Dragon Age

[gryeyes]

I had no problems identifying who was the douche.

[Lantyssa]

Also, people, remember when you walk into Orzammar, you see Bhelen just flat out murder someone in the street right in front of you. What more do you want, a flashing neon sign that says "I'm the evil choice?"

Actually, I didn't remember it at all because I had no clue who these people were.  With a play through split across several days before I got to the noble district and me dealing with lackeys instead of the individuals in question.

Even then an altercation which ends in death isn't a real good determinate given how many corpses I had walked over to reach Orzammar...

[01101010]

Also, people, remember when you walk into Orzammar, you see Bhelen just flat out murder someone in the street right in front of you. What more do you want, a flashing neon sign that says "I'm the evil choice?"

Actually, I didn't remember it at all because I had no clue who these people were.  With a play through split across several days before I got to the noble district and me dealing with lackeys instead of the individuals in question.

Even then an altercation which ends in death isn't a real good determinate given how many corpses I had walked over to reach Orzammar...

I fucking hate dwarves in pretty much all games, but this one I actually loved the entire story line in the deep roads. dunno why, but it seemed to capture the dirtiness and ruthlessness I always thought went on in the dorflands.

[tmp]

Also, people, remember when you walk into Orzammar, you see Bhelen just flat out murder someone in the street right in front of you. What more do you want, a flashing neon sign that says "I'm the evil choice?"

Yah but that's pretty much par for the course when it comes to dwarf politics. It's not as much Bhelen being the evil choice but rather the other guy being too soft to be any good in this environment.

[stray]

I didn't see it as evil. Just shocking. In his mind, he was the King.. or at least, the King's son. And then some cop tries to apprehend him for bullshit. His bodyguard is like "Fuck you! You don't even get to touch him." Chop. Brutal, but I respected it. I kind of thought he was the wrong choice though, until it was clear he was the populist, while the other dude would just reinforce greater evils and leave the caste system in tact.

[Tmon]

I liked that the Dwarfs for once didn't have Scottish accents.  First time through my goodie twoshoes human noble sided with not Behlen because he seemed less evil.  The second time through with my bitter Dalish Rogue I chose Behlen because he seemed ruthless enough to take control quickly and provide me with the troops I wanted.

[Raguel]

So I've been finishing some side quests before I start the whole Landsmeet part.

I've managed to rake in a ton of cash, so I have Lifegiver and every warrior/rogue/pc specific book I can find, and I still have about 60g.

I'm close to getting my money's worth out of Shale, I think.

I'm so disappointed that the Keening Blade is warrior only, but I gave that to Alistair so I can dual wield Starfang and Topsider's Honor  . I think with pet I can beat my s/s champ.

Somehow Wynne managed to self-revive. I have no idea how. I've been working on her side quest, even though it doesn't show up under quests, so maybe that had something to do with it. Or it may have been a glitch. Anyone else experience that?

[stray]

She has a Lifeward spell.. which sets up a rez on any target that dies. Maybe the AI self casted or something.

[Goreschach]

That's not what lifeward does. That's from a special ability Wynne gets if you do her companion quest.

[caladein]

Wynne self-rezzing is Vessel of the Spirit, as long as it's off-cooldown when she goes down.

Lifeward would ideally prevent someone from dying at all but I'm not sure on the mechanics of it (i.e. if someone went from 34%+ health to zero in one attack if it would proc).

[tmp]

That's not what lifeward does. That's from a special ability Wynne gets if you do her companion quest.

She has that even before you really touch her companion quest. She revived self during my fight with the spider queen which was quite a bit of a wtf moment and actually made me speak with her afterwards and dig some deeper into her dialogue which eventually led to some confessions and the companion quest thing. Maybe the self-rezz just triggers when she dies on you with above neutral approval or something.

[caladein]

For those of you that got her to self-rez (and therefore unlock Vessel of the Spirit) during normal gameplay, did you ever have a random encounter that went a bit like the following?

Starts with a cut-scene of being ambushed by Darkspawn and everyone dies to a fireball; when you get control Wynne pops up via Vessel of the Spirit and then you fight off the Darkspawn.  When you're about to leave the area you have the "WTF was that?" conversation that tmp describes.

I imagine it's just a fail-safe if you have high enough approval with Wynne to start her quest up but haven't had her die in battle yet.

