Companion builds and tactics

[elysium_fic]

If there has been one feature of DAO I feel I have been missing getting the most out of in the time I've been playing, it's the more challenging combat. Mostly, this hasn't been a problem because I've been doing RP playthroughs where it doesn't matter that I'm on easy mode. But even with mods that should make it possible for me to be able to play on Normal or even Hard mode, I still can't.

Part of the problem is, I think, that my computer is a bit too slow for the game. I meet the minimum specs, but there still seems to be some sort of response lag. I can throw a bomb and it will be well over a minute before it detonates. I can take aim at a TRASH mob and be attacking it for 30-60 seconds before its health bar ever drops below 100%. So it's taking a prohibitively long time for me to clear out even trash, and all the while the trash is pounding on my companions. I had to download a mod that added a bunch of elite militia at Redcliffe to have even a hope of getting through the siege with any of the town's militia alive. And that was on Normal mode.

Lag issues aside, I suspect my other problem to be that I'm not building my companions or using the tactics efficiently. Mostly, I take the "default" tactics set and tweak it a little to add things like lyrium and health potion usage.

I've decided before DA2 comes out, I want to do one final playthrough of DAO and Awakening, and I want to challenge myself a bit and do it on a harder mode. I think I will uninstall all but the most crucial mods (the ones that fix bugs and things like Advanced Tactics) to see if that helps the response lag. But I also want to get the most out of my companions and their tactics.

So, hit me. How do you have your companions built and how do you deploy them?

Comments

[scarylady]

The main change I make is to mages; the default tacs are crap. I never ever use an npc mage as a damager, always as a healer/controller. So I want my mages to have a basic healing spell + spirit healing and a bunch of controlling spells.

If you then set them to Controller, you'll find that their spell choices are ok, BUT the healing spells chosen are pants. It heals self at 50%, but allies at 25%. That's too late, imo. I change it to 50% and pick another slot to add in group heal at ally=50% also.

There's also usually room at the bottom to add a weapon enhancement like ice or fire, as Self/Any.

[elysium_fic]

Yeah, I've noticed that I rarely agree with most of the choices in the healer default set.

[scarylady]

Pure healer stats are a MASSIVE mana drain. You'll find yourself pouring mana pots down your mage as she pisses them away on unnecessary regens and rejuvs.

I find that heal + group heal is enough for virtually any encounter, which is why I use a tweaked controller rather than a healer tactic. Having half the monsters stand still is worth far more than any amount of extra healing.

[sakuratea]

I too change my mages, but mostly try to keep them from wasting mana. I change Wynne's tactics by disabling every offensive spell unless she's being attacked by a melee attack, disabling rock armor, and changing her tactics to passive. I set her to heal self with a lesser health poultice at 50%, heal allies at 50% and use group heal once anyone is at 25%. I have her use regeneration once self/ally has health of 75%. I always give her damaging spells, but I want to be the one to control when they fire.

Hmmm. I always give Leliana lots of rapid fire equipment and set her default mode to "aim" instead of "rapid fire" so she does more damage. I also set her to use arrow of slaying on the nearest visible mage. Oh, and if you want her to be and archer only, don't give her melee weapons. For some reason, she always seems to switch to them otherwise. I also have her use pinning shot when being attacked by a melee attack (not just distraction.

I set Alistair to aggressive and I set him on anyone who is attacking Wynne or Morrigan. Zev I try to make a dualist so he takes less damage. I change Morrigan around so her most deadly spells don't auto-fire, but I think with her it's so specific and also so much about what spells you like as a mage (cone of cold!) that I don't know how useful my advice would be. I also like to give most of my NPCs a point of poison so if we're in a really tight spot they can throw grenades.

In general, though, I take control of the action all the time. I'll take control of the NPC and have them use a specific attack or even just take control of them to make them run away. On hard mode, sometime running away is important =) I also set them on hold all the time, draw in a couple of enemies and have my party finish them off. Much easier than trying to deal with a bunch at once.

Take my advice for what it's worth, though. I play on the 360.

[elysium_fic]

I always give Leliana lots of rapid fire equipment and set her default mode to "aim" instead of "rapid fire" so she does more damage.

Does rapid fire stack? I was under the impression that equipment bonuses didn't stack. For instance, you can't wear two "increases monetary gains" items and get more monetary gain than you would get from a single item of that sort.

I don't micro-manage. I just don't have the attention span for it. Maybe that's why I can't play on the harder difficulties.

