31 réponses à ce sujet

[Solid_Altair]

I had a hard time picking a title for this topic. The 'no healing' stuff is mostly a preface to the turtling discussion. And the rethorics of the 'why not turtle?' question is in the sense of answering it, not in the sense of implying that there is no reason not to turtle. Lets go to the healing stuff.

 

Healing Allowed:

 

+ Healing player skill is important.

- Tank skill is important most of the time, but not always.

-- DPS skill is rarely important.

-- Small sights don't matter.

- Dangerous enemies must surpass the party's mitigation and healing in order to threaten the players, which sometimes requires some trolly stuff or stuff that makes the fight very streamlined (if you don't do exactly this, you get wiped).

 

Healing Disallowed:

 

- There is no standard healing skill, even though there are defensive support abilities that require skill.

+ Tank skill is more important and always important.

++ DPS skill is much more important and always important.

++ Small fights matter.

+ Dangerous enemies must only surpass the mitigation in order to threaten you, for if such a fight last too long, you'd run out of potions, specially if you didn't do very well in previous small fights. As a consequence, the hard fights probably won't be so scripted and streamlined.

 

I guess it's quite clear that I agree with the 'no healing' (limited healing) stuff. It worked very well on Dark Souls and it was even better on Lightning Returns. And this rule is quite important to the discussion I wanna bring about turtling.

 

Turtling Discussion

 

Due to limited healing, the main aspect of efficiency in fight now is clearly the party's damage intake. The less damage you take, the better. And this matters even for the small fights. So... why not turtle? Why not go with 3 tanks and one barrier-speciallized-mage? The answer is... wait... let us not spoil the fun of the thought experiment. Let us envision how this turtling party would fare.

 

In one very specific kind of fight, maybe it would do as well as a classic party. Suppose there are multiple kinda weak enemies, about three of them. The Tanks are able to pull them all and slowly kill them. They have a lot of time to dish out damage, but the tanks can soak most of it. In a classic party, the fight woud be quicker, but the damage delt probably wouldn't be soaked as well, so lets call it even.

 

Now let us think of a different kind of fight, where there is kind of a boss among the mobs. You slowly kill the mobs. They attack you a lot, but you soak it well. Then there is the tough guy left. One Tank mains him and the others hack away at him. The Tanks besides the main Tank would deal little DPS and the boss would last much longer than he should, which in turn would result in your main tank taking more damage then if there were a couple of rogues at the big guys back. The irony of it is that the toughness of the other Tanks would be irrelevant in this strong-single-target situation.

 

So think of a good DPS as kind of a healer, now. Good DPS = quicker fights = less damage output from your enemies... even to the point of compensating for a lack of toughness. Rogues actually have a skill to make their target ignore him, if the target is being engaged by another party member... so their squishiness doesn't even matter... at all, in a situation like this.

 

Do you agree with this assessment? Where would you (supposedly) draw the line between a viable and a non-viable party? Considering these things, which party composition do you intend to use and which class would you have for your Inquisitor?

 

I'm new around here, so... a special thanks for reading a fairly long post from a stranger.

[In Exile]

I think you're entirely wrong. Turtling will just lead to a great deal of attrition for you. Tanks are taking damage every time they get hit, though perhaps there is a way to play around with the guard mechanic to essentially throw around enemies to go from character to character without ever reducing HP. But it'll take forever to kill them.

 

The most efficient move is AOE. Since enemies won't have huge HP bloats, concentrated AOE will wipe out mooks quickly. 

[Gothfather]

/snip

So think of a good DPS as kind of a healer, now. Good DPS = quicker fights = less damage output from your enemies... even to the point of compensating for a lack of toughness. Rogues actually have a skill to make their target ignore him, if the target is being engaged by another party member... so their squishiness doesn't even matter... at all, in a situation like this.

 

Do you agree with this assessment? Where would you (supposedly) draw the line between a viable and a non-viable party? Considering these things, which party composition do you intend to use and which class would you have for your Inquisitor?

 

I'm new around here, so... a special thanks for reading a fairly long post from a stranger.

 

Can't say as I agree.

 

I think crowd control is just as important as DPS, I think tanks can ping pong. I think mitigation is viable. I do think very high DPS parties work I just don't think you have demonstrated they are superior.

