Dragon Age tips?

[RyanPaulShaffer]

If anyone was a Mage on their playthrough, which specialization did you get first?

Blood Mage

Blood Mage = Game Over

 

[sourceninja]

I almost forgot, traps become a cakewalk if you have stealth. Just stealth, tell your party to hold back, and walk though the area disarming ever trap as you go. Then go back to your party and engage the bad guys. Helps in those areas that are filled with horrible traps.

 

[DefDC]

I almost forgot, traps become a cakewalk if you have stealth. Just stealth, tell your party to hold back, and walk though the area disarming ever trap as you go. Then go back to your party and engage the bad guys. Helps in those areas that are filled with horrible traps.

I've finished the tower, castle, elves, and now the dwarves... I've yet to encounter any traps, even when triggered that were no more than an extremely trivial nusiences. I've gone almost entirely without a rogue due to everyone saying chests are filled with junk and traps being a non-issue, even when triggered.

Pressure plates only seem to be in areas with no combat. When not in combat, the damage heals almost instantly.

I guess if you didn't have a healer in your party, the in-combat traps might cost you a light potion, but traps seem extremely nerfed to me....

 

[katank]

Well traps can quickly add up.

Sure, they're usually not insta-frags but can still close to kill one of your squishies (mage or rogue) and thus make them far more vulnerable to enemy burst damage afterwards.

Remember, not only can you disable their traps, you can also set your own. Claw traps might be the most useful for disabling bosses. Grease traps can also dovetail nicely with even a low level fire spell to create grease fire.

Stealth also allows you to throw bombs to damage clustered foes and soften them up before engaging. Remember that the enemies can't see you and thus usually will just sit around getting smacked.

Besides, stepping away from the min-max perspective, stealth allows you to do so many rogue types of tasks. It also helps with your stealing, for example.

 

[RyanPaulShaffer]

Well traps can quickly add up.

Sure, they're usually not insta-frags but can still close to kill one of your squishies (mage or rogue) and thus make them far more vulnerable to enemy burst damage afterwards.

Remember, not only can you disable their traps, you can also set your own. Claw traps might be the most useful for disabling bosses. Grease traps can also dovetail nicely with even a low level fire spell to create grease fire.

Stealth also allows you to throw bombs to damage clustered foes and soften them up before engaging. Remember that the enemies can't see you and thus usually will just sit around getting smacked.

Besides, stepping away from the min-max perspective, stealth allows you to do so many rogue types of tasks. It also helps with your stealing, for example.

Why fumble around with all of that when you can just take three mages and keep all of the enemies completely paralyzed while you launch endless AOE spells at them and keep your party at 100% health?

 

[sourceninja]

Why fumble around with all of that when you can just take three mages and keep all of the enemies completely paralyzed while you launch endless AOE spells at them and keep your party at 100% health?

Maybe for roleplaying purposes. I like to play my characters and not really min/max. When I played my rogue I decided to do it without any mages (my character hated mages). It was no where near as easy as my mage character, although with careful use of stealth, traps, and poison/bombs I was able to pull it off on hard difficulty without too much of an issue.

Contrast that to my wife who found the game boring because she played it on the xbox and just had 3 mages AOE without any friendly fire.

 

[RyanPaulShaffer]

Maybe for roleplaying purposes. I like to play my characters and not really min/max. When I played my rogue I decided to do it without any mages (my character hated mages). It was no where near as easy as my mage character, although with careful use of stealth, traps, and poison/bombs I was able to pull it off on hard difficulty without too much of an issue.

Contrast that to my wife who found the game boring because she played it on the xbox and just had 3 mages AOE without any friendly fire.

Fair enough. To each their own.

 

[sourceninja]

I've finished the tower, castle, elves, and now the dwarves... I've yet to encounter any traps, even when triggered that were no more than an extremely trivial nusiences. I've gone almost entirely without a rogue due to everyone saying chests are filled with junk and traps being a non-issue, even when triggered.

Pressure plates only seem to be in areas with no combat. When not in combat, the damage heals almost instantly.

I guess if you didn't have a healer in your party, the in-combat traps might cost you a light potion, but traps seem extremely nerfed to me....

I can think of two areas where the traps can cause a quick death on hard.

Both of them are in the elf area. Both of them are firetraps that reset over and over again. So as your party fights it keeps setting off these fireballs that take a good chunk of life out and knock everyone down.

 

[snikt]

I noticed when mages fire, they rarely miss. As long as their target is in line of sight they almost always hit unless the target is behind something, like a ballista. When you're not missing 99% of your shots, there's no challenge in the game.

 

[DefDC]

I can think of two areas where the traps can cause a quick death on hard.

Both of them are in the elf area. Both of them are firetraps that reset over and over again. So as your party fights it keeps setting off these fireballs that take a good chunk of life out and knock everyone down.

Good point. I'm playing on normal, and I've only encountered small handful of traps that dealt anything that wasn't completely negligible damage. Upping the difficulty probably makes them a more viable risk.

However, I have to say, I miss the BG days of having a Rogue there for reasons other than DPS. I loved detecting secret doors and passages, and dealing with traps that were a real threat.

To avoid the non-combat, insta-regen from trap damage, I thought it would make sense that traps dealt injuries, rather than damage. At least early in the game, it would make them much more threatening...

 

[ProfJohn]

Blizzard + Inferno + Tempest

Peak around a corner and launch all three and watch everyone die. Cheezy, but effective.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

I actually prefer Paralyze Rune + Repulsor Rune + Inferno. Non-line of sight high power paralysis, and since 1.02 longer duration then the hold from blizzard.

