Dragon Age, Awakening

[Kyzarius]

Started playing this last night, lots of fun to continue the storyline.

not to mention my aracane warrior/blood mage/battlemage is unstoppable heh

[Imoutgoodbye]

Started playing this last night, lots of fun to continue the storyline.

not to mention my aracane warrior/blood mage/battlemage is unstoppable heh

I'll top that with my city elf thief and his 52 cunning that goes straight to damage. Dirty fighting ftw!

EDIT: Actually, I might just persuade you not to fight me.

Almost forgot..specialized bard/duelist.

[Kyzarius]

I'll top that with my city elf thief and his 52 cunning that goes straight to damage. Dirty fighting ftw!

EDIT: Actually, I might just persuade you not to fight me.

man arcane warrior / blood mage is like..cheating

magic becomes strength, so I have like 60 strengt...so I am wearing heavy plate armor...and I have 40 constitution giving me huge HP pool to cast spells from (since blood magic uses your hp as mana when its active), so I can use as many sustained spells as I want.

Its sickening, I dont even need my party members.

I just wish the game people would comment on my appearance. I am translucent, glowing white being surrounded by shimmering shields and a cloud of fire. My sword swings do ~60 every hit and I cast spells like a fiend..its just great

you know you can respec now Valek, in the expansion.

[Imoutgoodbye]

man arcane warrior / blood mage is like..cheating

magic becomes strength, so I have like 60 strengt...so I am wearing heavy plate armor...and I have 40 constitution giving me huge HP pool to cast spells from (since blood magic uses your hp as mana when its active), so I can use as many sustained spells as I want.

Its sickening, I dont even need my party members.

I just wish the game people would comment on my appearance. I am translucent, glowing white being surrounded by shimmering shields and a cloud of fire. My sword swings do ~60 every hit and I cast spells like a fiend..its just great

you know you can respec now Valek, in the expansion.

That's scary. I'm waiting for the expansion to drop in price/pick up a used copy from gamestop. Real short on cash at the moment, but I can't wait to pick it up. Everything Game Informer said made me want to play it even more.

[Kyzarius]

That's scary. I'm waiting for the expansion to drop in price/pick up a used copy from gamestop. Real short on cash at the moment' date=' but I can't wait to pick it up. Everything Game Informer said made me want to play it even more. [/quote']

first thing I did was respec, I had to much CC and not enough direct damage. Also, I chose spells that can be cast with your "weapon drawn" since I am an arcne warrior i use a sword, not a staff and man it sucks when youc ast something that you have to wait for the sheath animation to get off.

the respec book only costs 6 gold.

The neat thing I think is yo can start the expansion by making a new character and you automatically start at lvl 18...so no lame "pew - pew" levels. I was thinking of trying an assasin / shadow / duelist rogue. I might start that tonight, who knows.

[Sandbox]

i have this for xbox 360, its pretty fun.

[Enethier]

man arcane warrior / blood mage is like..cheating

magic becomes strength, so I have like 60 strengt...so I am wearing heavy plate armor...and I have 40 constitution giving me huge HP pool to cast spells from (since blood magic uses your hp as mana when its active), so I can use as many sustained spells as I want.

Its sickening, I dont even need my party members.

I just wish the game people would comment on my appearance. I am translucent, glowing white being surrounded by shimmering shields and a cloud of fire. My sword swings do ~60 every hit and I cast spells like a fiend..its just great

you know you can respec now Valek, in the expansion.

That should cause you as many problems, if not more, than it solves. Mobs in DA are hardcoded to attack the heaviest armored person in the party first, and then base threat off of damage, the tertiary source being threat-increase abilities and taunts. So your heavy-armored mage that aims to deal as much dmg as it possibly can is going to be first on the list of who to kill. Now, thats fine if you have a dedicated healer and all. but in my opinion, if i am going to have somebody dedicated to healing, i will want to focus my healing on somebody other than a mage, regardless of specs. Because as a meleemage, and a bloodmage at that, you have to take your stat points and divide them among several different stats. You need Intel, to boost your mana and dmg, you need con to boost your health for not only being hit, but for your blood magic. you need dexterity to improve your defenses... where as a warrior tank really only needs two stats. Strength and Con. Sure, some of the shield-oriented skills require dex... but how hard is it to put the all of about 20-25 points into dexterity to meet the highest dex requirement of 36? You can then focus on raising your strength to wear more armor and deal more damage, and once that hits around 45-50, you can dump the rest into con. your stats go a lot further that way, plus, you have all 3 forms of threat generation, rather than the limits of only 2 as a battlemage.

In my experience, it was easier to be a healer, stack the beneficial auras, as well as intel for mana pool, and set your AI to spam healing and those glyph things. Also, the less you specialize, the more spells from the mage class you get, which is always helpful, considering how deep some of the better spells are. Grab the other specs for the bonuses, if you want them. but the points are better spent on upkeep spells, crowd-control spells, and restorative spells.

