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Count Arioch the 28th
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Archmage Joda wrote:So, I just got Dragon Age 2 for my xbox 360 (yes, I know it's on origin on PC, no, I'm not going to get origin, fuck that), and I was wondering if you guys had any tips to pass on, particularly for a mage PC?
Spirit Healer is winsauce. Also winsauce: Blood mage, then stacking as many sustainable abilities as you can (You are more limited than in DA:1 because they take a percentage rather than a flat amount, so no buffing willpower for more. In fact, blood mage should get just enough willpower to wear high-end gear and then stop putting points into it).

Make sure all your party members can both set up and complete combos as that will give you a huge boost to DPS. Here's a link: http://forum.bioware.com/topic/171484-a ... ents-only/

Also, make the decision if you want your party members to like you or hate you early on. For whatever reason, party members who hate you enough will be more likely to stay if they have no strong feelings for you. On occasion, the party member's demeanor will change the plot and their personality rather than make them hate you (Anders becomes less human if he hates you, Fenris is either a stoic but troubled warrior or a whiny bitch that actively caused his own problems depending on rivalry, etc.) This could have been interesting but wasn't done evenly.

Varric is probably the least annoying companion all in all. Although I liked Aveline and actually did like Fenris to a point when most people do not.
In this moment, I am Ur-phoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my int score.
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Count Arioch the 28th
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Inquisition question: Anyone know of any guides that shows rune schematic locations? Trying to upgrade all the runes I have to Superb.

EDIT: This guy has nice runefinding vids: https://www.youtube.com/user/MrCodeslinger
Last edited by Count Arioch the 28th on Sun Dec 14, 2014 11:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
In this moment, I am Ur-phoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my int score.
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Post by name_here »

More DA2 advice now that it's morning.

Yeah, the combos are very useful when you can get them. It can be a bit difficult to synchronize the timing, though. Granted, that was mostly a problem with Walking Bomb for me.

On a note related to Walking Bomb: generally, in any fight there will be a huge range in enemy HP. Lots of guys will have tiny bars and a handful of people will have much larger ones. Naturally, this means you want to drop huge AoEs on the guys with small bars. Walking Bomb, though, does damage proportional to the max HP of the target, so if you can detonate one of the guys with more HP that's fantastic.

Blood magic is indeed great. I didn't use the persistent buff trick, but having a vastly deeper mana pool is still handy. And it's got that massive AoE with paralyze chance like it did in Origins. I've found that the Force Mage specialization is also pretty handy. You get to throw people around and knock them down.

It's been a while, so I can't tell you much about non-specialization mage powers, but I do recall that Death Siphon is pretty sweet. It turns corpses into mana and health. You also want mind blast, it knocks people back and drops aggro.

For companions, it's generally a good idea to invest in their specialization trees. They're all pretty good. Particularly handy is Merril, since she's a blood mage. See above. Aveline also turns into a ridiculous tank; she gets +15% damage resistance as a passive and a sustained mode that slows her but gives her +8% damage resistance for the next five seconds every time she's hit. This stacks with other sources of damage resistance and itself. You play as a mage, you will want her in the party a ton.
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

To expand on Merill a bit, she has a hybrid of the DA:A Keeper and DA2 Blood Mage. If you have access to the Black Emporium you want to respec her to go heavier on the con. You want Merrill to be up in the enemy's grill, as she has an area life draining effect that is not nerfed by having Blood Magic active (always pissed me off that life draining never worked with blood magic). You want to friend her up because that boosts the hp/mana conversion. In my file due to tanks being a bit MAD in DA2, Merrill and Blood Mage Hawke topped the HP for the entire party because of that, and both had gear further boosting that. (If you are running a patched game, that gets nerfed. The patch nerfs a lot of stuff, like abilities that boost blood magic and the armor rune that gives a bonus to all stats).

