32 réponses à ce sujet

[SfHell]

I've been reading a lot of comments of people saying how hard this game is and how they get wrecked and all.
Well I'm going to just give a few simple tips (actually I think it's just one)  that may improve your gameplay a bit. Note that these strategies are the ones I use on nightmare when I'm getting overmobbed etc. Irregardless of your party these should work all times, even without mages in your party.

Some may find the info here is basic and in fact it is, but bear in mind that are folks out there who never played this kind of rpg and may feel very lost as frustrated.


To me, in DA:O the key of combat is positioning. This is a wide concept, but when I mean positioning I it stands for crowd control; knowing how to set up your party in combat and have the enemies where you want them to be. 
In this game you almost always being surrounded, you are walking all cool and bam! you have enemies from 3 different cornes and you are caught in the middle. Now what most people do (or maybe the few having a hard time XD) is to continue in the middle of this mess. So you have arches shooting at you, your mage has 2 monsters on him ( not that is really a problem) the mob is scattered so your tank can not lure them and you can't flank with your rogues.


Now what you really wanna do is to get out of this whole mess. And how do you do that? It's simple: move. Actually, you run. For all those who saw 300 that's the exact effect you want. You want to go to a position where 3 enemies at maximum will be albe to hit you. Your tank will be holding all them ,  is you have the flanks free for your rogues or mages to put a well placed cone of cold which will 90% of times hit all the enemies enganging your tank.

Doing  that is very easy, especially in dungeons with rooms, all you have to do is move from the room where you are surrounded to an empty room ( always move to where you came unless you want more enemies). You will have enough time to recompose your party, to put your tank on the front, with a good taunt and it's all set.  You will want to leave your take a few staps backs from the door of the room, so 3 enemies  ( or less if you desire) may pass and the others will be stuck ( I remember doing this with Golems in Baldur's Gate). So you will have enought room for your rogue or whatever to flank and be safe at the same time. Plus if you have a cone spell just sneak to the side of the tank and damage all the enemies .Plus you will get your other characters away from enemy arches vision which is priceless. 


Of course that not all times you can make this cone effect, take some wide dungeon caves for example. Usually on the encounters in these caves you will be surrounded North, East and West. What you will do is that you'll run south. Always lead the run with your mage or weakest character, by doing so you will secure the tank stays behind, thus when you stop the enemies will be at him. Ok you run south, but where south? Well closed quarters are you best friends in Dragon Age. You will want to run to a corner where you will be able to aplly, even though limted, cone effect. Also you want to try to look for places where you can get shelter from archers fire, in early game they are ok but at the end scattershot is really a pain in the ass and can spoil the most perfect fights.


The main goal is, as you may have notice,  not to remain surrounded. No matter what you do, never stay in the middle. However still, there situations where you can barely move much. What you wanna do in this situations is to charge with everyone to one direction, let's say, charge to the enemies at your west side. By this time you will have aggro around you, a well place mind blast followed by a taunt will solve the problem, if you use no mages you can stealth with your rogues, if you have no rogues , weapon sweep if your 2h warrior, if you have none of these skills, well..... hardly the fight will come the need of using this tatic.


In an open quarter fight the ideal position is to have the meeles at your tank, they will surround him making an arc ( semi circunference line). This is position is great for your characters to flank or for the mage to send a cone of cold spell. If you have this setup I ensure the fight will be very easy.


So recaptiulating all written in a small sentence: Get out of the open and go to a closed space, never never never stay surrounded! 

Another very important point in combat : ALWAYS take the mage first. Especially if it's those damned blood mages. I don't care what you do, you either nullify them with Force Field, kill them with crushing prision + winter's grasp, send your rogues on stealth , for riposte madness. Whatever, just kill them fast,  never last them cast fireball while you are flocked, otherwise you are pretty much dead.

Other imporat point are spells, they will let you control the mob like no other character.
There are hundred points I could say in the matter lofwhich spells to use, when etc. But some basic lines to remeber:

Cone of Cold is deadly, saves your ass when things are rough. I see this as a crowd controlling spell never almost never use it just for damage.

