17 réponses à ce sujet

[b4ld5h3ph4rd]

Playing a male mage hawk I've met Captain Janeway and sailed on the boat to the city gates. Far enough to have fought the first ogre and some hordes. For a new player who doesn't know what I'm doing yet, it has been a cakewalk. In Origins on normal, the first ogre was tough.

My first question is: Is normal difficulty something to be passed over by someone who played Origins?

Also, it seems that personal experience from Origins is not going to cut it in this game. I chose to get Taunt for one of the characters. Absolutely useless because of the new arrangement for more and weaker foes.

My second question is: Are there respec potions in the game or does it require a mod? Because I've made some decisions for supporting characters that I think I will regret, such as choosing defensive abilities when I probably should have directed them at abilities for killing things as fast as possible or setting up combos, like Pommel Strike.

[caradoc2000]

b4ld5h3ph4rd wrote...

My first question is: Is normal difficulty something to be passed over by someone who played Origins?

DA2 tends to be easier than DAO.

Also, it seems that personal experience from Origins is not going to cut it in this game. I chose to get Taunt for one of the characters. Absolutely useless because of the new arrangement for more and weaker foes.

Game mechanics got a complete overhaul for DA2, so you can't really rely too much on DAO experience.

My second question is: Are there respec potions in the game?

Yes, if you have the Black Emporium DLC. It sells Maker's Sigh respec potions. It also has the Mirror of Transformation that lets you change your character looks.

[cJohnOne]

Well, I think most battles can be won on Hard. I don't think the ogre battle is that easy although I could be remembering wrong. Yeah if it's too easy try Hard. I tried all the difficulty levels. Easy was a cake walk except for two places as I remember. It also depends on how bad your builds are. The DAO Ogre is always fun for me since I don't use any kiting strategy until he's killed everybody except for one person

I think taunt is more useful in DA2 since you don't need it in DAO. I've never had much use for pommel strike but other people have said that it is good. If you're talking about Aveline she has shield bash and doesn't need pommel strike. I'm not sure if Fenris needs it or not but it doesn't sound like your that far in to meet him yet. As far as taking offensive versus defensive. Everyone seems to like the offensive talents to kill things faster.

Oh I imagine that Carver would need Pommel Strike.

Modifié par cJohnOne, 26 décembre 2013 - 07:44 .

[b4ld5h3ph4rd]

Focus on offensive: That's the idea I'm getting after reading more and more posts. Damage as fast as possible and ignore defensive stuff. Although I have looked through all the abilities of all the current characters and noted combos in hopes of a teamwork based playthrough.

stagger -> electricity
freeze -> brittle -> stun -> stagger -> electricity
sleep -> paralyze

Thanks, guys! I will keep taunt instead of starting a new game, and just increase difficulty.

[mr_afk]

Yay, the dps mantra is sinking through! What is this sense of.. achievement I'm feeling?!

Anyhow, in answer to the original question, most reasonably effective setups will find post-patch normal rather easy, aside from the occasional fight. The only real dangers in the game are elite and boss enemies, especially if they are left to their devices. That's why if using a dps-orientated setup and targeting the dangerous enemies from the get-go can make hard and even nightmare rather easy.

That said, on harder difficulties directing the threat away from your weaker companions becomes more important. Given the nature of enemies spawning from multiple directions, abilities drawing, transferring, and reducing threat are quite useful. Clustering enemies (via threat management) is also has the additional benefit of allowing certain abilities to hit multiple targets. So in some regards taunt can be quite useful.

In regards to focusing on the offensive, as you seem to have noticed, they added a new system of cross class combos. Here's the CCC triangle I made a while back:


Increasing attack-speed with haste (ideally dual haste), dropping firestorms, and targeting elemental weaknesses (double damage) will also help dish out maximal amounts of damage.

The other important aspect besides focusing on the offensive/CCCs is crowd control - but you seem to have got that sorted with your status afflictions..? Mages are the best at this, especially forcemages.