[sakuratea]

It might just be that the gloves from RTO stack with bows, or I maybe it's all mental, but I swear you can fire faster in "aim" with multiple rapid aim items. Stacking them seems to work in Awakenings, too. But again, it could be all mental.

[scarylady]

Leliana won't switch to melee weapons if you change her from "Default" to "Ranged". It's not enough just to have her on Archer tactics, you have to set her to Ranged, also.

[sakuratea]

she still does on my xbox, at least.

[darkrose]

What graphics setting are you playing on? There's a noticeable difference between low and medium, and I know that on my old machine, medium was pretty much unplayable because it was so slow and choppy.

I usually play on easy because I use grenades and AOE's a lot, and I don't want to have to worry about friendly fire, but I'm anal-retentive enough that I have to go in an mess with everyone's Tactics settings. I do use three mods that are really cheating: the mod that allows you to make Stamina potions in Origins, the unlimited tome mod, and the respec mod. I always respec my companions as soon as I get them, and I generally add between 4-10 extra attribute points, a skill point or two, and a couple of talent points. Especially with Alistair, Sten, and Oghren, I feel that the game default of giving them only a 10 or 11 in Cunning is ridiculous: these guys are experienced fighters, and they should be able to have at least two levels in Combat Tactics to start with.

As far as companions and tactics, it varies a lot depending on my Warden. The one constant is Alistair: I always have him as my tank. I use the Defensive set as a base, and then tweak from there, adding an item to use Cleanse Area when going up against any enemy with short-range buff, and Holy Smite on the nearest visible enemy mage.

I try to get as many tactics slots for Zev as I can, because I use him as both an archer and melee DPS. With Mira, he tends to do more archery, while she handles melee combat; it's much easier to manage her sneaking around and using poisons and grenades. I also give Zev a big boost from the tomes, so that, you know, he isn't lying like a cheap rug when he says he can pick locks. (Although I also use the Lock Bash mod in case I don't have a rogue handy right then.) I generally set him to start off using his bow, and then switching to melee once the opponent gets into range.

Leliana is exclusively ranged. I have her start off with one of the bard songs, and then rapid shot, and cycle through the archery attacks. I try to make sure her Con is high enough that she doesn't get two-shotted all the time, and to boost her Willpower enough so that she can have two sustained abilities active at once.

I use Wynne almost exclusively as a healer, and Morrigan as a damager. With Wynne, I set her to fire off Group Heal when any party member is below 50% health. I generally give her Arcane Warrior for her second specialization, but I don't take any of the spells. I also have her using lyrium potions midway through the cycle. Morrigan usually gets respecced to focus more on the Primal school. I never use her shapeshifting, and even though I make her a blood mage, I've found that the specialization requires too much micromanagement for an NPC to use effectively.

I rarely use Sten or Oghren; when I do, I mostly focus on compensating for the poor defense of the 2-handed style. I do use the Faster 2-Handed Weapon mod, which makes them marginally more useful, but not enough to compensate for their personalities. I almost never use Shale because her abilities are also kind of micromanagey, and the stomping annoys me after a while. I always have Dog, due to the Extra Dog Slot mod, but he's mostly there for RP reasons.

[elysium_fic]

What graphics setting are you playing on? There's a noticeable difference between low and medium, and I know that on my old machine, medium was pretty much unplayable because it was so slow and choppy.

It appears I had it on medium, which I could have sworn wasn't always the case. But things aren't normally choppy for me. Cutscenes play fairly smoothly at about 12 FPS, FPS during gameplay is around 30 or so. But during combat, commands just don't respond in a timely manner and mobs can take hit after hit without anything registering. I don't know why that would be.

And interestingly enough, I don't appear to have that problem in Awakening. When I tried to play Awakening the other night, mobs took damage the moment I targeted them and initiated combat, and everything responded the way it was supposed to.

[visser]

You know, I noticed Origins is choppy lately for me, too, but Awakening is smoother. I wonder if there's a memory leak that needs to be patched. =/

[elysium_fic]

I do set Alistair to defender, and he holds aggro fine for me. I usually just tweak anything that says "enemy: nearest available" to "enemy: target of controlled party member" so that he's taunting on the same mob I'm attacking.

I hadn't thought of using healing pots on the mages. The way they burn through lyrium pots is obscene. I may have to consider taking off her sustained abilities.

No one is mentioning much here that I haven't been trying to do myself. I wonder if I'm just setting the tactics commands up improperly, using the logic wrong.

The other thing that poses a problem for me is having to redo their tactics with each level up. Either I have to manually add in their new skill, or re-choose the pre-programmed tactics set and then add back in the customized touches.

