Dragon Age: Origins. Lets talk tactics!

[Eclectic Dreck]

If you want your compainions to focus their abilities, simply set them to attack the same target as the PC. I will tell you that often, this is not the best route to take.

My own strategy is generally to pair my tank up against the deadlest enemy I can find and attempt to drag as many foes to him as possible. The healer can thus focus on healing the guy who is going to take the least damage and the highest bonus health with healing percentage. The remainder of my party (the DPS characters) focus on taking out the secondary members of the opposing group. If your tank is properly holding the enemies and suitably equipped, you'll find few enemies that really prove a challenge. Obviously you have problems if you try to send your tank toe to toe with a few of the deadliest enemies in the game but I'm sure you can develop tricks of your own to defeat such monsters.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I thoroughly disagree about Rogues. On single targets they can outdps mages. I say yes, you say no, there's not much to argue about here.

Also, I'm not sure what game you're playing, but Taunt only works some of the time, and only for short periods, at least in my experience, so it barely holds any aggro. Enemies get out of a Earthquake + Blizzard combo all the time, and even if they don't, the combo does hardly any damage (with over 60 spellpower it ticks for some 8-10 damage). And I'm not sure what Revenants you fought, but I mostly got "Immune", "Resist" and less than 20 damage numbers when trying to hit them with offensive spells.

I'm guessing you're playing on "Easy"?

no im playing on nightmare taunt lasts long enough to put up blizzard and earthqauke aka never get out aoes then you can put up inferno and tempest for perfect storm and most likely that will kill anything while you finish off the stragglers. and mobs really CANT get out of the earthqauke blizzard combo. they KD and slow them constantly and if they are resisting the KD you can cone of cold them as they get close to the edge and they will have to sit in it for even longer. along with stone fist and such that can push them back into it or grease if you really get desperate. your casters can handle anything that gets out and walks over to them and rogues never outdps a mage as far as crowds come they are the highest dps in the game. rogues are the steadiest dps in the game having high accuracy means they can sit behind and backstab forever but you wont have any chance of outdpsing a mage who has his gear setup right. you can make a lightning bolt hit for about 80-100 if you are geared correctly to benefit it(and thats at level 14+. revenants are only so resistant to mental affects and frost damage. you can easily burst him down with lightning arcane bolt and stone fist each of those does 60-100 damage which coming from 3 mages will burst him down in no time.[/quote]

At the end of my first game, my rogue PC was accountable for more than 50% of the partie's damage and 25% came from alistair. Morrigan's "letha" spells were useful certainly and helped swing the battles more than once, but I mostly kept her around for crowd control. Those top tier aoe spells are actually fairly terrible. Even with all three stacked atop one another, people still manage to escape and the per tic damage is generally only about 30 - 40. If you bear in mind that this is at the cost of most of your mage's mana pool, it's fairly unappealing. Worse still, only any level beyond easy your party members will not only happily blunder into the deathtrap, they'll often take significantly more damage than the enemies (because only a handful of items actually deliver a significant amount of resistances to magical damage).

 

[geldonyetich]

I love the Tactics system. I so hate micromanagement in RPGs. E.g. "you're about to die, so drink your potion, stupid" or "that spell or skill is a no brainer, so use it, stupid." It was a very good thing to borrow from FFXII.

As for the original poster's requesting how to get their party members to focus on one target at a time in order to concentrate firepower, I recommend setting them to focus on "enemy:lowest health" (or something like that). This will get them to focus on killing the most injured enemy, which should rapidly eliminate the number still standing. Although, there is a potential hazard that they'll all run off and attack something far away which is badly injured.

Personally, I play a Mage who is fairly heavy focused on healing and crowd control, so telling them to focus on my target just won't work.

I know. The tactics menu is shit. I tell my healer to heal if anyone gets below 50% health and what does the ***** do? Charges in and fights and does not even heal!

This never happens to me (unless my healer is out of mana). I'm guessing it's a priority problem. The list evaluates from top to bottom, so any thing you put on the list only happens if things above it absolutely can not be done. So, for example, if you've got a "heal everyone who gets below 50% health" command below the "attack nearest target" command, the healer will be too busy attacking the nearest target to ever get around to healing anyone.

 

[Grosvenor]

Hi Everyone,

This is all very interesting and useful but I don't get the fasination about having the best combination of characters, the best spell combos etc.

Chrissyluky asks: "and dog is an awful party member i dont know why you would use him theres a reason everybody ditches him for sten or pretty much anyone else."

Well, I use the dog. Not because he's the best. Because it's a RPG game and I'm following through with the actions I've taken along the way. I helped heal the dog, I like the dog - so I use him. Ok, I may get totally stuffed later on in the game, it certainly sounds like it gets harder later on.

But what's the point of having a RPG game with a wealth of characters, spells, potions and tatics if everyone starts using the same charcters and spells. No doubt someone will be asking which attributes should I put my level up points in next. Then even everyones playing character will be more or less the same as well.

I like having flawed characters, it's what makes the game more interesting and challenging. It makes it a more personal game, playing a unique character.

I'm not having a go at this thread per say. It just seems you've forgotten what a RPG is.
Why do Bioware and similar companies go through all the hard work of creating such a versitle gaming world? So you can play the game your way, making a connection with your character, etc.

I think Jandau has it about right: "Don't get me wrong, if it works for you, great! It doesn't for me, but I've found other combos that I like better. That's the great thing about DA:O - there isn't one perfect way to set it up, there are tons of options that you can use. Well, except Archers. Archers suck. However, they are getting patched soon, so that'll probably change."

