Bow Damage Without Leathality

[LooksLikeDaniel]

I'm running a Dalish Warrior with Dual-Wielding and Archery. I like to call it my Legolas build.

Am I correct in thinking that bow damage is determined by strength just like every other weapon for warriors? Just wanted to clear that up.

[Ilja]

Bow damage primary attribute is Dexterity.

[LooksLikeDaniel]

Originally posted by Ilja:

Bow damage primary attribute is Dexterity.

Damage? I thought that was just to determine if the shot hits.

[WardenofSilence]

Originally posted by LooksLikeDaniel:

Originally posted by Ilja:

Bow damage primary attribute is Dexterity.

Damage? I thought that was just to determine if the shot hits.

Dexterity both increases the chance of you hitting an enemy and the amount of damage you do with some weapons, bows included.

You can see exactly how the weapons work here: https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Dragon_Age:_Origins_weapons

[briarroot]

Originally posted by LooksLikeDaniel:

Originally posted by Ilja:

Bow damage primary attribute is Dexterity.

Damage? I thought that was just to determine if the shot hits.

Hover your cursor over the attributes and you'll see brief explanations of their effects. According to the wiki (see the link below) Bow damage is based on 50% Strength, 50% Dexterity. However, Dexterity does have a positive effect on accuracy with Bows. Crossbow damage is unaffected by either attribute and based solely on the weapon itself.

https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Weapons_(Origins)#Ranged_weapons


If your playing a Warrior, my advice is to put most of your points into Strength getting just enough Dexterity to allow you to get all your chosen Talents. A Dual-Wield Warrior will need at least 36 in Dexterity to get all the available Talents. If you split your Talent choices between Dual-Wield and Archery, you won't be very strong at either. Don't try to do a lot of damage with Bows, just use them to pull. That's just my take, so of course do whatever seems most fun for you.

The page below has some useful build guides, including the "Dual-Wield Warrior" and "Warrior-Archer" builds, so check it out if you like

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/920668-dragon-age-origins/faqs/58876

[LooksLikeDaniel]

Originally posted by briarroot:

If your playing a Warrior, my advice is to put most of your points into Strength getting just enough Dexterity to allow you to get all your chosen Talents. A Dual-Wield Warrior will need at least 36 in Dexterity to get all the available Talents. If you split your Talent choices between Dual-Wield and Archery, you won't be very strong at either. Don't try to do a lot of damage with Bows, just use them to pull. That's just my take, so of course do whatever seems most fun for you.

You can easily get two-thirds of both the Archery and Dual-Wield talents if you don't put much into specialization, especially if you use both the talent books. I've never found the precise striking tree to be much use after the first talent (which you get by default), anyway, so I skip that entirely.

[New Moon On Monday]

It isn't worthwhile to get a lot of archery talents, and in particular the activated talents are not as good as the descriptions make them out to be. I'd go with Aim and eventually Master Archery, and skip everything else in Origins. In Awakening, add Accuracy.

I found this to be an interesting evaluation of the Archery talents: Archery Strategy[dragonage.fandom.com]. It's also worthwhile to read the individual Wiki entries for each talent (all linked from the Archery Talents page[dragonage.fandom.com].)

Though if you are not going to be an archer all the time- such as firing a few shots and engaging in melee- maybe you just go with one talent like Rapid Fire (and beware of the bug of combining Rapid Fire and Haste and fixing it with a mod.)