7 réponses à ce sujet

[Ryan-The-Red]

Hello everyone,

With Dragon Age 3 rumored to be in production and Dawn of the Seeker recently released, I was considering replaying Dragon Age 2...as an archer.

I my previous playthrough, I had made a dual-dagger build, using scoundrel and assassin talents mostly along with the dual-wield tree. However, several things about the build bothered me, such as daggers that didn't match, clumsy combat, and the fact that my Hawke would take more damage than I would have liked.

So now I am wondering, does an archer provide enemies with less oppurtunites to hit you, being a ranged fighter? What about damage? I don't expect to put out the same quick damage my dual-dagger build did, but I've heard that archer rogues can one-shot tough enemies. If so, is that with stealth or assassinate?

So my request is this: Name which skill trees should be selected as an archer, and what skills should NOT be passed up.  Feel free to leave any helpful tips as well, such as the right companions or equipment.

Cheers!

[mr_afk]

The patch placed a damage cap on elites/bosses so that archers are somewhat gimped damage-wise compared to DW (which deals two sources of damage and offers lacerate to bypass the 40% damage cap). As it is, major spike damage (such as assassinate) will no longer one-shot enemies and you won't be able to get numbers like 240000+ anymore.

The typical method to get massive damage (pre-patch) was to do an assassinate brittle CCC (with added mark of death/hexes for extra overkill). Shadow was also used for its damage buff since duelist isn't really the most useful for an archer. All of that is mostly unnecessary for an archer post-patch as a dex/cun archer will probably hit the cap on an assassinate alone.

Despite all that, they still provide a decent amount of single target dps and do offer a little more durability compared to a non-shadow DW (decoy gives more than enough survivability to DW and archers alike). They also have a slight advantage in not needing to get into range of enemies and can start dealing damage right from the start.

Due to damage caps etc, the most effective way to get the most dps out of your archer is to get haste running (dual haste when possible) as well as eventually getting the primeval lyrium rune into your end-game bow. Along with the speed sustain and any additional speed buffs from gear etc, you basically become a machine-gun and your basic auto-attacks will be fast enough to pretty much ignore the damage cap against most elites and kill things fast enough so that larger groups of enemies aren't a problem.

The other way to increase your dps (and overall party dps) is to spec into shadow and get disorienting criticals. Post-patch you get a 50% passive increase to critical damage and another 50% critical damage increase while obscured - effectively an extra 100% damage since your critical chance should be 100%. Additionally, your shots will disorient enemies setting them up for CCCs from your allies. If you use an Aveline tank you can set off some pretty beastly assault and scatter CCCs while your mages can set off some stone-fist and spirit bolt CCCs.

On a similar note, if you want a more advanced/fun sort of setup, a spirit bomb archer is pretty fun: http://www.youtube.c...h?v=ejaDpNOVp6I
I'm not exactly sure how Arelex did it in the vid, but basically you use the decoy to cluster all the enemies, half-kill an elite, disorient it and walking bomb it then blow it up.


I can go into a bit more depth about which skills to choose (e.g. post-patch pinning shot deals a decent amount of damage and archer's lance is pretty solid), but mostly it's pretty straight forward and you might as well experiment around and figure out what works for you. The main thing would be to put all your points into dex until you reach ~90% critical chance (100% with heroic aura) and cunning (especially if you have devious harm) since health and stamina aren't really that necessary on an archer. The other thing is to focus on passives and sustains (speed, blindside, disorienting criticals, devious harm) since dual-haste auto-attacks will probably be your main source of damage. Shadow veil will probably be the easiest way to get obscured (use stealth or decoy to become obscured), but having a rogue companion cast chameleon's breath/fatiguing dog could also work.

Companion-wise, besides the mages necessary for heroic aura/haste it's really up to you. An all ranged party works quite well (especially if you're playing on nightmare and friendly fire is an issue), otherwise Aveline can work quite well to soak up all the threat/damage while your ranged party members do their thing.


Hope this helps.

Modifié par mr_afk, 01 juin 2012 - 05:50 .

