Dragon Age: Origins: Making an effective party

This guide is for newer players looking to get the best party they can. Basic Tank, DPS and Healer layouts are essential for easy progression and success in boss fights. This is best used on hard or nightmare difficulty.

Basic Party structure

Basic Party Structure.

Dragon Age is a unique game in the respect that it requires a four person party to effectively play the game. For maximum potential, these four characters, including your own, need a specific role.

Tanks

Characters like Alistair or Sten begin with skills that allow them to attract enemies, and pull them from attacking other party members, to soak up damage themselves. They are heavily armoured, and can take direct damage from almost any boss with hopefully minimal loss to health. These characters are 'Tanks'. You'd want to place them right at the front to ensure they get attacked and prevent other party members from taking damage, so they can, in turn, focus on their role, damage causing.

Damage per Second (DPS)

Damage causers are called 'DPS'. These characters are, by far, the most numerous in DA:O. However, even though they are numerous, its rare to make the perfect DPS who causes the perfect amount of damage. Because they need to focus on damage skills, and strength, they usually have very low armour or defense, especially ranged, like Leliana or Morrigan. This is why they cannot accumulate too much threat, otherwise enemy attention will focus on them, and the DPS will die quickly unless to tank can regain aggro. It often takes time to perfect DPS equipment, so for a while aggro might jump from the tank occasionally.

Healers

The final, and arguably most important, is the healer. The only dedicated healer the game provides is Wynne, but other characters, such as your own or Morrigan, can be adjusted slightly to fit this role. These characters use all of their mana on healing the other party members; its always best, if the party is comfortable for DPS, to keep the threat of these characters low by putting their tactics behavior on 'passive'. If they die in a long fight, its practically a guaranteed wipe. The survival of healers is essential.

These three set types go towards making a good party. If anyone reading this has played MMORPG's, and was an avid PvE-er, you should proabably have a good grasp of party structure, probably enough to mix and match this at your will. The standard 5 man dungeon set has the same basic layout, with just one more DPS. To anyone who is completely new to party based combat and threat, basic structures are best.

Party Structure

First off, start with a good, heavily armoured tank. Alistair makes the best choice if your character is a DPS or healer. Make sure to have the ability 'Threaten' on, since that increases threat from him across the board. Also, without the ability 'Taunt', regaining aggro quick enough to prevent a wipe is much harder. Once Alistair is kitted out in your heaviest armour (if your a low level group looking for massive armour, there is a set a set of templar at tier 3 in the mages tower. Alistair already has templar spec, so its perfect for him. My personal advice is always complete the mages quests first for Wynne), place any 2 DPS in the party. Alistair fits well with high damage melee combatants, because he was focused on gaining threat from the start of the game. He also causes very little damage. Have Zevran and Leliana, or your own ranged DPS with Sten or Oghren. It is unwise to place him in a party with Morrigan if you care about approval ratings from both Alistair and Morrigan. They will both drop drastically with the amount of arguing they do and the sides your character takes. Finally, place a healer, preferably Wynne if you didn't reject her or take the other option in the mage's quests. Morrigan will also do, but is not as proficient. Using your own character can get a better result than Wynne, sometimes.

Its always better to customize and find the way you play best. Experimentation often gets the best results.

Threat

Basics of Threat.

In Dragon Age, much combat is decided by 'threat levels'. It is as it says: the character the enemy considers most threatening will be the one it attacks. Threat cab be increased and decreased in many ways, through abilities, damage or even just proximity. For example, a tank gains threat by dealing melee damage. This increases threat by proximity and damage, along with the ability 'threaten'. As previously mentioned, threat should be commanded by the tank, and the DPS and healers should have the least threat possible while still making both damage and healing effecient.

How to increase/decrease Threat.

Ways to increase threat:

• Damage done. The more damage done, the more threat is accumulated. Simple.
  
• Healing done. The healer accumulates threat from a monster by healing its target. This is the main healer-killer.
  
• Armour Rating. When a monster first aggros, it will target the most heavily armoured, which is a great boon for traditional tanks. However, on nightmare, armour rating isn't a factor.
  
• Proximity. Depending on how close you are, more threat is generated. Great mechanic for parties relying on ranged DPS.
  
• Abilities. Talents like 'Taunt' and 'Threaten' are great for aggroing enemies.

Ways to decrease threat:

• Taking time out of a fight. If a character is drawing too much attention, place them off to the side, making sure they won't attack anyone, and after a couple of seconds the threat will decrease a little. If they are ranged, its handy to just move them to a different spot and have them attack a different enemy. At 60 M the enemy loses interest completely, and drops the character from their threat table.
  
