18 réponses à ce sujet

[SinisterSyn]

I haven't quite finished DA:O yet, but so far I've acquired Alistair, Morrigan, Leliana, Dog, Wynne, Sten, Shale and Zevran. Not counting the dog and Shale (since they are quite...different), the other 6 humanoid allies are certainly not balanced on their overall usefulness for me.

 

Alistair vs. Sten - Alistair is the early tank and you have access to him right away, so big plus there. Whereas with Sten, he is probably a better damage dealer eventually (not sure on that), but in a game where it's advantageous to have a tank, he just can't hold up to him in utility. So if you want a tank and aren't a warrior yourself, you're kind of stuck with the goody goody character.

 

Morrigan vs. Wynne - Morrigan has some pretty nice damage dealing spells and good debuffs but...Spirit Healer is just miles ahead of Shapeshifting in terms of usefulness. Group Heal alone is super valuable and having the only way to revive is quite nice also. And she already starts with Heal and Regeneration, so she is already good at survival with just those two things. Morrigan's Ice spells wins over Wynne's Earth spells, but Wynne just being a dedicated heal bot is incredibly useful early on. And, again, Wynne is a "good" character for the most part.

 

Leliana vs. Zev - If you aren't a rogue and need a rogue, you'd hopefully get one that is good at picking locks and disarming traps. Zev claims to be good at picking locks when you recruit him, but then you open up his stats and skills and....he's pretty much not, at all. Sure, he COULD, but he's not nearly as good at it as Leliana right out of the gate. He has less than stellar cunning and no skills in Deft Hands already. Zev is definitely a good damage dealer with his dual wielding and Momentum, but Leliana has good locking and trap disarming, as well as a couple of points into stealing (which I find quite useful for some free items, though I know not everyone finds a need for it). She's also not terrible to have in combat, since she has her Bard songs and can be a decent Archer. She's more so on the "good" side and Zev, while not necessarily bad, he's a character that doesn't seem to give a crap when you do bad things or good things really.

 

tl;dr - Did anyone else find a HUGE desire to just respec the people you like and roll with them or did you just not give a crap about approval ratings and just used anyone at any time regardless of the outcome? I find it hard to do either personally...but seriously considering it. 

[mousestalker]

Sten is an off-tank at best. He excels at damage out of the box. Shale is far better choice for a non-Alistair tank.

I prefer Morrigan to Wynne simply because my party rarely takes all that much damage.

Your point about Zevran is well-taken. He is not as he is sold.

I do like him for damage dealing. And his voice.

[robertmarilyn]

I almost always took Zevran over Leliana despite his lesser lock picking skills. Hey, he was trying his best to stay alive so he overstated some things. 

 

He was always my early romance for my female Couslands (with the mod that allowed me to get him early), before they romanced Alistair (and kept Zevran as a friend). And he was the romance of my male Couslands so he was almost always in the party.

 

All my PCs were scared of crazy Leliana who would ninja romance them at the slightest mention of pretty hair so they stayed away from her unless she was absolutely needed.    

 

BTW, my personal canon playthrough was with female Cousland romancing and marrying Alistair (with a mod). For some reason, my PC and Alistair would be fighting the big bad ogres or dragon and I guess they'd get distracted and make eyes at each other and there Zevran would be, in the background, doing the big, fancy, killer moves on the dragon (at the Sacred Temple) or the ogres (toward the end of the game). Cracked me up, every time this happened. 

[Akrabra]

Yeah when you get Sten he is usually so far into 2hander that it is not worth going defender with him, imo. Alistair has that focus from early on and you get to decide more of his direction, even though his attributes are placed horribly. Leliana also trumps out Zevran easily, because you get her earlier mostly. Wynne as a spirit healer is vastly superior to Morrigans laughable shapeshifter. 

 

I personally installed a mod that let me respec all the characters so i can craft the party i want. I often pick 3 members that i will bring anywhere in the game. That way i get the most consistent story related to those 3 and all their banter. 

 

Personality wise i like all the companions, but i see how the goody two shoes were abit more focused on an easier game. Most people play that way, you could see that by the Paragon statistic from Mass Effect. 

