Dragon Age III: Inquisition

[BetoJR]

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

People who say the graphics are ugly clearly haven't tried staring at the Storm Coast.

Oh, God... There are those people? Ugh.

[Random Wanderer]

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

People who say the graphics are ugly clearly haven't tried staring at the Storm Coast.

They probably have Mesh Quality turned down too low and are getting the related character uglification due to that. Or they had some sort of ridiculous expectations going in, I don't know. Now that I can see it properly, I can justifiably say that the game looks quite nice.

While I'm complimenting it, I'd also like to give points to the designers for not doing the reusable map thing like they did in DA:II for every dungeon or out of city encounter and such. One would think not doing that would go without saying, but then I thought they'd learned their lesson on that after the transition from the original Mass Effect to ME2, but then DA:II came along, so...

[DragoonKain3]

Oh yeah, DAI. The game that killed my comp. I thought having an R9 270 would be enough, but no, my Q6600 was the bottleneck. And I broke something trying to overclock it past 3ghz lol.

But it doesn't look half bad in the PS4. I do wish tactics came back though, as I kinda miss having complete control of my party with virtually no micromanagement as it was in DAO. On the upside, the AI is much better, but far from foolproof.


Oh yeah, some notes...

Auto Attacks
-Fifth attack is 3 hits, so if you do the full combo (takes around 5 seconds), you do ~160% of your weapon damage per second.

Barrier
- 24s CD, lasts 12s
- Lasts ~17s with Knight protector, and it doesn't matter who cast it, as long as one person in your party has the passive
-Elegant Defense doesn't reduce the CD if you replace your existing barrier with another one (meaning it's kinda useless if you're already staggering your barriers with multiple mages)
-Rejuvenating Barrier only works on the person who has the passive, though it is multiplicative with Winter Stillness/Combat Clarity. So combing Rejuv Barrier with either of the latter two pretty much doubles your mana regeneration
-Mana Surge activates your no mana cost for next spell buff once it runs out, no need for an enemy in particular to break your barrier. Kinda bugged that it also affects other mages who doesn't have the passive, some of time...
-With Clean Burn, Knight Enchanter can get it down to 12s CD IF they spam lightsaber and hit somebody with it (not as effective in tactic mode since the AI doesn't spam it as well)
-Alternatively, every other mage can do the same by combining Winter Stillness + Gathering Storm + mainly auto-attacks hitting a monster
-Getting hit while barrier is up activates heal x% over 15 seconds weapon/armor mods, which is what makes KE (and multiplayer Arcane Warrior) so powerful in conjunction with damage dealt becomes barrier generated passive.

Winter Stillness
- auto-attacks and most spells do not break it
- most notable spells that break it are fire/ice mine, and very unfortunately, energy barrage does as well even though you barely move lol. (others include Revivify, Necromancer panick spell, and Knight Enchanter Light Saber)
- #1 mage passive to have if you're not a KE, and long range KE can use it too

Combat Clarity/Ice Armor
-VERY inconsistent. Sometimes you get the buff immediately once you're next to the enemy (next to ice spells in Ice armor's case), sometimes you can have entire periods of time without it.
-Pretty annoying as a KE, as sometimes you would be surrounded and don't have the mana regen buff so you can continue lightsabering

Fire Notes
-Firewall is your best friend early levels. Allows a lvl 4 party to take on the lvl 8s, since it's essentially 'protection from melee' with FF off. XD
-Fire Mine is so frigging good later on with CD reduction skills. Unfortunately, it does break Winter Stillness, so only KE can use it to its full potential.

Rift Mage notes
- Perma-blizzard build is a fun build, as smothering Veil gets you mana back in proportion with the damage you deal to wekeaned enemies. Winter Stillness + Gathering Storm + Smothering Veil passives. Upgraded Stonefist into activating Blizzard while auto-attacking while Blizzard is on, then rinse and repeat once Stonefist is off CD. Easy 400+% dps, though you do need a Champion to keep a boss target within its area of effect.
- Outside of that though, Rift Mages I feel are pretty weak. It really hurts against the ice dragons for example.
- Note tooltip for singularity Pull of the Abyss is wrong. It's duration is around 6 seconds, not 12. So if you're thinking about cc-locking entire hordes of mobs with gathering storm + winter stillness, don't even think about it.
- Also note that Pull of the Abyss won't weaken anyone who doesn't get pulled. I assume Veilstrike won't weaken anyone who doesn't get knocked down either, but to be honest, I haven't ever brought Veilstrike against dragons lol.