In addition, I recommend Merril also filling out the entropy tree, as a lot of those spells work great. Merril makes a great second mage in the group.
Last edited by Count Arioch the 28th on Sun Dec 14, 2014 5:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Archmage Joda
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Post by Archmage Joda »

So, on DA: Origins (because I feel like maybe I should actually finish a playthrough of that before playing DA2), is there any way to make a shapeshifter mage viable and not suck monkey testicles enough to go through the game?
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Post by Longes »

Basically, no. You can't cast spells while shapeshifted, so why aren't you just playing a warrior?
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Post by Whipstitch »

Because even a shitty mage is still better than most warrior builds? Shapeshifter is my least favorite mage specialization, but you're still a mage, and you're still viable. It's slow as fuck, but swarm form and blood wound shenanigans can grind its way through plenty of shit in the game, especially if you load up on gear that increases your mana regeneration.
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Post by name_here »

For DA:O, mages have enough badass in their spell list that they can scrape by with only using one specialization.

I liked DA:I pretty well, but now that I'm at the ending it is my sacred duty to bitch about things.

First, the open world is nice but also much too big for how they set up the mechanics. I got to level 19 before going to the endgame quest and explored less than half the playspace. And a huge chunk of that was done wandering around zones I'd badly outleveled. They could have cut out like a quarter of that at no real loss and spent that effort making more alternate paths in the main quest. Or on beta testing. It doesn't help that the companion quests require running all over the place and everything is too far apart. It offends me that the crafting stations in your castle aren't in the same room as your shops. The shops are outdoors and the crafting stations are in the basement. Oh, and as far as I can tell the castle shops only upgrade their wares once. I didn't go shopping much.

Crafting was kinda unsatisfying. The offense and defense slots gave small bonuses that often literally didn't matter to my Knight-Enchanter, but still demanded I expend resources, and I never seemed to have enough level-appropriate resources to even consider decking out the whole party with crafted gear. Also, due to sheer bad luck I only got mage schematics from the quests I did before level 17.

The final boss fight was pretty fun but could maybe have stood to be a bit tougher. Then again, Knight-Enchanter is totally batshit and I was playing on normal. Now, maybe this is my excessive strategy game and JRPG-playing speaking, but I think it would have been nice if the final dungeon had not just been the final boss. It was a totally awesome setpiece for a clash of armies but instead the whole thing contained just enough guys for a game of basketball if you let the creatures without hands play.

The epilogue was kind of eh. I wish I'd gotten at least a bit of direct input on how the Inqusition responded to the stuff that happened. And then there was a batshit sequel hook that came more-or-less out of nowhere, followed by an after-credits sequence.
So in my case the Orlesian Wardens have declared that it is time for their order to come out of the shadows and help fight humanity's true enemy. Um, the fuck are you talking about? Everyone knows who you are, you have uniforms and appear in legends and history books all over the place. And what do you even mean by true enemy? Demons? The Seekers, Inquisition, and newly-formed College Of Magi have that covered. The Qunari? You're like half a continent away from them. Tevinter Imperium? Still entirely the wrong place. Darkspawn? You've been doing that! What, is it the Daelish? The dwarves? The elven go- okay, actually I can see that last one.

Also apparently they are having a secret civil war with the other Grey Wardens, and all contact with Weisshaupt has been lost. Why? Corypheus is dead, and if he did manage to mind-control a bunch of wardens and had his influence stick around, I see no rational reason not to tell the Inquisition. I will be supremely pissed if Corypheus comes back from the dead after I specifically disabled his ability to body-jump, disintegrated him, and threw the dust into the Fade.

And really, this feels like it's an entirely unnecessary setup. There's an ongoing Qunari invasion. There are two Old Gods waiting to become Archdemons. There are any number of demons waiting in the wings. The ancient Elven God of backstabbing is in the house. The Black Divine probably has opinions regarding the Inquisition and new White Divine. There is no shortage of world-shaking threats available if need be.
Oh, and there's the bugs. It's not AC:Unity levels of bad, but the specularity is terrible for mesh settings below High so it looks like people with brown hair have literal metallic silver hair in many lighting conditions. It is bad. Loading times are unreasonably long. Also, when they have fog or dust, it not only crashes, it makes my graphics driver tell me that the application was badly designed after I updated to the latest stable release. Seriously, the message literally says it is a design-time issue.
Last edited by name_here on Mon Dec 15, 2014 5:34 am, edited 2 times in total.
DSMatticus wrote:It's not just that everything you say is stupid, but that they are Gordian knots of stupid that leave me completely bewildered as to where to even begin. After hearing you speak Alexander the Great would stab you and triumphantly declare the puzzle solved.
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Post by shau »

