Dragon Age sequel official

[TimJames]

Yeah, she is really one of the better characters in the game, not only in her own right, but also in comparison to the others, since she’s neither annoying nor over-the-top with a single quality (of course she is a law-and-order type, but she doesn’t spend the whole game whining about her beliefs, like most of the other characters).

I’m surprised to hear this about Aveline. When I met her in the demo, I thought “oh boy, here we go again.”

I haven’t been annoyed by Bioware characters in a while, but Aveline made me tense up a little. I’m glad to hear she’s good.

[flyinj]

I might give it one more shot and then shift down, but I already did that for the first lock-in boss and was hoping to maintain some consistency through the game. Not sure why.

I’m playing on the 360 on hard. I’ve knocked the difficulty down to normal for many of the bosses. I’ve even seen instances where I was fighting a boss on hard and their health would not go down a single pixel even though I was spamming all sorts of different damage on them. I kited this guy around for like 20 minutes, and nothing was hurting him. It may have been some kind of scripting bug, as in maybe enemies were supposed to spawn when he hit a certain percentage of health and they didn’t, so his immortal health flag never got reset.

Anyhow, I definitely find the game more enjoyable by dynamically changing the difficulty. In DA:O on the PC I played on Hardcore all the way through and never changed it. In this game, however, it seems almost necessary given how crazy fast the combat is.

[Miramon]

Yeah, I like Varric. And I like Fenris quite a bit too, though I suspect that flirting with him ever would ruin that for me. But Aveline’s taking top honors as my favorite from DA2, even if she is worthless as a tank.

Yeah, pity about the way she doesn’t seem to do that much in combat. If you just let the AI play, she pretty stands there pecking at enemies watching everyone else get killed. I admit I haven’t tried to fiddle with her abilities and tactics to get her to pull aggro better when it seems so much easier just to go with damage dealers and kill things directly, so maybe she can in fact be made more effective.

[Two_Sheds]

Has anybody respec’d Fenris to use sword/shield instead of 2-handed? How did that work out? I never bring him along because my main character is a 2-hander, and that might make him a little more useful to me.

I like Aveline, but yeah, her damage numbers make me feel like I’m doing something wrong. She’ll be wailing on a guy over in the corner and chipping away at his health until I run Hawke over there to take two swings and drop him. Not super-useful as an attacker, but she can take a lot more arrows than Hawke can.

[Neopythia]

Her quest was easily my favorite companion quest. She gets much more bearable after the demo ends. Isabella, on the other hand, is such a horrific character. I can’t even buy her as an ironic comment on female characters in rpgs. I refused to keep her in my party.

I’m surprised to hear this about Aveline. When I met her in the demo, I thought “oh boy, here we go again.”

I haven’t been annoyed by Bioware characters in a while, but Aveline made me tense up a little. I’m glad to hear she’s good.

[frank_austin]

Has anybody respec’d Fenris to use sword/shield instead of 2-handed? How did that work out? I never bring him along because my main character is a 2-hander, and that might make him a little more useful to me.

I like Aveline, but yeah, her damage numbers make me feel like I’m doing something wrong. She’ll be wailing on a guy over in the corner and chipping away at his health until I run Hawke over there to take two swings and drop him. Not super-useful as an attacker, but she can take a lot more arrows than Hawke can.

You can’t, because in Bioware’s infinite wisdom they decided to make characters less customizable. Anders is the only healer, Aveline the only sword and board tank.

[malkav11]

The NPCs all have specific weapon preferences you can’t respec them away from. So you can’t spec Fenris sword-and-shield.

[Wallapuctus]

Anders is back? What happens if I got him killed in Awakenings…

[Two_Sheds]

You can’t, because in Bioware’s infinite wisdom they decided to make characters less customizable. Anders is the only healer, Aveline the only sword and board tank.

I thought I read something about using a potion from the Black Emporium.

Edit: Apparently it’s called “The Maker’s Sigh.” I’ll have to look for it tonight.

[Razgon]

Yeah, pity about the way she doesn’t seem to do that much in combat. If you just let the AI play, she pretty stands there pecking at enemies watching everyone else get killed. I admit I haven’t tried to fiddle with her abilities and tactics to get her to pull aggro better when it seems so much easier just to go with damage dealers and kill things directly, so maybe she can in fact be made more effective.

