91 réponses à ce sujet

[lessthanjake9]

If my tank dies, the next person to die will be the mage. At that point I'm probably looking at soloing the fight, and I'll just reload because victory would take too long. Easier and faster to just start over and avoid whatever mistake got me in a pickle in the first place.

Fair enough, but that is a silly argument. Any build can seem great if you just reload any time you screw up. A good build can yield a character that saves you even if you do screw up.

You should be defensive about your argument, but caps makes it sound angry, or worse.

Oh I’m not angry at all. The caps are entirely for emphasis of something I think is important, and do not at all indicate anger. I use caps especially in a long post because someone might skim but I do not want them to miss the thing I’ve used caps on.

On ranger pet: If you want to tank, you can get a tank pet; If you want to save Scattershot's stamina, you can get a CC pet. Solo rangers thrives on handling messy combat situations effectively. Sure the pet is not a "physical" part of you. But isn't it better when it, instead of you, gets chewed by a dragon or waste stamina?

Thats silly. Pets have no way to draw aggro. Pets cant use Scattershot or an extra Arrow of Slaying etc etc. Ranger pets ARE good, but they arent a substitute for the positives of a warrior archer. And besides, they have some glaring flaws such as losing you xp.

On attack/defense: These numbers suffers diminishing return (e.g. why get extra 20 attack when you can hit everything already). That's why stacking them into unrealistic numbers does not improve the archer. A few party buff gets you to what you need easily. And no, Shale really doesn't have anything better to do besides sustaining her aura.

Yes it IS all on diminishing returns. But they diminish differently depending on the opponent. An easy opponent can be hit almost 100% of the time by a character with sub-optimal attack. So the value of my extra attack is relatively low. But against a boss/lieutenant character with super high defense, there is still significant use in having high attack because the hit %s are lower. This is especially true for an archer, who needs higher attack to start seeing significantly diminishing returns because missile deflection can get high for tough enemies. And it is the battles against tough opponents that show how effective a build is. Any build can crush easy opponents.

If you are concerned about rogue's health and durability, there is evasion, distraction, dirty fighting, stealth, and yes, a hungry blight wolf ready to overwhelm whoever he finds delicious.

Evasion is terrible on an archer. It interrupts their combat talents A LOT, wasting stamina and putting the ability on cooldown without it being used. Distraction and Dirty Fighting are one target effects, and Dirty Fighting isn’t even for very long. Stealth is great, but you can’t win a fight from stealth. You will eventually need to leave stealth to attack. Lastly, a summoned wolf shouldn’t have overwhelm. Bioware didn’t mean for it to be possible to set a tactic for that, so it is sorta cheap to use that as a reason a rogue is better.

On talents allocation: you get 32 talents in game for warriors and rogues. Neither class are talent starved, so it comes down to progression. Both stealth and deft hands trees are meant to follow plot progression. You don't throw 8 talents right away into these trees and be 8 level behind on combat. When warriors takes filler talents, rogues takes utility talents.

Yes, as I said, by endgame you aren’t talent starved. But the rogue takes a lot of talents to be able to do everything it is capable of. This leads to tough choices and inevitably spending a good portion of the game not being able to do everything you’re capable of.



Obviously you don’t take 8 deft hands and stealth points right away, but its still an issue. Until you put 3 points in stealth, you wont be able to do combat stealth, so your stealth will be worth a lot less. The longer you take to put some points in Deft Hands, the less of the game you will spend actually being able to utilize your potential to open locks and disarm traps. So if you want to make use of those abilities for most of the game, you gotta put points in them early. But you must do that in lieu of archery talents that you also want early. You must make choices about what abilities will be left untapped until later.



On the other hand, the warrior does not have this issue. They focus entirely on combat, and everything builds towards effectiveness in that. You aren’t forced to make choices about what aspect of your character’s abilities you will wait to be able to use, like a rogue must. Also, they don’t have filler talents. I don’t know what you are talking about with that. The archery talents aren’t filler. Powerful and Bravery are great passive abilities for combat. Threaten and Taunt are great for a character that might tank some. Death Blow is great. Disengage is quite useful for losing aggro when you are close to death. Precise Striking is a good sustainable, and Perfect Striking is great in boss battles. EVERY single warrior talent is useful in this build. There is no filler.

Also note that they provide bonus, not mandatory utilities. If the warrior can bring Leliana, so can the rogue. I'm sure she wouldn't mind another bard singing songs with her. But if Leliana doesn't want either's company, the rogue can do the job himself, so to speak.

Hmm?? Leliana’s Song of Courage is not really a utility so much as a party buff. If you want to talk about party buffs as being utility, then my character will have Rally to buff and Warcry to debuff. He is just as useful, if not more useful, in that capacity. As for skills, chest opening, and trap disarming, you can definitely just use a party member. You don’t need anyone specific to do things like make traps or poisons, because you can relegate roles to whatever party members you want for that stuff. And bringing either Leliana or Zevran is not that big of a deal IMO. Sure it is nice not to need one of them with you, but it’s really not gamebreaking at all since both of those characters can be made into top notch party members in terms of DPS anyways. You aren’t losing anything by taking them along except some small degree of party choice.

The stamina difference is a matter of a couple Willpower. Key to the City alone makes up warrior's initial bonus. Now the rogue gets the stamina needed to pull off that combo he was just short earlier. Spellward is nice too, right? If there are still stamina problems, well, chew some shrooms.

That’s all well and good, but the problem of total stamina cannot be fully rectified just with those objects. First off, you cant get those items right away, so that issue exists until you do. But more importantly, it is a matter of the rogue having less stamina AND needing more. Rogues will want to be Duelists and either Bards or Rangers. Dueling is 30 stamina, and Song of Courage or a Summon is 50. That’s 80 stamina. A warrior archer will generally only use Rally for 50. Both characters will want some sort of archer sustainable on as well. The result is that the warrior has a slightly higher base stamina as well as less stamina being used by sustainables. This combines to create a problem for rogues that does not exist nearly as much for warriors.

Because CC is not needed and more shooting is.

Scattershot is only partially useful as CC. It doesn’t stun for that long. What it does do is hit every enemy for normal damage, which can frequently be huge damage overall.

[dkjestrup]

Thing is. Cunning Rogues give better party support, with stronger Bard songs and a pet (You don't need Duelist as well.



Dex Rogues are better for soloing, because of their high defense, stealth, and they get more skill points (traps etc are very useful for a solo).



There just isn't a good niche for a Warrior Archer. They have higher defense, but that alone isn't enough. Stealth is so huge that it doesn't make much difference. Rogues also have better specs, for a ranged character, where as Warriors get Champion, which is great. Templar is good, but you get an attack speed penalty from the Massive Armor (you will only want Templar for Knight Commanders). That leaves you with Champion Reaver really.

[soteria]

If my tank dies, the next person to die will be the mage. At that point I'm probably looking at soloing the fight, and I'll just reload because victory would take too long. Easier and faster to just start over and avoid whatever mistake got me in a pickle in the first place.



****



Fair enough, but that is a silly argument. Any build can seem great if you just reload any time you screw up. A good build can yield a character that saves you even if you do screw up.

No, it's not. I said if my tank dies, I'm probably going to have to solo the fight and victory would take too long. The same thing is true for your high-dex warrior build. I never said, "If my tank dies, I lose," because that's just not true.

Lastly, a summoned wolf shouldn’t have overwhelm. Bioware didn’t mean for it to be possible to set a tactic for that, so it is sorta cheap to use that as a reason a rogue is better.

Wait--I don't have master ranger yet, so I haven't seen this, but the wolf can overwhelm? And you're saying that's not an argument in favor of rogues because.... in your opinion that's cheap and you don't think Bioware meant to do that? What??