Also, remember that the caster doesn't need to be able to see the target for any of these. This means that in a lot of situations, a stealth rogue can open the door and act as a spotter for your mage to perform a strategic launch.

To avoid the non-combat, insta-regen from trap damage, I thought it would make sense that traps dealt injuries, rather than damage. At least early in the game, it would make them much more threatening...

Some of the more powerful traps do, as I discovered when half my party ended up with 3 different injuries without falling in combot.

 

[katank]

Why fumble around with all of that when you can just take three mages and keep all of the enemies completely paralyzed while you launch endless AOE spells at them and keep your party at 100% health?

Frankly it feels boring and repetitive. I've mucked around w/ 3 mages before and it pretty much feels like you drop at least one difficulty level.

Heck, as AW/BM, I barely even get scratched by my lonesome. The funny thing is that he ends up sitting out most fights for the most part as blood wound+SoC kills absolutely everything.

I find rogues to be far more entertaining and dynamic an experience. Besides, you actually get better DPS against single targets like bosses. Frankly, I find most of the hardest fights are against single targets (this maybe biased by 3 mages runthru). You could roll w/ 2 mages+2 rogues for ultimate glass cannon setup w/ decent CC, AoE+single target DPS. Hitting traps would hurt though as you're all squishy.

 

[katank]

Blizzard + Inferno + Tempest

Peak around a corner and launch all three and watch everyone die. Cheezy, but effective.

Inferno and Blizzard actually cancel out some of each other's effects.

Best combo might be blood wound (for reliable lockdown) + blizzard (additional freeze) + tempest + virulent walking bomb (another damage source). Perfectly achievable w/ 3 mages. Consider possible upgrade to storm of century for complete and utter overkill.

You can further use ward of repulsion to keep them bottled up behind a chokepoint if by some miracle they resist all of the holding effects.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

Inferno and Blizzard actually cancel out some of each other's effects.

Best combo might be blood wound (for reliable lockdown) + blizzard (additional freeze) + tempest + virulent walking bomb (another damage source). Perfectly achievable w/ 3 mages. Consider possible upgrade to storm of century for complete and utter overkill.

You can further use ward of repulsion to keep them bottled up behind a chokepoint if by some miracle they resist all of the holding effects.

Does blood wound require Line of Sight? The main advantage of these combo types is that they can be dropped without LoS, so you can nail enemies around corners, behind closed doors, ect, where they get no chance to react at all.

 

[katank]

Blood wound goes require LOS. In this case, cast it after blizzard and they come running into view (or at least try). It has a better guarantee of locking down your targets and also provides some additional damage.

Example: Morrigan casts blizzard on a door, I wait w/ blood magic enabled, Wynne earthquakes. I then blood wound if they come thru, Morrigan casts tempest, Wynne can throw down a glyph of repulsion to bounce them back into the middle of the storm. Any elites who pass physical resist check for blood wound can be locked down w/ a crushing prison (they usually have weak mental resist). Virulent walking bomb or death cloud can be a further source of damage.

No regular enemies can survive such an ordeal. Any elites you face will be severely weakened and probably outnumbered.

However, this method feels boring in that most of the time, I'm waiting out the duration of the crazy combo elemental storm after all da enemies are dead to be able to walk my party through.

 

[RyanPaulShaffer]

Casting spells out of LOS sounds like a bug/exploit that BioWare will probably fix in a future patch. It seems like an incredibly OP exploit.

 

[katank]

Well, for AoE's, u can lock onto doors as valid casting target. That's probly a design feature.

These things r incredibly predictable. In most dungeon crawls, u can tell from da minimap that there's probly a buncha dudes waiting for u inside. A quick AoE will just about wipe them out.

This isn't to say that it's not boring to do ad nauseaum. Sometimes, it's just more fun to charge in and see if u can come out OK on the other side.

 

[RyanPaulShaffer]

I'm talking about being able to cast AOEs into rooms that you can't see because they are behind closed doors. That is cheesy and seems like an exploit, but whatever.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

It's not always possible though. You can't target in fog of war, so if there is a bug, it's in the fogging.

 

[pontifex]

I got to my camp today but there was no enchanter there.

Also, how do you go back to your camp once you leave it and go to another area?

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

I got to my camp today but there was no enchanter there.

Also, how do you go back to your camp once you leave it and go to another area?

Upper right hand corner of the world map is the camp icon. Click on it.

Was the merchant there? You didn't kill them or anything while in the first real town?

 

[zerocool84]

Blood Mage

Blood Mage = Game Over

Good to know thanks.

 

[pontifex]

Upper right hand corner of the world map is the camp icon. Click on it.

Was the merchant there? You didn't kill them or anything while in the first real town?

When I go to the map it only shows the map of the town I am in. No way to get back to the camp. I only saw the camp option when I was in like a world map.

What merchant? In Lothering? There was a merchant at the inn and then there was a "merchant" outside the inn hassling a priest. He ended up leaving because of the dialog options I chose. Is he the merchant I need?

 

[ProfJohn]

I'm talking about being able to cast AOEs into rooms that you can't see because they are behind closed doors. That is cheesy and seems like an exploit, but whatever.

It usually does not allow you to see behind closed door so you can't exploit it that way.

But you can do the following:
with a high survival skill all the baddies show up as little red dots on the screen.

So you walk up but stay out of their site, behind corners usually and then launch the spell into the middle of them. Blizzard has a real long launch range too so it is the easiest to get off.