Bryant Hawke Lives

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Death Syphon is great, i've had it on 99% on Hawke. There's really just 1 or 2 fights that are single-target only. And they're not even the hardest.
What i've overlooked about it and only noticed near the end of the game is that it's a fairly short radius. Until then i've thought it had an internal cooldown, but it's like 8 meters radius in which the enemy has to die for it to replenish health&mana.
I think it should work wonders with Merrill, buff her health, rock&arcane armor, perma bloodmagic mode with improved Death Syphon and let her wade kneedeep in enemies, be it dead or soon to be dead. Attrition based party setup, toss in EmoElf for some cleavage (hah) and AoE Hawke. Sweeping ketchup harvest fest, not battle.
I'd try it, but i've decided on playing Origins in favor of 2nd DAII run. Very glad i did, i already prefer PC-ishness of Origins to consol-ishness of second installment.
What i meant by spirit healer limitation is clear with Origin comparison. Even at level 7, i've more party support/buff spells than DAII. I didn't think it was too much to ask for enough tools to make supporter a fulltime occupation. As it is, you HAVE to take either damage or disable spells, just cause there's simply not much to do/use as a support and/or buff mage. Huge downside for me right here.

I always found Varrics stamina exhaustible, it may well be because of his high attribute spread requirement (at least if you want him to pick locks&disarm traps). If you know where to find a certain awesome act III rune recipe, you can stop pumping cunning at least at 33.

Btw, was i blind whole game, or is there really no simple "turn AI off" button like even BG had 10 years ago?
All i wanted was for them to keep autoattacking if i rightclick them an enemy and deselect them, yet it took me nearly half an hour of tinkering in tactics screen to get just about halfway there.

 

The only way I know of is to just unclick all the check boxes in the tactics screen.

Also, just noticed that the R-key auto-attacks and auto-loots .

 

I have to say the tactics engine in DA2 is far superior to DA:O, even if the strategy involved in combat is way less. You really can leave your party members to their own devices and they do an incredible job of running around and staying alive.

 

Tassadar, I'm not sure what difficulty level you're playing on, but if you're finding the strategic/tactical requirements of the game to be on the light side, I would suggest upping the difficulty at least to hard.

I'm finding that the game gives a nice challenge on hard, along with my house rule that no companions can fall in combat. I'm having to reload plenty of battles, and have to be fairly thoughtful about how I engage enemies so that none of my party members become overwhelmed.

 

Oh don't get me wrong, the game's plenty hard for sure, but nine times out of ten it pretty much still is run around like a crack addict and whack 'em till they die. And the brilliant tactics engine lets me do this quite easily.

Maybe it isn't so much the lack of strategy and more the improvement of party member AI.

 

I used Bethany in the end game and she never ran out of mana; she had two sustain abilities activated too.

As for a second play through - not happening right away. I am going to play DAO with a Mage before I play DAII again.

 

Never found DA:O to be particularly challenging at any difficulty. The hardest part of the entire game was getting through the bridge puzzle of the sacred ashes quest without quick saving (I always forget to quick save). Even on nightmare I just auto-piloted most encounters.

DA2 on hard so far has been more challenging because of the random little things that can happen to low-HP party members. I'm not going to try nightmare until I get a better hang of the game and cross-class combos. ie: I love that enemy rogues do go out of their way to vanish and attack the casters, and that I can stun them with my warrior and turn them into charred flesh with a mage spell (REVEEEEENNNNNGGGEEEE).

 

I like tatics are acquired instead of using skill points. That to me makes sense.

 

Agreed. There was no good reason not to allow a player to set up a tactic to activate a sustained ability and then deactivate it later. But in Origins that would consume 2 of your limited tactics slots. There's no problem doing this in DA2, however, as you always seem to have an ample supply of tactics slots.

There were a number of "gamey" features in Origins that have been reworked to the players' benefit in DA2.

 

Now if only they allowed you to zoom the camera out more than currently allowed, so you could position your party members in a less frustrating way...

 

On consoles, DAII camera is better than in DAO, but not by much.

I recommend viewing Bioware social forum. There is a forum now covering what we as gamers see as things that Bioware can improve upon for the next installment or things that should have never changed from DAO.

Bioware Social Forum

I posted my thoughts. My username as stated in another post is MEBengal2008.

 

Agree with pretty much all your points, Munchkin - except I actually love the exploding enemies lol. The whole OTT combat in DA2 feels like I'm playing with a party of Soul Calibur characters and extremely entertaining to watch. Gibbing an ogre with the assassination skill is somewhat mind boggling but makes me feel awesome haha. Although I do recall being able to gib enemies all the time in Baldurs Gate 2 with a backstab. Love it.

But yeah, I don't understand why they made the camera so claustrophobic - I mean it was fine in DA:O (although would be even better if you could zoom out even more). Maneuvering party members to flank has never been so difficult!

 

I think I've noticed the lack of isometric view more in DA2 than I did in Origins. I'm not sure why that is. I had Isometric in Origins, but I only occasionally had the need to use it.

In DA2 it seems like it's a lot more common that my character gets slammed against a wall, and I really can't see what's going on with him. Invariably, I just try to run my character until I can see him properly again.

I use WASD to move my character around exclusively. I've heard people say that it doesn't work in DA2, but I have no idea what they're talking about. It must be the same bunch of folks who incorrectly label the game a button (s)mash. /shrug

Another thing I miss from Origins is the special abilities that so many enemies had. Getting pinned by a giant spider was awesome, as was getting picked up by an Ogre only to be pummeled. It was great when Revenants "summoned" casters to their side to beat the living tar out of them

Those abilities occur occasionally in DA2. Dragons will still pick up a character in their mouth. A few "special" enemies have some great moves, like the Arishok. But I would love to see special attacks occurring A LOT more often.

 

The Arishok moves were abit...over the top. He impaled me on his sword 11 times when I fought him, and lifted me up like a fish on a spear. It would have been cool if he did that when winning the fight - like a finishing move, but being impaled every 20 seconds kind of ruined the belivability.

 

That's bizzare. It happened to me like twice. But again, I was a mage, and so was keeping my distance from him most of the time.

 

Happened to me a lot of times on my warrior as well. Pretty much every time I messed up kiting him around the pillar and let him catch up to me .

 

There was a weird bug in that fight where I was using the rogue's decoy skill. Arishok would attack the decoy, kill it, then stand around doing nothing while I stabbed him repeatedly. Qunari aren't very smart!

 

That, but with the force mage end-talent.

 

I abhorred the Arishok duel fight. As my Hawke was a non-direct mage, all i really had was Spirit Bolt and one other similar instant damage ability, i forget which.

I don't find it fun, clicking to run away again and again while autoattacking. Getting a spell or two in when he goes choo-choo in the wall. For 15 minutes of however long it takes.
And i suspect it wouldn't be all that more fun with a warrior or rogue protagonist either. It's not like you can stand there and take his normal blows, even if you're a full plate+tower shield warrior and he's a halfnaked barbarian.. can you?

 

I agree, the fight is terrible. Probably the worst one in the game. Took me 30-40 mins to do it with my 2h warrior on nightmare, just running around a pillar, getting a few hits in here and there, then scythe after he charged. The worst thing is, imho, that the fight is not even very hard; it just drags on forever .