[visser]

=/ I have to FORCE Wynne to heal Loghain- as in, I have to set tactics at the top of the list to target him and actually heal him if I don't want him to die. Setting her as a healer has NEVER worked after the Landsmeet. (And no, it's not a mod issue- she did that before i started using them) She also would refuse to use group heal if he was in the party, so I'd have to add that to her tactics as well.

(Granted, if I'm playing a mage, they're usually a bamf combo of spirit healer and spirit/entropy damage, so wynne sits her old ass back at camp.)

With Alistair, I have to tweak his tactics because he's a HORRIBLE tank, and my rogue is often wearing chain mail and has to stack dexterity, because she always pulls off him. Loghain? Not so much. The man is a fantastic tank, and that's not just my natural bias speaking =P When he's in combat, every single target is focused on him and my rogue can slice and stab to her heart's content.

Sten, Oghren, and Zev I set as scrappers, Lel as an archer, and Morrigan as a debilitator- sleep + nightmare= WIN

For awakening, I set Anders myself from scratch- use crushing prison on emissaries, walking bomb on elites or higher, wards, healing, etc. Otherwise, he just uses lightning and arcane bolt and seems to think that lifeward= healing. NO, ANDERS, it DOESN'T. Lazy sexy bastard.

I don't have justice tank- he's worse than Alistair. I just have Oghren stack strength and dex, slap heavy armor on him and have him activate threaten. He holds aggro pretty damn well. Sigrun is defaulted to scrapper, and Nate is an archer (thought darkspawn end up regretting trying to engage him in melee combat)

Velanna, just set her to ranged damager. Her tactics seemed to work decently enough for me.

[lemontwisted]

For me, it was the opposite with Alistair and Loghain.

I've never had any problems with Alistair as a tank, since getting him so early meant I was able to build him up the way that worked for me: I go strength to 42 for the heaviest plate and then concentrate mostly on dex for avoidance, with just enough cunning for tactics, and have him always running shield wall and threaten. I also set him to use taunt liberally. His personal damage output was not so hot, but he was a beast at soaking it up.

Loghain, on the other hand, comes pretty late, and so I didn't have much wiggle room to play with his build. (The playthrough where I spared him was early on, when I wasn't using many mods yet, and at the time I didn't know about the one that lets you respec your companions.) As a result, while he had no problems holding threat, he died at least once or twice on most fights even with Morrigan keeping an eye on him for heals.

I think the key thing I was missing with Loghain was dex. If I remember right, he had mostly strength and con by default, and I've found stacking con to be almost useless. Nowadays, I even stack Sten and Oghren with a good amount of dex, and I've found it ups their survivability quite a bit.

[elysium_fic]

LOL I'm cracking up at the idea of Wynne's dislike of Loghain being built into her AI.

[zute]

I think I've seen mods to disable certain graphic things. They might help some.

I love advanced tactics and I use it a lot. I got so I found the combat was really unchallenging, even on nightmare mode for most fights. I always went heavily cunning for my rogues and used that one ability that lets cunning stand for dexterity... lethality.

Archery is crap in DAO but great in Awakening, so I rarely play with Leliana, especially if my PC is a rogue. I like the sleep/horror combination. Force field is extremely useful when someone has something like stinging swarm and death hex on them and you can't heal them. Just stick them in a force field until the death hex wears off.

I never remember to use Alistair's templar abilities. Sometimes I put them in advanced tactics though. I always start healing at 50% and if heal isn't up, then I use group heal if 2 or more players need a heal and they're below 75%. It's kind of cautious but better that than have an unpleasant splat. It's all in my tactics setup.

Usually I use Alistair, PC, Wynne and Zevran as a team and ignore everyone else. Dagger rogues can do wonderful damage if you spec them correctly. There were some guides to builds I read at one point, I'm sure they're still around.

[zute]

I forgot to mention, I have a mod so I can respec characters. So if I don't like their build, I start over and allocate points and abilities to suit myself.

I'm not found of two-handed fighting at all. So I either respec them or use someone else.

I like Justice as a tank. Maybe because I respec him, I don't remember.

[visser]

DA Mutator! I can't LIVE with this mod! Turns off graphics of all sustained auras and enchants, and lowers the AOE graphics.

I couldn't play above Low settings until i got DA Mutator <3333

http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=166

[elysium_fic]

I like Advanced Tactics, too. It's one of my must-have mods. But then, I also use Mutator to unlock all tactics spots off the bat, which is cheating, but I just don't see how people function with four tactics spots.