Edit: Grammar and ability name.

[Tebonas]

Yep, can confirm exactly that cutscene as well.

[stray]

Yeah, I had the cutscene on a random map fight. I think it was darkspawn too.

[eldaec]

Wynne self-rezzing is Vessel of the Spirit, as long as it's off-cooldown when she goes down.

Lifeward would ideally prevent someone from dying at all but I'm not sure on the mechanics of it (i.e. if someone went from 34%+ health to zero in one attack if it would proc).

Far as I can tell the self rez is only a one time thing on unlock? First time she dies and whenever you get the cutscene.

I use use the aoe-stun&heal self activated version very rarely, but I have never seen her use self rez except when the ability unlocked (and then possibly in the cutscene - when it looked like she was using the aoe heal rather than rez anyhow).

[tmp]

For those of you that got her to self-rez (and therefore unlock Vessel of the Spirit) during normal gameplay, did you ever have a random encounter that went a bit like the following?

I had that encounter but only quite a while after the first self-rez she did. As far as i can tell the encounter can trigger only if you have Wynne picked for the travel group while you move over the main world map, and it just happened i was always picking other people instead. It may require some level of approval to pop up too, not sure.

[Raguel]

I was going to say I didn't notice it doing my first playthrough, but now that I think about it,  I went to Brec Forest with her and she was the only one who didn't take a (story forced) dirtnap at that weird campsite. I thought for sure I couldn't do that part w/o her, but noone died at all with my rogue, Alistair, Leliana and Morrigan.

[Goreschach]

I finished my three mage nightmare playthrough. The mid-game nerf to some of the spells didn't really slow me down, it was more annoying than anything. More than anything, the only thing in the game to actually slow me down was the dwarf area. Seriously, fuck whoever decided to make an entire fifth of the game one big fucking sewer level. Really, the only fight that made me reload multiple times and try different strategies was the one with the crazy dwarf woman. And that was probably because I was dragging Oghren along. The first quarter of the game was the best, with everything after that seemingly degrading into me and the level designers trying to out-cheese each other. But in the end my übermage managed to secure victory by one-shotting Kangaxx for over 2600 damage.

Having experimented with nearly all the spells, I've figured out what's what.

[schild]

I'm not sure what you're smoking.

Sure, blowing stuff up with fireball is nice, but by the end of the game, between cone of cold, winter's grasp and ice storm - I simply wasn't getting hit. And yea, both Morrigan and my main were Arcane Warriors, so even if they got hit, I wouldn't have noticed.

Yours sounds very dependent on Shale keeping hate and you keeping the hell away from battle. Meh, I'd rather stand there and just finish the thing.

Because, frankly, here's how I figured (what's what):

Combat in Western RPGs blows snot out a goat ass. I'm not entirely sure why anyone would play on anything other than normal (except something lower). >_>

[01101010]

Creation only exists for Heal and Spell Wisp. It actually has some good buffs, but they're so short duration you'd have to spam them constantly. Even if that was effective, it wouldn't be fun, so they're out. An interesting thing about the spellpower buff spells is that they're augmented by spellpower itself. So at low level, they're useless, but as your spellpower raises, they become more useful. At the end of the game I had ~150 spellpower, which, even on nightmare, could take over half health off an even level white with one fireball.

If you are going to go the fire route, you can not NOT take grease from that line. Grease the floor, watch them fall down, fireball, watch them take dmg - get knocked down - ignite and burn, inferno to cover up the evidence...less blood, clean up in a snap with a swiffer, and while you are waiting for inferno to burn out you can make smores.

I dunno about the spoiler tag on opinion on game mechanics, but feel free to add it if need be.

[Samprimary]

Now for the really controversial part.

The controversial part was where you said that fire voids any need for any other primal, talked about the virtues of fireball while mentioning grease exactly zero times, and talked about inferno as if it were more pimp than, say, Storm of the Century.

Compared to that, there's very little controversy in stating that the free-wearing-armor-forever-with-one-talent-point class actually sucks :X

[eldaec]

Since we're doing spell reviews.




