Cass Tank Build Order and Tactics / Behaviors Settings

FF on? I only play FF off, so YMMV.

Are you sure you want to go W&S with Cass? I prefer to run her as a 2H tank. The AI does a great job with Block & Slash and Pommel Strike, both effective for tanking. Also 2H gets more bang for the buck, base damage-wise.

Anyway, regarding stamina reserve. A tester noticed something unexpected recently. Maybe this is all old news to you, but it was a surprise to me. The AI tests the level before the ability is used, not after. So this means you could chronically be stuck at a stamina level that is below the level you set. Even more surprising, there are certain abilities that appear to ignore the level set. Block & Slash specifically. The tester observed Block & Slash being used at stamina level 45%, with 50% set for reserve.

This suggests to me that maybe the purpose of the reserve is mainly for the AI to use emergency abilities, like Barrier, Block & Slash, Parry, Evade, etc., without worrying about being resource starved. You set aside some for the AI to use, just in case.

Possibly unrelated, but I've noticed that when I have Cass set to 0% reserve, she won't use auto-attacks to regain stamina. She just stands around waiting for regen to refill the pool. You can see this happening in this video.

So, given all that, I'm wondering if maybe 0 isn't actually the best choice, at least for a 2H? It might not matter for a W&S, since Shield Wall is Stamina free. Might matter for Payback Strike, though.

I don't put Shield Wall on Preferred. The AI seems to "overdo it," favoring having the wall up when it could be attacking. Leaving it on normal seems to work when it's needed and only when it's needed, which is what I want. Chevalier's Step is also essential -- soooo slooow without it.

Same thing happens with 2H. I always end up dropping a 2H ability I had from the beginning and don't get it back for a while. Since I have to have Flow of Battle, it's usually Mighty Blow that gets dropped. Which sucks because it takes forever to get Whirlwind that way.

If you are before Skyhold, there's nothing really good to let Cass shine. Exalted Plains, Emerald Graves, Hissing Wastes, EdL, those all have better battlegrounds for W&S. The Storm Coast and the Fallow Mire are terrible for AI warriors. Hinterlands are so-so. Maybe the camp in Hafter's Wood? Several enemy spawn points nearby, though they include bears and stealthy smugglers.

Had the great idea to try and go through Hushed Whispers without using any health pots and not allowing anybody to die. I had some life drain rings though (just four total), and no crafted gear. I tried to fight Alexius a few times but I am not sure I can beat him with these restrictions without coming up with some sort of cheese tactic or something. Part of the issue is that I and Cass are starting with relatively low health.

I was able to get to it tonight with the change to tactics and finished it, even though it was a bit of a pain.

First thing though I went to the Lake Lucias camp in the Hinterlands to grab a few more Blood Lotus so I could actually fill up on Bees. Then I remembered the lake quest where you get the Warlord Greatsword and picked that up as it was much better than my sledgehammer. It was too bad I forgot that earlier.

Anyway started the mission and this time I basically made Dorian Spirit / Ice with Fadeknocker staff. I respec'd the inquisitor to sort of an interesting build for level 6

2H - Mighty Blow+
Vanguard - Challenge, Charging Bull
Battlemaster - Grappling Chain, Hamstring, Deep Reserves, Warhorn

The nice thing about this was the knockdown, decent guard building, and AOE panic. The previous build I ran though this mission was more similar to Matth's 2H build order, which I decided to go back to from the "Flawless Defense" build I had been fooling around with in the Hinterlands post prologue.

The mission proper wasn't too bad, but the Alexius fight was a pain to do this way. I didn't do much to Alexius except hit him with Mighty Blow every time it was off cooldown. To do that though had to order Cassandra out of the way, then drop it. Also tried to hit tac cam and order dispels when mines were dropped under Cassandra. The second rift fight was the hardest to get through without letting anybody take too much damage or get dropped since it is hard to keep the AI from getting knocked down by the Terror.

Cass had actually taken too much spirit damage before the second rift part, and then Solas had to face tank a Shade for a second, so by the third Alexius segment both were near useless, but I was able to keep them alive while Dorian and I finished him off (with some Leliana of course).

I had Cass set to War Cry prefered, then Challenge, Shield Bash and Shield Wall to enabled.  I am not sure if she looked better in this run because there was more freezing or it was because my 2H was more effective, but she managed to stay with pretty high health nearly the whole mission.

