52 réponses à ce sujet

[DarthGizka]

There must be gazillions of Dragon Age gameplay recordings on YouTube but it isn't exactly easy to find something specific, for example a video that would convincingly showcase the power of an Arcane Warrior*, or one that shows how fast a mage can blaze through the fights in the origin. On the other hand, a while ago I came across an awesome video where someone did Ser Cauthrien without leaving the room and without using potions, but now I cannot find it again because the shortcut I made is lost in some bottomless link collection.

That's why I'd like to invite all of you to post here when you find convincing examples of your favourite fighting styles and techniques, and also other stuff that would inspire players to try new techniques (like the "Cauthrien no-pots in-room" thing). This post here can serve as a directory with links to the various posts.
 
The emphasis is on convincing examples, like showing complete battles being won easily by utilising a certain technique, not three-second clips of the type 'This is Paralysis Explosion'. Things that you think may inspire other players to try your favourite fighting moves, techniques and styles, or that may be relevant to discussions in other threads (i.e. regarding theories like "The fighting in the mage origin is even slower than in other origins").
 
Structure: The first part of an entry shows player level and class; it links to the post where the video was reported and which may contain a write-up giving more details (the relevant discussion, if any, is bound to be somewhere nearby). The second part of an entry gives you the video itself.
 
SER CAUTHRIEN
 

N23 Bd/As (0:23)  Ser Cauthrien Quick Kill - no retreating, no potions
N20 BM/SH   Ser Cauthrien (Nightmare) - No retreating, no potions.
 

HIGH DRAGON

 

N22 3 dual-wielders + CC mage (0:08)  Dragon Age Origins: High Dragon Quick Kill (8 Seconds)
 

ARCHDEMON (ordered by raw fighting time and sheer awesomeness)

3 archers + Shale (0:50)  Dragon Age Origins: Archers & Shale vs The Archdemon
DW rogue + party (1:10)  Dragon Age Origins: DW Rogue & Co. vs The Archdemon
rogue archer solo (1:22)  Dragon Age Origins: Rogue Archer vs The Archdemon
nuker mage solo (2:10)  Soloing the archdemon as a general CC/nuker mage.
 
HARVESTER
 

N35 DW party (0:24)  The Harvester Quick Kill (24 Seconds)
N21 LS/Ra archer (9:36)   Level 20 Nightmare Harvester (Dragon Age: Golems of Amgarrak)  
N35 AW (4:59)   DRAGON AGE the Harvester SOLO on NIGHTMARE (WITHOUT HEALING)

 

ISHAL OGRE

 

N06 solo mage (0:35)  Dragon Age: Origins Nightmare Solo Mage destroys Ishal Ogre with No Healing or Kiting in 40 seconds
N06 solo mage (0:53)  Dragon Age: Origins Nightmare Solo Mage destroys Tower of Ishal Ogre in 1 minute without kiting
N06 solo DW rogue (6:04)  Dragon Age Origins Solo Nightmare NoPull NoKite AggrAll Rogue ToI Ogre

 

TOWER OF ISHAL

 

N05 mage + archers (9:50)   The complete Tower of Ishal battle in 10 minutes
N05 solo mage (16:05)  Dragon Age Origins Solo Nightmare Mage Tower of Ishal SpeedRun2
N05 solo mage (21:02)   Dragon Age Origins Solo Nightmare Mage AggroAll Tower of Ishal Speedrun

 

FIGHTING STYLES
 
N03 (Flame Blast, Fireball, Mind Blast) (7:07)  Empyrea burns up the basement
N04 (dito plus Walking Bomb) (14:51 + 14:11)  Darkspawn flambé. A leisurely solo jog through the Korcari Wilds (part 1/2)  (part 2/2)
N03 stealthy DW rogue trapper   Dragon Age Origins Solo Nightmare NoPull NoKite AggrAll Rogue Kokari 7DS

