[ITEM]
Bethany Hawke
class: Mage
Specialization:
Focus: Damage
If you’re playing as a warrior or rogue, Bethany will be the first
character you get and the first mage you get until you recruit either
Anders or Merrill. However, she’ll only be a temporary companion, making
your choice to build her somewhat irrelevant for the majority of the
game. However, we’ll indulge.
Bethany, in the early game, probably best serves you as a straight up
damage dealer. She doesn’t have a specialization to worry about so you
can just pour all her point directly into a skill tree. Since she starts
with Fireball, you’ve got a head start in the Elemental tree so that’s
probably where you’ll want to stay.
In the early game (probably with your first level up), you should
invest in Heal, for obvious reasons. Until you get Anders, she’ll be
your only option to heal. And unless you rush ahead and nab Anders as
the first quest you take on in Act I, this will be able to help you out.
Nab Winter’s Grasp, Cone of Cold, Firestorm and Pyromancer, all in
the Elemental Tree with the goal of working your way up to Elemental
Mastery.
In the middle if you need to grab an outside skill (due to level
restrictions), some quick support choices will add some extra oomph to
your party.
One-and-done skills like Elemental Weapons or Heroic Aura will suffice,
or grab another attack spell in Spirit Bolt in the Spirit tree.
You probably won’t get too many more skill points with her than that
before she’s unavailable for you to use. If/when she comes back later
and if you really want to use her for old times’ sake, depending on your
party makeup
you may want to grab a couple disabling spells in the Entropy Tree, or
focus on more support-type roles with Creation Spells or Arcane. Or you
can go even further into the realm of pure damage by nabbing some primal
spells too. But really, that late in the game, your supporting cast
should greatly outshine Bethany.
Carver Hawke
class: Warrior
Weapon: Two-hand
Specialization: None
Role: Damage/Off-tank
Carver, like Bethany, is temporary for your party and only if you’re a mage. Also, like Bethany, he is best used by focusing on raw damage-dealing early.
Start Carver out immediately in the Two-hand tree, nabbing your early
skills like Mighty Blow, Giant’s Reach and Sunder. You’ll eventually
want to get Scythe and Whirlwind too when they become available and then
probably stick to upgrading those skills as they become available.
If you plan on using only Carver as your warrior early, get Taunt, a
necessity to help him control threat on the battlefield. If you want to
branch out a bit into other trees the best option is probably the
Vanguard Tree. By picking up Might and Control (which are unfortunately
mutually exclusive) you can unlock Cleave, which will double his damage
output. Or, you can stick in the Warmonger tree and pick up other skills
like the sustainable Bravery to increase his power in crowds or go
toward Tremor for some AOE knockdown.
However, since he’s unavailable most of the game, your best bet is to
just pump up his two-handed skills as far as you can while you have
him. If/when he comes back later in the game, that would be at time to
branch out especially into the Vanguard Tree where he can pick strong
passive skills like Destroyer and Massacre to really add up his killing
power.
Aveline Vallen
class: Warrior
Weapon: Weapon and shield
Specialization: Guardian
Role: Tank
You get Aveline during the Lothering escape and from there and beyond, she will best serve as a tank for your party.
Aveline (outside of Hawke) will serve as your best option for a tanking
character. With her weapon-and-shield focus and powerful damage-taking
specialization, you’ll want her to be taking all your party’s hits.
Where to put talent points: Weapon-and-shield, Warmonger, Defender, Battlemaster, Guardian
Where not to put talent points: Vanguard
Early game (1-7): Aveline starts out with Taunt and
Shield Defense under her belt, which is great because those are two
skills you’ll probably want to utilize frequently. At the beginning I
turn on Shield Defense and just leave it on all the time since it
effectively reduces the damage she’ll take. I nab Pommel Strike, which
gives her a single-target stun, but also will open the door to Taunt’s
upgrade later.
Make sure to pick up Perception (W&S) to make Aveline immune to
flanking to better protect her. Early on, instead of focusing on some
attack skills, I move immediately into the Battlemaster tree. Grab Rally
(which is somewhat useless except for its mana/stam regen effect) and
get Battle Synergy. Battle Synergy is exclusive with Bravery
(Warmonger), but you should always use Battle Synergy with Aveline over
Bravery. While Battle Synergy boosts defense and damage resistance for
the whole party,
Bravery increases attack and critical chance for Aveline only. She’s
here to take hits, not dish them out, making Battle Synergy a much more
effective, supportive choice. Early in the game run both Shield Defense
and Battle Synergy. While this cuts your stamina bar to about half,
Aveline doesn’t really need a whole lot of active skills yet to be
effective. That will allow you to use a Taunt to control the early
battle and that’s about it. You shouldn’t need more at this point.
Mid-game (7-15): At level 7 you get access to the
Guardian tree. Aveline, unfortunately is loaded down with too many
sustainables, so you may not get the full effect out of her tree if
you’re using other sustainables like Shield Defense and Battle Synergy.
At level 7 grab the upgrade to Taunt first, then at your next level
start into Guardian by getting Immovable. Immovable increases Aveline’s
damage resistance as she gets hit at the cost of move and attack speed.
Make a decision here, either keep using Shield Defense or start using
Immovable. Immovable is better if you’re getting absolutely mobbed,
while Shield Defense offers a more constant protection at only loss of
damage, not attack and move speed.
Your goals in this portion should be to invest enough points in
Guardian to get both Indomitable (100 percent resistance to stun and
knockdown) and Thick Skin (+15 percent damage reduction). Retaliation is
a nice active skill that will allow Aveline to crack back when she’s
surrounded, so using Taunt plus Retaliation together can pay dividends.
The sustainable Bodyguard is pretty underwhelming in the Guardian tree.
Consider passing this one up, mostly because it’s another costly
sustainable
In this stage you can either begin focusing on getting some attack
talents in the Weapon and Shield tree including Shield Bash, Assault or
Scatter. Or this is probably a good time to look toward grabbing both
upgrades to Battle Synergy, which will increase threat generation as
well as transfer damage from companions
to Aveline. Or you can further increase your damage resistance by going
into the Defender tree and getting Stonewall and Turn the Blade toward
unlocking Adamant (+5 percent damage resistance), although it’s a lot of
skill points for pretty small returns.
Late game (15+): This should mostly be used to grab
upgrades to all the skills you use frequently, whatever those may be.
The only new skills you may want to grab are stamina related skills in
Battlemaster like Bolster, Deep Reserves or Second wind, since the
amount of sustainables you run (I usually use two with Aveline) will
cripple your small stamina pool.
Don’t waste any talent points in the Vanguard tree. There’s pretty
much nothing in there that is useful to Aveline, especially since the
first two skills you have to pick from are more sustainables.
Attribute distribution: Since Aveline will be taking all of the damage for your party,
you’ll want to give her high constitution. Also since she has several
costly sustainables to choose from, you’ll probably want to boost her
willpower up a bit higher than you might for other non-mage characters.
You may want to utilize a 1-1-1 level up with
strength-willpower-constitution or go with an every-other plan like 1-2
strength-con followed up by a 1-1-1 str-will-con. I would almost always
recommend having her con as high or higher than her strength.
Equipment: Remember that Aveline’s first duty is to
tank. Equipment that gives plus-percentage to damage resistance or magic
resistance should be sought. Items that boost health or health
regeneration are also good picks. Otherwise, go with typical warrior
stuff that increases attack or physical damage. Items that boost
critical rate or critical damage are wasted on her, give those to your
rogues instead.Varric Tethras
class: Rogue
Weapon: Bianca
Specialization: Marksman
Role: Single-target/AOE damage
Archers in Dragon Age 2
are somewhat of a mixed bag, but Varric’s specialization gives him some
good single-target damage options. However, you can focus more on other
trees to give Varric a variety of AOE-effect talents to make him more
of a controller/supporter than damage dealer, however, you’d be wasting
most of Bianca’s talents through the Marksman tree.
Where to put talent points: Bianca, Marksman, Scoundrel, Sabotage
Where not to put talent points: Subterfuge, Specialist
Early game (1-7): Your best bet when starting out
with Varric is to pretty much exclusively invest in the Bianca (archery)
tree. Hail of Arrows is a strong area-of-effect spell, Bursting Arrow
gives a nice little AOE pop and Pinning Shot is a staple single-target
attack.
Since Varric starts with Miasmic Flask, spend the extra talent point
to upgrade it early, which increases the stun effect as well as lowers
the cooldown. In the Scoundrel tree, Blindside at level 5 is a good way
to boost your damage since you get a bonus against targets who are fighting other allies. Stick to those staples early.
Mid game (7-15): Once you get access to the Marksman
tree, you probably want to stick exclusively here. Grab Rhyming Triplet
at level 7 then at level 8 choose either Archers’ Lance (Bianca tree)
or Kickback (Marksman). At level 9 grab Bianca’s Song to boost Varric’s
attacking power and leave it on all the time. At 10, grab either
Archer’s Lance or Kickback (whichever you didn’t get before) and then
scoop up the Nameless Grace upgrade to Rhyming Triplet at 11. At 12 get
Well-oiled to boost Varric’s attack speed. After that, take Overtime if
you want (+10 Stamina regen) or look elsewhere. You may consider
beginning to upgrade your Bianca skills or start looking at the Sabotage
tree to pick up some additional AOE controller spells.
Late game (15+): Like most characters, spend this
time upgrading your skills. Other places you may want to look at are
also the Scoundrel tree. If you get Goad or Back-to-Back, you can get
Twist the Knife, which means auto-crits on stunned targets which is
always nice. You may also want to look at the Specialist tree. Although
they are exclusive sustainables, Harmony is a nice bonus for rogues
since it gives you a pile of nice effects if you can get to it.Subterfuge has some advantages, but for an archery character, things
like Stealth and Evade aren’t really going to do you as much good as
other skills you can spend points in. Focus your time unloading your
variety of attack skills on tough enemies and you’ll be OK with Varric.
Attributes: For rogues, dexterity is the most
important. If you plan to use Varric as your only rogue, you’ll need to
ramp up your cunning to hit the lockpicking levels at 10/20/30/40
cunning. If you’re not a dual-wield rogue and not using Isabela, Varric
is actually the next best choice for this because he has a set weapon so
you don’t have to worry about falling behind on dexterity to meet new
weapon requirements. However, your overall damage will be considerably
lower.
Varric has a lot of good active skills and slower attack speed than a
dual-wielder, so you’ll need a fair amount of stamina as well to help
you keep firing. If you’re not using him as a lockpicker, a 2-1 ratio is
probably your best option, going with two dexterity and then
alternating between one willpower and constitution. Once Varric’s
constitution is up around 18 or 20 you can stop, that should be enough
for him in almost all situations.
Equipment: Like all rogues, Varric will benefit from
critical modifiers, both in chance and damage. Also, since Bianca isn’t
exactly fast firing, bonuses to attack speed are nice too. If you’re
going to be pumping up his cunning, you may also need some
attack-helping accessories. And you don’t have to worry about weapons,
because Varric always uses Bianca. Load that baby up with some nice
runes when available and you’ll be good. Anders
class: Mage
Specialization: Vengeance
Role: Healer/Support
Anders, like in Awakening, is set up to be your healer. So unless
you’re playing as a mage with a healing focus, you’ll probably need
Anders in some capacity. However if you ARE a mage with healing and you
still want to use Anders, you can make him a viable damage dealer as an
alternative build. This will focus on the healer/supporter, with a brief
alternate build later. Anders doesn’t have access to the Entropy tree
of spells.
