[GUIDE] How I beat the Prologue Pride Demon on Nightmare
Sept 17, 2016 19:44:56 GMT
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Post by PapaCharlie9 on Sept 17, 2016 19:44:56 GMT
I've written this up so many times in separate replies that I'm finally going to take the time to write a guide for it.
There's a strategy for every class that makes it relatively easy on Nightmare. You have to plan for it and spend your one skill point on yourself in anticipation of it, but if you do, it's not a big deal, even on Nightmare. Trials do make it quite a bit harder and I honor the people who did it with all Trials enabled. The following assumes that Walk Softly, Rub Dirt On It, and Travel Light are disabled.
For any class:
There's a strategy for every class that makes it relatively easy on Nightmare. You have to plan for it and spend your one skill point on yourself in anticipation of it, but if you do, it's not a big deal, even on Nightmare. Trials do make it quite a bit harder and I honor the people who did it with all Trials enabled. The following assumes that Walk Softly, Rub Dirt On It, and Travel Light are disabled.
For any class:
- Set up Cassandra to soak up aggro with Challenge and give her protection with Shield Wall. Both should be set to AI Preferred.
- Cassandra should have her AI set to Follow Cassandra, so she is self-directing.
- Set Solas to Follow Cass and spam Barrier, set to AI Preferred.
- Set Varric to Follow Cass and disable Caltrops to save stamina.
- Both Solas and Varric should be set in Tactical to hold position up in the raised elevation corner with the NPC archers, away from the demon. When you gain control after the cutscene, the raised area is to the left and behind your starting position.
- Set Cass to 20% health for healing potions and 2 potion reserve -- heal pots are for you and Cass, nobody else.
- Set Varric and Solas to all heal pots reserved.
- Manually revive Cassandra, Solas, then Varric, in that priority order, and only if you can do so with minimum risk. Varric usually spends at least half of the battle dead when I use this strategy.
- Rogue: stay in Stealth, tweak the rift, run away from the adds until Stealth is off cooldown, kiting them around the stone pillar if you have to. Repeat until the Pride Demon is dead. If you happen to be near the flank of the Pride Demon when it takes a knee due to rift tweaking, give it a Twin Fangs or Long Shot for good measure, but don't hang around to get hit and make sure Stealth is off cooldown! You can also manually revive Varric or Solas if you are nearby and no threats are near either.
- Mage: Fade Step should be your skill point spend. Put Barrier on yourself or whoever needs it, Fade Step to stay away from adds, use the stone pillar in the middle to kite adds, tweak the rift. If you can get in an auto-attack or two on the demon, go for it, but don't waste mana on Flashfire unless an add is about to kill you. Manually revive as need, if you have Fade Step ready to escape. Repeat.
- Warrior: this is the hardest spec of the three, but still doable. Assuming you already have War Cry or Challenge and one skill point to spend, get Charging Bull. Tweak the rift. Use Charging Bull to get away from adds or the Pride Demon, kiting adds around the stone pillar if needed. Try not to fight the adds, but sometimes you have no choice. Do not use War Cry/Challenge, you don't want any aggro on you. Use health potions as needed. Your job is to stay alive and tweak the rift. If you happen to be near the Pride Demon when it takes a knee, you can get in an attack or three, but get away when it is back up to strength.