20 réponses à ce sujet

[wanderon]

Just starting a "mostly mage" game where I plan to have 3 mages in the party most of the time and it occured to me that there may be a serious shortage of lyrium potions for that sort of group.

Is that correct?

Are there any stores that constantly restock them or will I have to change my tactics and use them much more carefully in order to have some when they are really needed?

(Playing on nightmare if that matters)
 

[berelinde]

Potions drop less frequently in nightmare than they do in hell, but you can craft restoration potions that restore 80% health and 40% mana. They're cheap as dirt to make, and you can buy the recipe from Solitivus at any time. All of the crafting materials are available in Act 1. Check the wiki for details.

Edit: IIRC, restoration potions do not share a cooldown with health or lyrium potions.

Modifié par berelinde, 21 août 2012 - 12:18 .

[mr_afk]

Potions drop from enemies more often when you have less of them, so you should always have ~3-5 before and after every battle. Stocking up on potions is usually unnecessary unless you're anticipating a particularly hard/long fight.

That said, you shouldn't need lyrium potions if you deal enough damage/finish fights fast enough/use dual haste+elemental weaknesses to maximise basic staff dps.
It doesn't take that much mana to grab a bunch of enemies, stick a grav ring on them, then drop a few firestorms on them.

Alternatively, simply using blood magic will make mana problems completely irrelevant for merrill/hawke, also allowing you to stick on as many sustains as you want.
I also find death syphon to be quite a useful alternative mana-wise.
Otherwise, maybe try using Aveline/Fenris for the fourth party member and have them use rally, which will greatly boost their mana regen. This probably isn't as ideal as you won't be able to unlock things and will probably have friendly-fire issues.

[wanderon]

Ahhh.. I forgot about the restoration potions adding mana/stamina that solves much of the issue right there. They did share a cooldown timer with health & elfroot potions last game (Hard difficulty) but not with stamina/mana potions - that was how I decided which potion to use - if health was down but mana/stamina was OK I used elfroot or heal - if both were down I used restoration.

As for freindly fire issues I'm already having those regardless of party configuration now that I'm playing on nightmare for the first time...

Seems I heard somewhere that lightning was the only elemental AoE that was freindly - freindly - any truth to that?

I am still very much learning to deal with both freindly fire and immunities/resistances - I mentioned in the thread I have about this party in the companion forums that it seems we need to bring a quartermaster with a wagon load of weapons and he needs to call a time out before each battle to assess the enemy; check it against his list and pass out the weapon of the day before allowing the battle to begin - thank the maker for the pause key!

[cJohnOne]

Yeah, Chain reaction and Tempest are non-friendly fire. I'm unsure about the rest.

[wanderon]

Well yesterday went pretty well on Nightmare - today not so much - had to reload to take out the last group of raiders for the finders keepers quest and now I am on my second reload on the loose ends quest - both of which I chose to do next because I thought they were the easiest on our plate currently...LOL

I guess thats why they called it Nightmare - huh?

[ripstrawberry]

elemental-all FF except un-upgraded winter's grasp
primal-all non-FF *this is the dmg tree you need to focus on*
spirit-WB is FF, dispel magic and spirit bolt aren't *good if you've got a disorient source*
creation-all non-FF *this is another excellent tree to focus on*
arcane-mind blast is FF, crushing prison isn't *good if you've got a stagger source*
entropy-hex of torment, misdirection hex and horror aren't FF. entropic cloud and sleep are FF.
force mage-everything is FF
blood mage- everything except the exploding blood slave is non-FF
spirit healer- everything is not FF.

So pretty much avoid elemental tree , get most of primal and creation, 1st half of entropy/spirit or most of arcane. Get the specs simply for the spec bonus (FM/BM + SH) or go blood mage + SH. I personally prefer death syphon to blood magic so I'd recommend getting the specs just for the spec bonus then focusing on the other spell trees after you've gotten most of primal and creation.

[mr_afk]

..or just use forcemage and an all-ranged party so friendly-fire isn't a problem?
- the elemental tree (firestorm) is probably the most powerful tree in the game
- walking bomb CCCs are awesome fun to pull off and can end fights really fast
- disorient CCCs are easy to pull off with a ranged rogue (fatiguing fog, confusion)

using a mix of crowd control and aoe attacks to deal with the majority of enemies while using hasted autoattacks and single-target/non-FF abilities to quickly kill elites is probably the most efficient way to play a mage.

