20 réponses à ce sujet

[xPez]

Right, basically was wondering which party members are naturally the best for each gaming role (tank, dps, support etc) when left completely on their own in battle with no micro-management.

 

I've almost finished the game on Normal with a DW Rogue but got a bit bored so I've started a Nightmare run with a Mage, planning on doing an OP KE build (booo, hiss). I don't really want to have to go into every battle with the tactical cam, and even though the KE is a one-man army when you get to a certain level I'd still like to have a party that can handle itself without me giving everyone orders all the time.

 

I was thinking of going with two Warrior tanks and a ranged Rogue for DPS and lock picking.

 

So, Cassandra is my tank on my other playthrough and she has always been pretty solid. Decent at guard generation but for some reason she isn't great at pulling aggro away from my more fragile party members.

 

Iron Bull I've heard is quite fragile, and I can only picture him as a two-hander. Weirdly when I auto-levelled him the points were put straight into Sword and Shield skills

 

Is Blackwall a decent tank? I admit I've never actually used him or even looked at his skills.

 

For the Rogue it's got to be Varric or Sera. Was leaning towards Sera cause Varric is my Rogue on my other playthrough, and although he is great, because of Bianca I think it'll be easier to increase Sera's DPS than his. Plus her specialisation is better suited for that than his.

 

Would I be better off with another Mage than the second tank?

 

Any ideas anyone? Feel free to discuss anything else about other party members and their roles, but please try not to just bash the OP KE build

 

[c3lix]

Blackwall is the best tank imo because of champion tree.
Cass is second.
It depends, cass can buff the group and dispell magic, sometimes she gets oneshot with full block, don't know why.
Ironbull is bad with everything, he needs endgame gear to not die
His damage isn't great, even with level 24 weapon.
Solas is a very good rift mage, never go without him.
Sera is a very powerfull tempest archer.
Varric is a cool char but his xbow isn't great, lacks a lot of crit chance.
Dorian as necro can cause quests to glitch out.
Cole... I just don't like him.
Vivienne should be a very good KE but she likes to spam staff auto attacks instead of going into melee.

My party setup is:
blackwall/cassandra
Solas
Sera
Inquisitor as KE or Artificer Archer (only with Sera in group) or assasin

Don't go with two tanks, they do no damage and they have no CC/bomb skills

Btw. A setup with 2 archer is probably the most op thing, killing dragons with 240.000 hp in 10 seconds. KE isn't as op as many say.

[Mushashi7]

I have Cassandra patched up with all the goodies I could find. And she is 99,9% invincible. She hasn't died on me one single time.

As described in another thread my team was fighting the Highland Ravager. I was at level 19, my team 18. The dragon is a level 23 fire dragon.
My team including my self were all dead within five minutes. Cassandra kept on smashing the dragon for about 40 minutes. She could have done it much longer.

No matter what situation I never have to worry about Cassandra. She is the ultimate tank if you do it right.

 

Don't ask me what I did. I don't know. But is must have something to do with the combination of abilities and equipment. I made custom armor and sword for her and gave her all the best rings and amulets.
There is one ring I suspect is very handsome though. It's the one that instantly gives 500 health if the enemy is striking a blow against you that will bring your health below zero. I don't remeber its name.

[rda]

Cassandra and Blackwall are great tanks. For some reason, I have more luck with Cassandra when AI is controlling her. If you can find the fade touched stones (I think one is fade touched obsidian) that give guard on hit your tanks will practically never die.

I'll disagree with a previous poster, though...I think two tanks can be good in some situations. Like, for example, I was a DW rogue, and with just one tank, regardless who it was, I would still occasionally get aggro. With both, I could basically march around the field and do my assassin thing completely untouched.

[rda]

I have Cassandra patched up with all the goodies I could find. And she is 99,9% invincible. She hasn't died on me one single time.
As described in another thread my team was fighting the Highland Ravager. I was at level 19, my team 18. The dragon is a level 23 fire dragon.
My team including my self were all dead within five minutes. Cassandra kept on smashing the dragon for about 40 minutes. She could have done it much longer.
No matter what situation I never have to worry about Cassandra. She is the ultimate tank if you do it right.
 
Don't ask me what I did. I don't know. But is must have something to do with the combination of abilities and equipment. I made custom armor and sword for her and gave her all the best rings and amulets.
There is one ring I suspect is very handsome though. It's the one that instantly gives 500 health if the enemy is striking a blow against you that will bring your health below zero. I don't remeber its name.

Lol, will totally back up the Cassandra vs. dragon thing. I had out a bad party, just for the banter, doing a bunch of low level missions when I ran into a dragon. IB, Cole and I were down in like 2 seconds. Cassandra beat the dragon singlehanded oh, and I think I might've used like 3 regen potions and no health potions. Of course, it did take me like 30 minutes, lol.

