11 réponses à ce sujet

[Ace Attorney]

I was thinking of making Bull a W&S warrior and Blackwall a 2H warrior. Or maybe. Have either of these (Reaver S&H Tank and Champion 2H Tank) as a future Inquisitor.
Do those two work well?

[GhoXen]

2H tank does not work well.

 

Shield Wall is what makes a tank a tank. Guard is just icing on the cake.

[Ace Attorney]

Any other opinions?

[Adhin]

It's a tricky question to answer. A SnB Reaver can make a hell of a tank if you stick to Ring of Pain and Devour as it, ultimately, just lets you heal your self and that's always good. Dragon-Rage is generaly counter to tanking however if things are setup just right it can help you quickly burn something down and with devour, get some of that HP back.

 

As far as a 2H tank... yes and no. I play on NM and I've made a rather tanky 2H warrior who can tank it up but theres some caveats to that. The biggest is that the AI is bad at it. Like, really bad at it. Your never going to get the AI to tank 2H in any reliable fashion with out being semi-late game with Guard on hit and 2 mages barrier spamming. At which point it's more of a 'because I can' not actually being an effective 'tank'. So as far as letting the AI do it, I'd use SnB. Granted I'm using bull right now as a 2H tank and letting him do it but I'm also double-barrier spamming to keep his ass alive. Also, apparently there is a glitch with Rampage where it only works if your using a 2H weapon? Someone said that, sounds like BS to me but that sucks if its true.

 

Now all of that kinda changes if your the one actually controlling the Tank. It's not a tradition stand your ground hold your shield up style though. You'll want Block n Slash, Combat Roll and Charging Bull. Those 3 things, along with effective taunting and you can hold a groups attention just fine your self regardless of your specialization. But I would go with Reaver or Champion. I personally go reaver for RP reasons, the self heal is nice but champion will result in taking less dmg overall. They get a general reduction to dmg and can have the most guard of any warrior at a time.

 

Keys to this working is taking, oddly enough, all the SnB passives. They work while using a 2H weapon (even if the description makes it sound like it needs a shield). 50% ranged DR, 20% DR from the front and can't be flanked are extremely important to any tank, regardless of style. You'll counter attack the attacks you can (basic swings on normal enemies, not giants and dragons). You'll dodge roll the stuff you can't, and you'll use Charging Bull to go through groups, reposition, build guard and all that kinda stuff. For instance say a giant is about to swing down, you roll out, vanguard through em. You avoid getting hit, hit back while building guard.

 

Anyway, if your leaving it up to the AI to handle it and your not actually directly controlling em? Stick to SnB and have Shield Wall as the only skill they're AI is allowed to use for the most part. Lung and taunts, of course are exceptions for obvious reasons.

 

Oh, and 1 last thing. This is important for any warrior/tanks. Damage Resist/Defenses are taken into account 'before' Armor. That is, if an enemy does 400 dmg, and your cutting it in half first, bringing it down to 200 before armor is taken into account. If this was done in reverse you would take a HELL of a lot more dmg. Point is, it makes taking ranged/melee defense as bonuses rather helpful as they can take large chunk of dmg off before your Armor eats away at the rest.

[JosieJ]

My next playthrough will be as a 2h warrior, and I'm wondering what kind of set-up to use.  I intend to go more for DPS, and take a S&B warrior along (usually Cassandra, but sometimes Blackwall) to do the tanking.  The S&B warriors will probably take a lot of the Vanguard skills.  I'm wondering if taking some of the Battlemaster skills on my 2h would be worth it?  And what specialization?  I was leaning toward either Champion or Reaver; Templar doesn't really interest me much.

 

I'm not good at warriors--it's the class I've used least over the course of the whole trilogy, so I'd appreciate some advice!

[RamonNZ]

Thanks for that information Adhin.

[luism]

I played normal but my 2h champion was a lot of fun and just as unkillable as a shield tank idk

[Ace Attorney]

It's a tricky question to answer. A SnB Reaver can make a hell of a tank if you stick to Ring of Pain and Devour as it, ultimately, just lets you heal your self and that's always good. Dragon-Rage is generaly counter to tanking however if things are setup just right it can help you quickly burn something down and with devour, get some of that HP back.
 