[Dunmer of Redoran]

I don't think having a healer is all that important outside of a few scenarios, since you can just use poultices to keep your health up. Now, if you're doing the Battle for Redcliffe and you're trying to keep all the warriors and militia alive, Wynne is absolutely necessary for that. But otherwise? I think Morrigan is the superior mage. If you do her personal quest and raise her approval, her spellpower is ridiculous, able to cast things that few enemies can resist.

 

Also, she starts off with spells in the ice, sleep and hex trees, which are all superb, especially if you're playing another mage, since you can alternate powers for an endless spam of cone of cold, affliction hex and/or sleep.

[line_genrou]

Oghren is a dps monster, let me tell you

Morrigan, Alistair and Oghren all in the party is win win

not to mention my warden is also a dps monster

[Damdil]

First of all, on PC you can respec your party members with this: http://www.nexusmods...nage/mods/14/? 

After one vanilla playthrough, I would suggest you respec every party member the way you like, then basically you can take with you who you want.

 

Regarding the vanilla specs, I disagree with you. Morrigan is nearly a must have in your party for non-mage main characters, as she's the only mage with offensive and crowd controll potential. Sten comes with a nice amount of HP and strength, which make him really valuable to begin with. A sword and shield tank + a healer (Alistair and Wynne, as you mentioned) make the game a lot easier for unexperienced players. I rarely use them though. Well skilled and equipped warriors can tank very well with 2H or DW, while staying alive easily and dealing MASSIVE damage. Especially DW warriors are ridicolously strong. 2H-warriors also get this awesome sustained ability which makes them immune against knockdown. With rogue you choose is a matter of taste in my opinion, Leliana's bard abilities make your whole party better while dealing good amounts of damage. Personally, I think that's more useful.

 

A pure healer is only needed for a few encounters (for example dragon fights). You can win most fights more quickly and easily with pure damage. And as I said, damage warriors are still really tough.

[SinisterSyn]

First of all, on PC you can respec your party members with this: http://www.nexusmods...nage/mods/14/? 

After one vanilla playthrough, I would suggest you respec every party member the way you like, then basically you can take with you who you want.

 

Regarding the vanilla specs, I disagree with you. Morrigan is nearly a must have in your party for non-mage main characters, as she's the only mage with offensive and crowd controll potential. Sten comes with a nice amount of HP and strength, which make him really valuable to begin with. A sword and shield tank + a healer (Alistair and Wynne, as you mentioned) make the game a lot easier for unexperienced players. I rarely use them though. Well skilled and equipped warriors can tank very well with 2H or DW, while staying alive easily and dealing MASSIVE damage. Especially DW warriors are ridicolously strong. 2H-warriors also get this awesome sustained ability which makes them immune against knockdown. With rogue you choose is a matter of taste in my opinion, Leliana's bard abilities make your whole party better while dealing good amounts of damage. Personally, I think that's more useful.

 

A pure healer is only needed for a few encounters (for example dragon fights). You can win most fights more quickly and easily with pure damage. And as I said, damage warriors are still really tough.

 

Yeah, I know that I can respec them, as I pretty much had to do it in Warden's Keep when that stupid Sophia wouldn't start the Veil thing. I saw that using Fireball to knock her into place was a way to fix it, so I gave it to Wynne temporarily (the fact that it has never been patched at this point is a bit ridiculous, but whatever).

 

I just kind of feel like it's best that they are the way that they are, for personality sake, at least for this first time. It makes sense that the good characters are more "protective" and less aggressive, but I find them more useful overall. Once I get closer to the end, then sure, I may notice a change in the raw damage of the bad ones and just take them anyway. But with not so great skillsets to just blast through everything at the moment, then defensive aspects are just more appealing to me.

