24 réponses à ce sujet

[BelgarathMTH]

So, I've played DAO a lot of different ways with several characters.

I've just discovered something new to me -

I can completely ignore and stop obsessing over settings in the so-called "tactics" screen. Here's how:

1) I concentrate on my own character and my own character's abilities in every combat.
2) This is the important one: I keep the "select all" toggle activated 90% of the time!
3) I only deactivate that toggle if I want to move myself closer to the action in order to cast an AOE spell.
4) Build all party members to max their sustained abilities, as other combat abilities will be very, very rarely needed.

I am now playing on hard difficulty and almost never needing so much as a healing poultice!

What this strategy does is to keep all attacks constantly concentrated on single enemies such that they fall very quickly.  I am finding that any special abilities by party members are almost never needed. You can program their tactics to use them as a backup while you want to move your character from one position to another, but other than that, they really don't need anything but their default attacks. Just make sure they have good passive abilities activated.

In a pinch, you can select party members individually and activate special attacks yourself. No need to rely on the the AI, which will never be as good as human intellect.

I am starting to own the game like this. I hope it doesn't get too easy from here!

Modifié par BelgarathMTH, 16 décembre 2009 - 01:11 .

[brelrande]

Hmm interesting you will have to keep us updated as the game unfolds and fights get harder

[Livanniah]

Rather than using select all at all you can instead set the tactics screen for each party member to attack your target, which has the large benefit of allowing them to still use their activated abilities - did similar to your variant for a few fights before I was tactics savvy though.



Also note, Sustained are good, but also Passive are in the case you outlined - only Activated abilities are "unusable" in that context.

[Faerell Gustani]

Yeah, I do something similar. If you load yourself with dual wielders and shield warriors you rarely use abilities. Just activate their sustained abilities. You control the mage and keep them up while you have "Select all" activated and you focus fire the crap out of everything.



The same tactic works on the majority of fights. I suppose the sad thing is that I get a very marginal efficiency boost when I try to micromanage everything.

[dtking3]

Zerg rush!

[Zenocrate]

A problem with setting everyone's tactics to "attack your target" is if you want to split dps. Only tactic I've used, on occasion, is "attack nearest visible" and only because characters stop doing anything if they get cced or even knocked back. The game is cake if you pause often and mircromanage.

[Creature 1]

BelgarathMTH wrote...
1) I concentrate on my own character and my own character's abilities in every combat.
2) This is the important one: I keep the "select all" toggle activated 90% of the time!
3) I only deactivate that toggle if I want to move myself closer to the action in order to cast an AOE spell.
4) Build all party members to max their sustained abilities, as other combat abilities will be very, very rarely needed.

Yawn?  I think this sounds boring.  I micromanage all of my party.  

[Jo_]

focus fire is an pretty old concept.

[DM Veil]

I already did this the first week the game came out, worked well for me.

[metatrans]

get much better performance in general by setting effective tactics. its kinda useful to be able to have your allies use activated abilities.

[Solistus1]

While focusing on sustained and passive abilities in general is helpful, as they don't rely on skill to use properly (and skill is one thing the AI certainly lacks), using select all seems very inefficient to me. As others have said, a tactic to attack the controlled character's target would achieve a very similar effect while allowing the handful of abilities that work well with tactics to be used.

Unless your main is a healer, do you just not use healing spells, then? Healing is the one thing Tactics actually half decent at, IMO, as a simple Ally hp < 50% trigger helps significantly (although it's still a good bit less efficient than microing your heals, particularly with Group Heal).

Modifié par Solistus1, 16 décembre 2009 - 05:27 .

[Noble_House]

This is actually a pretty terrible strategy. If you have everyone selected, then none will use abilities unless use order them to. Goes doubly so for a mage - ouch.

[Solistus1]

Noble_House: that's the point of the OP's strategy. I agree that it's not a great idea, but he is building his whole party such that only his main has any actives worth using. The rest (presumably all warriors and rogues) just stack sustained abilities and passives so they can auto attack harder. Far from an optimal strategy but if it works and is enjoyable to him then more power to him. There's not much sense powergaming this game anyway, as you only need a 'decent' party build and strategy to beat the hardest encounters on Nightmare anyway.



In fact, come to think of it, this could become an interesting challenge mode for those of us who are bored with Nightmare. It certainly sounds less tedious than a solo run.

[kormesios]

Noble_House wrote...

This is actually a pretty terrible strategy. If you have everyone selected, then none will use abilities unless use order them to. Goes doubly so for a mage - ouch.

I'd view that as an advantage.  My problem with the tactics settings is that they don't leave anything in reserve for when you really want them.

I find it really annoying when you want "Winter's Grasp" to disrupt an enemy spellcaster, and the AI uses it on some idiotic grunt.  Same if you want to stun an Ogre who went into Grab mode, or protect an incapicitated character.

I mostly handle this by keeping tactics defensive (healing potions, and some "I'm surrounded" options.)  But I use select all alot too.  Not all the time, depends on the type of fight.

[krsboss]

I would disagree somewhat...



...on my first playthrough I played on normal difficulty and completely ignored combat tactics...I was playing a mage and was able to control / micro battles well enough to not really worry about combat tactics...



...on my 2nd (current) playthough I'm playing it on hard and I've really found combat tactics a must. It took quite some time to get everything set up the way I want / need, however I find it totally essential! ...I've basically set Wynne up as a healbot and now there's not really a battle where one companion falls, and my 'hero' has not been injured yet!



The essentials to put in tactics are use of healing / lyrium potions where applicable. This can really burn through your potions if you don't set it up well, however it also means that no-one dies!