Where to put talent points: Creation, Arcane, Vengeance
Where not to put talent points: None
Early (1-7): Your earliest focus should be upgrading
Heal (which Anders starts with) to give him the biggest
health-restoring spell you can get to this point. A good place to start
is with Heroic Aura, which gives a team boost to attack and defense. It
can be upgraded later to give you a bonus to damage and critical chance
too, making it a great supporting skill. Barrier can give your party
member a quick shot of damage resistance and Crushing Prison is a nice
spell to inflict on strong enemies to slow them down and Elemental
Weapons is a nice supporter for 10 percent of your mana. You may also
want to start building Arcane Shield as well, since at its full upgrade,
offers great defense and resistances to your party.
Mid game (7-15): In the mid game, your best move is
to focus on his Vengeance specialization. Panacea unlocks both Aid
Allies (group heal) and Regroup (revival) which Vengeance will give you
access to Swift Justice, which reduces all of your cooldowns to 80
percent, greatly useful.
You’ll probably want to start upgrading your skills in here,
especially Arcane Shield and Heroic Aura as well as nabbing Haste and
its later upgrade, which is nice for boss fights. If you want some
attacking power, you can look at some offensive spells. Anders starts
with Winter’s Grasp and Cone of Cold is a nice controlling spell for
mages. Or you may dive into the Spirit tree and nab Spirit Bolt and/or
Walking Bomb. Primal can also lead to Petrify, which is perhaps the best
boss show-stopper in the game.
Late game (15+): By this time, most of your core
spells should be upgraded to max, so you can really move toward amping
up your attack spells or other supporting moves like the Glyphs in the
Creation tree.Attributes: Anders will do well
with plenty of available mana, since he’ll probably be carrying one or
more sustainables as well as needing to have his heals and some
offensive firepower available. Take his constitution up to about 18 or
20 to give him some survivability, then keep magic and willpower about
even. More magic will give his limited offensive arsenal more power, but
more willpower will lead to more mana and more casting ability. Since
spells like Heal and Haste aren’t spellpower dependent, you’re better
off having more casts available.
Equipment: For staves for Anders, additional mana or
mana regeneration rate will do you more good than additional damage, so
don’t sacrifice a good staff with plus-mana and plus-mana regen for one
with more damage. Also any staff with plus-percent healing by this
character is nice too. As for accessories, same deal, additional mana
regen will do well, additional mana or plus-to-healing. Otherwise fill
in gaps where you need them, things like defense or health can help if
they are marginally better than what you have. Attack is probably the
least important, since Anders is a support guy.
Alternate Build: If you’re a healing mage or you want a no-healer party,
you can build out Anders’ offensive capabilities and utilize the
Vengeance sustainable, which will increase his damage, however at a cost
to damage resistance. If you want to keep Vengeance active, make sure
that Anders is well protected and be prepared to waste enemies with him
to get the heal effect from Martyr and Blood of My Enemy. You may want
to get powerful spells in the Primal school to really give him the most
pop. If you do this his role will change to pure damage dealer maybe
with a bit of support. However, the more people he can kill in this
build, the better.
Fenris
class: Warrior
Weapon: Two-hand
Specialization: Tevinter Fugitive
Role: Damage/off-tanking
Fenris is a two-handed warrior, which gives him a predisposition
towards being a damage dealer. This role is helped by his
specialization, which is like a mix of Templar, Berserker and Reaver
mixed into one mega tree. He’s better suited to just be set lose to rip
enemies apart, but you can also build him up to serve as a solo tank or
off-tank too in your party.
Where to put talent points: Two-handed, Vanguard, Tevinter Fugitive
Where not to put talent points: Defender
Early (1-7): I can’t rightly suggest any warrior go
without getting Taunt, at least one level. Even if you’re making Fenris a
heavy damage dealer, he’s still going to be more sturdy than any rogue
or mage. Otherwise early you want to nab your two-handed tree skills,
since those will be your main vehicle for cutting through enemies. Make
sure you get all of them – Mighty Blow, Giant’s Reach, Whirlwind and
Scythe. If you want, you can wait on Sunder, but you’re going to want it
at some point. If you grab Taunt, you may also want to invest in
Bravery early as well. While Aveline benefits more from Battle Synergy,
Fenris will get more out of Bravery since it increases his attack power
when he’s surrounded, a good thing. However, if Fenris is going to be
your only warrior, you may want to still go with Battle Synergy or
neither, since you’ll get a bonus to defense and damage resistance from
Lyrium Ghost. You may also want to get Might, since it will open up the
rest of the Vanguard tree for later.
Mid game (7-15): The Tevinter Fugitive
specialization is a good one, so make sure you grab almost all of the
skills here. Get Lyrium Ghost first and keep it on, since it will give
you more defense and critical chance, both good. Veneer of Calm is
essentially the same a Blood Frenzy, meaning your damage goes up as your
health goes down so grab that too. Spirit Pulse is like the Templar
specialization Holy Smite, which will give you some nova spirit damage.
If you want another AOE attack (I personally like the Scythe/Holy
Smite/Whirlwind combo), grab that, otherwise, this is one skill you can
skip. In this level you may want to start upgrading your two-hand
abilities or start grabbing more talents in Vanguard like Cleave or
Destroyer. Make sure to upgrade Lyrium Ghost at level 11 or later and
finish out this part back in the Tevinter Fugitive tree by scooping up
Battle Tempo and Inner Reserves.Late (15+): Hone
your skillset here. Upgrade any skills you use frequently (should be
about all of your two-hand abilities) and look toward getting Masscre
from the Vanguard tree. Deflect (+25 percent magic resistance) may be
something to get later if you’re worried about magic, but isn’t totally
necessary. If you still have a few talent points after your upgrading is
done, get stuff from the Battlemaster tree like Bolster, Second Wind
and Deep Reserves to help keep your stamina pool.
Attributes: If you want to run more than one
sustainable (namely, more than Lyrium Ghost), you should probably boost
up your stamina reserves, since Fenris will have a lot of active
abilities to utilize. He can probably get by with less constitution than
a true tank since his defense will mostly derive from his offense, high
killing power. A constitution of 25 should be plenty and a willpower
around there will give him a nice base to work from. Unbalance Fenris to
have disproportionate strength for the best results. A 2-1 ratio of
strength to willpower/constitution should serve you well. But if he’s
going to be your only warrior, consider giving him some extra
constitution to take more hits for you at the cost of some additional
strength.
Accessories: Fenris is a damage dealer, but he’s
still a warrior. Physical damage items are good but damage resistance
items should never be overlooked for any warrior. Health, stamina and
attack items are next in line, with low priority given to defense and
armor items, since the total bonus is typically negligible to warriors. Isabela
class: Rogue
Weapon: Dual-wield
Specialization: Swashbuckler
Role: Single-target damage
Isabela is your own dual-wielding option if you’re not one yourself. This pirate
duelist is also perhaps your best option for a lockpicker, since
additional cunning will mesh well with her high defense from her
specialization. If you want to play her as a more sneaky, stealthy rogue
you can, but she’s well enough suited to go face-to-face with most
enemies in mid and late game.
Where to put talent points: Dual-wield, Scoundrel, Swashbuckler, Specialist
Where not to put talent points: None
Early (1-7): Isabela comes with some points put into Subterfuge, which will be great to help keep her alive
as she develops. Early on, make sure to nab the basics in the
dual-wield tree including Backstab, Unforgiving Chain and Explosive
Strike. These will be your staples for the majority of the game and will
continue to serve you well. You want to get Isabela’s damage up, so
definitely get Blindside to deal bonus damage to enemies not engaging
you. Grabbing Back-to-Back in the Scoundrel tree will be a way to
support allies in trouble and give you more options later in that tree.
Mid game (7-15): This is when you can get into the
Swashbuckler tree, which will skyrocket Isabela’s effectiveness in
single combat. Get both Across the Bow (a single-target taunt) and
Savvy. Savvy, since it reduces your damage as more enemies engage you,
isn’t really useful, since you should want a 1-to-1 fight whenever you
can get it. Shelf it for if you’re getting severely overwhelmed.
Experienced Hand, All Hands on Deck (Flicker from Awakening repackaged)
and Sea Legs are all useful. Also in this range if you have the point,
grab Power from the Specialist tree (gives a chance to stun) and Twist
the Knife (100 percent chance to crit against stunned enemies). See how
those two will work together nicely? Also upgrade All Hands on Deck,
which will stun enemies it hits. Again, good with Twist the Knife.
Late game (15+): Upgrading Across the Bow will
reduce your taunted enemies defense, so you may want that. Upgrade
Backstab and Explosive Strike. You may want to invest in Twin Strikes,
but personally, it’s got a slow attack animation so you may just be
better off skipping it and counting on your regular attacks to land your
criticals. Also Lacerate increases your damage while giving a chance to
inflict bleeding wounds, but you can potentially pass on this too if
you’re short on talents. With Isabela, I’d highly suggest increasing
your points in Specialist to get Harmony and then upgrade Power to give
you a higher chance to stun for more damage with Twist the Knife. Other
skills worth a point include Rush (the rogue version of Scythe) or grab
Scoundrel’s Follow Through or nab some Subterfuge skills to be a bit
more sneaky.Attributes: Isabela is a great
choice for lockpicking, since it requires high cunning. This meshes well
with Isabela’s naturally high defense from the Swashbuckler tree, which
makes it easy to max out her defense at 80 percent chance for normal
enemies to miss. If you’re not going to use her for lockpicking, make
sure she gets enough cunning to keep her defense up then pour extra into
dexterity. Since I’m a treasure-holic, I usually aim for Isabela to get
30 Cunning by the end of Act 1 and 40 cunning by the End of Act 2, then
stop. The rest I distribute mostly into dexterity so she can keep using
better daggers, with only a spare point here and there for willpower
and constitution. Isabela doesn’t need a whole stamina, since she won’t have a lot of skills to
activate and regenerates stamina quickly through her auto-attacks. Since
she has high defense, she won’t need too much health as long as you
don’t throw her into situations she can’t handle.
Accessories: If you’re pouring points into cunning,
you may fall behind the curve on daggers since your dexterity won’t be
high enough. So try to find the best daggers you can equip or daggers
that you can buff up with a rune or two in the meantime. If you have
options though, both higher damage and plus chance to critical or
additional critical damage are all good. For belts/rings/amulets, the
same applies. Anything involving criticals is good, physical damage is
nice and health or stamina are lower on the chain. Plus to defense or
attack won’t give you a huge benefit, so skip those unless they’re
spectacular.
Alternate build: If you don’t want such a
single-target focused Isabela, you can expand out and get a variety of
bombs. Miasmic Flask, Fatiguing Fog, Confusion, and Chameleon’s Breath
can help you control the battlefield and aid your party for a more single-target/support role.
Merrill
class: Mage
Specialization: Dalish Pariah
Role: Damage/Support or Burst Damage
Merrill is interesting. Without Creation, she’s has no ability to heal the party,
so her roles are reduced to either damager, support, or controller.
With a specialization that’s a mix of Blood Mage and Battlemage/Keeper
from Awakening, you can either build Merrill like a typical mage or
really take advantage of her blood magic in a more atypical build that
will require your attention. I’ll go into details about both, since they
are wildly different.
Typical Mage Build
Where to put talent points: Primal, Entropy
Where not to put points: None
Early (1-7): Merrill starts with some goodies in
Primal and Entropy, so it’s as good a place as any to start. Since
Anders doesn’t get Entropy, Merrill will be the only mage with access to
that tree for most of the game (especially if you don’t have Bethany).