• Rouges only create 80% of the threat made by damage.
  
• Abilities. These are prevelant for every class, such as disengage for the warrior; for example, 'Feign Death' for Rogues.
  
• There are items that reduce threat, though they are ineffectave for a warrior, since they are mostly leather.
  
• Run to the tank and circle them for a little till they regain aggro. This is not so effective if you just go and circle the tank, but it is a little amusing. If threat gets out of control, and the tank has an off-cooldown taunt, pause, and get all the party to run to the tank, who must be prepared to taunt quickly. Then the party members re-group, allowing the tank to build up a little threat to start again. Health poultices are essential here, since the healer is very mobile.

Using a tank to maximum potential

Since a tank is there to soak up damage, and since much more threat is gained on the first target an enemy aggros, send the tank into any location first. Depending on the party archetype, have the tank either at a choke point, in which all the enemies run to the tank, or a central point which is easy to run from to another party member and regain aggro. Have ranged line up around the room, and melee take the backs of the enemies. Its always beneficial, in most fights, to have the tank make the monsters face away from the party, especially for a rogue orientated party. In a tank 'n' spank boss fight, where there are few or no special adds, have the party as still as possible and have the boss facing away from the party. An example of this would be the final boss in the mages tower. If played correctly, and if the item is used to repel the effect (I won't be including spoilers!) then there will be no adds once the two who come with the boss are killed. He himself just does lost of damage, with few knockback abilities or CC's, making this an easy fight if you pay attention. There are many fights that do not go as simply or as smoothly as this, however, so a constant eye is needed on positioning and threat levels of the tank. If aggro is lost and the boss 1 or 2 shots the healer, its all over. Unless you have a ton of poultices and super powerful equipment.

Companions skills and Yours

Companions Skills

Often in Dragon Age, in your party, your player character will be either marginally or noticeably more effective. However, this does not mean companion skills are inferior. You may do 50% of the total damage, but as a warrior, you couldn't accomplish proper crowd control like a Morrigan could. To this end, irregarding companions and their skills, and placing yours in front is the wrong way to go.

Companion buffs and cross class combinations

Often, while throwing out lots of abilities at once, you may come across a 'cross-class-combo', which is as it states, a comination of attacks from multiple classes that deals either instant death or very heavy damage. Critical attacks on frozen enemies can shatter them, and stunned enemies are much more vunerable to special attacks from other classes, since resistances have been dropped.

Oftentimes, its difficult to pull one off, because of positioning and aggro risks. However, with proper positioning, and a balanced, effective party, its alot more viable. Depending upon the desired ability, your party will have to be set up in special ways. For example, to use freeze/shatter, the tank would have to have enough aggro to keep monsters on the tank while the mage freezes the enemies with either cone of cold or winters grasp. Because cone of cold draws alot of threat, because of the AoE ability and the close range, whoever is designated to shatter needs to do it quick, to keep other enemies off the freezer. It is possible for the tank to keep aggro, but needs alot of pre-gained threat.

Skills to compliment the Tank

It often helps to have a mage debuffing enemies throughout a fight. Skills like 'misdirection hex' or 'weakness', decrease the enemies attack power and damage, thereby taking strain of the tank. Other hexes cause damage or increase damage done to the target, which indirectly compliments the tank by getting the monsters down quicker. Rogues, as masters of single target damage, can stun an enemy completely out of the fight and DPS them down while stunned. Other warriors can act as 'back-up tanks', which are only used in 10 to 25 man raids in MMO's, but can stand as backup if your really struggling in DA:O. a DPS warrior with taunt abilities can quickly pull of two or three too free up the main tank and deal with them in the corner.

Crowd Control Strategy

More often than not in DA:O, there are more enemies than you can count. An effective counter for swarming monsters is crowd control. Crowd control can effect either one target or many; often, single target CC has longer durations or needs a higher resistance to stop. Mages are most effective with large scale crowd controls, being able to immobilize half of a battlefield in one ability. Counter to that, rogues excel at single target CC. If one party member accidentally grabs aggro from a monster, a rogue can easily CC that monster to stop doing harm. An added benefit, after the effect wears off, the aggro table of the monster is reset. This means that it will attack the closest party member, which makes it easy for a well positioned tank to regain aggro. Another example would be if the tank is taking far too much damage from lots of low level enemies. A mage can use earthquake to CC some to give just enough time for the tank to use a poultice or get the healer to knock up the health sufficently.

