DA: Inquisition: Are archers good?

[Gizmo1990]

Tital says it all. Got a mage at the moment (love it) and so I am thinking about a Archer for my next char. However I remember that archers in DA:O were basicly useless and I never played one in DA2 but a friend says they were still no good. Did Biowear get them right this time? Are good/fun enough for a playthrough?

 

[Casual Shinji]

I played an archer for about an hour. Not that the combat in Inquisition is super engrossing, but just standing from a far firing arrows when I could be in the thick of it is just dreadfully boring.

 

[Longing]

They have a pretty good skill tree, some of the moves like long shot which deals more damage the farther away you are and the other one I forgot the name which does more damage to healthy enemies are pretty op, you can decimate some weaker enemies with them in one strike. I have however noticed that regular attacks do fuck all against armored enemies (which us logical obviously), but it does get frustrating.

Archer was my favourite class to play after mage, mostly 'cause you don't have to chase after enemies

 

[Arisato-kun]

Archers have some insane DPS. Probably the highest DPS of any Rogue right now.

I'd go Tempest if I were you. Not only is it super fun popping flasks to gain things like cooldown reduction and increased combat damage but the class was broken last I saw.

See when you upgrade your ability Flask of Fire it makes it so all of your abilities have no cooldown while it is active. This applies to the Tempest's Focus ability Thousand Cuts through a glitch that makes it so the ability doesn't use your Focus while Flask of Fire is active.. Thousand Cuts at Level 3 Focus will hit an enemy I believe 52 times and each hit can crit with the 25% damage boost from Flask of Fire. When you can hit an enemy with a 104 hit combo in 30 seconds it makes even fights on Nightmare complete child's play. And it's wicked fun! Try fighting dragons with it!

The broken ability could've been patched out as I am writing this but playing a Tempest was pretty fun and synergizes well with Archers. Give it a whirl.

 

[Happiness Assassin]

Nothing I can say will quite do justice to this video. Just keep your eyes on Sera...

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

Who needs to play an archer when you have Varric? Having two ranged rogues might make Varric redundant and why would I ever not want Varric in my party?

In all honesty it should be fine. I'm nowhere near done the game but Varric's been pretty useful for me so far. I'm sure Sera would be a useful ranged rogue too but I actually decided to make her a dual daggers one, reason being if I had her with me I'd probably also have Varric and I don't really need two ranged rogues, if I had two rogues in my party at the same time I'd rather one with daggers and one with a ranged weapon.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I think so, although I started as a duel wielder. I used a bow here and there and it was enjoyable enough, but my first playthrough is always as a duel wielder.

However, there is one thing that an archer does that is enjoyable. They can attack from afar. Now there's a hidden benefit to this. I'm not sure if you noticed this, since you played as a mage, but your party members won't start fighting until you start fighting--or the enemy runs up and smacks them. This is a problem because, if you're playing as a CQC character, your long rang fighters--mages and rogues--will follow you right into the thick of battle before they start fighting because they're still waiting for you to land that hit. To get around this you just have to open up the tactical view and order your people to attack, but that gets annoying for every single fight.

So yeah, archers at the very least have that going for them. They can get the party started from far away and your other characters will rush forward to start the melee.

 

[laggyteabag]

Nothing I can say will quite do justice to this video. Just keep your eyes on Sera...

Well.. shit. I was playing as a Mage Knight-Enchanter and I thought that made the game easy because I was practically an invincible god, but that... was something else.

I might start using Sera now.

 

[solemnwar]

Archers were useless in Dragon Age Origins? Did we play the same game? Archers in both Origins and II were ludicrously overpowered. There's one achievement for Origins, cause 250 points of damage in one attack, right? I got it with a level 12 archer. They've always been insanely OP.

And from what I've seen of archers in DA:I, the trend seems to be continuing. OP Archers for life!

 

[Jeremy Dawkins]

Nothing I can say will quite do justice to this video. Just keep your eyes on Sera...

