Arcane Warrior as a fighter

Rudimentary question about the Arcane Warrior. Is the main advantage being able to wear higher level armor, or do you also do a lot of melee fighting with it? If the latter, switching to weapons reduces your spellpower, right, since you aren't casting with the staff?

Originally Posted by crpgnut
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.

Seriously? I never noticed. Probably because I had 3 mages. That puts quite a dampener on the AW idea. If I can't make one a really good melee support unit, I don't really see any reason to play one at all … dual class characters are not my thing.

@Anderson: There's a whole page dedicated to the Arcane Warrior on the DA Wiki, and another one for Arcane Warrior Spellcasting. In a nutshell: for some spells you can't have a sword equipped, causing a delay when casting those spells due to automatic unequipping, for others it doesn't matter.

Thanks Arhu, I'll do some reading.

Arcane Warriors are tanks. No more, no less. They use various buffs, such as rock armor, combat magic, shimmering shield etc to reach incredible levels of survivability. Their general damage output is fairly low, their spell options are limited by extremely high fatigue and they're slightly boring to play (mostly autoattacking). However, they are somewhat overpowered simply because they have more survivability than any other character. They can grind down any creature in the game.

I agree with Maylander here. Properly kitted, an AW cannot be killed unless he's just totally surrounded. I've been messing with lower fatigue armors and focusing on defense rather than AC. If you can get fatigue down some, then he can cast spells and still be pretty hard to hit. I've been using AW as melee in fights where my tank and rogue get wiped. I'll buff up and head into battle. I can hit for 100+ with the right weapon and telekinetic force. I still miss 70% of the time.

A small warning: Beware enemies that dispel (i.e Templars). They'll remove all the buffs (even Combat Magic), which means you'll be nothing more than a normal mage with extremely high fatigue. In other words, not a very impressive sight..

Interesting…because I keep starting over I've never fought templars before. I've never even initiated the big gathering in the largest city.

Originally Posted by xSamhainx
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.

Having played a dual wield warrior and a dual wield rogue, the warrior really is much better in straight combat; can wear the good massive armor sets (i.e., Warden Commanders or Dragon Scale), and with a higher damage output. The warriors will have a higher strength, which allows them to wield end-game main hand weapons (and increases the damage for those weapons), and with the level 4 talent, a DW warrior can wield 2 mainhand weapons at once.

Even without any healing ability besides poltices, my warrior was able to solo revenants without much problem. The damage output is just insane. My rogue…really struggled.

The rogue makes up for it by positioning and backstabbing, however, and a heck of a lot more party utility (stealth and lockpicking).

Check out this analysis that says the highest rogue melee damage can be had with dual wielding daggers. It has to do with speed of daggers.

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/66/index/223777

My dual wielding rogue had the Warden armor from Warden's Keep. I see no reason why Rogues should walk around in leather if they have the Strength for massive armor - the Warden armor only requires 30 Strength, which any melee main character should easily be able to obtain. In fact, I built him as if he was a Warrior, but with the added bonus of being able to stealth and backstab when flanking. Also, he got some nifty bonuses from the Duelist/Assassin subclasses that a Warrior would not be able to get.

The reason I used that particular armor is due to the extra stamina it provides.

Originally Posted by Maylander
My dual wielding rogue had the Warden armor from Warden's Keep. I see no reason why Rogues should walk around in leather if they have the Strength for massive armor - the Warden armor only requires 30 Strength, which any melee main character should easily be able to obtain. In fact, I built him as if he was a Warrior, but with the added bonus of being able to stealth and backstab when flanking. Also, he got some nifty bonuses from the Duelist/Assassin subclasses that a Warrior would not be able to get.

The reason I used that particular armor is due to the extra stamina it provides.

Yeah, that and the Superior Dragon Scale armor I found the best for a dual wielder. However, please note that the Warden's armor is not limited to a certain tier, and the strength requirement may vary depending on what the armor is. For example, I found the Warden Commander armor at tier 3, but after awhile sold it to a merchant. I was surprised to see I could buy it later, with it being tier 6.

With a higher strength requirement, of course.

The other thing about armor is that the heavier the armor type, the more aggro you accrue (it's stated in a loading screen). So a rogue in leather will attract less attention than a rogue in massive armor.

Shale and Leliana make a great team for melee battles. I just rush Shale in and do bellows and roars to make everyone aggro him. Then Leliana trapes in and backstabs around the circle surrounding Shale. Equip both in fire resistant gear, and have two mages throw fireballs at the group. It's a fun way to fight

Hmm, I've done similar things with Shale, but I never thought about the idea of using the improved drake armor on a melee to allow them to stand in the fire as well. This opens up a lot of options for a dual melee, dual mage game, with spells like:
Grease + Fireball: Stand in the fire and it will fry the enemies.
2x Inferno: Massive fire damage.
2x Flame Blast: It's possible to aim this away from characters, but it's easier to hit even more enemies if you can freely target your own characters as well.

I think I'll try this.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Interesting, I didn't know that either. I never thought to try health poultices on him.

Applying tons of health poultices onto dog was the only way I could manage to beat since Wynne kept running out of mana and even ran out of lyrium potions eventually, so I can vouch for that poultices are very effective on dog.

Shale was my key to defeating that encounter. I just had him hold aggro on the creature with his defensive skills and had my mages constantly bombard it with cold spells. It took awhile, but we won. I had to quaff a lot of mana potions too.

Generally, I always fight dragons like this:
- Shale tanks. Turn the dragon away from the partymembers, so any frontal attacks do not hit the party.
- Position everyone away from the dragon, with some sort of ranged attack (bows, staves, etc).
- Autoattack down the dragon while healing Shale (should have plenty of mana since the mana is not spent on spells). Even staves do a surprising amount of damage.

It takes a while, but it never feels as if I might lose the fight, regardless of difficulty level. I beat Revenants the same way.

About Arcane Warrior is anybody can explain me why I have the mana that constantly low down during fights, I'm using only some sustained spells. That's perhaps only when wearing a rather heavy armor with Wynne. For me fatigue should only increase spells cost but should not have an effect like that.

For a quote not linked to my question, I recently reorganized the armors used by my party and gave the commander armor set to Wynne and the spell cost reduction is amazing.

EDIT: Ok my bad, one more spell with wrong description confused me, it's Cleansing Aura that constantly drains some mana. Now I understand why my sustained spells was deactivated.

Yeah, the last spell in the spirit healer line is a serious mana drain. According to the description it should be a normal sustained spell, but it actually drains mana each time it ticks, which makes it very situational. I think I only used it in the final fight, but then with two mages at the same time - you'll still have to drink one mana potion after the other, but it's amazing there because it heals all nearby allies as well, not only your party members.

Indeed, I only use it to remove injuries. A lot of sustained spells act that way - draining mana whenever the spell does something actively (i.e heal). Rather annoying, as it makes them very situational.