Necromancer notes
- Between Walking Bomb+Spirit Mark+Autos and Winter Stillness+Gathering Storm, it is the most damaging mage build. Even if you can only sustain Walking Bomb every 12s (every 10s is the ideal situation), you'd still be doing at least 500% dps at the cost of around 10 mana per second. In comparison, lightsabering as a KE is 300%dps at 10 mana per second too, and that takes much more maneuvering than just sitting in a corner and letting your champion taunt everyone together while you blast them lol.
- On the downside, horror is a terrible skill, and the panick passives are mostly kinda useless. Either you use only DoT skills (which don't break panic/terror) and lose damage from not doing your autos, or use your autos and remove the damage bonus from your panick passive. Terrible.

[zztop]

I hear playing certain classes gives you specific class related dialogue/judgement decisions(eg. only mages can hand out Tranquility punishments).

So if you play as a rogue or warrior, do those have their own class-specific dialogue/judgement? Has anyone got those yet?

[Daniel E.]

Originally Posted by zztop

I hear playing certain classes gives you specific class related dialogue/judgement decisions(eg. only mages can hand out Tranquility punishments).

So if you play as a rogue or warrior, do those have their own class-specific dialogue/judgement? Has anyone got those yet?

From the top of my head, I can think of two......

If playing with a female elf warrior, Solas dialogues adjusts a bit to the class at the beginning of the love conversations in Haven. Same thing if your elf girl is a rogue or mage.

As a warrior (probably mage too), you also get an extra dialogue option where you ask Sera for help when trying to open the locks in Haven's dungeon.

EDIT:

When you first meet Solas, he also has mage/non mage dialogue bits depending on your class.

[Random Wanderer]

There are some modifications to dialogue for class. So far mages seem to get the most attention (not surprising, given the focus of events in the world), but at least once that I can remember with the rogue I'm currently play Solas has made comments about how I've trained to throw a blade or use a bow with precision, and how he admires that skill.

Different races also get different dialogue, of course. I've only really played Qunari and Elves, so far, but they've gotten enough that I expect Humans and Dwarves will have plenty on their own.

In other news, I finally beat the game with my Qunari mage recently. My first character. It was interesting. Kind of annoying when I discovered that Vivian could kick more butt with her knight enchanter powers that I have been completely ignoring than I could with my rift mage powers that I've been carefully building and focusing on.

I think the story worked and ended quite functionally. The where-are-they-now epilogue felt a little bare-bones, as it seems to me those things usually give alot more information on a many more different people and groups. I don't know what to think about the post-credits scene. Aside from the reveals about Elven deities, the most earthshaking discovery for me was the reveal that

Spoiler:

lyrium is alive!

I think that could fundamentally affect everything we think we know about... well, everything. Thedas, the Fade, magic, the Maker, everything.

Anyway, I've still got a half-dozen characters running, so I'm not done.

[Spectacular_Insanity]

Originally Posted by Random Wanderer

Anyway, I've still got a half-dozen characters running, so I'm not done.

Me too. One human male warrior, one male elven rogue, one female Qunari warrior, one female elven mage, and one male dwarven warrior.

I can still never find all those damn reliefs/mosaics without looking at online guides, though. Makes me feel like a scrub.

My favorite advanced subclasses, after save-scumming and experimenting with all of them would be:

Warrior - Reaver for 2H weapons, Champion for Sword/Shield. For obvious reasons. I personally felt the Templar class, while it was cool and had interesting tie-in dialogue with Cullen, lacked the power of the Reaver and the defense of the Champion, though it is great against demons. It's just so limited in actual usefulness. Makes me sad, since it was conceptually my favorite.

Rogue - Assassin for Daggers, Tempest for Archery. Again, more copying off of the pre-existing party members, but their synergies work quite well. Assassin in particular gets crazy damage versus single targets.

Mage - Knight-Enchanter hybrid build. The class I've experimented most with in terms of abilities. I grab Lightning Chain for large AOE, Winter's Grasp for freeze/chill, and Immolate for more powerful AOE. It works well, and you don't have to worry about the elemental alignment of your enemies, nor the element type of your staff. I also take Barrier and Mind Blast so I can get the Barrier increase passive. Spirit Blade is not only powerful, but it also hits with AOE, and combined with Fade Shield (give you 30% Barrier of damage dealt) can make it much easier for you to survive if you get mobbed in melee. Rift mages are superior for mana recovery (my Solas never even gets low when I take control of him), but they're much, MUCH squishier and harder to keep alive on Hard or higher difficulty. Especially during electric-based dragon fights. Damn you Vinsomer.