Chain Lightning and Tempest are both very strong spells and Petrify is a
fantastic disable against ALL enemies, bosses included. Grab Horror in
the Entropy tree for a single-target stun.
Mid game (7-15): Of all your companions,
if you’re building Merrill like a typical mage, her specialization is
NOT very useful to you. You can legitimately skip all of the skills
without losing too much. Ensnare is a nice nova-type attack, but other
than that, the Dalish Pariah tree is particularly week. So forget it.
Continue to build in the Entropy tree, get Galvanism in the Primal tree.
You may want to consider some support skills to take the load off of a
mage Hawke or Anders, so picking up Elemental Weapons or a fully
upgraded Arcane Shield can help. Or if you want more damage, when you’re
done with the Primal Tree move on to the Spirit or Elemental tree and
keep picking up attack spells.
Late game (15+): Round out your favorite skills with
full upgrades. Chain Lightning, Tempest and Petrify are all worth
upgrading and Entropic Cloud is good for tightly knit packs around a
warrior. Otherwise having Walking Bomb or other Elemental skills in your
pocket is a nice tough. Essentially you’ll want to focus on some
disabling and crowd-control first, then bomb the crap out of your
enemies with a wide variety of offensive spells.
Attributes: Like other casters, high magic and high
mana are good, while you shouldn’t need a much health. Your big spells
will draw threat, so pump up your health enough to help you survive if
enemies get away from a warrior. Depending on the amount of offensive
spells at your disposal, adjust your willpower to make sure you can
launch at least two rounds of big spells before being exhausted.
Accessories: This is mostly a damager build, so
items that increase particular damages like electric or spirit damage
are good, depending on which spells you focus on. Otherwise, typical
mage gear like increased mana regeneration or additional mana always
works fine.
Blood Mage build
This build relies on a high health pool, since you’ll want to fill up
your mana pool by constantly running sustainables. This Blood Mage
build is essentially a support/damager build, but you’ll need to be
careful with it since your spells are fueled by your health less than
your mana. However, you may need to personally take control of Merrill
more often than other mages and babysit her to make sure she stays safe.
Where to put talent points: Dalish Pariah, Arcane, Spirit, Primal, Elemental
Where not to put talent points: EntropyEarly (1-7): Start
building a pool of potential sustainable spells to run. The most
important of this is Death Syphon from the Spirit tree. Although Blood
of the First makes you immune to conventional healing, you should (not
100 percent sure on this one) still get absorption heals from corpses in
the area. However, the health regen effect isn’t available until you
upgrade at level 9. However, get Spirit Bolt and Death Syphon now so
they’ll be ready later. Mind Blast will also be key, since your health
will be iffy at some points. If you get surrounded, you’ll need an
escape mechanism and against normal enemies, this is the best you’ll
have available. Pick one or two attack spells you like, Chain Lightning
and Tempest are good options, but don’t go crazy with attack spells.
Mid game (7-15): This is when you can finally get
Blood of the First, however it eats up 50 percent of your mana pool. Get
it, because it’s the most important part of this build. You’ll also
want to nab Wrath of the Elvhen, which will give a pulse-damage aura. So
here’s essentially how the build works. You’ll WANT enemies to surround
you eventually, since they will be damaged by Wrath of the Elvhen, be
grouped up for use of Wounds of the Past (Blood Control), allow her to
hit people with Ensnare and allow her to heal using Wrath’s upgrade even
while blood magic is active. Focus almost all of your points into the
Dalish Pariah tree to upgrade everything and get the upgrade to Death
Syphon for an additional healing mechanism. You can choose to pass on
Stone’s Throw, which is essentially the same as the rogue talent
Back-to-Back, but it can work as an escape mechanism if you get into
real trouble. Fill your mana bar with sustainables like Wrath, Death
Syphon and Blood of the First, then cast all your spells off your
health.
Late game (15+): The key here is tweaking your
formula. If you still take a lot of hits, Rock Armor can help reduce
damage. If you want another attack to hit people with as they close in,
try Cone of Cold or Firestorm. Or invest in Walking Bomb to help blow up
some of those close-by enemies. But remember, the majority of your
spells will be cast from your health pool, so don’t go nuts trying to
cast eight of ten spells each battle because you’ll deplete yourself.
This build is about burst damage, get into a group and bam, bam, bam and
then back out. And if you get into trouble, turn off Blood of the
First, heal, and be a more “typical” mage until you’re ready for another
round.
Attributes: Obviously blood mages need to focus more
on health, since its going to be in short supply. In this build you can
mostly neglect willpower, since the only thing your mana pool will be
used for is running three
sustainables (Blood of the First, Wrath of the Elvhen and Death Syphon =
90 percent of your mana pool). So whether you have 100 mana or 1,000
mana, it’s going to eat up the same bar. Pump up your magic and your
constitution to get the most out of Merrill.
Accessories: I’m not certain if the blood magic
items work on Merrill, aka “Get an extra 1 point of mana per point of
health used” but if they do, these are instantly your best item to
consider. Otherwise look for health regen items or health increasing
items. Additional mana regeneration or mana items are pretty much
useless to this Merrill build.
Sebastian Vael
class: Rogue
Weapon: Bow
Specialization: Royal Archer
Role: Single target damage
Although Sebastian is an archer, his skillset from his specialization
make his build more akin to a dual-wielding rogue. This gives him a
great opportunity to unload on single targets, so pick an enemy and set
Sebastian loose on them.
Where to put talent points: Specialist, Scoundrel, Royal Archer, Archery
Where not to put talents: Sabotage
Early (1-7): You don’t get Sebastian until Act 2, so
essentially this early game portion will consist of you picking five or
six skills at your first level up. While Varric benefits from his
skills, Sebastian’s regular attacks will be more valuable to you. You
can grab skills from the Archery tree like Hail of Arrows or you can
completely bypass them if you want. Some important first skills to grab
are in the Scoundrel tree: Blindside, Back-to-Back, and Twist the Knife.
Also, invest in the Specialist tree to open up Harmony for later.
Mid game (7-15): The Royal Archer specialization is a
good one so you’ll want to grab everything in here. Righteous Chain is
like the dual-wield’s Unforgiving Chain, except for Archers, while Arrow
of Judgment serves as Explosive Strike. Wounding Arrow can reduce enemy
damage resistance based on your chain. Maferath’s Advance gives you 100
percent chance to critical from flanking angles. Combined with the 120
percent damage from Blindside, hitting an enemy attacking another party member from behind will be big damageLate game (15+):
Get Harmony from the Specialist tree, then utilize either Speed or
Power and upgrade them. Power will give you more chance to stun, for
which you’ll get automatic criticals from Twist the Knife, while Speed
will get your more attacks from your increased speed and reduce
cooldowns on your nice chain-oriented arrows in the Royal Archer tree.
Feel free to fill out your ranks with Archery talents, Miasmic Flask or
some Subterfuge talents if you’ve got spare points.
Attributes: Although Sebastian is a rogue, you’ll
cripple him if you try to boost his cunning so he can unlock chests.
Focus your points into dexterity to keep his attack and damage up. Go
with a 2-1 ratio of dexterity to willpower/constitution on every level
up to really up his killing power.
Accessories: If you build Sebastian right, he’ll
critical – a lot. So your best bet is for items that increase critical
damage or just damage in general. Attack speed items are always a bonus
for the slower bows, so look for those too. Otherwise physical damage
items or plus health/stamina items will do if nothing better is
available.
I hope this is helpfull and thank you for reading;)
[/ITEM]
Bethany Hawkeclass: Mage
Specialization:
This article, Bethany Hawke (Dragon Age), is the sole property of MarkRulez711 this article can not be used, altered in any way, shape or form. Please do not edit this article without the user's permission or vandalize in any way shape or form.
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NoneFocus: Damage
If you’re playing as a warrior or rogue, Bethany will be the first
character you get and the first mage you get until you recruit either
Anders or Merrill. However, she’ll only be a temporary companion, making
your choice to build her somewhat irrelevant for the majority of the
game. However, we’ll indulge.
Bethany, in the early game, probably best serves you as a straight up
damage dealer. She doesn’t have a specialization to worry about so you
can just pour all her point directly into a skill tree. Since she starts
with Fireball, you’ve got a head start in the Elemental tree so that’s
probably where you’ll want to stay.
In the early game (probably with your first level up), you should
invest in Heal, for obvious reasons. Until you get Anders, she’ll be
your only option to heal. And unless you rush ahead and nab Anders as
the first quest you take on in Act I, this will be able to help you out.
Nab Winter’s Grasp, Cone of Cold, Firestorm and Pyromancer, all in
the Elemental Tree with the goal of working your way up to Elemental
Mastery.
In the middle if you need to grab an outside skill (due to level
restrictions), some quick support choices will add some extra oomph to
your party.
One-and-done skills like Elemental Weapons or Heroic Aura will suffice,
or grab another attack spell in Spirit Bolt in the Spirit tree.
You probably won’t get too many more skill points with her than that
before she’s unavailable for you to use. If/when she comes back later
and if you really want to use her for old times’ sake, depending on your
party makeup
you may want to grab a couple disabling spells in the Entropy Tree, or
focus on more support-type roles with Creation Spells or Arcane. Or you
can go even further into the realm of pure damage by nabbing some primal
spells too. But really, that late in the game, your supporting cast
should greatly outshine Bethany.
Carver Hawke
class: Warrior
Weapon: Two-hand
Specialization: None
Role: Damage/Off-tank
Carver, like Bethany, is temporary for your party and only if you’re a mage. Also, like Bethany, he is best used by focusing on raw damage-dealing early.
Start Carver out immediately in the Two-hand tree, nabbing your early
skills like Mighty Blow, Giant’s Reach and Sunder. You’ll eventually
want to get Scythe and Whirlwind too when they become available and then
probably stick to upgrading those skills as they become available.
If you plan on using only Carver as your warrior early, get Taunt, a
necessity to help him control threat on the battlefield. If you want to
branch out a bit into other trees the best option is probably the
Vanguard Tree. By picking up Might and Control (which are unfortunately
mutually exclusive) you can unlock Cleave, which will double his damage
output. Or, you can stick in the Warmonger tree and pick up other skills
like the sustainable Bravery to increase his power in crowds or go
toward Tremor for some AOE knockdown.
However, since he’s unavailable most of the game, your best bet is to
just pump up his two-handed skills as far as you can while you have
him. If/when he comes back later in the game, that would be at time to
branch out especially into the Vanguard Tree where he can pick strong
passive skills like Destroyer and Massacre to really add up his killing
power.
Aveline Vallen
class: Warrior
Weapon: Weapon and shield
Specialization: Guardian
Role: Tank
You get Aveline during the Lothering escape and from there and beyond, she will best serve as a tank for your party.
Aveline (outside of Hawke) will serve as your best option for a tanking
character. With her weapon-and-shield focus and powerful damage-taking
specialization, you’ll want her to be taking all your party’s hits.
Where to put talent points: Weapon-and-shield, Warmonger, Defender, Battlemaster, Guardian
Where not to put talent points: Vanguard
Early game (1-7): Aveline starts out with Taunt and
Shield Defense under her belt, which is great because those are two
skills you’ll probably want to utilize frequently. At the beginning I
turn on Shield Defense and just leave it on all the time since it
effectively reduces the damage she’ll take. I nab Pommel Strike, which
gives her a single-target stun, but also will open the door to Taunt’s
upgrade later.
