16 réponses à ce sujet

[Faerell Gustani]

 Whenever, we make a non mage character, we pick weapon style and stick with it.

What if, we're supposed to be able to use 2 weapon styles near simultaneously?  Meaning, quick swap to 2-hander for an ability or two, then swap back sword board.  Looking at the game design elements, there are many things that would give cost/benefit to this type of combat style.
2-H and dual wield both contain some area of effect abilities that would allow a tank to generate a solid amount of aggro...then quick switch back to Shield.
Shield tech is mostly about sustained abilities, so 2-H can burn the stam down using 2-h sweep and sunders, then quickswap.

Similarly, a dual wielder using momentum cares very little for stamina, so start the fight with bow drawn.  Arrow of slaying a few guys, then switch to dual wielding, turn on momentum and do good damage.  Both are dex based, as a Rogue, the Dex/Cun stat base functions for both archers and dual wielders.

Has anyone tried this?

[shaktiboy]

 The question's been asked before; there are other threads. I've asked the question too.  At this point I'd summarize things as follows:

• Through level 1-24(ish), you're better off sticking with one focus as a warrior or rogue. Why? because depending on how your build works, you typically want to min-max one attribute as high as possible and make one or two other attributes only high enough to meet minimum gear or talent requirements and leave the other attributes completely at their starting values. For example, if you're a DW warrior, you typically want to freeze STR at 38-42 max and pump everything else in DEX and never touch any of the other four attributes. Or if you're a CUN rogue, you typically want minimum DEX to grab the DW skills you care about, STR to 20-ish to equip T7 light armor, and pump all the rest into CUN. And so on.
• When you're doing a min-max build like this, you're optimizing for one focus and gimping yourself for other focuses, usually. For example, if you're a DW warrior, you're going for as high a DEX as possible and you don't care about Willpower at all because you rarely need stamina for active talents. If you wanted to use 2H talents on that DW warrior, you've got the wrong attribute mix for any of the 2H talents, which require high STR and a lot more stamina since the strengths of the 2H focus centers around using active talents a lot. So in this first "chapter" of the DA series, it's not really practical to try and do a dual-focus or 3-focus build for warriors and rogues. (But it works fine for mages, IMO, because unless you're an Arcane Warrior all you need is MAG and lots of lyrium potions.)
• However, if they raise the level cap for future expansions in the DA series, then we'll all pretty much be forced to branch out into a second or third focus even as a warrior or a rogue, because by level 24 you're able to grab nearly every single talent available in the two warrior chains, two spec chains, and all three of the chains in a single focus like DW.  I took a DW war to level 24 and was thinking that by level 25 there was literally no talent left worth taking.  Personally I'm hoping they do raise the level cap and force us to think about how to diversify our builds with a primary focus in one area and a secondary focus in another area, because it will force us to make harder decisions about attributes than we currently have. Right now everything is very cookie cutter and min-max and obvious. At least for warriors and rogues, anyway: if you're going to build a DW warrior there's pretty much only one best way to do it. Likewise for a 2H warrior. Likewise for a SS tank. Rogues you essentially have only two major choices: DW dagger/dagger CUN or DW dagger/dagger DEX.  Remember, I'm talking about min-max builds that are optimized for Hard or Nightmare play, even soloing something like Nightmare mode if you're patient enough.

Hope that helps. That's my take anyway. In hindsight, it's probably better to play the game in pure RP fashion where you take skills that sound fun and forget thinking about optimal min-max builds, because frankly the game is a cakewalk on Hard with any of the above-listed cookie-cutter min-max builds. You'll probably find the overall challenge level more.... challenging... if you don't think too hard about your build.

Another thing I'd do in hindsight if I bother to do a second playthrough is to skip nearly every side quest and codex pick-up and just zoom straight through the mainline story. Why? Because if you do every side quest and codex pickup you frankly earn too much EXP, IMO, and outlevel the challenge levels designed into each area too fast. The challenge scaling IMO doesn't have nearly high enough of a ceiling in most areas.


