Pyros
<Silver Donator>
On my last reroll, I went to Val Royeaux after only doing a few things in Hinterlands, and damn it changes everything. First you get like a level from codex entries shit, which helps with the "slow leveling" thing and not having enough skills. Second important thing, you unlock A LOT of companions from just doing that. That's a big plus cause I wanted to switch up my party. I switched from 2H war to 1H tank, kicked Cassandra out(though I kinda like her) and added Vivienne. She has some fucking great dialogues too so that's nice. Kept Solas and Varric, I didn't like Sera so Varric is my archer and I kinda want two mages, Solas is like full Spirit atm with the much better barrier and shit, only spell other than that he has is the Freeze one he starts with, which does shit dmg but the constant freezing is useful. I made Vivienne Lightning based since I figure the AI wouldn't be able to use the fire aoes correctly anyway. Really like this party.
The AI is so garbage though, really miss DA:O setup. Like Solas has dispel right, but he uses it completely randomly if I set it to active. He'll often pops barriers with it which is nice, but he'll also try to dispel animals and obviously he always has it on cd during rifts when a new wave spawns so fuck that. So I have to turn it off and do it manually. I also have 2 mages with barriers but they overwrite each other all the time instead of waiting for barriers to be down before recasting. I'd also like for them to only barrier me(the tank), and not barrier themselves when they're not even taking dmg. I also had to take stealth for Varric since I want to get knockout powder for stray mobs/rogue mobs/teleporters etc, and the idiot will often stealth then wait until it's over to attack again. Had to turn it off, he doesn't try to use stealth for damage like ever. Oh and they often randomly decide that they need to fire their spells/crossbow from melee range, because why not, so I have to move them away constantly. I can get it when I push a mob into LoS, but quite often it seems completely random, mob is perfectly fine and they'll still run in melee to do whatever.
But eh, game's really fun regardless. The combat is a lot more interesting as a tank than as anything else so far, since you have the shield block stance thing that you need to time correctly, then attack a bit, then block and so on. It's very fun, and surprisingly, tank damage is actually good so you don't feel completely worthless. It's not like super high damage, but it's pretty good.
One question, on specialization, once you unlock specs, do all your companions also unlock theirs? Are they set to certain specs or can you pick them?
The AI is so garbage though, really miss DA:O setup. Like Solas has dispel right, but he uses it completely randomly if I set it to active. He'll often pops barriers with it which is nice, but he'll also try to dispel animals and obviously he always has it on cd during rifts when a new wave spawns so fuck that. So I have to turn it off and do it manually. I also have 2 mages with barriers but they overwrite each other all the time instead of waiting for barriers to be down before recasting. I'd also like for them to only barrier me(the tank), and not barrier themselves when they're not even taking dmg. I also had to take stealth for Varric since I want to get knockout powder for stray mobs/rogue mobs/teleporters etc, and the idiot will often stealth then wait until it's over to attack again. Had to turn it off, he doesn't try to use stealth for damage like ever. Oh and they often randomly decide that they need to fire their spells/crossbow from melee range, because why not, so I have to move them away constantly. I can get it when I push a mob into LoS, but quite often it seems completely random, mob is perfectly fine and they'll still run in melee to do whatever.
But eh, game's really fun regardless. The combat is a lot more interesting as a tank than as anything else so far, since you have the shield block stance thing that you need to time correctly, then attack a bit, then block and so on. It's very fun, and surprisingly, tank damage is actually good so you don't feel completely worthless. It's not like super high damage, but it's pretty good.
One question, on specialization, once you unlock specs, do all your companions also unlock theirs? Are they set to certain specs or can you pick them?