Force Field has many uses. Force field is a deadly spell, it's awesome to let your tank hold that revenant but is also awesome when you don't want that revenat charging at you. You see where I come from? Use this spell to take out the most annoying or hardest character in the combat, while you clean everything and deal with him latter.

Crushing Prision - Just like force field , note that this spell wont work on bosses or very high ranked enemies. However this the best mage killer ever, crushing prision + winter's grasp = bye bye mage. 

Paralyze - Deadly spell another crowd control

Gylph of paralyze- Same.


Fireball - Knock down and good damage, couldn't ask for more, always aim these on the archers.




Note that  thereare spells people invest because they do sound awesome but in real pratical term their effectiveness is limited to some very special occasions. Of course there maybe some disagreement on this, and truth be told you can beat the game with whatever line of spells you want.


Inferno, blizzard , tempest. These spells take long to cast, the damage is very verypoor especially in nightmare, slows combat, prevents you from charging at enemies, reduces atk hit rate for both sides which is bad for you.
Rare are the occasions where you will land them perfectly, you have to have and standing stillmob and get them by surprise, the fireball + inferno combo is good but again, it's very situational.

Mass Sleep - The sleep + horror/ walking nightmare combo seems good. Well actually not, first sleep effect lasts nothing, most enemies wake up just after the spell. You barely have time to cast horror, plus you are spending a lot of mana on a combo with very random effectiveness. Walking nightmare IMO is terrible. It does the exact opost you should be doing, it disperses the mob, when it's over the enemies are all scattered again. I don't want enemies running around , I don't care if they can't hit me, what I want is the enemy where I can control him and hit while keeping the battle field under controll.

Petrity - Never get this, 4 points on wast. You already have 5 useful ways of paralyzing your enemy. 


Heal- Just use  a potion. It's faster and consumes no mana. Although get group heal, it's a whole different history.



Well this post ended up being a lot longer than I expected. I hope it can help some folks out there, who are not very familiar with rpg games. Also there are other hundred stratgies one could use, like luring, or using trap ( search for nightmare rogue solo on youtube, for an awesome guy playing solo with bow rogue using traps in a very clever way). Another that I like for fun is building a party with high fire resistance (75%) and spell resistance and just spam fireball and inferno all the way.

Feel free to add any comments or suggestions as well make critcs. Bear with my grammar mistakes I'm no native speaker ( I'm brazilian).

Modifié par SfHell, 18 décembre 2009 - 02:53 .

[badkenbad]

Great post. My favorite crowd control combo for open areas is Sleep + Waking Nightmare. Nothing like getting a big group of monsters fighting each other! For more closed areas, I like the Paralysis Explosion combo (overlap Glyph of Paralysis & Glyph of Repulsion), since you can cast it without line-of-sight as long as you can see the enemies in the area where you're casting. Having one party member with level 2 or 3 in Survival is very helpful for that.

[shaktiboy]

Good stuff, but I'll post my short and sweet version.

Your best friends are the All and Hold buttons at the bottom of your party portraits. The shortcut for All is the keyboard = key, and the shortcut for Hold is the H key.

Basic pulling tactic to avoid getting swarmed with too many foes at once:

•  When you suspect an encounter is looming ahead, hit the H key to hold your party. When your party is held, everyone except the one you're controlling stays where you held them and most important, most of their tactics response code is suspended.
• Run ahead with a ranged pulling character (bow or mage) and stop just at the very edge of the range you can attack from. Plink at one character and wait until it and maybe one or two more come running at you.
• Break off and run back past your group. As you're running past your group, hit the H key again to toggle Hold mode off.  You'll see/hear your party engaging as you run by.

This one basic tactic and variations of it is 80% of what you need to succeed at Hard or Nightmare mode.

Now, what about the All button?  When you are controlling only one player and tactics are enabled for your entire group, they don't easily go where you want them. If you're not controlling each one directly, they go right back where their tactics AI tells them to go. Which is usually in the wrong direction when the situation is deteriorating.

