DA:O DA combat tips

Dragon Age: Origins

lostforever

SasqWatch
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I am no pro and sometime I even play on easy but I found the following helps with combat. Please feel free to post your own or suggest improvements for mine.

1. There is "hold" button under the group frame and that will prevent your part from moving. They beauty of this is that they will still fight. I found that it nice way keep a "formation" together.

2. Always flank your mobs and don't let them flank you. When you flank them you get better chance to hit and critical hit. Note that to get flank bonus you need to be 60 degrees behind the mob (the black area in the target circle). For rogues its 180 degrees provided they a backstab talent. Also I think (see script below) more out of flanking.

Note that flank applies to archers as well provided they are behind the mob. So have the tank turn the mobs away from the main group.

Also note that Warriors get flank immunity if they have one of the shield line ability (don't remember which).

Note that the same rules applies to mobs too. So if they flank you then you are good as dead!

Here is the script which works this out,

http://social.bioware.com/wiki/datoolset/index.php/Combat_h.nss#Combat_GetFlankingBonus

3. When possible focus fire. I have won lot of battles this way.

4. If you have boss and lot of small adds, kill the adds first. However this has not always worked for me if the boss is hitting way too hard.

In summary I think if you get flanking and positioning right you can easily win most of the boss fights.

PS: That link is very useful. You can figure out how combat works
 
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I got a spell recently that has made the toughest fights almost ridiculously easy. The spell is 'Force wall' or something like that. Basically, it puts the target in 'stasis' so he/she can't do anything, but is impervious to damage.
So, the way I make it work is, my main character is a caster, so I start the fight with a big fireball and grease in the middle of the enemy group, then force field and the mobs will keep swinging at the immune caster, while the rest of the group kills the enemies one by one.
(I'm playing in hard difficulty btw)
 
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Pretty much always attack and kill the weakest members of the enemy first. Instinct is to hit the strongest first, and there are times where it needs to be done (some will outright kill you if not taken down first) but it's prudent to use RTS logic in a lot of fights - the less enemies you have dealing damage on you, the better.
 
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Crowd control is extremely useful to me.

I'm limited to Cone of Cold and the AoE stun that the dog has so far but they save my life. Anything frozen in the CoC will shatter if hit with a critical hit or certain spells. This means I can CoC a group then have my Rogue pop the 4th lvl Duelist skill (which I will get in one more level), then the mage can cast Stone Fist on one and Crushing Prison (when I get it) on another and that'll be 3 dead in just 3 attacks. This is pretty much always successful on White beasties, Oranges usually resist being shattered and sometimes yellows too. But I almost never see them resist being frozen by the CoC...so you can still use it to lock down the bosses and just pound on them while they can't fight back.

I just got the Force Field spell mentioned that removes the target from the fight basically. Using it on the mage after she gets them attacking her is smart but using it on the boss while you take out all the peons will be nice too I think. Aiming for Crushing Prison and Mass Paralysis next.
 
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Cone of cold or petrify followed by shattering fist or whatever(the spell two slots before petrify) will kill a white enemy instantly.
 
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One thing that's pissing me off is how the other party members always seem to move to stay close to the one I'm controlling, even if I've given them an order to fight a certain enemy. If I move too far away, they'll break off combat to follow me.

Is there any way to keep them from following you around the battlefied other than using the "hold position" command?
 
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One thing that's pissing me off is how the other party members always seem to move to stay close to the one I'm controlling, even if I've given them an order to fight a certain enemy. If I move too far away, they'll break off combat to follow me.

Is there any way to keep them from following you around the battlefied other than using the "hold position" command?

I am hoping they fix this in a patch.
 
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I know you said "other than" but I use the Hold button for this and it works pretty well for me.

The problem with using the hold button is that they won't engage an enemy unless it's right on top of them, preventing them from helping each another in the larger battles unless you manually issue every order.

Another thing that I'm starting to notice is how slow my party members will react sometimes. For instance: In the middle of a large melee, I'll notice Alistair just standing in place after he's slain the last enemy I had him target, rather than automatically moving to fight another enemy. I've tried different tactics/behavior settings, but they don't seem to make a difference. It's like the AI just shuts off sometimes. :mad:
 
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One thing that's pissing me off is how the other party members always seem to move to stay close to the one I'm controlling, even if I've given them an order to fight a certain enemy. If I move too far away, they'll break off combat to follow me.

Is there any way to keep them from following you around the battlefied other than using the "hold position" command?

Are you 100% sure there's nothing in your tactics commands that tell them to attack an enemy that's attacking your main character?
I have found that I had to pretty much change all the default tactics that my people came with.
 
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Yes, I've already messed around with the tactics quite a bit, I haven't found anything that seems to work with that particular issue.
 
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The problem with using the hold button is that they won't engage an enemy unless it's right on top of them, preventing them from helping each another in the larger battles unless you manually issue every order.

Hmm that's odd as I did not have this problem. I use the hold button a lot and I find that ranged characters will always attack. It's the melee that won't attack unless enemy get close them (make sense).
 
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Hmm that's odd as I did not have this problem. I use the hold button a lot and I find that ranged characters will always attack. It's the melee that won't attack unless enemy get close them (make sense).

I don't have *that* problem either, my ranged characters work just fine. :)
 
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I don't have *that* problem either, my ranged characters work just fine. :)

So I fail understand your problem :) Are you saying that after pressing the hold button you expect your melee to engage in combat even if the enemy is not in melee range?
 
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JDR 13 said that often his other party members run towards his main guy in the midst of battle, even when he does not want them to. You seem to be on a different tack?
 
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I got a spell recently that has made the toughest fights almost ridiculously easy. The spell is 'Force wall' or something like that. Basically, it puts the target in 'stasis' so he/she can't do anything, but is impervious to damage.
So, the way I make it work is, my main character is a caster, so I start the fight with a big fireball and grease in the middle of the enemy group, then force field and the mobs will keep swinging at the immune caster, while the rest of the group kills the enemies one by one.
(I'm playing in hard difficulty btw)

Sounds like it makes the game really easy?? maybe so far as to be a bug ?
 
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Sounds like it makes the game really easy?? maybe so far as to be a bug ?

Not necessarily a bug, but maybe they could make the enemy a bit smarter as in 'hmm… I just whacked this guy with my club and he didn't even flinch, maybe I'll just attack someone else'.
I think the problem comes with aggro. Since I start the fight with a fireball, let's say I do 50 damage. So all enemies hate me for '50' only switching when they hate someone '51', so they keep attacking the phased mage while I order my other 3 members to concentrate on one of them… by the time it hates someone more than it hates my mage, it's dead.
 
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