[Gothfather]

I think you're entirely wrong. Turtling will just lead to a great deal of attrition for you. Tanks are taking damage every time they get hit, though perhaps there is a way to play around with the guard mechanic to essentially throw around enemies to go from character to character without ever reducing HP. But it'll take forever to kill them.

 

The most efficient move is AOE. Since enemies won't have huge HP bloats, concentrated AOE will wipe out mooks quickly. 

I think someone didn't bother to read his actual post.

[In Exile]

I think someone didn't bother to read his actual post.

 

I think you're right, but I don't believe in editing posts to avoid embarrassment. 

[The_Prophet_of_Donk]

_{I don't believe in the "Turtle Method" at all for this game....  but below that you were talking about a good DPSer, so yeah....}

 

_{I whole-heartedly agree in how they have it set up! Anyone that has ever done dungen crawling raids on an MMORPG knows what the roles are and how they work effectively. Now while they do not have a Healer per se, they do have support spells, so it kinda balances out.}

[rprm1987]

You do realize that your party must contain a rogue an warrior or a mage this time because all three has specific skills to open areas. So why not create a more fluid party that depends on cross class combos ?

 

Besides   there are some rare healing like abilities available to some specializations besides barrier and guard.

[The_Prophet_of_Donk]

I'm speccing as a Tank for my first play through and I'm gonna romance Blackwall who will be my Two-Handed beast. Sera will be my long distance DPS and then Dorian or Solas as my CCer or AOEer

[Applepie_Svk]

OP is making points to dismiss the support of healers...

 

You are saying that with heal spam is somehow most importnat only the healer, because healer is the alfa and omega. But that´s not true, without tank your healer will be dead, without healer your dmg dealers will die soon enough and same works in other direction. in the end you are in loading screen. It´s up to developer to do an enemies challenging enough, to give them a good AI and abilities, it´s like with any of the MMOs, going to dungeon ? Ok, but keep in mind that each class has it´s importance for group.

 

BioWare made a mistake by assuming that being or having a healer is somehow wrong... which is not.

 

And in the end, it even doesn´t matter much, if you have or don´t have a heal in the inquisition, because BioWare took from you healer but instead of it gave you a crapload of potions and options to restock them and also CC and barriers stuff...

[Wulfram]

Since there's healing at the end of a fight but only up to a point, to me it makes sense to concentrate damage on a single tank rather than spread it out.  Mix in lots of barrier and crowd control casting mages to boost mitigation if you want a defensive force mix.

[Blisscolas]

I think the main difficulty of the game is to keep the aggro on the tank in a much more proactive way. In previous games, you were given a little bit more of a delay between something happening to your party and adapting your strategy (mainly due to the fact that you had healing just in case things went bad). In this game you ahve to be much more reactive. I just watched the last twitch stream from Cologne and you can clearly see that on higher difficulties, slow reacting to enemies and poor decision making (not running away early enough) can lead to really problematic situations.

 

What you need to do now is have abilities to disengage enemies for your squishy characters. I think it's fairly easy for rogues, but I think there's quite few to no abilities for mages. In therms of crowd control and AoE they're the deal but they're really squishy. I see the mage and the warrior as classes that depend on each others abilities and the rogue seems like a more independent class (sole purpose is DpS and running away when the heat comes)

[Solid_Altair]

You are saying that with heal spam is somehow most importnat only the healer, because healer is the alfa and omega. But that´s not true, without tank your healer will be dead, without healer your dmg dealers will die soon enough and same works in other direction. in the end you are in loading screen.

In most situations, without the Tank, the party will wipe. But in small fights, even if the Tank suck, people will recover full health and the Tank's poor performance won't mean a thing. And although without healer or tank the party would be doomed, without DPS it would be fine. Most of the time, when there is health regen after the fight and standard healing, a good DPS is just a flair.

 

That is why having healers is wrong. Remember back on PS2 times, when shooter/action games switched the stick controls? We used to both move and aim with the left stick. Then they changed it for what we have today. It took a while for players to get used to it and all games to finally adapt. Resident Evil was particularly stuborn.

 

That's what I think will happen to standard healing on RPGs. "Resistence is futile. You will be assimilated."

 

BTW, I like healing. It was my secondary role in FFXIV. I just think killing the healers is a worthy sacrifice. Have you played Dark Souls or Lightning Returns? 'No healing' works wonders!

[Solid_Altair]

Can't say as I agree.

 

I think crowd control is just as important as DPS, I think tanks can ping pong. I think mitigation is viable. I do think very high DPS parties work I just don't think you have demonstrated they are superior.