 

[Steel Majere343]

i have a topic pointed at about the same idea you do mate. i think you might be on to something as well.



my topic is about why weapon sets exist in general though (its actually a school project, im trying to get feedback).



you could look at my topic for all my thoughts. just search weapon sets, and its the only one made by me (theres only a list of like 5).



in general im torn because abilities like master archer, duel-wield mastery, and shield mastery all promote sticking with that line (they give bonuses to the entire "family" of skills). just the same MOST characters only have skills in one type of weapon class. which could also hint that bioware intends you to focus on a weapon style. i say most because daveth actually starts with skills in both archery and duel wield, so its clear they are not against the idea when the game was created.



one thing that is clear though is that it was more intended that rogues and warriors have a ranged weapon and a melee weapon. This is also evident since in the tactics screen there is only the option to have your characters switch to melee wepaons or ranged weapon and not the option to just switch weapon sets. so that implies they figured the sets would be used for ranged and melee. not just two diffrent types of melee for example.

[Faerell Gustani]

I can see the argument for "focus" in regards to Archery or 2-Handers

However, Dual Wield only truly as 6-8 techs you want. (3 of proficiency ones, and teching up to momentum)

You can easily put the others into Archery to utilized Scattershot to open a fight and get some quick damage, a quick 4 points.



The offensive Shield abilities are rather sub-par, Shield is mostly used to jack up defense using Shield Wall (so 2 trees at full, 8 techs, maybe 9 or 10 with bash and pummel)



My point is, full out specialization of 12 points is not necessary.

[shaktiboy]

Faerell Gustani wrote...

I can see the argument for "focus" in regards to Archery or 2-Handers
However, Dual Wield only truly as 6-8 techs you want. (3 of proficiency ones, and teching up to momentum)
You can easily put the others into Archery to utilized Scattershot to open a fight and get some quick damage, a quick 4 points.

The offensive Shield abilities are rather sub-par, Shield is mostly used to jack up defense using Shield Wall (so 2 trees at full, 8 techs, maybe 9 or 10 with bash and pummel)

My point is, full out specialization of 12 points is not necessary.

Riposte and Punisher are useful for boss killing. Necessary? No. But they make it go faster.

Whirlwind and Sweep are useful any time you have 2 or more enemies clustered on you. Necessary? No. But they make killing the easy weenies go faster so you can get to the boss faster before he does too much damage.  There's plenty of fights in the game where you have several groups coming at your from different angles and your tank has already taunted a cluster onto himself and another set of 3-5 come in. Why not taunt them with your DW and Whirlwind and Sweep them? Weenies go down fast that way.

Point being that Momentum isn't the only thing you're going for as a DW warrior--all three talent chains are useful. The only talents that aren't really useful are the last two in the proficiency chain (assuming you're min-maxing by going with two daggers and high DEX as a DW warrior).

Also, why even bother with any archery skills? Anything in the archer trees pales in comparison to your melee damage output. Plus, switching to bow or starting with bow shuts off Momentum and then you have a delay to start up Momentum (and Berserk) once you switch back to melee weaps, losing valuable time. Why not just rush the archers in the backline and kill them faster with your daggers?  Any mages around sure won't slow you down if you took Templar as your 2nd spec and are running with full 100% spell resist gear (or close to 100%).  Trying to plink at anyone with a bow is just cutting your total damage output by a huge factor.

Not that there's anything wrong with using archer skills for roleplay reasons, but in terms of sheer effciency.... No. Just no.  The only reason a bow is useful to pretty much *any* warrior build is simply for tactical pulling/splitting enemies to chase you back to a choke point or whatever. But frankly, unless you're on nightmare mode or trying to solo Hard or Nightmare, you don't even need to bother with pulling tactics like that that after about level 10 if you run with a full group of companions.

[Steel Majere343]

shaktiboy wrote...

 The question's been asked before; there are other threads. I've asked the question too.  At this point I'd summarize things as follows:

• Through level 1-24(ish), you're better off sticking with one focus as a warrior or rogue. Why? because depending on how your build works, you typically want to min-max one attribute as high as possible and make one or two other attributes only high enough to meet minimum gear or talent requirements and leave the other attributes completely at their starting values. For example, if you're a DW warrior, you typically want to freeze STR at 38-42 max and pump everything else in DEX and never touch any of the other four attributes. Or if you're a CUN rogue, you typically want minimum DEX to grab the DW skills you care about, STR to 20-ish to equip T7 light armor, and pump all the rest into CUN. And so on.
• When you're doing a min-max build like this, you're optimizing for one focus and gimping yourself for other focuses, usually. For example, if you're a DW warrior, you're going for as high a DEX as possible and you don't care about Willpower at all because you rarely need stamina for active talents. If you wanted to use 2H talents on that DW warrior, you've got the wrong attribute mix for any of the 2H talents, which require high STR and a lot more stamina since the strengths of the 2H focus centers around using active talents a lot. So in this first "chapter" of the DA series, it's not really practical to try and do a dual-focus or 3-focus build for warriors and rogues. (But it works fine for mages, IMO, because unless you're an Arcane Warrior all you need is MAG and lots of lyrium potions.)
• However, if they raise the level cap for future expansions in the DA series, then we'll all pretty much be forced to branch out into a second or third focus even as a warrior or a rogue, because by level 24 you're able to grab nearly every single talent available in the two warrior chains, two spec chains, and all three of the chains in a single focus like DW.  I took a DW war to level 24 and was thinking that by level 25 there was literally no talent left worth taking.  Personally I'm hoping they do raise the level cap and force us to think about how to diversify our builds with a primary focus in one area and a secondary focus in another area, because it will force us to make harder decisions about attributes than we currently have. Right now everything is very cookie cutter and min-max and obvious. At least for warriors and rogues, anyway: if you're going to build a DW warrior there's pretty much only one best way to do it. Likewise for a 2H warrior. Likewise for a SS tank. Rogues you essentially have only two major choices: DW dagger/dagger CUN or DW dagger/dagger DEX.  Remember, I'm talking about min-max builds that are optimized for Hard or Nightmare play, even soloing something like Nightmare mode if you're patient enough.

Hope that helps. That's my take anyway. In hindsight, it's probably better to play the game in pure RP fashion where you take skills that sound fun and forget thinking about optimal min-max builds, because frankly the game is a cakewalk on Hard with any of the above-listed cookie-cutter min-max builds. You'll probably find the overall challenge level more.... challenging... if you don't think too hard about your build.

Another thing I'd do in hindsight if I bother to do a second playthrough is to skip nearly every side quest and codex pick-up and just zoom straight through the mainline story. Why? Because if you do every side quest and codex pickup you frankly earn too much EXP, IMO, and outlevel the challenge levels designed into each area too fast. The challenge scaling IMO doesn't have nearly high enough of a ceiling in most areas.


 

to clarify  it only takes destarity and or strength for every  weapon style in the game, so switching between them freely is not illogical. if the manual means anything it clarifies what their intent was, and the OP is more in the right here. By the games standards we are indeed "doing it wrong". the manual has a paragraph on page 28 defining the purpose for weapon alternate sets. it states that the sets are generally for ranged weapons and melee weapons. but it also states that there is no reason a character cant switch between dual weapons and a two handed weapon for example.

[Steel Majere343]

shaktiboy wrote...

Faerell Gustani wrote...

I can see the argument for "focus" in regards to Archery or 2-Handers
However, Dual Wield only truly as 6-8 techs you want. (3 of proficiency ones, and teching up to momentum)
You can easily put the others into Archery to utilized Scattershot to open a fight and get some quick damage, a quick 4 points.

The offensive Shield abilities are rather sub-par, Shield is mostly used to jack up defense using Shield Wall (so 2 trees at full, 8 techs, maybe 9 or 10 with bash and pummel)

My point is, full out specialization of 12 points is not necessary.

Riposte and Punisher are useful for boss killing. Necessary? No. But they make it go faster.

Whirlwind and Sweep are useful any time you have 2 or more enemies clustered on you. Necessary? No. But they make killing the easy weenies go faster so you can get to the boss faster before he does too much damage.  There's plenty of fights in the game where you have several groups coming at your from different angles and your tank has already taunted a cluster onto himself and another set of 3-5 come in. Why not taunt them with your DW and Whirlwind and Sweep them? Weenies go down fast that way.

Point being that Momentum isn't the only thing you're going for as a DW warrior--all three talent chains are useful. The only talents that aren't really useful are the last two in the proficiency chain (assuming you're min-maxing by going with two daggers and high DEX as a DW warrior).

Also, why even bother with any archery skills? Anything in the archer trees pales in comparison to your melee damage output. Plus, switching to bow or starting with bow shuts off Momentum and then you have a delay to start up Momentum (and Berserk) once you switch back to melee weaps, losing valuable time. Why not just rush the archers in the backline and kill them faster with your daggers?  Any mages around sure won't slow you down if you took Templar as your 2nd spec and are running with full 100% spell resist gear (or close to 100%).  Trying to plink at anyone with a bow is just cutting your total damage output by a huge factor.

