22 réponses à ce sujet

[Bayonet Hipshot]

I just have one big question regarding the Assassin specialization and that is this :- How do their abilities actually work ?

 

See the Assassin has 3 primary skills - Hidden Blades, Knockout Bomb and Mark of Death.

 

Knockout Bomb is easy to understand. Its a sleeping bomb.

 

But what about the other two abilities ? How does Hidden Blades and Mark of Death work ? From my observation, skills like Hidden Blades and Mark of Death can easily by offensive Illusion spells were they in other RPGs. Specifically, they look like the skills of a Nightblade.

 

However the Assassin does not use and is not capable of using magic. So what exactly goes on when an Assassin uses Hidden Blades and Mark of Death ? I mean, Heir never exactly explains what is going on when you choose to train with her, she just asks you to make a murder knife.

 

This is weird especially since Mark of Death can store damage and then be detonated and Hidden Blades make it appear that some illusion is attacking the target repeatedly. 

 

By contrast, Artificer and Tempest make much more sense.

 

Artificer is like the Engineer + Demoman + Trapper. The teleportation device is rather far fetched but Varric alludes to it being an invention of Bianca and she should become a Paragon for that invention to which Bianca replies you that surface Dwarves will never be a Paragon. Additionally, a teleportation device is not that far fetched given that we can make Golems and Lyrium Wells that shift people into another dimension. The elemental mines are Thedosian version of Demoman's grenades and the spike trap is a classic trap.

 

Tempest is a mixture of alchemy and magic. First off, you are sent to gather the essence of powerful Fade Spirits, so there is something magical with Tempest. Second, it turns alchemy into something crazy, powerful and offensive. As someone who studied Chemical Engineering, I know how crazy and deadly Chemistry can get so the flasks are somewhat believable. That and Iron Bull mentions that those flasks Tempests use are somewhat like Gaatlok in terms of their complexity.

 

So yeah, I would welcome suggestions to how on earth Mark of Death and Hidden Blades work, given that Assassins in Thedas are not supposed to be able to use Illusion magic ?

[andy6915]

The more magical elements to it do make much more sense on Cole, with all his weird spirit attributes.

[Bayonet Hipshot]

The more magical elements to it do make much more sense on Cole, with all his weird spirit attributes.

 

But the Inquisitor and Heir are not Cole.

[Dethfield]

Theres a few examples of these odd "non-magical magical abilities".

 

Champion - Walking Fortress, Line in the sand... suddenly surrounded floating shields that glow and battle buddies appearing out of nowhere! Makes you wonder how mages have not mastered the magic of invincibility but these seemingly mundane warriors have.

 

Reaver - Ring of Pain... strange red circle suddenly makes everyone spontaneously weak...

 

Two-Handed - Earthquake.. smash weapon on ground, receive fire?

 

The stealth skill for rogues also borders on straight up magic.

[andy6915]

Reaver - Ring of Pain... strange red circle suddenly makes everyone spontaneously weak...

 

That one has an excuse, reavers having magical abilities is part of the lore. Dragon's blood grants strange powers beyond what a non-mage should normally be able to do, it's part of why people choose to be reavers. Ability to create an aura of spirit damage, ability to drain corpses for power, ability to drink someone's blood by biting them like a vampire and using their blood as a power source not unlike a blood mage, ability to somehow terrify an opponent by creating some magical illusion of your face being horrifying, ability to cast a quasi-haste on yourself every time you kill an enemy so that you're attacking at speeds that should be impossible... These are all things that a reaver can do without breaking the lore. Dragon blood is potent sh!t, on the same level as lyrium. Honestly, in a weird way, reavers and templars are two sides of the same coin since they both have you drinking a strange liquid that grants you the ability to use magic without being a mage (and one has you basically getting Alzheimer disease and the other has you becoming a mindless killer if either spec's liquid is consumed too much).

[NextGenCowboy]

All specs save Reaver, Templar, the mage ones (and even that's iffy with Necro's Focus) don't make perfect sense.

 

Artificer's abilities make sense, its Focus sure as heck doesn't. Where did creating copies of yourself that mimic your every attack come into play, especially without magic? Necro has time slowing abilities that are specified by their user to have never actually been workable outside of the breach's power being used, mixed with dark forces he wasn't present for. As was mentioned Champion created images of itself, Tempest has time slowing properties and 30 hit version of Hidden Blades as a Focus. Only Rift Mage, Knight Enchanter, Reaver and Templar don't do something that seems implausible, and Templar's given to a character who specifies they don't actually use Templar abilities....