My party setup was:

Healer/Crowd-Control (Wrynne or whatever her name was. i didnt like her, cept her special abilities make it better to use her)

Champion/Berserker (Tank) (Sten or the dwarf. Take your pick)

Assassin/Bard (Leiliana/Zevran)

Assassin/Bard (Main Character)

One bard would Song of Courage, the other would Song of Valor. Double marking is nice, and for a while there (not sure if it was bug or intended) it would stack on certain bosses.

The champion grants a lot of sustains, which help the entire party, which greatly increases damage output. The berserker has some very nice bonuses to add in, and is far better suited for a tank than the other specs in DA. Templar was just bad, in my opinion. And the other.. you were just doing damage to yourself

One rogue is the cunning expert, the other is the dexterity major. The cunning has less damage, but more util, and conversely, the dex has less util, but more damage. Get all the dual wield sustains for both. Don't use doubleswing though, its garbage for rogues. I would suggest making your main character the cunning one, as it helps communicate, and have Zevran/Leilliana as your main damage dealer.

With this party setup, I killed the High Dragon in less than 3 minutes without resist gear. You pretty much just control the healer and let your damage dealers go wild, backstabbing with +backstab damage weapons, hasted, additional haste effect from dual wield sustain, champion bonuses, double bard bonuses... you get the picture. My one-hit damage output record is 212 with a dagger. backstab, of course.

Some people will wonder why there is a lack of offensive casting. I retort with this: Why? Damage Casters melt faces at the start. Towards the mid-end? not so much. I mean, you can set it so they dont do collateral damage to the party... but then you're playing EZmode, and thats not much fun at all. And even then, you STILL fall short of the sheer damage output of sustain-buffed rogue. Why? Because caster-desired sustains are few and far between.

That is all just my take on the game tho. I do not mean to say it is the right or only way to play, or to belittle any other style.

[jibber]

I killed the High Dragon with just my arcane warrior/shape shifter, Morrigan. Also I've killed Flemmeth with just my arcane warrior/spirit healer with my main char.

The combos you can have on this game is incredible, and what you can do is even more incredible. Shimmering shield, Rejuvenation, Fade Shroud, Aura of Might, Cleaning Aura, Life Ward.. All you need to solo nearly anything in this game.

And I can't wait to get the expansion either

[Kyzarius]

So your heavy-armored mage that aims to deal as much dmg as it possibly can is going to be first on the list of who to kill.

Enethier!

With Combat magic on, Arcane shield (upgraded to the new fade shield), and all of the powers in combat magic to improve the defenses of having combat aura on. You can tank elites. When things get tough, I just turn on shimmering shield and can tank the dragons. My strength is depdendent on my magic. SO I only put into two stats, Magic and Con, with a little in willpower. I rarely use my mana as mana though, just to sustain all the auras I am constantly turning on.

Its not about avoiding damage at all at this point. I use Blood wound (the aoe stun DoT) and chain lightgning to massive effect, also Virulant walking bomb. I can throw out all of these spells and lose maybe 25% of my huge 300+ hp pool, while the enemy hits are doing 1 damage a piece.

My party setup in Origins was Me, Shale, Morrigan and Wynn. Morrigan and Shale were DPS. Wynn heals. I basically was piss everything off with aoe spell damage wade in tank mage.

The expansion came out yesterday, I got the first to battlemage powers already..which are SICK. You can shut off blood magic and turn on life drain, hits every 2 seconds for 60 damage everyone near you and heals you for all of it. Sucks your mana dry though, but once its finished..its back to bloodmage and sustaining. You also get a PBAOA ice ability that does huge damage and freezes. So far I am using berserker, healer, rogue and me. I hold all the aggro.

Im tellin ya though, arcane warrior is pretty much invicible.

[Enethier]

hmm. so you took off the collateral dmg to party?

[Kyzarius]

hmm. so you took off the collateral dmg to party?

no, I am not sure why you would think that.

I play on nightmare, actually, as far as skill level is concerned.

[Enethier]

I would think that because you mentioned virulent bomb. yeah it does a ton of damage, but it also would deal damage to nearby party members, which is why i avoid it like the plague. It just took me a few of the lower level bombs going off to realize that.

on a side note, since i avoided the virulent walking bomb.. it doesnt spread to party members, does it?

do you play on ps3, 360, or pc?

[Kyzarius]

I would think that because you mentioned virulent bomb. yeah it does a ton of damage, but it also would deal damage to nearby party members, which is why i avoid it like the plague. It just took me a few of the lower level bombs going off to realize that.

on a side note, since i avoided the virulent walking bomb.. it doesnt spread to party members, does it?

do you play on ps3, 360, or pc?

no it doesnt spread to party members.

I play on the ps3

I currently am using all ranged people, and should I myself get hit by splash dmage I have so much armor / resists from my gear + shields that it rarely hits me for more than 1 or 2 points.

The new battle mage pbaoe freeze only hits enemies, blood wound only hits enemies. Spells like inferno and tempest I only use when the other mage and I manage to blood wound a group of guys at the opposite end of the battlefield.

[Enethier]

i see. maybe it was just cause of the beginning i never bothered to try it. i found it much easier to just passive stack and backstab-maul.