Ranking Specializations.

[HeroicNinja1337]

What are some of the best and worse specializations in Origins and Awakening? I'd like to hear some thoughts on this, and sharing my own.

These are some classes I'd particularly want some more insight on since I've never used them before.

The Reaver as I've never used it and it feels meh.
The Shapeshifter: people seem to think that this specialization is trash.
The Blood Mage: in-game, it's made out to be this dangerous magic. But it does the whole sacrifice health for mana gimmick.
Arcane Warrior: I'm told that it's essentially a powerhouse.
All of the specializations from Awakening.

[2High2tell]

Shapeshifter could be ok, but I always felt I needed my mages for other things, Like healing or stunning enemies etc.. So it was a skill I had but never used. I think the skill itself is good, but there just does not seem to be a use for it. Maybe if you carried multiple mages in your party. But I have only done that when I myself was a mage.

I seemed to have avoided blood magic at all cost. IDK why. maybe its in my head, and truly there is at least 2 mages that would benifit from the max of this skill. maybe it is the hatred for blood magic in the game that steered me away. ALSO, I am a rogue player at heart. most games like this I ply, I always tend to lean to rogues or assassin's. 2 handed swords or bows. Even in Skyrim mages and 2 handed warriors are my last play through. I would guess that people that play mages as there first choice would be way better at breaking down these skills then I could ever do. Another thing, as you said the sacrifice of mana for blood magic was something I had a hard time dealing with. I was always in need of the precious mana and maybe myu lack of skill using mages contribute to this. I just could not manage.

Arcane warrior is one of those skills I do love to use when playing a mage, but as you said it could be overpowered skill. And as a player who does not play mages much maybe I tend to go that route because it is an easy skill to master.

All in all when I play mage I look for two things in this game, the healing and the stuns/repel. I am gonna follow this thread because I would be interested to see how a real mage player explains these classes better. I may learn something here.

[Valden21]

IME, Arcane Warrior can be borderline OP if you have the right set of tactics on a mage who has it. If your tactics aren't set up to handle it, it becomes dangerous for the mage.

[dwarfpcfan]

Spirit Warrior is the best Warrior specialization

If you don't have awakening or you haven't reached the dlc yet, champion is the best for warrior

The best mage specialisation is Arcane Warrior, it's also THE best specialisation in the game period. There are dozens of videos proving you can solo on nightmare with a well built Arcane warrior

The best rogue specialisation is Legionnaire Scout, before the DLC it's either Assassin or Swashbuckler

[Guts]

Arcane warrior can benefit from blood mage. You should have so much health from building like a warrior that it doesn't matter if you sacrifice a little health for mana. The heal spells are actually efficient enough that you get more mana with blood magic than you use.

[VithaR]

Originally posted by HeroicNinja1337:

What are some of the best and worse specializations in Origins and Awakening? I'd like to hear some thoughts on this, and sharing my own.

These are some classes I'd particularly want some more insight on since I've never used them before.

The Reaver as I've never used it and it feels meh.
The Shapeshifter: people seem to think that this specialization is trash.
The Blood Mage: in-game, it's made out to be this dangerous magic. But it does the whole sacrifice health for mana gimmick.
Arcane Warrior: I'm told that it's essentially a powerhouse.
All of the specializations from Awakening.

Reaver's Devour and Fright are amazing abilities.
Arcane Warrior is one of the most overrated Specs if not the most in the game - Basically 2/3 if not 3/4 of the game you play gimped mage spec and in the end you are just a ''Sword and Board'' Mage who auto attacks (while normal Mages can obliterate whole Armies).

Spirit Healer , Bard and Assassin are good specs.

[Guts]

Originally posted by VithaR:

Arcane Warrior is one of the most overrated Specs if not the most in the game - Basically 2/3 if not 3/4 of the game you play gimped mage spec and in the end you are just a ''Sword and Board'' Mage who auto attacks (while normal Mages can obliterate whole Armies).

Spirit Healer , Bard and Assassin are good specs.

Arcane warrior is not over rated. You're an invincible tank that's stronger than the whole party combined if you build it right. Sure, you auto attack. But that's a backup plan. You can have all the buffs active and still cast an army killing spell before joining the melee. I target harder enemies with a shattering spell combo and then move on to easily kill the minions. The allure of arcane warrior is being able to wear the heaviest armour in the game without the fatigue penalty warriors would get while still being able to act exactly like a mage. And if you run out of mana completely, you can still rely on your autoattack.