Make sure to pick up Perception (W&S) to make Aveline immune to
flanking to better protect her. Early on, instead of focusing on some
attack skills, I move immediately into the Battlemaster tree. Grab Rally
(which is somewhat useless except for its mana/stam regen effect) and
get Battle Synergy. Battle Synergy is exclusive with Bravery
(Warmonger), but you should always use Battle Synergy with Aveline over
Bravery. While Battle Synergy boosts defense and damage resistance for
the whole party,
Bravery increases attack and critical chance for Aveline only. She’s
here to take hits, not dish them out, making Battle Synergy a much more
effective, supportive choice. Early in the game run both Shield Defense
and Battle Synergy. While this cuts your stamina bar to about half,
Aveline doesn’t really need a whole lot of active skills yet to be
effective. That will allow you to use a Taunt to control the early
battle and that’s about it. You shouldn’t need more at this point.
Mid-game (7-15): At level 7 you get access to the
Guardian tree. Aveline, unfortunately is loaded down with too many
sustainables, so you may not get the full effect out of her tree if
you’re using other sustainables like Shield Defense and Battle Synergy.
At level 7 grab the upgrade to Taunt first, then at your next level
start into Guardian by getting Immovable. Immovable increases Aveline’s
damage resistance as she gets hit at the cost of move and attack speed.
Make a decision here, either keep using Shield Defense or start using
Immovable. Immovable is better if you’re getting absolutely mobbed,
while Shield Defense offers a more constant protection at only loss of
damage, not attack and move speed.
Your goals in this portion should be to invest enough points in
Guardian to get both Indomitable (100 percent resistance to stun and
knockdown) and Thick Skin (+15 percent damage reduction). Retaliation is
a nice active skill that will allow Aveline to crack back when she’s
surrounded, so using Taunt plus Retaliation together can pay dividends.
The sustainable Bodyguard is pretty underwhelming in the Guardian tree.
Consider passing this one up, mostly because it’s another costly
sustainable
In this stage you can either begin focusing on getting some attack
talents in the Weapon and Shield tree including Shield Bash, Assault or
Scatter. Or this is probably a good time to look toward grabbing both
upgrades to Battle Synergy, which will increase threat generation as
well as transfer damage from companions
to Aveline. Or you can further increase your damage resistance by going
into the Defender tree and getting Stonewall and Turn the Blade toward
unlocking Adamant (+5 percent damage resistance), although it’s a lot of
skill points for pretty small returns.
Late game (15+): This should mostly be used to grab
upgrades to all the skills you use frequently, whatever those may be.
The only new skills you may want to grab are stamina related skills in
Battlemaster like Bolster, Deep Reserves or Second wind, since the
amount of sustainables you run (I usually use two with Aveline) will
cripple your small stamina pool.
Don’t waste any talent points in the Vanguard tree. There’s pretty
much nothing in there that is useful to Aveline, especially since the
first two skills you have to pick from are more sustainables.
Attribute distribution: Since Aveline will be taking all of the damage for your party,
you’ll want to give her high constitution. Also since she has several
costly sustainables to choose from, you’ll probably want to boost her
willpower up a bit higher than you might for other non-mage characters.
You may want to utilize a 1-1-1 level up with
strength-willpower-constitution or go with an every-other plan like 1-2
strength-con followed up by a 1-1-1 str-will-con. I would almost always
recommend having her con as high or higher than her strength.
Equipment: Remember that Aveline’s first duty is to
tank. Equipment that gives plus-percentage to damage resistance or magic
resistance should be sought. Items that boost health or health
regeneration are also good picks. Otherwise, go with typical warrior
stuff that increases attack or physical damage. Items that boost
critical rate or critical damage are wasted on her, give those to your
rogues instead.Varric Tethras
class: Rogue
Weapon: Bianca
Specialization: Marksman
Role: Single-target/AOE damage
Archers in Dragon Age 2
are somewhat of a mixed bag, but Varric’s specialization gives him some
good single-target damage options. However, you can focus more on other
trees to give Varric a variety of AOE-effect talents to make him more
of a controller/supporter than damage dealer, however, you’d be wasting
most of Bianca’s talents through the Marksman tree.
Where to put talent points: Bianca, Marksman, Scoundrel, Sabotage
Where not to put talent points: Subterfuge, Specialist
Early game (1-7): Your best bet when starting out
with Varric is to pretty much exclusively invest in the Bianca (archery)
tree. Hail of Arrows is a strong area-of-effect spell, Bursting Arrow
gives a nice little AOE pop and Pinning Shot is a staple single-target
attack.
Since Varric starts with Miasmic Flask, spend the extra talent point
to upgrade it early, which increases the stun effect as well as lowers
the cooldown. In the Scoundrel tree, Blindside at level 5 is a good way
to boost your damage since you get a bonus against targets who are fighting other allies. Stick to those staples early.
Mid game (7-15): Once you get access to the Marksman
tree, you probably want to stick exclusively here. Grab Rhyming Triplet
at level 7 then at level 8 choose either Archers’ Lance (Bianca tree)
or Kickback (Marksman). At level 9 grab Bianca’s Song to boost Varric’s
attacking power and leave it on all the time. At 10, grab either
Archer’s Lance or Kickback (whichever you didn’t get before) and then
scoop up the Nameless Grace upgrade to Rhyming Triplet at 11. At 12 get
Well-oiled to boost Varric’s attack speed. After that, take Overtime if
you want (+10 Stamina regen) or look elsewhere. You may consider
beginning to upgrade your Bianca skills or start looking at the Sabotage
tree to pick up some additional AOE controller spells.
Late game (15+): Like most characters, spend this
time upgrading your skills. Other places you may want to look at are
also the Scoundrel tree. If you get Goad or Back-to-Back, you can get
Twist the Knife, which means auto-crits on stunned targets which is
always nice. You may also want to look at the Specialist tree. Although
they are exclusive sustainables, Harmony is a nice bonus for rogues
since it gives you a pile of nice effects if you can get to it.Subterfuge has some advantages, but for an archery character, things
like Stealth and Evade aren’t really going to do you as much good as
other skills you can spend points in. Focus your time unloading your
variety of attack skills on tough enemies and you’ll be OK with Varric.
Attributes: For rogues, dexterity is the most
important. If you plan to use Varric as your only rogue, you’ll need to
ramp up your cunning to hit the lockpicking levels at 10/20/30/40
cunning. If you’re not a dual-wield rogue and not using Isabela, Varric
is actually the next best choice for this because he has a set weapon so
you don’t have to worry about falling behind on dexterity to meet new
weapon requirements. However, your overall damage will be considerably
lower.
Varric has a lot of good active skills and slower attack speed than a
dual-wielder, so you’ll need a fair amount of stamina as well to help
you keep firing. If you’re not using him as a lockpicker, a 2-1 ratio is
probably your best option, going with two dexterity and then
alternating between one willpower and constitution. Once Varric’s
constitution is up around 18 or 20 you can stop, that should be enough
for him in almost all situations.
Equipment: Like all rogues, Varric will benefit from
critical modifiers, both in chance and damage. Also, since Bianca isn’t
exactly fast firing, bonuses to attack speed are nice too. If you’re
going to be pumping up his cunning, you may also need some
attack-helping accessories. And you don’t have to worry about weapons,
because Varric always uses Bianca. Load that baby up with some nice
runes when available and you’ll be good. Anders
class: Mage
Specialization: Vengeance
Role: Healer/Support
Anders, like in Awakening, is set up to be your healer. So unless
you’re playing as a mage with a healing focus, you’ll probably need
Anders in some capacity. However if you ARE a mage with healing and you
still want to use Anders, you can make him a viable damage dealer as an
alternative build. This will focus on the healer/supporter, with a brief
alternate build later. Anders doesn’t have access to the Entropy tree
of spells.
Where to put talent points: Creation, Arcane, Vengeance
Where not to put talent points: None
Early (1-7): Your earliest focus should be upgrading
Heal (which Anders starts with) to give him the biggest
health-restoring spell you can get to this point. A good place to start
is with Heroic Aura, which gives a team boost to attack and defense. It
can be upgraded later to give you a bonus to damage and critical chance
too, making it a great supporting skill. Barrier can give your party
member a quick shot of damage resistance and Crushing Prison is a nice
spell to inflict on strong enemies to slow them down and Elemental
Weapons is a nice supporter for 10 percent of your mana. You may also
want to start building Arcane Shield as well, since at its full upgrade,
offers great defense and resistances to your party.
Mid game (7-15): In the mid game, your best move is
to focus on his Vengeance specialization. Panacea unlocks both Aid
Allies (group heal) and Regroup (revival) which Vengeance will give you
access to Swift Justice, which reduces all of your cooldowns to 80
percent, greatly useful.
You’ll probably want to start upgrading your skills in here,
especially Arcane Shield and Heroic Aura as well as nabbing Haste and
its later upgrade, which is nice for boss fights. If you want some
attacking power, you can look at some offensive spells. Anders starts
with Winter’s Grasp and Cone of Cold is a nice controlling spell for
mages. Or you may dive into the Spirit tree and nab Spirit Bolt and/or
Walking Bomb. Primal can also lead to Petrify, which is perhaps the best
boss show-stopper in the game.
Late game (15+): By this time, most of your core
spells should be upgraded to max, so you can really move toward amping
up your attack spells or other supporting moves like the Glyphs in the
Creation tree.Attributes: Anders will do well
with plenty of available mana, since he’ll probably be carrying one or
more sustainables as well as needing to have his heals and some
offensive firepower available. Take his constitution up to about 18 or
20 to give him some survivability, then keep magic and willpower about
even. More magic will give his limited offensive arsenal more power, but
more willpower will lead to more mana and more casting ability. Since
spells like Heal and Haste aren’t spellpower dependent, you’re better
off having more casts available.
Equipment: For staves for Anders, additional mana or
mana regeneration rate will do you more good than additional damage, so
don’t sacrifice a good staff with plus-mana and plus-mana regen for one
with more damage. Also any staff with plus-percent healing by this
character is nice too. As for accessories, same deal, additional mana
regen will do well, additional mana or plus-to-healing. Otherwise fill
in gaps where you need them, things like defense or health can help if
they are marginally better than what you have. Attack is probably the
least important, since Anders is a support guy.
Alternate Build: If you’re a healing mage or you want a no-healer party,
you can build out Anders’ offensive capabilities and utilize the
Vengeance sustainable, which will increase his damage, however at a cost
to damage resistance. If you want to keep Vengeance active, make sure
that Anders is well protected and be prepared to waste enemies with him
to get the heal effect from Martyr and Blood of My Enemy. You may want
to get powerful spells in the Primal school to really give him the most
pop. If you do this his role will change to pure damage dealer maybe
with a bit of support. However, the more people he can kill in this
build, the better.
Fenris
class: Warrior
Weapon: Two-hand
Specialization: Tevinter Fugitive
Role: Damage/off-tanking
Fenris is a two-handed warrior, which gives him a predisposition
towards being a damage dealer. This role is helped by his
specialization, which is like a mix of Templar, Berserker and Reaver
mixed into one mega tree. He’s better suited to just be set lose to rip
enemies apart, but you can also build him up to serve as a solo tank or
off-tank too in your party.
