15 réponses à ce sujet

[Exalus]

On my second nm run and currently just reached skyhold. it was far smoother than my first nm run and it only took one reload to beat captain denam soundly. I restricted myself to tier 1 weapons and disallowed chest respawning.

 

The key takeaway from both runs is that when it came down to it, nothing really mattered except that cassandra or blackwall was able to tank the enemies just long enough for my other guys to do damage. Really, the entire remaining party could be naked and armed with nothing but a ranged weapon for auto attacks and I still would have won albeit slower.

 

The power of turn the bolt, turn the blade, shield wall and armor mechanics make it trivial to tank most things even in NM and as long as your tank survives, you will eventually win the fight. The enemy AI is usually not smart enough to start your non tanks so its pretty easy to just stand and fire even with 50 hp. So with that, do tanks make the challenge, even in NM, trivial? Should the proper playstyle be then to carefully tune down the tank by either ignoring certain strong passives or intentionally using lower grade armor so enemies can now pose a threat? 

 

As note I was very lucky and managed to this overpowered guard stick during the mage questline - Rares are so amazing when you restrict your crafting. Though after realizing all this maybe i should have vendored it.

 

[Wulfsten]

Bit of a facetious question, to be honest. Nightmare may be trivial for you, because of your very specific playstyle, but I guarantee it takes a LOT of micromanaging your tank on Nightmare in order to survive mobs, let alone taunt them such that they will never target anyone else. That doesn't sound like a trivial challenge to me.

 

I'm on a Nightmare playthrough and it takes a lot of thought and preparation to make it through. The challenge level is fine, although the huge amounts of experience you get make the endgame considerably easier than the first 60% of the game.

 

If you really need a greater challenge, then just try soloing the game. Or not using any tanks, if you think they're that broken.

[WJC3688]

Jeez. Gone through that part 3 times now and I've never gotten a guard on hit weapon. In fact I've only gotten that effect from a drop (as opposed to crafting) once ever so far. That is very lucky indeed.

 

As for tanks, eh. They did make sword & board very strong if only due to how OP shield wall is. It completely negates damage as long as you still have stamina to use it (upgraded challenge can help with that); arrows, magic, it doesn't matter, shield wall blocks it all. This is very OP compared to the 2H alternative which afaik cannot stop projectiles.

 

That said, there are plenty of things which when used properly will trivialize the game, sword & board is hardly the only example. Really any kind of party comp will faceroll if you use tac cam enough to optimize your party's actions, although using S&S tank builds may be the option which requires the least effort (they basically play themselves even when controlled by the AI).

[teks]

The two hand version has advantages over shield wall. It automatically counters with a powerful knockback. Shield wall depends on the the upgraded version of another skill to do the same.

The ai is really good with these defensive skills, and they can be really strong, but i think the winner is the player, not the tank. In this case its the power of the player behind an unchecked ranged or flanking character who is able to take advantage of the situation.

[Pluvie]

I totally agree.

 

Imagine what would a tank be if they fixed all the broken abilities and mechanics (front armor, +% guard skills, + maximum health items not affecting ward, etc.).

That kinda makes me think that they disabled those on purpose in order to nerf tanks a bit.

 

Still, if you want a challenge, I suggest that you bring only 2-hander warriors. You can still spec them with the W&S abilities (Turn the Blade, Turn the Bolt) just to make sure they aren't squishy as rogues, but not having a shield is going to step up the difficulty a lot.

 

Other than that, I feel that the overall difficulty of the game is fine for the first 40%; the remaining 60%, however, is a progressive dumbing down curve as your character literally ascends to godhood (unless some other guy who clearly didn't have a specialization trainer ) while enemies basically remains the same. Heck, that is true even for dragons: the Ferelden Frostback is probably the hardest, while the Highland Ravager is so easy I almost feel bad for her.. she can't even fly..

[Exalus]

That's another issue, holding agro is a joke because 95% of the enemies will attack the nearest thing even when youre pounding them from the rear for thousands of damage. People complain about party AI as being bad for enemy AI is far worse.

 

The terrors from fade rifts and venatori stalkers are some examples of enemies that can actually threaten a well organized party but even their not immune to taunting or barrier stalling or CC. I feel like the game should have had more of these enemies in addition to enemies that did either armor piercing damage or did damage based on health % in order to actually threaten tanks. 

 

My goal is not so much to make the game unbearably difficult to the point its no longer enjoyable(I would play a naked-except-for-a-weapon 2handed solo warrior limited to vendor gear only in that case) but to find ways to modulate the difficulty so battles are meaningfully challenging and require tactics as well as manually shield wall play. Disallowing crafting was the first step but it seems i need to do more.

 

I think going with a 2handed warrior as the sole warrior in the group would be a good start, It just irks me the cross class skills for 2h skills are bugged and do no damage at all. 

 

Bit of a facetious question, to be honest. Nightmare may be trivial for you, because of your very specific playstyle, but I guarantee it takes a LOT of micromanaging your tank on Nightmare in order to survive mobs, let alone taunt them such that they will never target anyone else. That doesn't sound like a trivial challenge to me.

 

Perhaps trivial is too strong a word, there is certainly a great deal of finesse and preparation involved with restricted NM runs. I suppose having foreknowledge of static item locations, boss strategies and skill combinations is not something the game was really meant to adjust organically to. 

[ashwind]

Tanks nullify the challenge of the game no more than how a rogue can nullify dragons, literally.

 

OP is at his 2nd NM play through. You already know what to expect, what skills and builds are good and thus the 2nd time is naturally much easier. It is a stat base game, encounters are like puzzles, once you solve them, the magic is gone.

