2H vs W+S

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TL;DR as per title.

Long version:

Was thinking about W+S because of smart, well-designed talents to choose, including even crowd control and some form of area damage and being about on par with 2H in terms of damage output (largely because of weapon stats).

However, the 'tutorial' and early parts of the game proper left me impressed with 2H animations and special talents — Scythe in particular, followed by Whirlwind. Plus, the fact of warrior Hawke starting out 2H supplies a good roleplaying incentive to continue on that path, even though technically there is no firm or formal commitment as no points are invested in the 2H talent tree as of level 1.

Also, at least initially, 2H looks like a better fit for Hawke's personality and background than a more measured and aristocratic/chivalrous 'sword & board'. But this, given his junior status, can probably change the moment he finds a decent shield or a one-handed weapon that's better than his initial 2H sword.

The game's practically begging for a rogue PC, and Hawke looks like someone who's going to be taking care of his mage sister, and you don't really protect a mage by simply being survivable like a tank. You need to be killing stuff and ploughing the mobs while having good damage potential vs big guys. Still, stamina isn't endless and W+S isn't as inferior to 2H in terms of damage as one would expect, so the choice is difficult.

Finally, 2H kinda goes well with humorous dialogue style. 'We can't keep up.' 'Neither can they.' Mum complains — 'Look at the bright side.' Or: 'Speaking of running,' (which escaping and being followed by a horde of darkspawn).

Diplo + helpful could probably combine with W+S into a knight-errant sort of character, but I'm not sure how viable that is given the 'bias' inherent in the game.

Perspective?

 

Personally, on my current playthrough i am running with a rogue for the dual weapons - they can easily dish out the most damage per second of any class, and a rogue Hawke is the only one that can truly comfortable do so, as both Sebastian and Varric are pretty locked into becoming a ranged rogue instead, and Isabella's personal skill tree just can't compete with the bonuses of the assassin and shadow trees.
being able to insta-kill the enemies rogues and assassins is a real godsend from act 2 onward - one enemy stealth backstab is enough to instantly down your mages/rogues in combat, only emphasizing more how powerful rogues are.
I've lost some battles because i failed to notice an enemy assassin, only to have them instantly take down bethany/merril/anders in my backline, without having even the opportunity to use a healing potion.
It kind of becomes a game of spotting the enemy assassin first and instakilling them before they can do the same to one of your party members

That said, rogue hawke does rely a lot on your party members delivering the BRITTLE status debuff to your enemies to get the best potential out of your skills.
While not able to deliver as high damage overall, a 2handed fighter is able to deliver good amounts of damage reliably the entire time - so it's a matter of consistency over burst damage.
A 2handed warrior Hawke using Cleave can even out-burst all of the companion rogues (as none of them get access to the assassinate tree.)

Sword and board pretty much means making a tank build - i personally prefer taking along Aveline for this when i need one, since her personal skill tree makes the best at being a human punching bag.
Besides, 2handed fighters still get access to a fair share of crowd control skills to take some off the heat off the rest of your party.

 

I went the W+S route once and found it devastating when properly built. You can keep your mages safe from assassins by forcing them to target you with the right warrior talents, and the added defenses are a plus if you end up taking an offensive specialization like Reaver.

 

As far as I know, it's a W+S talent that makes you immune to flanking, right? So if you taunt assassins into attacking you, flanking immunity should prevent you from suffering backstabs. Then there's crit immunity, so their high dexterity, rogue talents for crits and other such aren't going to give them any advantage. And the worst of all, i.e. backstab + crit, is totally no longer a problem? So you maximize your threat level and start doing stuff like Bravery/Bravura/Bravado to gain bonuses from being surrounded by a bunch of people with knives and leather jackets doing normal damage to you and leaving your mage alone. Do I get it right?

 

Yep, that's pretty much exactly it. It's tempting to go purely defensive with this character now that I think about it, and go with the templar so that you can effectively disable both mages and rogues.

 

The tricky thing about W+S is that many of the defensive passives significantly reduce your mobility, stamina total/regeneration and ability to deal damage. You need to be able to juggle the various pros/cons that comes with these skills if you want to play a W+S character with good offensive/defensive/aggro-management abilities. Two-handers are much more straightforward damage-wise with their specific talent tree, which makes even their basic attacks devastating (especially to allies, never stand near a two-hander when playing in nightmare difficulty). The W+S, however, is more combo-friendly.
Based on experience, killing key enemy targets ASAP (using combos or chained skills) makes battles so much easier than trying to outlast your enemy. You just have to be careful with pacing (especially in nightmare - killing enemies too fast can lead to being overwhelmed by respawns).

Note that mana and stamina management is much more important in DA:2 because your resources are limited. There is a limit to how many mana/stamina potions you can find, and therefore, use per battle (once you hit the limit they will no longer drop normally). You can craft or buy extra mana/stamina potions yourself but gold is much more limited in DA:2 and you need to be very careful about how you spend your cash.

