Agree. Hence I am just give impressions (not judgement of the game) as I progress.
Dragon Age: Inquisition - Nov. 18
- Thread starter wshowers
- Start date
Playing again is not going to be a problem. The Classes are vastly different. Helps that I play as little as possible with the other classes. The little I have played with Mage has been fun, and Mage will be my next class.
Guess than that I shouldn't feel bad, 3 hours in & still feel I have much to learned.....
What is worse is that you can not choose you party members specialization. I was a little pissed at that.
I am wondering though, I f I learn the other 2 specializations will I get the 2 extra skill points again ? It says on one of those cards in the loading screen that learning more than one is beneficial.
Think I'm at 100 hours at this point.
Another tip, two Mages that specialize in different skills is killer. I have Vivienne handling barriers and protection, while Solas provides the offense. They kinda feed off each other. Also, I've been using the Tac mode much more. Position my Mages farther back from the fight while my tank gets all the attention. Even when surrounded by 4-5 enemies Cassandra doesn't take much, if any damage. My archery knocks enemies down giving her breathing room. But i do recommend two Mages for particular situations.
Another tip, two Mages that specialize in different skills is killer. I have Vivienne handling barriers and protection, while Solas provides the offense. They kinda feed off each other. Also, I've been using the Tac mode much more. Position my Mages farther back from the fight while my tank gets all the attention. Even when surrounded by 4-5 enemies Cassandra doesn't take much, if any damage. My archery knocks enemies down giving her breathing room. But i do recommend two Mages for particular situations.
Yep, 2 mages and 1 warrior is fookin awesome. I played for 2 hours with that party set up and DAMN! I was kicking ass. Cassandra never took damage. to illustrate how effective it is, I took on 2 giants, 2 wyverns and a couple of human enemies with 3 party members on less than 2 bars of health( no health potions) and we all survived while Cassandra only lost like 30% health
However, I still got my ass kicked by a dragon
I've been using 2 warriors (Blackwall, me), 1 rogue (Sera), 1 mage (Vivienne) most of the time. It's gotten me a bunch of dragons down with the main potion user being me as the reaver specialisation eats up my health and I don't take any caution at all.
I've got very little to do in the war room now, though still a fair chunk left to do in zones but I think I should get around to moving the story on now, I'm nearing level 19 I think and my current story quest is recommended for like 12-15 if I recall, so I imagine I'm gonna steamroll through that one.
I've got very little to do in the war room now, though still a fair chunk left to do in zones but I think I should get around to moving the story on now, I'm nearing level 19 I think and my current story quest is recommended for like 12-15 if I recall, so I imagine I'm gonna steamroll through that one.
Yep, 2 mages and 1 warrior is fookin awesome. I played for 2 hours with that party set up and DAMN! I was kicking ass. Cassandra never took damage. to illustrate how effective it is, I took on 2 giants, 2 wyverns and a couple of human enemies with 3 party members on less than 2 bars of health( no health potions) and we all survived while Cassandra only lost like 30% health
However, I still got my ass kicked by a dragon
Hell yea man. It's very useful against powerful enemies. My current combat tactics are letting cassandra engage first, then the mages will start their work. I go invisible and sneak off to the side, start taking out any archers I can find. It's so effective.
Dragons require a great amount of skill. I'm thankful I have the entire Archery tree filled. Plus with Viv using all the Spirit abilities, her reviving and barriers are great. But I think two tanks would be best against a dragon with a mage that specializes in healing. I still haven't beaten my first Dragon, those f***ers are tough lol
What difficulty you on ? I am on hard.
I think to fight Dragons you need to set up specifically for it. So high heat resistant armour and accessories. Weapons that deal more damage to dragons(like the Dragon Slayer rune)..etc. Two warriors might better, but not Iron Bull. Not sure why but he loses health quick, two Cassandra's would be ideal.
How are you configuring the Mages in terms of defending and tactics? Might try it out. Any Mages and builds recommended?
Bug Report: In the Forbidden Oasis, there is is a quest called, What It's Worth, where you have to find a Ring that belongs to a miner that's just wandering the desert. Once you clear the cave where her Ring is(this is actually kinda tough, recommend two tanks for this one) and actually get the Ring, she just disappears from the game. I'm not sure if this is consistent, but basically your quest marker will tell you shes at a particular location when she's not. To fix this, fast travel from the Oasis completely then go back, fixed the glitch for me.