 

As far as 2H warriors go... well, it will provide some challenge at first as you are trying to figure out how to best solve the puzzles/encounters. Again, once you solve those puzzles, I would say a 2H warrior is as effective as a Sword and Shield tank. Instead of tanking for long periods, they kill faster which ends up the same.

[Sidney]

The simple answer if the AI was smart is it would play like you and not get auto-distracted by someone yelling at them but if it played like you do and immediately buried your rogues and mages the game would be over very soon. Them being "dumb" is about why you can function.

[sinosleep]

People will complain either way. The lack of proper cover forces the game to have a taunt mechanic as otherwise enemy attacks are just cheese. How do you properly mitigate an archer that can one shot your squishies if you can't taunt him to attack your tank? Cc you say? Ok, so then the game is trivialized by cc. So don't make them one shot the squishies you say. Well if we do that then what purpose do they serve? They are squishy themselves if they don't do enhanced damage why have em at all?

So what can the devs do at that point? Also I've really got disagree with you about untaunted enemies, archers and terrors that haven't been taunted or caged always make a bee line for my squishes. It's why I always have challenge disabled on my tanks. Ill let them use warcry cause that's aoe and preferred so it's kinda hard to get it wrong but I save a challenge for any stragglers they miss.

[mesmerizedish]

"Does playing well nullify the challenge aspect of the game?"

[HTTP 404]

I am not that great at dragon age games compared to mass effect games.  So I can not relate to OP specifically when it comes to Dragon Age.  I find Mass Effect insanity to be a walk in the park and I actually want more of a challenge in that game. I have actually restricted what equipment I'll use and weapons as well to make it more challenging. However, I also realize that not everyone is as good as I am in that game.  What I am trying to say is that, you (the OP) are good at the game.  

[hong]

People will complain either way. The lack of proper cover forces the game to have a taunt mechanic as otherwise enemy attacks are just cheese. How do you properly mitigate an archer that can one shot your squishies if you can't taunt him to attack your tank? Cc you say? Ok, so then the game is trivialized by cc. So don't make them one shot the squishies you say. Well if we do that then what purpose do they serve? They are squishy themselves if they don't do enhanced damage why have em at all?

So what can the devs do at that point? Also I've really got disagree with you about untaunted enemies, archers and terrors that haven't been taunted or caged always make a bee line for my squishes. It's why I always have challenge disabled on my tanks. Ill let them use warcry cause that's aoe and preferred so it's kinda hard to get it wrong but I save a challenge for any stragglers they miss.

Games don't have to have a tank-dps dichotomy. For example, when Guild Wars launched, warriors were both the most durable class and the class with the highest sustained dps. They were your primary damage dealers, and other classes like mesmers, elementalists, monks etc were support. The game was built around the idea that melee would be the source of most of your damage, while ranged was more about CC, debuffing, healing and protection. If you were playing a ranged class, you were supposed to know how to kite away from the big dude with an axe, rather than assuming he'd ignore you because another big dude with an axe yelled at him. Since GW originally had a strong PvP focus, this made sense; you can't expect human players to take AI "taunting" seriously.*

Of course as time went by this concept became eroded. While it was fine for PvP, it was hard to sustain in PvE where people soon figured out how to take advantage of the AI's shortcomings. Thus warriors learned to ball up monsters for nukers; nukers got more flashy boom spells; and so on. It just became too hard to sail against the prevailing tank/dps/heal wind.


* Taunting from human opponents is something else completely

[GameVark]

I gotta ask ... I'm new to the DA games and struggled too much on hard so for now I play at normal, I can't even think about trying on NM for now.

 

Doesn't anybody here tank himself? It's the first thing I did is reroll my character and made myself a tank. Respecced Cassandra to 2H. I don't know what to do with Blackwall and Iron Bull though .. recruted them but with Cassandra and me as warriors, what would I need them for?

 

I'm playing through normal at the moment and it's a walk in the park. I sneeze at a group and everything dies around me. I often can't even get to a second target before everything is dead. Varric one shots from a distance, Solas pretty much can do the same, I reel in with the chain-and-boot and things die before they get up.

 

I must be doing something wrong because on Hard, I can't even get past the Pride Demon at the end of the intro. Seems to me the difference between normal and hard is quite big, while between hard and night mare is minimal?

[ashwind]

I gotta ask ... I'm new to the DA games and struggled too much on hard so for now I play at normal, I can't even think about trying on NM for now.

 

Doesn't anybody here tank himself? It's the first thing I did is reroll my character and made myself a tank. Respecced Cassandra to 2H. I don't know what to do with Blackwall and Iron Bull though .. recruted them but with Cassandra and me as warriors, what would I need them for?

 

I'm playing through normal at the moment and it's a walk in the park. I sneeze at a group and everything dies around me. I often can't even get to a second target before everything is dead. Varric one shots from a distance, Solas pretty much can do the same, I reel in with the chain-and-boot and things die before they get up.

 

I must be doing something wrong because on Hard, I can't even get past the Pride Demon at the end of the intro. Seems to me the difference between normal and hard is quite big, while between hard and night mare is minimal?

 

IMO the Pride Demon is probably one of the toughest fights in the game because you do not have decent gear nor enough skills to deal with it. The key to fighting Pride Demon in Nightmare or maybe hard is to disrupt the rift strategically.

 

I usually leave the tanking to Cassandra, the AI does an awesome job tanking with her even on nightmare and I am free to do fun things like killing

 

Once you know how the game works (skills, equipments, etc). You should find that the difference between normal and nightmare to be minimal. Many find that beating the game once in normal makes subsequent nightmare runs easier than their first normal run 

[Kage]

I think S&S warriors are a bit OP, yes.

But if ANY class has to be the OP one, I think the tank is the best candidate. It makes people who play poorly (or just does not care), to get less frustrated, since as long as you have a tank and invest in the S&S tree, you are good to go for many difficulties