56 replies to this topic

[WeeRLegion]

So, what kind of an party have you ended up playing with?
What are the worst kinds of enemies for you to face?
Favourite tactics?

Me?
I'm playing on normal difficulty, with an HN warrior, with Alistair, Wynne & Leliana in the active group.

So, with Wynne being a healerish sort, I tend to rely on massive armor, tanking, and simply outlasting the enemies.
That's for all enemies except spellcasters, as far as they go, I prefer to just have Leliana snipe them with the Arrow of Slaying talent, maybe have the whole party take up ranged weapons if there's good open ground.
In tight places I'll usually just have Wynne cast stone fist and paralyzation (or whatever), to buy some tiem to kill them off before they can nuke it up.

Lately I've also added Petrify to my list of favourite spells, and damn does it work wonders to have the toughest enemies out of the fight until I've managed to thin down the ranks of less threatening enemies.

I've also found, that surprisingly, all the skills actually seem to have uses, even survival, which despite it's feeble-sounding description, actually gives you a sort of an radar, quite good for avoiding any ambushes that aren't forced on you. ^^
And poisons. While I haven't gotten anywhere with blending any of my own, the skill enables the use of thrown acid bottles and the sort, which may be just the thing you need against a horde of lower level creeps.

I also hate spiders and Revenants. Spiders just send you for so much time out of the fight with the webs... and revenants regenerate at a mad pace, no hope of dealing any damage if you can't get the whole party focused. o_o


Oh, and ranged weapons are a must for all party members. I keep getting that in the game load-screeen hints all the time, and it's all too true.
There's often large groups of enemies that are sparsely spaced out; charge in and you'll have to deal with them all, which just may be doable if you snipe out a few beforehands.


And, that's about it for my ideas.

Edited by WeeRLegion, 09 November 2009 - 01:30 PM.

[EvaineDian]

My party consists of a rogue, Alistair, Zevran and Morrigan. I'm playing on normal difficulty, too, and I don't need any kind of tactics, I just let them bash in skulls and hardly ever use any special abilities. I don't think it's too easy, but the whole combat system and the enemies you face are just totally boring in my opinion. Maybe it's that your characters just faint, not die and regenerate so quickly, maybe it's the "automatic fighting" - I finished Venetica and Risen just the day before I started Dragon Age and have come to prefer action rpgs where you have to control every single hit.

Hopefully Dragon Age will get more interesting, so far it's been quite disappointing...

[cmorgan]

Opposite reaction for me. I am loving it more and more. Playing on normal and hard, so far two very different sets of tactics based on party composition and skill sets.

M HNO (warrior) + Wardog + Allistair + Morrigan = make Harald (wardog) leader (starting from camp with Harald on the left, Allistair on the right, and Morrigan on the bottom) and select all, place in ambush, hold position. This puts the tanks forward and flanking morrigan, protecting her. Ranged weapons. Harald scouts forward, draws off a few, runs back to lead position, and while the party snipes as the enemy runs forward, he waits - then howls to stun. As the first line engages, Morrigan casts Mind Blast, and gets another few stunned, then it is shield bash and pummel/growl from the front three while Morrigan mops up. If the Shield wall is broken or there are mage and archer ranged attacks, then it is shapeshifter time, and charge 'em.

M HNO (warrior) + Allistair + Leilana + Morrigan = all ranged, snipe at range, with M HNO in lead. Split into two teams, one with the tanks, one with support. in close quarters, the support team works ranhged and then manouvers for flanking attack if possible, or plugs up holes by supporting whichever tank is getting hurt worst. Two great tactics - manual Pummel/Shield Bash sequences from the tanks. both start with a shield bash on the two farthest out sied opponents, then concentrate on center so that at least one attacker is getting hit from behind by one tank. When outer rim is almost recovered, one of the two hits pummel or bash, and targets whomever is weakest for their next strike, while the other Sield fortersses and taunts, drawing the attacks. Then they swith places, rocking the enemy back and forth like a big boxing match with them as the fists. Works great until you hit a huge opponent - then it is fight to stay at range and surround the enemy, trying to keep one of the party hitting the undefended back, with each party memeber taunting or trying to draw attention by closing range. Dunno how that woill work for dragons, yet, though. With this team, having Morrigan get the healing series is imperative.