UNUSUAL TECHNIQUES
 
Shapeshifter (Flying Swarm AoE damage)   Dragon Age Origins - Mage Flying Swarm

fast attack rate via animation cancelling   Dragon Age Origins Dwarf Noble Proving Interrupt Animation
fast attack rate via animation cancelling   Dragon Age Origins Solo Nightmare NoPull NoKite AggrAll Rogue DwarfNobleOrigin 6DSAlpha Vs 1
 

PICTURE SERIES

 

Shapeshifter  Key elements from Shapeshifting 101, demonstrating advanced aspects

 

Abbreviations

L20 ... level 20
N20 ... level 20, nightmare
 

AW Arcane Warrior

BM Blood Mage
SH Spirit Healer
 

As Assassin

Bd Bard
LS Legionnaire Scout (Awakening)
Ra Ranger
 
*) assuming that it is possible at all, which I'm not certain about

[DarthGizka]

Seconded. Haven't got a video to show for it, but I did exactly what you suggested and it was a blast. After Amgarrak I rolled a new mage and sent her on a fun run through Origins, with the Vestments of the Seer, Sash of Forbidden Secrets, and all the cudgel money blown on the four arcane tomes plus Staff of the Magister Lord as soon as she reached Lothering.

 

P.S.: A while back someone posted a video here in the DA:O forums, showing a newly-created archer/ranger beating the Harvester. I found that really impressive, especially the fact that the archer had higher sustained DPS than my level-25 mage.

[DarthGizka]

Thanks, you are amazing!

The Arcane Warrior is impressive - nice sustained DPS from the longsword, and it looks like the Harvester's minions cannot hit him at all. That certainly takes the sting out of the whole operation, but how is it even possible?

At level 35 I measured 263 attack for a glowing yellow of the 2nd or 3rd generation, so the AW must have had 300ish defence or 100% dodge. Spellpower seems to have been well in the 200s, too. Awakening must have some seriously serious kit then... I've read about the Legion of the Heraldry bug, which the AW seems to be using. But that alone cannot explain these mind-boggling stats.

I think it is a perfect demo for the AW fighting style: turtle up and start whacking on auto-attack until you are the last one standing. Not my cup of tea, though. I couldn't stand the excitement.

Like theskymoves over in Rosey's armour thread, I like my mages squishy.

[Mike3207]

It's most likely he got to 100% dodge or something close. I think you can get to 50% dodge in Origins with items, and it's close to another 50% with Blessing of the Fade/Combat magic and Fade Shield activated. There are also sword and shield items that can increase dodge as well. Vigilance can add 10%, Partha 5%, and you can stack dodge runes on armor-5% for each rune.

 

200 spellpower-possible if you put everything in magic. It's not possible to add 300 defense to that unless you duplicate tomes. There's just no telling since you can't read the equipped items or the player's stats-at least I can't.

[Mike3207]

No, I'm pretty sure he's on console because he had the Legion of the Herald emblem, and that adds +20 to stats on console. They fixed the bug on PC I think, so it's only +3 there. I can't imagine a AW not using Vigilance-it's the best longsword out there.

 

Combat Magic scales with spellpower, but I think it's only .2 per point of spellpower for attack. Damage is different-it's 1 point for each point of spellpower, so a AW with 200 spellpower could do up to 200 points of damage with each hit, depending on the foe's defense.

 

I have to think he was stacking dodge gear to not get any hits on him. You can get to 60% for both in DAO with the following gear-Reaper's Vestments, Cailan's Greaves, Spellward, Cinch of Skillful Maneuvering, Key to the City, and First Enchanter's Cowl. i'd only switch to armor in Awakening when you can get the armor rune slots, and runes like Dodge and Immunity to add on to your armor.

