Very interesting guide, as always! Thank you for your great work 😎 On behalf of the community I actually proclaim that your videos became even more enjoyable after you started voicing them
@@EminNSU I disagree. The mages are actually the best class in the second game in my opinion. Blood Mage + Sprit Healer is super fun and super powerful. Same with Blood Mage + Force Mage or Force Mage + Spirit Healer. All very fun. :)
@@AKisHerceg They're good at supporting other classes, but I'm talking about class autonomy. A rogue beats Arishok in seconds, while my blood mage has to run from him for 10 minutes or so. That's just ridiculous. And when I killed the high dragon in the bone pit, it took about 25 minutes.
@@AKisHerceg 4 spells for the entire fire and ice tree of which half of them are always blocked by 100% resistance from everyone in a row! That's not serious. And the rest of the branches can't do much damage without interclass combos. Some nameless assassin dwarf can easily absorb all of my mage's spells three times while I'm running from him because he can kill me with a single invisibility attack.... I recently went through the second part solo mage - it's the worst. The developers just killed all the potential of mages as a standalone class.
Just finished Origins with a Arcane Warrior but focused on Tank. I only used wisp but it helped me hit a lot more and still deal damage besides blood magic and crushing prison. My party was Leliana who I took only for the song of Courage, Sten skilled to use a bow and morrigan for additional crowd control and Magic damage. No need for a healer since enemys could barely move. Learned a lot from your videos which helped me to come up with such builds so thank you.
Great tips! I would like to add however that there's another option to play an Arcane Warrior as a tank, so in that case you don't care about maximizing your damage since you'll have other damagers in your party to do that, and so you can put some points in Dexterity for the bonuses to both attack and defense.
That's a good video. Well at least someone doesn't talk about attack growing from fatigue and dex.... One popular channel in my language threw in this fatigue fake and since then I've come across three or four times who believed it.... Of the weaknesses, I would also add that they are very vulnerable to dispel magic. Fortunately very few mages in the game use antimagic spells (ironically these are other Arcane Warriors, one in Orzamar and one in the lair of the fake andraste). Mages, however, can be protected by 100% magic resistance, which is easily achieved through the same antimagic branch - and that's what the other Arcane Warriors in the game do. Alas, this won't work with templemasters and higher pride demons, who are also adept at dispelling your magic. Another weakness is the lack of defense against knockdowns and grabs. You can be an impenetrable killing machine, but any ogre will roll you on the ground until it gets bored or runs out of stamina to ram you, because that ability have no CD at all. And spiders can keep you on the ground for minutes! When fighting most werewolves and animals, you need to keep your health above 70% so they don't use grabs (that's their tactic). But there are shadow werewolves that attack from invisibility right through a grab. And the only defense against this (when playing solo) will come in Awakening, when you get access to the repulsion field, which will simply disrupt the capture animation of weak enemies like maggots. P.S. Sorry for my English.... To be honest I don't even know what some spells and classes are called in English, so... I feel I made some mistakes.
@@sjbell4653 There is a tactic to avoid being captured by the higher dragon, this is done by going between the front legs and hitting from the side. The speed of the attack is very important, so acceleration and agility balms are a must. This is approximately how the dragon is defeated by solo rogues with daggers. Paralysis runes on weapons can also make it easier, they can throw off the dragon's attacks. As I recall, she's resistant to electricity in both forms, so my basic tactic via Storm of Ages didn't work against her. Luckily the drying aura is extremely good against her, so I was practically immortal in this fight as well. I also didn't have any paralysis spells pumped in, so I couldn't paralyze the balls and I didn't have enough time and damage to kill them all.... So yeah, it was a long fight.
Hm sure ogre can knock you down or grab you just like other enemys but thats not rly a problem. Just use stuns, or shield your arcane Warrior. Force field is perfect for this because enemys still attack you so your team has enough time to kill everything.
