General Gameplay Discussion

Was super disappointed when the First Warden didn't refer to my Rook as Warden Thorne.


Edit:

So in act 2, when you get to commit to a romance. Is there any point in doing it asap, do you get any additional content/dialogue afterwards?

I’m currently undecided and thought about leaving the quests for the very last moment. But I also don’t want to miss out on any content if I do so.

If I knock an enemy off an edge, if they were supposed to drop something will it appear on the edge, or is it lost for good?

There are some comments from companions at least when they are talking with each other in Lighthouse.

You don’t choose a class specialization at the start. I think it’s just a preview to give you an idea of what to expect, since you're locked into the main class. When you hit lvl 20 you can unlock one of the big specialization nodes, if you’ve built a skill path to it.

Quick two part question for everyone.

I'm going for Veil Ranger but putting a lot of effort into necrosis as my damage dealing element, but VR is shock. Now A. Does becoming a VR change the damage you do and override things because I'm seeing blue pop up when I hit things and B. Seen a lot of YT vids mention how you should go all in on improving the damage type of your spec, so how viable is it to go for two like this?

On PC, do we get 100 save slots per character, or 100 total?

For Warrior Rooks, if you are going Warden I definitely recommend Champion as it's not only very fun but the RP is insanely good esp with gearing.

I played on Nightmare with a dead-is-dead personal setting (only Revives allowed) so that I would always be on my toes.

This was my full build



Overall the major ability keywords I looked for were Area, Control, and Projectile. A lot of the nodes I pick up buff these ability types specifically.

The first goal was attaining this node.



This forms the cornerstone of your early game build tankiness until you can invest in it more later by going up and grabbing the Ready Guard (Deflect on combat start) and +1 Deflect Stacks. It's incredibly easy to build up stacks with this as you can time kills with Driving Kick pretty easily. Do note that knocking them off the ledge does not count.

Before going for Ready Guard though I wanted a third ability so I pathed towards Grappling Spear, grabbing one of the most important passives in the game for Warrior tanks: Reinforcement.



Why is it important. Every buff you get gives you 10% damage. You will have a LOT of those between Heavy Armor Master, Deflect, Precision, Rune Advantage, and Flaming Weapons in the early game. This passive scales really well. In the end you can easily have 7-8 advantages running at a time.



After that I rushed Grappling Spear. This is an amazing ability, not only for its high damage but it's great at both pulling in pesky ranged targets AND interrupting boss abilities. It's worth keeping for the whole game and it scales well with the build. It also works on most bosses. It does not work on massive ones though, like Dragons and some constructs.

Ultimately my build for most of the game involved having Titan Stomp and Grappling Spear with a 3rd Rage-based ability based on my needs.

Early game, that was Driving Kick.

Later on, I used Groundbreaker with the Mourn Watch Control amulet.



This nets you almost infinite rage and is a very viable build when fighting hordes.

However, I later switched to Blight Bane (Warden ability) because it hits a lot harder with Warden + Area effects and is also just more satisfying to use.

At this point I grabbed Ready Guard/Deflect +1 stacks as mentioned before. You don't generate as many Deflect stacks in combat as before, but you get one on each combat start and Titan Stomp can still be timed for them on demand. You also won't need as many since fights will be shorter now that your damage is higher.

After that I went for the Warden ability that improves your Final Attacks to be shield bashes. This gives a massive stagger/damage increase to your hits that scales later on.

In the midgame, you'll want to invest in Stagger because your damage isn't all there yet and you're more likely to stagger enemies before finishing them off. For that reason I invested points to get Slam. 50 Rage and 20% Ultimate on a Takedown is huge at this point as you are somewhat resource starved unless or until your companions are purely supportive with Time Slow or Replenish/Adrenaline rush. Slam is the node on the right in the image just below. (top right in Survival area)

At that point, I was a level or two from unlocking Champion so I invested in resists (10% elements, one near Champion and one near Mourn Watch) and passives that increased stagger.

It's around this time that you should unlock Champion. Blight Bane is surprisingly super effective, for two reasons.