I'm am playing through DA:O again too and am finding a warrior build surprisingly effective. While my mage was based around utterly destroying fools with tactics and CC, my warrior just runs forward with the x button held down and wins anyway.
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

I think bioware has responded to the fully clothed sex scenes in previous games and added some stuff. I totally saw Cassandra's nipples earlier today. Her rack is also a lot larger than I envisioned...
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Post by Archmage Joda »

So, in Origins, what would be the fastest way to just steamroll through the game, hopefully with minimal micromanaging other characters?
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Post by Kaelik »

Archmage Joda wrote:So, in Origins, what would be the fastest way to just steamroll through the game, hopefully with minimal micromanaging other characters?
Get the Robot, Alister, and the female Mage, be a mage.

Set Alister to Block and Taunt, set Shale to Hit things hard, set healy mage to heal things when not at full, and wand otherwise. You get the Force Line of Spells, and Blood Magic, and the spell might and Spell Wisp thing to buff your mage power. Then get the Lightning Blizzard line. Walking Bomb?

Magic increases Spellpower, Spellpower is all you care about. Then use Spell Wisp, Spell Might, Spell Wisp, in that order to get maximum additional spell power. EDIT: And then dismiss spell Might. It isn't very good, but it is basically free spellpower onto spell wisp, which is basically free spellpower.

Basically, you walk in, Crushing Prison then Prison when that wears off any boss, Blizzard the area, and Walking Bomb Groups. Mostly just let Alister Face Tank and Shale Wail on things. Get the Force Imprison stuff on the other mage too, and then chain four straight imprisons on all bosses, so they never even fight you.
Last edited by Kaelik on Fri Dec 19, 2014 4:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Also, while I'm not fond of some of the spells she starts out with, I'd recommend the old lady over the young witch due to the fact that she gets a special self buff thingy that starts out pretty cool and later gets upgraded to ridonkulous once you acquire a special item for her.
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Don't pick up Walking Bomb unless you have tight crowd control or are playing without friendly fire. And even if you are playing it on easy, allied NPCs will still get hit. Ask me about the time I killed everyone in Redcliff...
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Post by zugschef »

The #1 stat is dodge. Get over 100 % and you're basically untouchable. The armor made by the smith is one of the best items for that.
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Post by Kaelik »

Whipstitch wrote:Also, while I'm not fond of some of the spells she starts out with, I'd recommend the old lady over the young witch due to the fact that she gets a special self buff thingy that starts out pretty cool and later gets upgraded to ridonkulous once you acquire a special item for her.
Just go get her before you level up at all. Her auto leveling up is garbage, but her chassis is way better.
Last edited by Kaelik on Fri Dec 19, 2014 12:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Post by name_here »

Apparently some people on the internet have found the cause of most of the performance issues, which is that whoever made the graphics engine is not qualified to make graphics engines and whoever designed the graphics options menu is not qualified to make graphics options menus.

On the graphics engine side, normally when rendering a scene the first step is to check all the objects in the scene and not render the ones which are behind the camera or too far away. Apparently in Inquisition too far away is an excessively high number and not rendering things behind the camera is more like the last step. Which explains why I had crashes apparently related to the sulphur mists in the northern portion of the Western Approach even after I made a point of not looking at them once I realized they seemed to be the problem.

On the options menu side, you can write things into a config file to have it not do motion blur stuff. Or you can turn it off in the options menu, and then it will apparently perform the calculations and then throw the results in the trash.
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Post by Archmage Joda »

So, on a slightly related note to previous questions on Origins, what is the best way to warrior for quick efficient playthough without being a mage PC, dual-wielding, two-handed greatsword, or sword and board?