As you might imagine, I really love this game. I've probably spent over 400 hours on it, and I'll probably spend at least another 100 getting the last variations of dialogue from my various Inquisitors. I most certainly got my money's worth, lol.

[Random Wanderer]

Right now I have concluded that the most powerful class in the game is, in fact, the Tempest-Rogue. Entirely because of something that is almost certainly an exploit, but which I hope they never patch, because I just find it hilarious to be able to kill a dragon in less than a minute.

Spoiler:

Flask of Fire is supposed to keep your skills from costing Stamina, and it does, but it also keeps your focus skills from costing focus. You can, for example, drop four Mark of the Rifts on an enemy simultaneously if you cast them fast enough. Or you can do it my way and have Thousand Cuts at 3 tiers of focus and only use it immediately after activating Flask of Fire. That means you can get it off once every 32 seconds, which either wipes the battlefield clean of lesser enemies, or really beats the crap out of bosses. No dragon I've faced yet has withstood more than two of those.

Of course, I prefer to only use that on really hard bosses, or when the going gets too tough. I'm not trying to eliminate all challenge from the game, after all.

[Von Himmel]

Originally Posted by Random Wanderer

Right now I have concluded that the most powerful class in the game is, in fact, the Tempest-Rogue. Entirely because of something that is almost certainly an exploit, but which I hope they never patch, because I just find it hilarious to be able to kill a dragon in less than a minute.

Spoiler:

Flask of Fire is supposed to keep your skills from costing Stamina, and it does, but it also keeps your focus skills from costing focus. You can, for example, drop four Mark of the Rifts on an enemy simultaneously if you cast them fast enough. Or you can do it my way and have Thousand Cuts at 3 tiers of focus and only use it immediately after activating Flask of Fire. That means you can get it off once every 32 seconds, which either wipes the battlefield clean of lesser enemies, or really beats the crap out of bosses. No dragon I've faced yet has withstood more than two of those.

Of course, I prefer to only use that on really hard bosses, or when the going gets too tough. I'm not trying to eliminate all challenge from the game, after all.

Wasn't that patched already though? I haven't really keep up with the latest patch or news, but is there any news for story DLC in DA:I?

[DragoonKain3]

^
Yeah, not sure why people were complaining about KE when Tempest is BROKEN. Pretty sure it's going to be patched sooner or later, as fire flask should only make skills not cost stamina but still cost focus. I personally don't use it as it's obviously not in the intent of the creators to work that way.

That said, I personally think Tempest still is the best class in the game WITHOUT the Fire Flask + Focus ability combo. Ice Flask for near invulnerability, Fire Flask for mucho damage, Lightning Flask for the 'oh shit' moments when you need to revive someone (or 'cheat' with some of the time sensitive puzzles hehehehe). Extra slots for potions (8 charges of healing mist for bosses? On average 10 charges with the passive? YES PLEASE!), chance for free use of a healing potion (obviously not intended but you can't avoid this), and still respectable damage compared to assassin. It's also weapon independent, being as good with dual daggers as it is with a bow, so they can fit in ANY team.

Sure Barrier is still the #1 must have skill of the game, and KE has a passive that makes it so much better, but I've done a Necro + Rift Mage playthrough in Nightmare, and it wasn't that much more difficult than my double KE playthrough.

For tank, I've found Champion to be better in most situations since very few enemies or even bosses are immune to his (eternal) taunt. Templar though is surprisingly good with double KE where you don't really care much about taunt, since everyone in your party is melee and everyone should be in range to get hit by every barrier. In that case, the party wide defense+offense buffs and the AoE stun was much more useful, and not to mention Templar focus ability rocks.

Tempest though is leaps and bounds above all the other Rogue classes even without the exploit. Like seriously.



@Spectacular
Fire Mine is so much better than Immolate for KE once you have the core skills (All of the left side KE skills until you get knight protector, all of the right side of Spirit until Strength of Spirit, Fire skills until Clean Burn, Energy Barrage). The reason for this is because Immolate with lightsaber spam+Clean burn has a CD of 6s when the initial damage is 400% with 150% burning damage (which burns longer than the CD of the spell). Meaning every rotation of Immolate has an effective dps of only 217% with a mana cost of 5.83 per second.