Obviously you don’t take 8 deft hands and stealth points right away, but its still an issue. Until you put 3 points in stealth, you wont be able to do combat stealth, so your stealth will be worth a lot less. The longer you take to put some points in Deft Hands, the less of the game you will spend actually being able to utilize your potential to open locks and disarm traps. So if you want to make use of those abilities for most of the game, you gotta put points in them early. But you must do that in lieu of archery talents that you also want early. You must make choices about what abilities will be left untapped until later.

That's true about dual-wielding rogues as well, and I don't think anyone is trying to say cunning is bad for them. Actually, high cunning is beneficial because it lessens the need for Device Mastery. It's actually worse for dual-wield rogues, because they actually have really good talents to go for that significantly up their damage.

On the other hand, the warrior does not have this issue. They focus entirely on combat, and everything builds towards effectiveness in that. You aren’t forced to make choices about what aspect of your character’s abilities you will wait to be able to use, like a rogue must...

You mean, because they don't have any other option? That's hardly in argument in your favor. All that means is they focus only on combat because they have to. The rogue has that choice, too. The fact that many rogues still choose to pick up talents like Device Mastery says a lot for their value to players.

That’s all well and good, but the problem of total stamina cannot be fully rectified just with those objects. First off, you cant get those items right away, so that issue exists until you do.

And hey, warriors can't get deathblow until around the same point of the game you can probably pick up Felon's Coat and/or Andruil's. Again, not really an argument in your favor because warriors will have the same issues early on.

But more importantly, it is a matter of the rogue having less stamina AND needing more. Rogues will want to be Duelists and either Bards or Rangers. Dueling is 30 stamina, and Song of Courage or a Summon is 50. That’s 80 stamina. A warrior archer will generally only use Rally for 50.

Wait, you mean because rogues have more good sustains? With the exception of the ranger pet, those can all be activated after AoS, making them effectively free. If the warrior had access to those sustains, he would be running them too. Players leave them on for a reason.

[lessthanjake9]

I very strongly disagree. I'll kill "trash" faster with a high cunning build and the mentioned debuffs than you will with 99% hit rate already and redundant debuffs. If I need a higher chance to hit something tough, I can paralyze, stun, or otherwise disable it to increase my chance to hit even further, also negating the need for extra defense. In other words, on easy stuff the extra attack is not needed. On hard stuff, I can use abilities to close the gap that just become useless on your toolbar.

High attack becomes less useful against easy enemies later on in the game, yes. But your idea that you will just paralyze or stun hard enemies is silly. Hard enemies shake that stuff off really quickly. You won’t get many shots out before a hard enemy has already shaken off whatever CC you put on it. At that point, your low attack will become a problem. And again, it is the fights against hard enemies that matter. Any build can easily crush lame opponents.

It's also possible that since the CC is so short and the damage is not tremendous, I rarely think to bother with it. It's only on the hard fights that I take the time. I can't think of a time I didn't use an ability because I was afraid of drawing aggro. Well, I take that back. In my current playthrough, I'm not using a healer or potions, so sometimes I don't taunt.

The damage isn’t tremendous? 50 base damage + 6 enemies = 300 damage. Sounds pretty good to me. Scattershot does great damage. It effectively multiplies your normal damage by however many enemies there are. The stun effect is just an added little bonus.

Every bit of + attack helps, on a diminishing return. It is plain awesome when you jumps from 10% to 20% chance to hit. From 80% to 90%, not as awesome. Dumping attributes into Dex already pushes toward the limit.



Now I'm curious at where did OP's extra attack and defense come from.

Lets say the rogue is a Dex Duelist/Ranger, and the warrior is Dex Champion/Berserker, then:



5 Atk for Warrior, 5 Def for rogue.

Rally offsets Dueling

Warcry offsets Deadly Strike

Ranger's pet offset whatever dmg bonus there is.



And we are left with Precise Striking, I guess losing 10% speed is offset by Rapid Aim after enough Dex. But aren't we using Defensive fire and Haste?



So that's 10 situational attack differences, and the original 5 Atk vs 5 Def trade-off. Based on that, I don't think the rogue would be afraid to draw aggro any more than the warrior. I hope there are more to saying Warrior is better than the 5 attack and 10 situational attack.



Sure perfect striking is nice, but abusing pinpoint strike is even nicer.

Your post was a little confusing for me to follow, but Ill try to respond. I never said that a dexterity based rogue would be afraid to draw aggro. They wouldn’t because their defense would be uber high, likely slightly higher than the warrior archer’s defense. The difference is that the rogue has no way to draw aggro to abuse the high defense. The warrior does.



A dexterity based warrior WOULD have higher attack than a dexterity based rogue, but it wouldn’t be too big a difference. They start with +5, and their starting stats boost attack a bit more than the rogue’s starting stats. So there is a slight difference that is very useful early in the game, but isn’t gamebreaking later.



Here is where I think you are confusing yourself though. I never said that a dexterity based warrior is better than a dexterity based rogue because of attack and defense. I used other reasons for that. I said that a dexterity based warrior archer is better than a CUNNING based rogue archer because of defense and attack. And that is easy to prove. Every point the cunning based archer puts in cunning, the other character would put in dexterity and gain attack and defense. If you dump 60 points in cunning, my dexterity based archer will have about 60 higher defense and 30 higher attack.



As for Pinpoint Strike, using that for archery is an exploit of the game, so I don’t think we can use it in a serious discussion comparing builds. Lastly, Deadly Strike is a melee ability, so it hardly offsets Warcry for an archer.

No, they cannot. There are far to many abilities that they are not immune to, that defense does nothing against, that would kill them very quickly without even counting the fact that after one stun there defense means nothing. Against normal mobs they last longer than a normal DPS would but that's it. As such the defensive merits of a Dex archer are irrelevant because they'd still need a real tank or massive CC anyway and once you've got that the utility of defense drops to 0 or very nearly 0.

Yes, abilities hurt the archers ability to tank. But you are acting as if we see those abilities being used against us all the time in every battle. That is just not the case. Rogues with Dirty Fighting will be annoying; Scattershot will be annoying, as will Shield Bash. However, you don’t always get those used on you every battle, and when you do, those abilities don’t last that long. Just heal up and watch while the mobs keep missing you after the stun/knockdown is over. Is this optimal? No, but if we wanted optimal we wouldn’t be making an archer now would we? The fact is that you CAN tank; you just gotta watch out for your weaknesses when you do tank.



And even if you are not tanking with the guy (say if you are against a boss with a knockdown attack), he still has a ton of survivability for a non-tanking character in your party. This is always useful. You can ALSO bring along a tank as well and draw aggro towards both of them, significantly lessening the chance that either of them will go down. There are a lot of options. The point is that the ability to tank pretty well in most situations gives you more good tactical options.

As a side note no warrior tank would ever need more than 32 strength at the absolute most.

You need more strength to use most of the top notch armor choices. But even if you have a set of equipment you want that doesn’t require higher strength, 32 strength will just result in pitiful damage. That is only a +22 modifier on damage. My archer will likely have about a +50 or so modifier on damage by the end. You will do much less damage than me, even though I am ranged (and there is something to be said for being able to attack anyone you want without moving). You will STILL end up with slightly less defense. You will not have the strength to get much better armor than me, though Shield Wall will leave you ahead in this regard. Both of us will have the same hp. You will be immune to knockdowns. So you will have a decent bit higher armor than me and be immune to knockdowns. Thus, you will be somewhat harder to kill. But my guy will be a ranged attacker who owns your guy in damage even if I use Defensive Fire. Furthermore, IMO the activated abilities of an archer are more valuable than the activated abilities of a sword/shield character, if only because Arrow of Slaying is ridiculously good. So what you have just done is manage to make a sword/shield character that is about equal to an archer character, which shouldn’t even be the case. A 42 strength sword/shield tank is far superior IMO. More damage and maximized armor while only losing 10 defense.

[lessthanjake9]

Thing is. Cunning Rogues give better party support, with stronger Bard songs and a pet (You don't need Duelist as well.