Edit: Or, alternatively to warrioring, how about a primarily nuker mage?
Last edited by Archmage Joda on Sat Dec 20, 2014 7:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Kaelik »

Archmage Joda wrote:So, on a slightly related note to previous questions on Origins, what is the best way to warrior for quick efficient playthough without being a mage PC, dual-wielding, two-handed greatsword, or sword and board?
Uninstall.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Simplest is just emulating the setup Kaelik already described, you just usurp Alistair's spot instead of one of the mages.
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Post by Kaelik »

Whipstitch wrote:Simplest is just emulating the setup Kaelik already described, you just usurp Alistair's spot instead of one of the mages.
Except there are literally zero fucking blood mage starts in the game. I don't even know if you can make any of the NPCs blood mages. So I think you are basically just consigning yourself to garbage. Also you have to micromanage the shit out of that mage NPC, so you are basically not actually playing your character.
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The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Kaelik wrote: I don't even know if you can make any of the NPCs blood mages.
Depends on whether or not it is a second playthrough. Anything you unlock is unlocked permanently even on other playthroughs, but you cannot unlock blood mage unless you play through as a mage to the Arl of Redcliff quest. Or play Awakenings where the book to teach you forbidden magic is sold by a random merchant in Amaranthine.
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Post by Archmage Joda »

I have all the mage specializations and all but reaver warrior specializations unlocked currently. I just haven't actually made a complete playthrough of Origins because for whatever reason, I just stop feeling like playing it at some point through, hence my desire for greater speed this time, so I may actually get myself through the end before going back to a "meh" state.
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Post by shau »

Archmage Joda wrote:So, on a slightly related note to previous questions on Origins, what is the best way to warrior for quick efficient playthough without being a mage PC, dual-wielding, two-handed greatsword, or sword and board?

Edit: Or, alternatively to warrioring, how about a primarily nuker mage?
Dual wielding. The start is a little weird because dual wielding sucks in the beginning for reasons I don't understand. If you have DLC, you probably just want to drop almost everything into strength for wear Blood Dragon armor or whatever. Use the money glitch to have more cash than you are supposed to in the beginning. Try to get enough dexterity to pick a few attack skills and momentum for the attack speed, plus movement speed bonus.

When you get out of Lothering you should be able to bu the Vershaile of your Dwarven shop guy. It's pretty much the best one handed weapon in the game and you can have two if you buy one the first time you see him. Go to the Mage's circle first because you get Wynne and a bunch of stat boosts there. Having items you should not should make that content fairly trivial, although I did get my one death there after being stun-locked by fireballs.

After the Fade you should be well on your way. Get you strength up to around 43 with bonuses so you can wear heavy armor, then everything goes into dex. I am using the king's old armor because it gives health regeneration. At a certain point, daggers are more powerful than anything else, so you want to dual wield them. This is also the point where just auto-attacking becomes better than using techniques. Picking the berserker specialization makes this even more apparent

Your party should be Wynne, as a support mage, and whoever you want. Have Wynne pick up fire weapons and haste, then go for that spell that blows up enemy mages with their own mana. She comes with enough Tactics slots to make her a competent healer from the moment you get her. Another warrior guy is helpful to help take the heat off you. I generally use Alister, but I a used Oghden in the deep roads and could not tell the difference. Leiana is my chest opener who dies more frequently than the rest of the party combined, but it does not really matter, My character does over sixty percent of the part's damage.

Near as I can tell, you can just dominate the game like that. My strategy for the broodmother was just hold the X button down, and I remember that as being a a hard fight last time.
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

shau wrote: Near as I can tell, you can just dominate the game like that. My strategy for the broodmother was just hold the X button down, and I remember that as being a a hard fight last time.
Broodmother is definitely a DPS check. If you can bring on the pain, no problems, but the longer the battle lasts the more likely you will have issues. Also, it's kind of nasty because it traps any pets outside, as someone who nearly always takes animate dead and/or ranger spec, that's a real problem, you need to dismiss before going in. (and I forget if you can animate Darkspawn corpses, it's been a while since I played.

Adding a shot from Dragon Age 3, my second character is in full tier 3 crafted and I wanted to show him off. Pictured in the background: Dorian fidgeting around like an idiot and Iron Bull's award-winning man boobies (Not pictured: Fraps telling me that FPS has dropped to 4, the burns on my thighs because my computer wanted to melt in the short time it took to take this pic):
Image
EDIT: I just realized that if I hit the gym hard enough for a few months, I actually would have the right body type to cosplay The Iron Bull... All I need is a bit more definition and bulk in my upper body...
Last edited by Count Arioch the 28th on Sat Dec 20, 2014 12:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
In this moment, I am Ur-phoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my int score.
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