[andy6915]

All specs save Reaver, Templar, the mage ones (and even that's iffy with Necro's Focus) don't make perfect sense.

Artificer's abilities make sense, its Focus sure as heck doesn't. Where did creating copies of yourself that mimic your every attack come into play, especially without magic? Necro has time slowing abilities that are specified by their user to have never actually been workable outside of the breach's power being used, mixed with dark forces he wasn't present for. As was mentioned Champion created images of itself, Tempest has time slowing properties and 30 hit version of Hidden Blades as a Focus. Only Rift Mage, Knight Enchanter, Reaver and Templar don't do something that seems implausible, and Templar's given to a character who specifies they don't actually use Templar abilities....

The time showing is merely how the game shows super speed, not time magic.

[NextGenCowboy]

Haste is in previous games, I'll give you that, but the fact it's on necro, who's linked to time magic makes it somewhat iffy to me. This is especially true due to attack speed increases being a thing, via Rampage.

[andy6915]

Haste is in previous games, I'll give you that, but the fact it's on necro, who's linked to time magic makes it somewhat iffy to me. This is especially true due to attack speed increases being a thing, via Rampage.

 

How is necro linked to time? It isn't... At all. In any way, shape, or form. One is a spirit power that blows enemies up, one is a damaging sigil you put on someone that makes a spirit control their corpse after death, one scares the hell out of enemies, and the final grants super speed. What in there is time based?

 

Rampage is merely an increase to attack speed, not an increase to everything.

[CanadianPeanut]

Theres a few examples of these odd "non-magical magical abilities".
 
Champion - Walking Fortress, Line in the sand... suddenly surrounded floating shields that glow and battle buddies appearing out of nowhere! Makes you wonder how mages have not mastered the magic of invincibility but these seemingly mundane warriors have.
 
The stealth skill for rogues also borders on straight up magic.

One thing to remember with these 2 specific situations is that sometimes gameplay trumps "lore". When it comes to the warrior abilities, walking fortress basically acts as a short term automatic shield block. Instead of having your character spin like a top blocking every attack, the shields appear giving a visual indication that walking fortress is active. Something similar could be said for line in the sand, instead of your character getting huge to physically block peoples path, the spirits are summoned to give a visual indication of what area is blocked.

Rogue "invisibility" is a question that gets asked in almost every game that involves a stealth ability. Most "stealth" abilies can be explained as the ability to stay hidden in the shadows and move without being seen. The way stealth works in DA is a little over the top, being able to move up to and stand directly in front of any enemies without being seen is a little beyond what's normally expected.

The only ability that really can't be explained is mark of death, hidden blades could easily be another situation where gameplay trumps "explainability". The assassination specialization needs to be usable by both melee and ranged rogues, thus the thrown dagger triggering the "phantoms". If it were melee only, I'd expect we'd get a deathblow type animation followed by the phantoms to simulate our "flurry of strikes from every angle".

[Bayonet Hipshot]

One thing to remember with these 2 specific situations is that sometimes gameplay trumps "lore". When it comes to the warrior abilities, walking fortress basically acts as a short term automatic shield block. Instead of having your character spin like a top blocking every attack, the shields appear giving a visual indication that walking fortress is active. Something similar could be said for line in the sand, instead of your character getting huge to physically block peoples path, the spirits are summoned to give a visual indication of what area is blocked.

Rogue "invisibility" is a question that gets asked in almost every game that involves a stealth ability. Most "stealth" abilies can be explained as the ability to stay hidden in the shadows and move without being seen. The way stealth works in DA is a little over the top, being able to move up to and stand directly in front of any enemies without being seen is a little beyond what's normally expected.

The only ability that really can't be explained is mark of death, hidden blades could easily be another situation where gameplay trumps "explainability". The assassination specialization needs to be usable by both melee and ranged rogues, thus the thrown dagger triggering the "phantoms". If it were melee only, I'd expect we'd get a deathblow type animation followed by the phantoms to simulate our "flurry of strikes from every angle".

 

Mark of Death used to be simple debuff in DAO and DA2. This can be explained as someone using some form of chemical, something like the TF2 Sniper's Jarate. But now in DAI they are...well...I have no idea what they are...