Fire Mine on the other hand is 1600% initial damage + 200% per sec for 8+2s. So that's a whopping 3600 over 10s, or 360% dps. And since the CD on Fire Mine is 24s, or 12s if you spam spells like you should be doing as a KE, that's an effective dps of 300% per rotation of Fire Mine with a mana cost of 2.91 per second. So 38% more damage for half the mana cost, with a bigger upfront damage to boot too. It's also more Chaotic Focus friendly since the CD of Fire Mine is effectively the CD of your Barrier (12s), so you can always cast it at full effectiveness if you really like using half your barrier (which I personally dont but I know many who do like the big numbers).

Sure you have to 'lead' with Fire Mine, but IMO the added benefit of flinging the enemy into the air and knocking them prone (aka built-in CC) far outweighs the cons of using Fire Mine once you have the skill points to afford it. The mana cost as well is noticeable once you finished your reserves, as lightsaber + barrier spam already costs more mana per second (10 + 4.167 = 14.167) than you can generate (50 mana every 8 seconds = 6.25 * 1.5 Combat Clarity * 1.35 Rejuv Barrier = 12.66). So when you do have a breather and are able to get more mana by stopping lightsaber spam, Fire mine gives you more bang for your buck once you have an extra 35 mana to spare.

Of course, if you're not in nightmare, anything works.

[Random Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Von Himmel

Wasn't that patched already though?

Nope. I've been using it to make fools of dragons on my current character. Well, technically one of my current characters, but it's the one I'm focusing on at the moment.

[FlareKnight]

So, finally got around to playing and eventually beating this one.

Not bad. Definitely a step forward after the stumbling backwards in Dragon Age 2. I don't think it's as good as Origins, but I honestly don't expect Bioware ever will get there again. This game had a lot of good things going for it. A lot more wide open areas to run around in, some interesting mounts, dragons to fight, and solid combination of races and specs.

The story was ok. I didn't feel it was as compelling as Origins, but it was fine. The overall threat was good, the mystery of trying to figure out what happened to you was good, and the rise of the Inquisition was enjoyable. The companions were better than the last game, good move keeping Varric and bringing Cassandra into it. Though I think the romance options still weren't all that good due to trying to cover everything possible. It's like they threw Morrigan and Liliana into the game just to say "ha, we're still not giving you anyone nearly as interesting as these two." Not that the options were bad. Leagues better than DA2 where being single was actually the only rational choice in my mind. Also glad they streamlined things a bit better so that being nice to someone wasn't suddenly leading to them hitting on you. Actually had the proper flirting options.

Combat was pretty fun. Though it was a bit annoying to have the limitations on healing in this one. No healing for the mages and limited potions made it a bit annoying to actually explore. Not without decking everyone out with heals, regens, and area heals. You had your options to limit damage true with barriers and armor, but still felt like it dragged down the combat a bit.

I enjoyed it. I'm not sure when I'll do a second playthrough, maybe after a few DLCs have come out, but it was good. Glad to see the DA team can still create a good game.

[Vexx]

Still playing this game .. mostly only this game because of my new "author career" schedule. Running two characters in parallel, one male, one female to tinker with romance routes. I keep trying to play the other classes but quickly end up back as a rogue or occasionally a mage.

Now I hear Fallout 4 is due out later this year. I'm doomed.

[Jazzrat]

Originally Posted by Vexx

Still playing this game .. mostly only this game because of my new "author career" schedule. Running two characters in parallel, one male, one female to tinker with romance routes. I keep trying to play the other classes but quickly end up back as a rogue or occasionally a mage.

Now I hear Fallout 4 is due out later this year. I'm doomed.

Think on the bright side, you got a big RPG that's replayable for the next 3 to 5 years (with mods)

Personally, i seemed to have stopped doing 2nd run through for most games especially these long ass RPGs and just read the wikis on what alternate choice entails. I feel that variation doesn't justify playing through the same game twice these days.

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by Jazzrat

Think on the bright side, you got a big RPG that's replayable for the next 3 to 5 years (with mods)

Personally, i seemed to have stopped doing 2nd run through for most games especially these long ass RPGs and just read the wikis on what alternate choice entails. I feel that variation doesn't justify playing through the same game twice these days.