Primal-Fire
Flame Blast: Never use it, range too short not worth getting aggro when you are that close to the bad guys.
Flaming Weapons : Solid pick if you have at least two melee characters most of the time. I'd try to spread this, frost, and telekinetic across different mages (they don't stack and you can only run one per mage)
Fireball : Nice in battles that start or stay long range, or where you can manage a choke point, and so long as you have grease, but useless the rest of the time.
Inferno : Very nice, so long as you can use it at long range in combo with some of earthquake, blizzard, death cloud, tempest, but useless in many battles where you can't do that.

Primal-Earth
Rock Armor : Nice enough.
Stonefist : Love it for the shattering combo, this is the only single target damage worth taking other than as a prerequisite.
Earthquake : Like inferno/blizzard/tempest, use them in combination for long range or chokepoint battles.
Petrify : Pretty cool, always useful.

Primal-Cold
Frost Weapons : See flame weapons, solid with 2+ melee, remember you can't run it on the same character as flame or telekinetic weapons, and it doesn't stack with itself.
Winters Grasp : Awesome in early levels, but you grow out of it.
Cone of Cold : Awesome in early levels, but there are better aoe cc spells.
Blizzard : Combo with earthquake, inferno, tempest, death cloud or go home.

Primal-Lighting
Lightning : Shit
Shock : Shit
Tempest : As blizzard etc, combo or get out. You are taking this line solely for this spell, and probably for the storm of the century combo. Problem I have with this, is that if you can trap the bad guys in any two or three of the other big aoe effects then you have probably already won, and you don't need to win more. Lighting line isn't worth it for this imo.
Chain Lightning : Mediocre, and did you really buy the last three just to get here?

Creation - Healing
Heal : Awesome
Rejuvenate : Useless
Regeneration : Double plus awesome
Mass Rejuvenation : Does nothing

Creation - Enhancements
Heroic Offense : Pointless
Heroic Aura : Pointless
Heroic Defence : Penalty to attack, wtf?
Haste : Nice, but you wasted 3 picks getting here.

Creation - Glyphs
Paralysis : Nice enough, I usually cast it directly on a mob as a paralyse spell rather than as a trap (except for the combo with repulsion).
Warding : Solid - adds a good amount of defence.
Repulsion : This is my favourite spell in the game, I use it to save anyone that gets swarmed, and just stick it down between my group and the enemy group or on a choke point to slow down incoming mobs and take them one at a time. The combo with Paralysis (a souped up mass paralysis) is very cool.
Neutralisation : Haven't tried it, but looks like it would be problematic in a multiple mage group.

Creation - Summoning
Spell Wisp : Nice
Grease : Nice if you have fire
Spellbloom/Swarm : Haven't tried, don't sound impressive.

Spirit - Anti magic
Haven't used this line, sounds a bit average, you usually have more magic than the other guy.

Spirit - Mana alteration
Does this have a purpose beyond cheesing one or two bosses?
Mana Drain : Stop with this shit and buy more lyrium.
Mana Cleanse : Oh, great, my mana has gone. Seriously, this is what templars are for.
Spell Might : Meh, ok.
Mana Clash : Only take this if you hate fun. Why do you hate fun?

Spirit - Death
Walking Bomb : Meh, ok, but cooler in theory than in practice.
Death Syphon : Does nothing
Virulent Walking Bomb : See walking bomb.
Animate Dead : Self explanatory and effective enough if you really want justification for taking walking bombs.

Spirit - Telekinesis
Mind Blast : Solid at early levels, but you grow out of it, stun is too short to be useful later.
Force field : Awesome, very hard to resist, and takes reds/oranges out of the game to kill adds, or takes archers/spellcasters out of the game to kill everything else.
Telekinetic Weapons : Solid, see frost/flame weapons. Remember, doesn't stack, can only run one of the three per mage.
Crushing prison : Very cool, stick it on a white and forget about it - it'll be stunned until dead, or use it on a yellow as a long duration stun. Don't bother using it on orange/reds.


Entropy - Debilitation
Weakness : Shit
Paralyze : Solid
Miasma : Nice enough against massed melee.
Mass Paralysis : Awesome.

Entropy - Hexes
Vulnerability : Not terrible, I use it occasionally on bosses, combo with drain life is ok, but this is not your A game.
Afflication : Works well with a Blizzard/Earthquake/Templest/Rock Barrage/Inferno/Death Cloud combo, but aside from that - not great.
Misdirection : Awesome - shuts down even oranges and reds, very hard to resist.
Death : Great on orange/reds who will survive several crits.