Where to put talent points: Two-handed, Vanguard, Tevinter Fugitive
Where not to put talent points: Defender
Early (1-7): I can’t rightly suggest any warrior go
without getting Taunt, at least one level. Even if you’re making Fenris a
heavy damage dealer, he’s still going to be more sturdy than any rogue
or mage. Otherwise early you want to nab your two-handed tree skills,
since those will be your main vehicle for cutting through enemies. Make
sure you get all of them – Mighty Blow, Giant’s Reach, Whirlwind and
Scythe. If you want, you can wait on Sunder, but you’re going to want it
at some point. If you grab Taunt, you may also want to invest in
Bravery early as well. While Aveline benefits more from Battle Synergy,
Fenris will get more out of Bravery since it increases his attack power
when he’s surrounded, a good thing. However, if Fenris is going to be
your only warrior, you may want to still go with Battle Synergy or
neither, since you’ll get a bonus to defense and damage resistance from
Lyrium Ghost. You may also want to get Might, since it will open up the
rest of the Vanguard tree for later.
Mid game (7-15): The Tevinter Fugitive
specialization is a good one, so make sure you grab almost all of the
skills here. Get Lyrium Ghost first and keep it on, since it will give
you more defense and critical chance, both good. Veneer of Calm is
essentially the same a Blood Frenzy, meaning your damage goes up as your
health goes down so grab that too. Spirit Pulse is like the Templar
specialization Holy Smite, which will give you some nova spirit damage.
If you want another AOE attack (I personally like the Scythe/Holy
Smite/Whirlwind combo), grab that, otherwise, this is one skill you can
skip. In this level you may want to start upgrading your two-hand
abilities or start grabbing more talents in Vanguard like Cleave or
Destroyer. Make sure to upgrade Lyrium Ghost at level 11 or later and
finish out this part back in the Tevinter Fugitive tree by scooping up
Battle Tempo and Inner Reserves.Late (15+): Hone
your skillset here. Upgrade any skills you use frequently (should be
about all of your two-hand abilities) and look toward getting Masscre
from the Vanguard tree. Deflect (+25 percent magic resistance) may be
something to get later if you’re worried about magic, but isn’t totally
necessary. If you still have a few talent points after your upgrading is
done, get stuff from the Battlemaster tree like Bolster, Second Wind
and Deep Reserves to help keep your stamina pool.
Attributes: If you want to run more than one
sustainable (namely, more than Lyrium Ghost), you should probably boost
up your stamina reserves, since Fenris will have a lot of active
abilities to utilize. He can probably get by with less constitution than
a true tank since his defense will mostly derive from his offense, high
killing power. A constitution of 25 should be plenty and a willpower
around there will give him a nice base to work from. Unbalance Fenris to
have disproportionate strength for the best results. A 2-1 ratio of
strength to willpower/constitution should serve you well. But if he’s
going to be your only warrior, consider giving him some extra
constitution to take more hits for you at the cost of some additional
strength.
Accessories: Fenris is a damage dealer, but he’s
still a warrior. Physical damage items are good but damage resistance
items should never be overlooked for any warrior. Health, stamina and
attack items are next in line, with low priority given to defense and
armor items, since the total bonus is typically negligible to warriors. Isabela
class: Rogue
Weapon: Dual-wield
Specialization: Swashbuckler
Role: Single-target damage
Isabela is your own dual-wielding option if you’re not one yourself. This pirate
duelist is also perhaps your best option for a lockpicker, since
additional cunning will mesh well with her high defense from her
specialization. If you want to play her as a more sneaky, stealthy rogue
you can, but she’s well enough suited to go face-to-face with most
enemies in mid and late game.
Where to put talent points: Dual-wield, Scoundrel, Swashbuckler, Specialist
Where not to put talent points: None
Early (1-7): Isabela comes with some points put into Subterfuge, which will be great to help keep her alive
as she develops. Early on, make sure to nab the basics in the
dual-wield tree including Backstab, Unforgiving Chain and Explosive
Strike. These will be your staples for the majority of the game and will
continue to serve you well. You want to get Isabela’s damage up, so
definitely get Blindside to deal bonus damage to enemies not engaging
you. Grabbing Back-to-Back in the Scoundrel tree will be a way to
support allies in trouble and give you more options later in that tree.
Mid game (7-15): This is when you can get into the
Swashbuckler tree, which will skyrocket Isabela’s effectiveness in
single combat. Get both Across the Bow (a single-target taunt) and
Savvy. Savvy, since it reduces your damage as more enemies engage you,
isn’t really useful, since you should want a 1-to-1 fight whenever you
can get it. Shelf it for if you’re getting severely overwhelmed.
Experienced Hand, All Hands on Deck (Flicker from Awakening repackaged)
and Sea Legs are all useful. Also in this range if you have the point,
grab Power from the Specialist tree (gives a chance to stun) and Twist
the Knife (100 percent chance to crit against stunned enemies). See how
those two will work together nicely? Also upgrade All Hands on Deck,
which will stun enemies it hits. Again, good with Twist the Knife.
Late game (15+): Upgrading Across the Bow will
reduce your taunted enemies defense, so you may want that. Upgrade
Backstab and Explosive Strike. You may want to invest in Twin Strikes,
but personally, it’s got a slow attack animation so you may just be
better off skipping it and counting on your regular attacks to land your
criticals. Also Lacerate increases your damage while giving a chance to
inflict bleeding wounds, but you can potentially pass on this too if
you’re short on talents. With Isabela, I’d highly suggest increasing
your points in Specialist to get Harmony and then upgrade Power to give
you a higher chance to stun for more damage with Twist the Knife. Other
skills worth a point include Rush (the rogue version of Scythe) or grab
Scoundrel’s Follow Through or nab some Subterfuge skills to be a bit
more sneaky.Attributes: Isabela is a great
choice for lockpicking, since it requires high cunning. This meshes well
with Isabela’s naturally high defense from the Swashbuckler tree, which
makes it easy to max out her defense at 80 percent chance for normal
enemies to miss. If you’re not going to use her for lockpicking, make
sure she gets enough cunning to keep her defense up then pour extra into
dexterity. Since I’m a treasure-holic, I usually aim for Isabela to get
30 Cunning by the end of Act 1 and 40 cunning by the End of Act 2, then
stop. The rest I distribute mostly into dexterity so she can keep using
better daggers, with only a spare point here and there for willpower
and constitution. Isabela doesn’t need a whole stamina, since she won’t have a lot of skills to
activate and regenerates stamina quickly through her auto-attacks. Since
she has high defense, she won’t need too much health as long as you
don’t throw her into situations she can’t handle.
Accessories: If you’re pouring points into cunning,
you may fall behind the curve on daggers since your dexterity won’t be
high enough. So try to find the best daggers you can equip or daggers
that you can buff up with a rune or two in the meantime. If you have
options though, both higher damage and plus chance to critical or
additional critical damage are all good. For belts/rings/amulets, the
same applies. Anything involving criticals is good, physical damage is
nice and health or stamina are lower on the chain. Plus to defense or
attack won’t give you a huge benefit, so skip those unless they’re
spectacular.
Alternate build: If you don’t want such a
single-target focused Isabela, you can expand out and get a variety of
bombs. Miasmic Flask, Fatiguing Fog, Confusion, and Chameleon’s Breath
can help you control the battlefield and aid your party for a more single-target/support role.
Merrill
class: Mage
Specialization: Dalish Pariah
Role: Damage/Support or Burst Damage
Merrill is interesting. Without Creation, she’s has no ability to heal the party,
so her roles are reduced to either damager, support, or controller.
With a specialization that’s a mix of Blood Mage and Battlemage/Keeper
from Awakening, you can either build Merrill like a typical mage or
really take advantage of her blood magic in a more atypical build that
will require your attention. I’ll go into details about both, since they
are wildly different.
Typical Mage Build
Where to put talent points: Primal, Entropy
Where not to put points: None
Early (1-7): Merrill starts with some goodies in
Primal and Entropy, so it’s as good a place as any to start. Since
Anders doesn’t get Entropy, Merrill will be the only mage with access to
that tree for most of the game (especially if you don’t have Bethany).
Chain Lightning and Tempest are both very strong spells and Petrify is a
fantastic disable against ALL enemies, bosses included. Grab Horror in
the Entropy tree for a single-target stun.
Mid game (7-15): Of all your companions,
if you’re building Merrill like a typical mage, her specialization is
NOT very useful to you. You can legitimately skip all of the skills
without losing too much. Ensnare is a nice nova-type attack, but other
than that, the Dalish Pariah tree is particularly week. So forget it.
Continue to build in the Entropy tree, get Galvanism in the Primal tree.
You may want to consider some support skills to take the load off of a
mage Hawke or Anders, so picking up Elemental Weapons or a fully
upgraded Arcane Shield can help. Or if you want more damage, when you’re
done with the Primal Tree move on to the Spirit or Elemental tree and
keep picking up attack spells.
Late game (15+): Round out your favorite skills with
full upgrades. Chain Lightning, Tempest and Petrify are all worth
upgrading and Entropic Cloud is good for tightly knit packs around a
warrior. Otherwise having Walking Bomb or other Elemental skills in your
pocket is a nice tough. Essentially you’ll want to focus on some
disabling and crowd-control first, then bomb the crap out of your
enemies with a wide variety of offensive spells.
Attributes: Like other casters, high magic and high
mana are good, while you shouldn’t need a much health. Your big spells
will draw threat, so pump up your health enough to help you survive if
enemies get away from a warrior. Depending on the amount of offensive
spells at your disposal, adjust your willpower to make sure you can
launch at least two rounds of big spells before being exhausted.
Accessories: This is mostly a damager build, so
items that increase particular damages like electric or spirit damage
are good, depending on which spells you focus on. Otherwise, typical
mage gear like increased mana regeneration or additional mana always
works fine.
Blood Mage build
This build relies on a high health pool, since you’ll want to fill up
your mana pool by constantly running sustainables. This Blood Mage
build is essentially a support/damager build, but you’ll need to be
careful with it since your spells are fueled by your health less than
your mana. However, you may need to personally take control of Merrill
more often than other mages and babysit her to make sure she stays safe.
Where to put talent points: Dalish Pariah, Arcane, Spirit, Primal, Elemental
Where not to put talent points: EntropyEarly (1-7): Start
building a pool of potential sustainable spells to run. The most
important of this is Death Syphon from the Spirit tree. Although Blood
of the First makes you immune to conventional healing, you should (not
100 percent sure on this one) still get absorption heals from corpses in
the area. However, the health regen effect isn’t available until you
upgrade at level 9. However, get Spirit Bolt and Death Syphon now so
they’ll be ready later. Mind Blast will also be key, since your health
will be iffy at some points. If you get surrounded, you’ll need an
escape mechanism and against normal enemies, this is the best you’ll
have available. Pick one or two attack spells you like, Chain Lightning
and Tempest are good options, but don’t go crazy with attack spells.
Mid game (7-15): This is when you can finally get
Blood of the First, however it eats up 50 percent of your mana pool. Get
it, because it’s the most important part of this build. You’ll also
want to nab Wrath of the Elvhen, which will give a pulse-damage aura. So
here’s essentially how the build works. You’ll WANT enemies to surround
you eventually, since they will be damaged by Wrath of the Elvhen, be
grouped up for use of Wounds of the Past (Blood Control), allow her to
hit people with Ensnare and allow her to heal using Wrath’s upgrade even
while blood magic is active. Focus almost all of your points into the
Dalish Pariah tree to upgrade everything and get the upgrade to Death
Syphon for an additional healing mechanism. You can choose to pass on
Stone’s Throw, which is essentially the same as the rogue talent
Back-to-Back, but it can work as an escape mechanism if you get into
real trouble. Fill your mana bar with sustainables like Wrath, Death
Syphon and Blood of the First, then cast all your spells off your
health.