What?? Give her a decent sword/mace/axe, and she deals out more damage than any other character I’ve ever seen.

[idrisz]

What?? Give her a decent sword/mace/axe, and she deals out more damage than any other character I’ve ever seen.

She have THE Best weapon in the game for my hard playthrough, except she does pitiful amount of damage compare to Fenris, due to amount of sustain skills she need to active in order to take all the hits.

Fenris’s special tree is similar to reaver tree for main character’s warrior class. it has a passive skill that let him attack 30% faster after every kill, also Aveline doesn’t have the most damaging skill tree which is the 2hand one for warrior. the overhead smash near end games does damage into 4-6000 of damage, since 2hand sword stagger so much, while Aveline is taking less damage per hit from enemies, Fenris taking almost no damage, since he is capable of chain-staggering most of the enemies.

You give Fenris the attack speed rune on a 2hand weapon that deals magic damage, Fenris can probably solo most of the encounter by himself in late game.

[frank_austin]

I thought I read something about using a potion from the Black Emporium.

Edit: Apparently it’s called “The Maker’s Sigh.” I’ll have to look for it tonight.

That lets you respec, yes.

What I’m saying is that Fenris doesn’t even have Sword and Shield available as a tree, same as Merrill doesn’t have Creation and Aveline doesn’t have Two Handed.

[Two_Sheds]

I get you. I haven’t paid attention to him, so I didn’t realize that.

[Brian_Rucker]

I haven’t been paying super close attention but when I’ve got Aveline around, as a rule, my folks seem to survive longer. Sometimes she pulls groups in (you have to pick and chose from a couple different lines to get a taunt and good aggro keeping skills) but where she really shines is tanking Big Things. She almost always holds them well enough that I can get around for a flank attack and the squishies don’t get rushed. It’s not 100% but then that would get boring wouldn’t it?

I’m playing as a 2-hander guy with some leadership. I just rush the hell in and start wailing on whatever I see. I know Aveline’s behind me picking up whatever spills around before they can hurt Varric or my sister (that’s my core team). Sometimes, though, she’ll run up with me and I’ll backtrack to pull aggro from the soft targets in the rear.

It’s not rocket science, usually, but it’s fun and there are enough variables in each fight it stays fairly fresh without being a real tactical headache or anything. I just charge in like a big damn hero and then run around fighting fires as problems crop up. Aveline tends to keep those problems manageable.

[Miramon]

I’m playing on the 360 on hard. I’ve knocked the difficulty down to normal for many of the bosses. I’ve even seen instances where I was fighting a boss on hard and their health would not go down a single pixel even though I was spamming all sorts of different damage on them. I kited this guy around for like 20 minutes, and nothing was hurting him. It may have been some kind of scripting bug, as in maybe enemies were supposed to spawn when he hit a certain percentage of health and they didn’t, so his immortal health flag never got reset.

I wonder if something like that happened to my first encounter with Hayder on mere normal difficulty. I tried him a second time actually paying attention to what I was doing, and he went down fairly quickly, though he still seems to have a disproportionate number of hit points compared to other early-game minor bosses.

[Jason_Townsend]

Yeah, I think it may be “intended” that Aveline be more of a single target creature-of-doom tank. I bungled Fenris’ build and have always used Aveline, and while I have I often have agro problems in normal fights, I pretty much never worry about her taking care of Godzilla for a few minutes while I run around killing adds.

There’s a bug on 360 that makes armour keep stacking up if you equip and unequip a shield; there are probably a lot of accidentally invulnerable Avelines running around on the consoles.

[flyinj]

I wonder if something like that happened to my first encounter with Hayder on mere normal difficulty. I tried him a second time actually paying attention to what I was doing, and he went down fairly quickly, though he still seems to have a disproportionate number of hit points compared to other early-game minor bosses.

That’s exactly the guy I was describing. So it’s a more common bug than I thought…

[Matt_Perkins]

Those Bioware guys really love their game.

Long story short, bioware employee has given Dragon Age 2 a 10 on metacritic with no mention of them having worked at Bioware…*

* - assuming anything is true on the internet

[Ranulf]

Interesting review from some modder:
https://sites.google.com/site/iam4aces/Home/mods/dragon-age-origin/dragon-age-2-review

[thinkingork]

Considering that link contains one’s LinkedIn profile, it is probably best not to throw accusation before confirmation.