Hello Kis I wanted to thank you for your content, it makes me very Happy to see my favourite games studied with so much effort ❤ Mb if it sounds not clear, I'm learning English 😅
When I played my AW back in the day, i didn't worry about my auto-attack at all, I just focused on defense. I would just nuke the shit out of everybody then switch to the shield when they closed in and turn on the auras. With Wade's set I could stand inside of an inferno taking very little damage.
Thoughts on dual striking dagger mainhand warrior? It's insane with swift salve and without, probably the highest dps setup in the game and youre invincible with templar armor and spell resist
Dexterity also provides dodge chance. Which shouldn't be underestimated in Origins. With decent magic resist and high dexterity, Alistair can tank anything perhaps better than arcane warriors. But I haven't tested high dexterity on arcane warriors yet to, say for certain.
As I said in the video, it provides Defense. Defense is chance to avoid hit, which is a bit different than Dodge chance. Stacking Dex with a tank or a dagger wielding AW is a good idea. :)
If I'm gonna be completely honest, I don't really care about the decisions anymore. In Inquisition my game could not recognize the Keep and I could not properly import anything from it. I used a save modifier to be able to experience a few different choices, but then I stopped with the import completely(the save mod was tedious to deal with) and just accepted the pre-made world. So, although it sucks that most of what happened before doesn't matter, it's not something that I care too much about. I know what happened, so that's all that matters to me. About the rest(in shot): The design of the new creatures is lame(it's like they are from Darksiders or Warframe or something). The combat looks intense and fun. Yes, it's not Origins, but that doesn't mean it can't be fun. I enjoyed Inquisition too, so it can work. The graphics are good. The team? Not sure about them yet, none of them really impressed me, but I said the same when I saw the party in Inquisition the first time and I was wrong - they grew on me. The story? Looks interesting. So I guess we'll see! :)
@@AKisHerceg Well thanks, you gave me a little more optimism about the whole thing! I’m exited to see whether you’re gonna make veilguard videos and builds as well :)
I have a question, so for the superior dragonplate armour made by wane, it gives +1 STM regen for each peice, does this also give mana regen, or does it only give the regen to warrior and rouge?
I must have seriously messed up my last aw build coz at the end I couldn't consistently hit harvester (on nightmare), realistically speaking how do you even miss harvester's big fat ass in point blank
It works, but you will have problem with mana regen in combat if you use Haste + Spellmight(no dagger gives mana/stamina regen). Unless you are willing to chug mana pots of course.
I actually played that character build for a little while. (I'm a little ADHD when it comes to sticking with characters, so it probably wasn't very far when I made a different character. Not far from just Post-Lothering) The primary goals were to raise Dex high enough to be able to wield top tier daggers like Rose's Thorn without equipment boosts. And to exploit weapon enhancements (like flaming or telekenetic weapons). THEN focus almost entirely on magic (with a little willpower thrown in) So this video is a great boon for me to revisit that character again.
Passive skills from the skill tree are critical for dual wielding. Otherwise the damage of the weapon in the second hand is ridiculous - not worth the time. Also the problem is that the main characteristic of daggers is dexterity. I don't remember exactly what the damage will be, but it will definitely be lower than with a sword. Dagger and shield is a good combination for a warrior through dexterity, but for a mage it's not suitable. Although I myself also like to play with two swords for the arcanine warrior. Spell Weaver in one hand and Starfang or Duncan's Sword in the other. But for that, you have to use a bit of mods to pump the dual weapon passive perks for the mage to get full damage and the ability to equip two swords. To be honest I don't even consider it serious cheating, because I put skill points into that perk. After all, what prevents my hero from taking a couple lessons from Isabela (in the first game she is equipped with two swords) or Leliana and Zevran. P.S. I was a bit mistaken, on the wiki it says that daggers boost from both strength and dexterity.... So using a dagger might make some sense, but without passive perks it's still weird. I'd rather have a dagger and a shield.