Late game (15+): The key here is tweaking your
formula. If you still take a lot of hits, Rock Armor can help reduce
damage. If you want another attack to hit people with as they close in,
try Cone of Cold or Firestorm. Or invest in Walking Bomb to help blow up
some of those close-by enemies. But remember, the majority of your
spells will be cast from your health pool, so don’t go nuts trying to
cast eight of ten spells each battle because you’ll deplete yourself. This build is about burst damage, get into a group and bam, bam, bam and
then back out. And if you get into trouble, turn off Blood of the
First, heal, and be a more “typical” mage until you’re ready for another
round.
Attributes: Obviously blood mages need to focus more
on health, since its going to be in short supply. In this build you can
mostly neglect willpower, since the only thing your mana pool will be
used for is running three
sustainables (Blood of the First, Wrath of the Elvhen and Death Syphon =
90 percent of your mana pool). So whether you have 100 mana or 1,000
mana, it’s going to eat up the same bar. Pump up your magic and your
constitution to get the most out of Merrill.
Accessories: I’m not certain if the blood magic
items work on Merrill, aka “Get an extra 1 point of mana per point of
health used” but if they do, these are instantly your best item to
consider. Otherwise look for health regen items or health increasing
items. Additional mana regeneration or mana items are pretty much
useless to this Merrill build.
Sebastian Vael
class: Rogue
Weapon: Bow
Specialization: Royal Archer
Role: Single target damage
Although Sebastian is an archer, his skillset from his specialization
make his build more akin to a dual-wielding rogue. This gives him a
great opportunity to unload on single targets, so pick an enemy and set
Sebastian loose on them.
Where to put talent points: Specialist, Scoundrel, Royal Archer, Archery
Where not to put talents: Sabotage
Early (1-7): You don’t get Sebastian until Act 2, so
essentially this early game portion will consist of you picking five or
six skills at your first level up. While Varric benefits from his
skills, Sebastian’s regular attacks will be more valuable to you. You
can grab skills from the Archery tree like Hail of Arrows or you can
completely bypass them if you want. Some important first skills to grab
are in the Scoundrel tree: Blindside, Back-to-Back, and Twist the Knife.
Also, invest in the Specialist tree to open up Harmony for later.
Mid game (7-15): The Royal Archer specialization is a
good one so you’ll want to grab everything in here. Righteous Chain is
like the dual-wield’s Unforgiving Chain, except for Archers, while Arrow
of Judgment serves as Explosive Strike. Wounding Arrow can reduce enemy
damage resistance based on your chain. Maferath’s Advance gives you 100
percent chance to critical from flanking angles. Combined with the 120
percent damage from Blindside, hitting an enemy attacking another party member from behind will be big damageLate game (15+):
Get Harmony from the Specialist tree, then utilize either Speed or
Power and upgrade them. Power will give you more chance to stun, for
which you’ll get automatic criticals from Twist the Knife, while Speed
will get your more attacks from your increased speed and reduce
cooldowns on your nice chain-oriented arrows in the Royal Archer tree.
Feel free to fill out your ranks with Archery talents, Miasmic Flask or
some Subterfuge talents if you’ve got spare points.
Attributes: Although Sebastian is a rogue, you’ll
cripple him if you try to boost his cunning so he can unlock chests.
Focus your points into dexterity to keep his attack and damage up. Go
with a 2-1 ratio of dexterity to willpower/constitution on every level
up to really up his killing power.
Accessories: If you build Sebastian right, he’ll
critical – a lot. So your best bet is for items that increase critical
damage or just damage in general. Attack speed items are always a bonus
for the slower bows, so look for those too. Otherwise physical damage
items or plus health/stamina items will do if nothing better is
available.
I hope this is helpfull and thank you for reading;)
- Author: admin
- Category: Category
class: Mage
Specialization:
This article, Bethany Hawke (Dragon Age), is the sole property of MarkRulez711 this article can not be used, altered in any way, shape or form. Please do not edit this article without the user's permission or vandalize in any way shape or form.
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NoneFocus: Damage
If you’re playing as a warrior or rogue, Bethany will be the first
character you get and the first mage you get until you recruit either
Anders or Merrill. However, she’ll only be a temporary companion, making
your choice to build her somewhat irrelevant for the majority of the
game. However, we’ll indulge.
Bethany, in the early game, probably best serves you as a straight up
damage dealer. She doesn’t have a specialization to worry about so you
can just pour all her point directly into a skill tree. Since she starts
with Fireball, you’ve got a head start in the Elemental tree so that’s
probably where you’ll want to stay.
In the early game (probably with your first level up), you should
invest in Heal, for obvious reasons. Until you get Anders, she’ll be
your only option to heal. And unless you rush ahead and nab Anders as
the first quest you take on in Act I, this will be able to help you out.
Nab Winter’s Grasp, Cone of Cold, Firestorm and Pyromancer, all in
the Elemental Tree with the goal of working your way up to Elemental
Mastery.
In the middle if you need to grab an outside skill (due to level
restrictions), some quick support choices will add some extra oomph to
your party.
One-and-done skills like Elemental Weapons or Heroic Aura will suffice,
or grab another attack spell in Spirit Bolt in the Spirit tree.
You probably won’t get too many more skill points with her than that
before she’s unavailable for you to use. If/when she comes back later
and if you really want to use her for old times’ sake, depending on your
party makeup
you may want to grab a couple disabling spells in the Entropy Tree, or
focus on more support-type roles with Creation Spells or Arcane. Or you
can go even further into the realm of pure damage by nabbing some primal
spells too. But really, that late in the game, your supporting cast
should greatly outshine Bethany.
Carver Hawke
class: Warrior
Weapon: Two-hand
Specialization: None
Role: Damage/Off-tank
Carver, like Bethany, is temporary for your party and only if you’re a mage. Also, like Bethany, he is best used by focusing on raw damage-dealing early.
Start Carver out immediately in the Two-hand tree, nabbing your early
skills like Mighty Blow, Giant’s Reach and Sunder. You’ll eventually
want to get Scythe and Whirlwind too when they become available and then
probably stick to upgrading those skills as they become available.
If you plan on using only Carver as your warrior early, get Taunt, a
necessity to help him control threat on the battlefield. If you want to
branch out a bit into other trees the best option is probably the
Vanguard Tree. By picking up Might and Control (which are unfortunately
mutually exclusive) you can unlock Cleave, which will double his damage
output. Or, you can stick in the Warmonger tree and pick up other skills
like the sustainable Bravery to increase his power in crowds or go
toward Tremor for some AOE knockdown.
However, since he’s unavailable most of the game, your best bet is to
just pump up his two-handed skills as far as you can while you have
him. If/when he comes back later in the game, that would be at time to
branch out especially into the Vanguard Tree where he can pick strong
passive skills like Destroyer and Massacre to really add up his killing
power.
Aveline Vallen
class: Warrior
Weapon: Weapon and shield
Specialization: Guardian
Role: Tank
You get Aveline during the Lothering escape and from there and beyond, she will best serve as a tank for your party.
Aveline (outside of Hawke) will serve as your best option for a tanking
character. With her weapon-and-shield focus and powerful damage-taking
specialization, you’ll want her to be taking all your party’s hits.
Where to put talent points: Weapon-and-shield, Warmonger, Defender, Battlemaster, Guardian
Where not to put talent points: Vanguard
Early game (1-7): Aveline starts out with Taunt and
Shield Defense under her belt, which is great because those are two
skills you’ll probably want to utilize frequently. At the beginning I
turn on Shield Defense and just leave it on all the time since it
effectively reduces the damage she’ll take. I nab Pommel Strike, which
gives her a single-target stun, but also will open the door to Taunt’s
upgrade later.
Make sure to pick up Perception (W&S) to make Aveline immune to
flanking to better protect her. Early on, instead of focusing on some
attack skills, I move immediately into the Battlemaster tree. Grab Rally
(which is somewhat useless except for its mana/stam regen effect) and
get Battle Synergy. Battle Synergy is exclusive with Bravery
(Warmonger), but you should always use Battle Synergy with Aveline over
Bravery. While Battle Synergy boosts defense and damage resistance for
the whole party,
Bravery increases attack and critical chance for Aveline only. She’s
here to take hits, not dish them out, making Battle Synergy a much more
effective, supportive choice. Early in the game run both Shield Defense
and Battle Synergy. While this cuts your stamina bar to about half,
Aveline doesn’t really need a whole lot of active skills yet to be
effective. That will allow you to use a Taunt to control the early
battle and that’s about it. You shouldn’t need more at this point.
Mid-game (7-15): At level 7 you get access to the
Guardian tree. Aveline, unfortunately is loaded down with too many
sustainables, so you may not get the full effect out of her tree if
you’re using other sustainables like Shield Defense and Battle Synergy.
At level 7 grab the upgrade to Taunt first, then at your next level
start into Guardian by getting Immovable. Immovable increases Aveline’s
damage resistance as she gets hit at the cost of move and attack speed.
Make a decision here, either keep using Shield Defense or start using
Immovable. Immovable is better if you’re getting absolutely mobbed,
while Shield Defense offers a more constant protection at only loss of
damage, not attack and move speed.
Your goals in this portion should be to invest enough points in
Guardian to get both Indomitable (100 percent resistance to stun and
knockdown) and Thick Skin (+15 percent damage reduction). Retaliation is
a nice active skill that will allow Aveline to crack back when she’s
surrounded, so using Taunt plus Retaliation together can pay dividends.
The sustainable Bodyguard is pretty underwhelming in the Guardian tree.
Consider passing this one up, mostly because it’s another costly
sustainable
In this stage you can either begin focusing on getting some attack
talents in the Weapon and Shield tree including Shield Bash, Assault or
Scatter. Or this is probably a good time to look toward grabbing both
upgrades to Battle Synergy, which will increase threat generation as
well as transfer damage from companions
to Aveline. Or you can further increase your damage resistance by going
into the Defender tree and getting Stonewall and Turn the Blade toward
unlocking Adamant (+5 percent damage resistance), although it’s a lot of
skill points for pretty small returns.
Late game (15+): This should mostly be used to grab
upgrades to all the skills you use frequently, whatever those may be.
The only new skills you may want to grab are stamina related skills in
Battlemaster like Bolster, Deep Reserves or Second wind, since the
amount of sustainables you run (I usually use two with Aveline) will
cripple your small stamina pool.
Don’t waste any talent points in the Vanguard tree. There’s pretty
much nothing in there that is useful to Aveline, especially since the
first two skills you have to pick from are more sustainables.
Attribute distribution: Since Aveline will be taking all of the damage for your party,
you’ll want to give her high constitution. Also since she has several
costly sustainables to choose from, you’ll probably want to boost her
willpower up a bit higher than you might for other non-mage characters.
You may want to utilize a 1-1-1 level up with
strength-willpower-constitution or go with an every-other plan like 1-2
strength-con followed up by a 1-1-1 str-will-con. I would almost always
recommend having her con as high or higher than her strength.
Equipment: Remember that Aveline’s first duty is to
tank. Equipment that gives plus-percentage to damage resistance or magic
resistance should be sought. Items that boost health or health
regeneration are also good picks. Otherwise, go with typical warrior
stuff that increases attack or physical damage. Items that boost
critical rate or critical damage are wasted on her, give those to your
rogues instead.Varric Tethras
class: Rogue
Weapon: Bianca
Specialization: Marksman
Role: Single-target/AOE damage
Archers in Dragon Age 2
are somewhat of a mixed bag, but Varric’s specialization gives him some
good single-target damage options. However, you can focus more on other
trees to give Varric a variety of AOE-effect talents to make him more
of a controller/supporter than damage dealer, however, you’d be wasting
most of Bianca’s talents through the Marksman tree.