 

Another reason I kind of feel this way is because I was being super cheap early on and never bought the health poultice recipe and couldn't find it for a while, since the places that had it were destroyed lol. So not having to use poultices and having a healer is just an all around win for me right now. If I had a more plentiful supply of poultices, I would probably dump Wynne in a heartbeat, since she's kind of boring and the judgmental granny personality isn't ideal for my choices. I would ditch Alistair too, but my PC is female and she started a romance with him, so I guess he can tag along sometimes just for immersion sake. If I had gone with Zev first, I probably wouldn't feel bad about leaving him at camp since he doesn't seem the type to care about being a stay-at-home sex slave really. 

[Remmirath]

Skills and equipment always make a difference as you level them up, but if anything, I'd almost be inclined to argue the opposite. I will, however, point out that my view of "most useful character" is usual precisely the same as my view of "character who does more damage". In some circumstances, the others can be more useful.

 

It is easier to build Sten into a reasonale damage-dealer, and either one of them can be as tough as one needs. Alistair can soak the hits, yeah, but killing things faster removes the need to soak so many hits. Either one can be made useful, though, and it is in my opinion difficult to make either really oustanding without fully respeccing them (as in, just building off what they have when you recruit them).

 

Morrigan is far more useful in terms of damage dealing, battlefield control (if that's your thing), and as an Arcane Warrior -- or at least, that's what I've found. Wynne's healing is very useful, but if you don't need a lot of healing, then it's my opinion that Morrigan does just about everything else better. Now, of course, if you do need a decent amount of healing, you can't beat Wynne.

 

I find Zevran at least as useful in every regard aside from lock-picking, any just about any rogue is good enough for that (or can be made to be), especially if you aren't worried about getting every single piece of loot. It is easier to build him into a decent fighter, I think. Of course, Leliana can also be made into a competent fighter, but since she starts with more of the other skills, it's more difficult.

 

I'd also argue somewhat about that good/bad division. I wouldn't say that most of their morals are as simple as that. Certainly Alistair and Wynne would count as good, but Sten seems much more neutral than anything else -- if we were going with D&D alignments, I'd peg him as lawful neutral or perhaps even lawful good, considering that he is set on following a philosophy that he believes is right -- but that's a tricky argument, and some people would argue that very differently. Morrigan is almost certainly more neutral than anything else as well. I don't think any of them are exactly bad. My personal impression is that Zevran and Leliana are not significantly different, morally speaking. Sure, they present their morals differently, but how different are they really? They both did very similar jobs, both apparently more or less enjoyed the work, and both are now working towards the greater good.

 

Anyhow, I just go with the people my character at the time gets along with the best, regardless of what that does to the party composition. I do tend to switch up what weapons and spells the NPCs are using on different playthroughs, to keep things more interesting, but every party combination I've tried yet has been viable (although some worked better than others). I find that the PC does most of the heavy lifting in terms of fighting anyhow, unless they're a mage (which I play the least of), but that may just be how I tend to build my own characters.

[Marika Haliwell]

Me , Alistair ,Leli and Morri forever and sometimes I replaced Leli with Wynne for some boss fights

[KaiserShep]

My party was primarily Alistair, Leliana and Morrigan. Wynne's healing abilities were great in the beginning, but became less of a concern as I leveled up. The party just became a bit too beefy for it to matter after a while. Alistair is a great tank as it is, but with his Templar spec unlocked, he can also deal with multiple enemies at a good range too, making him a really versatile character. With him, Leliana as my archer and Morrigan as my arcane warrior, led by my DW rogue, the team was pretty much unbeatable.

[Marika Haliwell]

lol it came a time where i just tell them to stay behind a wall, i would enter in a room and drop Storm of the Century on the mobs then ran. after that i was just a matter of dispossing of the remaining crippled mobs :XD

[Valmar]

If having a healer is so important why not teach Morrigan? She was my healer - never used Wynne.

 

I'm not sure how useful the "good" character's really are... I think it depends on your build and how you play. I went the majority of the game with Alistair, Morrigan and Sten. Had no issues myself. I'm assuming Morrigan and Sten are part of the "bad" crowd yes? If so, I found them useful. 