Working all these aspects into a party setup can makes for very effective combos. For example, freezing enemy elite units (assassins) with a winter's grasp/petrify/cone of cold (brittle) --> archer's lance CCC, or stunning an enemies with pommel bash (stagger) --> chain lightning/haemorrhage CCC. With some threat management, enemies clustered around tank/dog or with pull of the abyss --> fatiguing fog (disorient) --> walking bomb for some explosive fun times.

Anyway, good luck and have fun!

[Fast Jimmy]

^

I still can't believe the game doesn't do a better job of A) introducing cross-class combos earlier (you can't really unlock your first actionable one until around Level 9, I believe and making them difficult to recognize and pull off without a comprehensive tactics set (or, at least, I felt so, playing on the 360 and being unable to distinguish the squiggly lines difference between Brittle, Disorient and Stagger without a magnifying glass).

[mr_afk]

Pretty much. If they were going to use some exaggerated story with high levelled characters at the start, they should have used that opportunity to introduce us to cross-class combos and some of the other gameplay mechanics. I can easily see the corny tutorial pop-ups going "use bethany to cast winter's grasp" --> "now that the enemy is brittle, use carver's upgraded mighty blow on it."

And yeah, the default tactics were garbage and I don't think they ever properly explained how to set proper tactics. Also, navigating the tactics menu on consoles was a pain. Lucky we had suicidalbaby et al. to figure all that stuff out for me to copy! I suck at tactics haha.

[Angrywolves]

I found DA2 much harder due to the at times late in the game ninja enemies showing up out the woodwork.

[Magdalena11]

mr_afk wrote...

Yay, the dps mantra is sinking through! What is this sense of.. achievement I'm feeling?!

Anyhow, in answer to the original question, most reasonably effective setups will find post-patch normal rather easy, aside from the occasional fight. The only real dangers in the game are elite and boss enemies, especially if they are left to their devices. That's why if using a dps-orientated setup and targeting the dangerous enemies from the get-go can make hard and even nightmare rather easy.

That said, on harder difficulties directing the threat away from your weaker companions becomes more important. Given the nature of enemies spawning from multiple directions, abilities drawing, transferring, and reducing threat are quite useful. Clustering enemies (via threat management) is also has the additional benefit of allowing certain abilities to hit multiple targets. So in some regards taunt can be quite useful.

In regards to focusing on the offensive, as you seem to have noticed, they added a new system of cross class combos. Here's the CCC triangle I made a while back:


Increasing attack-speed with haste (ideally dual haste), dropping firestorms, and targeting elemental weaknesses (double damage) will also help dish out maximal amounts of damage.

The other important aspect besides focusing on the offensive/CCCs is crowd control - but you seem to have got that sorted with your status afflictions..? Mages are the best at this, especially forcemages.

Working all these aspects into a party setup can makes for very effective combos. For example, freezing enemy elite units (assassins) with a winter's grasp/petrify/cone of cold (brittle) --> archer's lance CCC, or stunning an enemies with pommel bash (stagger) --> chain lightning/haemorrhage CCC. With some threat management, enemies clustered around tank/dog or with pull of the abyss --> fatiguing fog (disorient) --> walking bomb for some explosive fun times.

Anyway, good luck and have fun!

Wow, this is awesome.  Thanks!  I'm copying your chart into my game notebook now.  I use cross-class combos a lot but always have to go through each companion's skill trees to set up tactics.

To set up tactics for CCCs I make sure I insert the line for triggering status above the line where the skill would be used.  For instance, I make sure Fenris will use Scythe on brittle targets before he uses it on any target at short or medium range.  I just wish there was a way to include more than one qualifier for a tactic, for instance if multiple enemies are staggered then chain lightning.  I know there's a jump tactic - if an enemy is staggered go to tactic 12 with tactic 12 being enemy clustered with 2 or more others-->chain lightning and tactic 13 being enemy staggered-->crushing prison.  I just was never able to get it to work.