Where to put talent points: Bianca, Marksman, Scoundrel, Sabotage
Where not to put talent points: Subterfuge, Specialist
Early game (1-7): Your best bet when starting out
with Varric is to pretty much exclusively invest in the Bianca (archery)
tree. Hail of Arrows is a strong area-of-effect spell, Bursting Arrow
gives a nice little AOE pop and Pinning Shot is a staple single-target
attack.
Since Varric starts with Miasmic Flask, spend the extra talent point
to upgrade it early, which increases the stun effect as well as lowers
the cooldown. In the Scoundrel tree, Blindside at level 5 is a good way
to boost your damage since you get a bonus against targets who are fighting other allies. Stick to those staples early.
Mid game (7-15): Once you get access to the Marksman
tree, you probably want to stick exclusively here. Grab Rhyming Triplet
at level 7 then at level 8 choose either Archers’ Lance (Bianca tree)
or Kickback (Marksman). At level 9 grab Bianca’s Song to boost Varric’s
attacking power and leave it on all the time. At 10, grab either
Archer’s Lance or Kickback (whichever you didn’t get before) and then
scoop up the Nameless Grace upgrade to Rhyming Triplet at 11. At 12 get
Well-oiled to boost Varric’s attack speed. After that, take Overtime if
you want (+10 Stamina regen) or look elsewhere. You may consider
beginning to upgrade your Bianca skills or start looking at the Sabotage
tree to pick up some additional AOE controller spells.
Late game (15+): Like most characters, spend this
time upgrading your skills. Other places you may want to look at are
also the Scoundrel tree. If you get Goad or Back-to-Back, you can get
Twist the Knife, which means auto-crits on stunned targets which is
always nice. You may also want to look at the Specialist tree. Although
they are exclusive sustainables, Harmony is a nice bonus for rogues
since it gives you a pile of nice effects if you can get to it.Subterfuge has some advantages, but for an archery character, things
like Stealth and Evade aren’t really going to do you as much good as
other skills you can spend points in. Focus your time unloading your
variety of attack skills on tough enemies and you’ll be OK with Varric.
Attributes: For rogues, dexterity is the most
important. If you plan to use Varric as your only rogue, you’ll need to
ramp up your cunning to hit the lockpicking levels at 10/20/30/40
cunning. If you’re not a dual-wield rogue and not using Isabela, Varric
is actually the next best choice for this because he has a set weapon so
you don’t have to worry about falling behind on dexterity to meet new
weapon requirements. However, your overall damage will be considerably
lower.
Varric has a lot of good active skills and slower attack speed than a
dual-wielder, so you’ll need a fair amount of stamina as well to help
you keep firing. If you’re not using him as a lockpicker, a 2-1 ratio is
probably your best option, going with two dexterity and then
alternating between one willpower and constitution. Once Varric’s
constitution is up around 18 or 20 you can stop, that should be enough
for him in almost all situations.
Equipment: Like all rogues, Varric will benefit from
critical modifiers, both in chance and damage. Also, since Bianca isn’t
exactly fast firing, bonuses to attack speed are nice too. If you’re
going to be pumping up his cunning, you may also need some
attack-helping accessories. And you don’t have to worry about weapons,
because Varric always uses Bianca. Load that baby up with some nice
runes when available and you’ll be good. Anders
class: Mage
Specialization: Vengeance
Role: Healer/Support
Anders, like in Awakening, is set up to be your healer. So unless
you’re playing as a mage with a healing focus, you’ll probably need
Anders in some capacity. However if you ARE a mage with healing and you
still want to use Anders, you can make him a viable damage dealer as an
alternative build. This will focus on the healer/supporter, with a brief
alternate build later. Anders doesn’t have access to the Entropy tree
of spells.
Where to put talent points: Creation, Arcane, Vengeance
Where not to put talent points: None
Early (1-7): Your earliest focus should be upgrading
Heal (which Anders starts with) to give him the biggest
health-restoring spell you can get to this point. A good place to start
is with Heroic Aura, which gives a team boost to attack and defense. It
can be upgraded later to give you a bonus to damage and critical chance
too, making it a great supporting skill. Barrier can give your party
member a quick shot of damage resistance and Crushing Prison is a nice
spell to inflict on strong enemies to slow them down and Elemental
Weapons is a nice supporter for 10 percent of your mana. You may also
want to start building Arcane Shield as well, since at its full upgrade,
offers great defense and resistances to your party.
Mid game (7-15): In the mid game, your best move is
to focus on his Vengeance specialization. Panacea unlocks both Aid
Allies (group heal) and Regroup (revival) which Vengeance will give you
access to Swift Justice, which reduces all of your cooldowns to 80
percent, greatly useful.
You’ll probably want to start upgrading your skills in here,
especially Arcane Shield and Heroic Aura as well as nabbing Haste and
its later upgrade, which is nice for boss fights. If you want some
attacking power, you can look at some offensive spells. Anders starts
with Winter’s Grasp and Cone of Cold is a nice controlling spell for
mages. Or you may dive into the Spirit tree and nab Spirit Bolt and/or
Walking Bomb. Primal can also lead to Petrify, which is perhaps the best
boss show-stopper in the game.
Late game (15+): By this time, most of your core
spells should be upgraded to max, so you can really move toward amping
up your attack spells or other supporting moves like the Glyphs in the
Creation tree.Attributes: Anders will do well
with plenty of available mana, since he’ll probably be carrying one or
more sustainables as well as needing to have his heals and some
offensive firepower available. Take his constitution up to about 18 or
20 to give him some survivability, then keep magic and willpower about
even. More magic will give his limited offensive arsenal more power, but
more willpower will lead to more mana and more casting ability. Since
spells like Heal and Haste aren’t spellpower dependent, you’re better
off having more casts available.
Equipment: For staves for Anders, additional mana or
mana regeneration rate will do you more good than additional damage, so
don’t sacrifice a good staff with plus-mana and plus-mana regen for one
with more damage. Also any staff with plus-percent healing by this
character is nice too. As for accessories, same deal, additional mana
regen will do well, additional mana or plus-to-healing. Otherwise fill
in gaps where you need them, things like defense or health can help if
they are marginally better than what you have. Attack is probably the
least important, since Anders is a support guy.
Alternate Build: If you’re a healing mage or you want a no-healer party,
you can build out Anders’ offensive capabilities and utilize the
Vengeance sustainable, which will increase his damage, however at a cost
to damage resistance. If you want to keep Vengeance active, make sure
that Anders is well protected and be prepared to waste enemies with him
to get the heal effect from Martyr and Blood of My Enemy. You may want
to get powerful spells in the Primal school to really give him the most
pop. If you do this his role will change to pure damage dealer maybe
with a bit of support. However, the more people he can kill in this
build, the better.
Fenris
class: Warrior
Weapon: Two-hand
Specialization: Tevinter Fugitive
Role: Damage/off-tanking
Fenris is a two-handed warrior, which gives him a predisposition
towards being a damage dealer. This role is helped by his
specialization, which is like a mix of Templar, Berserker and Reaver
mixed into one mega tree. He’s better suited to just be set lose to rip
enemies apart, but you can also build him up to serve as a solo tank or
off-tank too in your party.
Where to put talent points: Two-handed, Vanguard, Tevinter Fugitive
Where not to put talent points: Defender
Early (1-7): I can’t rightly suggest any warrior go
without getting Taunt, at least one level. Even if you’re making Fenris a
heavy damage dealer, he’s still going to be more sturdy than any rogue
or mage. Otherwise early you want to nab your two-handed tree skills,
since those will be your main vehicle for cutting through enemies. Make
sure you get all of them – Mighty Blow, Giant’s Reach, Whirlwind and
Scythe. If you want, you can wait on Sunder, but you’re going to want it
at some point. If you grab Taunt, you may also want to invest in
Bravery early as well. While Aveline benefits more from Battle Synergy,
Fenris will get more out of Bravery since it increases his attack power
when he’s surrounded, a good thing. However, if Fenris is going to be
your only warrior, you may want to still go with Battle Synergy or
neither, since you’ll get a bonus to defense and damage resistance from
Lyrium Ghost. You may also want to get Might, since it will open up the
rest of the Vanguard tree for later.
Mid game (7-15): The Tevinter Fugitive
specialization is a good one, so make sure you grab almost all of the
skills here. Get Lyrium Ghost first and keep it on, since it will give
you more defense and critical chance, both good. Veneer of Calm is
essentially the same a Blood Frenzy, meaning your damage goes up as your
health goes down so grab that too. Spirit Pulse is like the Templar
specialization Holy Smite, which will give you some nova spirit damage.
If you want another AOE attack (I personally like the Scythe/Holy
Smite/Whirlwind combo), grab that, otherwise, this is one skill you can
skip. In this level you may want to start upgrading your two-hand
abilities or start grabbing more talents in Vanguard like Cleave or
Destroyer. Make sure to upgrade Lyrium Ghost at level 11 or later and
finish out this part back in the Tevinter Fugitive tree by scooping up
Battle Tempo and Inner Reserves.Late (15+): Hone
your skillset here. Upgrade any skills you use frequently (should be
about all of your two-hand abilities) and look toward getting Masscre
from the Vanguard tree. Deflect (+25 percent magic resistance) may be
something to get later if you’re worried about magic, but isn’t totally
necessary. If you still have a few talent points after your upgrading is
done, get stuff from the Battlemaster tree like Bolster, Second Wind
and Deep Reserves to help keep your stamina pool.
Attributes: If you want to run more than one
sustainable (namely, more than Lyrium Ghost), you should probably boost
up your stamina reserves, since Fenris will have a lot of active
abilities to utilize. He can probably get by with less constitution than
a true tank since his defense will mostly derive from his offense, high
killing power. A constitution of 25 should be plenty and a willpower
around there will give him a nice base to work from. Unbalance Fenris to
have disproportionate strength for the best results. A 2-1 ratio of
strength to willpower/constitution should serve you well. But if he’s
going to be your only warrior, consider giving him some extra
constitution to take more hits for you at the cost of some additional
strength.
Accessories: Fenris is a damage dealer, but he’s
still a warrior. Physical damage items are good but damage resistance
items should never be overlooked for any warrior. Health, stamina and
attack items are next in line, with low priority given to defense and
armor items, since the total bonus is typically negligible to warriors. Isabela
class: Rogue
Weapon: Dual-wield
Specialization: Swashbuckler
Role: Single-target damage
Isabela is your own dual-wielding option if you’re not one yourself. This pirate
duelist is also perhaps your best option for a lockpicker, since
additional cunning will mesh well with her high defense from her
specialization. If you want to play her as a more sneaky, stealthy rogue
you can, but she’s well enough suited to go face-to-face with most
enemies in mid and late game.
Where to put talent points: Dual-wield, Scoundrel, Swashbuckler, Specialist
Where not to put talent points: None
Early (1-7): Isabela comes with some points put into Subterfuge, which will be great to help keep her alive
as she develops. Early on, make sure to nab the basics in the
dual-wield tree including Backstab, Unforgiving Chain and Explosive
Strike. These will be your staples for the majority of the game and will
continue to serve you well. You want to get Isabela’s damage up, so
definitely get Blindside to deal bonus damage to enemies not engaging
you. Grabbing Back-to-Back in the Scoundrel tree will be a way to
support allies in trouble and give you more options later in that tree.