Dex Rogues are better for soloing, because of their high defense, stealth, and they get more skill points (traps etc are very useful for a solo).

Cunning rogues are not better party support. Rally and Warcry are equal or better than Song of Courage for party support. And you need Duelist with a cunning rogue. Without it, your attack will just be terrifyingly bad. Sure, you can get a ranger pet instead, and those are kinda cool, but the cunning rogue already has huge problems hitting enemies. Taking away Duelist is just not an option if you want your actual character to hit much of anything.



Dex rogues might be better for soloing just because stealth is a HUGE deal when soloing. Otherwise, the warrior archer is probably better since the hardest part of soloing an archer is early on, and the warrior archer scales up in combat ability much faster. But yeah, rogues in general have a big advantage in soloing due to stealth.

There just isn't a good niche for a Warrior Archer. They have higher defense, but that alone isn't enough. Stealth is so huge that it doesn't make much difference. Rogues also have better specs, for a ranged character, where as Warriors get Champion, which is great. Templar is good, but you get an attack speed penalty from the Massive Armor (you will only want Templar for Knight Commanders). That leaves you with Champion Reaver really.

I think you are overemphasizing stealth. If you are in a party, stealth can get an enemy off your back. But this is not so useful if things have gone bad in the battle, and even if things haven’t gone bad, you are still wasting time stealthing instead of doing damage, which the warrior wouldn’t need to do. Lastly, you gotta spend 3-4 talent points early on to make your fragility less of a problem. This leaves you with less other talents (ie archery talents) until late game when youll eventually get everything. So your character’s combat effectiveness will be lessened for that reason.



Rogues only look like they have better specs for archers on the face of it IMO. Duelist is not as good as Champion. And Bard is only good for the cunning build which I see as clearly inferior. Ranger is always good, but once again, there are huge issues with ranger pets. They steal xp, they disappear, etc etc. Champion is better than any single one of those IMO. Templar is not THAT great for an archer, but Holy Smite and Mana Cleanse are both pretty good, as is the extra mental resistance. IMO Champion/Templar really isn’t worse than the rogue combinations.

[lessthanjake9]

No, it's not. I said if my tank dies, I'm probably going to have to solo the fight and victory would take too long. The same thing is true for your high-dex warrior build. I never said, "If my tank dies, I lose," because that's just not true.

Well if your tank dies, and you only have an archer with low defense, low armor, and low hp left, then I really don’t see how you would survive very long. Stealth can’t really save you because you’d eventually have to stand and fight.

Wait--I don't have master ranger yet, so I haven't seen this, but the wolf can overwhelm? And you're saying that's not an argument in favor of rogues because.... in your opinion that's cheap and you don't think Bioware meant to do that? What??

It is not that I don’t THINK Bioware meant to do that. It is that I know they didn’t. It is confirmed. And it is only possible on the PC I believe. When you summon a ranger pet on the PC, a little thing pops up quickly saying like “3 new tactics slots recieved” and then disappears. If you click that before it disappears, you can get to a tactics menu that you otherwise couldn’t access. This tactics menu allows you to set a tactic for Overwhelm, among many other abilities. However, most of these abilities are not on your pet’s ability bar at all. Thus, you cannot order your pet to overwhelm except through this tactics mechanism. Only the abilities you can access on the ability bar are meant to be used. The other abilities are there in the tactics because Bioware didn’t create new character models specifically for the ranger pets. They used models they had already made. These models CAN overwhelm when you fight them, so they have that in the tactics. So yes, I do think its cheap, and I do think it is not an argument in favor of rogues.

That's true about dual-wielding rogues as well, and I don't think anyone is trying to say cunning is bad for them. Actually, high cunning is beneficial because it lessens the need for Device Mastery. It's actually worse for dual-wield rogues, because they actually have really good talents to go for that significantly up their damage.

Just because it is true for other rogues does not mean it isn’t a big downside. The fact is that you guys are talking about all the things your rogue will be able to do when you won’t be able to do ALL that stuff until pretty far into the game. To me, that is significant. You will spend a large amount of the game unable to do some of the things that you guys believe makes the rogue archer better.

You mean, because they don't have any other option? That's hardly in argument in your favor. All that means is they focus only on combat because they have to. The rogue has that choice, too. The fact that many rogues still choose to pick up talents like Device Mastery says a lot for their value to players.

No. The rogue does NOT have an option. Unlike warriors, they do not have rogue talents that increase their combat effectiveness with archery (except Lethality for a cunning rogue, but that is more something that is necessary for the build rather than something that actually increases combat effectiveness). Thus, they must utilize the branches they do have, like stealth and deft hands, in order to make up for this. The problem is, these branches are their own separate entities that need to be invested in soon in order to be of any use. Without them, there is no reason to take a rogue over a warrior. But with them, you must forgo some combat talents for a lot of the game in order to utilize them. This IS a negative. You need only play as a rogue to see that.

And hey, warriors can't get deathblow until around the same point of the game you can probably pick up Felon's Coat and/or Andruil's. Again, not really an argument in your favor because warriors will have the same issues early on.

You misinterpreted my point. Death Blow is tangential to what I am talking about, which is total stamina restrictions. Early on, neither character will have Arrow of Slaying or lots of sustainables, so the point is mostly moot. But in the midgame, the rogue archer will want to use his or her expensive sustainables AND start a battle with Arrow of Slaying. This will probably be impossible. On the other hand, the warrior will not only have more stamina and less fatigue (due to Powerful), but he will also likely be wanting to use less stamina on sustainables (probably just Rally and one archery one, instead of Song of Courage/Summon, Dueling, and an archery one). The result is that the warrior will be able to get the most out of all his abilities, whereas the rogue will be stuck having to go without something valuable. That is a big disadvantage because the rogue needs everything it has in order to compete with the warrior.

Wait, you mean because rogues have more good sustains? With the exception of the ranger pet, those can all be activated after AoS, making them effectively free. If the warrior had access to those sustains, he would be running them too. Players leave them on for a reason.

First off, those sustains take time to activate, which will lose you an attack or two. More importantly, I don’t think you can activate them effectively for free. My game does not allow me to activate a sustainable if I do not have the stamina for the upkeep cost. Thus I believe I cannot use AoS and then activate all the sustainables later. Maybe you know something I do not know about how to do this, but I have never been able to get sustainables for free like that.

Modifié par lessthanjake9, 25 janvier 2010 - 09:19 .

[soteria]

High attack becomes less useful against easy enemies later on in the game, yes. But your idea that you will just paralyze or stun hard enemies is silly. Hard enemies shake that stuff off really quickly. You won’t get many shots out before a hard enemy has already shaken off whatever CC you put on it. At that point, your low attack will become a problem. And again, it is the fights against hard enemies that matter. Any build can easily crush lame opponents.

Honestly, this is getting a bit comical. If I stick Zevran on any hard enemy with paralyze runes and deathroot extract or better, as soon as I activate momentum they're going to get stunned and paralyzed a LOT, even without Riposte and Dirty Fighting. Add in Alistair with paralyze runes and poison. Now watch Dog Dread Howl and follow it up with an overwhelm. I'm not even getting into mage spells and abilities. I can and do keep tough enemies locked down until they're dead--I've seen bosses die before the overwhelm is over. The only exception is Revenants, but they really aren't *that* hard.



Scattershot...

The damage isn’t tremendous? 50 base damage + 6 enemies = 300 damage. Sounds pretty good to me. Scattershot does great damage. It effectively multiplies your normal damage by however many enemies there are. The stun effect is just an added little bonus.

By the time you get Scattershot, your group will have access to a lot of other abilities that can beat that. Walking Bomb, a tier 1 spell, does something like twice the damage. An acid flask does more damage, and takes less time to use as well. It's decent, but no, it's not tremendous, not if you compare it to other aoe abilities. I guess if you compare it to other abilities archers have, it's one of the best.