[Nerevar-as]

Well, she's a dragon hunter after all, nice to see gameplay reflects that.

[xPez]

I've got Cassandra as my tank on my other playthrough so I might go with Blackwall in this one just for a bit of variety, even if he isn't the best choice.

 

At the moment I've got Blackwall, Solas and Sera with myself as a mage gearing towards KE when the chance appears. It's going well so far! Even a standard mage is more fun than DW Rogue.

[xPez]

Welp, just tried the Envy Demon boss on Nightmare. Went prettttyyyyy awful.

 

I've loaded an earlier save and I'm going to grind for a bit, try to overlevel a lot.

 

Might go with two S+S Warrior tanks just until I get the KE spec.

[rda]

Welp, just tried the Envy Demon boss on Nightmare. Went prettttyyyyy awful.
 
I've loaded an earlier save and I'm going to grind for a bit, try to overlevel a lot.
 
Might go with two S+S Warrior tanks just until I get the KE spec.

That envy demon, if you are under leveled and with the wrong party, can be one of the hardest fights in the game.

I went there on hard with a DW rogue, Cass, IB, and Viv. I got my butt handed to me repeatedly. Finally I ended up having Cassandra basically kite around, revive Cole, allow Cole to damage the demon, and then when he died, revive Cole again.

It worked, but it was super cheap. Might be an option for you though if you don't want to reload from hours ago.

[JosieJ]

I haven't used Cassandra all that much in my current playthrough, but she is a great tank when I have used her.  She's especially good at taking down magic-using enemies, as befits her Templar specialization.

 

My go-to tank this run has been Blackwall.  Properly specced, he just won't go down.  His Champion specialization lends itself especially well to this.  He doesn't do much damage, but that's not his function; his function is to keep the aggro squarely on himself and take the incoming damage while the rest of my team does the damage, and he shines at this.  He's pretty much set-and-forget, at least on Normal difficulty.

 

I haven't found Iron Bull effective as a tank; to me, he's more of a 2h DPS warrior, and there's really no room for one of those in my party on this runthrough, as much fun as his character is.

 

This is painful for me to say, but as much as I love Varric as a character, his archer rogue functions during a fight are better handled by Sera.  As often as not, he ends up face down in the dust in any major fight (like dragon fights).  I still take him with me, because I'm stubborn and I don't care for Sera as much as I do him, but I'm currently playing on Normal, where I can afford to carry some dead weight in my party.  On my next playthrough on Hard, Varric's going to be cooling his heels in Skyhold most of the time.

 

I haven't found Cole very useful, either, as he requires more micromanaging to get flanking bonuses than I want to devote to him.

 

Mages: Solas is useless to me this playthrough, as my PC is a Rift mage herself and duplicates his functions.  I've found Rift mages to be excellent dealers of damage and CC, so once I move on to a different class PC, I expect to be using Solas quite a lot.  Dorian, in addition to being a hilarious character to have in my party, I have specced to complement my PC: when she's corralling all the enemies into a small spot and weakening them, he's dropping Fire or Ice mines on them.  I can't really see him as the only mage in the party, though; he's best at teamwork.  Vivienne has not spent much time in my team; I don't care for her character as much as some others, and on Normal, there's really no need for an OP Knight Enchanter.  The AI doesn't make as good use of KEs, either, and I'm not interested in devoting much time to micro-managing her.  This may change on higher difficulty playthroughs, though.

 

As you can see, my main concern--at least on this playthrough--is not having to micro-manage my party a lot.  If you're willing to put in the work, though, some of the characters that I may not want in my team might be very useful to have.  For someone who's not averse to playing tactically Cole, for example, could be specced to put out especially high burst damage.

[rda]

I think there's some characters that just aren't useful unless you're willing to play them personally and/or do tactical combat all the time. DW rogues and 2H warriors come to mind.

[JosieJ]

On the subject of how awesome a tank Blackwall is: I just finished taking down the Kaltenzahn dragon.  I had my PC Rift mage, Blackwall, Vivienne, and Dorian: the mages were there for damage, and Blackwall to tank anything that needed tanking.  My PC and Dorian kept biting the dust and Vivienne and Blackwall were kept busy running around and reviving them.  We finally ran out of healing items, all three mages went down (even Vivienne), and at one point, Blackwall was soloing the dragon and all the little dragonlings it kept calling.  I kept trying to use him to revive Vivienne, so she could revive the other two, but the dragonlings kept interrupting the revival and he couldn't pull it off.  He was down to half health, so I figured he should concentrate on taking down the last bit of the dragon's health (somewhat less than 5,000 hp).  I didn't want to get so close to killing it just to fail at the last second!