Naturally, however, I will still take control of specific characters at certain times to tell them exactly what needs to be done if required...and for the big battles I'll often take care of Wynne to target the heals when & where they are needed..though I think I'm possibly worse than the tactics I've set!!!



...I can see that concentrating on passive abilities makes micro of 4 characters a lot easier, however activated abilities can be a lot more powerful and useful. Setting up good combat tactics is really a must, but it's not as difficult as it seems. If you start early with a character then you can just sub in new abilities as they are gained and it's not so much of an arduous task to add more as they open up!

[GhostLad]

Ultimately it's a question of milage. Personally though I like playing around with tactic combos. Wynne's Stonefist f.inst I will usually set with a condition "enemy petrified" to have her automatically attempt to Shatter, unless there is healing to be done of course. If your mage is surrounded by 2 or more enemies, I can also think of few situations where Mind Blast is a bad idea, so that is a common tactic for me too, giving them time to move away.



After my first run through Mages Circle Tower, I am very loathe to keep my entire party grouped up. One untimely fireball, and you are, literally, toast. And while you can get by on passives, and I do love passives, part of the charm of combat is in using the right ability at the right time for me. Thus I would probably get bored if the party was on autopilot.

[gammle]

i usally set my roge and mage on easy targets while me as a warrior whit shield and one hander takes the hard whit backup of sten or oghren it works relly well to...leliana is capable of tanking non yellow mobs easy if you put 2 resist gems in her daggers..whit 15%.

[Cydz]

focus fire is not something new, it is as old as more then one unit fighting.

[BelgarathMTH]

Livanniah wrote...

Rather than using select all at all you can instead set the tactics screen for each party member to attack your target, which has the large benefit of allowing them to still use their activated abilities - did similar to your variant for a few fights before I was tactics savvy though.

Also note, Sustained are good, but also Passive are in the case you outlined - only Activated abilities are "unusable" in that context.

Liv, I used to always use the AI tactics as you and most others here suggest. What I found was that everyone in my party became a red potion junkie, and the AI kept doing really stupid stuff no matter how I set it - it wasted special abilities and stamina, it absolutely WOULD NOT make archers run from melee (trust me, I tried every possible setting in every possible screen), and basically would just waste, waste, waste my party resources - not to mention that it had a deadly lag to it - the AI controlled characters do not concentrate their attacks properly and efficiently or drink potions or heal in a timely manner, even when you set the tactics correctly.

When I used the AI, I always had to worry about how many red potions I had, and whether the AI would activate them fast enough at precisely the correct logical moment.

Now, using select all, and I can't emphasize this enough, I almost never need red potions, and party members rarely die.

I am playing on hard difficulty and using my own brain instead of the AI. I can still activate special abilities among my party members at crucial moments, which are a lot rarer than you'd think. The bottom line is that the AI is incredibly stupid compared to a human brain, no matter how you mix it.

[Varenus Luckmann]

Wow. You've discovered the revolutionary concept of focus fire. Congratulations. Generations of gamers will forever remember the innovative spirit of BelgarathMTH.

/facepalm/

[JJM152]

Varenus Luckmann wrote...

Wow. You've discovered the revolutionary concept of focus fire. Congratulations. Generations of gamers will forever remember the innovative spirit of BelgarathMTH.
/facepalm/

Wow. You've discovered the revolutionary concept of sarcasm. Congratulations. Generations of forum posters will forever remember the innovative spirit of Varenus Luckmann.

/double facepalm/

[Balthazars55]

Personally, I find the tactics quite useful. I micromanage the party a lot, but I usually stay selected on 1 or two characters (either the CC mage, the backstab rogue, or my main character) during a fight when things aren't paused, and I find tactics can be set up to handle most standard situations. You can always interfere manually if something unexpected crops up.

[Cybercat999]

I see no reason to use entire group when I can set focused fire in tactics and then micromanage. First thing I do in tactics is to set them all to attack the same target my PC is attacking. From there I can take command of each and approach other targets with specific spells/abilities as needed.

I really hate pausing the game every 2 seconds so I rely a lot on tactics - I find them quite decent.

[Suron]

while that works it sounds really...dull...boring..and repetitive..

I don't "buy" extra tactics slots as that lazy copout for a skill/talent/whatever the hell it is is lame...except MAYBE my healer..I like to set things up..it's...FUN..that way.

I'd rather not just click all and click one target and wait...that's lame and boring. Sure it works but I prefer fun over mind-numbing boredom

Modifié par Suron, 18 décembre 2009 - 02:51 .

[Suron]

kormesios wrote...

Noble_House wrote...

This is actually a pretty terrible strategy. If you have everyone selected, then none will use abilities unless use order them to. Goes doubly so for a mage - ouch.

I'd view that as an advantage.  My problem with the tactics settings is that they don't leave anything in reserve for when you really want them.

I find it really annoying when you want "Winter's Grasp" to disrupt an enemy spellcaster, and the AI uses it on some idiotic grunt.  Same if you want to stun an Ogre who went into Grab mode, or protect an incapicitated character.

I mostly handle this by keeping tactics defensive (healing potions, and some "I'm surrounded" options.)  But I use select all alot too.  Not all the time, depends on the type of fight.

uh yah....you control all these "problems" with the tactics settings...don't have WinterGrasp set to go off on grunts...set it to go off at particular times or just DON'T SET IT AS AUTO USE AT ALL and when you see a time when you'd want to use it...OMG IT'LL BE THERE READY TO USE!

such a concept...