As for Pinpoint Strike, using that for archery is an exploit of the game, so I don’t think we can use it in a serious discussion comparing builds. Lastly, Deadly Strike is a melee ability, so it hardly offsets Warcry for an archer.

I guess you make the rules now. I know some people who say using taunt is an exploit of the game, so should we disregard your use of that as an argument in favor of warriors?

Yes, abilities hurt the archers ability to tank. But you are acting as if we see those abilities being used against us all the time in every battle. That is just not the case. Rogues with Dirty Fighting will be annoying; Scattershot will be annoying, as will Shield Bash. However, you don’t always get those used on you every battle, and when you do, those abilities don’t last that long...

Don't you keep on saying that it's the hard fights that matter? Guess what, it's in the hard fights that those abilities are used. Actually, which hard fights are you thinking of that being immune to flanking and knockdowns isn't a huge plus?

And even if you are not tanking with the guy (say if you are against a boss with a knockdown attack), he still has a ton of survivability for a non-tanking character in your party. This is always useful. You can ALSO bring along a tank as well and draw aggro towards both of them, significantly lessening the chance that either of them will go down. There are a lot of options. The point is that the ability to tank pretty well in most situations gives you more good tactical options.

No, it's NOT always useful, that's the point. It's only useful if your tank is either bad at holding aggro (player problem) or poorly built and can't take the heat (again, player problem). The point is the survivability is only useful if you're getting attacked. I recently killed Flemeth with no healer, and no potions. Alistair tanked her until she died from lots of arrows from my PC rogue (cunning) and Leliana (also cunning).



I can only think of a single fight where the defense on non-tanks actually matters, and that's Caridin if you brought Shale. That's called a niche role, not "always useful."



Re: 32 strength: You're wrong. You only need 32 strength because of the items that increase strength to the point you can wear massive armor.



Re: Specializations: You keep saying pets steal exp. I don't think that's even true, it just doesn't show up as combat text. Also, you keep on bringing up "hard fights." There's always time to summon the pet before any hard fight. Please don't tell me the Archdemon is hard. Pets really don't have that serious of issues. You said "etc" like there were more possible issues than you listed--there aren't.

[soteria]

Well if your tank dies, and you only have an archer with low defense, low armor, and low hp left, then I really don’t see how you would survive very long. Stealth can’t really save you because you’d eventually have to stand and fight.

Honestly, this is too variant on group makeup and the fight and what sort of self-imposed restrictions I'm playing with to get into, but yes, a ranger archer with stealth could still win. Wait a minute in stealth and summon another pet. Use bombs, use potions.

It is not that I don’t THINK Bioware meant to do that. It is that I know they didn’t. It is confirmed.

Hmm, I haven't seen that. When I click on it I only get the option to set additional tactics for the caster using the summon as a condition. I'll check it out some more when I get off work. If it's confirmed, can you provide a link?

Just because it is true for other rogues does not mean it isn’t a big downside. The fact is that you guys are talking about all the things your rogue will be able to do when you won’t be able to do ALL that stuff until pretty far into the game. To me, that is significant.

My cunning rogue in my current playthrough had dirty fighting, combat stealth, two ranks of device mastery (all I've ever needed), and momentum by the time I did redcliffe at ~lvl 9. I think I probably had some other rogue talents as well such as below the belt. Swap that for scattershot or something for an archer rogue, and yes, you can do exactly what we're saying from a very early point in the game.

No. The rogue does NOT have an option. Unlike warriors, they do not have rogue talents that increase their combat effectiveness with archery (except Lethality for a cunning rogue, but that is more something that is necessary for the build rather than something that actually increases combat effectiveness). Thus, they must utilize the branches they do have, like stealth and deft hands, in order to make up for this. The problem is, these branches are their own separate entities that need to be invested in soon in order to be of any use. Without them, there is no reason to take a rogue over a warrior. But with them, you must forgo some combat talents for a lot of the game in order to utilize them. This IS a negative. You need only play as a rogue to see that.

I've played two rogues now, but thanks for the tip... and you're still wrong about this. Two specializations plus every point in the archery tree is 20 talents. By level 20--very near the end of the game--you'll have what, 25 talent points? Sounds like a rogue archer really can spend his points elsewhere. Not to mention actually having two specializations worth maxing out, notwithstanding your claim that pinpoint strike is an exploit.

First off, those sustains take time to activate, which will lose you an attack or two. More importantly, I don’t think you can activate them effectively for free. My game does not allow me to activate a sustainable if I do not have the stamina for the upkeep cost. Thus I believe I cannot use AoS and then activate all the sustainables later. Maybe you know something I do not know about how to do this, but I have never been able to get sustainables for free like that.

You need enough maximum stamina to activate them. If you have 150 stamina, and you use a few abilities bringing you down to 30/150, then activate multiple sustains for a total of 80 stamina, that will leave you at 30/70.

[au_ithum]

I think that the defense issue is huge. If you reduce an enemies chance to hit from if to 99% to 98% you only decreased it's chance to hit by a factory of 1:50 but if you reduce it form 5% to 4% you just reduced the chance of it hitting by a factor of 1:5 (20% of the total chance.) Attack on the other hand becomes less useful at higher levels because the typical enemy is usually in the 70-80% probability to hit then the 5-10% range.

I agree that it's kind of cheap that you can set up tatics for overwhelming on your PC rouge, and I see your point about not including it in the argument for a rouge, but unless bioware fixes it in a patch, I think it's valid to argue that it is a point in favor of rouges (even if it is an exploit the warrior can't take advantage of it). Furthermore, I think that saying that using pinpoint strike as a archer is an exploit is highly controversial. I understand that the typical preconception of a dualist is a swordsman, but according to the "fluff text" pinpoint strike is based on being able to spot weaknesses in the enemies defense, whcih presumably an archer could do as well (albeit with a bit more difficulty considering the distance) but if we ignore the largely irrelevant text,I find no reason to believe pinpoint strike was meant to be used as a melee only ability.

As an aside, I can use my sustains for free and I'm using the latest PC version of the game. I wonder if there is a difference between the PC and console versions in this regard.

However, I think that many people are missing the point. Simply put, it's that the best build for an archer in combat is dex warrior build. Clearly it's not that dex archer is the best warrior build, or that other characters of other builds can do alot better in combat then the dex warrior. Based on pure statistics the warrior is probably going to be the better choice. Furthermore, since your archer is probably only going toe to toe with enemies when the rest of your party is dead, weaknesses that can be compensated by party buffs is largely irrelevant unless the party buff is coming form the PC.

Weither or not the utility of the rouge is going to upset the added combat prowess of the warrior is largely a personal choice. I personnel think it does, because I consider the in game rouges to be a huge drag on the party, whereas mine can be decent, but this varies from person to person.

I have a question about one of your arguments, however. You said that the rouge won't be able to afford arrow of slaying with his persistent buffs activated, and said that the end game rouge will have approximately 180 stamina. Did you factor in the willpower buffs received in the fade? Since you can't choose how those points are allocated, and presumably every character will obtain them in the course of the game, I think they are highly relevant to the sufficient stamina argument.

[lessthanjake9]

Honestly, this is getting a bit comical. If I stick Zevran on any hard enemy with paralyze runes and deathroot extract or better, as soon as I activate momentum they're going to get stunned and paralyzed a LOT, even without Riposte and Dirty Fighting. Add in Alistair with paralyze runes and poison. Now watch Dog Dread Howl and follow it up with an overwhelm. I'm not even getting into mage spells and abilities. I can and do keep tough enemies locked down until they're dead--I've seen bosses die before the overwhelm is over. The only exception is Revenants, but they really aren't *that* hard.

First off, you get that stuff later on in the game. You act like you’ll always have multiple characters with paralysis runes and such. You won’t.



