14 réponses à ce sujet

[wanderon]

I'm barely into the main game yet but I'm already contemplating attempting some "no reload" campaigns. I have two sorts of such campaigns in mind -

1) Just basic No reload - play the game normally but if the entire party gets wiped it's game over - you lose - some one else will have to save the world from the Darkspawn...

2) No reloads - No raise dead -

• If the PC dies - game over
• If a party member dies you remove them from the party forever at the end of the battle

I will likely make a few attempts at the first version soon and save the more masocistic hard core second version for after I have completed the game

My question is - if you were going to attempt some sort of no reload campaign - what sort of PC (class - specialization- focus etc ) would you choose and what sort of party to back them up?

PLEASE KEEP SPOILERS TO A MINIMUM AND MARK ANY YOU FEEL YOU MUST POST - TIA

[Spazmodian]

Arcane Warrior allows you to walk through the game solo if you want with little fear of ever getting killed. It'll be boring and slow overall, but virtually no fear of death.

[nuculerman]

Spazmodian wrote...

Arcane Warrior allows you to walk through the game solo if you want with little fear of ever getting killed. It'll be boring and slow overall, but virtually no fear of death.

That's not entirely true, since AW is only immensely over powered once you have the third ability.  So the levels below 12 are quite challenging to solo as a mage.  But, since your PC is still a mage... as long as you don't care about soloing nightmare, I do agree that AW is the safest bet.  

I recently used the XP glitch to get a level 17 AW/BM to see what the hype was about.  I went through the Wardens intro and the Dalish quest so far.  It's a complete joke.  I love the way my guy looks and everything, and the first hour or so was a ton of fun, but man... I cant imagine playing 50+ hours with that build.  You don't need any mage DPS abilities at all.  You don't even really need BM.  You can't take damage.  It's as simple as that.  I haven't tried a real boss fight yet like Flemeth or the High Dragon, so maybe those fights need more creativity but I doubt it.  AW play style is basically this:

Activiate Rock Armor
Activate Shimmering Shield
Activate Combat Magic
Activate Mage Shield
Activate Telekenetic/Flaming/Cold weapons (whichever line you went down)
Auto attack
Leave the computer to grab a snack
Call your significant other
Go get dinner
Come back to the computer an hour later
Everything is dead.  You have 80% of your health if not more.  And you never had any mana.

I mean, I'm honestly curious as to why AW/BM is the "broken" class and not just AW.  It seems to me that there isn't a difficulty setting high enough to require you take the second specialization.  Besides which, all that would happen is you end the battle faster and with less health.

I enjoy giving Wynne the AW specialization so on those occasions where I screw up and wipe I have an instant "I win button" up my sleeve that's even more reliable than taunt/force field.

[Spazmodian]

Well, going Blood Mage does let you turn that on to use spells and not worry about the mana issue at all. As you pointed out you take almost no damage otherwise. Then you can just down health pots, I never had to use anything but the lowest ones as those almost always over healed.



Best way to fight as an AW/BM is to drop Inferno down and stand in the middle. You take little to no damage and half of the enemies spend their time running to you attempting one attack and then running out to the edge of the inferno....then back in again...



As for getting to 12 for shimmering shield...up until that point mana isn't a problem and just brute force everything down with excessively stacked CC and AE damage.

[wanderon]

I'm sure from what I'm hearing that AW/BM must be very powerful but suspect that doesn't apply early on so I'd be more concerned about how much of a glass cannon the mage is going to be for the first 10 levels than what a powerhouse he might be at end game.

[DarkSpiral]

wanderon wrote...

I'm sure from what I'm hearing that AW/BM must be very powerful but suspect that doesn't apply early on so I'd be more concerned about how much of a glass cannon the mage is going to be for the first 10 levels than what a powerhouse he might be at end game.

Well said.

[wanderon]

I'm currently leaning toward a rogue build - maybe an archer (with high stealth as a get out of trouble card) -
 
just finished browsing through a big rogue archer thread but the math and whole hotfix/no hotfix makes my head hurt   (I am not using the dex hotfix - I'll wait for the official patch).

I've started a couple different human rogues and and a dwarf commoner rogue already and I'm not sure which might be better for the no reload - the human has better stat boosts for rogue but I wonder if the dwarf magic resisitance might be worth going for?

Also just in case my no reload turns out to be my first finish - I'd like to have a relatively bablanced character that can get a lot out of the game (dialoge, goodies etc) rather than a min maxed build that has to give up gameplay options to max some area.

[Id of Ith]

Tough call. Since you are going to use the entire party, a Warrior is not a bad idea. You can pump the hell out of STR and bolt straight for Blood Dragon armor without gimping the character much (unless you plan to not use DLC items) which will put you in it before you get to anything very dangerous, which won't be possible with the other two really. As for what type, it depends I think on what party you plan to try and keep alive the longest. Since your goal here is to minimize death rather than "pure" effectiveness (i.e. you are laying yourself in front of the RNG gods), as much CC and def/armor as possible is going to be your overall goal.



To that end, I would not run a melee Rogue of any variant, because they are at risk in many situations earlier in the game when you lack some of their defensive options like rank 4 stealth or feign death. A ranged Rogue may be a good idea - going Ranger would give you a pet (though I do not know how you would apply your rules to the pets exactly), and early points would be spent in getting good lockpicking/trap disarming. Plus the archery line gives you access to scattershot, which is a powerful CC - something you'll want in your Ironman variant.

