Next Play Through ((May Contain Spoilers!!!))

[Teslyn]

I just finished with my second play through today.

 

Today was my cunning rogue duel wielder of mass doom and death. I'm a big fan of most mods. My favorite being The Winter Forge, so I think I might be slightly skewed in my performance of the class. I basically enchanted the hell out of my gear. All within the unchanged bounds of the Forge but OMG, dragonbone daggers with rune slots and TWF added effects is WTFOMGBBQ times four to the tenth ridiculous. Halfway through the game I simply didn't need my party for much of anything except to kill off the flack.

 

 

I played through mostly good, but also extremely ruthless, a city elf. I killed everyone that I could, allowed the Urn to become a carnival attraction, and put Alistair on the throne, while taking Morrigan up on her offer.

 

 

Got a halfway decent ending.

 

 

I have also played through as a human mage. Same style more or less. Let Anora take the throne. Refused Morrigan. And lost Alistair when I let Loghain live. Wasn't a great ending and it sort of put me off on playing again.

 

 

Now I want to play through again before taking on Awakening (mostly to give modders time to upgrade to awakening as well as hopefully let Bioware put out a half decent patch). I am at a crossroads of what to play.

 

 

I have also played through as a human mage. Same style more or less. Let Anora take the throne. Refused Morrigan. And lost Alistair when I let Loghain live. Wasn't a great ending and it sort of put me off on playing again. This time I know I want to play mostly evil, while still seducing Leliana. I know I want to kill the elves for the werewolves, and I want to let Branka have her way. Just not sure what class I want to play.

 

 

Possibilities are:

 

Archer (not sure warrior or rogue to be honest, kind of want to do the human noble origin).

Massive Tank (sword and board, or maybe 2H if I get told that enchanting haste onto everything will actually speed up the swing enough that I don't fall asleep in between attacks).

Shapeshifter (Using Vals Shapeshifting Mod )

 

I'm also toying with using the Adoption mod if I can make sure it doesn't bork anything.

 

 

 

Thanks much for your participation! :D

[chibievil]

do a 2h they r strong and skillful i am playing a human noble and my 2h is really awesome. i only have 1 mod for a 2h weapon as i deleted all mods as most dont work with awakening. But so far its strong but def is weak so i put up strength and dexterity as dex helps with defence and chance of hitting

[mirja]

rouge archer of cause.

 

combat stealth + arrow of slaying + high dex and cunning and a good bow of cause. :rolleyes:

 

if you give the rouge some dualweapon skills so she/he can put the guy down quickly (flurry, or riposte) when he charges you after beeing hit by the arrow of slaying. (if hes elite or higher, normal white enemies are killed with one shot at nightmare difficulty)

 

this combo have given me the highest damage dealt ive seen so far in the game.

a 2h warrior cant even dream of reaching that damage, even when using final blow with full stamina on a genlock grunt.

 

so the sheer damage you can inflict on elite and bosses with stealth + aos should be enough for you to choose the rouge archer over 2h warrior.

 

ps. with the rouge you have lockpicking too, and that is nice.

warriors are for n00bs, lol.

[Mlai]

Archery doesn't work well with Warrior specializations. As a rogue archer you can take Bard for all-party passives, and Ranger for melee support/distraction. It makes Leliana redundant, but you can respec her into a melee rogue, or have her level up in lockpicking while you concentrate on combat skills.

 

2H Warrior is more fun because it's more challenging, otherwise TWF might make your game too easy as a S&S Warrior. I would take Reaver as a 2H, because as a 2H you'll spend lots of time being low on health.

 

I also recommend the mod Combat Tweaks (Talent Tweaks). It re-balances all the combat, because let's face it, Bioware cba'ed. CT mod makes archery much more fun and balanced, rather than just AoS, Scattershot, AoS, Scattershot... Being able to poison your arrows is a huge plus.

 

Definitely play Human Noble, so you can make yourself King, just in time for Awakening.

[DarkeWolf]

But does combat tweaks work in Awakening?

 

You'll want at least ONE stab n slab warrior in your party for Awakening. As you will face a LOT of those infernal Children, and those blighters have Overwhelm. So you'll want at least one tank in your party that can knock them off. You get Justice, which is a SnS fighter, but depending how you chose to take the quests, it may not be until later on when you get him.