Not that there's anything wrong with using archer skills for roleplay reasons, but in terms of sheer effciency.... No. Just no.  The only reason a bow is useful to pretty much *any* warrior build is simply for tactical pulling/splitting enemies to chase you back to a choke point or whatever. But frankly, unless you're on nightmare mode or trying to solo Hard or Nightmare, you don't even need to bother with pulling tactics like that that after about level 10 if you run with a full group of companions.

arrow of slaying should never be nocked, thats almost blasphemy here.

plus scattershot, those two alone are more usefull then 90% of the dual wielding class altogether. arrow of slaying will do more damage then ripost, punisher, and every other technique it has, not to mention scattershot can stop a whole group in their tracks instantly. i dont think it was ment to master the entire specializations nor is it even necessary. like two trees in a weapon class that you REALLY like is good enough.

with that in mind its more then possible to have a melee and ranged team and work effectively. having skills in both. or, if you have a character you dont want to be ranged, just pick up another weapon type, i just built alistar (he has had like 10 cumulative levels so i decided to test it out) to use both sword and shield and a semi branch of two handed, not to mention hes a full templar and a champion, and has a full warrior tree.

its really fun using two weapon types im finding. screw practical, you can make thousands of potions in this game plus a full fledged spirit healer can pretty much make any battle easy. its just all around fun to have each character have what feels like infinit options.

try it out, some wont like having partial trees. but i like the versatility of switching to a two hander and knowing some skills there, then going dual, knowing some skills there, etc.

[shaktiboy]

Steel Majere343 wrote...

arrow of slaying should never be nocked, thats almost blasphemy here.

plus scattershot, those two alone are more usefull then 90% of the dual wielding class altogether. arrow of slaying will do more damage then ripost, punisher, and every other technique it has, not to mention scattershot can stop a whole group in their tracks instantly. i dont think it was ment to master the entire specializations nor is it even necessary. like two trees in a weapon class that you REALLY like is good enough.

with that in mind its more then possible to have a melee and ranged team and work effectively. having skills in both. or, if you have a character you dont want to be ranged, just pick up another weapon type, i just built alistar (he has had like 10 cumulative levels so i decided to test it out) to use both sword and shield and a semi branch of two handed, not to mention hes a full templar and a champion, and has a full warrior tree.

its really fun using two weapon types im finding. screw practical, you can make thousands of potions in this game plus a full fledged spirit healer can pretty much make any battle easy. its just all around fun to have each character have what feels like infinit options.

try it out, some wont like having partial trees. but i like the versatility of switching to a two hander and knowing some skills there, then going dual, knowing some skills there, etc.

From a standpoint of having a "fun" build or a "roleplay" build, I totally agree with you. Mix and match, try whatever seems appealing. Especially on Normal mode or even Hard mode, if your companions and party and tactics are constructed well, then it really doesn't matter much whether your main character is "optimal" or not.

But from the standpoint of efficiency or min-max, I disagree.  The problem with Arrow of Slaying and Scattershot is very simple if you're a DW warrior. How long is the cooldown on those skills? How often can you fire off those skills in 10 seconds?  Now tell me what is happening when those two skills are on cooldown? Arrow auto-attack damage? Okay, now compare this with just staying in DW mode with two daggers over that same 10 seconds. Sure Riposte and Punisher might not be as much damage as Arrow of Slaying and Scattershot, but your speed-boosted dual-dagger auto-attacks (with Berserk + Momentum/Haste + Blood Thirst) will outdamage your arrow auto-attacks by a huge factor.

Yes, there are times when it might be tactically advantageous to stand back and use a bow (won't go into the spoiler situation for that) but really, is it worth lowering your overall efficiency and DPS just to be a little stronger in the very very few fights where shooting from range is a safer option than fighting from melee range? For fun, sure, you might say that's worth it but not from a sheer efficiency standpoint. IMO, anyway. Ultimately, it's all good and whatever is "fun" for a person is what they should do. 

