Dragon Age: Origins. Lets talk tactics!

[Ayrav]

I've been playing DAO for a couple of days now and really enjoying the experience; however, this game is kicking-my-ass. It's very hard but I refuse to turn down the difficulty because I don't want this game to loss that you-might-die-at-any-moment feeling. That being said, I think that my problem is I'm not using the tactics menu the most effective way possible. What I would like to set-up is a way for my three party member to focus fire down one target at a time. I'm using Alistair in heavy armor and sword and board as a tank, Morrigan is my DPS/healing caster, and Leliana is my ranged DPS, I have myself set-up for DPS and off tanking as I like the role of filling up gaps and improvising. Ideally what I would like to have happen at the start of every encounter is for Alistair to pick out targets, weakest to strongest, and for Morrigan and Leliana to only attack his target. Is there anyway for this to be set up? Can anyone offer some insight into how to use my companions effectively?

For farther information all of my companions have six tactics slots opened at the moment.

Edit: THIS IS FOR THE PC VERSION! I realize that the console users can beat this game without having to micro-manage, but your nightmare difficulty is like normal on the PC.

 

[Gaderael]

I never thought of doing something like that. You could probably accomplish what you want with some odd key binding, or something. Not exactly sure how though.

 

[GoldenShadow]

I won't spoil the where and whos, but theres a battle later on where the main boss is pretty damn tough and it summons lots of low and mid level enemies to help it as its HP gets to 75%, 50% and 25%

At first I tried to use area of effect attacks to kill the low level guys so I can focus on the boss, but this doesn't work, the boss has devastating attacks that can KO someone in a blink of an eye.

This took me at least a dozen attempts, I had my main character, a mage, use blood grab, and morrigan use vulnerability hex, and the other not alister guy put on death mark, all on the boss for the first round of the battle. Then I used Mage and Morrigan the nuke the crap out of the boss, If I hadn't been pausing the game every half second to reissue orders, I imagine the whole thing would have lasted maybe 10 seconds in real time. Once the boss died, I had a huge ass room full of enemies left. I used Alister's taun to group them up and one well placed blast of chain lightning and morrigans mind blast to stun the survivers.

This plan worked eventually, but I had many difficulties. One time the chainlightning was Resisted and did jack squat to anything, without that, I got overwhelmed pretty quick. Other times, I just got unlucky as the boss had resisted too many spells to die fast enough.

 

[Poomanchu745]

I think in the tactics menu where you can tell them what to cast in certain situations you can have them attack whatever target you or alistar are attacking. This way they will focus fire down whatever you are on. It is pretty effective but the best way to play is by using the pause menu to queue up your attacks for each person and then resume the game. Once they have all casted their attacks then pause again and queue up more attacks for each party member. This way you can dictate exactly what you want to attack with and whom which makes for the most effective way to fight.

 

[Ayrav]

Bah the stop and go pause method is NOT what I want to do for every single fight . Let me post some screens of what I'm trying to do to give some visual on the topic.

 

[Ayrav]

Alright I mostly would like to know why when I have my tactics set up like this I get red actions.

Spoiler

 

[Ayrav]

Edit: To answer the red thing. Its because you are targeting the enemy. Not yourself or a member of your group.

Wait... does that mean that my setup is fine? Its just red because its an enemy that is being targeted?

 

[Fire Daemon]

My usual plan is to make Sten, Morrigan and either Alistair of myself hold near a doorway or behind a corner and send either Alistair or myself to attract the attention of a couple of the enemy and make them follow back to the group. By doing this I can pick them off in groups of two or three, making the combat much easier. It also gives me a chance to save and heal between combat. Also by doing this I can easily get enemy spellcasters and archers into combat. You can't do it in every combat, obviously, but in places like the Andraste temple it really helps.

The only combat I have had a lot of problems with is in the Guantlet when:

Spoiler

When you have to fight invisible version of yourself. I died constantly.

 

[Rascarin]

Tactics? I've never used tactics once, and I've already completed the game.

That said, I had it on Casual, and the Broodmother still beat the living shit out of me. Repeatedly. Maybe I'm doin it wrong?

 

[quiet_samurai]

Tactics?? Heh, the run straight for the enemy and stab, smash, burn, freeze, maul approach has worked pretty well for me so far. I've only died a few times and I'm playing it on normal. The only tactic slot I have set so far is Wynn and she does nothing but heal, and i don't even really use her much.