So the All button enables you to forcibly do two very useful things:

A. You can toggle All on and then click far away and all four will faithfully stop fighting and run away like sissies.
B. You can toggle All on and then click the one guy you really need to kill fast and everyone in your group will momentarily stop their AI tactics and attack that one target.

Don't forget to toggle All off as soon as you don't need it any more--otherwise you might, for example, think you're telling one character to cast a spell or special attack and all the others will just stop what they're doing because they have no equivalent action to perform.

Modifié par shaktiboy, 18 décembre 2009 - 01:24 .

[LynxAQ]

shaktiboy wrote...

Basic pulling tactic to avoid getting swarmed with too many foes at once:

•  When you suspect an encounter is looming ahead, hit the H key to hold your party. When your party is held, everyone except the one you're controlling stays where you held them and most important, most of their tactics response code is suspended.
• Run ahead with a ranged pulling character (bow or mage) and stop just at the very edge of the range you can attack from. Plink at one character and wait until it and maybe one or two more come running at you.
• Break off and run back past your group. As you're running past your group, hit the H key again to toggle Hold mode off.  You'll see/hear your party engaging as you run by.

This one basic tactic and variations of it is 80% of what you need to succeed at Hard or Nightmare mode.

This is NOT needed at nightmare or hard. The "pulling" 1 mob at a time from large groups IS exploiting bad AI. Can hardly believe people would think this was an intended AI behaviour and pass it off as a tactic.

Genlock 1 - OMG somebody shot me! I get em- you guys just stay here...!
Genlock 2 - OMG I been shot to now, I get em - you guys just stay here...!

Hardly think that was ever intended.

[shaktiboy]

LynxAQ wrote...

shaktiboy wrote...

Basic pulling tactic to avoid getting swarmed with too many foes at once:

•  When you suspect an encounter is looming ahead, hit the H key to hold your party. When your party is held, everyone except the one you're controlling stays where you held them and most important, most of their tactics response code is suspended.
• Run ahead with a ranged pulling character (bow or mage) and stop just at the very edge of the range you can attack from. Plink at one character and wait until it and maybe one or two more come running at you.
• Break off and run back past your group. As you're running past your group, hit the H key again to toggle Hold mode off.  You'll see/hear your party engaging as you run by.

This one basic tactic and variations of it is 80% of what you need to succeed at Hard or Nightmare mode.

This is NOT needed at nightmare or hard. The "pulling" 1 mob at a time from large groups IS exploiting bad AI. Can hardly believe people would think this was an intended AI behaviour and pass it off as a tactic.

Genlock 1 - OMG somebody shot me! I get em- you guys just stay here...!
Genlock 2 - OMG I been shot to now, I get em - you guys just stay here...!

Hardly think that was ever intended.

Um, no offense mate, but how many MMOs have you played?  This is MMO pulling tactic 101.  Divide and conquer. It's not an exploit of any sort because of the obvious way the social code for encounters is set up (like every other MMO out there).  If the devs actually wanted the entire huge mob to come hit you all at once no matter what tactics you used, they'd configure the "social" logic accordingly.  The fact that you either range pull or body pull one foe and at most a group of 2 other social adds come with your pulltarget demonstrates conclusively that they designed this to be a legitimate tactic for dealing with large groups.

I mean, really. My entire summary tactic is a short rephrasing of the essential tactic the OP spent 5 paragraphs explaining. Only he recommends that you run your entire group in to body pull, then run your entire group back to another room. Why? Because the social code and leash code is such that only a few mobs will actually follow you back to the other room.

My technique is simpler (and again, it's MMO dungeon crawl 101 tactics): you position your party in the formation you want and the position you want to lead the ambush into, then you use your best "puller" to go grab 1-3 mobs and funnel them right into your kill zone.  No need to waste time running your entire group back and then repositioning all of them for the fight.