DA:2 is, by far, the most "biased" game in the series when it comes to the Chantry and issues like blood magic. It's hard not to get drawn in to the Chantry's way of thinking especially since Kirkwall seems to shelter the very worst sort of mages/maleficar in the DA universe.

 

One more question. Do I want to put points in DEX (crit chance) and CUN (defence rating, crit damage) for a fighter or am I better off skipping those?

Part of the reason I'm asking is I've heard it's either bugged or not very transparently designed or described, resulting in your defence rating falling after some time from its increase that resulted from CUN increase.

 

Skip. Only exception is if you want to reach some subjective "magic" crit chance/defense/HP/stamina/etc number.

Point by point STR is more valuable to warriors because you can find crit chance/defense/HP/stamina/etc on non-weapon items (not to mention talents and passives). In comparison +flat damage (like from STR for warriors) is extremely rare, and usually only found on runes and weapons.

 

Yeah, cunning and dexterity are stats i'd only take when playing a rogue hawke - focus on strength and some constitution as needed on warriors.

 

Agreed, STR and CON. Especially if going W + S because the best shields, and armor IIRC, require decent CON to equip.

Definitely look into the Vanguard talents if seeking to add DPS to the build. They are the best support tree for that imo, unless wants to exploit the stamina regen ability for use with berseker talents.

 

Actually, there is a point to be made to also invest some into willpower as a fighter, just so you can keep up and sustain your abilities.
Especially at the later stages of the game as you gain access to more and more skills that you can fire off in succession this becomes important.
I'd invest into constitution just enough to equip your gear, and strength to stay around 75-80% accuracy, putting whatever you can spare into willpower to gain a decent stamina pool.

Willpower is a weird stat like that - important to pretty much all 4 archetypes, since they all need stamina/mana to use their abilities.

 

So far I've mostly focused on STR, generally to the point of sitting at near 100% with Control but without Heroic Aura, but this obviously is affected a great deal by your equipment, as in if you need health, you pick the health sword or boots, if you need attack you pick the attack helm or shield, etc. etc., so I guess options are infinite. But, I've largely ignored CON, not to the point of leaving it at 10 but not even 20 IIRC, and it's worked just fine.

Right now I sit at 100% attack and more than enough HP for almost all encounters, so I've given serious consideration to upping CUN for defence + crit dmg (around 33% crit chance it kinda starts to matter) or even +10 DEX for +10% crit chance. Most of my party members are at 100% attack or close plus high crit chance, often with a two-hander or two in the party, so the low HPs only matter if someone gets one-shot with a powerful ability.

I would most certainly up CUN if it popped up in conversations (my DAO warrior had 32 before items), but it's my understanding it never does. Please please correct me if I'm wrong.

I would take WIL, but I never run out of stamina for Rally & Cleave. If I did, I would get Bolster for Hawke, put it in his tactics and change control to a different party member for the AI to execute a series of fast deep breaths, which would be perfectly enough at my stage — which is level 13 just at the beginning of Act 2, so admittedly not very far into the game.

However, it's probably going to start to matter when I eventually set my eyes on Scythe, Whirlwind, Scatter, Assault and other such crowd-control skills or Mighty Blow for extra punch, but I find myself concentrating more on passives and sustainables with my Hawke as the leader and the sole necessarily permanent member of the party.

There always seems to be something more attractive than crowd-control, but this is also a matter of style, I guess. I just don't really invest much in crowd control because crowds are always doable, they just take more time and more thinking if you don't have too much AoE. But my AoE is found more in high-powered versatile combos like Heroic Aura + Greater Haste + Elemental Weapons + Rally + Battle Synergy etc. than dedicated CC abilities (beyond scatter and simple use of 2H weapons on clusters of enemies). This goes to the point where my Anders is an aura provider + staff fighter (it's either Panacea or the ability to cast Haste or Heal).

Anyway, do stats matter in conversations, ever?

 

As far as i know, your stats do not influence your dialogue options in any way - only your disposition (agressive, diplomatic, sarcastic) and choices made in DA:O do.

 

I'm sure I'll come up with a way of spending my 14 stacked points… eventually.

I'm not committing to anything silly like DEX for Crit Chance yet because I may need the CON for HP eventually, and I'm certainly going to need more STR sooner or later too. Mantle of the Champion supposedly requires 31 CON, so I might need that eventually.

I'm just silly like this, while I don't particularly enjoy micromanaging flimsy characters, I still prefer not to be losing HP over having a deep pool of it. As comfortable as it is to have such a reserve, if I'm losing enough HP to make it matter I'm probably doing something wrong to begin with.

 

Okay, bear with me. Stacked attribute points is one thing, I now need to spend like 5 ability points on level 14. I've spent 1 spec point on Templar because I'm not going to get Berserker (loss of self-control) or Reaver (blood magic) for RP reasons. I'm looking at Templar talents and wondering if they couldn't perhaps, eventually, turn out useful. Smite isn't bad for a little AoE, 10% silence chance or 50% magic resistance aren't bad passives at all. Still somewhat lacklustre compared to normal warrior talents.