[DarthGizka]

Mike, your post gave me an idea and I asked my favourite ersatz Oracle for a list of all +dodge items known to the toolset:
 

select st.Text, it.*
   from bw_dragonage_content.dbo.t_Item it
      left join bw_dragonage_content.dbo.t_StringText st on st.StringID = it.NameStringID
   where it.ModuleResRefVersionID in (
      select ModuleResRefVersionID from bw_dragonage_content.dbo.t_ItemProperty where PropertyID = 6062  )
   order by it.InventorySubgroup

 
Adding DLC items from memory, we get the following list of items available in Origins:
 

10% First Enchanter's Cowl         (cowl)   Bodahn before the final battle
10% The Spellward                  (amulet) Bodahn
10% Evon the Great's Mail          (armour) Wade's
10% Reaper's Vestments             (robes)  Wonders of Thedas
 5% Robe of the Witch              (robes)  Wonders of Thedas
10% Tevinter Enchanter's Robes     (robes)  lootable during Unrest in the Alienage
10% Imperial Weavers               (boots)  Bodahn

15% Battledress of the Provocateur (armour) Leliana's Song
10% Cinch of Skillful Maneuvering  (belt)   Witch Hunt
20% Cailan's Greaves               (boots)  RtO

 
It looks like there are plenty of ways to get 50% dodge. With the DLC you can get it early and at little cost, otherwise it can take a while. Lots of good stuff for AWs of the cloth-wearing persuasion, too. The battledress in particular is so good and so light (2.3% fatigue) that it is a serious alternative to the Vestments of the Seer.
 
That would make it possible to ask the Harvester for a rematch right after Archie's party, without a detour via Awakening. Respec to get Fade Shroud and Bob's your uncle. My CC/nuker would have to drop the Sleep or Tempest lines of spells to free up the points for Fade Shroud but that wouldn't compromise the combat value of her spellbook (since Sleep is pretty useless in Amgarrak).

 

P.S.: forgot that Fade Shroud gives only 25%, not 50%.   Back to the drawing board...

[Mike3207]

There's also the Lion's Paw-it has 10% dodge, protection from normal missiles, and +1 armor. it's one of the free DLC items.

 

Awakening is worth it for the Evasion runes that add 5% dodge for each rune and Fade Shield. Fade Shield adds 5% dodge passively, 15% dodge additional if you have Arcane Shield activated.

 

One other thing-the best CC I've run into is Swarm Form. As long as you have time to transform, the Swarm can do nature damage to multiple foes at once. I've done 30-40 to multiple foes at once, maybe as many as 5-6 at a time. I may not even need Sleep in the future as long as I have the Swarm. Unfortunately, golems are one of the few foes that are resistant to nature damage.

[Mike3207]

Ok, here's one Arcane Warrior/Shifter on Nightmare, along with the items equipped. I will attach the Youtube video in a couple of minutes. I'll admit-not sure Swarm form dodge stacks with equipped Dodge items.

 

Uploaded on Feb 13, 2011

Just showcasing the effectiveness of Flying Swarm on Nightmare Difficulty.
Arcane Warrior, Shapeshifter
Combat Magic for Cailin's Greaves.

Items:
The Spellward
Cinch of Skillful Maneuvering
Key to the City
Cailin's Greaves
Reaper's Vestments
Helm of Honnleath
Spellweaver - Grand Master Dweomer x1, Master Dweomer x1
Duncan's Dagger - Master Dweomer x1

100% Spell Resist, 90% Dodge.
Will swap out Helm of Honnleath for First Enchanter's Cowl upon attainment.
Will end with 100% Spell Resist, 100% Dodge in Flying Swarm and 100% Spell Resist, 60% Dodge in Bear Form
I just got the Silk Weave Gloves and I will be equiping those and placing another Master Dweomer rune into Duncan's Dagger.

 

 

 

 

[DarthGizka]

Very nice! It must be a blast during the endgame, especially in Redcliffe and during the kill-stealing competition immediately after the arrival in Denerim.

 

With 100% dodge and 100% spell resistance you'll be immune against pretty much everything, except for poorly scripted abilities like Scattershot... You could even walk up to the Archdemon and poke his eye out, or tickle him to death with the Fork of Horripilation.

