17 réponses à ce sujet

[Keth Balderk]

I was able to finish this combat, but did not find it easy. A lot of people seem to be moaning how easy the game is; so, I would like some pointers to improve my play. The protagonist is a L8 warrior armed with a grey iron saw sword and a grey iron enchanted dagger. I have a L7 dog, L7 Morrigan (no third tier talents/ no cone of cold), and L8 Wynn (with only the spells she comes with on meeting). So, what is a winning strategy to make this combat easy on Nightmare (or any other level)? Thanks for your help.

[Bluesmith]

Maximize your tank's armor and defense. HP is secondary (don't bother putting points into CON). Send him in, taunt, and then wail on the enemy. Have Wynne simply healbot. Keep regen up on your tank at all times. Use heal when health falls below 50%. Heroic Defense is actually fairly helpful. Magic weapons are very useful if you run 3 melee.

If you want to really trivialize the game there are a number of things you can do. One is forcefield your tank, rendering him immune to all damage, letting you run without any healing or fear of wiping whatsoever. You're also free to AOE spam on top of him. Rotating Cone of Cold and Winter's Grasp with a high magic mage can totally lockdown even boss characters if your MAG is high enough (cone of cold alone can lock down whites, easily). Crushing Prison is a OHKO on whites and sometimes yellows. Mana Clash will OHKO pretty much every caster in the game - even bosses. AOEs can be cast through walls, and you can easily abuse certain spell combos (Paralysis Explosion, Storm of the Century) to really break the game's difficulty.

[metatrans]

crowd control spells are vitally important at all stages of the game. even boss fights usually have additional mobs besides the boss.



a high performance tank is 100% necessary to win against most of the game's bosses. a dual wield warrior can adequately tank but a few things have to be kept in mind.



1) defense is the best damage mitigation stat. it is gained primarily through Dexterity.

2) armor is the second best damage mitigation stat. it is gained primarily through your equipment. 42 strength is required to wear the heaviest armor in the game.

3) consitution is a low performance stat. you will automatically gain enough health from levels to get you through the whole game without putting even 1 point in Con.

4) healing spells and health poultices are almost always enough to keep you alive even through alot of incoming damage. what really kills you fast will be stuns and knockdowns that prevent you from being able to use a poultice when you're low. the way to avoid this is by increasing your Physical Resistance stat. Strength and Dex both increase this and also look for gear that increases it.



your tank will also need to be able to maintain aggro. wear the heaviest armor you can equip to gain initial aggro and use Taunt whenever the cooldown is up. that alone should suffice to hold aggro through almost everything. Threaten is a useful passive ability to have if you have a character like a mage or rogue that tends to pull aggro off single targets. for many fights though Taunt alone is good enough and Threaten can be skipped.

[originalSabZero]

In my opinion, people who find the game easy are min-maxers. If you're not, then the game is challenging enough. At least it is for me. I personally find min-maxing boring and stressing.

[Dragon Age1103]

originalSabZero wrote...

In my opinion, people who find the game easy are min-maxers. If you're not, then the game is challenging enough. At least it is for me. I personally find min-maxing boring and stressing.

still early for me & I'm sure I'll feel dumb after getting an answer but what is " min-maxing"???

[metatrans]

min-maxing is just what the name implies. minimizing negatives and maximizing positives. in other words, optimization of attributes for peak performance.



and to respond to originalSabZero, for a person like me its impossible to play the game without min-maxing. this is a personality thing. i'm an engineer by profession so it im trained to do it anyway and for me optimization is just how things are done, its not arduous its pleasurable. and it feels wrong to use something that isn't optimized.



if thats now how you roll, thats fine. just do whatever works and pay no attention to the stats. there's lots of fun to be had in the game. i find it fun to tinker with stats and optimize. thats my fun. it also allows me to crank the difficulty to nightmare and still beat the encounters easily. but numeric scaling (the difficulty slider) just lets you maintain an adequate challenge level to your degree of optimization. a non-optmized party doesn't have the performance to play on nightmare so you stick to normal mode and the game is still fun and challenging.

[Keth Balderk]

Thanks everyone for the quick input. I appreciate the general suggestions on how to optimize play. I am thinking things will become easier for me as I get desirable talents and equipment. I would particularly appreciate info on how to make the first levels easier on nightmare. And as a reminder, I am curious in how you would approach the battle with Uldrek with the team that I outlined. Thanks again.