Right now with my baby DW rogue PC on Hard, I'm running with Leliana, Alistar, and Morrigan (just finished Lothering before coming here to post). My party has poo for control and mitigation skills right now--they're all babies.  If I use my own PC rogue to pull, she's gotta drop Momentum to use her bow, so I just leave her, Alistar, and Morrigan in position and go out with Leliana (who's set up to stay in ranged mode full time) and pull with her bow. By the time she funnels back through my kill zone and I hit H to release the other three characters, Alistair's already i the right position and has grabbed aggro, my DW rogue PC is already in flanking position and swinging away, and Morrigan is nicely back and casting in DPS mode.

Modifié par shaktiboy, 18 décembre 2009 - 01:16 .

[shaktiboy]

For example, in the opening arc where you have to go light the beacon at the top of the tower. As you near the tower entrance there are two archers on platforms flanking the steps up, and more bad guys including a yellow at the top.

It's *stupid* tactics to run the gauntlet all the way up the steps with your entire party and take arrow damage the entire way while you slog past the meleers to get to each archer and take them out. It's likewise *stupid* tactics to just run up to the meleers and kill them while the arrow guys on the platforms have their way with you. Because the two archers are elevated above bow/crossbow/magic LOS from the ground where you are, you cannot damage or control those archers until you get up on the platforms with them.

So the *smart* thing to do is aggro pull the meleers down first (as many as will come anyway--some are leashed to the top area, which is further evidence that the underlying social-leash-aggro code is both standard fare and decently sophisticated). Once you've reduced the overall strength of the guys up top you can now more easily deal with the archers while the meleers beat on you or vice-versa.

Certainly in the early levels, before you have any real missile mitigation or mage control and Alistair is weak as a puppy and has no good armor yet, you can't just rush in and take the entire mob on at once. Not on Hard and certainly not on Nightmare. On Normal? Sure you can. Normal is a cakewalk that takes no tactics at all; just zerg every encounter and fight them all at once.

Modifié par shaktiboy, 18 décembre 2009 - 01:20 .

[DodgeMoreLightning]

Um, no offense mate, but how many MMOs have you played?  This is MMO pulling tactic 101.  Divide and conquer. It's not an exploit of any sort because of the obvious way the social code for encounters is set up (like every other MMO out there).  If the devs actually wanted the entire huge mob to come hit you all at once no matter what tactics you used, they'd configure the "social" logic accordingly.  The fact that you either range pull or body pull one foe and at most a group of 2 other social adds come with your pulltarget demonstrates conclusively that they designed this to be a legitimate tactic for dealing with large groups.

Maybe he hasn't played any, but I've played enough to know that you wouldn't want to build a single player game like that on purpose and charge money for it.

This isn't an MMO. That's the kicker. I don't care if you like to pull enemies in your single player games like MMOs, but trying to pretend like that isn't taking advantage of lax AI is silly and unnecessary. Just because something is possible in a game doesn't mean that it was intended. There are things such as bugs. There are things such as features not working entirely as intended.

[mousestalker]

One slick thing to try is if your opponents' big gun is a mage. Hold your party out of sight. Sneak your rogue in behind the mage. Load up with magebane and deathroot . Backstab away. Release your party to charge in. Now all the big bad can do is shoot pretty sparks and hit you with a stick.



If you think pulling is an exploit, try this less effective version of it. Hide your party around a handy corner. Have your rogue sneak around the corner and put down some cheap traps. Shoot the bigbad with an arrow and run back around the corner to your pals. Wait. The traps will slow some mobs down. Which means that while they will all head for you, some will arrive sooner than later. With any luck you can kill the former before the latter arrive.

[Alphakiller]

i'd like to see you program an AI that will react as a group to your efforts. My guess is that it's not intended for them to chase simply because it'd make the game a lot harder for those who need to take advantage of these tactics

[shaktiboy]

One common (and useful) variation on the basic "party hold" pulling tactic:

• Rogue with stealth, stealing, and traps is your advance scout while your party is in Hold mode in the room you just cleared out.
• Rogue sneaks in, detects and disarms traps, and steals from all the mobs you're about to kill.
• You decide you can just zerg rush the room--no pulling needed.
• Rogue positions himself behind the alpha target (the mage). Still stealthed.
• You hit the H key to release the party from its Held state and the other three come blazing into the room, tactics AI at the ready, grabbing all the enemy aggro--including the mage you're lurking behind.
• You unstealth and unload a can of ginzu on the alpha target, whose back is turned to you because he's lobbing spells at the other three in your party.