Party Skills

In general, making use of the entire party is the key. The cross class combos and abilities to free up the tank and other members are very important.

Tactics

Party Member Tactics

Dragon Age party members come equipped with a set of tactics, fitting to their intended role in the party. For example, Alistair comes with tactics utilizing his threat gaining abilities when surrounded by multiple enemies; Wynne has tactics utilizing her healing powers when party members have <50% health. These preset tactics, however, are sometimes sloppy for a very specialized character. You may feel Alistair should balance tanking with another member, and therefore would need tactics that another tank would be compatible with. You might want Morrigan to throw in healing spells every so often, along with Wynne. All these eventualities require you to edit the tactics yourself.

Where and What are Tactics?

The tactics screen is located on the bar at the top of your UI. 3rd from the right, it's symbol is a crosshair, similar to an archery target. You'll find a list of tactics each party member has; the tactics are made up of an IF condition, a variable (for example: IF {self < 50%}) and an action, also known as an executable (for example: IF {self < 50%} activate {heal}). Here, and throughout the tactics, 'self <' or 'self >' stands for health. This also applies to other party members: 'Morrigan < 50%' means: Morrigan less than 50 percent health. If Morrigan at this time had exactly 500 health, the tactics would say this: 'If Morrigan is less than 250 health, heal her'. Written in terms of tactics it'd come out 'IF {Morrigan < 50%} activate {heal}'.
Of course, this is not how the computer actually sees it, but the closest I can think of to how the tactics are written in the tactics screen. This should help you understand it in a way that will really help you make them. If you have even the most basic understanding of programming and syntax, I'm sure you'll know exactly what IF statements are and making tactics will be easy. If not, things should at least be a little easier now.

Basic Tactics for Basic Roles

Tank Tactics

Firstly, just for personal organisation, begin with your tanks defensive and threat tactics. If you have taken 'threaten', have it always on, or 'IF {self = any} activate {threaten}'. This means its always on, and the character should activate it if it is not.

Next, have 'taunt' activate not when the tank aggros, but when surrounded by multiple enemies. This is because of the long cooldown on taunt, and its a waste when it might only affect on enemy. In tactics, it would look like 'IF {self = surrounded by X enemies} activate {taunt}'. I personally would say 2, just for safety. However, 3 or 4 are perfectly viable numbers; if your tank is great at keeping aggro, then taunt is less needed for emergencies, and can be used more often. However, tanks that might struggle against large groups might need taunt for emergencies, so you may want to set the number higher.

Defense talents need to be activated, too. There are 3 sustained defensive abilities in the sword and shield tree, and cannot be activated at the same time. The first one available, Shield Defense, is a good balanced ability, good for all situation. It grants a moderate bonus to both defense and missile deflection, but has a small penalty to attack. The next one, shield cover, is defense against only arrows, but has no attack or damage penalty. This is great for tanks who do damage for aggro. The final one, in the same tree and Shield Defense, is Shield wall. Granting +5 armour and +10 missile deflection, it is much more defensively effective than Shield Defense. However, damage done is reduced by 20%, which is surprisingly large amount. This ability is best for well structured late game parties, who have excellent balance of high damage and a tank able to keep aggro. In tactics, the process for this is the same as 'threaten'; it should always be active: 'IF {self = any} activate { (your chosen shield ability) }'.

Healer Tactics

Next, Healing tactics should be configured. This is a little easier, but perhaps more important than tactics for tanks. First, make sure that the healer has tactics that heal her when she has lost some health. The percentage is your choice, but it should be over 50%. In tactics, this would be 'IF {self < X%} activate {heal}', where X is the percentage you choose for health. Next, set tactics up for the party; if you want to heal anyone who has been damaged, choose 'ally'. This registers as the party, and the healer will heal anyone damaged. You may also want to set a separate tactic to heal the tank, at a higher percentage. This comes in handy if you have a low armoured but talented tank; or you have a talented tank on nightmare who has forgone the benefits or massive armour because of the lack of threat it gains on nightmare, and is wearing heavy armour. All together, that would look like 'IF {ally <50%} activate {heal}' and if you want 'IF{Alistair >75%} activate {heal}', in a situation where Alistair is the party tank.

