General Gameplay Discussion

Ok, thanks.  That works from a 'powering through' perspective, I guess.  I do like getting up close and personal with bad guys that have weapons, but it is a bit unsettling when my choices are currently 'get hit', or dance around the battlefield like a meth-tweaking hummingbird.

Thanks - playing on Adventurer.  Solid yellow, not yet full.  Useful.  I'll give that a try, cheers.

And yeah, red means roll. 

There are only so many enemy types in the game so you can eventually figure out their damage patterns.

Ogres for example have a three-hit attack (swing left, swing right, swing frontal) that can be easily parried on the final hit as it's predictable, while their other attacks are unblockable for non-Champs.

Hurlocks have two main attacks, the horizontal and vertical swings. The former can be blocked and the latter has to be dodged. They generally alternate between these two unless you reset their "rotation" with CC.

So learning enemy abilities and swing timers is pretty important. That's my only advice here.

The *easiest* blocks/parries are probably projectiles imo. Warriors can even reflect it back to the enemy with a sick animation so there's that. 

I played on Nightmare which has an arguably stupidly unforgiving block/parry window but I eventually managed it, and I'm an elder millennial. 

I tend to agree. My last successful parry games were Shadow of Mordor and Assassin's Creed Syndicate which (for me) had very reliable parry windows.

Even on the most forgiving parry window setting I invariably fail, so a dodge becomes the rational choice.

I think duelist Rogue should get red attack perfect defense similar to champions, or at least have more of their skills tied to perfect dodges, which is more rogue unique. Alternatively they can get a real parry tied to charged attacks or the timed attacks. One issue the Duelist tree has is that no one will ever take the +25% damage to charged attack for 25 momentum skill - the node itself is just never worth the point. Even against necrotic resistant enemies, you are better off just using lightning flask. (Speaking of resist, it is odd how penetration does not seem to do anything vs resistances)

Rogue parry is also arguably a higher risk endeavor than the other two classes: getting hit will lose you an adrenaline stack as well as momentum - yet your only reward is an extra bleed on the target, as every other class has a node that grants a weapon buff on a parry.

In fact, arguably the necrotic weapon buff is worth less on a rogue since they have a unique with a perma necrotic weapon buff, and they can always get the other node which grants necrotic weapon on a weakspot shot with the bow.

Yeah nightmare in all the Dragon Age games has historically been about anticipating enemy resistances and overcoming them.

Though I don't recall enemies ever being resistant to statuses in the game I played. The only status I know some enemies are immune to completely is crowd control/stagger on massive enemies and bosses.

I think BioWare's tuning was actually pretty on point. I never felt like I was fighting bullet sponges on Nightmare even when running a tank build. Scaling is also in your favor if you build correctly so eventually you get so strong you melt enemies. Even as a tank I didn't even have time to stagger anymore towards the end lol

Effectively if you're blowing enemies up rather quickly you should turn it up and if you feel like enemies have too much health you should turn it down. When you've got an effective build and you're not using the wrong attack/damagetypes on enemies nothing will feel too talky, even on nightmare. Though, if you're having fun on whatever you picked, power to you. No shame in playing on low difficulty and just blowing everything up if you enjoy that 😁

Right I forgot about that after I got the skills that made everything but my ultimate bypass resistances haha

Can be luck dependant. Regularly check vendors for upgrades. There are a few spirit/wisp vendors In the crossroads that might have some hidden/lost treasure, and they take green crystals Instead of gold. 

But to the rivain gear, unfortunately a lot of It Is locked behind Taash personal quest with a certain king. 

I still can't get the hair right for my LOTR Elf Rogue. The hair is constantly changing colour in game from what I select and how it appears in the CC. The CC shows me one thing (I like it, I apply it) and then in-game, in the Lighthouse and in all the different environments I am constantly seeing a change in the colour...Like that special kind of car paint that changes colour when the sun hits it. SOmetimes you see green, other times you see blue....