5 réponses à ce sujet

[Arkey]

H'ok so,

 

In my preparation for Descent one of the things I am trying to come up with is a viable dagger build on nightmare difficulty for Varric. I know the dagger artificer is a thing and great but I need to know I can minimize the way the AI is terrible with melee rogues. There are many builds on dagger artificer so I'm not going to go into great detail, instead I will focus on my areas of concern and how I hope to address them.

 

List of actives.

1. Flank Attack +

2. Spinning Blades +

3. Twin Fangs +

4. Stealth +

5. Fall Back Plan +

6. Spike Trap +

7. Elemental Mines

8. Knockout Powder +/Throwing Blades

 

The key, I believe, is in CC (duh). From my experience when is comes to the AI controlling dagger rogues (which is limited because I did not stand for that for very long before Cole went Archer on my first playthrough ages ago) the biggest problems arise when the char has no actives to use and just starts auto attacking enemies faces like a mook.

 

With Artificer's cool down rates  Varric should always have a button to press (so set them all to preferred?) which will keep him from standing in front of enemies (hopefully). Between elemental mines, spike trap, flank attack, stealth and fall back plan Varric should be able to viably stay out of harms way or at least undo most of said harm.

 

Knockout Powder and Throwing Blades is toss up. I like throwing blades a lot on my bow wielding artificer as it does away with the need to ever auto attack and it provides a slight CC as most enemies 'react' to being hit by them. That said if Varric is in melee a lot (and so long as enemies aren't immune) the sleep cc could go a long way to keeping him safe.

 

You get to pick 3 masterworks for this set up and guard on hit is a given for one of them. Also contemplating 1% heal on hit (just being cautious that the AI is dumb when it comes to activating FBP to regain health lost) for the second with a hidden blades proc as the likely third.

 

I have yet to test this (and will probably be given it a field test tonight when I begin my descent (get it?!)) but I'd love to hear from anyone that has tried a similar build with dagger based Varric (poor Bianca). Hearing how the AI handles these types of abilities will go along way in terms of what I should expect.

 

Thanks!

[OrionAnderson]

It really depends on whether you're willing to micro him at all. I doubt the AI used fallback plan to heal. It also doesn't use sleep powder in a useful way -- rememebr that sleep is broken by damage. I might try evade or parry.

[draken-heart]

One question. Why? Varric has Bianca, and she is all he SHOULD need (note I NEVER respec Varric to DW, he needs to keep Bianca in his hands).

[Bigdawg13]

Not sure of the OP's original purpose, but I can think of a few.  First off, Bianca is extremely dependent on crafted upgrades.  If you are doing a no-crafting playthrough, then Varric's bianca will pale in comparison to most high level daggers, even the white ones).  Secondly, I have a hard time getting Bianca to perform comparatively well.  Considering I cannot make a mastercrafted Bianca is most troublesome.  Lots of threads discuss Varric underperforming compared to Cole or Sera.  For me personally, I only bring him when I want his party buffs or for a conversation option.

 

That being said, I would only make Varric DW on nightmare if I planned on playing him. 

 

If you plan on letting the AI handle him, give him heal on hit, guard on hit, and another guard on hit.  Make sure stealth, evade, and fallback plan are all on preferred.  Finally give him a health belt and make liberal use of regen potions and bee grenades. 

[Paragon78]

I'd prolly use the same trees on him as I did on Sera and Cole in my playthrough as I always use DW dagger over range, just my personal preference. 

 

I pretty much take spinning blades, flank attack, twin fangs, and deathblow. Pretty much everything in DW tree except parry, which means you need to get looked like it hurt for the near limitless stamina regen. I take it your using Fade touched Hidden Blades x4 and x5 with silverite so you don't have to worry about being knocked down and stunned? If so you will definitely have no stamina issues and easily be able to pull off all of his tempest abilities and DW abilities without ever missing a Cooldown.

 

In stealth tree I know allot of people love ambush, but I don't usually take that just because not really needed if you have cheap shot and improved twin fangs, you will keep everything sundered anyway and considering how armor penetration weighting works I just never really cared for ambush.

 

Even with Varric's cooldowns coming up faster you will still have plenty of stamina. Good luck, hope this helps.

 

EDIT:

Also forgot to mention if your going to really min/max him, or any rogue make sure to prioritize Attack% and Dexterity since you will have sneak attack passive which gives nearly 90% crit while flanking? Which is quite easy to do as any melee. I think I have something like 90% attack on my rogues with close to 200% critical damage multiplier. And there are so many times where you recieve 100% crit anyway you really want to take advantage of having those huge hits.

 

Just in case your wondering, here are the stat weights for min/max dps.

Gear Equivalents:

0.67% Flanking Dmg

1% Attack (benchmark)

2% Armor Pen

1.6% Crit Chance

1.5 Dexterity

2 Willpower/Strength/Magic

3.2 Cunning

7% Crit Dmg

[draken-heart]

Not sure of the OP's original purpose, but I can think of a few.  First off, Bianca is extremely dependent on crafted upgrades.  If you are doing a no-crafting playthrough, then Varric's bianca will pale in comparison to most high level daggers, even the white ones).  Secondly, I have a hard time getting Bianca to perform comparatively well.  Considering I cannot make a mastercrafted Bianca is most troublesome.  Lots of threads discuss Varric underperforming compared to Cole or Sera.  For me personally, I only bring him when I want his party buffs or for a conversation option.

 

That being said, I would only make Varric DW on nightmare if I planned on playing him. 

 

If you plan on letting the AI handle him, give him heal on hit, guard on hit, and another guard on hit.  Make sure stealth, evade, and fallback plan are all on preferred.  Finally give him a health belt and make liberal use of regen potions and bee grenades. 

 

Honestly, I can never imagine Varric without him "fingering" his crossbow. It just does not work.