One, it scales with Fire damage and AOE skills which are plentiful around the Champion Node, but more importantly, this node:



This makes it so that Blight Bane (and technically Spear) ignore Resistances completely. This makes it so that you do not have to worry about Nightmare damage resistances whatsoever for your spammables.

Anyway, I put points into Champion at each threshold, and the build finally came online when I unlocked the Inspiring Guard node. This makes Perfect Defense work on unblockable hits. Better yet, it blocks damage even if you don't do Perfect Defense.

So you're basically unkillable at this point if you block at all, though you do get knocked down if you are hit with a held-down Block. However, being able to Perfect Defense EVERYTHING makes it a lot easier to use it. It became so satisfying to be able to defend against things I had to dodge before. Rally Party is a nice bonus..

You also unlock this node after:



Best. Node. Ever. Your Heavy Attacks now scale HARD with your defense. My bashes were demolishing enemies and staggering them forever. Any time they had an opening I just Perfect Defense, but otherwise they can't do a thing while you beat them to a pulp.

It's around this time that I really started investing in Fire damage and Flaming Weapons, grabbing all the associated nodes. The next Warden section at 40 will further improve your Fire damage.

However, the next real milestone is this



Dazzle gives you Quickened every time you use an Area ability that hits multiple targets. With Blight Bane, your Titan Stomp and Grappling Spear have almost no cooldown in the mid/late game. This basically sets you up for farming Deflect stacks, generating high Stagger for takedowns, and overall just keeping everything controlled.

Nearby is the Incite Violence node. It gives 15% bonus rage generation on weapon attacks, and it will be 30% most of the time since it doubles if an affliction is on the target and you'll have Burning up almost all the time.

You should be approaching end game at this point. I just put points in what I thought was cool. I went for Rolling Thunder for some sick shield animations on Charged Attacks and to pick up more resists, Burning stacks, and Flaming Weapon buffs, but it's a free for all.

In terms of gearing, I went for Health, Defense, Resistances, and Fire damage buffs.

Deflect stacking ends up being a 25% damage buff with Weisshaupt's Wall.



Captain's heater is the next most important piece here, as it turns your Resistances into Weapon Damage. This is how your tank becomes a monster.



The next important combination is Warden's Signet and the Upend rune.

Warden's signet gives you a lot of Fire damage bonuses AND makes other damage type bonuses contribute to your Fire Damage.



Upend gives 5% resists passively and turns your resists into damage bonuses of the same type on use. See what's going on here? For example, Upend turns your Necrotic Resistance into Necrotic Damage which contributes to Fire Damage. This applies to all resists. In my build, this was around a 30% damage boost. I try to time it with Blight Bane spams (usually with Time Slow) and Warden's Fire.

The last piece of the puzzle is Vigilant Hammer



These passives remain active even if you aren't using the weapon, so the defense and damage conversion from Defense further improves your DPS while making you very tanky. I ended the game around 1.2k Defense in the heat of battle.

The rest of the gear is personal choice. I went for Griffon Great Helm for the RP (I could have gone more DPS but I wanted to buff allies for fun) and I used Warden Straps belt for more fire damage (could go for any of them really). I also stubbornly used Grey Emblem the WHOLE game. If I had Legendary, I could have had Precision for abilities. RIP me.

The only weakness to this build is DOT damage. If you ever get dot stacked, just drink a potion or use a healing ability to clear them. Though you can let them trickle you to hit Low Health for some bonuses if you wanna live on the edge.

Honestly a really fun build. Towards the end I didn't even have time to stagger.

My favored combo is Light - Light - Heavy - Heavy as the sword swings are faster and the final two heavy attacks knock down enemies and prevent them from casting abilities so you want them immediately.

And yes, Warden's Fire is up ALL THE TIME with the amount of takedowns and companion passives you get so just spam the hell out of it and hear the Wardens ROAR with you as you absolutely obliterate Darkspawn.

Has anyone figured out where all of the Runes are located, and is there a list anywhere?

Quoting myself to answer - we get a new set of 100 save slots with a new character.

I found a set up that made me completely op using an item that gives me infinite arrows and the bow that shoot three arrows at once.

The downside is that I feel like I don't ever need to use my swords. And I'm a duelist lmao