[shaktiboy]

Steel Majere343 wrote...

to clarify  it only takes destarity and or strength for every  weapon style in the game, so switching between them freely is not illogical. if the manual means anything it clarifies what their intent was, and the OP is more in the right here. By the games standards we are indeed "doing it wrong". the manual has a paragraph on page 28 defining the purpose for weapon alternate sets. it states that the sets are generally for ranged weapons and melee weapons. but it also states that there is no reason a character cant switch between dual weapons and a two handed weapon for example.

Point for point, Dexterity is far superior to Strength for both Warriors and Rogues. The only "focus" that benefits from higher STR than DEX is a 2H warrior whose role is DPS. For almost any other warrior or rogue build, you never take more STR than needed for the type of armor you plan to use and you pump all other points into as much DEX as possible (or CUN for one type of rouge DW build).

To recap:

Benefits of StrengthIncreases damage from all weapons except crossbows and staves.Increases attack score in melee combat by 0.5 for each point purchased.Increases physical resistance by 0.5 for each point purchased.Prerequisite for most weapon talents and higher-level armor and weapons.Contributes to intimidation.[/list]Benefits of DexterityIncreases attack score in melee combat by 0.5 for each point purchased.Increases attack score in ranged combat by 1 for each point purchased.Increases damage from piercing weapons.Increases defense by 1 for each point purchased.Increases physical resistance by 0.5 for each point purchased.Prerequisite for some weapon talents. [/list]
Should DEX have such an overwhelming advantage over STR for warriors and rogues? No. That's just weak balance design IMO. But it is what it is and it didn't take the player community long to figure it out.

Modifié par shaktiboy, 28 décembre 2009 - 06:58 .

[Steel Majere343]

shaktiboy wrote...

Steel Majere343 wrote...

to clarify  it only takes destarity and or strength for every  weapon style in the game, so switching between them freely is not illogical. if the manual means anything it clarifies what their intent was, and the OP is more in the right here. By the games standards we are indeed "doing it wrong". the manual has a paragraph on page 28 defining the purpose for weapon alternate sets. it states that the sets are generally for ranged weapons and melee weapons. but it also states that there is no reason a character cant switch between dual weapons and a two handed weapon for example.

Point for point, Dexterity is far superior to Strength for both Warriors and Rogues. The only "focus" that benefits from higher STR than DEX is a 2H warrior whose role is DPS. For almost any other warrior or rogue build, you never take more STR than needed for the type of armor you plan to use and you pump all other points into as much DEX as possible (or CUN for one type of rouge DW build).

To recap:

Benefits of StrengthIncreases damage from all weapons except crossbows and staves.Increases attack score in melee combat by 0.5 for each point purchased.Increases physical resistance by 0.5 for each point purchased.Prerequisite for most weapon talents and higher-level armor and weapons.Contributes to intimidation.[/list]Benefits of DexterityIncreases attack score in melee combat by 0.5 for each point purchased.Increases attack score in ranged combat by 1 for each point purchased.Increases damage from piercing weapons.Increases defense by 1 for each point purchased.Increases physical resistance by 0.5 for each point purchased.Prerequisite for some weapon talents. [/list]
Should DEX have such an overwhelming advantage over STR for warriors and rogues? No. That's just weak balance design IMO. But it is what it is and it didn't take the player community long to figure it out.

you speak a lot of truth. In every game though i believe that it takes away the fun and the majority of the options to min/max as you describe. i completely agree with you in that there are builds that are the best. most defenately, it is almost impossable for developers to make a game like this and balance it so well that every build will have equal advantages, unless you substantially decrease the options.

you are absolutely right in that the times you actually need a ranged weapon are severly limited to a point that the ranged tree altogether is not really worth it. To play with maximum effeciancy would be boring though. every mage build especially would end up identical, with identical skills. although they did a great job balancing the mages spell trees (there are no useless spells and every tree is well worth the points considering what you get) but there are still spell trees that are the BEST ones of the group.

to be honest, most of what they suggest as tips for their own game actually make you less efficient. such as their general vision that warriors should have high willpower, dextarity and strength. that is actually less efficient then just focusing on dextarity and strength alone, rogues, in the games "vision" see them as both strong and cunning. whereas most people take advantage of lethality and just toss out strength altogether.

and to top it all off if you auto level them, i found out that the auto level also puts points into multiple skill trees. mostly the characters main melee choice and archery. after auto leveling 10 levels with alistair he was a master archer, working on his second line.