[cJohnOne]

I've never used pinning shot before but now it seems a great goto move after rain of arrows and bursting arrow. I have Merril set to stonefist then when I pin and disoriente. And Aveline to Scatter when Disoriented. I'm also bringing along Fenris for the fun of it so there's a lot of staggers going around.

[ripstrawberry]

I'd say with the dmg cap hurting archers alot in the latest patch, being an auto-attack archer is the way to go. Stock up on +attack speed gear, upgrade speed and get the +crit dmg passives from shadow, assassin and blindside. Make sure to have enough dex to auto-crit and hit 100% on grunts. to get obscures, focus on stealth sources (invisible friend, stealth and decoy) + shadow veil. Mark of death is also nice to get more bang for your buck vs. elites/bosses. Finish up with assasinate/pinning shot.

[NRieh]

Might not be very useful, but I'll write it anyway.

As much as I enjoyed almost "classic" and long forgotten D&D archer in DAO as much I regreted about my love to bows in DA2. 4 shots, 2 of which are AOE. Pinning shot, Archer's lance, small AOE, large AOE.

Crippling shot? Critical shot? Arrow of slaying? shattering shot? Close combat shot?..variety of stances and modes?.. Changing strategy and ammo type for different type of enemy? Not in this game, sorry. Archer is mediocre AOE damager with constant plain autoatack (and one heavy single target shot on long cd).

Another problem is tanking. Even with proper tactics - you are very unlikely to make "classic" fights where tank keeps aggro and you shoot things from distance. Or it will take some extra efforts. Alistair and Oghren did much bettter tanking job than Aveline and Fenris.

DAO was much more ballanced with classes and skills. I don't know why would they want to casualize and cripple good old system. I'd not recommend to play DA2 as an archer to anyone who enjoys something different than Diablo1 style and respects NWN and other adnd-type things.

Is it possible to play as one? Yes, it is, especially if you don't pick hard difficulty. Arishok duel is doable, but long and boring as hell. Routine combats are also not too problematic, it's just might be not exactly what you expected from class.

Probably - it's just me. But I'm on my first DA2 play now, and I really dislike how game handles archer spec. But I prefer bow to duall weapons anyway - not because of damage ornumbers, I just like archers.

And no advanced classes also hurt. I mean no ranger and bard spec...

[tat2teel]

As far as being an Archer in DA2, I was into auto attack with a 100% crit rate, and just switched up bows depending on the enemy. Shadow/Assassin specs for auto-attack = win

[cJohnOne]

Both Shadow and Assassin worked well for an Archer. I don't remember the specific skills involved but they seem to work.

I don't get Duelist it just isn't attractive to me. I've started getting it then I say why am I getting this and switch to Shadow.


Edit:  I also prefer archery in DA2 to DAO because it is more powerful.  As has been said you can get a high critical hits ratio and mow down your opposition.

Modifié par cJohnOne, 17 août 2012 - 11:26 .

[ripstrawberry]

<I>Crippling shot? Critical shot? Arrow of slaying? shattering shot? Close combat shot?..variety of stances and modes?.. Changing strategy and ammo type for different type of enemy? Not in this game, sorry. Archer is mediocre AOE damager with constant plain autoatack (and one heavy single target shot on long cd). </i>

While archery is indeed worse in DA2 (especially after post-patch) do note that AOE dmg is not what they're for. Their primary function is to kill primary targets from range like elites/bosses.

<I>DAO was much more ballanced with classes and skills. I don't know why would they want to casualize and cripple good old system. I'd not recommend to play DA2 as an archer to anyone who enjoys something different than Diablo1 style and respects NWN and other adnd-type things. </i>

I would say without the expansions/DLC DAO balance was bad. Mages *cough arcane warriors cough* were overpowered compared to mages/rogues. Rogue archers catched up in awakening due to accuracy and made dex builds viable compared to the usual cun builds recommended for DAO.

<I>And no advanced classes also hurt. I mean no ranger and bard spec...</i>

I missed those too. It would have been nice to have ranger instead of duelist as the 3rd spec.

<I>Edit: I also prefer archery in DA2 to DAO because it is more powerful. As has been said you can get a high critical hits ratio and mow down your opposition.</i>

DAA + DLC archery>DA2 archery>DAO archery. Awakening + DLC really buffed up archers in DAO