 

[sogortheogre]

I only put a few basic tactics on; the only fights I really had to pick actions for each group member were large battles or boss fights. My setup was me (dps mage), alistair (tank), wynne (healer), and leliana (dps i guess)

 

[Ayrav]

I've been playing DAO for a couple of days now and really enjoying the experience; however, this game is kicking-my-ass. It's very hard but I refuse to turn down the difficulty because I don't want this game to loss that you-might-die-at-any-moment feeling. That being said, I think that my problem is I'm not using the tactics menu the most effective way possible. What I would like to set-up is a way for my three party member to focus fire down one target at a time. I'm using Alistair in heavy armor and sword and board as a tank, Morrigan is my DPS/healing caster, and Leliana is my ranged DPS, I have myself set-up for DPS and off tanking as I like the role of filling up gaps and improvising. Ideally what I would like to have happen at the start of every encounter is for Alistair to pick out targets, weakest to strongest, and for Morrigan and Leliana to only attack his target. Is there anyway for this to be set up? Can anyone offer some insight into how to use my companions effectively?

For farther information all of my companions have six tactics slots opened at the moment.

In the tactics menu, select the condition: Enemy > Target of Party Member > [In this case probably Alistair], and the behavior Attack. Do this for [In this case Morrigan and Leliana] and the result is that any time Alistair will target a given enemy, Morrigan and Leliana will target the same one. This way, at the start of battle, select Alistair and have him target who you want or, alternatively, you can set the condition (for Alistair): Enemy > Rank > Target rank is critter, and the action: Attack.

You could set up subsequent tactics (progressively lower down the priority list):
Enemy > Rank > Target rank is normal | Attack
Enemy > Rank > Target rank is elite | Attack
Enemy > Rank > Target rank is boss | Attack

This way, if there are no critters, he'll attack normals and if there are none of those he'll attack elites, etc.

Awesome! I've been messing around with the tactics menu ALOT since Avykins set me straight on the Enemy/Red thing. I've just about got it down to how I want it, I just need to open more tactics slots so that I can get my companions to rotate their abilities correctly.

Edit: Almost forgot, does anyone know if the generic 'Attack' effect is just a standard, no ability, continuous attack? or does it rotate though the companions combat abilities as well as start their swing timers?

 

[Cryo84R]

How do you set up someone to DEactiveate an ability after combat?

 

[Ayrav]

Pretty sure there isn't an 'Combat Ends' cause . You can set-up your companions to change their Abilities when certain things happen to them in combat though. Why do you need them to turn off combat abilities between encounters anyway? That feels like it would take up to many tactics slots.

 

[Jandau]

Ahhh, the Tactics! First of all, you can't automate your party members 100%, you can only reduce the time you need to spend micromanaging them, such as drinking healing pots, switching on modes when stamina is low, casting buffs and recovery spells.

A handy trick is to automate turning on modes when mana or stamina gets low (so there's no cost). My fighters and rogues all sitch to combat modes after blowing all their stamina. My mage switches to Death Syphon after dropping bellow 50% mana and such. Wynne is almost completely automated, except in large scale battles where I need Group Heal and Revive.

As for automated focus fire, try this:
Enemy->Target of party member->Controlled party member => Attack
Put this in everybody's tactics list and they'll attack whoever is being targeted by your currently controlled character. You could also substitute "Controlled party member" for a specific member of your party if you occasionally want to take an individual party member for a specific task while the others stick to what they were doing.

I know. The tactics menu is shit. I tell my healer to heal if anyone gets below 50% health and what does the ***** do? Charges in and fights and does not even heal!

See that "Behaviour" tab in the upper right corner of the tactics tab? The one you probaby left on "Default"? CHANGE IT! Seriously, it's not that hard...

 

[Ayrav]

See that "Behaviour" tab in the upper right corner of the tactics tab? The one you probaby left on "Default"? CHANGE IT! Seriously, it's not that hard...

Having my best luck with the 'default' behavior atm, although a handy breakdown of what each mode does and doesn't would help... As I mentioned before I made a DPS/OT hybrid as my main, and currently I'm the hardest hitting character in my party, however I don't really get to play her at all because I constantly have to control my mage to CC all the damn enemies ((. Setting up Shield Bash on my tank for when a caster or ranged attacks her is easy, getting the AI to optimize when to Mind Blast and Cone of Cold is an entirely different animal.

 

[Jandau]

Having my best luck with the 'default' behavior atm, although a handy breakdown of what each mode does and doesn't would help... As I mentioned before I made a DPS/OT hybrid as my main, and currently I'm the hardest hitting character in my party, however I don't really get to play her at all because I constantly have to control my mage to CC all the damn enemies ((. Setting up Shield Bash on my tank for when a caster or ranged attacks her is easy, getting the AI to optimize when to Mind Blast and Cone of Cold is an entirely different animal.