Speaking of which. With 2H I could:

• Finish out Vanguard and Battlemaster (don't really need every single ability there).
• Land a full set of passives between 2H and Vanguard: Sunder (+10% crit chance), Giant's Reach (+1m attack range), Massacre for death blows (normal 20% HP, lieutenant 10% HP => dies) and Destroyer (enemy dmg resistance -10% for normal hits and -50% for crits) from the Vanguard tree.
• This really is going to make a lot of annoying long crowd fights significantly shorter, where either one of Whirlwind and Scythe would help things further (focusing on upgrades to the chosen one and stamina regen to use it more often rather than the variety offered by having both).
• Whirlwind has that upgrade for 100% crit chance, so for that you switch from Control to Might (+10% dmg, +25% crit dmg) and watch the damage.
• Could use Taunt with that.
  
• With upgrades Mighty Blow has a 15-sec cooldown, does 220 damage, will triple the damage for Brittled targets, so just chug potions and repeat.
  
• Whirlwind for crowds + Mighty Blow for bosses = unstoppable, easy to manage, pretty rewarding.
• … Never outdo Fenris anyway. (Dude easily has >50% crit chance with Heroic Aura.)
• I prefer having Aveline in my party rather than Fenris. I use her presence to justify Hawke taking on some quests that would be questionable without official presence but are perfectly reasonable for a guard auxiliary accompanied by a ranking officer.
  
• My Hawke has mostly used 2H weapons so far, switching opportunistically to W+S simply for stats.
• More and more crowd fights are actually more difficult than boss battles, e.g. hordes of respawning archers hidden behind obstacles, or even crowds of high-HP melee opponents. It's doable, but not having to reload and fit in very narrow windows of chance would be a bonus for realism. Combined boss + crowd fights (think the Legacy fight with a powerful boss, charging bronto, full platoon of archers and whathaveyou) are a pain. They could be easier to handle with a Stamina-enhanced two-hander alternating between Whirlwind and Mighty Blow while otherwise relying on passives. This could potentially make for a very rewarding Hawke to play, I guess.

With 1H I could:

• Actually dish out almost as much damage as a two-hander, except for more limited reach, hence less ability to damage multiple opponents at once.
• Attack more often, so not waste too many hits because of kill steals.
  
• Still get more than enough AoE and crowd control from the W+S tree (seriously, it's too much to choose from) + Vanguard.
• Cleave and Assail pack a serious punch, so I'm not left without focused dmg capacity either.
• Immunity to flanking and crits kinda disables rogues on the main character. Wide-range Taunt, which we have already discussed, kinda disables the non-archer kind of rogues altogether.
• I probably wouldn't go Defender, too passive. This would be an offensive W+S.
  
• … Never outdo Aveline anyway.

Roleplaying etc.:

• 2H so far but no points invested. Switching opportunistically to W+S upon finding better stuff, then back to 2H if finding better. Focusing more on command and weapon-independent abilities.
  
• So far sided with mages while sympathising with templars, now experiencing some doubts, especially with Bethany being treated well etc. Some templars are good guys. There's been enough collaboration going on with Cullen, Thrask, Emeric etc. on specific quests with some acquaintance or friendship formed plus debts of gratitude, to justify informal training. My Hawke already has Templar spec (no abilities yet).
• Templars' reliance on lyrium makes things more complicated from an RP point of view, although Hawke is rich and prominent enough to get his own supplies. Still, my Hawke would probably prefer not to play around with substances and metaphysics (spell-like abilities) and stuff like that but rely on his wits and skills.
• There's been a lot of the 'wits' part, so I'm contemplating giving him some CUN points. That would be more defence and more crit damage. This would benefit him either way, as either a fine fencer for W+S (not really this Hawke's type, he's too hands on for fancy duelist style) or a… well, there isn't that much fencing done with 2H weapons, and my Hawke is no kensai/samurai type with superhuman focus. Argh. Never mind, this is too much speculation.

What do you guys think?

The reason I produces all this today is because I'm playing Legacy and have to choose the sword type for The Hawke's Key. There are probably better weapons of either type in the game, so I'll probably play on but be mindful of the need to choose eventually. Can't ignore both trees forever.

 

If you've unlocked the templar tree and are planning to go down it eventually, sword & board seems to be the weapon style that specialization seems most suited to.
However, a 2-handed templar can work just as well - assuming you're not playing on nightmare difficulty anyway.

Locking yourself out of beserker/reaver does limit your choices somewhat - purely from an optimizing perspective, you'd want to pick up at least one of the two, regardless if you're going sword & shield or two-handed.
A 2-handed fighter with his high damage and low defense really benefits from the reaver tree, especially when combined with the skills in the vanguard tree, while a sword & board fighter wants access to the beserker tree to be able to hit like a truck for those moments you have an enemy you really need to take down quickly, like enemy assassins. (remember, you might be immune to flanking/backstabs, but they can still wreck your backline squishies.)