 

Seriously though, Morrigan in this getup could bind and eliminate Achie's armies all on her own, keeping your back free while you're roasting the big lizard.

[theskymoves]

Very nice! It must be a blast during the endgame, especially in Redcliffe and during the kill-stealing competition immediately after the arrival in Denerim.

 

With 100% dodge and 100% spell resistance you'll be immune against pretty much everything, except for poorly scripted abilities like Scattershot... You could even walk up to the Archdemon and poke his eye out, or tickle him to death with the Fork of Horripilation.

 

Seriously though, Morrigan in this getup could bind and eliminate Achie's armies all on her own, keeping your back free while you're roasting the big lizard.

 

The Fork of Horripilation! Best weapon ever. 

 

(Julan is not impressed by your Fork of Horripilaton.  *giggles maniacally at the oh-so-stylish Alienslof leathers paired with glass armour bits*) /threadcr@p

[DarthGizka]

Here's the first offering for basic fighting techniques, the use of Flame Blast and Fireball to clean out the basement in the mage origin.

 

Empyrea burns up the basement

 

Empyrea is a human mage specialising in fiery destruction, a mere mortal without the racial benefits of the elves and without über items from DLC. The basement fight nicely demonstrates the basic indoor fighting style with fire spells: using a fireball to disable the enemy for a few seconds, arranging for them to be thrown in a way that allows flame-blasting as many of them in one go as possible. It also shows one way of dealing with elite enemies, which is to give them a little extra attention in the form of Arcane Bolts while treating the whole group with AoE spells. That tends to leave them weak enough to be mopped up with little ado.

Nightmare solo, no pots.

 

P.S.: Two tactical notes on the final fight. Depending on how many spells the elite guard resists it may well be necessary to move the fight into the storage room with the statue, where he can be kited safely pretty much forever and fireballed or flame-blasted through the shelves. That's why Lily and Jowan were sent further away. After flame-blasting the final group and topping up the elite guard with an Arcane Bolt, Empyrea waited for a brief moment before putting some distance between herself and the group during the Fireball cooldown. That was necessary to avoid getting caught with a Shield Pummel when already out of Mind Blast range; when the elite took a swing instead of telegraphing the pummel, it was safe for her to move away. Doing a Mind Blast simply as a precaution would have left Empyrea without any reserves in case of resisted spells; as it is she finished with just one spell's worth of mana left.

[DarthGizka]

Here are Empyrea's exploits in the Korcari Wilds:

Darkspawn flambé. A leisurely solo jog through the Korcari Wilds (part 1/2)
Darkspawn flambé. A leisurely solo jog through the Korcari Wilds (part 2/2)
 
Empyrea is a human mage specialising in fiery destruction, a mere mortal without the racial benefits of the elves and without über items from DLC. Here she solos the Wilds with Mind Blast, Fireball and Walking Bomb, using a conservative, relatively safe approach even though her firepower would allow her to use much more aggressive tactics based on frontal assault. However, that would leave no margin for error, while the approach shown here lends itself to experimentation and getting a feel for the capabilities of a new class or build. The full write-up including tactical notes is at the BioWare forums.

Nightmare solo, 4 lesser pots used for that fire-proof bossy bastard Gazarath.
 
I have no idea why the quality of the videos is so bad; they were uploaded with all text still readable. It may have something to do with their length and YouTube squeezing the total size under some threshold.
 
As stated in the description, Empyrea could have mounted frontal assaults instead of doing à la Sun Tzu's Injuring the Corners, in pretty much all encounters except for Emissary Bridge and the final group with the hurlock alpha. Which isn't to say that the latter isn't possible, I just haven't tried it yet. However, the bonus wolves and the darkspawn group guarding Jetta's box leave absolutely no margin for error, the slightest snag, misstep or a fireball fizzling out means death or potion quaffage (which boils down to the same thing). The other encounters are easy or at least reasonably doable with frontal assault.
 