That's her focus ability, a thousand cuts or something at level three right? Because when I fight dragons it never goes that easy.

I am currently playing an archer after my mage play-through and it's pretty fun. I put all my talents into subterfuge so I poison people and then they explode into gas bombs. Also you get a really cool chain that can zip you into enemies.

 

[masticina]

I play one. Now I haven't reached the max of the unlocks yet but it is quite doable.

Now it might seem less fun then go in close for some nice dual daggers but. You have quite an effect on the battle, poisons, firearrows and some pretty strong shots can really damage the enemies. Definitely since they usually are to busy with the token fighter so you have flanking bonus.

Add the passive bonuses like standing higher then the enemy and the different active powers having different cool downs it.. is very good to do.

Some abilities take 24seconds to reload [cooldown] and yeah that is slow. So even though they do allot of damage it would keep that for the big guys. For the smaller guys? I rather use abilities with cooldown times with 12s.

Yes there is enough there to make it fun to play it smart.

Now is it better then magic or sword and shield or two handed massive damage. Or even close cut dual dagger fun. I dunno! Look I like it, it allows me to stand a bit away and do smart damage while the warriors can play sponge for me. And of course the mages can make nice ice lollies.

It so depends on your sought playstyle. With the abilities and insight in flanking and bonuses you get from standing higher up it is fun.

I don't think that there is actually a bad class. If you want to do a ton of damage two handed. If you want to be a bit safer on yourself, weapon+shield and its abilities, if you want to magic well mage obviously. If you want you could come in from the side with daggers and hit really hard.. for a while. And yeah archers, your normal attack might not do much but your bonuses stack up!

 

[Denamic]

Archers have some insane DPS. Probably the highest DPS of any Rogue right now.

Heh. No. They have the advantage of not having to close distance, but nothing comes nowhere NEAR the raw damage output of a dagger rogue. You'd be hard pressed to even come up to half the damage output of an assassin or tempest dagger rogue. Even if archers had infinite stamina, their animations aren't even fast enough to keep up with the damage. I've no idea where you got the idea that they do more damage, as absolutely nothing I've seen even implies that.

 

[Grant Stackhouse]

Archers really don't have any place in my party. Guess my theme. I'm a Qunari Warrior, specializing in two-handed weapons. I'm teamed with Cassandra and the Iron Bull. My final slot is usually a mage or rogue, but I don't much care for their offensive capabilities. I just use them to open doors, etc. After all, at my current level of 14, my warriors do about 220 dps, while mages hover around 60 dps, and archers are around 110. Additionally, even with stealth, my archers seem to die first.

In other words, nothing takes a beating like a warrior, and nothing gives a beating like a warrior. Plus, 3-4 warriors with the grappling chain will instantly eliminate any threat of enemy archers/mages if we get the jump on them. Warriors FTW.

 

[Steve Waltz]

Who needs to play an archer when you have Varric? Having two ranged rogues might make Varric redundant and why would I ever not want Varric in my party?

I used Varric and had my main as an archer and it actually worked out extremely well.

Vivienne, Varric and I would stay in the back supporting Cassandra as she ran up on the front lines building guard and fighting enemies. Whenever someone came near the support team in the back, Varric would use the skills from the Sabotage tree and the Artificer tree to lower the threat, I would use the ice potion from the tempest tree to freeze them in place, and Vivienne would continue to freeze them with ice spells.

Varric was still golden, even with another archer on the team.

 

[Augustine]

Non-Artificer Rogues are very good in general, bow or no bow.

And they are certainly more fun to play than mind numbing KE slow hack-fest. They are require a bit of forethought in regards to the abilities, but once that's taken care of, they rock.

 

[maneyan]

Oh yes, certainly. Archers have plenty of abilities that are really fun, like Full Draw. It lets you play a more "sniper"-ish kind of game. I've taken out the enemy one by one from such distances they don't even know where I am. In the thick of it they work too, especially with leaping shot. Give it a spin, definitely. I think they made all classes fun and playable in this one.