All you really need to defeat the majority of enemies is
- Creation (haste, heroic aura)
- Force mage (pull of the abyss, grav ring)
- Elemental (firestorm, winter's grasp)

Primal and spirit trees are useful supplements, especially for their disorient CCCs

[wanderon]

Thanks ripstrawberry! Thats just the sort of info I am looking for this morning - I may start a new topic asking for general tactics and some specific explainations about playing nightmare before firing up the game today!

Hawke and company had a tough time at the office yesterday surviving small battles on nightmare but having to drop back to Hard for almost every quest ending battle after failing a couple times on nightmare. The worst part is the battles on hard are now too easy and not much fun while the battles on nightmare are like....(wait for it)...

 a bad dream

[wanderon]

mr_afk wrote...

..or just use forcemage and an all-ranged party so friendly-fire isn't a problem?
- the elemental tree (firestorm) is probably the most powerful tree in the game
- walking bomb CCCs are awesome fun to pull off and can end fights really fast
- disorient CCCs are easy to pull off with a ranged rogue (fatiguing fog, confusion)

using a mix of crowd control and aoe attacks to deal with the majority of enemies while using hasted autoattacks and single-target/non-FF abilities to quickly kill elites is probably the most efficient way to play a mage.

All you really need to defeat the majority of enemies is
- Creation (haste, heroic aura)
- Force mage (pull of the abyss, grav ring)
- Elemental (firestorm, winter's grasp)

Primal and spirit trees are useful supplements, especially for their disorient CCCs

I was just checking out the info in your "How to deal with assasins etc." - very useful stuff !

I am trying to use a 3 mage + Isabel set-up and having trouble becuase I don't have anyone to draw aggro away from the mages  but I'm not quite ready to change my party plan just yet.

 I tried holding back the party to begin the battle while we tossed some elemental AoE at bunched enemies which of course doesn't work unless the enemies start off bunched up or - even worse I discover too late that the enemy is immune to the elements we are tossing becuase I didn't check my handy dandy list of elemental resistances first!

Then I have been trying to work on micro-managing everyone but as I hand out orders and then turn everyone loose I look up to see someone just got one shotted and now I'm down to 3 - then 2 - then its reload time! (hence looking at your guide today)

I was also quite surprised to see that warrior attacks generate FF as well when I had Carver along and his mighty blow almost took out two mages while dispatching the foe that was in their face.  
 
Of course one part of our issues is we are still in Act one and currently level 10 and we have a ways to go before we become all powerful juggernauts of awesomeness...

[ripstrawberry]

"I am trying to use a 3 mage + Isabel set-up and having trouble becuase I don't have anyone to draw aggro away from the mages but I'm not quite ready to change my party plan just yet."

While mr_afk's advice is pretty useful and is quite optimal, since you want to stick with Isabela, I suggest you stick to non-FF spells for now until you get a better hang of how to play on nightmare, what to use. when to use them, optimal party combo strategies, general tactics, etc. If you want somebody to take aggro from the mages though you'll probably have to bring Aveline.

"I tried holding back the party to begin the battle while we tossed some elemental AoE at bunched enemies which of course doesn't work unless the enemies start off bunched up or - even worse I discover too late that the enemy is immune to the elements we are tossing becuase I didn't check my handy dandy list of elemental resistances first!"

I would suggest throw out non-elemental aoe's 1st that are geared toward CC like gravity ring, pull fot he abyss, hemorrhage, glyphs of paralysis or fist of the maker. Alot of skills in this game do FF. Most of the warrior skills that have AOE do FF. Take note, if you have the latest patch, the auto-attacks don't do AOE anymore. So, again, until you get the hang of it, it might be better for you to stick to single-target warrior skills (there are a few like pommel strike), taunt and auto-attacks.

Modifié par ripstrawberry, 22 août 2012 - 02:42 .

[wanderon]

ripstrawberry wrote...

"I am trying to use a 3 mage + Isabel set-up and having trouble becuase I don't have anyone to draw aggro away from the mages but I'm not quite ready to change my party plan just yet."

