Easiest Character for Nightmare Playthrough?

[Elit3Hawkins]

Howdy,

 

I have played through most of the game with two different characters. Got rather far with a DW Rogue (Dex), and even farther with a DPS Mage. I completed Ozzamar + Redcliffe on one character, and completed Forest + Circle Tower on the other. So didn't get close to finishing, but did quite a bit.

 

I feel that I am ready to try out nightmare, I am in it for the long hall. After playing on "EASY" with those two characters, I thought the decision of picking my nightmare character would be easy. The mage is obviously more effective when it comes to dealing death to the enemy. However, with Nightmare's lovely addition of friendly fire damage, I feel that most of the heavier AOE spells will loose their effectiveness, leaving just utility spells mostly, which are MORE than enough covered by party members, at least I think so. It's a very confusing and difficult subject. So I am at a crossroads.

 

Could I get some help with deciding which would be the easiest/most effective character type? Between the Mage and the Rogue of course.

 

Let it be known that I have the respec mod, and none of my characters, nor their followers are set in stone by the game. I normally change Morrigan into a Healer/DPS until Weyne, then Weyne is a full Healer, and Morrigan is full DPS. So basically I already have two+ fully powered mages in whatever talent direction I want, slanting me towards the Rogue as my PC.

 

• I am also allowed to go down one tree for a while, then respec and go down a different one once it comes available.
  
• I also have the Shale DLC.
  
• Patch 1.02a
  
• Four man party + dog ( Dog slot mod )
  

 

I don't know if this makes any difference in the decision, but I just wanted you guys to know.

 

Thank you to any who help, and a cookie to the person who slants me the most!

- Hawk

[rebalious]

Well I did it with a mage with arcane warrior and blood magic, sorry I can't remember the build I stupidly deleted it along with other unwanted characters. For the party I think it was Morri/Wynne (healer and stunning) Leli/Zev (picklocking and more stunning) and Ali/shale (damage/tank and stunning) I think you can see I relied on stuns a lot.

 

I don't think this is a brilliant setup though, I probably died 9000 times.

[PhoenixAdamu]

I agree with rebalious that the Arcane Warrior/Blood Mage setup is quite formidable; Arcane Warriors in themselves, when built right, are nigh indestructible, and with Blood Wound, it's easy to CC large crowds while you take on smaller ones face-to-face. Many who solo with AW/BM mages will take the Frost chain in Primal up to Cone of Cold, and no matter what I play, I usually like to take the full Telekinesis line in Spirit, as Mind Blast, Force Field, and Crushing Prison are more CC tools to keep you alive. I've also experimented with the Glyph chain in Creation, and if you can pick the targets just right, Glyph of Paralysis makes things much easier (you can also turn this into Paralysis Explosion by comboing GoP with Glyph of Repulsion to lock up a bunch of mobs at the same time). Other than that, take some high-damage spells and you'll be on your way (my major recommendation is Virulent Walking Bomb).

 

Warriors do have the chance to do some soloing by building mainly into the Two-Handed Weapons tree, which provides utility at the same time that you get to wear that pretty massive armor (such as the Warden Commander Armor Set). In this case, people will often spec Reaver/Champion or Reaver/Templar, depending on if mages are their bane or they want that very nice AoE knockdown out of War Cry (and additional attack out of Rally).

[rockstarjay]

You can win playing any character class. One of the more important things to keep in mind is on the lower difficulty levels the games threat detection is ridiculously skewed towards shield fighters. This is so players using the traditional Tank+DPS

[Balagor]

I have done Nightmare a couple of times with my

main character elven warrior, 2 weapon fighter, dex 50, light amor

Leliana rouge, 2 weapon fighter, dex 50, light amor

Morrigan witch spelpower 50

Wynne Mage spellpower 50

Wolf (dog) strenght 45

[tgvulcan]

Completed Nightmare easily with a warrior specced as reaver and champion shield mastery. I didn't even have wynne on that play through. I used morrigan as a backup healer and crowd control with sleep and waking nightmare. I had the combo of Morrigan, Sten and Zevran or morrigan, alistair and lelianna. If you do zevran right he can really do some serious damage. I recommend the advanced tactics mod to allow rogues to try to attack from behind on their own. Zevran will be much better. Nightmare on vanilla gameplay is not that difficult if you know what you're doing. Though you will likely use a TON of potions and salves to keep yourself going.

 

I enjoyed this play through very much and i didn't have any player armor or weapons. Everything was vanilla or Official DLC. You really don't need 2 mages to play the game, you just have to set the tactics better and the advanced tactics mod helps with that. I think you'll need a mod to allow for more slots, i use the combat tweaks mod myself.

 

I will say that you'll find the battles more rewarding with only 1 mage. It really allows you to explore more of the game with other character combo's. First and foremost get sten his sword as soon as possible. He is nothing without it.

 

One of the biggest difficulties is how you play the areas too. Some people try to get ahead of themselves but on nightmare you'll want to follow the most useful path. Going to redcliffe first after lothering and then I recommend doing quests in denerim and then either mage tower or brecilian forest for the juggernaut armor.