To the well-intentioned guy up above who thinks this is some type of exploit.... I mean, the very way they designed the party hold mechanics and behavior clearly demonstrate that they expect and want players to use the Hold function in the ways I've described as legitimate game tactics.

Modifié par shaktiboy, 18 décembre 2009 - 01:38 .

[SfHell]

Actually this totally different from what I suggest. In my suggestion you are in the middle of the battle and then you pull the whole mob with you. They are all going to follow  you. You are already in combat and engaged by all the members. Your suggestion is engange on oponent at a time. Which as mentioned in my opinion is an exploit. And a very boring tactic to do, takes all the fun away from combat. 
It may be effective but the game is not that challenging itself and these things just make it a lot easier.

Modifié par SfHell, 18 décembre 2009 - 01:59 .

[shaktiboy]

Alphakiller wrote...

i'd like to see you program an AI that will react as a group to your efforts. My guess is that it's not intended for them to chase simply because it'd make the game a lot harder for those who need to take advantage of these tactics

Really, you're missing the point.  Leash and social code is basic in many games of this general genre where you have large groups that can be overwhelming if you aggro the entire group at once. This game is especially brutal because the enemy AI is tuned to surround you as often as possible.

If the devs *wanted* an entire mob to come at your group no matter what, they would increase the values of the social aggro functions to reach farther (or to flag more than n units).  This is basic basic aggro code.  The fact that social aggro is limited in the way it is *clearly* indicates that they feel pulling tactics like I've described are legitimate tactics for handling an otherwise overwhelmingly large group.

I mean really, the combat and party mechanics of this game have a lot in common with Guild Wars, where you also had a party of up to 5 other bots fighting alongside you.  One of the most basic tactical challenges they can give us in games like these is "force the player to divide and conquer an otherwise overwhelming aggro".

Modifié par shaktiboy, 18 décembre 2009 - 01:46 .

[mousestalker]

BTW, Virulent Walking Target and traps or paralyzation glyph equals much innocent glee and/or joy.

[LynxAQ]

This is a bug / bad AI - the pulling one mob at a time from a large group its standing right next to. (That DOES NOT happen in even decent MMO's) You can not pull 1 mob a time from a pack of 5/6 in MMO's either. But in this game you can by pulling from max range and I hardly think that it was ever intended.

[Ambaryerno]

I have to COMPLETELY disagree with your assessment of Waking Nightmare. I LOVE this spell. In fact I totally WASTED Jarvia with it.



The beauty is that, yeah, it may disperse the mob. But it gets them attacking EACH OTHER instead of you, which can both buy you time to withdraw to a better position or clean up some of the enemies attacking you. There's also the stun effect when it first hits, which can gain you more room to maneuver and increase the likelihood of your enemies fighting each other instead. I especially target mages and Emissaries with it if I can't get my melee units in at close quarters right away. It's also great against high-power enemies because, once again, it gets their minions to attack them instead and keeps the boss and minions occupied. The boss will usually waste the minions before they can do much damage in return, but in the end you still have less work cut out for you and can focus on cleaning up the rest of the mob before turning your attention to the bigger threat (because frankly, it doesn't help to focus all your attention on the boss only to get wasted by the minions).



Regarding the AoE spells:



These spells are definitely situational. However combining Blizzard with Tempest/Inferno is VERY effective. Blizzard has a chance of knocking down or freezing the mob, trapping them in the AoE, while the other spell hammers them. I've found this combo VERY effective against large numbers of darkspawn, and have cleaned out several hordes before they even cleared the area of effect. It also depends on how you intend to approach a battle. If you intend to engage at a distance anyway, or let the enemy come to you, I lay it down and let it weaken them before they can close. Even if it doesn't kill them outright, at the very least low-level enemies are nearly dead by the time they reach you.