sten also had a few archery abilities (i auto leveld him 5) and ohgren actually surprised me when he started to pick up dual weapons but not archery like the other characters. although looking at the fact that dwarven warriors start with dual weapons skills thats probly a racial thing. non the less he was all the way finished with his first line and could wield two full sized weapons.

so i believe the INTENT was that. but the intent for the game was a lot of things, and i think if everyone did what the game intended it would probly be less contriversy on whether the game is difficult or not, and my money is people would have a far more difficult time building the characters as was intended. it was ment to be a challanging game. you were supposed to have to use your head.

so i agree with you that its not the most efficiant, and i see what your saying about weighing str and dex, all true.
but i dont think its exactly how they intended it, its a single player game so do whatever you are having fun with of course, but thats what i believe they had in mind.

[Steel Majere343]

and i dont mean challenging as in you lost alistair in that last fight lol. i mean the game was supposed to be a true challenge. you wernt supposed to be able to just pick out of a flock of min/max builds, build them all the same way, and steamrole over the archdemon.

you were supposed to feel like you had to use every skill available to you. not just pump alistair full of dextarity every playthrough, get forcefield every playthrough, get wynn every playthrough and buy a bunch of potions, set some tactics and watch the game like a movie. now i know theres no wrong way to play the game lol. but hey, just for the hell of it. i encourage just auto leveling the characters. you cant get any truer to the games vision then that. letting the game form your characters will basically form them to the same characters the game was built around. meaning the challenge level should be appropriate for all the situations.



not to mention i just tried auto level again and sten actually picks up a skill from every tree except dual wielding. on top of getting some archery abilities he picked up shield bash.

so i think the game was more meant for warriors to be versatile, like for example sten will probly always want a two hander in one of his slots but he could also start using a shield and have some techniques there. one extra shield bash can turn a whole battle around, ud be surprised.

so while its not the most affective i think it probly is the most fun to just pickup skills as you see fit. not to just specialize in a weapon style, theres a reason why they dont have warriors just pick a weapon style in the beginning and lock the rest like they do with specializations.

they are obviously there so you can take them if you find appeal there.

Modifié par Steel Majere343, 28 décembre 2009 - 09:02 .

[shaktiboy]

 Steel Majere, you make many excellent points about Bioware's "vision" two posts above. I think you're spot on. The fact that the game seems too easy even on Hard mode with a full party, player-chosen talents/spells for the party members, smartly chosen and ordered tactics for all party members, and of course any of the many logical and easy to figure out min-max builds for your main character and the easy-to-figure out "best talents/spells" for your companions all point to several conclusions:

First conclusion: Bioware tried to do a good job with balancing possible/typical player-designed builds against their challenge scaling and overall exp gain, but failed pretty spectacularly. Why do I make a harsh conclusion like this? Because ArenaNet faced an almost identical complex problem in Guild Wars, yet they succeeded at balancing very well. Many of the mainline quest encounters in GW were freaking hard even with some of the best optimized builds and party makeup the player community could come up with, and they ruthlessly rebalanced skills that were found to be too powerful in certain ingenious combo builds. There were even a few missions where it was considered nearly impossible to beat them without forming a group of all players to completely remove AI-controlled party members from the equation (and the AI was pretty good actually).

Second conclusion: Bioware seriously messed up their upper limits for challenge scaling in most of the "middle" areas of the game (the four main "recruitment" quest arcs after Lothering). It would be really educational for the community if someone on a PC version would just use console cheats in Ostagar to create a level 25 character out of the gate and then zoom through the mainline quests to open up each area and measure the critter/normal/lieut/boss/elite boss levels reported by Survival, then present that in a table on the Wikia site somewhere. This would ultimately provide the *real* story about which areas you should "ideally" hit in which order, and at what point you have effectively overleveled the challenge scaling designed into any one area. Maybe if I get real bored I'll do this but don't count on it--I'm not as enamored of story driven games with very little combat as many here are (Borderlands, for example, has a far higher replay value for my tastes.)

Third conclusion: The balance team really missed the mark on their expectations of how many people would do all the side quests and find all the codexes for extra exp, etc. The statements by Bioware devs that they expected most people would finish the game at between levels 10-15 points that out pretty clearly. Anyone looking for maximum play hours and content enjoyment can easily hit level 23 with a non-rogue character. Somebody here even pointed out that if you're willing to kill off nearly every NPC possible with friendly fire from the Mages in your party, you can even hit level 25 without a single exploit.