 

He finished it off.  Let me just say that Walking Fortress rocks!  I kept spamming it, and Blackwall just kept going no matter how many dragonlings were pecking at him.

 

Granted, this was on Normal difficulty, but still: pretty impressive!

[Duelist]

Weighing in on the Rogues:

 

Varric requires the least micromanagement to be effective but comes into his own when he has a partner in crime who can rack up critical hits allowing him to take advantage of Opportunity Knocks to spam his Archery talents.

 

Sera is the party's heaviest hitter (outside of a PC Tempest or Assassin) but requires some micromanagement because the AI sucks at using her flasks properly.

 

Cole, depending on what he's using, either needs to be babysat as a melee fighter or can completely obliterate enemies from Stealth at long range.

[Kortok]

On nightmare Blackwall is the one constant in my party.  Just such a great tank.  I use him even though my character is also a SnS tank (Templar).

[Frybread76]

I've found Blackwall to be the best pure tank, with Cassandra coming in second.  However, I do like Cassandra's party buffs.

 

Iron Bull is a wimp.  Sure he looks big and tough, but he dies the most of any other companion.  If I control him directly he does OK but the A.I. is terrible with him.

 

The rogues also have a habit of dying a lot.  Cole always goes down and even the ranged rogues run into melee for some reason.

 

The mages seem to do a much better job of staying at range and I rarely have had problems with the dying (as much as the rogues, at least).  Solas has rift magic, so I almost always have him in my parties.  Vivienne seems like she would be powerful as a KE but the A.I. does a poor job at utilizing the specialization.  Even with Barrier and Spirit Blade set to priority, she gets into trouble in melee when she shouldn't as a KE.

 

Therefore, my parties usually consist of Blackwall or Cassandra, Solas, Dorion and either Varric or Sera.

[RavenousIron]

In games like Dragon Age I never pick characters by their skill, but rather their personality. I love Cass (even though she just finished breaking my heart last night) as a character, thankfully she is also a fantastic tank! I'm actually uploading a video of me and her taking down a the level 19 Dragon, Vinsomer on Nightmare mode. I made her a Templar/Vanguard and she works wonders for me in combat. Iron Bull is another character I love, but like someone said on here, he is extremely fragile for a guy of his size. Damage wise he is great, but his defense is highly lack-luster. I'm actually thinking of giving him a sword and shield because when it comes to those tough Dragon fights he doesn't last very long at all. Kinda odd since every time we're about to fight a Dragon he seems to have some sort of orgasm, lol.

[Lucrece]

I pick Cassandra instead of Blackwall because if you spec a tank properly, their specialization won't matter they'll live through anything.

 

Cassandra on the other hand offers party-wide defense as a templar with 10% reduced damage to the party and dispell plus an aoe stun and extra group damage against demons. Champion specialization is too selfish for me.

 

The characters that die for me are my two mages, not the tank, so I take the tank who can reduce the damage they take.

 

I want to make a 2h warrior playthrough instead of DW rogue this time around, however.

[ozymandiusz]

Sera is really strong because of her specialization. flask of lighting makes her bow fire like a machine gun, combine that with guard point per hit and she hits like a truck while being tanky. flask of fire is buged and just op. 

 

Cassandra with templar specialization and shield/swrod tree is a great tank/support.

 

You can put support mage in 3rd slot. Solas as a rifht mage is good but Dorian can work too. Vvienne is not the best because AI dosn't use KE blade. Still all mages can do their job - barrier, resurect etc. 

 

I played mage KE on nightmare and I found that this composition is damn good. tank(cassandra), dps archer(sera) and support mage(solas). 2 mages worked great because me and cassandra were attacking in close combat. But I played with varrik instead of sera, could not stand that ******.

[GhoXen]

My Cole deals more damage than the rest of the party combined, and that's when it's controlled by AI.

[l3loodpimp]

My Cole deals more damage than the rest of the party combined, and that's when it's controlled by AI.

 

Might be true on a dragon fight, and even then, Sera will deal far more damage than any NPC rogue if you are just willing to spend 3 sec on her every 20 sec, especially since she doesn't have to wait till your target has less then 50% HP to start the real burst.

 

My short answer would be:

- Early game: Cassandra (Tank), Vivienne (dps/support), Dorrian (dps), Serra (dps).

- Late game: Blackwall (2hander tank/support/dps), Vivienne (one woman army), Dorrian (can be swapped if fighting against fire resistant boss), Serra (Tempest all day baby).

[brazen_nl]

Cassandra with templar specialization and shield/swrod tree is a great tank/support.

 

I find Cassie much better as a 2H DPS warrior, which also makes her Templar spec more useful. Of course, I control her myself, since my PC is a tank, the easiest class to put under AI management and just not die.