While mr_afk's advice is pretty useful and is quite optimal, since you want to stick with Isabela, I suggest you stick to non-FF spells for now until you get a better hang of how to play on nightmare, what to use. when to use them, optimal party combo strategies, general tactics, etc. If you want somebody to take aggro from the mages though you'll probably have to bring Aveline.

Yeah I breifly considered Aveline but she has been my go to warrior and constant companion in my last two games so I wanted to keep her use to a minimum this time and give someone else some face time

"I tried holding back the party to begin the battle while we tossed some elemental AoE at bunched enemies which of course doesn't work unless the enemies start off bunched up or - even worse I discover too late that the enemy is immune to the elements we are tossing becuase I didn't check my handy dandy list of elemental resistances first!"

I would suggest throw out non-elemental aoe's 1st that are geared toward CC like gravity ring, pull fot he abyss, hemorrhage, glyphs of paralysis or fist of the maker. Alot of skills in this game do FF. Most of the warrior skills that have AOE do FF. Take note, if you have the latest patch, the auto-attacks don't do AOE anymore. So, again, until you get the hang of it, it might be better for you to stick to single-target warrior skills (there are a few like pommel strike), taunt and auto-attacks.

I have been considering a respec for my mage - I took SH at level 7 for the spec boost and had been concentrating on elemental and I could take FM instead and get a few of those abilities on board and grab SH at level 14.

When you say auto attacks don't do FF does that mean when I head to the deep roads with Carver that as long as he is operating on auto-pilot I won't have to worry about FF from any of his abilities he chooses to use like mighty blow etc but I do have to consider them when I give him direct orders to use them?

Meanwhile we are continueing to move onward in nightmare and dropping back to hard after a reload or two - on wayward son we took the slavers at the docks and the final slavers on the coast on nightmare but we couldn't take Danzigs group without backing down to hard.

[ripstrawberry]

"Yeah I breifly considered Aveline but she has been my go to warrior and constant companion in my last two games so I wanted to keep her use to a minimum this time and give someone else some face time"

Why Isabela then? You could go with Fenris/Carver. An all-range party works well too with the dog.

'When you say auto attacks don't do FF does that mean when I head to the deep roads with Carver that as long as he is operating on auto-pilot I won't have to worry about FF from any of his abilities he chooses to use like mighty blow etc but I do have to consider them when I give him direct orders to use them?"

Auto-attacks mean basic attacks. Of course if you use the warrior skills, regardless of how you use them they will do FF. If you're not good with setting tactics/micro-managing, it's better to stay away from those skills and simply focus on buffs and passives like the vanguard tree, rally, taunt, etc.

[wanderon]

ripstrawberry wrote...

"Yeah I breifly considered Aveline but she has been my go to warrior and constant companion in my last two games so I wanted to keep her use to a minimum this time and give someone else some face time"

Why Isabela then? You could go with Fenris/Carver. An all-range party works well too with the dog.

Becuase Isabela is my romance and becuase I won't play without a rogue and didn't want Varrick again and becuase Fenris doesn't fit well in a game with 3 mages  -

and probably most of all becuase it isn't about which party is most optimal to me - it's about doing a different party concept perhaps BECAUSE it's less than optimal - for the challenge to some degree but mostly becuase I play more for the party interaction RP and banter than I do to optomize and maximize each characters mechanics to make it easier for me to "beat" the game...

you also  have to consider that my original plan was not to play on nightmare - it was just to play a new and different party concept (on hard) after just finishing a no mage party and prior to that a fairly normal run through  with a Dual weild Hawke Aveline Fenris and Merrill mostly. 

The whole Nightmare thing came about becuase the 3 mage party was too powerful on hard and I barely needed to manage anything at all - which is not much fun for me - altho it is more fun than a reload fest and when that occurs I can back down to hard or even normal to get past one

[mr_afk]

The main problem with 3 mage + isabela setup on nightmare is that isabela is rather useless at tanking/not dying and will cause a lot of friendly-fire issues.
Additionally, most of her damage potential comes from staggers (lacerate) which you can't get with three mages.

That said, if you micro-manage/control isabela, you should be able to pull off similar strategies to that of a DW hawke (albeit significantly weaker).

Unless chests/traps are very important to you, I would recommend going full-dex into isabela to concentrate on dps.
I would also consider manually controlling her to jump from enemy to enemy, drawing all the threat and keeping them chasing her.