I guess I expressed myelf poorly in that section. I don't think lacking a Tank will be a good idea. But having 3 or even 2 probably will. Having a rogue at the guy's back is awesome if there is a Tank at the front.

 

My attempt was to sort of demonstrate that turtling parties are probably not good. I don't think hyper-DPS parties will be good. And I'm curious about what people think to be the viable thresholds of defensiveness and offensiveness. For instance, a very offensive party could be a 2-hander Tank, along with one mage that is not very defensive and two rogues.

[Tevinter Soldier]

I had a hard time picking a title for this topic. The 'no healing' stuff is mostly a preface to the turtling discussion. And the rethorics of the 'why not turtle?' 

Do you agree with this assessment? Where would you (supposedly) draw the line between a viable and a non-viable party? Considering these things, which party composition do you intend to use and which class would you have for your Inquisitor?

 

I'm new around here, so... a special thanks for reading a fairly long post from a stranger.

 

The reason's why varied, first you have zero crowd control even with a rogue they are single target DPS. allows you to lock off and isolate enemies this results a lot less damage to your tanks and allows you to engage ranged characters as well (with turtles, you would have no choice but to gang on enemies one by one or split up to take on ranged NPC's) keep in mind those ranged characters will avoid the fight without locking down enemies with some kind of crowd control you can't isolate enemies.

 

you take more damage because the fight becomes protracted and it gives ranged characters more opportunity to hit hard (and ranged characters hit very hard this time around) 

 

So logically with a Crowd control character that can hit NPC's at long range and control the battlefield much more effectively than a rogue for pure DPS you'd take the mage.  remember also that enemies have strengths and weaknesses, having the flexibility to cast 2+ different spell schools and have a staff that deals a another elemental damage through your staff that you haven't spec'd into is a god send.

 

But this limits exploration, loot and disadvantages you in that your DPS output is totally dependant on the one single mage with cooldown and mana restrictions again limiting the effectiveness of the party.

 

So we take a rogue, not only for exploration but to manage the load on our main crowd control option, the mage. We can now use our spec'd defensive tank to hold aggro, lockdown mob's with our crowd control mage. Then target focus damage on locked down targets with our rogue dealing a great deal of damage to a single targets and allowing us to lessen damage taken by our tank. Simply through better management.

 

so now we have a defensive tank a rogue and a mage spec'd for crowd control, the player character now also has the freedom to be a heavy hitter as a DPS warrior a DPS rogue (bows or daggers) or a Damage dealing Mage.

 

with all 3 categories represented no environmental lock outs some areas are locked class specific.

 

Now the obvious choice is to bring the heavy hitting warrior as a second option if our tank goes down, but at the same time the PaxAus demo showed how deadly a few mages (their was 3) can be just laying ice traps nearly wiping the PC's team, this of course requires more micromanagement to pull off but its quite clearly viable.

 

overall i'd say if you going to use tac cam a lot the additional ranged DPS of a second mage can be far more effective than an offensive warrior, but if your more gung ho and charge in the warrior would be better. whilst another rogue appears to have less value than the other two, it may prove even stronger as you can tag team characters for massive single target DPS. (but require even more micro management)

 

long story short with health limited crowd control becomes the most vital resource. end of the day if we take say a small mob 3-4 guy's a full mage team will take the least damage as you can have two crowd controllers and two damage dealers. you can prevent the enemy from attacking and kill them faster then standing around trading blows, it's only when you reach larger mob's and higher level enemy's with debuff's and immunities that this becomes non viable. but because this game is built on attrition they will still enter the fight with more health and more health potions then a full warrior crew. creating a high risk high reward play style that is much more effective and cutting through enemies but requiring micro management.

 

But a balanced build is still the best option.

[Gothfather]

I guess I expressed myelf poorly in that section. I don't think lacking a Tank will be a good idea. But having 3 or even 2 probably will. Having a rogue at the guy's back is awesome if there is a Tank at the front.

 

My attempt was to sort of demonstrate that turtling parties are probably not good. I don't think hyper-DPS parties will be good. And I'm curious about what people think to be the viable thresholds of defensiveness and offensiveness. For instance, a very offensive party could be a 2-hander Tank, along with one mage that is not very defensive and two rogues.

 

You haven't shown that a high dps party is better.

 

party with two tanks, support mage & dps.