[Icy Magebane]

I don't think that there's really that much of a gap... While it's true that Sten lacks a second specialization, this only really amounts to a handful of bonus points that you could easily ignore or replace with boosts from equipment (I don't think that's needed, but you might).  There is also nothing about Sten that makes him inherently better as a damage dealer... in fact, I had a lot of success using Alistair as a dual wield warrior and I never respeced to give him back the wasted sword and shield point he starts with.  If you give Sten a sword and shield and teach him to use them, he will be just as good a tank as Alistair would have.

 

Along those lines, Morrigan and Wynne are also ony superficially different... if you want to make Morrigan a Spirit Healer, you are free to do so... simply focus on her healing and whatever normal magic trees you prefer, and ignore Shapeshifting entirely.  Again, the only loss is the bonus points from the second spec... while it's true that Blood Magic is very powerful in DA:O, you don't seem very concerned with damage, so I'm going to assume that the loss of this as a secondary spec isn't that important to you...

 

Finally, the Zevran and Leliana comparison... this one you actually have a good point on.  However, you can easily just ignore everything that Leliana says during missions, or better yet, leave her at camp and backtrack through the level to open all the chests once you've completed each mission.  While it's true that Zevran shows up a bit late, and you will need to actually train him to use lockpicks, it should only take about 4 or 6 levels to get that sorted out.

 

So that's my advice... if you care that much, then work around the problem...  I bet you'll appreciate your favorite party members a lot more if you put in the effort to work around what you see as weaknesses and make them into productive members of the team.  ...or just use mods to solve everything.  That also works, I guess...

[SinisterSyn]

I'd also argue somewhat about that good/bad division. I wouldn't say that most of their morals are as simple as that. Certainly Alistair and Wynne would count as good, but Sten seems much more neutral than anything else -- if we were going with D&D alignments, I'd peg him as lawful neutral or perhaps even lawful good, considering that he is set on following a philosophy that he believes is right -- but that's a tricky argument, and some people would argue that very differently. Morrigan is almost certainly more neutral than anything else as well. I don't think any of them are exactly bad. My personal impression is that Zevran and Leliana are not significantly different, morally speaking. Sure, they present their morals differently, but how different are they really? They both did very similar jobs, both apparently more or less enjoyed the work, and both are now working towards the greater good.

 

Well, by "good" and "bad", I'm not going by their actual backstory or personality overall, just strictly based on Approval during quests. Whereas certain characters are very opposed to killing in certain situations and in favor of helping others out (good) and other characters have the opposite reaction (bad). Some like Zev are maybe react to things less either way, but just the lack of concern would just lead me more to bad, in comparison to his Rogue counterpart at the very least.

 

 

If having a healer is so important why not teach Morrigan? She was my healer - never used Wynne.

 

I'm not sure how useful the "good" character's really are... I think it depends on your build and how you play. I went the majority of the game with Alistair, Morrigan and Sten. Had no issues myself. I'm assuming Morrigan and Sten are part of the "bad" crowd yes? If so, I found them useful. 

 

Because Wynne comes pre-equipped with Group Heal, Heal and Regeneration (Revival is nice in a pinch, but not super important). For Morrigan, you'd have to get the points up to dedicate to these 4 skills (since you have to take Rejuvenate along the way). And even then, her purpose is already more clearly that of a Nuker/Debilitator that it seems like a waste, when a pre-made heal bot is just sitting there. When at the same time, you can just take Wynne down the Glyph line and make her even better at support while Morrigan is playing catch up, especially with the quite useful Paralysis Explosion combo. But, yes, when you get the points to spend, it is very viable to make Morrigan go that route if you want.

 

 

I don't think that there's really that much of a gap... While it's true that Sten lacks a second specialization, this only really amounts to a handful of bonus points that you could easily ignore or replace with boosts from equipment (I don't think that's needed, but you might).  There is also nothing about Sten that makes him inherently better as a damage dealer... in fact, I had a lot of success using Alistair as a dual wield warrior and I never respeced to give him back the wasted sword and shield point he starts with.  If you give Sten a sword and shield and teach him to use them, he will be just as good a tank as Alistair would have.

