Daggers and Dexterity

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I don't know if you've noticed but there is a bug in the game. It seemed to me that the damage output of high dexterity rogues using daggers was quite low and in fact it is due to a bug.

Dexterity should be used to modify damage output but it isn't, I've just read a thread on the official forum and it appears the damage is only modified by strength. That's something to keep in mind when you plan your rogue build and it makes daggers rather pointless (pun intended).

That being said if you've played a dual wielding character you've probably noticed that one of the abilities you can get allows a rogue to use a main hand weapon in the off hand.

Hopefully a patch will fix this issue.

 

they said its going to throw off some of the enimes so they are going to have to rebalance the entire game so its proably going to take them a while to get that done

 

The silver lining here is that a dagger-using rogue with Lethality and a high cunning score will usually deal more damage than they would if there was no dexterity bug. Daggers should take half their damage modifier from dexterity, and half from strength (replace strength with cunning if you have Lethality, which you should). What actually happens is that only strength applies to damage, but with Lethality it uses purely cunning instead. My dagger-using rogue had over 60 cunning by the end of the game, and did frankly ridiculous damage with his backstabs. It gets even better if you take the assassin specialization and get the skill that adds bonus damage to backstabs based on your cunning score.

 

That does sound deadly. I do find my mage though averaging over 60 points of damage on most spells with a Magic skill of 30.

As for the Rogue class, how does everyone distrubts their ability points?

 

I don't know about everyone but I went for cunning dexterity and strength. With all the stat boosts you can get it's not that hard to get these high enough.

Strength is very important for equipment. I overlooked that at first but it makes a huge difference.

Dexterity is useful to boost defense and archery and open certain abilities.

Cunning works with many skills and conditions backstabs and armour piercing.

The way I see it, putting enough points (around 26?) in strength to wear a good armour and use a powerful weapon, increase dexterity to unlock all abilities (40 iirc) and then put the rest in cunning so you can take advantage of the bonus to damage and backstab Jhonka mentioned.

 

20 strength is enough to wear the best leather armors, and I think 36 dexterity is the sweet spot for unlocking all the dual-wielding talents. Beyond that, maybe a little in willpower to up your stamina and the rest in cunning is how I did it. By the end of the game I was backstabbing with daggers for 60-90 damage per hit, and with momentum those hits come really, really fast.

Of course, if you'd rather use a larger weapon (or two, with the dual-weapon mastery talent) then you'd need at least 31(I think?) strength to use the best swords. That'd also allow you to wear heavier armor, and now I find myself thinking about how a semi-tank rogue would go. It's an interesting thought

 

I did a high strength Rogue in my first play through, it cripples the efficiency of the build as a backstabber. I'm going for a backstabber now (aiming for 60 points in Cunning) so I will be able to compare both builds. I tried a dual wielding warrior and I missed backstab a lot.

 

All you need is a 22 STR to wear the Drakeskin armors. My Human Rogue is going to be a dual weapon expert with daggers. With that said, my character is going to equally distribute points in Dexerity and Cunning up until Dexeteriy is 40. After that all points into Cunning.

As for end game levels, what is maximum level everyone achieving? I completed my first run through at level 21.

 

Strength can be raised with items so it's not a problem.

High Strength is good with regular weapons (not daggers) since there is a new patch that fixes the Dexterity issue!

Level 22 in my first run as a City Elf Rogue.

 

That's greatly welcomed. It's telling that the 'newest' patch on EA Games' support page as of five minutes ago was still 1.01b. And I still haven't been able to find a direct link to the patch on the Dragon Age site, or through the social network site.

It's a bloody disgrace that it is easier and quicker to just go to a third party site to find the patches.

 

I don't know about that but here is a link that seems to work pretty well:

http://social.bioware.com/page/da-patches

 

Caradhras do you know if the PS3 DAO has the dexterity issue? If so, how would I go about getting an update?

 

It doesn't look like the PS3 version has the same issue:

It all depends on what they mean by "many" as the phrasing is not very clear.

I'll post if I find anything about that issue on the official forum.

 

The daggers not implementing damage from Dex is an issue on the consoles as well as some bugs that stop you from advancing in the game. From what I read Bioware is going to release a patch for the consoles later on this month.

I really hope they release the patch within a week or so before I get too far into the game with my Human Male Rogue.