Secondly, you need only read over what you just said to realize that you are not really making a real point. You say that you can keep hard enemies locked down until they are totally dead. Then that battle is extremely easy for you. Thus, the effectiveness of a build does not matter when it comes to combat success. In that case, of course you can say that defense and high attack doesn’t matter! Nothing really matters if you totally own every fight. If you can just keep all hard enemies locked down until they die, you shouldn’t even care about the quality of a build. Your argument really amounts to: “I am so good at the game that I do not need the bonuses of this build.” That’s not an argument for why a cunning archer is better in general, but rather why the game isn’t hard enough for you. The fact is that high attack and high defense should matter, and they do matter to most players.

By the time you get Scattershot, your group will have access to a lot of other abilities that can beat that. Walking Bomb, a tier 1 spell, does something like twice the damage. An acid flask does more damage, and takes less time to use as well. It's decent, but no, it's not tremendous, not if you compare it to other aoe abilities. I guess if you compare it to other abilities archers have, it's one of the best.

Yes Walking Bomb does more damage (but is also quite a bit more situational). Acid Flasks do friendly fire as far as I can remember, and do not have the area of a scattershot. Is Scattershot the best talent in the game? No. Plenty of mage abilities are a lot better. But when it comes to warriors and rogues, Scattershot is one of the top combat talents.

I guess you make the rules now. I know some people who say using taunt is an exploit of the game, so should we disregard your use of that as an argument in favor of warriors?

Ummm the difference is that you CANT activate Pinpoint Strike with a bow equipped. This CLEARLY indicates that Bioware did not mean for Pinpoint Strike to be used with bows. Bioware clearly meant for taunt to be used. Big difference. If the game makers didn’t mean for you to be able to do something, and clearly created a mechanism that was supposed to stop you from doing it, then I think its pretty clear that doing it anyways is an exploit.

Don't you keep on saying that it's the hard fights that matter? Guess what, it's in the hard fights that those abilities are used. Actually, which hard fights are you thinking of that being immune to flanking and knockdowns isn't a huge plus?

That is somewhat true, but not always. Big enemies like the High Dragon or Flemeth or Elite Ogres knock you down. But that is hardly relevant. An archer would never tank against those enemies anyways, as they are quite invaluable as long range attackers against such enemies. So in those cases, the lessened ability to tank doesn’t matter because you won’t use them to tank. So I suppose in those cases the high defense is not all that useful. But there are uses in other tough battles.



- Most tough battles early on are tankable because enemies early on do not have lots of abilities. Thus, you’ll be as good a tank as any early on. This is a big deal, because in my experience it takes a while for abilities that would be a problem to be used a lot by enemies.



- Some battles are made tough due to enemy mages with warriors backing them up. Some mages will use Fireball and knock you down, but this isn’t THAT common, nor is it a big deal because you won’t be getting attacked while knocked down if the enemies were fireballed too. Otherwise, you won’t be knocked down, and your archer can soak up attacks from the non-mages, while he and the rest of your party focus damage on the mages.



- There are a good deal of tough darkspawn battles, especially in the Deep Roads. I have never really seen too much stunning and knocking down from them. The Broodmother can be tough. You can’t really tank that battle entirely due to the tentacles, but you can certainly taunt the darkspawn while your party kills the Broodmother. You won’t have problems, as long as you avoid grabbing range.



- Many of the battles against the Cultists/Drakes near the Urn are tough, but I do not remember having huge knockdown problems there.



- I think Gaxkang can knock you down in Revenant form (not entirely sure though as I can’t recall him ever doing a knockdown). Either way, you can tank him in Revenant form pretty well if you have crazy high defense.



- Ser Cauthrien gives you two tough possible fights. In the first one, you’ll get scattershotted a lot, to start, so youll have to drink some poultices pretty quickly. If you just taunt afterwards though, you can tank Cauthrien and her archers pretty well. Or you could do what most of us do and run away and kill Cauthrien in another room by tanking her. That works pretty well. In the second battle, you can tank pretty easily.



I could go on. The point is that there are plenty of tough battles in which a warrior archer could be a good tank. Do most battles carry the possibility of being knocked down or stunned? Of course. But even in harder battles, it will generally not be a debilitating weakness that will stop you from being a serviceable tank. This is especially true earlier in the game when enemies won’t have as many abilities and against darkspawn who really don’t utilize abilities too much.

No, it's NOT always useful, that's the point. It's only useful if your tank is either bad at holding aggro (player problem) or poorly built and can't take the heat (again, player problem). The point is the survivability is only useful if you're getting attacked. I recently killed Flemeth with no healer, and no potions. Alistair tanked her until she died from lots of arrows from my PC rogue (cunning) and Leliana (also cunning).

This is absurd. You are essentially saying that defense isn’t useful because your tank should NEVER die. If your tank never dies, then the difficulty of the game just isn’t high enough for you. Tough battles SHOULD kill your tank sometimes. If they don’t then you don’t need a good build to succeed. You say that your tank never dies so you don’t need high defense. I say, battles are obviously so easy for you that the quality of the build clearly doesn’t matter. Basically, a good player can cover the glaring flaws in ANY build. That doesn’t make them not flaws. It just means that with sufficient skill, they aren’t debilitating.

Re: 32 strength: You're wrong. You only need 32 strength because of the items that increase strength to the point you can wear massive armor.

How do you get +10 strength? +2 from Key to the City. +2 from Andruils. How else are you getting all of this strength without equipping things for which there are better alternatives?

Re: Specializations: You keep saying pets steal exp. I don't think that's even true, it just doesn't show up as combat text. Also, you keep on bringing up "hard fights." There's always time to summon the pet before any hard fight. Please don't tell me the Archdemon is hard. Pets really don't have that serious of issues. You said "etc" like there were more possible issues than you listed--there aren't.

I said “etc” because ive listed the problems multiple times in this thread already. I have heard they steal xp (I can’t say I know it 100% for sure, but it certainly doesn’t show up saying you got xp). They unsummon themselves, which is annoying. You can’t set tactics for them (unless you are on PC and quickly click the tactics thing RIGHT after you summon, and even then you must do it EVERY time you summon). You can’t control them on xbox. They have pathfinding issues frequently. In my experience, they seem to disobey my orders in combat a lot, or at least do stupid things in combat when I’m paying attention elsewhere. You can’t see what you told them to do (or what they are about to do of their own accord) listed, which is annoying. A lot of these are annoyances rather than real decreases in effectiveness, but IMO, these things greatly limit the value of the ranger pets, even if objectively speaking, they are very powerful.



As for battles where they are unsummoned, how about Gaxkang? Wouldn’t the pet be unsummoned for that? I could probably think of others, but that’s the first one that came to mind.

[lessthanjake9]

Honestly, this is too variant on group makeup and the fight and what sort of self-imposed restrictions I'm playing with to get into, but yes, a ranger archer with stealth could still win. Wait a minute in stealth and summon another pet. Use bombs, use potions.

You are assuming you’re a ranger. Otherwise success is virtually impossible at that point unless you chug a ton of poultices. Not all rogues will go with ranger, especially cunning based ones, and you won’t be a ranger all game. In any case, I am not sure I am comfortable with doing that ranger pet + stealth tactic. It is kind of auto-win to the point of being quite lame. It’s not an exploit like using overwhelm with pets, but it IS lame to the point where I do not really want to consider it as a legitimate reason that rogue archers shouldn’t worry at all about defense (because with this tactic, a rogue archer doesn’t need to worry about attack, damage, defense, armor, or anything else really).

Hmm, I haven't seen that. When I click on it I only get the option to set additional tactics for the caster using the summon as a condition. I'll check it out some more when I get off work. If it's confirmed, can you provide a link?