 

Along those lines, Morrigan and Wynne are also ony superficially different... if you want to make Morrigan a Spirit Healer, you are free to do so... simply focus on her healing and whatever normal magic trees you prefer, and ignore Shapeshifting entirely.  Again, the only loss is the bonus points from the second spec... while it's true that Blood Magic is very powerful in DA:O, you don't seem very concerned with damage, so I'm going to assume that the loss of this as a secondary spec isn't that important to you...

 

Finally, the Zevran and Leliana comparison... this one you actually have a good point on.  However, you can easily just ignore everything that Leliana says during missions, or better yet, leave her at camp and backtrack through the level to open all the chests once you've completed each mission.  While it's true that Zevran shows up a bit late, and you will need to actually train him to use lockpicks, it should only take about 4 or 6 levels to get that sorted out.

 

So that's my advice... if you care that much, then work around the problem...  I bet you'll appreciate your favorite party members a lot more if you put in the effort to work around what you see as weaknesses and make them into productive members of the team.  ...or just use mods to solve everything.  That also works, I guess...

 

These things are pretty much "way down the line" solutions, whereas I'm kind of thinking more that these "good" characters are just more useful for a potentially easier time right out of the gate. Wynne already has a useful Specialization and skills that compliment it well. And even if it's for later, she can be made much more versatile as either a less glass jawed healer/support with Arcane Warrior or Blood magic versatility by using health for spells and the wonderful Blood Wound for CC, especially if you give Leliana or your Rogue the Ranger spec to heal with the pets. Morrigan, pretty much useless Shapeshifting and either healing powers or blood magic, but not both (mod-less anyway).

 

A tank without the good shield bonuses like Shield Wall and Shield Tactics for flanks makes them far less effective at staying alive than one without, which would take a lot more points that Alistair would need, and pretty much waste the ones already spent sitting in Two Handed. Also means that he's much closer to Shield Expertise and Shield Mastery. Templar and Champion for a tank just seems way more appealing than one or the other later on as well.

 

So really, I know that I can just mold them how I want later on as I acquire them. But it just appeared to me, IMO, that they were skewed more towards the good guys over the bad guys in immediate usefulness, especially for people new to the game. If you just take the good 3 over the bad 3, it seems like you will have a much easier time overall in terms of survival. But if you're good enough with your battle tactics, then the other 3 and a bunch of poultices could be sufficient enough since they are more base equipped to do well at damaging the enemy more.

[Icy Magebane]

So really, I know that I can just mold them how I want later on as I acquire them. But it just appeared to me, IMO, that they were skewed more towards the good guys over the bad guys in immediate usefulness, especially for people new to the game. If you just take the good 3 over the bad 3, it seems like you will have a much easier time overall in terms of survival. But if you're good enough with your battle tactics, then the other 3 and a bunch of poultices could be sufficient enough since they are more base equipped to do well at damaging the enemy more.

Well, as you already pointed out, the timing of these companions is also important... clearly it would have been cruel of them to give us a rogue with no lockpick skills and a lot of points spent elsewhere right at the beginning of the game.  In the case of Alistair, even the Tower of Ishal would have been a lot more challenging had he not started off with a bit of tanking skill and a spec that makes him uniquely capable against mages... and as for Morrigan, I think it would have been really unbalanced to start us off with a Spirit Healer in the party.  It's unfortunate that Shapeshifter sucks so much... perhaps a "Witch of the Wilds" spec would have been more useful, but there's no way that Group Heal should have been available to the first mage that joins the party...  At that stage of the game, the basic Heal spell is more appropriate (IMO) to the difficulty of the encoutners, so I don't mind waiting a few levels before she can learn Group Heal, Revive, etc...

 

So with that in mind, it's more that the later companions have skills that make sense for when they appear in the story... it's more a side effect of how the plot unfolds that the ones with more questionable morality happen to appear when they do and thus have the powers that they have.

 

Sten is kind of an oddball though... I never understood why had had no option to learn a second spec, and I won't deny that this hurts his effectiveness.  It's not overwhelming, but it is noticeable.  Oghren isn't any better since I always get him at around level 18... by then his entire two handed tree is filled out, so there's really no room to make him anything but a DPS character.