As far as a 2H tank... yes and no. I play on NM and I've made a rather tanky 2H warrior who can tank it up but theres some caveats to that. The biggest is that the AI is bad at it. Like, really bad at it. Your never going to get the AI to tank 2H in any reliable fashion with out being semi-late game with Guard on hit and 2 mages barrier spamming. At which point it's more of a 'because I can' not actually being an effective 'tank'. So as far as letting the AI do it, I'd use SnB. Granted I'm using bull right now as a 2H tank and letting him do it but I'm also double-barrier spamming to keep his ass alive. Also, apparently there is a glitch with Rampage where it only works if your using a 2H weapon? Someone said that, sounds like BS to me but that sucks if its true.
 
Now all of that kinda changes if your the one actually controlling the Tank. It's not a tradition stand your ground hold your shield up style though. You'll want Block n Slash, Combat Roll and Charging Bull. Those 3 things, along with effective taunting and you can hold a groups attention just fine your self regardless of your specialization. But I would go with Reaver or Champion. I personally go reaver for RP reasons, the self heal is nice but champion will result in taking less dmg overall. They get a general reduction to dmg and can have the most guard of any warrior at a time.
 
Keys to this working is taking, oddly enough, all the SnB passives. They work while using a 2H weapon (even if the description makes it sound like it needs a shield). 50% ranged DR, 20% DR from the front and can't be flanked are extremely important to any tank, regardless of style. You'll counter attack the attacks you can (basic swings on normal enemies, not giants and dragons). You'll dodge roll the stuff you can't, and you'll use Charging Bull to go through groups, reposition, build guard and all that kinda stuff. For instance say a giant is about to swing down, you roll out, vanguard through em. You avoid getting hit, hit back while building guard.
 
Anyway, if your leaving it up to the AI to handle it and your not actually directly controlling em? Stick to SnB and have Shield Wall as the only skill they're AI is allowed to use for the most part. Lung and taunts, of course are exceptions for obvious reasons.
 
Oh, and 1 last thing. This is important for any warrior/tanks. Damage Resist/Defenses are taken into account 'before' Armor. That is, if an enemy does 400 dmg, and your cutting it in half first, bringing it down to 200 before armor is taken into account. If this was done in reverse you would take a HELL of a lot more dmg. Point is, it makes taking ranged/melee defense as bonuses rather helpful as they can take large chunk of dmg off before your Armor eats away at the rest.

Great great post.

So a W&S warrior should have only Shield Wall as Preferred set up and everything else (including taunts) be manually used by the player? Or Taunts, as regular use and Shield Wall preferred?
I like having my party on auto pilot with me handling it the least I can. I use Tactical view almost exclusively unless the fight is with trash while exploring, etc. where I might just control one to speed things up (or just Tactical view, keep Advace time on until it ends or if **** hits the fan and I need to intervene).

2H Builds really interest me because of looks. Badass warriors are rarely depicted in anything but RPGs as Shield users. Then again, Dragon Age is an RPG so I could just roll with Shield warriors.

If it matters, I'm NOT playing on Nightmare.

[Adhin]

Nah even if you do nothing but set Shield Wall as the only skill they still wont use it 100% of the time to block all the hits they can. What I'm saying is don't set Pay Back as a skill the AI will use. Hotkey it, sure if you wanna use it but don't let em use it them selves. All favor does, is make it so they will use that skill, over another if the situation would allow for both based off there AI determination.

 

For instance if an attack is coming in, they're not in the middle of an auto-attack swing (that is they're near the beginning starting one or the end of one and not in the middle) they could use Shield Wall, or Pay Back... they'll use Shield Wall if there stamina isn't below the threshold. Which is another thing, I always set warrior stamina threshold to 0 to 20%. Last thing you need is them to be under 50% and be all 'nah I can't block now, I have all this stamina I can't use'. If neither wall or pay back are set as favorites, then it would be a dice roll to see what they use in that situation.