[CanadianPeanut]

Mark of Death used to be simple debuff in DAO and DA2. This can be explained as someone using some form of chemical, something like the TF2 Sniper's Jarate. But now in DAI they are...well...I have no idea what they are...

Exactly... Most rogue archtypes in current rpgs have something similar, whether it amplifies all damage or just the rogues is up to the game. It's the collection and detonation that makes MoD so odd and hard to explain. Again I think this is a situation where gameplay trumps everything else. Giving us something to track a timer and activate before it expires, but also collecting as much damage as possible makes for "interesting gameplay".

I don't necessarily agree that it's interesting gameplay, but its something more then "use highest priority ability that's not on cooldown, or auto attack for energy". Personally I think I'd prefer the simple damage amp debuff (15-20% that character only) on a shorter cooldown so it could be used to burst high priority targets (mages and archer) more often. As it is now, I pretty much only use it for bosses and to mop up brutes and high health targets at the end. Make the final clean up phase quicker.

[PapaCharlie9]

One thing to remember with these 2 specific situations is that sometimes gameplay always trumps "lore". Intentionally, by the game devs. Even when it makes lore inconsistent and forces retcon all over the place.

Fixed it for you.

[NextGenCowboy]

How is necro linked to time? It isn't... At all. In any way, shape, or form. One is a spirit power that blows enemies up, one is a damaging sigil you put on someone that makes a spirit control their corpse after death, one scares the hell out of enemies, and the final grants super speed. What in there is time based?

 

Rampage is merely an increase to attack speed, not an increase to everything.

 

Haste, and your Necromancer specifically helped develop the time magic used by the primary enemy of that section of the game. He just happens to come with a time-slowing ability, even if said ability is named the same as it was in previous games its effects slow down time here, instead of speed them up. As I said, the Focus abilities are the big issues. Artificer and Necro make sense, until you look at their Focus attacks. Tempest makes sense (for the most part), until you look at its 30 hit version of Hidden Blades, if 6 hits of Hidden Blades is lore-breaking for an assassin, then what's 6*5 hidden blades?

 

How does Mark of Death not make sense? You clearly throw an explosive attached to something at the enemy, probably hitting its vitals, then, you detonate it. Its mechanics might be a bit iffy (why does it do as much damage as you do?) but it makes perfect sense.

[CanadianPeanut]

Haste, and your Necromancer specifically helped develop the time magic used by the primary enemy of that section of the game. He just happens to come with a time-slowing ability, even if said ability is named the same as it was in previous games its effects slow down time here, instead of speed them up. As I said, the Focus abilities are the big issues. Artificer and Necro make sense, until you look at their Focus attacks. Tempest makes sense (for the most part), until you look at its 30 hit version of Hidden Blades, if 6 hits of Hidden Blades is lore-breaking for an assassin, then what's 6*5 hidden blades?
 
How does Mark of Death not make sense? You clearly throw an explosive attached to something at the enemy, probably hitting its vitals, then, you detonate it. Its mechanics might be a bit iffy (why does it do as much damage as you do?) but it makes perfect sense.

1. Haste specifically says in the tooltip "You increase the speed of the entire party. While this ability is active, all enemies move and attack more slowly by comparison. " its not time slowing, and has nothing to do with the breach and/or Alexius' use of time magic. It's reaction and movement speed increasing, but from the inquisition party's perspective things would be slower. Since your play is always from the party's perspective (even a 3rd person version of it) you don't see the super speed that you would if you played as Cory.

2. Tempest has flask of lightning though, if you remove the thrown dagger from hidden blades (since the throwing dagger is the main issue with its "believability") all you are left with is a series off attacks from multiple angles easily explained as the rogue slipping into shadows to attack again from another angle. Since the tempest has flask of lightning (a self only version of the necro's haste spell) it's fairly easy to assume he's doing something similar while moving faster then normal.

3. Again, the tooltip states "You mark your enemy, and every hit adds part of its power to the mark's damage." The assassin doesn't use explosives, the mark is clearly some kind of mystical/magical object not an explosive. As i said above, every rogue archtype seems to have something similar its just the "detonation" idea that makes mark of death "odd" for lack of a better word.

[NextGenCowboy]

Fair enough.

 

My issue is, why does Haste work that way when Rampage increases speed?