Let's hope that Bioware learns from these mistakes and makes the future chapters in the Dragon Age series more realistically challenge-balanced against the typical preferences of their target audience. These preferences include: a tendency to look for "optimum" builds in any game with sophisticated and flexible build possibilities, and a tendency to consume all possible content to make the gameplay hours last as long as possible.

Modifié par shaktiboy, 28 décembre 2009 - 03:59 .

[rabbitchannel]

Jeez. tldr for some of the other posts. Anyway, my two cents is that switching weapons quickly in battle would be feasible if not for sustained abilities deactivating and having to wait for cool down each time you switch back. Even if you waited to reactivate them you take away from your DPS.



Sorry if this was covered in the sea of text above me.

[shaktiboy]

rab****annel wrote...

Jeez. tldr for some of the other posts. Anyway, my two cents is that switching weapons quickly in battle would be feasible if not for sustained abilities deactivating and having to wait for cool down each time you switch back. Even if you waited to reactivate them you take away from your DPS.

Sorry if this was covered in the sea of text above me.

omg tldr wtf u xceed3d 140 char ^.^

[Faerell Gustani]

shaktiboy wrote...
Riposte and Punisher are useful for boss killing. Necessary? No. But they make it go faster.

Whirlwind and Sweep are useful any time you have 2 or more enemies clustered on you. Necessary? No. But they make killing the easy weenies go faster so you can get to the boss faster before he does too much damage.  There's plenty of fights in the game where you have several groups coming at your from different angles and your tank has already taunted a cluster onto himself and another set of 3-5 come in. Why not taunt them with your DW and Whirlwind and Sweep them? Weenies go down fast that way.

I was merely outlining the "necessary" talents of TWF.
Dual Weapon sweep is along the way to Momentum.
I said 6 to 8.
6 being what include 3 of the proficiencies, then Sweep, Flurry, Momentum.

The 8 includes options like going to Whirlwind or Riposte.

shaktiboy wrote...
Point being that Momentum isn't the only thing you're going for as a DW warrior--all three talent chains are useful. The only talents that aren't really useful are the last two in the proficiency chain (assuming you're min-maxing by going with two daggers and high DEX as a DW warrior).

Also, why even bother with any archery skills? Anything in the archer trees pales in comparison to your melee damage output. Plus, switching to bow or starting with bow shuts off Momentum and then you have a delay to start up Momentum (and Berserk) once you switch back to melee weaps, losing valuable time. Why not just rush the archers in the backline and kill them faster with your daggers?  Any mages around sure won't slow you down if you took Templar as your 2nd spec and are running with full 100% spell resist gear (or close to 100%).  Trying to plink at anyone with a bow is just cutting your total damage output by a huge factor.

Because not all fights start with you in melee range.
Start your basic preparation as Bows drawn, this way momentum is already disabled and can be enabled at will.
The fight occurrs, if it starts at range, then you scattershot them and give your melee precious time to close in.
If the fight starts in melee, you quick swap to dual wielding kick in momentum loosing virtually no time, as the start up "draw weapon" animation is about the same speed as the "swap and draw weapons" animation.

[Steel Majere343]

shaktiboy wrote...

 Steel Majere, you make many excellent points about Bioware's "vision" two posts above. I think you're spot on. The fact that the game seems too easy even on Hard mode with a full party, player-chosen talents/spells for the party members, smartly chosen and ordered tactics for all party members, and of course any of the many logical and easy to figure out min-max builds for your main character and the easy-to-figure out "best talents/spells" for your companions all point to several conclusions:

First conclusion: Bioware tried to do a good job with balancing possible/typical player-designed builds against their challenge scaling and overall exp gain, but failed pretty spectacularly. Why do I make a harsh conclusion like this? Because ArenaNet faced an almost identical complex problem in Guild Wars, yet they succeeded at balancing very well. Many of the mainline quest encounters in GW were freaking hard even with some of the best optimized builds and party makeup the player community could come up with, and they ruthlessly rebalanced skills that were found to be too powerful in certain ingenious combo builds. There were even a few missions where it was considered nearly impossible to beat them without forming a group of all players to completely remove AI-controlled party members from the equation (and the AI was pretty good actually).