 

And it's been my experience so far in Awakenings, that the old rule about Mages and Archers hiding safely behind the tanks doesnt apply anymore. I've had numerous cases of enemies smartening up and just outright IGNORING my warriors and blade rogues to go straight for my distance attackers.

Baroness of the Marsh outright DROPPED me, the DW warrior to go running 3/4 of the screen away to go suck the life out of Anders. Literally had me in her claws and dropped me, to go chasing the mage that fireballed her in the face.

Because of that, I just will not spec any of these npc's for range only.

 

Another thing to keep in mind for Awakening, is DPS. These guys have a considerable more amount of hit points than many of the cannon fodder we're used to, in Origins. And to be honest, my npc rogues are getting chewed on pretty hard, since a lot of the enemies are dual wielders. Plus, their armor is better than it was before. What would normally have killed some of these guys with just one, maybe two special attacks with my DW warrior, now takes 4, 5, sometimes 6-7 attacks to kill. Some of these leaders that I've been fighting have about as many hits as an Ogre, but without the special attacks that ogres have.

And if you're fighting some of the new Talking DS...OMG.

 

For your gear, when you transition, I'd recommend focusing on stamina, hit points, defense, and offense. The fights are longer, the enemy hits harder, has better armor, and more hit poits. They've made changes to armor piercing rules in 1.03 so I'd recommend skipping the armor increases, and just go for defense instead so that you're avoiding the hits, rather than trying to soak them.

Stamina regen isnt so much an issue anymore. There's potions that can regen stamina, and there's warrior skills now, that can renew stamina (tho, those skills have a helaciously long recharge time)

Also consider what kind of armor you're going to have to wear. One of my npc dw rogues is wearing heavy chain dragonbone, and she gets the snot knocked out of her. I'm half tempted to put her in heavy plate, just so I dont have to heal her so much!

 

Oh yeah, and some of the new DW attacks inflict BLEEDING :woot:

[Mlai]

If I can play Awakening using patch 1.02a, I'd have bought the expansion already. This is like deja vu for me... "a perfect patch (+ mods) ruined by a buggy rushed patch just so the company can sell you a lackluster expansion"...that's what I had to endure in the last major franchise I was following.

 

Yeah so... patch 1.03... broken stealing, no combat tweaks mod... no thank you. I have 4 more origins to go, anyways. Catch you in the bargain bin, Awakening. Or whenever a good patch for you comes out.

[Teslyn]

If I can play Awakening using patch 1.02a, I'd have bought the expansion already. This is like deja vu for me... "a perfect patch (+ mods) ruined by a buggy rushed patch just so the company can sell you a lackluster expansion"...that's what I had to endure in the last major franchise I was following.

 

Yeah so... patch 1.03... broken stealing, no combat tweaks mod... no thank you. I have 4 more origins to go, anyways. Catch you in the bargain bin, Awakening. Or whenever a good patch for you comes out.

 

 

My thoughts exactly. Exactly.

 

DA:O is perfectly fine right now for me with the mods I have the 1.02 patch behavior I am happy enough. I also have more origins to play through, and more endings to see. . . . I hope.

[mirja]

just so the company can sell you a lackluster expansion

 

thats why playing pirate copys is so appealing. :rolleyes:

[DarkeWolf]

Yeah so... patch 1.03... broken stealing, no combat tweaks mod... no thank you. I have 4 more origins to go, anyways. Catch you in the bargain bin, Awakening. Or whenever a good patch for you comes out.

 

You forgot the part about the patch preventing about 3/4 of our custom armors and weapons from loading on new characters. :verymad:

 

Hell, I had an "Awakening" experience where I was doing some clean saves, and my warrior that had been wearing the Black Templar Armor was butt nekkid afterwards and COULDNT get the armor BACK!

[DarkeWolf]

have you considered the dwarf noble origin if you go with a warrior? I have heard that it's got the richest origin plot of pretty much all of them. And honestly, as a human noble, when you get to orzammar, the dwarves are damned near intolerable, at least for me. I've played human noble warrior twice, and both times, I end up wishing I could punch the majority of them right in the face.

Changes a lot of their interaction style if they're talking to another halfer tho.

 

I'll also say this. While stabNslab/swordNboard has the best defense, it really doesnt give a whole lot of attack options in comparison to dual wield. And two handed, if you're using the dual wield 2h mod all three, forget about it. It turns all weapons 1h use, so you cant even use any 2h skills. And after going in as a DW meat grinder, 2h is going to seem Sloooooooooowwwwwwwwww.