Entropy - Sleep
Disorient : Does nothing
Horror : Solid single target cc but short range, combos with Sleep to kill whites.
Sleep : Very nice aoe mez for spread out adds, othen use it against fields of archers.
Waking Nightmare : This awesome whenever you get a more than a few bad guys in a group, best aoe control in the game, not only does it shut down everyone you hit, but when they start beating on their unaffected allies, those mobs fight back, taking even more damage off your group.

Entropy - Draining
Drain Life : Ok with vulnerability hex, but does no more damage than a good staff.
Death Magic : Does nothing.
Curse of Mortality : How many mobs in this game heal? Because you just bought a spell that only affects them. Great job.
Death Cloud : Use only in battles where you can combo Blizzard/earthquake/inferno etc etc.



Mage:
Arcane bolt: Meh, toward the end game staff damage is fine for vanilla single target work.
Arcane Shield:  Decent for arcane warriors.
Staff focus: Decent for non-arcane warriors (this is a better pick than single target damage spells)
Spell might: Effective, and you'll have too many spells by the end of the game anyway, so a very sensible pick - but not very fun.

Arcane Warrior:
If you go this route you obviously want all four spells.

Blood Mage:
Blood wound is cool (you can never have enough aoe cc), the rest I found underwhelming. The supposedly fantastic combo with arcane warrior is all very well, but if you are comfortably casting with HP on a melee character, then you already won, so you don't need this. This is a 'win more' spec.

Shapeshifter:
wtf is this shit, takes too long to change shape, and when you do you can no longer use pots and only have one useful talent. People have suggested using this when you run out of mana, these people are crazy. Alternative plan for when you run out of mana:
1) Buy more lyrium, make more pots.
2) Cast more real spells
3) Shit gets dead.
4) ? ? ? ? ?
5) Profit!

Spirit Healer
Group Heal : Very nice.
Revival : Awesome
Lifeward : shit
Cleansing Aura : Awesome, especially with multiple mages running it.




For what it is worth, I think the most powerful set of three mages would be something like....

AW/Spirit Healer (all four spells)
Everyone takes Heal
Everyone gets a skill point in poison making so they can throw grenades.

If you aren't changing Morrigan's base shapeshifter spec, I'd take Spirit Healer on her ahead of AW, but jesus christ no more talent points in shapeshifter. On that spec I'd take her up to regeneration on the heal line, which will be the spell she casts most, and probably the only one I'd give her on tactics.

Then mix and match these across your group according to taste.

4x Fire spells
4x Earth spells
4x Cold spells
4x telekinesis spells.
3x glyphs
4x hexes
4x sleep
4x paralysis
Grease and spell wisp from Summoning

[Threash]

I finished my three mage nightmare playthrough.

Nightmare was a breeze with TWO mages, try it with one and then we can have a discussion about whats effective (hint, its not fire).

[caladein]

Rejuvenate : Useless

Rejuvenate is awesome!  Since there aren't true Stamina pots, this is your answer for physical DPS.  Also neat if you have multiple mages take it and trade it off.

[Sky]

Rejuv and mass rejuv are great. So is lifeward. You smoke crack rocks.

Cleansing aura seems to be draining Wynne's mana for some reason, during combat. While I was using it, my front line boys were kicking ass and taking almost no heals, but Wynne was always running out of mana, had to turn off her auto-imbibe script after she cleaned me out of mana potions.

[taolurker]

Since we're doing spell reviews.

<MASSIVE SNIPPAGE>

As far as spells go, there are quite a few that are interesting, and the glyphs ones are really nice when you are using hold position and also area of effect CC'ing with ice.

There's also mods that deal with most of your complaints like casting/talent delays, respeccing companions, and shapeshiting times (all in one handy mod DAO Mutator link #2 time), and also a shapeshifting "enhancement" with more forms, plus a drawn weapon spellcasting one for Arcane mage. Another promising mod is changing the weapon ehancements to a single line and adding single target cold/fire spells (but it had issues still) Beta Weapon Enhancement. I had a couple of playthroughs and am now cheating and upping difficulty.

Cleansing aura seems to be draining Wynne's mana for some reason, during combat. While I was using it, my front line boys were kicking ass and taking almost no heals, but Wynne was always running out of mana, had to turn off her auto-imbibe script after she cleaned me out of mana potions.