I believe I saw something where a Bioware employee posted saying it was a bug, but just a really really quick search at least yielded a mod on this site saying it’s a bug:



http://social.biowar...s-162792-1.html

My cunning rogue in my current playthrough had dirty fighting, combat stealth, two ranks of device mastery (all I've ever needed), and momentum by the time I did redcliffe at ~lvl 9. I think I probably had some other rogue talents as well such as below the belt. Swap that for scattershot or something for an archer rogue, and yes, you can do exactly what we're saying from a very early point in the game.

And my warrior archer could have every single archery talent by level 9. At that point, I would be the much better archer. It would take you a while to catch up. Meanwhile I’d have stuff like Arrow of Slaying and +30 defense (which at level 9 is absurd).

I've played two rogues now, but thanks for the tip... and you're still wrong about this. Two specializations plus every point in the archery tree is 20 talents. By level 20--very near the end of the game--you'll have what, 25 talent points? Sounds like a rogue archer really can spend his points elsewhere. Not to mention actually having two specializations worth maxing out, notwithstanding your claim that pinpoint strike is an exploit.

When I said you need only play a rogue to see that, I wasn’t trying to act as if you hadn’t played as a rogue. You obviously have. I was using “you” as the collective you.



Anyways, haven’t I said over and over that the rogue archer’s talent problems are not an issue later on? They are not talent starved at the end. But they ARE talent starved early on. So talking about how many talent points you’ll eventually have is irrelevant to my point. My point is that they it takes quite some time to fulfill their potential because things like stealth, deft hands, and lethality require an early investment to be of any use, and you can’t get all that at once while still getting archery talents.

You need enough maximum stamina to activate them. If you have 150 stamina, and you use a few abilities bringing you down to 30/150, then activate multiple sustains for a total of 80 stamina, that will leave you at 30/70.

Hmm I didn’t realize that. I am somewhat lazy and so I virtually never bother with a strategy involving putting on sustains after every battle starts. It is somewhat of a house rule of mine born from laziness haha, so I never noticed that. I guess what I had noticed was that I couldn’t have so many sustains on that the upkeep itself was more than my stamina/mana pool.



In any case, this makes my point about total stamina weaker. But it IS still annoying to have to put on sustains after each battle starts instead of just leaving them on. And it does still take some time you could be using to attack. It’s not nearly as big of an issue as I thought, but it IS a small issue in my mind.

[soteria]

First off, you get that stuff later on in the game. You act like you’ll always have multiple characters with paralysis runes and such. You won’t.

YOU won't. I sell the blood dragon armor, do some sidequests, and can have paralyze runes by the time I leave Redcliffe.

Secondly, you need only read over what you just said to realize that you are not really making a real point. You say that you can keep hard enemies locked down until they are totally dead. Then that battle is extremely easy for you. Thus, the effectiveness of a build does not matter when it comes to combat success. In that case, of course you can say that defense and high attack doesn’t matter! Nothing really matters if you totally own every fight. If you can just keep all hard enemies locked down until they die, you shouldn’t even care about the quality of a build. Your argument really amounts to: “I am so good at the game that I do not need the bonuses of this build.” That’s not an argument for why a cunning archer is better in general, but rather why the game isn’t hard enough for you. The fact is that high attack and high defense should matter, and they do matter to most players.

Eh. No. Point is, low attack can be compensated for by leveraging the abilities of your entire group. There's very few group buffs that increase damage, and this is all ignoring the other benefits of having cunning above 50, such as easy persuade checks, stealthing in combat, and disabling traps and locks without having to bring another rogue. If I focused more on attack and defense, I probably wouldn't be able to kill the hard enemies as fast. And to be honest, it's true that you can't really lock down dragons for an entire fight, either.

Ummm the difference is that you CANT activate Pinpoint Strike with a bow equipped. This CLEARLY indicates that Bioware did not mean for Pinpoint Strike to be used with bows. Bioware clearly meant for taunt to be used. Big difference. If the game makers didn’t mean for you to be able to do something, and clearly created a mechanism that was supposed to stop you from doing it, then I think its pretty clear that doing it anyways is an exploit.

You say it was an oversight that it gives a bonus to ranged attacks. I say it was an oversight that it requires a melee weapon. Why don't they fix it if they think it's an exploit? If they do, then I'll agree with you, but otherwise all you have is your opinion.

There are a good deal of tough darkspawn battles, especially in the Deep Roads. I have never really seen too much stunning and knocking down from them. The Broodmother can be tough. You can’t really tank that battle entirely due to the tentacles, but you can certainly taunt the darkspawn while your party kills the Broodmother. You won’t have problems, as long as you avoid grabbing range.

Cherry-picking because I really don't have anything to say about the other battles. Defense is irrelevant for Broodmother--stand on the rocks and the tentacles can't hit you. You'll still get hit by spit. A warrior tank or Shale can just as eaily taunt/warcry the darkspawn as your archer, letting your archer save stamina for useful abilities.

Many of the battles against the Cultists/Drakes near the Urn are tough, but I do not remember having huge knockdown problems there.

Most of the ones that are tough involve mages or drakes that overwhelm/roar, or both. Defense wouldn't help mitigate that.

I think Gaxkang can knock you down in Revenant form (not entirely sure though as I can’t recall him ever doing a knockdown). Either way, you can tank him in Revenant form pretty well if you have crazy high defense.

Well, just have a templar tank him in spell resist gear--at that point you won't take much damage from his revenant form anyway. I guess you could do that with an archer as well, if you don't mind taking the penalty for massive armor. Seems more efficient to let Alistair do it, but whatever.



I'm not arguing that a character with high dexterity can't tank stuff. I'm saying the warrior with high dexterity and a shield will do better for the majority of the game, and the rogue archer with a pet, bard song, and good dex and cunning will end up doing more damage. My bear does like 40-50 damage and I don't even have master ranger yet. And he can shatter stuff.

This is absurd. You are essentially saying that defense isn’t useful because your tank should NEVER die. If your tank never dies, then the difficulty of the game just isn’t high enough for you. Tough battles SHOULD kill your tank sometimes. If they don’t then you don’t need a good build to succeed. You say that your tank never dies so you don’t need high defense. I say, battles are obviously so easy for you that the quality of the build clearly doesn’t matter. Basically, a good player can cover the glaring flaws in ANY build. That doesn’t make them not flaws. It just means that with sufficient skill, they aren’t debilitating.

Again, no. Although I have said multiple times on these boards that nightmare mode isn't hard enough, that's not what I'm saying here. You absolutely need a good build to survive. Well, not to survive--you can always chug potions--but to thrive. We're just in disagreement about what is the optimum build.



My PC weapon and shield warrior didn't require any particular strategy, not with Wynne backing him up. Defense is too easy to stack. I'm not bragging, because it didn't require any particular skill--I just equipped massive armor, stacked dexterity, and went through a lot of the game on autopilot.



To be honest, I'm not sure a good player *could* cover the flaws in ANY build. In my current game, I'm doing just fine with no potions or healer, but only because I built the entire group around that concept. If I tried to do the same with someone else's group, or even one of my own from a different playthrough, I'd get annihilated. Heck, I struggle even if I just swap out a single character. The build is very important, but having a backup tank is not. If I chose to build someone like that, I would probably end up having to use them in that capacity because I would be weaker in other ways.

How do you get +10 strength? +2 from Key to the City. +2 from Andruils. How else are you getting all of this strength without equipping things for which there are better alternatives?

Because you can equip +strength items, put your massive armor on, and take them off. I'm just guessing you're going to call it an exploit. It's too tedius for my taste, but there you have it.



Summons: Ok, I'll give you Gaxxkang. As for the rest, I haven't seen any issues that couldn't be chalked up to size. I've noticed the bear has a hard time getting around stuff. Having used both, though, I'd definitely take ranger over templar. For Champion it would depend on what the rest of my group looked like.

