Dragon Age: Inquisition (Plot Details in Spoilers!)

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?

Yeah well took knockout powder on Varric, surprise, he fucking runs in melee range to go sleep shit I'm fighting instead of only keeping it when shit gets on his ass, so I'm gonna respec him out of that too. I kinda wanted to spec Solas into cold stuff too to get mines as defensive measures but he apparently never casts mines, or ice wall on his own. I could use them tactically but I said fuck that, instead I'm gonna get the fire aoe, it's good damage over time for bosses and shit with the 2pt in it and the passive for longer burns.

Kinda running out of stuff to get though, at this point it's all pointless shit. I guess I should advance the story to unlock specializations, I'm lvl 9 and almost done with Hinterlands, only the lvl 12 rifts, the dragon area and a bit of redcliff left. Sadly I look at those collections shit and most of them aren't done and I feel like I must have missed stuff, it annoys me.

Talenvor_sl said:

This lack of AI competence you guys keep talking about has me worried. I remember FF12 party AI being amazing in terms of telling your party how to behave and they actually did it well without having to micromanage every fight. I guess I'm going to be spoiled by FF12 (a game I haven't played in 8 years...the gambit system I think?) when I get my PS4 and DA:I. Unfortunate but still looking forward to trying Inquisition.

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DA:O and FF12 had very similar systems, you set up a "line" with an ability, a targetting scheme and a conditional and you unlock more slots as you go, which lets you customize multiple situations kinda like a script(if you have x mana then use this, if an enemy is close, then use that etc). I assume it takes a while to make so that's why they removed it.

Wouldn't be a problem if they designed the AI to not be fucking retarded. I mean it's playable most of the time but it's really annoying to see the same stupid stuff in every game. If a char is ranged and a mob goes out of line of sight, the way to get back in line of sight should be by circling around the object while staying at range, not running closer, but they simply reuse the pathing for "move to melee range" which will solve the line of sight problem at the same time and save time coding an actual system. Abilities being misused isn't even an issue of not properly coding and more an issue of not properly tagging abilities.

For example Solas has Mind Blast or whatever which is a pbae knockback. He only uses it when enemies get close to him, he never runs into melee range to use it. That's what you'd expect. However Varric runs into melee range to knockout powder stuff, even though they're basically the same abilities, defensive crowd control. I assume it does because whoever coded it didn't bother adding a ranged weapon/melee weapon conditional, so it behaves assuming you're melee(the tree is stealth based, which is kinda melee oriented, though works fine with ranged too). Some abilities just aren't used properly by the AI(for example charging bull is terrible since the AI doesn't turn during it and tends to cancel it super late).