 

But yeah... I think that by the time you unlock all of the characters, the ones you like should be approaching the point where you can (or already have) adjusted for their initial skill sets and put them on a path more to your liking... I think this is part of the game's charm, but it is still annoying sometimes, so I can totally understand why people simply use mods to edit the skills however they want...

[Valmar]

Because Wynne comes pre-equipped with Group Heal, Heal and Regeneration (Revival is nice in a pinch, but not super important). For Morrigan, you'd have to get the points up to dedicate to these 4 skills (since you have to take Rejuvenate along the way). And even then, her purpose is already more clearly that of a Nuker/Debilitator that it seems like a waste, when a pre-made heal bot is just sitting there. When at the same time, you can just take Wynne down the Glyph line and make her even better at support while Morrigan is playing catch up, especially with the quite useful Paralysis Explosion combo. But, yes, when you get the points to spend, it is very viable to make Morrigan go that route if you want.
 

 

Sure, she has them pre-specced. It was still easy, at least for me, to teach Morrigan healer spells. This is even with me foolishly speccing into her Shapeshifting (max'd) early on in the game. I had no issue getting her to be a healer. Infact she was my healer long before I even met back up with Wynn. Though that's just me.

 

You don't even need to spec into being a spirit healer to get the heal spell if I remember correctly. Heal, if I remember right, only takes a single point to spec into in the Creation tree of magic. Something Morrigan can have access near the start of the game - very handy given that she is one of the first companions you get. Sure, the other creation spells are handy to have in a pinch but it isn't difficult to get them.

 

If you want the entire creation support tree, sure, Morrigan plays catch up. The same can be true of Wynne though if you want her to have the same spells Morrigan already has access to. They both have their uses and they'd both be playing "catch up" with one another if you want them to have each other's abilities.

 

Beyond that quite a few of Morrigan's pre-set tree can be considered support as well. The biggest difference is that Wynne's support primarily just buffing allies, whereas Morrigan's pre-set skills favor more in making the enemy weaker. Buff vs debuff. Both are good for support, imo.

 

You don't NEED the entire tree to be a healer though. Heal and Group Heal are easy to pick up. Actually, in a way, Morrigan heal's are superior. Heal's restoration rate, I believe, scales based off your Magic stat. Morrigan starts with a slightly higher magic stat than Wynne. Same with Willpower. Least, according to the wiki this is true. 

 

Ultimately, I don't think any character is really inherently less useful than others - it all depends on how you decide to spec them and how you build your party. If you find them less useful, chances are its more on you than it is them.  The only character I can think of that has an inherent flaw is Sten for only giving you one specialization point. Though even this I would argue isn't going to make or break the character.

 

Coincidentally if you play on PC there's a mod that prevents your party from automatically speccing themselves when you acquire them so you can build them exactly how you want them. You might find that useful.

[ImAnElfMofos!]

Hmmmmm. . .As a person who solely plays at male I always stick with Alistair, Morrigan and Leliana plus my dog(with the extradogslot mod).

 

Why?

 

-Alistair is a comic relief always trying to joke around and besides I start with him as tank because i get him first so propping up another as tank is too redundant.

 

-Morrigan is the games sadist seductress who will be awkwardly cute when she feels the same way about you, you could always learn spirit healer skills and paralysis, horror, mass paralysis and sleep always help with the difficulties against no healing.

 

-Leliana; love the voice, plus she's a hot lady and there is no difference between her and zevran late game. I prop her as a ranger with those dangerous arrow of slaying and scatter shot plus pets from ranger spec.

[Dabrikishaw]

As far as the original game goes, I mostly agree with the topic creator. Alistair, Wynne, and Leliana just don't suffer from the faults Sten, Oghren, and Zevran do. Morrigan however is different. Not only can she be made into a good healer like Wynne can by leveling her up, she can also have a higher magic stat than Wynne because Morrigan's points aren't wasted in Mana. Wynne can still have higher Spellpower than Morrigan if you use her Vessel of the Spirit buff, but that's best saved for boss fights, so the mage you want to use is up to you.