Oh btw, if you "general target" CoC, Shock and the flamethrower rather than target it at a specific enemy, it will go through walls....



If I'm entering an area and end up surrounded (like some of the ambushes where the game spawns enemies all around you) I often allow them to close on the party then hammer them with Mind Blast once they're all in range. If you can get them all at once you've once again got more time to maneuver.

[Tirigon]

Pulling is actually quite hard. I tried it when I cleared the tower of Ishal on nightmare and wanted to use Ali and the soldiers as less as possible, so I was solo 90%of the time. Without pulling this is impossible, but mostly the entire group of enemies followed me. The main purpose was to make the archers go into range for CoC and Fireblast, because running to them for casting equalled death. Its not the splitting of enemy groups that matters, but positioning them as you want.

Archers are a hell if they can shoot you, but if you hide behind a wall there are 2 possibilities:

1. (rarely) they dont do anything; you kill the meeleefighters and deal with them afterwards.

2. (often) they run through the door to follow you, perfect positioned for a CoC and an ambush by your entire party.

[Faerell Gustani]

shaktiboy wrote...

Um, no offense mate, but how many MMOs have you played?  This is MMO pulling tactic 101.  Divide and conquer. It's not an exploit of any sort because of the obvious way the social code for encounters is set up (like every other MMO out there).  If the devs actually wanted the entire huge mob to come hit you all at once no matter what tactics you used, they'd configure the "social" logic accordingly.  The fact that you either range pull or body pull one foe and at most a group of 2 other social adds come with your pulltarget demonstrates conclusively that they designed this to be a legitimate tactic for dealing with large groups.

Actually, MMOs are designed around this concept.  Conversely, DA: O's encounters are not designed around this.
You can tell by the "shout" range and the way in which mobs are linked.  You rarely ever have a single pull in a Raid or an Instance in WoW.  It's usually a group pull.

Not to say that the tactic in general is not valid, just that DA:O was clearly not designed with pulling in mind as a viable tactic (or if it was, the devs failed epicly in this department).

[SfHell]

Ambaryerno wrote...

I have to COMPLETELY disagree with your assessment of Waking Nightmare. I LOVE this spell. In fact I totally WASTED Jarvia with it.

The beauty is that, yeah, it may disperse the mob. But it gets them attacking EACH OTHER instead of you, which can both buy you time to withdraw to a better position or clean up some of the enemies attacking you. There's also the stun effect when it first hits, which can gain you more room to maneuver and increase the likelihood of your enemies fighting each other instead. I especially target mages and Emissaries with it if I can't get my melee units in at close quarters right away. It's also great against high-power enemies because, once again, it gets their minions to attack them instead and keeps the boss and minions occupied. The boss will usually waste the minions before they can do much damage in return, but in the end you still have less work cut out for you and can focus on cleaning up the rest of the mob before turning your attention to the bigger threat (because frankly, it doesn't help to focus all your attention on the boss only to get wasted by the minions).

Regarding the AoE spells:

These spells are definitely situational. However combining Blizzard with Tempest/Inferno is VERY effective. Blizzard has a chance of knocking down or freezing the mob, trapping them in the AoE, while the other spell hammers them. I've found this combo VERY effective against large numbers of darkspawn, and have cleaned out several hordes before they even cleared the area of effect. It also depends on how you intend to approach a battle. If you intend to engage at a distance anyway, or let the enemy come to you, I lay it down and let it weaken them before they can close. Even if it doesn't kill them outright, at the very least low-level enemies are nearly dead by the time they reach you.

Oh btw, if you "general target" CoC, Shock and the flamethrower rather than target it at a specific enemy, it will go through walls....

If I'm entering an area and end up surrounded (like some of the ambushes where the game spawns enemies all around you) I often allow them to close on the party then hammer them with Mind Blast once they're all in range. If you can get them all at once you've once again got more time to maneuver.

Good point on Walking nightmare, Ambaryerno. The thing is the ammount of time required to combo the two as well the mana spent is what makes it not so valuable to me. Of course it all depends on what kind of party you have, I used to run very OP with Arcane Warrior, Alistair and Morrigan and leliana with bow ( to balance a little). The mobs would be gone pretty fast. Some people play with 2 meele rogues, a tank and a mage. With a party like this by the time you cast sleep the mob is pretty much dead. 