When flinging Walking Bomb spells, it is important not to be too close when the bomb goes off. This means it is safer not to prep a prospective bomb too thoroughly, if it means that a fireball would set it off instead of merely stopping it in its tracks. With bombed elites/bosses it is often better to kite them until the bomb runs out rather than having them explode in one's face by injudiciously finishing them off when they are still ticking.
 
--- comments for part 1 ---
 
00:23  First group of wolves: when fireballing a bunch of wolves it is easy to miss the odd "Resisted" SMS, meaning it is better to check that all of them a burning properly. If not then a Walking Bomb on a burning wolf close to the resister - and far from the caster - is often enough to solve the problem.

00:33  Second group of wolves: since Walking Bomb was resisted it became necessary to fireball the bunch. Casting fireball close up on uneven terrain can be dangerous, since the AoE indicator is a flat disk somewhere in 3-space instead of being projected onto the ground. Sometimes it is safer to move to a place where it is easier to gauge the actual AoE. I am less prone to self-nukage when casting uphill rather than down, hence the move.
 
01:41  If Alistair is given a looting order like Daveth instead of being walked manually then there is a good chance of him getting within alert distance of the darkspawn a bit off to his left. That would block the area transition for delivering the Wilds Flower.

02:11  Handing in the Wilds Flower quest early: the reward for being a total ass is a whopping 500 XP. That makes it possible to reach level 5 before the final fight in the Wilds (Gazarath or the group with the alpha), in case there is some spell that you need to take for that. I did it here to show that it can be done without losing too much time.

03:55  Archers on the hill: it is important not to get too close to the ticking bomb here. The game seems to check only the horizontal distance, not actual distance in 3-space, and the stone does not attenuate or deflect explosions either.

05:33  Mopping up the hurlock: could have used a fireball here, but I wanted to show how weak staff attacks are compared to spells. Even though the hurlock has only a tiny sliver of HP left, it still takes three staff blasts to take him down.
 
06:13  Bonus wolves: the move to a slightly elevated position keeps staff blasts and LOS spells from getting blocked. With staff blasts you get the 'blocked' message, with spells your toon suddenly starts running towards the enemy instead of casting.

07:26  When attacking with the staff at the limit of its range your toon will fire only a single shot and stop, requiring separate attack orders for subsequent shots. Sometimes it is difficult to tell whether they will continue firing or not.
 
--- comments for part 2 ---
 
00:04  Moving Daveth is necessary here to avoid a glitch that makes him show up in the battlezone and pull the cloaked little buggers down at the pond. He must have been a quarter inch beyond some magic range this time, since there were no problems in earlier playthroughs.

03:33  Positioning the troops closer to the rest of the map because otherwise the game would do so on its own in ways that are difficult to predict. If companions are moved by the broken game logic then they may well end up pulling aggro and engaging enemies. Sometimes you can notice the effect indirectly because the camera height changes when companions move to locations with different altitude. Sometimes you get alerted by the fact that they start taking damage even though you had parked them in a safe place.

04:15  Taking down the emissary: doing the risky duel instead of using one of the safer options was an accident. I'd recommend Fireball, Flame Blast, Walking Bomb plus Arcane Bolt, which has the emissary exploding en route to his sanctuary position but he will keep running anyway until he gets there.

08:08  Moving close to Gazarath and hitting him with a high-threat spell to make him switch target, in order to keep him from chasing after the companions. The Flame Blast was telegraphed while Empyrea was still moving towards Gazarath, so it was pretty much unavoidable.

08:20  The attempt to immobilise Gazarath for a few seconds by way of a fireball was abandoned. Because of Gazarath's speed the spell would require very close and precise targetting, which is near impossible in this uneven terrain. With Empyrea already burning, accidental self-nukage would have meant instant death.

12:18  Empyrea didn't dealert after killing the hurlock, which means she must have come too close to one of the remaining enemies earlier. So she had to move farther away in order to dealert and start regenerating.

