DA:O Arcane Warrior as a fighter

I've been playing around with the respec mod and my Arcane Warrior. I purposely went solo and ran around in Denerim looking for fights. The bottom line is that your guy isn't going to hit very often but when he does the average damage is around 50 points a hit. The good thing is that almost nothing can harm you with all the spell buffs active. You won't be able to cast many spells yourself, because they'll be keeping all the buffs going. I fought 8-10 bandits solo and had to drink two normal health potions in the fight. Only one of the bandits was yellow, the rest white. Note that this battle was on easy. I'm going to bump it up to normal and look for another battle. I'll post on that when it's over.

For fun, there's a Revenant nearby. I'll attempt him solo on normal and tell you how long it takes him to kill me. I'm guessing not long, but will update this in a bit.

I'm planning on specing my mage as blood mage / arcane warrior, though I hadn't really planned that build from the start. We shall see....

Okay, I forgot to switch to normal when I fought the Revenant. Here's the setup: My AW stats before buffing:

Level 16 STR-14 Dex-16 Will-41 Magic-47 Cun-18 Con-23
210 Health 360 Mana 28 AC 53 Defense 42 Spell Power
Weapon does 18.1 damage and has two paralysis runes

Buffs Cast (in order)
Spell Wisp raises SP to 49/Spell Might raises SP to 64
I do this to make all the other buffs more effective
Rock Armor raises AC +13 to 41
Arcane Shield raised defense +16 to 69
Combat Magic raises defense +10 to 79 AND raises weapon damage from 18.1 to 45.1 FTW!!!
Shimmering Shield raises Armor from 28 +15 to 43

The battle lasted about 2 minutes and it took me 4 normal healing potions to win the fight mano a mage-o against Mr. Orange guy Revenant. I'm sure the fight will be harder on normal.

Did you have any stunning attacks or anything else to slow the revenant down?

I hear they resist all magic.

I have paralysis on my weapon, Thrasher but he doesn't resist my spells. I'm a level 16 mage and it's an easier battle if I start slinging spells along with being totally buffed. I purposely fought him without using any magic against him. I renew the buffs that run out, but that's it. I was using potions instead of heal spells too, just to see how many it'd take. I beat him on normal but it cost me 16 healing potions to do it. If I started hitting him with lightning and arcane bolts, I'm sure I could win faster and with less potions. The problem on normal is that I really can't hit him with my weapon unless I have heroic offense cast on my guy.

Again, I respecced my AW just to see if it was feasible to fight melee with him. It's similar to fighting with a shield specialist. The damage is slow to accumulate but victory is inevitable (with enough potions).

Note: I was using a AW specific weapon-called Spellweaver. I could have used a two-hander or other gear to change how the battle went. I was wearing the Juggernaut gear.

Ok, for grins I'm going to fight him again just buffing my defense and fighting him with spells. I have a feeling this will be much easier, but I'll post the results in a bit. This build doesn't have much offensive firepower because it's focused on melee. I have lightning and arcane bolt and the freeze spell, not CoC.

Okay, he kicked my ass with just those three spells for attacking. The problem was I had to wait for them to recharge. I had put away my melee weapon and was just going as a mage he wiped me out. Kinda fun. I'm going to go grab my normal mage with his full assortment of spells and try the battle again. Revenant 1 on 1 is fun.

Yeah, that's what kills me with spells, is the cooldown timer.

Does freeze or paralyze or any of the other disabling spells work against a revenant?

Interesting. The buff route is the best when fighting one on one against the Revenant. This same character is in deep trouble against a crowd though. I got ambushed while traveling to the encounter and just couldn't stop the crowds. My normal build easily wins the crowd battle by getting surrounded and then casting mind blast. While the enemies are stunned, I step back and fireball the archers and run from the crowd. I have enough time to put an earthquake between me and the melee crowd and then blizzard and firestorm them to death. The tactics are quite fun.

The normal freeze always fails. Cone of Cold works to paralyze him for several seconds. Lightning attacks do the most damage and Arcane Bolt works too. Without serious buffing defensively though, a mage just dies too quickly. You must have defensive buffs to stand a chance, at least for me. I haven't tried some of the entropy builds though. They might win by making the Revenant unable to hit.

If anybody wants me to spec out a certain way and fight Mr. Revenant let me know. It's a fun little mini-game. I've been to 3 of the 4 allies and have to get the dwarves next. Happy gaming.

Interesting. Yea, spells with paralyze-like effects don't have very long durations on bosses. I wonder if the debuffs work on Revenants.

The entropy line seems to work on the Revenant. He misses me a lot if I cast misdirection, etc. on him. Sometimes it says immune and sometimes it doesn't, even with the same spell.

My rogue (lv12) wouldnt last very long at all in that fight. While she definitely does the most damage in the group, she cant take the kinda damage the Rev puts out.

Usually, my tactics for dealing w/ the Rev is have Morrigan cone of cold and hex the hell out of it, and everyone runs in to pound away on him. He thaws, everyone bails except Al stays and does his tank thing and the girls chip away w/ some ranged attacks. Hopefully he stays on AL. I let Alistair use a potion, then by that time it's generally time to freeze him again. Repeat til done.

Kinda boring way to go about it, but it seems to get the job done. I'd like to try the Mabari and my Rogue against it in a few levels maybe. Have to cook up a whole mess of double baked mabari crunch biscuits tho!

I've wondered about the biscuits. The dog can drink potions just like the other companions, so I wonder if it's worth making the biscuits. I know the biscuits cure an injury too, so they might be good if you were low on injury kits. I've never wasted the two extra slots for the biscuits

One other tip for fighting Revenants. If you put Cold Iron runes in your weapons, it really is devastating to the Rev. I equipped 2 Cold Iron and one paralysis and took him on normal with my AW and it only cost me 7 potions. I chose a weapon that had 3 slots on it, even though the base damage wasn't as good. The Revs generally drop nice loot so I recoup the cost of the potion ingredients when I sell.

The biscuits are more of a healing-over-time type thing, not the instant heal of a potion. I didnt know that he liked potions too!

Ive been turning off Morrigans "frost weapons" or whatever sustained feature to keep her mana high, since Al and Draconia are both rolling w/ elemental effects on their weapons already. Good to know, I'll flip it back on next time and see what happens

crpgnut said:

I've wondered about the biscuits. The dog can drink potions just like the other companions, so I wonder if it's worth making the biscuits.

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Interesting, I didn't know that either. I never thought to try health poultices on him.

I currently play an AW/Blood Mage as well. Very powerful, but they are tanks, and that's about it. They also have a little crowd control and healing, but they can't cast it a whole lot. The best way to heal tends to be blood magic on a pet (i.e if you bring a Ranger along).

Anyway, I didn't notice Miasma mentioned. Definetly a strong buff for AWs. Also, Glyph of Warding will increase your def by about 30, so that's a nice investment as well.

If you pump dex a bit, you can dual wield to hit more often, but the damage will still be low.

Didn't try either of those, Maylander. I'll have to fight him again. I have terrible start-over-itis when it comes to this game. I started over again last night. I always play a mage, but I like trying different strategies out and end up starting over to see how the game plays from the beginning with those strategies. One of these days, I need to actually finish the game...

My second theme party, which is on indefinite hold, was supposed to be with mostly fighters. I had considered making Morrigan an Arcane Warrior with all possible melee buffs like frost-, flaming- and telecinetic weapons, miasma, haste, etc.. But then I thought I'd try out a warrior only party with 4 berserkers. Didn't get very far though, got sidetracked by other games.

Each mage can only have one weapon buff active at a time. So if you wanted all three weapon buffs, you'd need 3 mages.