 

The Assassin uses Knockout Bomb. Just want to point that out. I'll grant you the mystical element of Mark of Death, but Knockout Bomb's listed as a Grenade in the tooltip.

[andy6915]

Fair enough.

My issue is, why does Haste work that way when Rampage increases speed?

The Assassin uses Knockout Bomb. Just want to point that out. I'll grant you the mystical element of Mark of Death, but it's listed as a Grenade in the tooltip.

Because rampage affects ONLY attack speed, not overall speed.

[Bigdawg13]

Mark of Death used to be simple debuff in DAO and DA2. This can be explained as someone using some form of chemical, something like the TF2 Sniper's Jarate. But now in DAI they are...well...I have no idea what they are...

 

It really is the same if you think about it.  The target takes double damage.  It just takes 8 seconds for their brain to register.

[CanadianPeanut]

It really is the same if you think about it.  The target takes double damage.  It just takes 8 seconds for their brain to register.

Not really. If you detonate early, it's like triple damage (attack damage + MoD + detonating early bonus) and that's the part that makes it odd and seemingly mystical in some fashion. If it was just a "collects all damage done and duplicates it on expiration" then sure it could be explained as you did. But the fact that there is a detonation bonus (trigger it at 7.5 second to do even more damage) makes it more then your standard damage increase debuff.

[Bigdawg13]

Not really. If you detonate early, it's like triple damage (attack damage + MoD + detonating early bonus) and that's the part that makes it odd and seemingly mystical in some fashion. If it was just a "collects all damage done and duplicates it on expiration" then sure it could be explained as you did. But the fact that there is a detonation bonus (trigger it at 7.5 second to do even more damage) makes it more then your standard damage increase debuff.

 

I have never actually seen the documented "extra bonus damage".  In my experience I never really saw a benefit from detonating it early.  That being said, the end result is the same.  The target doesn't realize the damage they are taking until too late.  Whether it happens at 7.7 seconds or 8 seconds makes little difference. 

[CanadianPeanut]

I have never actually seen the documented "extra bonus damage".  In my experience I never really saw a benefit from detonating it early.  That being said, the end result is the same.  The target doesn't realize the damage they are taking until too late.  Whether it happens at 7.7 seconds or 8 seconds makes little difference.

I don't have an easy way to gather data to prove the bonus damage as I play on Xbox 360. I'm not aware of an easy video capture system for it so I could gather data to do the math. I'm my experience though, I seem to get more damage from it when I detonate early.

Without doing any math we can still make assumptions based whether or not the tooltip is correct. If we assume the tooltip if lying, and there's no damage bonus for triggering it early then yes. Your explanation of taking damage without noticing it works. But if we assume that Bioware isn't lying to us in tooltips, your explanation doesn't work. How does noticing the damage at 7.5 seconds make that damage worse then noticing it at 8 seconds?

[PapaCharlie9]

Letting it expire is a debuff. You only get the full value if you manually trigger before time expires.

 

From [GUIDE] Documentation for Combat Mechanics

 

http://forum.bioware...mbat-mechanics/

 

 

Mark of Death

• Deals 100% of stored damage when manually triggered. Deals 50% of stored damage when allowed to expire. This damage, although displayed as physical damage in-game, ignores armor, all resistances, and is not affected by attack_bonus, damage_multiplier, flanking_bonus, or critical_damage_bonus (see below).
• [Bug? - Patch 2] Although the damage from this ability can trigger critical hits, they do not receive any critical damage bonus. Effects that proc on critical hits will still be triggered, though.
• [Bug - Patch 2] Sometimes deals no damage when allowed to expire.

[Dabrikishaw]

 

Letting it expire is a debuff. You only get the full value if you manually trigger before time expires.

 

From [GUIDE] Documentation for Combat Mechanics

 

http://forum.bioware...mbat-mechanics/

 

 

Mark of Death

• Deals 100% of stored damage when manually triggered. Deals 50% of stored damage when allowed to expire. This damage, although displayed as physical damage in-game, ignores armor, all resistances, and is not affected by attack_bonus, damage_multiplier, flanking_bonus, or critical_damage_bonus (see below).
• [Bug? - Patch 2] Although the damage from this ability can trigger critical hits, they do not receive any critical damage bonus. Effects that proc on critical hits will still be triggered, though.
• [Bug - Patch 2] Sometimes deals no damage when allowed to expire.

 

Good to know. I'm using an Assassin Qunari right now.