[soteria]

You are assuming you’re a ranger. Otherwise success is virtually impossible at that point unless you chug a ton of poultices. Not all rogues will go with ranger, especially cunning based ones, and you won’t be a ranger all game. In any case, I am not sure I am comfortable with doing that ranger pet + stealth tactic. It is kind of auto-win to the point of being quite lame. It’s not an exploit like using overwhelm with pets, but it IS lame to the point where I do not really want to consider it as a legitimate reason that rogue archers shouldn’t worry at all about defense (because with this tactic, a rogue archer doesn’t need to worry about attack, damage, defense, armor, or anything else really).

I wouldn't do it either. As I said, easier and faster to just reload. I wasn't actually saying to just stay stealthed while pets win the day, but that you can wait for your pet to come back for a second summon, and let it tank for you.

And my warrior archer could have every single archery talent by level 9. At that point, I would be the much better archer. It would take you a while to catch up. Meanwhile I’d have stuff like Arrow of Slaying and +30 defense (which at level 9 is absurd).

I'll admit this isn't really an amazing argument for rogue vs warrior (more against archery in general), but taking all the archer talents doesn't really make you much better as an archer. Most of the specials take so long to fire the benefit seems marginal. Most of the time you're better off just autoshooting. AoS and Scattershot are nice, but Critical Shot is a bit of a wash. Take 1.5x as long to fire to do 1.5x more damage? Erm. Of course, the rogue can just activate stealth every 10s for a free critical.



As for talent point investment, I am making two separate and mutually exclusive arguments, and you're mixing them. You said that it takes a long time for rogues to get all that utility. I pointed out that I can get it by level 9 or so, and still have points in the archery tree, which could certainly include defensive fire.



You also said rogues don't have any other options but to go with the utility because their talents aren't as combat-oriented. I pointed out that they don't have to spend points in utility--they can spend them in specializations, combat stealth, and lethality. 6 in rogue talents, 8 in specializations, 12 in archery. A warrior at the same level is spending 8 in warrior talents, 12 in archery, and 6 in specializations. You don't come out ahead.

[wby87]

So warrior archers are better than cunning rogue archers? I don't think they are comparable, but OK, since you assume dex rogue archers are better than cunning rogue archer.

And if warrior archers is not better than dex rogue archers because of atk and def bonus, how are they better? their combat versatility comparing to ranger's pets? Or their utility versus rogue utility? If you are arguing the later, then you can say warriors in general have more "utility" than rogues. Most people would have problem with that.

And don't argue for quantity of talents, its pointless. As for quality of talents, we are back to the utility arguement again.

I want to add one last point: when you argue about ranger pets, stealth, taunts, warcry, and other abilities that are boardline relevant to what archers really do (aka shooting), this becomes a general arguement of Warrior vs. Rogue. If thats the case, I think I'd rather troll on Batman vs. Superman instead. Keep arguements on how stuffs synergize with archery guys.

Oh god this thread is way too long.

Modifié par wby87, 25 janvier 2010 - 01:33 .

[sethroskull79]

I am currently playing a rogue archer and he is really good. I agree with putting more into dex than cun because you NEED to hit. I think I have like 59 or 60 dex and 51 or so cunning. I am having no problem hitting and Song of Courage works well too. I may invest the last 4 talents I get into The Dual Wield Mastery line. When you get rushed and surrounded switching to melee is great. I just got Axameter. Plan on using that and either Biteback Axe or the Adoh once I can use 2 fullsize weapons.

[Tryst]

Why does Deathblow really matter? Do your fights typically last 60+ seconds so you can use two Arrow of Slayings? Critical Shot is crap. Lose out on 2-4 autoshots for one 1.5x damage critical? No thanks. Crippling shot? Not worth the time either. I guess Pinning Shot is occasionally useful early on before you have a tank or a mage. Shattering Shot is ok for the armor debuff if you have two other physical damage maybe. But as a general rule, outside of AoS, archer abilities aren't worth the stamina to cast. They take too long, for too little damage or debuff. Now, you'll argue scattershot does 50 times the number of enemies hit. I'll then argue that single target focus fire is better time spent than doing a small amount of damage to lots of enemies, unless you're running an aoe group. Then I'd say that another mage is much better in that spot. Or a dual wielder using dual weapon sweep and whirlwind and you're just throwing a pebble into the pool and feeling like you're useful. The reason for this view is simply that killing an enemy is more important than damage a bunch of them some, especially given your concern about your tanks' survival.



A question, do you really keep your archer so close to the melee that they always get rally? I find the short range of rally to not be very useful for the group on my archer. Same goes with war cry. Why play an archer if you're going to spend all your time 10 feet from your group? If you don't spend time that close to the group, then rally really is worse than duelist, since it costs 15 more stamina to upkeep. And if you do stay that close, why are you playing an archer? That is what I find to be the big advantage for a rogue archer. He can supply Song of Courage to everyone regardless of range.



Now, to the warrior archer being able to tank. So what? Fine, you want to create an archer/tank. That's a perfectly valid reason. But to say it is the best build, because you need a second tank is not a compelling reason, especially not when many people do just fine with one or zero warriors as tanks. In the end, an archer is a damage dealer. Both the rogue and warrior variants can do about the same damage. You'll argue that because you get all the archer talents earlier, you're superior. I'll argue that the archer talents outside of AoS suck and aren't so important to being a good archer as gear is. Thus for me, a second tank is useless, the extra talents to pick up scattershot and master archer by level 9 aren't worth the time, thus I find I have plenty of talents to pick up some deft hands and more importantly stealth 3 by level 8.



Now, if you really want to say a warrior archer is better, your best bets are to use precise striking and perfect striking. Those are the two abilities a rogue does not an equivalent for that directly impact archery. Of course, I'm not sure you can really use perfect striking a lot on a boss, simply because without deathblow fueling stamina, you're going to be short, and if you're hitting things that you can kill quickly, you really don't need perfect striking anyways, but it is still a good ability. And precise striking's 2.5-14.5% crit bonus is nice in addition to the 10 attack. Too bad aim sucks for autoshots, that would be a nice sustained combo.



And no, I do not think pinpoint strike is an argument. If you argue pinpoint strike, then you have to give the warrior berserking, which can be up for every fight and pulls ahead of pinpoint strike over time. Admittedly, pinpoint is better in a short boss fight, sub 30 seconds. Over that though, it starts to lose out a bit in total damage.

[beancounter501]

One of the big things to keep in mind is that player skill and more importantly knowledge of the encounters plays huge role. If you are like Soteria who has played the game through multiple times, know where the good loot is, knows where the hard encounters are and what the tactics for them then defense is not as important. But I am on my first play through, there have been tons of times where I have been caught with my pants down. During the Urn quest there was a couple of encounters were some pretty nasty critters came up from behind and used Wynne as a chew toy. Defense on every character matters to me. Heck I am using two tanks - Shale and Alistar. So when you start giving advice keep in mind not everyone knows the best tactics for every battle. Some of us don't even know what is around the next corner. Bottom line - defense matters and to say it is not needed is kind of silly.



I think a dex based warrior archer and a dex based rogue archer are easier classes to play. Combat wise both are pretty much equal. A cunning rogue archer is viable, but I would not recommend it. Certainly not to a new player.



A large part of the choice really boils down to what you find fun. I like having a durable character who can use his activated abilities throughout the whole fight. I want my character to be able to survive an Orge grab or overwhelm. I like charging into a room with guns blazing. I really don't care about setting traps or sneaking. I could care less about opening some chest to find another leather helmet. Watching my character sit there and auto attack is boring to me. For me a warrior archer is a better choice.



I also think that switching to a melee weapon to activate an ability is an exploit. I think equipping a bunch of strength gear to wear massive armor and then take it all off is an exploit. If I am going to do that I might as well open the console and type kill. But it is a single player game and I don't care what you do. But any argument based on that has no meaning to me.