[tranj84cl]

Sword/Shield warrior, pump dex. You play as the tank. Then, you can roll 1 healer, and 2 damage dealers. Through out the game you're going to be effective at staying alive and protecting your other party members.



I've played an archer, and non-scripted encounters are easy. The ones that aren't are set ambushes, where your whole team is pulled into the middle of a bunch of guys.

[nuculerman]

wanderon wrote...

I'm sure from what I'm hearing that AW/BM must be very powerful but suspect that doesn't apply early on so I'd be more concerned about how much of a glass cannon the mage is going to be for the first 10 levels than what a powerhouse he might be at end game.

You missed my comment that you're still a mage, so unless you plan on soloing nightmare, you're not going to die if you play it right.  Mages are over powered at every level in this game, not just end game.  This is because you can get CoC at like level 3 and it's the single most broken offensive talent there is in the game.

By level 5 or so you can have CoC AND force field which are the two ideal talent/spells for your hopes of never dying.  As long as you let Allistair run in with threaten and build enough aggro so you can't pull it off him, you'll be fine.

Some recommendations for early on battles regardless of the class you choose.  

1.In the Kocari Wilds, the Emmissary needs to die on that bridge.  Failure to kill him on that bridge means the death of a party member, 9/10, since at least one, usually two will get stuck by bear traps.  To kill him on the bridge just spam your knockdown attacks.  Because he'll keep trying to run away.

2. The Ogre fight.  If you don't want to lose Allistair have the Soldier tank the Ogre.  There's just nothing you can do if the Ogre decides to grab your tank, assuming you're playing on anything but easy. Unless of course you went with my advice and chose a mage with CoC.  If you didn't, you're pretty much SoL.  The ogre resists dirty fighting 9/10 times.  

3. Bandit Leader in Lothering.  Have Morrigan spam cc him.  Darkness, mind blast and CoC all trip him up the vast majority of the time.  Don't bother having Allistair tank him.  Unless you want to burn through 4 or 5 healing pots, Allistair will die.  Give Allistair precise striking and use him to help take out everyone else quickly while Morrigan keeps the leader out of the battle.  If you're a mage this fight is a joke.  Two mages with cc abilities pretty much trivializes every fight that isn't a boss fight in this game.

[wanderon]

Well ATM I'm just doing a straight no reload game - in other words - I'm playing normally (on normal difficulty) but if the entire party gets wiped out then it's game over - try again.

(I'm going to save the dedicated Ironman with any death being final until after I have finished the game at least once )

I started a dwarf commoner rogue last night and took him to the first level of the tower in Ostagar - so far so good.

He is actually more of an RP character than a power build -

•  thus far I've spent all but one of his talents on rogue talents and one on DW weapon training (level 2 in all rogue lines except below the belt which is level 1)
• Current skills are level 3 coercion and level 1 stealing, poison, & combat training
• his current stats without equipment bonuses are: 14/25/12/10/21/12 (level 5)
• with equipment bonuses they are 16/26/13/11/22/13
• currently still in leather (cured) with armor 7 & defense 67 according to character sheet
• he currently weilds an ash longbow in one slot and Aeducan Mace/enchanted dagger in the other
• he is the party scout often pulling enemies back to the melee guys with his bow then jumping in for backstabby goodness once the tanks have them occupied and he has also mananged to disarm almost every trap thus far

I'm looking forward to seeing how he fares in the Tower which will really be the first big challenge.

[Forumtroll]

One important thing to remember is you can cast Wintergrasp through walls, while moving, while facing a different direction from the front of the zone on an enemy on the other end of the zone as long as you are targeting it.

[wanderon]

Forumtroll wrote...

One important thing to remember is you can cast Wintergrasp through walls, while moving, while facing a different direction from the front of the zone on an enemy on the other end of the zone as long as you are targeting it.

I tend to shy away from tactics that seem more like exploits than how something was designed to work - after all whats the point in making things more difficult by adding restrictions like no reloads if you are going to then exploit game anomolies to succeed.

Not saying there is anything wrong with taking whatever the game gives you - just that doing so doesn't fit within my own playstyle when it feels like an exploit.

My dwarf rogue (Bignose) & party made it through the tower without falling altho I was somewhat disappointed that Ali got the killing blow on the ogre and not Bignose.

[Vaylor66]

Probably the strongest and most balanced party I ever did was a dw rogue main, Alistair s/s tanker, wynn as the healer, and morrigain as cc and secondary damage to my main. I had very few reloads playing on nightmare and not trying for a no reload game. I also never abused cheesy tactics like perma coc and forcefield. I also barely used any potions. On normal you could probably do a no potions/no reload if you wanted.



My rogue was str based, so I had more attack rating and didn't have to rely so much on backstab. I much prefer the str based over cunning based, which I've also ran through the game with. With 4 points in the rogue line for locks/traps, you only need 30 cunning to open/disarm everything. So between some +2 to all stats items, and the free cunning points in fade, you don't have to dump many into it. And you can ignore the lethality line totally, giving you the points for the lock/trap line.



Alistair I did 26 dex, and the rest into str. He pretty much never died once he got geared up somewhat. Most non bosses only hit him for 1 damage with 47 armor. He also had very high physical and mental resists. He was a pretty decent contributor to damage as well.



Morrigain was mostly just cc spells that I could manually start a fight with. Then I'd just let her auto dps with single target damage spells. Wynn was just set up as pure healer, turning off any tactics for damage.

[Vaylor66]

Double Post.

Modifié par Vaylor66, 06 décembre 2009 - 12:10 .