The breakdown of each mode is included in the game, just highlight each mode for a couple of seconds and a tooltip should show up detailing what it does.

As for crowd control optimization, that's VERY tricky. What you can do is use the various Character:"surrounded by X enemies" or Enemy:"surrounded by X allies" tactics to automate some of those. It won't be perfect, but it might help. Cone of Cold should me manually targeted since it's tricky business. However, Sleep, Paralyze, Horror, Glyph of Paralysis, Waking Nightmare can all be safely automated if you want. I have my mage on auto for the Sleep + Horror combo (cast Sleep if 3 or more enemies are together, then cast Horror at a sleeping target).

 

[Chrissyluky]

3 mage 1 tank team seems to be the best. get forcefield and enjoy some aoe nuke rape. Also avoid rogue archers they are worthless if your going to have an archer make it a warrior archer because rogue archers cant do any damage worth a shit. 2 mage 1 tank 1 war archer works well too if you play it right. honestly what i always end up doing is pulling the whole group together and using cone of cold grease and other aoes to just rape the enemies while all my spellcasters are blood/spirit healer meaning i always have a set of heals and no mana restrictions so i do really really well. but ive tried 2 melee users and i dont think it works very well just too many targets to heal and generally if its a rogue or anything without a shield he wont live to see the end of the fight. but a very well specced dual user ass/duelist rogue will definitly survive and do very good damage. the team can work but for first timers id suggest 3 mage 1 tank its just a bit easier. when you get the hang of the game make a plan of how your going to level your rogue(cough get lethality asap cough) and go through with making your party(i generally start at the magis tower no matter what because gwynn will make your adventures just far less painful.)

 

[Ayrav]

3 mage 1 tank team seems to be the best. get forcefield and enjoy some aoe nuke rape. Also avoid rogue archers they are worthless if your going to have an archer make it a warrior archer because rogue archers cant do any damage worth a shit. 2 mage 1 tank 1 war archer works well too if you play it right. honestly what i always end up doing is pulling the whole group together and using cone of cold grease and other aoes to just rape the enemies while all my spellcasters are blood/spirit healer meaning i always have a set of heals and no mana restrictions so i do really really well. but ive tried 2 melee users and i dont think it works very well just too many targets to heal and generally if its a rogue or anything without a shield he wont live to see the end of the fight. but a very well specced dual user ass/duelist rogue will definitly survive and do very good damage. the team can work but for first timers id suggest 3 mage 1 tank its just a bit easier. when you get the hang of the game make a plan of how your going to level your rogue(cough get lethality asap cough) and go through with making your party(i generally start at the magis tower no matter what because gwynn will make your adventures just far less painful.)

Lady have you played D&D? Specially min/max style D&D? My heart aches for your knowledge.

 

[Chrissyluky]

3 mage 1 tank team seems to be the best. get forcefield and enjoy some aoe nuke rape. Also avoid rogue archers they are worthless if your going to have an archer make it a warrior archer because rogue archers cant do any damage worth a shit. 2 mage 1 tank 1 war archer works well too if you play it right. honestly what i always end up doing is pulling the whole group together and using cone of cold grease and other aoes to just rape the enemies while all my spellcasters are blood/spirit healer meaning i always have a set of heals and no mana restrictions so i do really really well. but ive tried 2 melee users and i dont think it works very well just too many targets to heal and generally if its a rogue or anything without a shield he wont live to see the end of the fight. but a very well specced dual user ass/duelist rogue will definitly survive and do very good damage. the team can work but for first timers id suggest 3 mage 1 tank its just a bit easier. when you get the hang of the game make a plan of how your going to level your rogue(cough get lethality asap cough) and go through with making your party(i generally start at the magis tower no matter what because gwynn will make your adventures just far less painful.)

Lady have you played D&D? Specially min max style? My heart aches for you knowledge.

no i just sit on the DAO forums and play around with ALOT of different builds to find out what works best for me and get all the broad stats to understand how the game works just like how most people dont know strength contributes to bow attacks far more than dexterity and dexterity only gives a bonus for its increase in accuracy as a rogue. and since lethality doesnt apply to bow attacks it makes getting cunning rather pointless and so theres no point in playing a rogue if your not going to need any cunning?(especially since as a rogue your going to have to spread out your abilities enough if you wanna talk more strat you can add my email.