It isn't brilliant with FF on.  If combat is initiated and she is behind any teammates they will get run over.  You could of course control her for exploration, but I prefer to run the Inquisitor nearly exclusively.

As far as the dual taunts, it seems like she uses Challenge correctly to taunt stragglers going after my ranged squishies, so I don't mind her having both.  Really I would almost not care if all of her abilities were tanking and taunting, but it seems like encounters are better when she can help detonate combos (and bust guard).

The reason I decided to see if I could get through this mission with my poor man's trial was that I was considering restarting the campaign and trying to do the whole thing with 0 health pots.  But I don't know if I want to bother, at least not with no crafting.  Nevermind that I am also starting to waiver on FF in general.  If I go Reaver it will probably get turned off since Terrifying Fury is screwed up too (at least it was with qunari inquisitor, I guess I could make sure it fears my squaddies with a human one).

edit:

After the mission I did more Hinterlands shenanigans and cleared the Merc Fortress.  Went back to trying to make Sera a semi-competent early game dagger rogue like when I wasted time doing that in the summer of 2015.  She is not horrible in mundane encounters with a Subterfuge build (fine in Witchwood and Wolves), but I still don't think there is any good way to make her not suck against 2H enemies, except spec her for Archery.

Not to make this a metathread, this is actually relevant to SnS.

I finished Still Waters and then went to Skyhold to talk to the trainers, then back to Crestwood. At that point I decided to go all melee party for no good reason (Cass, Blackwall, Sera). Respec'd Sera to dagger to accomplish this.

I had built Blackwall on Storm Coast and had planned for him to be a hybrid support / damage SnS. So he had most of SnS tree and then left side of Battlemaster down to Horn of Valor. This is without Trespasser, but it is a buff nonetheless.

Point is that back at Crestwood I went to the hill near the starting camp where there was a 2H Reaver and two mages. Blackwall kept getting his ass kicked (nevermind Sera who wasn't good either). His gear wasn't the greatest, but it seemed like he also wasn't really using Shield Wall correctly, nor did I ever see him bother to combat roll.

That was last night, and today I wanted to take a closer look at him after he also sucked vs the wyverns for Wyrm Hole (they are a couple levels above, but still).

I took him to Valammar to test him against the 2H darkspawn there, and he wasn't bothering to shield wall except out of at most every other swing, sometimes it was like the third swing. It didn't look like stamina was a problem, and I was playing around with disabling other powers and messing with stamina reserve, but didn't notice much of a difference.

Cassandra, on the other hand, could practically solo both things on autopilot so had her fight the 2H solo to see if she was behaving differently, and it turned out she wasn't really using shield wall any better. Her armor was a bit better, but the main difference seemed to actually be the bonus to armor from Call to Arms. So I respec'd Blackwall out of the Battlemaster tree and picked up Call to Arms and then some passives in Champion and lo and behold he was much better even though he was still mediocre with Shield Wall.

I remembered that when I was testing Sera a year and a half ago trying to get her a halfway decent autopilot dagger build, she wouldn't parry or evade if she was behind the 2H. Also she didn't Parry every attack even if she had the stamina, it was the only power active, and even though it is possible to do so with every single attack. I am wondering about AI behavior with dodges and blocks, specifically against the 2H, and if it is purposely depowered to make it less likely AI can autopilot through everything. Or rather the melee AI NPCs since ranged is so much better.

One of the things I haven't really bothered to do in my runs was run more than one NPC warrior at a time in the party (unless the Inquisitor was one), and I had thought they were a bit more adept at using SW.  I think also before Blackwall usually had a token "tank" build with taunts so he wasn't really much different from Cassandra.

I have no idea.  I mean as far as effectiveness goes, with her armor buffs the end result is an effective skill rotation.

I wonder if it is looking at the stamina cost of the blocks or something.  I guess I should have taken control manually and saw how many blocks I can actually do as SnS to give a more fair evaluation.

As for combat roll, I was reading an old thread talking about how AI used it great, but all I could remember was one encounter with a Venatori Brute in Western Approach when Cass and I were duoing.  She wasn't horrible with it, but not great.  But that may have been 2 or 3 patches ago.