 

The reason I say not to allow Pay Back is because, in all the in between situations they'll use Pay Back as they've recently been hit. Which ultimately means a rather hefty drain on there stamina totals. Which will, ultimately, result in less Shield Walling even if its set to favorite. Taunts and Lunge are ok to keep as normal. They'll use em to do what there supposed to do, close distance and taunt enemies. Once thats happened, they'll use all there stamina for Shield Walling.

 

As far as Battlemaster skills for DPS warriors. Well, Battlemaster is a generalist tab. It has some minor stuff useful for either thing. Horn of Valor is a nice party buff for dmg output. Weaken on crits is useful for tanking as it reduces in coming dmg for the duration of the weaken. Stamina reserves is kinda interesting but we regenerate stamina so slow at base 50% boost is still slower then a mages base. You'll notice a 1H and 2H warrior attack at semi-similar speeds (least with sword to sword). 2H gets about 2-3 times the stamina per hit then a 1H weapon though, so, as far as 2H warrior goes stamina is rarely an issue as far as that's concerned. I'd honestly say deep reserve is better for a SnB just on that alone. Combat Roll is awesome for anyone, not sure how AI use it though. I'm a good 3-4 lvls away from Iron Bull getting it to see if his AI will use it with any reliability, I'm guessing no but we'll see.

 

-edit-

Oh and all NM means is monster do more dmg and have more health. The Health part is less of a thing, just means fights are more drawn out which compounds the dmg boost they get. One thing I would recommend to anyone, regardless of difficulty. Look at how much dmg you take from an attack (each attack, ranged, melee, depends on the enemy) while you have a Barrier on. Barrier has 0 mitigation. That's literally the full dmg you would be taking if you have no defense, resist or armor (depending on dmg type of course).

 

That 400 dmg example I was using is like an avg dmg total from a ranged attack in NM. Archers tend to do around 400-ish. It'll be a lot less on normal, somewhere between on hard. So, the 50% DR passive also isn't Ranged Defense, or at least doesn't show up in the stat list. Basically it means its halving that damage (as long as you have no barriers) before other stuff kicks in. Ranged Defense kicks in, then your armor does its job if its physical... ignoring it if its not. It also doesn't matter if its a magical ranged attack or not - it will halve the dmg before other stuff kicks in.

 

If your on normal, armor totals and solid Con score (max hp, max guard, and melee defense from con) will ensure you take very little dmg by mid game. Crafting is your friend. Also Champions are tank gods. Walking Fortress is 8 seconds of pure dmg immunity. Upgraded every hit you take will give you 10% guard (so 10 hits in and you come outa it with max guard), and lowers all CD by 1 sec. If your in a group, this means you could potentially chain War Cry + Walking Fortress for x2 armor out of walking fortress + 8 seconds of immunity and super guard generation. You'd be unstoppable on normal, damn near it on NM - 2H or otherwise.

[Ace Attorney]

Does the AI use Charging Bull well? From what I've seen, it's mixed. Sometimes brilliantly. Others....no so.

[Adhin]

Yeah not really, they also seem to go to far. It's one of the reasons I say the AI is horrid at 2H tanking. It's not very efficient at SnB tanking but it gets by on how absurdly useful Shield Wall is. You can try it but I think if the AI is what your letting tank its just kinda a waste of points.

 

-edit-

Actually, one of the nice uses of Bull Charge is its upgrade. Next skill after its use is stamina free. There's no duration on how long you have to charge for either. So as a player you can literally just 'tap it', barely go anywhere, and get a free skill outa it. You can use that to make Devour free, or have some other large skill and make it free. Sadly stuff that constantly drain will use it up and kinda waste it. So charging + ring of pain, pointless. All you do is make the initial 10 free and the rest keep taking stamina.

[Manki]

Does the AI use Charging Bull well? From what I've seen, it's mixed. Sometimes brilliantly. Others....no so.

 

This is my exact experience as well. My Cass will sometimes save my a$$ hardcore (like, amazing timing, wish I had it recorded) and sometimes will use it for absolutely no reason at all lol. I generally am not upset when she does use it though, the only time it gets annoying is when she charges right back into my party, pulling enemies with her, but that is a simple fix in the long run.