Also if you're playing arcane warrior on purpose, it won't even take 1/3 of the game to unlock the specialization. I just did it with a fresh save and it only took me about 2 hours.

[VithaR]

Originally posted by N473:

Originally posted by VithaR:

Arcane Warrior is one of the most overrated Specs if not the most in the game - Basically 2/3 if not 3/4 of the game you play gimped mage spec and in the end you are just a ''Sword and Board'' Mage who auto attacks (while normal Mages can obliterate whole Armies).

Spirit Healer , Bard and Assassin are good specs.

Arcane warrior is not over rated. You're an invincible tank that's stronger than the whole party combined if you build it right. Sure, you auto attack. But that's a backup plan. You can have all the buffs active and still cast an army killing spell before joining the melee. I target harder enemies with a shattering spell combo and then move on to easily kill the minions. The allure of arcane warrior is being able to wear the heaviest armour in the game without the fatigue penalty warriors would get while still being able to act exactly like a mage. And if you run out of mana completely, you can still rely on your autoattack.

I have ~15 Walktroughts in DA:O/A and ~10 of them are by soloing the game with multiple classes and specs(on highest difficulty) and even made no - death runs.
From my experience and the experience of countless others like me - The Arcane Warrior cannot cast ~80% of the spells with the S&S or Dual Weapons and need to sheet them before releasing those spells , the same one can be crowd controlled without a problem because only the Two-Hander Warrior has the indomitable stance.

A normal Mage can Tank everything in the game without the Arcane Warrior Specialization can and his damage is ~10 times bigger than of the Arcane Warrior.
The AA from the Arcane Warrior is basically a giant waste of time and a pure ''ResidentSleeper'' - if you want to do that - go for a Warrior and at least you will have some actual instant abilities that do more than the ones you will use with the AW.

Also i don't understand why are you telling me the the AR can Wear the ''Heaviest Armor'' like the kit abilities doesn't explain it and i can't read it.
Running out of Mana ? - Excuse me , but i finish every time with few thousand potions crafted ... i don't even know what is like to be OOM in this game.


With pure and simple explanation - A person with a mediocre gaming skill can solo the game(on Nightmare) with a Non-Arcane Warrior pure mage build and do the same stuff the AR does - but better.

[Big Wanger]

I just wanna chirp in with a little more defence of the Arcane Warrior because I think it's a fantastic specialisation, and the best one, in my opinion. I think it's something of a misconception to think of it as a proper tank build. I think of it as the mother of all support roles for buffing your other melee attackers. There are a great many spells that provide benefits to everybody within a certain radius, and many debuff spells that work the same way. I first enjoyed the sweet succor of Miasma by playing this way, for example. AW allows you to get the most out of all of them, provided you're willing to get into the fray and your party consists of mostly melee fighters.

I couple this with the Spirit Healer specialisation mostly for it's AoE healing aura, but being able to revive is super handy too, which leads neatly to the drawbacks I experienced. If you're a buff-slut like me, you're gonna struggle to maintain your mana levels. I found myself depending heavily on potions and another mage to keep me topped up, which I felt was a pretty huge restriction to my party structure and meant that now I had a squishy magic user to protect. I'm never comfortable having two mages in the party, especially when my strategy is designed around melee optimisation. Also, it makes it harder to get a rogue into your party, which is a massive turn-off for me. This can be remedied by being a little more careful with your buffs and magic usage though.

I know I've waffled a lot already, but I also wanted to say that VithaR has made an excellent point that works counter to how I play AW. I'm very slow and defensive in my playstyle and I'm very party-centric, both because I like the interactions and because I enjoy the tactical aspect of controlling a small squad, but VithaR is totally right to say that there are other mages that can outclass the AW on damage output, tanking potential and single-character optimised play. So the ultimate conclusion is the most tired and neutral one there is: how good an AW is depends what you're going for and how you like to play.

[ADEC Inc]

Arcane Warrior doesn't lose any damage potential at all, because they can still equip a staff, and they can dump every point into magic if they wish (points in CON can be nice if you want to combine it with Blood Mage). It has every capability of a mage, with a pile of armor on top.