[Dragon Age1103]

metatrans wrote...

min-maxing is just what the name implies. minimizing negatives and maximizing positives. in other words, optimization of attributes for peak performance.

and to respond to originalSabZero, for a person like me its impossible to play the game without min-maxing. this is a personality thing. i'm an engineer by profession so it im trained to do it anyway and for me optimization is just how things are done, its not arduous its pleasurable. and it feels wrong to use something that isn't optimized.

if thats now how you roll, thats fine. just do whatever works and pay no attention to the stats. there's lots of fun to be had in the game. i find it fun to tinker with stats and optimize. thats my fun. it also allows me to crank the difficulty to nightmare and still beat the encounters easily. but numeric scaling (the difficulty slider) just lets you maintain an adequate challenge level to your degree of optimization. a non-optmized party doesn't have the performance to play on nightmare so you stick to normal mode and the game is still fun and challenging.

  Wait so why did they word it as if though min-maxing is a bad thing? Who doesn't it would be like putting 30pts in cunning on a warrior, just wouldn't make sense.
   Min-maxing is a really bad nicname for that why not playing like a normal person? lol.

[telephasic]

Uldred was one of the easier bosses IMHO. He just plays like a big ogre.



The secret is to tie him up (say in a force field) and wipe out all the abominations first. Once you only have him to concentrate on he takes a whole lot of hits, but he'll come down eventually.

[telephasic]

Dragon Age1103 wrote...

  Wait so why did they word it as if though min-maxing is a bad thing? Who doesn't it would be like putting 30pts in cunning on a warrior, just wouldn't make sense.
   Min-maxing is a really bad nicname for that why not playing like a normal person? lol.

Minmaxing originally came from the D&D world.  For example, for a D&D warrior, there was historically (haven't checked up on the new editions) no value to intelligence.  Therefore, they'd give their characters the minimum intelligence (3) in order to use the points on strength, constitituion, dexterity, etc.  Never mind that if you're RPing a character with an intelligence of three, you are playing a literal moron who probably can't figure out how to solve most quests.  Some games penalized low intelligence with limited dialogue options (fallout was hillarous for this), but those that didn't had the mechanic exploited.  As a general aside, I always had intelligence between 13 and 15 for my warriors in 2nd edition D&D games, just because I didn't want to play a dumb character. 

Minmaxing is looked down upon because it breaks immersion essentially.  You should, in a roleplaying game, find ways to get into the character you're playing, not exploit a hole in the game mechanics. 

[Mork_ba]

I'd swap Dog with AListair, if I were you. He's got some cool skills, and would be more useful... Or maybe Shale if you got the DLC. Anyway, try to not forget to make use of all kinds of skills you have. It's better to assign tactics to warriors and play the mages yourself than do the reverse. Use CC skills and spells, don't be hasty to attack with the mages(If they attack too soon they get aggro and then it's tough to pull the enemy off them), rather keep them back and heal a bit till the battle starts to pace, and use CC to control the enemies. Prioritise targets: Don't do aoe damage on all of them cause they still get to hit you. Kill them one by one instead, allowing for the incoming damage to be reduced over time, so that you can pace your healing better.



Use spells like sleep, horror, paralyze(single and mass) etc a lot. They really turn the tide of battle. Let your tank gain aggro first on tough bosses before going all-out with your dps on them. A tank's always easier to heal.





Hmmm... I hope that helped...

[Keth Balderk]

@telephasic. I think the fight may be easy for me too if I could put a forcefield on the protagonist. But I don't have that spell. See original post. Uldred was the last enemy standing before I took him down. I don't think I allowed him to create a single additional abomination either, but I did find success difficult because like an ogre he hits hard and has a lot of hit points.



@Mork_ba: Unfortunately, the protagonist is drawing the aggro. The dog sure doesn't I don't think you can swap characters in the tower, can you? Nor leave the tower until it is finished? No sleep or paralyze yet that I recall either.



One of my goals is to be able to take out the "minor" bosses at ease at low level.

[metatrans]

min-maxing is generally not a bad thing, it makes the game more easily completed. however, some people are annoyed by the breaking of immersion and would prefer to think only about story elements and not ever be bothered with game system elements. good thing theres a difficulty slider. you can do exactly that on easy mode.



anyway, some further advice for Keth.



get used to using tactics efficiently so your companions are doing the right thing even when you aren't controlling them. tactics set to automatically use health or lyrium potions at the right time are a good idea always. as are tactics that cause your party to attack the same target as your tank so as to avoid pulling aggro.assist trains are always a good idea. it makes targets die faster and thus reduces the burden on your healing.



however, none of that really applies when there's only 1 target such as in the Uldred fight.



unconventional tactics may have to be used if you can't establish a proper tank and spank routine.



have you considered kiting him? this is usually done by a mage who can open the fight by dumping as many high damage spells and high threat debuffs on the boss as possible. hopefully at least 1 slowing effect sticks to the boss as well or things could get rough.



once the initial "kite flyer" has got aggro he will need to be manually controlled and run in circles as the boss follows him around unable to catch him. the rest of the party will have to rely on ranged attacks only to damgae the boss as he won't be standing still for melee to hit him. hope your warriors have bows in their alternate equip slot.



its kind of a cheesy tactic, but it definitely works on fights that you're slightly under-prepared for.