Mid game (7-15): This is when you can get into the
Swashbuckler tree, which will skyrocket Isabela’s effectiveness in
single combat. Get both Across the Bow (a single-target taunt) and
Savvy. Savvy, since it reduces your damage as more enemies engage you,
isn’t really useful, since you should want a 1-to-1 fight whenever you
can get it. Shelf it for if you’re getting severely overwhelmed.
Experienced Hand, All Hands on Deck (Flicker from Awakening repackaged)
and Sea Legs are all useful. Also in this range if you have the point,
grab Power from the Specialist tree (gives a chance to stun) and Twist
the Knife (100 percent chance to crit against stunned enemies). See how
those two will work together nicely? Also upgrade All Hands on Deck,
which will stun enemies it hits. Again, good with Twist the Knife.
Late game (15+): Upgrading Across the Bow will
reduce your taunted enemies defense, so you may want that. Upgrade
Backstab and Explosive Strike. You may want to invest in Twin Strikes,
but personally, it’s got a slow attack animation so you may just be
better off skipping it and counting on your regular attacks to land your
criticals. Also Lacerate increases your damage while giving a chance to
inflict bleeding wounds, but you can potentially pass on this too if
you’re short on talents. With Isabela, I’d highly suggest increasing
your points in Specialist to get Harmony and then upgrade Power to give
you a higher chance to stun for more damage with Twist the Knife. Other
skills worth a point include Rush (the rogue version of Scythe) or grab
Scoundrel’s Follow Through or nab some Subterfuge skills to be a bit
more sneaky.Attributes: Isabela is a great
choice for lockpicking, since it requires high cunning. This meshes well
with Isabela’s naturally high defense from the Swashbuckler tree, which
makes it easy to max out her defense at 80 percent chance for normal
enemies to miss. If you’re not going to use her for lockpicking, make
sure she gets enough cunning to keep her defense up then pour extra into
dexterity. Since I’m a treasure-holic, I usually aim for Isabela to get
30 Cunning by the end of Act 1 and 40 cunning by the End of Act 2, then
stop. The rest I distribute mostly into dexterity so she can keep using
better daggers, with only a spare point here and there for willpower
and constitution. Isabela doesn’t need a whole stamina, since she won’t have a lot of skills to
activate and regenerates stamina quickly through her auto-attacks. Since
she has high defense, she won’t need too much health as long as you
don’t throw her into situations she can’t handle.
Accessories: If you’re pouring points into cunning,
you may fall behind the curve on daggers since your dexterity won’t be
high enough. So try to find the best daggers you can equip or daggers
that you can buff up with a rune or two in the meantime. If you have
options though, both higher damage and plus chance to critical or
additional critical damage are all good. For belts/rings/amulets, the
same applies. Anything involving criticals is good, physical damage is
nice and health or stamina are lower on the chain. Plus to defense or
attack won’t give you a huge benefit, so skip those unless they’re
spectacular.
Alternate build: If you don’t want such a
single-target focused Isabela, you can expand out and get a variety of
bombs. Miasmic Flask, Fatiguing Fog, Confusion, and Chameleon’s Breath
can help you control the battlefield and aid your party for a more single-target/support role.
Merrill
class: Mage
Specialization: Dalish Pariah
Role: Damage/Support or Burst Damage
Merrill is interesting. Without Creation, she’s has no ability to heal the party,
so her roles are reduced to either damager, support, or controller.
With a specialization that’s a mix of Blood Mage and Battlemage/Keeper
from Awakening, you can either build Merrill like a typical mage or
really take advantage of her blood magic in a more atypical build that
will require your attention. I’ll go into details about both, since they
are wildly different.
Typical Mage Build
Where to put talent points: Primal, Entropy
Where not to put points: None
Early (1-7): Merrill starts with some goodies in
Primal and Entropy, so it’s as good a place as any to start. Since
Anders doesn’t get Entropy, Merrill will be the only mage with access to
that tree for most of the game (especially if you don’t have Bethany).
Chain Lightning and Tempest are both very strong spells and Petrify is a
fantastic disable against ALL enemies, bosses included. Grab Horror in
the Entropy tree for a single-target stun.
Mid game (7-15): Of all your companions,
if you’re building Merrill like a typical mage, her specialization is
NOT very useful to you. You can legitimately skip all of the skills
without losing too much. Ensnare is a nice nova-type attack, but other
than that, the Dalish Pariah tree is particularly week. So forget it.
Continue to build in the Entropy tree, get Galvanism in the Primal tree.
You may want to consider some support skills to take the load off of a
mage Hawke or Anders, so picking up Elemental Weapons or a fully
upgraded Arcane Shield can help. Or if you want more damage, when you’re
done with the Primal Tree move on to the Spirit or Elemental tree and
keep picking up attack spells.
Late game (15+): Round out your favorite skills with
full upgrades. Chain Lightning, Tempest and Petrify are all worth
upgrading and Entropic Cloud is good for tightly knit packs around a
warrior. Otherwise having Walking Bomb or other Elemental skills in your
pocket is a nice tough. Essentially you’ll want to focus on some
disabling and crowd-control first, then bomb the crap out of your
enemies with a wide variety of offensive spells.
Attributes: Like other casters, high magic and high
mana are good, while you shouldn’t need a much health. Your big spells
will draw threat, so pump up your health enough to help you survive if
enemies get away from a warrior. Depending on the amount of offensive
spells at your disposal, adjust your willpower to make sure you can
launch at least two rounds of big spells before being exhausted.
Accessories: This is mostly a damager build, so
items that increase particular damages like electric or spirit damage
are good, depending on which spells you focus on. Otherwise, typical
mage gear like increased mana regeneration or additional mana always
works fine.
Blood Mage build
This build relies on a high health pool, since you’ll want to fill up
your mana pool by constantly running sustainables. This Blood Mage
build is essentially a support/damager build, but you’ll need to be
careful with it since your spells are fueled by your health less than
your mana. However, you may need to personally take control of Merrill
more often than other mages and babysit her to make sure she stays safe.
Where to put talent points: Dalish Pariah, Arcane, Spirit, Primal, Elemental
Where not to put talent points: EntropyEarly (1-7): Start
building a pool of potential sustainable spells to run. The most
important of this is Death Syphon from the Spirit tree. Although Blood
of the First makes you immune to conventional healing, you should (not
100 percent sure on this one) still get absorption heals from corpses in
the area. However, the health regen effect isn’t available until you
upgrade at level 9. However, get Spirit Bolt and Death Syphon now so
they’ll be ready later. Mind Blast will also be key, since your health
will be iffy at some points. If you get surrounded, you’ll need an
escape mechanism and against normal enemies, this is the best you’ll
have available. Pick one or two attack spells you like, Chain Lightning
and Tempest are good options, but don’t go crazy with attack spells.
Mid game (7-15): This is when you can finally get
Blood of the First, however it eats up 50 percent of your mana pool. Get
it, because it’s the most important part of this build. You’ll also
want to nab Wrath of the Elvhen, which will give a pulse-damage aura. So
here’s essentially how the build works. You’ll WANT enemies to surround
you eventually, since they will be damaged by Wrath of the Elvhen, be
grouped up for use of Wounds of the Past (Blood Control), allow her to
hit people with Ensnare and allow her to heal using Wrath’s upgrade even
while blood magic is active. Focus almost all of your points into the
Dalish Pariah tree to upgrade everything and get the upgrade to Death
Syphon for an additional healing mechanism. You can choose to pass on
Stone’s Throw, which is essentially the same as the rogue talent
Back-to-Back, but it can work as an escape mechanism if you get into
real trouble. Fill your mana bar with sustainables like Wrath, Death
Syphon and Blood of the First, then cast all your spells off your
health.
Late game (15+): The key here is tweaking your
formula. If you still take a lot of hits, Rock Armor can help reduce
damage. If you want another attack to hit people with as they close in,
try Cone of Cold or Firestorm. Or invest in Walking Bomb to help blow up
some of those close-by enemies. But remember, the majority of your
spells will be cast from your health pool, so don’t go nuts trying to
cast eight of ten spells each battle because you’ll deplete yourself. This build is about burst damage, get into a group and bam, bam, bam and
then back out. And if you get into trouble, turn off Blood of the
First, heal, and be a more “typical” mage until you’re ready for another
round.
Attributes: Obviously blood mages need to focus more
on health, since its going to be in short supply. In this build you can
mostly neglect willpower, since the only thing your mana pool will be
used for is running three
sustainables (Blood of the First, Wrath of the Elvhen and Death Syphon =
90 percent of your mana pool). So whether you have 100 mana or 1,000
mana, it’s going to eat up the same bar. Pump up your magic and your
constitution to get the most out of Merrill.
Accessories: I’m not certain if the blood magic
items work on Merrill, aka “Get an extra 1 point of mana per point of
health used” but if they do, these are instantly your best item to
consider. Otherwise look for health regen items or health increasing
items. Additional mana regeneration or mana items are pretty much
useless to this Merrill build.
Sebastian Vael
class: Rogue
Weapon: Bow
Specialization: Royal Archer
Role: Single target damage
Although Sebastian is an archer, his skillset from his specialization
make his build more akin to a dual-wielding rogue. This gives him a
great opportunity to unload on single targets, so pick an enemy and set
Sebastian loose on them.
Where to put talent points: Specialist, Scoundrel, Royal Archer, Archery
Where not to put talents: Sabotage
Early (1-7): You don’t get Sebastian until Act 2, so
essentially this early game portion will consist of you picking five or
six skills at your first level up. While Varric benefits from his
skills, Sebastian’s regular attacks will be more valuable to you. You
can grab skills from the Archery tree like Hail of Arrows or you can
completely bypass them if you want. Some important first skills to grab
are in the Scoundrel tree: Blindside, Back-to-Back, and Twist the Knife.
Also, invest in the Specialist tree to open up Harmony for later.
Mid game (7-15): The Royal Archer specialization is a
good one so you’ll want to grab everything in here. Righteous Chain is
like the dual-wield’s Unforgiving Chain, except for Archers, while Arrow
of Judgment serves as Explosive Strike. Wounding Arrow can reduce enemy
damage resistance based on your chain. Maferath’s Advance gives you 100
percent chance to critical from flanking angles. Combined with the 120
percent damage from Blindside, hitting an enemy attacking another party member from behind will be big damageLate game (15+):
Get Harmony from the Specialist tree, then utilize either Speed or
Power and upgrade them. Power will give you more chance to stun, for
which you’ll get automatic criticals from Twist the Knife, while Speed
will get your more attacks from your increased speed and reduce
cooldowns on your nice chain-oriented arrows in the Royal Archer tree.
Feel free to fill out your ranks with Archery talents, Miasmic Flask or
some Subterfuge talents if you’ve got spare points.
Attributes: Although Sebastian is a rogue, you’ll
cripple him if you try to boost his cunning so he can unlock chests.
Focus your points into dexterity to keep his attack and damage up. Go
with a 2-1 ratio of dexterity to willpower/constitution on every level
up to really up his killing power.
Accessories: If you build Sebastian right, he’ll
critical – a lot. So your best bet is for items that increase critical
damage or just damage in general. Attack speed items are always a bonus
for the slower bows, so look for those too. Otherwise physical damage
items or plus health/stamina items will do if nothing better is
available.
I hope this is helpfull and thank you for reading;)