13:20  Continuing to kite around the palisades would have allowed to stop and kill the chasing hurlocks by way of a Fireball, without any risk of the bomb being thrown towards Empyrea and exploding in her face. Setting off the bomb with an Arcane Bolt was too risky as well, because the bomb could have moved fairly close during the spell's casting time. That would have been bad regardless of whether the spell was resisted or not, with the bomb so close to exploding on its own. Waiting for the bomb to explode or run out while moving towards one's destination is safe enough on the whole, as long as there is some cover against ranged attacks (since hurlocks may stop chasing any time and start shooting fire arrows). Letting hurlocks come into melee range is the biggest risk here, since Shield Pummel means almost certain death unless it can be countered with Mind Blast (Fireball being unsafe against a ticking bomb with low health). Same for the bonus wolves who can all Shred and Overwhelm.

[Blazomancer]

Archers and Shale vs The Archdemon (~50 seconds playtime):

 

 

 

 

DW Rogue and Party vs The Archdemon (~1:10 min):

 

 

 

[Blazomancer]

Solo Archer Rogue vs The Archdemon(~1:22 min):

 

[DarthGizka]

Blazomancer, that's absolutely mind-blowing! I had to watch a couple of times just to wrap my mind around it all. Thanks for recording & sharing!

 

People can also glean a lot of useful tactical info from these videos, besides the inspiration to go out and shred things with extreme prejudice. There are other points of interest, too, like a paralysed Archie flying to the killing ground, or his armies just standing there twiddling thumbs and watching the show.

 

I'm putting Fiona's video here as well for convenience, although she doesn't even play in the same league... I'll have my fun run mage work towards Entropic Death so that she has a chance to compete, and I'll also try the triple ED thing with über Wynne as lead. But that'll be weeks or months yet, at my current rate of playing.

 

[Mike3207]

Not exactly a Youtube video, more a video album with some screenshots done of key fights from the Shapeshifting 101 resource.I thought it was interesting flanking improves your hit rate and critical chance.I would appreciate any hard numbers if anyone knows precisely how much it improves.I do know from the wikia that only rogues get the full +15, mages and warriors get half that.

EDIT-I guess for mages and warriors it'd be +7.50 attack and critical rate at full flank, less depending on the angle.

http://www.sorcerers...php?albumid=191

[DarthGizka]

The flanking bonus is added directly to the attack roll but divided by five for the critical chance.That means +7.5 to attack and +1.5% for a non-rogue, when positioned directly behind the target. Which is why my warriors never bothered to get the flanking immunity feats (except as stepping stones to Shield Mastery). A step to the side is sufficient, since the AI doesn't flank actively, and even that is only necessary for the small handful of rogues who can get behind you. Like the cloaked little buggers in the Wilds.

 

I checked the combat scripts in the toolset, and it seems that the information on flanking in the wiki is accurate.

 

The relevant file is combat_h.nss. The flanking bonus is computed in Combat_GetFlankingBonus(), and it is applied in Combat_GetFlankingBonus() in two places.

[Mike3207]

The flanking bonus is added directly to the attack roll but divided by five for the critical chance.That means +7.5 to attack and +1.5% for a non-rogue, when positioned directly behind the target. Which is why my warriors never bothered to get the flanking immunity feats (except as stepping stones to Shield Mastery). A step to the side is sufficient, since the AI doesn't flank actively, and even that is only necessary for the small handful of rogues who can get behind you. Like the cloaked little buggers in the Wilds.
 
I checked the combat scripts in the toolset, and it seems that the information on flanking in the wiki is accurate.
 
The relevant file is combat_h.nss. The flanking bonus is computed in Combat_GetFlankingBonus(), and it is applied in Combat_GetFlankingBonus() in two places.

You still get the attack boost, and +7 for a mage Arcane warrior/Shapeshifter in the early game is significant in itself.It takes awhile before you can take advantage of Combat Training or the AW spec bonus.