Dragon Age 2

[Vympel]

What I liked about the Ser Cauthrien fight is that its very easy not to lose if you don't play along with the setup. If you just run back into the corridor she's incredibly easy to kill, because the horde of archers can't do anything.

[Stofsk]

My two-hand warrior was for the most part owning the game until I hit the last part of Arl Howe's estate, where I bumped into Ser Cauthrian. I was like 'this will be a piece of cake'. About a dozen reloads later... (I should mention I played the game on nightmare)

Ser Cauthrien has more HP than the Archdemon, and the fight with her is probably second only to The Harvester.

There's a couple of fights in Awakening which could probably contend with it, but it is probably certainly DA:O's toughest fight. At the very least I can't think of anything tougher off the top of my head.

Then you have the Harvester, on nightmare, which is in a league of its own. Holy shit that's a 'So you think DA is easy do you? Fuck you' fight.

You're actually supposed to lose that fight, that's why it's set up with massive one sided archer spam. Three spells which are useful solely to win a fight you don't even need to win anyway is not good planning.

What? Just because you're 'supposed' to lose, doesn't mean I'm going to play along, and that spell combo was used multiple times throughout the game, it was just one that came in handy there. You're supposed to do the main quest line in a specific order, but there's actually nothing preventing you from doing it anyway you see fit. In my first playthrough I did the Brecilian forest after the Circle tower, when I was supposed to do Redcliffe. It doesn't matter.

And if there's archers on high ground shooting at you fireball will knock them on their ass long enough for you to get to melee with them (especially if you brought Dog, unlike everyone else his move rate goes up in combat, making him excellent for cleaning up archers and mages who like to stand off and fire), comes off instantly, and does more damage up front meaning you'll probably have ended them faster.

Not if there are melee groups in front of the archers, where a fireball would be useful for them.

This isn't really true. Tempest and Blizzard are massively useful, especially combined with spell might. It's basically an 'I Win' button for any fight in the game.

The only way I could see that being very good is if you have a second mage-healer along with to heal your party. If not, then you just hurt your own party as much as your enemies, unless you deploy it against archers, in which case fireball is probably better, given the combination of casting time, recharge time, and knocking out your enemies for a moment (at least compared to tempest).

IIRC (it's been awhile since I played it) fireball has a shorter casting time but a shorter range. Compared to blizzard and tempest I mean. Although it's gamey, you can also cast blizzard in a room behind a closed door, which is just hilarious (I did that quite a few times when I knew there would be dudes in the next room). I don't think you can do that with fireball.

As Vendetta says, that fight's set up for you to lose. Which is pretty silly, since it's the only one like that in the entire game.

Yeah, I don't play along. I once surrendered for a laugh and the rescue sequence is pretty funny, but meh I just like the whole drama of fighting my way out of the estate vs letting myself get captured only so that I can escape from prison (which should be harder realistically speaking but whatever).

I've only ever used tempest. After it proved such a colossal dissapointment, I decided not to waste resources on getting the fire or ice equivalents. Fireball is really all that's neccesary for archers.

Tempest is actually an anti-mage spell. It drains stamina as well as health.

Meanwhile your party has quaffed potions of greater cold resistance

See, I don't ever do that. The only potions I ever used were health and mana, and the only times I even bothered to loot element resistance potions were when I had a ton of inventory space (very rare) and would immediately sell them to the nearest merchant.

Sure, it was a waste to have 100 gold at the end of the game, but it's sure helped with Awakening

See this is the difference from playing it on easy or normal and playing it on hard or nightmare. The potions are really useful especially if you know beforehand (like you might if you're replaying) what you'll be going up against. The potions of resistance are good for specific circumstances, but the venoms and blade coatings and grenades are really useful as well. I basically give everyone I intend to put in my party full-time the first stage of poison, so that they can use poisons for their weapons and shit, and I make as many as I can. Although I suppose I'm overstating it, I sometimes forgot to apply venom and coatings in a lot of fights but that was because I judged it to be too small to be necessary. Some fights you look at and go 'Ok I might break a sweat here'.

What I liked about the Ser Cauthrien fight is that its very easy not to lose if you don't play along with the setup. If you just run back into the corridor she's incredibly easy to kill, because the horde of archers can't do anything.

Not easy to kill on nightmare though. But that's how I did it anyway, I retreated my party back there, had morrigan cast storm of the century which wiped out everything in that room, then had her kite Ser Cauthrian while the rest of my party wailed on her. The problem with Cauthrian is that she does huge damage on that difficulty level - I am pretty sure she knocked out Morrigan. (lol I got the achievement of never falling in combat ever as my main character, but that didn't apply to the rest of my party who had KOs in like the teens)

[TC Pilot]

What I liked about the Ser Cauthrien fight is that its very easy not to lose if you don't play along with the setup. If you just run back into the corridor she's incredibly easy to kill, because the horde of archers can't do anything.

Heh. The first time I ran into the encounter, I reloaded because it went to combat and I immediately went "no way in hell I'm winning this." I then backtracked to the dungeons, hoping to bypass the fight entirely. Oh, but Anora doesn't want to go into the dungeons!

IIRC (it's been awhile since I played it) fireball has a shorter casting time but a shorter range. Compared to blizzard and tempest I mean. Although it's gamey, you can also cast blizzard in a room behind a closed door, which is just hilarious (I did that quite a few times when I knew there would be dudes in the next room). I don't think you can do that with fireball.

Ok, that is hilarious.

I actually used Blizzard for the first time, in Awakening, today against 2 Revenants in the swamp. They resisted the freeze, mass-pulled my party into the the AOE, and I nearly lost that fight.

I'm not sure about range differences. Generally, you can get a fireball off and not hurt your own warriors as they're closing the distance with charging enemies.

Tempest is actually an anti-mage spell. It drains stamina as well as health.

You mean mana? Mages don't use stamina.

[Stofsk]

Stamina = mana, it's just blue and called mana for a mage, but essentially they're the same thing. Mages get more mana if you invest in willpower, for example, which is exactly the same if you invest in willpower and get more stamina as a warrior or rogue. The only effectual difference is mages get mana potions while warriors and rogues get nothing (at least in DA:O).

Oh yeah, Revenants have huge cold resistance, so blizzard and cone of cold do jack shit to them. Fire is your friend against the undead.

EDIT: also TK weapons is a good sustainable for your mage to give to the rest of your party. It ups the armour penetration which revenants have a ton of armour to mitigate damage. But yeah, revenants are pains in the ass.

[dragon]

Stamina = mana, it's just blue and called mana for a mage, but essentially they're the same thing. Mages get more mana if you invest in willpower, for example, which is exactly the same if you invest in willpower and get more stamina as a warrior or rogue. The only effectual difference is mages get mana potions while warriors and rogues get nothing (at least in DA:O).

Oh yeah, Revenants have huge cold resistance, so blizzard and cone of cold do jack shit to them. Fire is your friend against the undead.

EDIT: also TK weapons is a good sustainable for your mage to give to the rest of your party. It ups the armour penetration which revenants have a ton of armour to mitigate damage. But yeah, revenants are pains in the ass.

yeah found out to my annoyance that you need to put more points in willpower for the warrior and thiefs. First act was ok not having willpower but the second and especially the third running out of mana/stamina was a constent problems.