[tetracycloide]

lessthanjake9 wrote...
Yes, abilities hurt the archers ability to tank. But you are acting as if we see those abilities being used against us all the time in every battle. That is just not the case. Rogues with Dirty Fighting will be annoying; Scattershot will be annoying, as will Shield Bash.

Which game are you playing?  Pretty much every fight in the game has one or more of those abilities being used and the only ones that don't are against beasts, where Overwhelm also ignores defense, or against demons, where spells also ignore defense.

You need more strength to use most of the top notch armor choices.

No you don't, 32 is enough to wear any item in the game given a few +strength items.  There's absolutely no reason to get to 42 strength unless you need it for attack or damage.  Which brings me to my next point, warrior tanks should be using a dagger, not a sword/axe/mace.  With all the points in dex that would otherwise go to waste to pump defense it's only natural to equip a weapon that can gain damage from dexterity, daggers are perfect.  40-60 damage at the speed of a dagger is plenty of damage for a tank IMO.

No one makes tank to deal damage so the argument that the archer will do more is absurd.  Granted the argument of what archer, widely required as the lowest DPS of any weapon style and with good reason, would do the most damage is equally absurd.  Archers are there for utility, if a rogue or a warrior were to priorities DPS they'd be dual wield for sure.

lessthanjake9 wrote...
How do you get +10 strength? +2 from Key to the City. +2 from Andruils. How else are you getting all of this strength without equipping things for which there are better alternatives?

Ok, now I think I understand where the confusion is coming from.  You don't need to keep +strength items equiped after the armor is on.  Once it's on it stays on until you take it off.

Modifié par tetracycloide, 25 janvier 2010 - 04:44 .

[ownedbywitt]

OMG



First, you said that u have played a lot of games of this kind, but, why do u want your archer to be the tank?? (except for solo play)



I have played a lot of MMORPG which u have to play with a party, and there is one golden tactic:



One tank, one healer, and fill the party with damage dealer and a party buffer-songer whatever character that boost your attributes. (support-cc).

The tank keep the enemys, the damage dealers (dd) attack one target, support classes buff the party and if they can, cc and make damage, and finally the healer, heals.



The point is, that if u already have a tank (alistair or shale) why the hell do u want huge defense??

With my cun archer, with buffs, song, rally, i could get the same or more attack that u have, make more damage and with a lot of more criticals, and i don't wan huge defense, because i don't need it... check my City elf character, just dies one time and it was when u are on the brecilian forest and see an abandond camp, u check it, and unless your pc chararcter is mage, u died.



So, there is only one conclusion:

1 tank and 1 healer is a must, so the next other 2 slot must be filled with dd and songer.



On my last playthrough i have used those:

Tank: alistair

healer: wynne

dd: sten

dd: me as archer, cunning build bard/duelist. (i refuse to play with pets.)



Alistar keeps the aggro without problems, Sten is a ****ing machine, with heavy set (still enough armor, doesn't agroo to much and could use more talents), wynne healing and CC, and my archer one he pass the lvl 10 more or less he started hitting a lot more times, a lot criticals and huge damage.



The stats when i was that lvl were the next:



I got 73% hit rate, party contribution was 25%. Defense and attack stat i don't remember.



Now, on lvl 19 i got the next stats:



84% hit rate (actually, i could say that after lvl 16 more or less my hit rate is near 100%, but this is overall statistics btw, as u have noticed it has increases a lot and imo i would end the game with more than 90% of hit rate.)

contribution to party is 43%

defense: 110

attack: 144

damage: 55-60, 22-23 armor penetration, and near 30% critical chance.



But thats not all, Alistair has 85% hit rate, Sten has 91% hit rate (awesome!).



In resume, this a party game, for my is better the next:



Normal defense archer with high attack and a awesome party > Huge defense archer with huge attack with a poor party.

[soteria]

@Beancounter:

Sure, and I'll add that on my first playthrough, on hard, I really struggled through parts of the game. I gave my rogue (this avatar) medium armor because I wanted more survivability. I gave Alistair strength and constitution instead of dexterity, and ended up needing two mages to keep him up. I didn't use any of Wynne's glyph spells because I didn't think they looked that great, and momentum was one of the very last talents I grabbed.

I don't see using berserking or pinpoint strike with archery as an exploit mostly because I think archery is weak enough that it can use some loving. Bioware screwed the pooch when they designed 2/3 warrior and rogue specializations with a heavy melee bias.

I don't really care to continue this discussion much further, since I think we've all stated our arguments (once or twice) but I'll try this build on my next play. Dalish elf warrior focusing on ranged weapons, and he'll be tanking, too. I'll bring Leliana and Dog along for sure. Debating on the last slot.

Modifié par soteria, 25 janvier 2010 - 04:54 .

[Timortis]

lessthanjake9 wrote...
Stealth is great, but you can’t win a fight from stealth.

Soloing an Ogre Alpha without taking a single point of damage. Do this with a Warrior archer, then we'll talk...

[LightSabres]

This is a minor point I'm sure but Dalish elves get a point in Archery to start the game as a warrior OR a rogue...

[beancounter501]

soteria wrote...

@Beancounter:

I don't really care to continue this discussion much further, since I think we've all stated our arguments (once or twice) but I'll try this build on my next play. Dalish elf warrior focusing on ranged weapons, and he'll be tanking, too. I'll bring Leliana and Dog along for sure. Debating on the last slot.

Come on!  It is the internet afterall.  How many times have you seen someone change their mind during one of these debates!  At least this thread is better then most I have seen on archery where everyone moans about how horrible it is.  Some good information in here.  I would have never thought of doing the stealth + archery attack trick without reading this thread.  I am sure it is super powerful if a little on the lame/boring side.  But too each their own.

But I will admit I still do not see the appeal of a cunning build.  Even with Song of Courage a high cunning does not bring that much.  Not enough to offset a huge attack and defense penality.  Still the powergamer in you must cry whenever you roll archery on your rogue vs dual welding!  Ack, just four feats and I could be hitting for 90-100 DPS instead of 30! 

Have to love a Bioware game.  You can always count on dual welding to be the best and ranged to be the worst!.  Was true in BG2, Kotor, Kotor2, NWN, NWN 2 and DA:O.  No matter that historically very few people dual welded, never mind effectively!  But it looks so coolz.

[Realmzmaster]

I can only assume that the OP is talking about a pure warrior/archer and a pure rogue/archer without specializations. Because if you add specializations you can really notice the difference. The rogue has the Ranger specialization. If your PC is a rogue you can have a ranger in your party by level 7. You can have three rangers by level 14. You can spec Lelianna and Zervan as Rangers. You now have access to three wolves, a great bear and two wolves, a poisionous spider and two wolves. You have three pets. A party of 7.

On the PC you can select your pets as a group and send them on seek and destroy missions while all your other characters use range weapons.

The three rangers can Shealth themselves and let the pets do all the work! By level 18 your can have three blight wolves or three geat bears or three poisionous spiders! The PC and companions can sit around drinking coffee while the pets clean up.

If one dies you summon a different pet and continue the fight.

[tetracycloide]

At least in KotOR it's consistent with the universe the game was set it for blasters to be the most random, ineffective weapons ever.



I think one of the problems with convincing people one way or the other is that how much attack is enough and how much defense targets have is completely anecdotal because there's no way to know what the real values are in game or even what +1 attack does for certain. The game itself does a really horrible job of giving players a framework from which to weigh the relative merits of each stat without significant playtesting or data mining. It's a lot like WoW in this regard except without the combat log of WoW and the player base there's neither he ability nor the time resources necessary to figure everything out definitively.



I've certainly learned some things, berserking or pinpoint striking with bows had never occurred to me before. I'm looking forward to proving once and for all if auto attacks are a one or two roll system, something I'd have never felt necessary for my own play. Related to that there's a possible exploit with pinpoint striking I'd like to try as well. Even without convincing anyone else debate encourages posters to back up their opinions with factual evidence and results as much as possible, which is a good thing I think.