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.

[Jquist47]

If anyone think ranger and bard are bad they need to think again. A 3 party with ranger and bard (song of courage stack, at least partially) might be the most powerful party comp in the game.

All pets benefits from each song of courage and so do the characters, the damage output is silly high. Not to mention all the extra tanky bodies you get as well, incredibly powerful.

My S-tier would be:
Arcane Warrior
Blood Mage
Ranger

A-tier
Spirit healer
Bard
Reaver
Berserker
Assassin
Templar
Champion

B-tier
Shapeshifter
Duelist

But all warrior specialisations are pretty meh, maybe should be in B-tier but they are pretty even imo.

[Nickname0329]

song of courage is literally .05 scaling for damage with a -10 for starting base. It is so worthless that only someone who hasn't looked at the actual numbers would defend it.

At 60 cunning this is literally only 2 damage for a total of 4. This is super late game too. And you're a cunning rogue which means you're reamed by all magic, you don't have good defense, no heavy armor and you can't get around the attack speed cap. Don't even pretend this is good.

Not only that but because its a rogue its already behind a warrior in damage per level at that point, basically equaling out the difference. (Rogue gets 4 damage by 20, Warrior gets 8 damage by 20)

Warrior is completely immune to magic, wears heavy armor, has health regen built in, can reach the attack speed cap WITHOUT haste. A rogue party needs to be hasted twice, because momentum doesn't work with haste unless you have precise striking from warrior. You're never going to have 3 rogues unless you really just don't know what you're doing. Imo, you should have 0 unless you need to unlock something.

[ADEC Inc]

Late game cunning should be more like 75 for a companion rogue or close to 100 for a warden rogue. You still end up with about 90 base defense, which is more than enough after stacking dodge. Warden rogues can pick up a massive +23 damage per hit from The Tainted Blade. Rogues can use Momentum and Swift Salve, or you can just mod out the attack speed bug and use Haste without issue.

Spell resistance is nice and all, but if the group isn't dispatching mages quickly to begin with, something is wrong. No one should be getting "reamed" by magic.

While I tend to prefer a more balanced party, 3 rogues would absolutely work. The game is great about letting you form whatever team you wish, regardless of difficulty selected.

[Nickname0329]

100 cunning in dao lol. You need 35 -36 dex for rogues (base). You will not reach 100 cunning in dao and you will only go above 60 with dlc stuff, like high regard of house dace, at like 20. If we're talking awakening then warrior gets spirit warrior making the gap between warrior and rogue even greater than in origin.

Spell resistance isn't for enemy mages. That's what mana clash is for. Spell resistance is so that you can drop the actual good spells (storm of the century) from your mages without annhilating your frontline or having to hug a glyph of neutralization.

at 60 cunning tainted blade is 15 damage. This is like super late game. Because it has to scale its worse than thirst and worse damage than berserking until awakening where warrior gets spirit warrior and jumps ahead again.

Gaxkang and Revenants have like 80+ attack and cut your defense by 10. If you're running tainted blade on a cunning rogue you will absolutely just die with 90 defense.

If your argument is that a warrior can tank for the rogue, then just be the warrior who will do as much damage while not being squishy.

If you're going to mod away imbalances then there isn't a good ranking system as you can add pretty much anything you want.

[ADEC Inc]

Yes, 100 cunning is possible, and that is after equipment. Nobody said anything about excluding specific items. In Awakening, cunning can go as high as 150 easily. Awakening is full of overpowered stuff. Spirit Warrior is great, but rogue also gets extreme backstab damage from Shadow, and total invulnerability for 15 seconds from Legionnaire Scout, long enough to shred anything.

Aoe spells are easy enough to use without being spell immune. The very minor convenience of not having to aim at all is insignificant.

60 cunning is not late game for a warden rogue. You're flat out wrong. Rogue doesn't need the speed of Thirst since they already have Momentum, and Tainted Blade doesn't make them incur 20% more damage like Thirst does. Tainted Blade provides the same damage as Berserk with only 25 cunning, and almost triple the damage by the end. Spirit Warrior helps the warrior keep pace by converting to spirit damage to bypass armor, but the rogue is already penetrating most if not all the enemy's armor.

It's not just 90 defense. It's that plus the extremely high dodge chance you can pile on a rogue. In Awakening you can just rock 100% dodge at all times. The damage from Tainted Blade itself is nothing considering how quickly a rogue can end a fight.

I do prefer a warrior tank but a rogue can definitely do it also.

Attack speed resetting to default is not an imbalance. It's clearly a bug. One of many in Origins. If you don't want to fix it for whatever reason, there are still Swift Salves as I said. You can craft as many as you need.

[The Dude]

Publicado originalmente por Nickname0329:

You will not reach 100 cunning in dao and you will only go above 60 with dlc stuff

pfft - Straight from lothering to the fade, leave the circle with 600-800 cunning easy peasy lemon squeasy. The limit is 999 but that might not be hard coded and just a display limitation.

Essence fonts + input lag = super fun stat time.

[Sanvone]

Publicado originalmente por Nickname0329:

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.

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.

Overall great points but I have some nitpicking to those 3.

Ranger is single highest dmg and health pool increase in game for your party. With workarounds Wolf has plenty of talents (Dread Howl, Charge, Overwhelm, Shred).

Duelist's Pinpoint strike has different advantages over backstabbing. It is simply better against multiple regular enemies, as you don't need setup or (worst option) moving around allowing for one shotting enemies the quickiest. Also it combos tremendously with Cone of Cold. That said I'm huge fan of "Shattering" crutches.

Reaver - your comment confuses me. Either you just instantly kill things and then healing is never needed or you focus fire enemies one by one, so towards end of fight there are several corpses for full heal. Devour saves money spent on health poultices/lyrium potions. The more money you save, the quicker and more you can snowball as expert player (because you buy those massive armours etc). Horryfing Presence increases threaten to x3 multiplier for threat generation, which opens up grenades as stamina-free taunt equivalent. Aura of Pain together with calltrops will generate 18 + 24 threat in radius every tick. Blood Frenzy is scuffed - it should be +2 dmg per 10% health missing to be decent. Probably there are some damage tresholds that it allows to meat with Dual Wielding for 1-hitting enemies.

[Whitey]

If you're going to bring Awakening into it archery rogue using Accuracy with high dex beats any warrior.

[Crom]

Im the best player on the world.

Strongest is a ranger. Second strongest is Warrior Archer.