Friendly-fire will be a major problem, so I would probably go with the abilities ripstrawberry recommended (i.e. dual haste, party buffs, single target spells and lightning spells).
You can still get quite a bit of damage pumped out if you setup disorient CCCs with isabela (fatiguing fog, confusion).
In addition to allowing your spirit bolts and stone fists to deal a lot more damage, it also allows you to use a walking bomb setup (i.e. give isabela a lot of spirit resistance and have her trigger walking bomb CCCs with some spike damage). It's probably unnecessarily complicated for your purposes though.

Here's an old pre-patch vid of an isabela mage party setup.

Due to the haste bug I used varric instead of anders, so post-patch using a dual haste setup will be even more effective - possibly even getting close to a DW hawke (unlikely though).

[ripstrawberry]

"Unless chests/traps are very important to you, I would recommend going full-dex into isabela to concentrate on dps."

I would still recommend enough dex to reach 100% crit and 100% atk vs grunts then everything into cun because this helps increase Isabela's dps and her def. But yeah higher dmg=CC via force effect

"I would also consider manually controlling her to jump from enemy to enemy, drawing all the threat and keeping them chasing her."

Wouldn't make him control Isabela more than Hawke? Personally, I find that boring. hehehe.

[mr_afk]

If I remember right, Isabela never reaches 100% crit chance - and since she doesn't get devious harm or as many attribute points, she never reaches the stage (high enough base damage) that justifies increasing crit damage instead of base damage.

Defence is pretty much useless if you manually dodge enemies and can kill them fast enough - you can maneuver around enemies so that you can rely on distance rather than defence to not get hit and arrows always hit you anyway.

Yeah, I'm basically suggesting controlling isabela as a replacement DW hawke, using hawke as an extra Anders (hasting/healing etc).
She won't be as powerful as a DW hawke, but with dual haste she could come relatively close - kick a fatiguing fog into a group of enemies, jump around killing them all - twin fangs/explosive strike brittled enemies for the extra 50% crit damage, and use her aoe stun (all hands on deck?) to get out of trouble.

Imo, controlling a mage hawke that only casts non-friendly fire spells and buffs will be just as boring. Unless you're controlling the battlefield by dragging enemies around and dropping aoes on them, using single target spells and auto-attacking enemies down can be done just as efficiently via tactics.

Modifié par mr_afk, 23 août 2012 - 02:58 .

[wanderon]

Well optimal or not the way I have been playing Isabela she stays alive much longer now with more con than she did before I respecced her [ naked con currently (20) and I will probably leave it there.]  This is more important now with no option for raising the dead than it will be later on.

 - locks and traps are important to me so dex will mostly have to wait until she gets over 30 cun (current dex 22 - cun 28 - with gear)

Didn't realize dog was such a big plus will start using him more often - I had mostly been using him to get Hawke out of trouble when surrounded or for fresh troops when the party starts dying .

Since I started on Nightmare I have begun mostly micromanaging everyone - depending on how the battlefield shapes up altho Hawke & Isabela take most management Merrill & Anders just need to be pointed the right direction to start and when things get dicey. 
 
Hawke has a lot of elemental tree with a little arcane plus spirit bolt and heal - SH spec =no abilities yet. and tactics are agressive custom with no FF elemental stuff listed there - I order those in myself to minimize FF.

Anders is mostly support and Merrill mostly primal and wrath of Elven + ensnare - and she takes little or no management except when I want to target someone specific.

I have never worked very hard getting CCC maximized - with regular parties on hard it wasn't really needed - I wanted to use them last game but with no mages usage options were minimal and the same with this game with no warriors - so essentially it's just as well I don't know what I am missing

In the end some of these ideas sound interesting but I either don't have the abilites mentioned yet and/or would need to respec to change stuff around and I'm not much into that - as long as I am making progress I prefer to keep muddling along with what I have and keep the momentum going than to change horses mid-stream if you know what I mean.

I have had this game since it came out and played a lot of characters into Act 2 at the beginning and last game was the first time I ever respecced a character rather than working with what the game gave me and I don't want to fall too far to the dark side you know...

