How can a party survive without a healer and not alot of potions consumed on nightmare? Should i use merrill's entropy tree a lot or try something different? Please help.
Party with Merrill as only mage?
Débuté par
yonot
, juin 12 2012 04:27
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#2
Posté 12 juin 2012 - 06:27
mr_afk
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It's viable if you get enough party synergy happening (deal enough crowd control/threat management and damage). The main thing you'll be missing out on is haste and heroic aura, although emergency heals can be useful.
What class is hawke going to be? You could probably do a similar setup to my fully melee setup, with aveline and fenris drawing threat and setting up staggers while a DW hawke (duelist/assassin) makes the most of the staggers with lacerate (explosive strike/vendetta in particular). Merrill could replace isabela's role as another damage dealer, spamming chain lightning and crushing prison CCCs and perhaps setting up some brittles (winter's grasp, petrify) for crowd control and for hawke to assassinate (or just to take advantage of the extra 50% crit damage).
The general idea will be to have fenris and aveline buffing your party with rally (temporarily conveying the effects of might and control), staggering enemies with shield bash/pommel strike, and mostly relying on self-buffs and auto-attacks since abilities have friendly-fire. Ideally they will be drawing the majority of the threat so hawke and merrill can focus on dealing damage - and working together they can get through fights without receiving too much damage.
Another approach would be to just do a variation of the standard hawke, varric, anders and merrill setup and replacing anders with aveline. This works out quite ideally with a ranged hawke (i.e. a shadow assassin archer) since this frees up aveline to use her abilities. The idea would be for aveline to pull all the threat (perhaps aided by hawke dumping a decoy next to her) and for hawke and varric to disorient the enemies around her (disorientating criticals/fatiguing fog) so she can let off some assault and scatter CCCs. Merrill would be more of a side-line crowd control/dps, brittling enemies for hawke to assassinate and varric to archer's lance as well as popping off spirit bolt and stonefist CCCs on disorients and chain lightning/crushing prison CCCs on any staggers.
You could probably do some version of a walking bomb setup as well if you don't mind manually protecting Aveline with a barrier or don't mind her dying every now and then. Then again, you could just switch aveline out for some other ranged character (perhaps sebastian?). It would kinda be less effective due to the lack of CCCs, but switching to a DW hawke and using decoy as a tank could work.
So what you should take from this is that there are many potential approaches you can take with a one-mage/no healer approach. Pretty much any mixture of classes will allow some degree of class synergy and thus effectiveness, and if you give me your ideal party combination (and I have the time to spare) I can probably give you a possible setup you can use .
In addition to crowd control/threat management, If you're worried about survivability, I would recommend getting barrier for merrill and casting it on companions when they are at low health (so they have the time to chug a potion). Last time I checked, entropy kinda sucked so besides maybe a one-point investment into hex of torment I wouldn't recommend it. Some of the more advanced abilities in the tree do give some crowd control but I don't think it's worth the investment.
Hope this helps
What class is hawke going to be? You could probably do a similar setup to my fully melee setup, with aveline and fenris drawing threat and setting up staggers while a DW hawke (duelist/assassin) makes the most of the staggers with lacerate (explosive strike/vendetta in particular). Merrill could replace isabela's role as another damage dealer, spamming chain lightning and crushing prison CCCs and perhaps setting up some brittles (winter's grasp, petrify) for crowd control and for hawke to assassinate (or just to take advantage of the extra 50% crit damage).
The general idea will be to have fenris and aveline buffing your party with rally (temporarily conveying the effects of might and control), staggering enemies with shield bash/pommel strike, and mostly relying on self-buffs and auto-attacks since abilities have friendly-fire. Ideally they will be drawing the majority of the threat so hawke and merrill can focus on dealing damage - and working together they can get through fights without receiving too much damage.
Another approach would be to just do a variation of the standard hawke, varric, anders and merrill setup and replacing anders with aveline. This works out quite ideally with a ranged hawke (i.e. a shadow assassin archer) since this frees up aveline to use her abilities. The idea would be for aveline to pull all the threat (perhaps aided by hawke dumping a decoy next to her) and for hawke and varric to disorient the enemies around her (disorientating criticals/fatiguing fog) so she can let off some assault and scatter CCCs. Merrill would be more of a side-line crowd control/dps, brittling enemies for hawke to assassinate and varric to archer's lance as well as popping off spirit bolt and stonefist CCCs on disorients and chain lightning/crushing prison CCCs on any staggers.
You could probably do some version of a walking bomb setup as well if you don't mind manually protecting Aveline with a barrier or don't mind her dying every now and then. Then again, you could just switch aveline out for some other ranged character (perhaps sebastian?). It would kinda be less effective due to the lack of CCCs, but switching to a DW hawke and using decoy as a tank could work.
So what you should take from this is that there are many potential approaches you can take with a one-mage/no healer approach. Pretty much any mixture of classes will allow some degree of class synergy and thus effectiveness, and if you give me your ideal party combination (and I have the time to spare) I can probably give you a possible setup you can use .
In addition to crowd control/threat management, If you're worried about survivability, I would recommend getting barrier for merrill and casting it on companions when they are at low health (so they have the time to chug a potion). Last time I checked, entropy kinda sucked so besides maybe a one-point investment into hex of torment I wouldn't recommend it. Some of the more advanced abilities in the tree do give some crowd control but I don't think it's worth the investment.
Hope this helps
Modifié par mr_afk, 12 juin 2012 - 06:34 .
#3
Posté 12 juin 2012 - 12:55
Vincent Laww
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I'm not going to read a wall of text. Going on the thesis statement of this thread. I would have to say that any Mage that is Blood Magic orientated is a complete, and utter failure based on the broken Blood Mage class in DA2.
#4
Posté 12 juin 2012 - 01:26
mr_afk
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I broke it into simple paragraphs but maybe this will help:
- Answer to topic: It's viable with certain setups
- Solution: Possible party setup
- Solution: Possible party setup 2
- Variation: Alternative strategy for setup 2
- Conclusion: Anything can work really
- Side note: Entropy sucks
Also, blood magic is not broken.
Given that my post is mainly for the op's benefit (and as a source of procrastination) I can't really be bothered expanding on the many reasons why your statement is incorrect. You also kind of missed the point of the thread.
- Answer to topic: It's viable with certain setups
- Solution: Possible party setup
- Solution: Possible party setup 2
- Variation: Alternative strategy for setup 2
- Conclusion: Anything can work really
- Side note: Entropy sucks
Also, blood magic is not broken.
Given that my post is mainly for the op's benefit (and as a source of procrastination) I can't really be bothered expanding on the many reasons why your statement is incorrect. You also kind of missed the point of the thread.
Modifié par mr_afk, 12 juin 2012 - 01:26 .
#5
Posté 13 juin 2012 - 07:44
SuicidalBaby
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This made me giggle.Vincent Laww wrote...
I'm not going to read a wall of text. Going on the thesis statement of this thread. I would have to say that any Mage that is Blood Magic orientated is a complete, and utter failure based on the broken Blood Mage class in DA2.
Won't read or comprehend the conversation but ****s all over something he clearly has no clue about. Non-sequitiur much?