All this changes each time a new party member is swapped in, though, and it changes even more drastically as abilities improve. Overpower is way cool, but means only one tank is needed to be the rock and the other to be the hard place, and the support team becomes healers and protects from flanking. having one tank turtle and the other crush is pretty cool, and seems much more effective than the 'rock'em back and forth" style. But so far, the biggest help to getting things done quickly is to get a mage with paralyze in play. Divide and conquer, eh?

[Icendoan]

I'm not too far in yet, but I have found that snares + walking bomb + ranged spikes = win.


Icen

[Darziak]

My party is hu no rog, Alistair, Wynne and wardog with normal difficulty setting.

I tend to stick playing with one character without switching to the others but if fighting a boss or powerful enemy it requires switching.

My tactic is to keep my party back while my rogue sneaks and uses a bow on one enemy (I somtimes use my archery abilities for some extra damage) who then chases me back to my party and we beat it, if I guess that more than one will come I use Pinning shot. In some cases this works best when an ambush apears and my rogue can somtimes sneak back to the party and pull them one by one otherwise my rogue legs it back and the party takes them all on, the latter tends to use up afew potions.
My example was when my whole party took on three easy skeletons only after that over 8 popped up and killed us, the best way for me was using my tactic and when the ambush apeared they all still went after the party but since we wernt in the center my party was able to beat them one by one.

When it comes to fighting a Big boss fight it's just a case of hit hit hit but the bosses seem to like going after my main char so I run in circles while my party continues to attack.

[Bluenose]

I think the fact that different people have got different, all perfectly valid, strategies suggests that Bioware have got the combat pretty close to right.

My own varies depending on what I think I'm getting into. One party is my Dalish Rogue, Leliana, Morrigan and Alistair and relies heavily on Morrigan to control the battlefield with Grease spells to block people off plus missile fire and fireballs to weaken them so Alistair can finish them off quickly as they get past the Grease. The other has me, Alistair, Sten or little Tammy-wammy (Dog's name is Tam), and Morrigan and basically brutalises people at close quarters with Alistair tanking the main enemy, Sten chopping through the lesser ones, Morrigan doing as much immobilising as she can to break the enemy mob up, and my PC taking attacks against enemies who make the mistake of turning their backs while fighting someone else.

[Celestine]

I rely alot on mages, my PC's one. My party is made up of PC mage, Alistair, Zevran and Oghren. I just have Alistair start with taunt and the others charge in usually. If he's got alot of enemies on him, activate shield wall and I drop a force field on him and then aoe the hell out. If there's an enemy caster I petrify him and use crushing prison. Usually works pretty well. Sometimes I'll just make my party wait outside, open a door n throw a grease followed by fireball and then close the door. Pretty chessy way but fun. My favorite way of playing is definitely spamming different spell combos but I do have to watch for friendly fire.

[Choo Choo]

I play on easy, simply because I'm a storyline player. Tactics and fighting don't much interest me at all.

Still, my elven mage likes Cone of Cold a lot. I've got Leliana on arrows to take out archers and stuff. Alistair and doggie bash things up. It works.

[Kulyok]

Cone of Cold is super, especially with revenants and especially with items that boost cold damage! I like Tempest, too. My elven rogue and Zevran use Whirlwinds, and Alistair is good with a sword and a shield. I used to use Sten with his big sword, but I don't see him having a personality, so I dumped him in the camp. (Gotta find some cookies, maybe then he'll loosen up).

[berelinde]

My HN warrior PC is a sword-and-board kind of gal, so you'd think that might be a problem, with both her and Alistair competing for the good weapons/armor/shields, but the game supplies enough to go around, there.

HN warrior + Daisy, my war dog + Alistair + Wynne is my typical party. Both Alistair and my PC have bows in their Weapon 2 slot for taking out archers and mages. Typically, we'll let the fight come to us, picking of the archers and mages from a distance, if possible. I keep control of the archer so I can pick the targets individually. The melee fighters can more or less pick their own targets without too much interferance from me. Once the enemies are in melee range, either Alistair or the PC will keep shooting, if there are any archers/mages still standing, and the war dog and one of the warriors will wade into the melee. I try to keep them from getting surrounded, so I'll usually have them start at one edge and work their way across. Once the ranged enemies are dealt with, the other warrior will switch to a melee weapon and mop up whoever is left. There isn't usually much for Wynne to do, except keep the warriors at full health and throw out an offensive spell/staff blast when she can.