This will save you so much time jumping on cliffs trying to find this bitch.
This will save you so much time jumping on cliffs trying to find this bitch.
I have one mage with pretty much all spirit with barrier and that revive skill preferred. The other one( have not fully re-speced him) has a few Spirit but mostly offensive skills, barrier is the only preferred skill.
I set both mages to defend my warrior. She has a lot of guard building skills and taunting skills. You may want to do something different though, with you being a mage and the AI being a rogue(right?). I would likely be inclined to set the rogue to defend your other mage.
I had no issue with that quest.
I like your strategy. Similar to mine. I have my mages protect the my tank(Cassandra). As an archer, I pick enemies off in the distance. Enemy archers usually go down with hit actually so that's nothing.
Lucky you. That quest has been giving people issues. I google'd it after I finished it and it seemed that was the right thing to do. It's an annoyance, so I'm posting so hopefully others don't make the same mistake I did lol
Question for those of you using the 2 mage strategy: do you find that the mage casting barrier does a good job of it? Is the AI pretty competent at that? The reason I ask is, I'm a mage, so I'm handling the barriers, and I find it takes a bit of skill to time it well, so that you cover the whole party rather than just individual members. I'd like to be the attack mage, but I don't want to leave barrier in the hands of an AI mage who casts it incompetently.
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I think so, but then I have not been a mage in combat, so perhaps my perception of its usage is wrong. What I will say is that they seem to be doing a damn find job on my warrior, and to me that is most important.
I have found that keeping the preferred moves to a minimum and with no offensive skills preferred seems best. For example, my spirit mage only has barrier and that revive skill set to preferred and she seems to be doing a bang up job. When you make a lot of moves, or offensive moves preferred then they can become a bit spotty with the barriers application. At least from my experience.
Just give it a whirl and see how it goes. Must be a a few rifts somewhere that you can experiment with ?
I think so, but then I have not been a mage in combat, so perhaps my perception of its usage is wrong. What I will say is that they seem to be doing a damn find job on my warrior, and to me that is most important.
I have found that keeping the preferred moves to a minimum and with no offensive skills preferred seems best. For example, my spirit mage only has barrier and that revive skill set to preferred and she seems to be doing a bang up job. When you make a lot of moves, or offensive moves preferred then they can become a bit spotty with the barriers application. At least from my experience.
Just give it a whirl and see how it goes. Must be a a few rifts somewhere that you can experiment with ?
Thanks, menace. Yeah, I could give it a test run. I would have two warriors (Iron Bull, Cassandra) and two mages. I'd need to switch out Sera, but that's okay; I'd like to hear banter from someone new.
It would be good if the AI mage could cast his barrier to cover the two warriors. Covering one warrior doesn't require any sense of timing or placement, but covering two would. I like to cast barrier at the beginning of a fight, before everyone disperses, so that I can cover the whole party, but I assume that would be out. I could always throw an occasional barrier myself, to supplement.
I agree about using the "preferred" setting sparingly. I would have barrier as a preferred skill in an AI mage, but that's about it. Granted, I'm playing on normal difficulty, so none of this is "do or die" for me. I just like to win battles decisively, using the minimum number of potions.
I went back and looked at some of the old preview videos in the first DA:I thread and I think alot of content was cut. A good bit of what was shown in a few of these videos specifically in Crestwood doesn't show up in the game at all.
Yeah, you will have to use barrier yourself here and there. Having the spirit mage along side you simply frees you up to be more offensive in nature rather than party buffer. With 2 warriors I would set the AI mage to defend Cassandra, since she seems more like a tank to me -at least in my game, then set Iron Bull to defend Cassandra too. I would think that will keep your 2 warriors in close proximity so the barrier is more likely to get them both.
Ah, good idea, setting the mage to defend 1 warrior while having the 2nd warrior defend the first.
The AI has been doing well on my end. Barriers are usually cast immediately following contact. Since I'm a rogue archer, I usually use flanking and stealth, because who ever attacks first, usually has all the enemies focus on them.
But like Menace said, one mage to handle protection and another to handle offense with just the barrier skill. I've been doing this for a while and Boss fights have been much easier. Tac mode is key for this, because you may need to re-position your mages a bit farther from the action to prevent them from being targeted.