@@vladmakhno2431 In my last solo playthrough, I encountered an unbelievable bug in Argamak golems. It seems because my level was 5 above the default maximum (apparently due to some mod that raised my level cap), all companions including Bronto were level 1 and because of this, they died from any sneeze.. The Reaper suddenly started dealing me hundreds of pure damage per second during some area-of-effect melee attack. The skeletons he summoned also somehow began to break through my battle mage with all spells activated and in a full set of massive armor. So, what's the point of all this... Under such conditions, I had to optimize my strategy to the maximum. I found out that despite having two swords (4 passive skills I mentioned above), the damage per second was higher when I used one sword. Only if I additionally activated double strike did the damage of two swords become higher than that of one. Not sure if this will always be the case, or only in that broken playthrough. In my attempts to fix the game, I deleted and installed mods several times, so I might have completely broken everything... Anyway, it was a unique experience. Never before had my butt burned so much from a boss in Dragon Age.
Very interesting guide, as always! Thank you for your great work 😎
On behalf of the community I actually proclaim that your videos became even more enjoyable after you started voicing them
This video just reinforces my opinion that mages in Origin are the most OP in the series
Yep, the mages in the second game sucked..... especially in solo.
Yeah, the mages are great, but the dual-wielding rogues are the most OP, imo.
@@EminNSU I disagree. The mages are actually the best class in the second game in my opinion. Blood Mage + Sprit Healer is super fun and super powerful. Same with Blood Mage + Force Mage or Force Mage + Spirit Healer. All very fun. :)
@@AKisHerceg They're good at supporting other classes, but I'm talking about class autonomy. A rogue beats Arishok in seconds, while my blood mage has to run from him for 10 minutes or so. That's just ridiculous. And when I killed the high dragon in the bone pit, it took about 25 minutes.
@@AKisHerceg 4 spells for the entire fire and ice tree of which half of them are always blocked by 100% resistance from everyone in a row! That's not serious.
And the rest of the branches can't do much damage without interclass combos.
Some nameless assassin dwarf can easily absorb all of my mage's spells three times while I'm running from him because he can kill me with a single invisibility attack....
I recently went through the second part solo mage - it's the worst. The developers just killed all the potential of mages as a standalone class.
Just finished Origins with a Arcane Warrior but focused on Tank. I only used wisp but it helped me hit a lot more and still deal damage besides blood magic and crushing prison. My party was Leliana who I took only for the song of Courage, Sten skilled to use a bow and morrigan for additional crowd control and Magic damage. No need for a healer since enemys could barely move. Learned a lot from your videos which helped me to come up with such builds so thank you.
Great video mate! Love the production.
Great tips! I would like to add however that there's another option to play an Arcane Warrior as a tank, so in that case you don't care about maximizing your damage since you'll have other damagers in your party to do that, and so you can put some points in Dexterity for the bonuses to both attack and defense.
Yeah, I mentioned that in the video. :)
*Warrior with good-high strength + Perfect Striking*
“Wait, you guys miss attacks?”
That intro made me laugh out loud. Thank you.
That's a good video.
Well at least someone doesn't talk about attack growing from fatigue and dex.... One popular channel in my language threw in this fatigue fake and since then I've come across three or four times who believed it....
Of the weaknesses, I would also add that they are very vulnerable to dispel magic. Fortunately very few mages in the game use antimagic spells (ironically these are other Arcane Warriors, one in Orzamar and one in the lair of the fake andraste). Mages, however, can be protected by 100% magic resistance, which is easily achieved through the same antimagic branch - and that's what the other Arcane Warriors in the game do.
Alas, this won't work with templemasters and higher pride demons, who are also adept at dispelling your magic.
Another weakness is the lack of defense against knockdowns and grabs. You can be an impenetrable killing machine, but any ogre will roll you on the ground until it gets bored or runs out of stamina to ram you, because that ability have no CD at all. And spiders can keep you on the ground for minutes! When fighting most werewolves and animals, you need to keep your health above 70% so they don't use grabs (that's their tactic). But there are shadow werewolves that attack from invisibility right through a grab.