But that is my style of playing, I can definitely see the use of Sleep/Walking nightmare.

Becareful not to send Blizzard and Inferno together. As blizzard gives a lot of fire resistance so.... 
Out of the 4 tier elemental spells, Blizzard is definitely the best. You may want to pick the one from the three you invested. 
But most of the time people go fire / cold. So I'd save one point instead of getting the two.



The Mind blast trick is a excellent one too, done it numerous time. Gives plenty of time to recompose. Good fights are those in which you are mobbed  you send mind blast only to see  *resisted* *resisted* *resisted* *resisted*
 

[Sidney]

Inferno + Earthquake. The quake pins them in places while they burn. If you have two mages it is easy to start the inferno and then start the quake to arrive at the same time.



the OP's point about choke pointing is, IMHO, not all that useful though. It makes perfectly good sense and it SHOULD work but it won't since bad guys run right by your tank to get at whatever has caused them the most damage - your mage if you hit them with artillery fire or archer if you dropped an arrow of slaying. Taunt and those things help but the game's poor AI on threats and worse implementation of people running right by guys with swords makes it hard to choke point.



The key for me is to fragment the mob. Get them to attack into your lines bit by bit. Crushing prison takes out one member, force field another, earthquake will basically let people out in trickles. Cone of Cold and Winter's Blast also stop or slow down. If the mobs closes in mind blast and sleep or scattershot.. I love Waking Nightmare for crowd control. The effect is erratic but too useful to ignore.

[SfHell]

Well the idea with choke point is that even if some enemies run trough they are surrounded and easily killed while your tank holds the rest at the door. I even backturn him to attack the monster who passed the choke. And I never had more than 2 enemies running trough the door, because there's literally no room left for the others to enter.



The AI indeed sucks with threats. I used to have threaten on all the timbe but it was just a waste of stamina pool. I only turn it on bosses when I know I'll have to force field the tank.

[badkenbad]

There seems to be a lot of controversy on these forums about pulling, and I have trouble making my mind up about it. On the one hand, if you are able to pull apart groups one at a time, that sort of makes all the crowd control in the game completely useless. Why would there be any AOE crowd control spells if there's really never a need to be fighting more than one monster at a time? On the other hand, my experience on hard & nightmare difficulties leads me to believe that there are some encounters where you just can't split the group. No matter how careful you are, or what angle you come from, they're going to mob you. That sort of supports the argument that the designers intended pulling to work in most cases.

The bottom line for me is that the game is a lot more fun if I can just wade in with my party, melee swinging away, ranged characters picking off targets of opportunity, mages blasting everything in sight, and deal with crowd control as I need to. It's more fun for me if the encounters are slightly out of control. Picking off one monster at a time is boring.

Modifié par badkenbad, 18 décembre 2009 - 05:13 .

[shaktiboy]

badkenbad wrote...

There seems to be a lot of controversy on these forums about pulling, and I have trouble making my mind up about it. On the one hand, if you are able to pull apart groups one at a time, that sort of makes all the crowd control in the game completely useless. Why would there be any AOE crowd control spells if there's really never a need to be fighting more than one monster at a time? On the other hand, my experience on hard & nightmare difficulties leads me to believe that there are some encounters where you just can't split the group. No matter how careful you are, or what angle you come from, they're going to mob you. That sort of supports the argument that the designers intended pulling to work in most cases.

The bottom line for me is that the game is a lot more fun if I can just wade in with my party, melee swinging away, ranged characters picking off targets of opportunity, mages blasting everything in sight, and deal with crowd control as I need to. It's more fun for me if the encounters are slightly out of control. Picking off one monster at a time is boring.