 

Two tanks can ping pong. The both build up guard a support mage cast barrier to protect the 1st tank and the first tank engages the enemy. When the main tank starts to take damage you have the 2nd tank which hasn't been taken damage or having its guard reduced from attacks taunts. Now this 2nd tank becomes the "main tank" and when its attacked it losed the guard it build up previously.. When you second tank's guard is almost out you switch back to the 1st tank which will have replenished its guard using a taunt to become the "main tank" once again. You have your dps and support mage burn down the enemies.

 

One tank, one rogue dps , two mages.

 

Two support mages both with barrier and crowd control can CC enemies or cut them off allowing your tank and rogue to kill off isolated enemies. With both magies casting barrier then can keep you tank from taking damage by letting the barrier stay up longer. Ths builds the guard of the warrior so that also keeps the warrior up. Here we see the mages mitigating damage by support spells and reducing the groups of enemies in the fight at any one time.

 

 

I am not saying a high dps party sucks or is a failed idea. I am saying you have NOT shown it to be supperior.

[Solid_Altair]

I agree. I didn't try to demonstrate a high DPS party is superior. I just said I think lacking a DPS guy will probably be bad.

 

The latest two posts were awesome.

 

I'm wondering if archers will have some descent AoE.

[DarthLaxian]

In most situations, without the Tank, the party will wipe. But in small fights, even if the Tank suck, people will recover full health and the Tank's poor performance won't mean a thing. And although without healer or tank the party would be doomed, without DPS it would be fine. Most of the time, when there is health regen after the fight and standard healing, a good DPS is just a flair.

 

That is why having healers is wrong. Remember back on PS2 times, when shooter/action games switched the stick controls? We used to both move and aim with the left stick. Then they changed it for what we have today. It took a while for players to get used to it and all games to finally adapt. Resident Evil was particularly stuborn.

 

That's what I think will happen to standard healing on RPGs. "Resistence is futile. You will be assimilated."

 

BTW, I like healing. It was my secondary role in FFXIV. I just think killing the healers is a worthy sacrifice. Have you played Dark Souls or Lightning Returns? 'No healing' works wonders!

 

Works wounders? - No way man (sorry, but: Have you been dropped on the head lately?), it's not working any wounders at all (!) - It's constant pain the butt (like searching for a medi-pack in older shooters, because health didn't recover from damage you took...you had to run back to an area where you had killed all the enemies if you were really low (so low that the next hit would kill you!) and look for a medi-pack...bah, tedious, time-consuming BS!)...That's why I have not (and will not either!) buy Dark Souls or any other game that does away with healing (Dragon Age is a very rare exception, because I am already invested - emotionally - in the series) and regenerating health!

 

I hope there's cheats (console) to unlock, so I can fill my health and potions again if needed (I play for the story mostly, not for challenge etc.), because I hate backtracking (needing to do it is kind of insulting - more so if you carefully planned out your fight but still nearly got your face bashed in -.-)

 

Note: I don't think you really like healing - you would argue for retaining it, if you liked it IMHO

 

And no, that's not what will happen to healing in games (at least I don't think so) - many of the guys who are old enough to have played games when it was like this in all games don't want that to return, most younger gamers grew up with the new mechanics and like them - don't think this retro-gaming movement (there's some - not all that many IMHO - people who like those old systems) will prevail in the long run

 

greetings LAX

ps: even more with that many vocal people arguing against this sort of mechanic!

[eyezonlyii]

 

BTW, I like healing. It was my secondary role in FFXIV. I just think killing the healers is a worthy sacrifice. Have you played Dark Souls or Lightning Returns? 'No healing' works wonders!

I haven't played Lightning Returs, but I have played both Demon's and Dark Souls, and I am confused when everybody says there was no healing.

 

Because there were heal spells, you were limited in how many times you could use them, but you were limited with all spells anyway unless you wanted to double up. On top of that you had the Estus Flasks, and as many herbs as you cold carry. 

[Solid_Altair]

I should have used proper (double) quotes. Saying 'No healing' didn't cut it. I shoulda said "No healing".

 

Bottom line is that Dark Souls has limited healing from checkpoint to checkpoint. Lightning Returns does, too, except you also need to buy the potions. This kind of healing makes it so every fight matters, not just the ones that can kill you.