And the only defense against this (when playing solo) will come in Awakening, when you get access to the repulsion field, which will simply disrupt the capture animation of weak enemies like maggots.
P.S. Sorry for my English.... To be honest I don't even know what some spells and classes are called in English, so... I feel I made some mistakes.
The ghost dragon in Awakening knocks your arcane warrior around non-stop. A long, frustrating fight because of this.
@@sjbell4653 There is a tactic to avoid being captured by the higher dragon, this is done by going between the front legs and hitting from the side. The speed of the attack is very important, so acceleration and agility balms are a must. This is approximately how the dragon is defeated by solo rogues with daggers. Paralysis runes on weapons can also make it easier, they can throw off the dragon's attacks.
As I recall, she's resistant to electricity in both forms, so my basic tactic via Storm of Ages didn't work against her. Luckily the drying aura is extremely good against her, so I was practically immortal in this fight as well. I also didn't have any paralysis spells pumped in, so I couldn't paralyze the balls and I didn't have enough time and damage to kill them all....
So yeah, it was a long fight.
Hm sure ogre can knock you down or grab you just like other enemys but thats not rly a problem. Just use stuns, or shield your arcane Warrior. Force field is perfect for this because enemys still attack you so your team has enough time to kill everything.
@@woodpecker8116 I'm referring to solo playthroughs. You don't deal damage when you're standing in a force field.
Thank you for another entertaining video.
Hello Kis I wanted to thank you for your content, it makes me very Happy to see my favourite games studied with so much effort ❤
Mb if it sounds not clear, I'm learning English 😅
Glad you like it! :)
I think I understood that. Arcane Warrior is such an overpowered class with the right build.
It’s like you made a video for me!!!
When I played my AW back in the day, i didn't worry about my auto-attack at all, I just focused on defense. I would just nuke the shit out of everybody then switch to the shield when they closed in and turn on the auras. With Wade's set I could stand inside of an inferno taking very little damage.
Great video
Thoughts on dual striking dagger mainhand warrior? It's insane with swift salve and without, probably the highest dps setup in the game and youre invincible with templar armor and spell resist
It's great! :)
Now I'm excited to play DAO again!
For the algorithm
thank you for this, i always had trouble understanding arcane warrior and hitting stuff. but 5 magic for 1 attack? ouch.
Dexterity also provides dodge chance. Which shouldn't be underestimated in Origins. With decent magic resist and high dexterity, Alistair can tank anything perhaps better than arcane warriors. But I haven't tested high dexterity on arcane warriors yet to, say for certain.
As I said in the video, it provides Defense. Defense is chance to avoid hit, which is a bit different than Dodge chance. Stacking Dex with a tank or a dagger wielding AW is a good idea. :)
Would you consider doing a video on game bugs you'd consider notable?
@@TMNWG I might. :)
👍
What’s your opinion about Veilguard so far? Especially that no decisions from previous titles expect the Trespasser DLC will be taken into account
If I'm gonna be completely honest, I don't really care about the decisions anymore. In Inquisition my game could not recognize the Keep and I could not properly import anything from it. I used a save modifier to be able to experience a few different choices, but then I stopped with the import completely(the save mod was tedious to deal with) and just accepted the pre-made world. So, although it sucks that most of what happened before doesn't matter, it's not something that I care too much about. I know what happened, so that's all that matters to me.
About the rest(in shot): The design of the new creatures is lame(it's like they are from Darksiders or Warframe or something). The combat looks intense and fun. Yes, it's not Origins, but that doesn't mean it can't be fun. I enjoyed Inquisition too, so it can work. The graphics are good. The team? Not sure about them yet, none of them really impressed me, but I said the same when I saw the party in Inquisition the first time and I was wrong - they grew on me. The story? Looks interesting. So I guess we'll see! :)
@@AKisHerceg I want to be optimistic too, but there are fears that the studio will be dead upon release....