[mr_afk]

Haha no worries.

Yeah, tactics can be kinda tough to figure out. The easiest way to include two qualifiers is the "use current condition for next tactic". It pretty much works as an "and".

So for example, if you wanted to conserve your CCCs only against elite enemies, you could go:
1. Enemy: Target rank is elite or higher --> Use current condition for next tactic
2. Enemy: BRITTLE --> Scythe

And yeah, if you wanted to get your mage to crowd control/brittle an elite enemy without wasting an ability on an already brittled enemy, you can start skipping tactics:
1. Enemy: Target rank is elite or higher --> Winter's Grasp
2. Enemy: Target rank is elite or higher --> Use current condition for next tactic
3. Enemy: BRITTLE --> Jump to 6
4. Enemy: Target rank is elite or higher --> Petrify
5. Actual jump location because it's a buggy mess haha

However, while joining an "Enemy: Clustered with at least three enemies" with "Enemy: STAGGERED" would do what you want in theory, I don't think they can be joined. It's a pretty finicky system with certain conditions not working or unable to be joined intuitively, so it can be hard to get it to do what you want it to do.

Based on my rather limited knowledge of the tactics system, I think you would have to set a jump for "enemy clustered". Something like:
1. Enemy: Clustered with at least three enemies - Jump to 4
2. Enemy: Target rank is elite or higher --> Winter's Grasp (normal tactics affecting single targets)
3. Enemy: STAGGERED --> Chain Lightning

The only issue could be that if there are clustered enemies in addition to a separate staggered enemy, the AI would probably just fry that single enemy. But this is way past my understanding of the system, so it's just a guess. You'll probably need suicidalbaby to work his tactics magic for this haha.

[Ferretinabun]

mr_afk wrote...

Haha no worries.

Yeah, tactics can be kinda tough to figure out. The easiest way to include two qualifiers is the "use current condition for next tactic". It pretty much works as an "and".

So for example, if you wanted to conserve your CCCs only against elite enemies, you could go:
1. Enemy: Target rank is elite or higher --> Use current condition for next tactic
2. Enemy: BRITTLE --> Scythe

Okay, here's a question (because the finer details of the tactics system still elude me).

In this example, wouldn't the character use Scythe on all Brittled enemies anyway?

Here is my logic: Imagine a battle with no elites - or even just no brittled elites. The AI goes down the tactics in order. But since the condition for number one is not met, it is not activated. Thus it goes down to number two. But maybe the condition for number two IS met (ie, BRITTLED enemies who are lower than elite). So it would activate... right?

Or does the 'use current condition for the next tactic' command somehow cause both tactics to be seen as a pair, causing the AI to jump straight from tactic one to tactic three?

Does that make sense?

[mr_afk]

The latter. I'm pretty sure it causes both to be seen as a pair, so the tactic will skip both 1 and 2 if there are no elites present. But yeah, tactics elude me too haha. Lets continue hoping that they fix it up nicely in DA:I!

[Ferretinabun]

I'm with you there. Thanks for the reply.

[Magdalena11]

Thanks, mr_afk! I'm going to try that now. I really hate it when valuable CCCs are wasted on critters.

[luna1124]

I played on normal and it was easy until I got to the deep-roads. O_o

[cJohnOne]

luna1124 wrote...

I played on normal and it was easy until I got to the deep-roads. O_o

I hope you're just talking about the Ancient Rock Wraith.  Yeah you have to do something different there.

[luna1124]

Yes, and profanes that attack you all at once. I died a few times until I got it right

[Magdalena11]

luna1124 wrote...

Yes, and profanes that attack you all at once. I died a few times until I got it right

Tell me about it.  I wound up having Anders as the sole survivor running around in circles firing off a shot here and there until his regroup recharged on my nightmare run.  I nearly killed another keyboard on that battle alone.