melee opponent. I so far had two tactics for counter, both yet very life-consuming. Either I sent in dog and Fenris alternately to make him busy at melee, or spread the party so that only one gets hit by his lightning. The first method seemed to be slightly better, since the lightning has high damage, too, and it seems to shoot faster than his melee attacks strike.

You are saying he only does it in the first phase? I had the impression this was every phase, when he has no melee opponent, because just kiting him with ranged attackers, like I do easily with the dragons, rarely succeeds. I will verify it this evening, because that could be a key element indeed.

I have reserved one playthough for Anders, but not this one. I liked him quite well in Awakening, he was sort of a cool roguish mage. In DA2, he is uncool, psychotic, ugly and gay and thus not my taste. RPG-wise it seemed better to me to leave him in his hospital where he can do most good and least damage.

EDIT: Changed topic so that it is clear I am not looking for the myriad "standard procecure" guides, aka Anders.
EDIT2: Your additional "note" is a good hint to; so hiding behind pillars makes the spawns pick up aggro elsewhere, ideally dog. Fenris has 20 Con, it is not quite enough to shake all those stuns when he is clobbered with all 12 of them.

Modifié par Kaylord, 19 avril 2011 - 08:38 .

[mr_afk]

Kaylord wrote...

mr_afk, thanks for the encouragement!

I still haven´t figured out the ARW´s ranged attack. He shoots out lighting bolts with aoe when there is no melee opponent. I so far had two tactics for counter, both yet very life-consuming. Either I sent in dog and Fenris alternately to make him busy at melee, or spread the party so that only one gets hit by his lightning. The first method seemed to be slightly better, since the lightning has high damage, too, and it seems to shoot faster than his melee attacks strike.

You are saying he only does it in the first phase? I had the impression this was every phase, when he has no melee opponent, because just kiting him with ranged attackers, like I do easily with the dragons, rarely succeeds. I will verify it this evening, because that could be a key element indeed.

I have reserved one playthough for Anders, but not this one. I liked him quite well in Awakening, he was sort of a cool roguish mage. In DA2, he is uncool, psychotic, ugly and gay and thus not my taste. RPG-wise it seemed better to me to leave him in his hospital where he can do most good and least damage.

Well, Anders may be an annoying whiny mage flower BUT he does make himself useful. If you just ignore him and his sermonising you'll get along fine haha.

And as far as I know, the ARW only stands up throwing lightning bolts in the first phase. After the 360 laser attack he tends to roll around in a ball - which can be easily dodged by positioning your members around different pillars.
This is on nightmare though, so maybe on hard it's different?

As for the lightning, it actually isn't that damaging, it's just that your ranged attackers generally are a lot more fragile and can't take much damage. Thus it's preferable to send fenris and the dog in to occupy it while unleashing uninterrupted ranged dps (and to also spread them out so that if fenris loses the aggro your whole party doesn't get instantly fried). Same sort of deal with the profane that spawn.

oh and if possible, get merrill to use cold or spirit staffs and spells (and arcane weapons if you have it). the ARW and profane are weak to those elements so it'll help your damage output significantly. Anyway, see how it goes this evening then, I better get back to preparing for my exam tomorrow. gah.

Modifié par mr_afk, 19 avril 2011 - 08:41 .

[Kaylord]

Grumpy Old Wizard; thanks, finally, in the link you posted, amongst the myraid "with healer" braggers, I found some additional hints for my group setup.

[Jack-Nader]

Yeh, that is a rough party. Easiest party is all ranged damage dealers. Rumination888's video of him taking down the ARW is a perfect example. This party does so much damage that the ARW never actually uses his talents. He spends the entire time in the center in cool down.

Your best bet is to redo the deep roads. Take aveline and anders. All aveline needs is taunt and shield defence.

[Lumikki]

I think you party is wrong. As for healing, some would be nice, but not sure if it's actually needed. Depense how good you are avoiding the ARW's attacks with rangers. Stay near pilars, allways keep distance, so if rolling happens, be alert, you can avoid it by running behind pilar and then some safe direction. How ever, it's gonna take long time to kill it, if you damage isn't high and alot of luck too.

Group: Tank + 3 ranger or 4 rangers.

Modifié par Lumikki, 19 avril 2011 - 11:01 .

[mesmerizedish]

The Ancient Rock Wraith was the only fight I had to do on Normal. Hell, the Arishok's duel took less time on Hard.

[Kaylord]

I MADE IT! WOHOOO!!

The key to winning was:

1. keeping Fenris alive (he died usually first because of his attempts at tanking). Since there is no healer, that meant he had to charge in, get aggro and then kite or hide him behind a pillar.

2. Focus fire without too much focus. The last spawn of 12 adds caused to much damage and could focus a party member down because all party members focused, firsthand. I split the focus in two, timed a summon of dog, so that the lightning bolts distributed amongst the whole health pool of the party+dog. Like this, I could down the adds with minimal individual life loss.

3. Of course, perfect micromanaging of the party. In doubt, better move away instead of finishing that attack. Positions always close to a pillar to quickly hide behind them.

4. Burst damage by timing hex, stamina potions and all high damage abilities directly after the adds are destroyed.

Of the 10 healing potions, I needed only 5.