I am playing all the characters but one on "easy" (mostly because the actual combat mechanics in Dragon Age franchise tend to bore me).

I still pull up Skyrim if a new mod intrigues me. I may pull up Fallout: NV for some nostalgia before Fallout 4 releases. The trailer for the new Fallout has me squeeing like a little squid I'm afraid.

[Velsy]

I just bought the game yesturday and installed it today. But really wont be able to get into it for the next 2 days since I will be working long hours and I must go to sleep soon.

But I wondering, how the mods for this game now, that I gave it some time. Are there any reliable modding sites other than the nexus ? I usually use Nexus, but wondering if there are any other useful Dragon age modding sites around.

Any must have mods ? Similar to how things were for Skyrim ?

oh and I bought a 980 GTX the other week (decided to upgrade from 680). So I wondering how beautiful this game will run ? ^_~

[Von Himmel]

Originally Posted by Velsy

I just bought the game yesturday and installed it today. But really wont be able to get into it for the next 2 days since I will be working long hours and I must go to sleep soon.

But I wondering, how the mods for this game now, that I gave it some time. Are there any reliable modding sites other than the nexus ? I usually use Nexus, but wondering if there are any other useful Dragon age modding sites around.

Any must have mods ? Similar to how things were for Skyrim ?

oh and I bought a 980 GTX the other week (decided to upgrade from 680). So I wondering how beautiful this game will run ? ^_~

Just played it again too, kinda interesting that the thread was bumped a few days after I just got back to this game

I only found Nexus for modding site though since I can't find any others. I also still can't find hair texture mods too. Oh and not to mention the modding tools are kinda flimsy as it needs to be updated when Bioware patches the game later in the future

I really recommend the crafting mods, more schematics and resources mods to cut down tons of playtime just for farming the materials and hoping for schematic to drop It might sounds cheating but honestly it was quite a hassle for me in my first playthrough before the mods came out.

Overall I must say that the mods are pretty bad in this game when compared to its prequel and Skyrim.

[Velsy]

Can someone also give me whats this online connecting stuff, Dragon Age keep or so do ?. Kinda confused by it. Is it advantageous? or just EA trying to track what I am up too?

"edit" I sorta get it now, but for some reason, I cant put in the name of my Hero who I actually completed the game with in Dragon Origions (I had 3 games going, but only 1 game I actually completed) It only allows me to choose default heros. I beat the game with a Duel wielding Warrior Noble Human O_o.

"edit 2"
Well no matter what I do, doesnt seem to be anyway to add your own characters of the past, which would of been a pretty immersive feel to the game. Imagine reading the histories/legends of your characters in books :0. Shame they couldnt get that part right. This function would of been actually pretty good then. :/

[Vajra]

Originally Posted by Velsy

Can someone also give me whats this online connecting stuff, Dragon Age keep or so do ?. Kinda confused by it. Is it advantageous? or just EA trying to track what I am up too?

"edit" I sorta get it now, but for some reason, I cant put in the name of my Hero who I actually completed the game with in Dragon Origions (I had 3 games going, but only 1 game I actually completed) It only allows me to choose default heros. I beat the game with a Duel wielding Warrior Noble Human O_o.

"edit 2"
Well no matter what I do, doesnt seem to be anyway to add your own characters of the past, which would of been a pretty immersive feel to the game. Imagine reading the histories/legends of your characters in books :0. Shame they couldnt get that part right. This function would of been actually pretty good then. :/

It is supposed to sync with your origin account/email. So if you played DA:O on PS3 or 360 the information should be loaded into the keep when you sign into your account. You can also edit a default hero, which is what I had to do for DA:I as it took too long for it to sync with me game.

[Von Himmel]

Originally Posted by Velsy

Can someone also give me whats this online connecting stuff, Dragon Age keep or so do ?. Kinda confused by it. Is it advantageous? or just EA trying to track what I am up too?

"edit" I sorta get it now, but for some reason, I cant put in the name of my Hero who I actually completed the game with in Dragon Origions (I had 3 games going, but only 1 game I actually completed) It only allows me to choose default heros. I beat the game with a Duel wielding Warrior Noble Human O_o.

"edit 2"
Well no matter what I do, doesnt seem to be anyway to add your own characters of the past, which would of been a pretty immersive feel to the game. Imagine reading the histories/legends of your characters in books :0. Shame they couldnt get that part right. This function would of been actually pretty good then. :/

Have you done the dragon age keep stuffs?