[DarthLaxian]

Every fight could kill you (well, except later on with top gear...but that's how it should be IMHO) in DA:O, too -.- but a bad decision didn't mean an automatic backtracking (which it does now - except if there are cheats...which I will be using if they exist - the other thing is just a bad decision I can't just accept and say nothing about), if you managed to survive despite not playing at your best!

 

greetings LAX

[Solid_Altair]

I think if you play on Easy, the weak enemies and your durable health, which recovers to 50% after each fight, should be enough to make it so you don't need to backtrack.

________

 

And since this thread got to the point of party composition, do we know which characters will be available at the beginning of the game? I'm currently think of using two rogues, but I want my Inquy to be a Tank. I suppose the early characters would be one of each class. It'd be better for my plan if we could start with two rogue companions or if we could at least find a second rogue very soon. Another thing that would help would be making the starting companion warrior a 2-hander, without gimping him too much.

[karushna5]

I think if you play on Easy, the weak enemies and your durable health, which recovers to 50% after each fight, should be enough to make it so you don't need to backtrack.

________

 

And since this thread got to the point of party composition, do we know which characters will be available at the beginning of the game? I'm currently think of using two rogues, but I want my Inquy to be a Tank. I suppose the early characters would be one of each class. It'd be better for my plan if we could start with two rogue companions or if we could at least find a second rogue very soon. Another thing that would help would be making the starting companion warrior a 2-hander, without gimping him too much.

First 3 are Cassandra(a tank) Varric(rogue Archer) and Solas (who I don't really know as far as abilities)

 

Each class has ups and downs, but also each player has a style. I love my 3 tanks and a mage party because I adore dmg mitigation. I am naturally defensive in every single game whether board games, card games, video games, or even real life sports.

 

2 handed warriors can also be pretty great DPS, if you needed one as well. Point is people have different things that work for them.

 

The hardest I feel would be an all rogue party. Weirdly enough Rogues are pretty specialized to be good at DPS in DA and have less versatality than Mages (who can be support, DPS, or CCs) or Warriors (who can be Tanks, and DPS)They do a lot of dmg but can be taken down fairly easy and they have next to 0 dmg mitigation(like guard and Barrier) An all rogue party would have to take down an enemy very fast, any longer and the Rogues may have problems. Of course, a Mage +3 rogues sounds like a killer group, and a Tank warrior+ 3 rogues sounds like a horror to the enemies. I think rogues are great, but 4 rogues sounds like a risky thing.

[mowarty]

I had a hard time picking a title for this topic. The 'no healing' stuff is mostly a preface to the turtling discussion. And the rethorics of the 'why not turtle?' question is in the sense of answering it, not in the sense of implying that there is no reason not to turtle. Lets go to the healing stuff.

 

Healing Allowed:

 

+ Healing player skill is important.

- Tank skill is important most of the time, but not always.

-- DPS skill is rarely important.

-- Small sights don't matter.

- Dangerous enemies must surpass the party's mitigation and healing in order to threaten the players, which sometimes requires some trolly stuff or stuff that makes the fight very streamlined (if you don't do exactly this, you get wiped).

 

 

While this is true for DA this is not true for any game that has designed things properly, which Bioware has yet to do with DA. In a proberly designed incounter with healing the enemies need to do enough damage to be a threat to the healers mana (and the healers mana needs to be limited not the endless supply  that it is now).

 

I for one am having second thoughs about buying this game as it is starting to look like it will be tidus with alot of back tracking to restore potions ever couple of fights, and playing on easy is not an option as that takes away any chalange that the game has. I (and I am sure most people feel that same as I do) am not going to spend 60 or 70 bucks just for a story, if i want just a story I will buy a book.

[Solid_Altair]

^I read a hands-on write-up saying the guy never needed to backtrack. By the time you're running low on potions, you're already near the next camp, unless you totally screw up, which apparently he didn't. And seeing the videos of Devs playing... even on hard and against enemies of a higher level than they should be facing, the Devs take very little damage when they're playing seriously. I don't think baacktracking is gonna be a problem as big as most people think.

[mowarty]

You need to pay more attention to the demo's then, In all of the Devs demos (but this one ) they out level the enemies. Now this is a very common thing to do for all game companys. In the one live demo they where level 5 facing a group of level 4 and 6 enemies and they used almost all of there potions on that single combat, on top of that all indepent reveiwers that I have seen play the game that where not over leveled for the incounters where having the same thing happen, after just a couple fights they had to go back to camp and restock on potions. So no back tracking is going to be as big a problem as most people are thinking.