Occasionally, I swap out Sten for Daisy (the tactics don't change much), and once for Alistair because I succumbed to metagaming. I knew that we'd likely run into Zevran, and I didn't want to take the approval hit from recruiting him.

Revenants are about the only opponents I've encountered so far that really make life tough for my little group.

I'm hoping that somebody will come out with a mod that will enable you to expand your party size. It isn't that I want to make the combat mindless so much as hear party banter and interjections. I loved Alistair's comment on seeing a really huge statue ("Now that's a little excessive, don't you think?").

[Kulyok]

Slight spoiler!

I knew that we'd likely run into Zevran, and I didn't want to take the approval hit from recruiting him.

I think it's not necessary: maybe it depends on cunning score and persuasion checks(I usually pass these, because my protagonist invested in "silver tongue"-like skills), but I took no approval hit. Alastair did mind, but I used "persuasion" option and he shut up.

(Another question is: how does a rogue with all lockpicking skills in place and a cunning score nearing 30 failed to open about seven chests so far?)



I think there's a game problem with tactics, though: when I select the whole party and tell them: hit this one guy together! - they never follow my orders. However, when I select them one by one with F1, F2, F4 and tell each the same thing, they follow my orders immediately. Sigh.

[Darziak]

(Another question is: how does a rogue with all lockpicking skills in place and a cunning score nearing 30 failed to open about seven chests so far?)

I think there's a game problem with tactics, though: when I select the whole party and tell them: hit this one guy together! - they never follow my orders. However, when I select them one by one with F1, F2, F4 and tell each the same thing, they follow my orders immediately. Sigh.

My rogue can open alot of locked chests and has no lockpicking skills but has high cunning.

I noticed that if you order all to attack a target while still paused it doesn't work, when I have the battle paused and the party selected to attack a target I un pause for 1-2 secs and pause again to deselect all party and focus with my controlled char.

[Kulyok]

I guess I'd better increase my cunning score to forty soon. "Zovran, Alistair, you take care of the fighting. I am too busy picking chests and talking to people!"

A funny thing: my friend started playing on the same day, but gave up, because he hated all the talking. However, one skill he picked immediately was looting corpses.

[berelinde]

I think there's a game problem with tactics, though: when I select the whole party and tell them: hit this one guy together! - they never follow my orders. However, when I select them one by one with F1, F2, F4 and tell each the same thing, they follow my orders immediately. Sigh.

Could be. Might also be a scripting conflict making them select targets a certain way. I set up the tactics slots to give them targeting preferences. Perhaps "group mosh" isn't enough to override presets but individual selection is? Which would be wacky, but would that stop it from being true?

[Crazee]

I have a similar tactic to many others, here. I play on easy, so I haven't found anything too taxing yet.

My HN warrior, Diggyr (the dog), Leliana and Wynne make up my main party. Alek starts off the battle with Threaten, and most of the enemies are then focused on him. If he is surrounded by at least 4 enemies, he activates Shield Wall. Dog normally helps Alek out, attacking the enemies with his various abilities. Dread Howl is the best. Wynne is quite content to heal from the back lines, petrifying and shattering any enemies that make their way too close to her. She doesn't have any AOE spells yet, apart from Earthquake, which I tend not to use. Leliana, more recently, has been kept back with Wynne, firing ice and fire arrows at any other archers. If she's not doing that, she's deep in the middle of things, backstabbing whoever she can. Got her equipped with some sweet enchanted equipment that make her quite formidable.

Actually, now that I think about it, what spells does everyone recommend? Wynne spends most her time healing at the moment, but I'd like some good stunning/AOE spells to liven things up.

[Yovaneth]

Sometimes I'll just make my party wait outside, open a door n throw a grease followed by fireball and then close the door. Pretty chessy way but fun.

You've just made me very happy. That tactic was the only good thing about PoR2 and I used to devastating (for PoR) effect when clearing out rooms. Nice to know I can use it in DA.

-Y-

[Anaximander]

Actually, now that I think about it, what spells does everyone recommend?

Mana Clash - An AoE that can pretty much instantly kill any enemy mage, wich the exception of elite bosses. Even against them it does tremendous damage (I took one boss down to 50% with a single cast of this spell). The spell drains all mana from mages caught in the radius and does spirit damage to them proportionate to the mana they lost. Get some +spirit damage gear, and they don't stand a chance. The disadvantage is it's long refresh time and that it's sometimes difficult to get enemy mages clustered together, meaning you'll likely only take out one of them with a single cast of this spell. Still, for those times when you can use line of sight to bottle neck some mages together, this spell is awesome.