May I just say, after my paragraphs of rantting, that the information on tatics is very useful and I'll certainly be using some of the suggestions. Thanks

 

[atol]

What difficulty are you guys playing on? I'm on hard and it's not too bad. I can't see myself playing too well on nightmare, but I think hard is the perfect difficulty for me. I haven't played normal, but I'd assume it'd be a cakewalk.

Also, though it may not logically seem it, dog is a good ally. His strength is about equal to a well equipped two-hander. If you've got all the best gear for every slot for a regular NPC, they'd outperform dog. Otherwise, stick with dog if you want a well-rounded melee tank/dps.

 

[TPiddy]

I'm playing on normal and I was getting my ass kicked a lot until I rescued the Mage's tower. I run with Wynne as a Healer, Alistair as a Sword + Shield Templar, and Shale as the fucking badass that he is.

I'm an elven mage with mostly natural magic. I typically start a battle by casting Cone of Cold on a group of enemies and then Lightning Shocking the same group. I have Petrify for harder foes. Since giving Alistair the Blood Dragon Armor and Starfang he is almost as good as Shale in terms of being a tank.

We did get bested by a Revenant recently, but me dying is a rarity now as most of my spells are for crowd control. I think we'll be even better once I finish Wynne's Regret.

 

[gRiM_rEaPeRsco]

What difficulty ypu playing it on? i tried normal but i couldnt get past the bandits outside of the 1st town

 

[jakegold1472]

best setup (for me anyway)

Warden: Dual-Weild Rogue/Assassin/Duelist

Lelina: Archer/Bard/Ranger

Wynne: Spirit Healer/Blood Mage (uses Lel's summons for Blood magic)

Alistair: (tank) Templar/Champion (him plus ranger lel and wynne = three support chars)

OPTIONAL Ogren w/ templar spec instead of Al as dwarf magic resistance is better w/ templar

NOTE: you may replace warden w/ Zevran and use your Char as any of the other three roles.

I prefer two rogues my warden as a stealth dex=cun DW and Lel as a lock-picking dex rogue.

 

[WolfThomas]

I played an Arcane Warrior (it was really broken) as the main tank and mage (but he had good melee damage too), with Leliana as a DPS Archer Bard/Ranger with her blight wolf providing additional DPS and her bard songs giving buffs, Wynne was an Spirit Healer keeping them all alive and damage mage (mainly ice, glyphs and the spirit damage/draining class) and I respeced Alistair (mod) into a DPS dual weapons. I played that group out of roleplaying necessity too, as I was good.

I spent most of the time flipping through my mages, I liked to use cone of cold to freeze enemies then spells and criticals to shatter them. Kept two hastes running, miasma and bunch of other things. Mana regen was a ***** for my main PC but by the end of the game he had enough items to not only sustain countless buffs but to bring it back quickly.

My team in Awakening was retardedly powerful, Anders was a spirit healer/blood mage and my main character had the battle mage training, he'd haste a round the map surrounded by a swirling hurricane of elemental damage, he wouldn't even need to hit them.

Even now and then I'd like to kite all the enemies, use storm of the century, glyph of repulsion a narrow passageway and flee to safety. It was very bitchy.

 

[LittleBlondeGoth]

I'll state here at the start that I played DA:O on a PlayStation rather than a PC, but I'm one of those OCD people who micro-manage fights regardless. This is what I did:

My best / favourite / canon runthrough of the game was where I was a melee specced Rogue. Dual wield, Duelist and Assassin skillsets. I never found Leliana's archery to be all that good apart from in one or two specialised fights where getting too close was a bad idea. Rogue suits my personal playstyle the best, and it means I always have someone in my party to unlock chests and have decent coercion.

Alistair was my tank and comedy sidekick. It's what he's set up for, you get him right at the start, so it just seemed a logical choice. Though I think there's mods for the PC where you can reset everyone's skills, I never had that option. Get him into massive armour as quickly as possible by piling points into STR, then I went with a mix of DEX and CON for him.

The last two spots tended to go to Wynne and Morrigan, one mage for heals and buffs, the other specced for all-out damage. Having said this, I gave both of them Paralysis, and I think both had Crushing Prison as well. One also had Mass Paralysis. Crowd control was invaluable to me - it allowed me to command the more complex fights a lot better and limit the amount of incoming damage to my team.

No-one else really got much of a look in. Dog was useless. Leilana only handy on occasion. Zev wasn't bad, but I already had the DW DPS spot, and the other tanks just weren't Alistair.

Tactics wise, I set everyone to attack Alistairs' target, so the whole party concentrated on one mob at a time. General fights, I'd let him pick his own targets, and manually adjust if there was a magic user or mini boss that needed taking out first. My mages would demolish whatever he was fighting, and I'd often manually control my rogue, getting her to take out any extra threats.

But as people have already said, there is no one 'proper way' to set up your builds. Playstyles vary - my other half loves playing a sword and board tank, but I just don't have the patience for it. I did find though, that after a few hours playing, I leanred what spells were really handy and that I ought to have gone for from the start (back to that crowd control doohickey).

Also, Walking Bomb is the most fun ever.

 

[Weaver]

So, anyone else notice this thread is from 2009?

 

[Kaim89]

For normal fights I used Alistair as tank, myself as melee rogue, Morrigan for healing and offdps, and the other mage I can't recall her name.

For dragon/demon encounters: Alistair tanking, me ranged dps, Cleric girl for healing, and Zevran for ranged dps. Always worked well to keep everyone on range.