After pure healing, there are options of regeneration and restoring stamina and mana. Regeneration is good for little mistakes that drop health no lower than 75%. Set it to 'IF {ally < 75%} activate {regeneration}', so as not to waste mana. Rejuvenation is great to set to 50% and leave, as its pretty cheap and can be used in every fight. Set it to 'IF {ally mana/stamina < 50%} activate {rejuvenate}'. Mass rejuvenation is best to be manually controlled, since you can't state that the healer should only do it if ALL party members have less than 50% mana or stamina. It consumes a lot more mana, and if set to 'ally', it'll be a massive drain since your only rejuvenating one person.

After all the healing skills there are defense skills. Once again, your priority is tactics that protect the healer; set 'heroic aura' to be cast on the healer themselves if they are attacked by a ranged attack. After this, you should set the same for 'Ally'. Next with defensive skills, set 'IF {Alistair < 100%} activate {heroic defense}', in an instance where Alistair is the tank. This is to give your tank extra protection if their health is dropping. It is especially effective against mage opponents, giving a full set of resistances.

Damage Tactics

Finally are damaging tactics for all roles. These tactic sets are mostly up to you; unlike tanking and healing, there is no 'best preset' for DPS. It is party-flexible, and you have to make the choice what is best for your party. I will, however, give a basic preset for each role for you to build on.

Examine your damaging abilities your tank has, and decide if they are worth the stamina to use, or if that stamina should be spent on more sustained abilities or saved for an emergency taunt. If you have a high stamina tank, the abilities could be worth it. All are held in the tree beginning with 'Shield Bash'. A nice basic setup is having the tank shield bash an enemy using a melee attack, and use a more damaging offensive skill on an enemy below 50% or so health.

Your best choice for your healer staying out of direct combat; any damage they do will accrue threat, and that added to threat gained from healing may have monsters attacking your healer. Any abilities used will also be a drain on mana, allowing for less healing. However, DPS is entirely your call.

DPS members of the party should focus on damage balance; have less powerful spells when the tank is gaining aggro; and step up the ferocity as the fight becomes more stable. High damage abilities should be used around 50%, when attention is usually focused on the tank. Spells like walking bomb should be cast around 25%, to get maximum potential (bear in mind the threat gain from this spell). However, as I said, DPS is for you to figure out.

Tips to make Tactics more Efficient

• Take special care with DPS warriors; I've seen them come pre-equipped with tactics to always activate 'threaten', which increases threat by 100% with each strike. With all characters, your own and DPS warriors like Sten, make sure that is de-activated.
  
• Always make sure your own characters tactics are up to scratch; on harder modes, you will be flipping between party members, leaving your own character up to tactics. Just like any other character, they need to be altered for your preference, otherwise they may cause a wipe.
  
• Don't go by my suggestions by the letter; experiment, and see what you get. These are my experiences with games like this, and although extensive, are not the best of quality. Your party is yours, and you know whats best for it. Try things out that you think might work; a lot of the fun of the game is building the best characters you can.

[brian.warnock]

BUILD ALL MAGES WITH DAMAGE AND CROWD CONTROL. If you go with multiple mage squads you can pull off some great crowd control and damage at the same time. Play around with two stasis spells on your party and the enemies you fight, If you have a character that is taunting enemies and use stasis then they will keep attacking that character while taking no damage. Blast away big groups coming at you with fireball and mind blast when they are close. If the main character isn't a mage then get Wynne asap so she is not full of support spells.

I do very well on hard difficulty and haven't played nightmare.

[Cyanmurder]

Me and dogmeat solo on nightmare difficulty. We already near end game.

[Empathia]

@ ADEC Inc
I've always played a more cautious '' belt & braces'' approach but will deffo give your advice a try - thanks

[Empathia]

An amazing & well put together guide - but as a ''Golden Oldie'' in her 70's - it made my head hurt :)
I've played the game through a few times, never sure how I survived - so I will try to use some of your tips ( the ones I can remember) - lol

Thanks for taking the time & trouble to put all this together

[ADEC Inc]

Unlearn what you have learned. Two-handed warriors are amazing tanks. Shield warriors consistently have the worst performance if you check the party statistics by the end of the game.

[123]

now if you want to be even more strong I have a hint, "Do... Do you have any traps?"

[Kaddo-Oddak]

I gotta try that @Orion sounds down right dirty.

[Orion]

hear me out: three rogues and a mage. rogues dual wielding, mage buffing. haste on.

[fang]

I've always wanted to play through the game using the Warhound as my main tank, but it's harder than trying to use Sten as the main tank.

[DeletedGemz]

damn took a whole ass paragraph when you could just say

"use the funny one"