[The Dude]

Thread necromancy is really the best spec. Totally OP.

btw - you have to go out of your way to build a character that can't solo the game on nightmare. Like dumping all of your fighter's points into magic...

[Redman]

Originally posted by ADEC Inc:

Arcane Warrior doesn't lose any damage potential at all, because they can still equip a staff, and they can dump every point into magic if they wish (points in CON can be nice if you want to combine it with Blood Mage). It has every capability of a mage, with a pile of armor on top.

Yeah, I'm not sure where that came from. Maybe talking about the +2 Magic bonus lost when not using Spirit Healer which is easily substituted with Helm of Honnleath which gives a +2 to ALL attributes.

[LukanGamer]

Reaver is alright at times but ya nothing special

Shapeshift does indeed suck though can be fun for personal rp

Blood mage is good

Arcane warrior is indeed a powerhouse

(But if answer 2 was not evident enough, I don't care a great deal as I am more about character + story though as they can affect them I do wish they were a little better / more interesting, but great for their time and are good enough).

[Rivazar]

Origins:
S Tier: Arcane warrior, Bloodmage, Spirit Healer
A Tier: Champion, Bard, Assasin
B Tier: Templar, Reaver, Berserker, Duelist
C Tier: Ranger, Shapeshifter

[Redman]

Originally posted by Rivazar:

Origins:
S Tier: Arcane warrior, Bloodmage, Spirit Healer
A Tier: Champion, Bard, Assasin
B Tier: Templar, Reaver, Berserker, Duelist
C Tier: Ranger, Shapeshifter

Wow, Spirit Healer is S tier? What does it do, raise you from the dead?

Jokes aside, in my opinion it's maybe at B but definitely not A or S. And Reaver might actually be A for me. I'd swap it with Champion.

[Nickname0329]

Templar gives you access to the Knight Commander's Plate which is 40% spell resist. Without the specialization its basically impossible to get 100% spell resist through items. It's easily one of, if not the best specialization in the game until Awakening. S tier. You will have 100% spell resist from right after Lothering till the end of the game.

Berserker is +8 to damage on a weapon. Dual Wielding its +16 damage, with health regen eventually. This is also S tier, it is so absurdly powerful. There is no need to scale either, its that good immediately on picking it.

Blood mage has blood wound which is effectively the reason you pick it. Still waiting to 16 blows hard. Bottom of S tier.

Arcane Warrior is nice if you need Haste, but its overrated from a damage perspective. If you want to cast, you don't need to be an Arcane Warrior, and if you want to tank and do damage in melee, pick warrior. Still for a jack of all trades its pretty good. Also it can be dispelled. Top of A tier though.

Champion has Rally, +10 attack and defense for everyone that can be stacked. Pretty good. A tier.

Ranger. Summons benefit from all your buffs, meaning they can do some good damage. Until you get all the op buffs though, they kinda blow. A tier.

Spirit Healer. Its the healing specialization. It's obvious why you want one, but it doesn't do any damage. Top of B tier.

Assassin, Cunning Rogues are squishy and the modifier for exploit weakness is bad. Even at 60 cunning you're only getting 8 damage. The same as Berserker, base. Lacerate is a good boss killer, mark of death is good and so is feast of the fallen. Still having to be a cunning rogue sucks. B Tier.

Duelist. Dueling is a good self buff, but Rally does the same thing, to everyone. Pin point striking is ok until you consider that you're a rogue and can back stab, which means you don't need it. Top of C tier.

Reaver. Horror is a decent status effect. Devour only heals from corpses, when things are dead, which is usually when you don't need healing. Even then use a poultice lol. Aura of Pain does 6 per tick lol. Blood Frenzy needs you to be at 20% health to do as much as Berserk. Laughable. C tier.

Bard. At a glance this class seems alright but, all the modifiers for this class suck. You also need to be a cunning rogue. Bottom of C tier.

Shapeshifter. You cannot spell cast in forms, forms are not instant. If you want to mage tank, pick Arcane Warrior. F tier.

TL;DR

S Tier: Templar Berserker Blood Mage
A Tier: Arcane Warrior, Champion, Ranger
B Tier: Spirit Healer, Assassin
C Tier: Duelist, Reaver, Bard
F Tier: Shapeshifter