I guess I just don't know the logic to get the most out of the tactics commands, such as choosing the right time to use a sleep/horror combo, or Alistair's templar abilities.

I'm not sure if it's my response lag or a problem with the way I have my commands written, but I find when I try to create a command to get Zevran to automatically apply his poisons, he burns through them too quickly (I think he's using them again before they wear off?) and also there's this weird thing at the end of combat where he keeps giving the acknowledgment for going into stealth repeatedly but takes a minute or two to actually GO into stealth.

It's all very weird. I wish DA had an only interface like WoW does where you can display your builds, so I could see the exact way other people construct their tactics commands. Maybe I'm using the logic improperly or something.

[seven_corbies]

In DA, I fail at rogue and my. Mage skills are dire. So I always end up playing warriors. The sad part is that I like to hack and slash, so my character ends up as a spare Alistair. His gear I fuss over as much as my PC's. I usually go Ali: defender/defensive, zev: spec him duelist and get cautious/ defensive going (I have a lock bash mod), wynne: healer/ ranged so she's not wanderring iinto combat.

The only problem I run into is having a computer so old and junky that I have to play with the dev console enabled. Any more then four enemies on screen at a time and I have to use the killallhostiles cheat or my system crashes.

[elysium_fic]

LOL I'm the opposite. I can play dual wield or archery rogues just fine (I kinda prefer archery because it lets me see the fight from a distance, and usually I set the NPCs tactics to target my target. So I can hang back, survey the scene, choose a mob and everyone will jump on it.

I've never been able to make the defensive stance work for me. It invariably results in the NPCs just standing there while I get beat on. So I always have my meleers set to aggressive and my archers and mages set to ranged. But of course, that means my meleers keep charging in and setting off traps before I can get to them.

I am now going to make myself forget that there's a killallhostiles command.

[sakuratea]

I have never played through as a warrior. I feel like the rogue has all the best parts of the warrior *and* can unlock chests *and* steal. And mages are fun because of the crazy variety of spells. I would probably like warrior better if I played on the PC and had lock bash mod.

I feel like the only really useful skill warriors bring to the table is Taunt/Threaten early on and Holy Smite after level 15.

I actually don't bring warriors most of the time when I play Awakenings, the rogue and mage skills there are so incredibly bad-ass. It's always kind of a shock to go from Awakenings back to Origins because of that.

I thought of more stuff...

[zute]

It's been awhile since I've played.

I have everyone prioritize killing mages first, then archers (especially in Awakenings). Then they target whatever Alistair is targeting.

Alistair uses taunt anytime someone else is getting attacked. Warcry whenever it's up.

I think I always manually controlled stuff like sleep/horror. Generally that works best for the AOE stuff. I usually avoid most of the AOE spells if they affect friendly targets. Or at least, I don't let the AI control them, because it's idiotic about how it does them.

I think the tactics are done in order so if it's earlier in the list it gets priority.

[jannifer]

One tip I haven't seen is to Pause frequently during combat on the higher levels. Pause is your friend. It helps just to stop and take a look at the field in case something needs tweaking or someone needs an emergency heal or something similar.

All my companions' tactics are set to Ranged or Default. I don't use Aggressive because they go running through traps or Defensive because they only attack what's attacking them. Alistair, Sten and Oghren have strength boosted until they can wear the best massive armor with points in constitution and dexterity with cunning left at 16. Zevran's strength is boosted until he can wield dragonbone swords. Leliana's dexterity is boosted so that she can use higher level bows. She's killer with Marjolaine's Recurve later in the game. Wynne and Morrigan get just enough constitution that they don't get one-shotted, and everything else in magic and wisdom. I seldom have constitution over 20-23 points for rogues and 18 for mages while I set warriors higher with 27-30.

Everyone's first tactic is to use highest (rogues/warriors) or lowest (mages) health poultices when health is <=50%. Mages may Drain Health at <=75% health. Healers are set to heal when allies' health is <50%. Dog guards the mages if my PC is a warrior or the PC if s/he is a rogue. In as far as possible, I focus my party's attention on mages first; Templar abilities are invaluable here.

There are also keyboard related things I do. I set the quick slots up in the same order every playthrough so that I don't have to look down to see which button to press. I've remapped my keyboard a bit so that the most commonly used keys are all under my left hand. Since I always use the mouse to move, I can remap the W, A, S and D keys.

As for mods, most of mine are art things or tweaks/fixes, but I do use Dog as a Fifth Companion and a tweak which keeps my people from taking friendly fire at the higher difficulty settings. (Yes, I know, but I like to think that my mages have more control than that, and my people have more sense.)