Cone of Cold - Damage and crowd control in one. Frozen enemies can be shattered with Stone First, Crushing Prison, or any crtical hit. Pair up with a rogue for lots of shattering fun. I had Leliana set to use Critical Shot with her bow against any enemy that was stunned or paralyzed. The Coup de Gra rogue talent is also very nice against frozen enemies. In dungeons I often set up an ambush by having Morrigan stand to the side of a door, then using Alestair to lead a group of enemies through it. Once they were all within range of CoC, Morrigan would let them have it. Having multiple mages with CoC and Stone First is pretty devasting too.

Misdirection Hex and Death Hex - I mention these two together because I alsmost never cast one without the other. These two spells are amazingly effective for boss fights.

Curse of Mortality - Useful against pesky mages who like to heal themselves. Of course, if you have Mana Clash, pesky mages suddenly aren't so pesky anymore.

Grease and Fireball - an excellent first strike combo. Playing as my mage, I could often clear an entire room of badguys by casting Grease, Affliction Hex, and Fireball. Sometimes I'd throw a Walking Bomb in before the fireball for good measure. At higher levels, I'd use the time that fireball's knockown bought me to cast either Inferno or Death Cloud.

Blood Magic - Unlocked in Redcliff, the Blood Mage specialization has 2 very nice spells available at level 14 and 16 respectively. Blood Wound paralyzes all hostile targets (no friendly fire) in a huge radius while doing persistant spirit damage to them. Blood Control turns an enemy into an ally whlie doing persistant spirit damage to them. By the time the control wears off they've either been killed by other enemies or are nearly dead from the damage over time. My mage was a blood mage. Blood Wound + Affliction Hex + Walking bomb was my favorite combination of spells. The disadvantage is that blood magic only works against enemies that have blood, so it's ineffective against undead or golems. Just remember to deactivate Blood Magic after casting your blood mage spells, as Blood Magic causes all spells to use your health rather than your mana. I killed myself once by leaving blood magic active then selecting another party member. My character kept casting spells per his AI and killed himself. Was kind of funny, actually.

I didn't get into the Creation or Spirit lines that much. The glyphs look interesting,and there's a loading tip that says they can be used offensively or defensively but I didn't experiment with them much.

Other than that, all of the official spell combos that you get an achievement for discovering are pretty devasting. I found a link to all 10 of them somewhere. I'll see if I can dig it up again and post it here.

[Vicen]

Id ran with Alistar (One hand weapon sheild) Myself as a 2 handed Human Warrior...Morrigan the dps mage with a heal spell for whenever people need it...and leliana as the rogue archer who lock picks...I was able to beat just about ever boss on normal mode...though I must admit a few of them were quite hard and required a few reloads such as

Spoiler

Broodmother

Alistar I turned into a champion for his other spec

Morrigan...sadly I never unlocked any mage classes...did not want to buy the spirit healer book and sorta

Spoiler

let his mother kill connor during the urn quest

and I made Leliana into a duelist...which I realized was a not a great move considering I could of just bought the ranger book heh...

myself I choose to be a templar and a berserker..does anyone know where you unlock reaver?

[Anaximander]

So here's the link to all the special spell combinations. I have to say,there are a few I never would have thought of:

Spell Combos

And here's one for specialization classes (SPOILERS):

Specializations

Click the name of the specialization you want to see where and how to unlock it.

Edited by Anaximander, 10 November 2009 - 05:06 PM.

[Icendoan]

The use of glyphs for the paralyzation is fantastic, I have to admit. Because you can cast your glyphs fairly distant, it makes it easy to cast Repulsion + Paralyzation (in that order, so nobody sets off the paralyzation glyph) and then let your warriors charge in.

The Glyphs are fantastic spells, by far my favourite so far: Repulsion will keep anyone inside the Glyph free from anything which isn't worth worrying about on its own (Hurlocks, ect) for the duration, and it also proves very effective if used offensively in Choke Points (eg doors) as the enemies cannot pass through.

I used Glyphs of Warding less, mainly due to the higher cost, and that you can achieve better results by kiting, if fighting something which can't be repelled with blind spots or Heroic Aura (which is another fantastic spell, btw)

Icen