Second conclusion: Bioware seriously messed up their upper limits for challenge scaling in most of the "middle" areas of the game (the four main "recruitment" quest arcs after Lothering). It would be really educational for the community if someone on a PC version would just use console cheats in Ostagar to create a level 25 character out of the gate and then zoom through the mainline quests to open up each area and measure the critter/normal/lieut/boss/elite boss levels reported by Survival, then present that in a table on the Wikia site somewhere. This would ultimately provide the *real* story about which areas you should "ideally" hit in which order, and at what point you have effectively overleveled the challenge scaling designed into any one area. Maybe if I get real bored I'll do this but don't count on it--I'm not as enamored of story driven games with very little combat as many here are (Borderlands, for example, has a far higher replay value for my tastes.)

Third conclusion: The balance team really missed the mark on their expectations of how many people would do all the side quests and find all the codexes for extra exp, etc. The statements by Bioware devs that they expected most people would finish the game at between levels 10-15 points that out pretty clearly. Anyone looking for maximum play hours and content enjoyment can easily hit level 23 with a non-rogue character. Somebody here even pointed out that if you're willing to kill off nearly every NPC possible with friendly fire from the Mages in your party, you can even hit level 25 without a single exploit.

Let's hope that Bioware learns from these mistakes and makes the future chapters in the Dragon Age series more realistically challenge-balanced against the typical preferences of their target audience. These preferences include: a tendency to look for "optimum" builds in any game with sophisticated and flexible build possibilities, and a tendency to consume all possible content to make the gameplay hours last as long as possible.

i think this is true.min/max builds are way to easy to figure out, and so are the best spells ESPECIALLY if youv been through the game at least once.

minor fixes i think would be maybe splitting defense between str and dex?. seeing as how they also expected all fighters to have at least a reasonable str, if it were 50/50 then that would give a good reason to keep str up in the game.

rogues should also have abilities that rely on str, like hard backstabs or something. as it stands other then getting better equipment theres no reason for a rogue to put any points in str. if there was even one high level ability that required a moderate amount of str (like 32 or something) that would at least provide incentive and purpose.

willpower and constitution should probly be +10s and not +5s. +5 isnt really a big deal with any of the stats, stamina or health. plus 10 would make 10 points give 100 health, which would be awsome, instead of throwing 10 points for 50 health. 50 health goes in about 4 seconds with a tank. so really, thats a waste of 10 points in comparison to what you COULD have had with dextarity.

warriors would have been done perfectly if willpower and constitution were more appealing. then im sure people would want to spend points there instead of just min/max destaity warrior #134.

i also think healing should be redone. instead of offering a spirit healer and the ability to make hundreds of potions (trust me, the elfroot vendor was not on accident, to my knowledge he only sold deathroot in beta but people complained that if they felt forced to take wynn due to the games mechanics so they added infinit elfroot so that it gave players at least one more option then being forced to take a certain character or specialization) healer should have just been a full class. like mage or warrior. it should have been an archtype.

there are enough buffs and abilities to make multiple classes, just look at vanguard, everquest or any MMO, there are hundreds of healer oriented abilities that would transfer nicely to this game. then just remove health pultices alltogether.

in fact if i were playing on computer i would make a mod to do this, i do know how. i think it would generally improve the gameplay. that way, wynn wouldnt seem like such an omnipotent character since healers wouldnt be that difficult to achieve. just make one more mage to give a selection versus morigan, then make one more healer to offset wynn.

there could be a male mage dps for an alternate option to morrigan, and maybe a younger female healer to offset wynn.

its not like healer has to have the same amount of abilities mage has either. just make maybe three schools, take creation from mage, add a few more healing spells to the lines, then two more schools and 4 more lines for specialization and that could be a full archtype.

[Merlik]

In my new playthrough I started last night, spreading out the skills and talents is one of my goals.



This will be my personals hard core mode of self imposed rules.



*Every character will need at least 1 point in Survival

*I will have more learn trap making and potion making this time around.

*A stat cannot be increased by more that 1 at each level up for humans, Sten can put 2 points in Strength, elves can put 2 points in Dex (but i never use elves)

*Only one extra heavy object can be carried in inventory per character (Shield, 2H Weapon, Body slot armor)

*2 extra medium items per character can be carried in backpack (One handed weapons, helms, boots, gloves)



I have more rules I plan to go by, but it's time to leave work, later!