[mr_afk]

Yeah, the dog is amazing. It can take a massive pounding from enemies and somehow manages to holds heaps of threat. It's especially useful against rage demons (since it's immune to fire), but it also tanks assassin backstabs quite well.

20 con sounds reasonable, especially if you're not manually moving her around to avoid enemy attacks.

You really should learn to just use custom tactics - it's a lot easier than micromanaging everyone and allows for a much faster and natural feel to fights.

Anyway, you seem to have it mostly sorted, but you should consider giving hawke haste (and anders if you haven't already).
Dual haste will make fights a lot easier.

In regards to CCCs, the only CCCs you have available are Disorient CCCs.
They're well worth it, so you should consider giving Isabela upgraded fatiguing fog and confusion, and giving your mages an upgraded spirit bolt and stone fist.
Once you've got those, just use Isabela to disorient groups of enemies and set your mages to do CCCs, preferably on elites. e.g.
enemy: elite or higher: use current condition for next tactic
enemy: status: DISORIENTED: spirit bolt


Well, play the game the way you want to.
Since I don't really have anything better to do, I would kick up an old save game and record the setup for your party combination to show you what I mean, but I seem to have deleted all my DLC and kinda cbf downloading them all again.
Good luck with whatever you end up doing

[wanderon]

Anders does have upgraded haste and Hawke will probably have it eventually altho I can't even imagine attacks getting off any faster than they do now hasted

Anders has elemental weapons and heroic aura and usually arcane shield (not yet upgraded to include party) and only has a couple damage spells - spirit bolt and crushing prison so he mostly has the sustains up and spams staff attacks and occasionally heals someone. so I generally just have to point him in the right direction -

I've never been really into letting the computer run party members whether I was the one programming them or not - this started way back with BG and IWD and others - I was never a fan of better and better AI - it's a control issue no doubt but at 63 I'm a little set in my ways - the thing is I want to PLAY the game not just sit back and watch it like a movie

Thats not to say I don't appreciate all the advice - I do and over time will no doubt work parts of it into my battle plans and character set ups -
 
I wish I knew a little more about how the mechanics of stuff works - like poisons for instance - no one ever mentions them but some of them seem like they would be very useful - take 15% damage away from any enemy you hit? Does that stack? how long does it last? why does all that stuff have to be a big dark secret?

[ripstrawberry]

"If I remember right, Isabela never reaches 100% crit chance - and since she doesn't get devious harm or as many attribute points, she never reaches the stage (high enough base damage) that justifies increasing crit damage instead of base damage."

Actually, when I used to play normally with a party, my Isabela reached 100% crit (unforgiving chain, precision or harmony, gear) but yes, good point regarding not reaching a high enough base dmg that will make increasing cun for crit dmg better. I'm sure however, that I did reach that point (perhaps later in the game) and that's why I stopped increasing Isabela's dex and moved over to cun

"Defence is pretty much useless if you manually dodge enemies and can kill them fast enough - you can maneuver around enemies so that you can rely on distance rather than defence to not get hit and arrows always hit you anyway."

I don't know then if this is a glitch, but I've had 80% def and seen arrows miss me. Like there was 1 enemy left (archer) and I stood in front of it and see the "miss" pop up a few times. Or I could just be remembering this incorrectly. Take note this is post-latest patch i'l have to re-test this.

"Yeah, the dog is amazing. It can take a massive pounding from enemies and somehow manages to holds heaps of threat. It's especially useful against rage demons (since it's immune to fire), but it also tanks assassin backstabs quite well."

Yeah great for targeting with bursting arrows, firestorms, fireballs, you should always have it out.

"I wish I knew a little more about how the mechanics of stuff works - like poisons for instance - no one ever mentions them but some of them seem like they would be very useful - take 15% damage away from any enemy you hit? Does that stack? how long does it last? why does all that stuff have to be a big dark secret? "

Poisons don't stack. Alot of potions don't stack either. Lasts for 20 mins if I recall correctly. I personally prefer deathroot toxin for melee if i'm melee, the slowing poison (crow's i think) if I'm ranged though I usually switch to deathroot toxin if im facing a boss because they're usually immune to slow, arcane poison if i have alot of mages with me and the drain poison (fel I think) if I'm a blood mage). So since you have 4 party members, lug 4 types around unless you're using the drain one or deathroot toxin since the effect won't stack on the target. They cost money though.