It constantly drains the caster and she needs to be up the tank's ass. Better thing to do is have her tactics disable it after stam/mana reach a level that's scary, or disable that skill altogether. I think all my casters auto chug at 10% mana. I didn't think Cleanse was worth a point on my playthrough as mage though.

[Ingmar]

The damage on that shock cone thing in the electric line is actually really high.

Re: cleansing aura, I just don't let them autocast it, and turn it on manually when appropriate - good for removing injuries without needing a kit, etc.

[01101010]

The damage on that shock cone thing in the electric line is actually really high.

The dark side IS more powerful.

[sidereal]

Stonefist : Love it for the shattering combo, this is the only single target damage worth taking other than as a prerequisite.

Also essential if you're not bringing a sword&board and don't get Shield Bash.  It becomes the easiest way to quickly end Overwhelm and Grab attacks, which suck squirrel balls.

Rejuvenate : Useless
Mass Rejuvenation : Does nothing

Ran a lot of mages, did you?  Try getting Leliana to do more than 3 special archery attacks in a battle without a Rejuvenation running.  I'd say unless you're running at least 2 mages, they're essential spells.

Heroic Offense : Pointless
Heroic Aura : Pointless

Wha?   Mana is free, do more damage, kill things more.  Aura is great when you hit big groups of archers (especially after the archery patch).  It turns damage that would require significant focused healing and mitigation to damage that you can totally ignore.  Admittedly, Wynne gets them for free.  If I was on a skill point budget, I might not get them.  But they're not pointless, and if you do get them, you're only one wasted pick away from Haste.

Spellbloom/Swarm : Haven't tried, don't sound impressive.

Stinging Swarm is delicious.  It's a ton of damage for the mana that's never wasted (rolls over if the first guy dies).  It's a great combo with Arcane Warriors.  Fire off a swarm and charge in.  But Spellbloom is meh (mana is free), so you have to waste one to get it.


Even after the nerf, Telekinesis/Hex/Sleep owns all.

[Merusk]

The damage on that shock cone thing in the electric line is actually really high.

Re: cleansing aura, I just don't let them autocast it, and turn it on manually when appropriate - good for removing injuries without needing a kit, etc.

Lightning spells also drain stamina (and mana?) making them great for reducing the damage of any orange enemies.  A few lightning bolts and they're left with only auto attack.

[eldaec]

On the stamina regen spells, I never felt I was getting enough of an effect from them to be worth the effort. Now that the internet has spoken, I'm going to have to try them again...

[Samprimary]

Just FYI, what makes the lightning spells worthwhile (that most people don't notice!) is the drain effect. You want one of your mages up to Tempest anyway (for Storm of the Century, which will be your bread and butter for most of the entire game) so usually for that char, one more point to give them the stamina-eatin' chain lightning is not a bad investment.



I just want to reiterate the importance of Storm of the Century, too. Guys, it's ridiculous.

Also keep in mind that the major benefit of Cone of Cold is really how remarkably well it works against nearly any mob. It even freezes flemeth and the archdemon.

[Merusk]

Fucking hell.. my game has the "Disguse Armor" bug and I have no saves to go back to.

[EWSpider]

Fucking hell.. my game has the "Disguse Armor" bug and I have no saves to go back to.

There's a lot of different suggestions in this thread with some ways to fix it:

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/58/index/162918/1

If you'd like some assistance I'd be glad to tinker with it to see if I can fix it.  Just PM me about emailing me your current Save game.

[rk47]

Hmm. Spells overall are decent ideas, DA implementation of the melee needs work though. There's gotta be a reason why I rather be a guy in plate than the dude able to unleash ice storm, slowing those bastids in the process, then summon a pool of grease when they get too close before knocking them off with a fireball and start the BBQ grill.

Probably need to steal more ideas from WoW / other MMOs:
- Intercept. I find it fucking annoying to have to walk my tank through all that shitty traps and spells effects before actually getting to close range.
- Rage Bar please. I'd like a way to do special move than waiting for the yellow bar to regen ever so slowly. Autoattack sucks dick when mages just chug blue pot and spit fireballs whenever they want to.
- Probably sound like a broken record, but rogues with dual wields having combo points to spend instead of staminas? Why the hell not?
- Fix Shapeshifting for fuck sake. Who the fuck created that shit? At least make it instant-cast goddamit.