[Cyrilix2]

Not min-maxing is looking at the Strength attribute and seeing that it helps you attack better, and putting points accordingly. Min-maxing is looking at the Strength attribute, and seeing that it gives you +0.5 dmg, +0.5 attack, +1 physical resistance, vs. Dexterity which gives you so and so bonuses, and putting points accordingly.



One examines the stats with unrivaled attention and detail to determine the MAXIMUM COMBAT EFFECTIVENESS. The other examines the stats in a conceptual fashion to determine the GAMEPLAY ORIENTATION of a character.

[Dragon Age1103]

telephasic wrote...

Dragon Age1103 wrote...

  Wait so why did they word it as if though min-maxing is a bad thing? Who doesn't it would be like putting 30pts in cunning on a warrior, just wouldn't make sense.
   Min-maxing is a really bad nicname for that why not playing like a normal person? lol.

Minmaxing originally came from the D&D world.  For example, for a D&D warrior, there was historically (haven't checked up on the new editions) no value to intelligence.  Therefore, they'd give their characters the minimum intelligence (3) in order to use the points on strength, constitituion, dexterity, etc.  Never mind that if you're RPing a character with an intelligence of three, you are playing a literal moron who probably can't figure out how to solve most quests.  Some games penalized low intelligence with limited dialogue options (fallout was hillarous for this), but those that didn't had the mechanic exploited.  As a general aside, I always had intelligence between 13 and 15 for my warriors in 2nd edition D&D games, just because I didn't want to play a dumb character. 

Minmaxing is looked down upon because it breaks immersion essentially.  You should, in a roleplaying game, find ways to get into the character you're playing, not exploit a hole in the game mechanics. 

Ah I see, well thanks for the great explination. I would have to agree using exploits really ruins the game. Little things mean a lot to me like my favorite mod is the "Circles Be Gone" mod, those little yellow circles really pull me out of the world of Ferelden at times  anyways thanks again for explaining the term.

[originalSabZero]

Well, it's a personal choice to min max or not. I do not hold a grudge against anyone who prefers it, but it is detrimental to my own enjoyment of a game.



That said, my first character, Girlbrush, did actually pretty well. Granted, I switched to easy after Redcliffe.

[RVallant]

originalSabZero wrote...

Well, it's a personal choice to min max or not. I do not hold a grudge against anyone who prefers it, but it is detrimental to my own enjoyment of a game.

That said, my first character, Girlbrush, did actually pretty well. Granted, I switched to easy after Redcliffe.

I don't get it really.

Proper stat allocation gets tarred with min-maxing. I have a persuative warrior who's reasonably intelligent and it's shown in game through his dialogue, I don't feel the need to pump him full of Cunning to 'roleplay' it.

The way I see it, min-maxing is a cop out excuse thrown at people who put points where they're meant to be put. For example, a warrior relies on Str, Dex, Wil and Con. There's no argument about it. So putting points in there is not min-maxing, yet doing so makes the game easy, because you're filling out the points that suit the role of the warrior. Does that therefore mean that I'm min-maxing because someone having a hard time decided to throw everything into strength or cunning to 'roleplay' (pointlessly I may add in some cases) ?

Regardless I reject your generalisation that people who find the game easy are min-maxers. I don't go out of my way to min-max, I just allocate stat points and talents as per how I'd expect it to be.

How it breaks immersion is also beyond me.

Anyway, if you want an easy game it's a matter of actually co-ordinating your party to work together in their roles. Rush four warriors in a trapped filled room with twenty mages and you're obviously going to have a hard time. Bring a rogue along to disable all traps and backstab ten of them while your mage fireballs the rest and your tank slaughters the warriors rushing to their aid and you'll have an easier time. It's all about awareness of the situation, area, enemies and team-work. Min-maxing doesn't even come into it.

[originalSabZero]

What is "proper" lies in the eye of the beholder. Why do you take so much offense anyway, I meant none by it.