So many red flags.
@@AKisHerceg
Well thanks, you gave me a little more optimism about the whole thing! I’m exited to see whether you’re gonna make veilguard videos and builds as well :)
@@EminNSU
It’s really sad that so many big titles just flop now…
I have a question, so for the superior dragonplate armour made by wane, it gives +1 STM regen for each peice, does this also give mana regen, or does it only give the regen to warrior and rouge?
Yup, they are the same. If it gives stamina regen for warriors, then it gives mana regen for mages. Same with equipment with +stamina. :)
I must have seriously messed up my last aw build coz at the end I couldn't consistently hit harvester (on nightmare), realistically speaking how do you even miss harvester's big fat ass in point blank
What about dual wield daggers mage? 2magic and 1 dexterity every lvl + all equipment for rogues?
It works, but you will have problem with mana regen in combat if you use Haste + Spellmight(no dagger gives mana/stamina regen). Unless you are willing to chug mana pots of course.
I actually played that character build for a little while. (I'm a little ADHD when it comes to sticking with characters, so it probably wasn't very far when I made a different character. Not far from just Post-Lothering)
The primary goals were to raise Dex high enough to be able to wield top tier daggers like Rose's Thorn without equipment boosts. And to exploit weapon enhancements (like flaming or telekenetic weapons). THEN focus almost entirely on magic (with a little willpower thrown in)
So this video is a great boon for me to revisit that character again.
Passive skills from the skill tree are critical for dual wielding. Otherwise the damage of the weapon in the second hand is ridiculous - not worth the time.
Also the problem is that the main characteristic of daggers is dexterity. I don't remember exactly what the damage will be, but it will definitely be lower than with a sword. Dagger and shield is a good combination for a warrior through dexterity, but for a mage it's not suitable.
Although I myself also like to play with two swords for the arcanine warrior. Spell Weaver in one hand and Starfang or Duncan's Sword in the other.
But for that, you have to use a bit of mods to pump the dual weapon passive perks for the mage to get full damage and the ability to equip two swords.
To be honest I don't even consider it serious cheating, because I put skill points into that perk. After all, what prevents my hero from taking a couple lessons from Isabela (in the first game she is equipped with two swords) or Leliana and Zevran.
P.S. I was a bit mistaken, on the wiki it says that daggers boost from both strength and dexterity....
So using a dagger might make some sense, but without passive perks it's still weird. I'd rather have a dagger and a shield.
@@EminNSU 2 swords? Good idea
@@vladmakhno2431 In my last solo playthrough, I encountered an unbelievable bug in Argamak golems. It seems because my level was 5 above the default maximum (apparently due to some mod that raised my level cap), all companions including Bronto were level 1 and because of this, they died from any sneeze.. The Reaper suddenly started dealing me hundreds of pure damage per second during some area-of-effect melee attack. The skeletons he summoned also somehow began to break through my battle mage with all spells activated and in a full set of massive armor. So, what's the point of all this...
Under such conditions, I had to optimize my strategy to the maximum. I found out that despite having two swords (4 passive skills I mentioned above), the damage per second was higher when I used one sword. Only if I additionally activated double strike did the damage of two swords become higher than that of one. Not sure if this will always be the case, or only in that broken playthrough.
In my attempts to fix the game, I deleted and installed mods several times, so I might have completely broken everything... Anyway, it was a unique experience. Never before had my butt burned so much from a boss in Dragon Age.
Can this build be a Triology one ?
There is no Arcane Warrior spec in DA2 or DAI.
@@AKisHerceg DA2 yes, DA3- Knight Enchanter, but I thought you could somehow think up a way to make one in DA2 ^_^
@@tamhuynhminh2833 Sadly, I can’t. :)
Robes better than armor ....that s dragon age !!!
Battle mage is very unbalanced , try to pass for archer with a crossbow on solo nightmare )
You're going to suffer , like me )
UNGA BUNGA