Something you say in your first paragraph is exactly correct, and supports my contention that pulling is a legitimate mechanic if a frontal assault on all mobs at once is doomed to failure for whatever reason. Certainly at low levels early in the game if you're playing on Hard or Nightmare, you just don't have the talents, attributes, and gear to handle some of the early mobs. Think about the encounters out in the large outdoor area in Lothering... Morrigan's just not equipped to handle all the CC needed for those bandit and wolf groups and Alistair is still made of tissue paper at this point in the game. In the wide open spaces there are very few corners to exploit for stacking or choke-pointing a huge pack of wolves/bandits trying to surround your party.  Pulling to weaken the core group enough to finally assault what's left is the *only* real option in cases like these. At higher levels when you have CC aplenty and your characters are well-developed with high attributes and good gear, it becomes a different story and you can start enjoying different challenges and tactics.

But back to what you said:  as you've noticed--and anyone who pulls a lot will notice--there are certain mob clusters that *cannot be split*.  There are also specific mobs that cannot be pulled: they are permaleashed to their initial spawn spot.  The encounter designers are CLEARLY setting some parameters for every encounter to vary the overall challenge.  Some groups can be easily nipped away by ones, twos, and threes.  Other groups can be cut down to half size with pulling techniques, but the other half of the group cannot be broken apart or pulled, nor will they leave their spawn points. So you have no choice but a full frontal assault on the portion of the group you couldn't chip away at with pulling.  Other encounters? You won't be able to pull even a single mob--you just need to figure out how to get the job done.

If pulling were a *global AI weakness/exploit*, it would work universally on every group. The fact that it does not clearly demonstrates that the social-leash-aggro code is flexible and sophisticated, and that the encounter designers fully expected certain groups to be approached with pulling tactics.

Ultimately, whatever tactics work for the player and are "fun" are legitimate.  Some people find a Leroy Jenkins zergfest to be "fun". Some people enjoy constantly pausing a battle and manually micromanaging every character's every move, like a chess game.  Some people enjoy movement and LOS mechanics (pulling).  Whatever floats your boat, it's all good.

Me? I'm a puller. In MMOs I usually played the puller role. I enjoy a good, successful pull that doesn't "fail" by bringing too many mobs or too little mobs with each pull.  So I summarized the tools available in the UI that facilitate pulling tactics (and which are clearly built for pulling tactics).

Modifié par shaktiboy, 18 décembre 2009 - 05:31 .

[Echelon30]

The "pulling" 1 mob at a time from large groups IS exploiting bad AI. Can hardly believe people would think this was an intended AI behaviour and pass it off as a tactic.

The very concept of Tanking is built on bad AI.

[SfHell]

Echelon30 wrote...

The "pulling" 1 mob at a time from large groups IS exploiting bad AI. Can hardly believe people would think this was an intended AI behaviour and pass it off as a tactic.

The very concept of Tanking is built on bad AI.

Actually it's not. Tanking reflects the desire of the mob to take down one character. Just like the player does. I usually have all my party members attacking the same character to bring his down as fast as possible. The AI just happens thinks the same way 

Hehe just playing devil's advocate, I see what you mean, and it's true. 

[Haplose]

Echelon30 wrote...

The "pulling" 1 mob at a time from large groups IS exploiting bad AI. Can hardly believe people would think this was an intended AI behaviour and pass it off as a tactic.

The very concept of Tanking is built on bad AI.

Yea, it should be more based on actual positioning, choke points, blocking doorways, etc. Maybe also wall-type spells. A Warrior should have skills that will prevent foes from passing by him, rather then these weird aggro management talents straight from an MMO. Getting through a "living wall" should either be next to impossible in choke points or punishing/hampering in more open spaces (some mechanism similar to atacks of opportunity perhaps).

Also I tend to disagree that pulling should be considered a viable tactic in DAO. Like has been said before, which MMO will allow you to pull enemies one-by-one? Perhaps except at the first 20 levels, anyhow, as they are usually more forgiving at the beginning.
In DAO you pull single mobs. Very rarely you get 1-2 adds. Some mobs sometimes indeed seem stuck. Leashed if you prefer. I can't imagine that being on purpose though, as then they die without even reacting to ranged fire.

So I really think that is an exploit. Or a really horrible implementation.