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Dragon Age: Inquisition Dagger VS Bow Comparison

Dragon Age: Inquisition Dagger VS Bow Comparison

Posted by on Dec 12, 2014 in Commentary, featured, PS4 |

Melee VS Ranged has been a contested topic as old as RPGs themselves and Dragon Age: Inquisition is no exemption. As of patch 2 Inquisition offers no game-breaking advantage between the two so the easy answer to the comparison is that it boils down to player choice. And to help make that choice here’s a quick list of the pros and cons of both styles of play.

Before I go on, let me tell you one thing that you probably already know: archery has been said to be boring in this game. I actually agree with that. Double-dagger skills are flashier and require a lot of involvement to pull off effectively. Archers, naturally, simply shoot arrows. They don’t have the flair that dagger rogues have. With that in mind, here’s the list:

Daggers:

Pros:

  • Flashier combat.
  • Melee fighting brings the action up close and personal. You feel more involved.
  • In theory, the fast attack rate should allow Hidden Blades to proc more often. Whether it actually does or not is still unconfirmed.

Cons:

  • Melee targeting can get funky sometimes. Some of your attacks will fail to land.
  • You have to chase your targets. It can get annoying when some of them are jumping or flying around.
  • You’re melee. If you can hit them it means they can hit you.
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More On Combat

Posted by on Feb 16, 2011 in Commentary | 5 comments

I have a confession to make in case it wasn’t obvious: the whole point of building a Combat set was to bring back the glory days of WotLK. I’m referring to being able to run both as Combat and Assassination. I just liked having that choice back then. Now that I actually have a decent Combat set, things aren’t working out as I intended.

This explains why:

Q: What’s the top DPS spec?

A: Assassination and Combat are both reasonable options. Combat should be a bit ahead above 35% and a bit behind below 35%, but its hard to say which is going to be higher on average. In practice, I think they’re going to be pretty close on single-target, and primarily distinguished by how they perform in non-single-target situations. That is: Assassination has vastly better AoE and more broadly applicable utility talents, while Combat will be the king of DPSing two targets (via Blade Flurry) and has better burst via cooldowns; for any given fight, this distinction is likely more relevant than the theoretical single-target difference between the specs. [via EJ]

Combat used to be the spec of choice when it came to AoE situations, making it better for 5-man dungeons. Now that Assassination is the superior spec for both single and multi-target fights, the only reason to run Combat is when I’m cleaving. I don’t know about you but I find that option severely limiting.

Don’t get me wrong. Combat DPS is amazing when it’s used properly. With my current gear I usually get 6-7k DPS on single-target and 11k when I can use Blade Flurry. 11k is good damage, obviously. My only problem with it is that it seems so situational.

Think about it.  With Assassination all you need to do after the pull is to cast Tricks then go crazy with Fan of Knives. That’s it. With Combat, I have to decide whether hitting two targets only justifies not touching the others. I also have to worry about the eventual threat issue when Tricks goes down. Bottom line, I need to do more runs as Combat and see what I can learn. I also have to convince myself to stick with Combat even when I start seeing my numbers go down (cleaving nothing, KS on cooldown, etc.)

How about you guys? Any similar experiences? Have you tried running both? Is it better to just stick to one spec?

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Combat In Patch 4.0.6

Combat In Patch 4.0.6

Posted by on Feb 12, 2011 in Commentary | 1 comment

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So the patch is out. I went ahead and assembled a second set for Combat to try it out. In case you’re wondering why a second set is necessary, it’s because of stat weights; Assassination and Combat have different priorities. For example, Spell Hit is critical to Assassination due to its reliance on poison damage. Special attacks play a more vital role for Combat, making Expertise a priority over Spell Hit. You can look up my previous post on stat weights for more information.

I tried out my Combat set earlier today and here’s what I can tell you.

• This is an early impression, but soloing and questing were more convenient to do in Combat because my special attacks were hitting harder. Downsides? Recuperate was healing less and I was running slower. Why? Because they were both untalented.

• Blade Flurry did wonders for my DPS during trash pulls on heroic dungeons. It was fun cleaving everything. However, it also messed up my threat big time. I was using Vanish then Evasion + Cloak of Shadows when it was on cooldown more often than necessary. And yes, even when I was casting Tricks I was still having problems. I’m going to try to include Feint in my rotation and see how it goes. It’s better than turning off Blade Flurry altogether.

• How’s Combat’s single-target DPS compared to Assassination? Forget it, it’s not even close. Go switch specs and use your daggers when you’re fighting only one mob.

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Miscellaneous Rogue Info for Cataclysm

Posted by on Dec 20, 2010 in Tips |

I hit 85 a couple of days ago and I’m in the process of gearing Sin for raiding. Well, possibly anyway. There are a couple of things we need to sort out guild-wise before we get there but that’s a different story. Anyway, here are a couple of things you might want to know in case you’re also considering getting your rogue geared.

    The item level of regular dungeon drops is 333. Gear that can be acquired by Justice Points is 346. Regular dungeon drops have a heroic equivalent when you run heroic dungeons. The level of these items is also 346 and says “Heroic” under the name.

    You need an item level of 329 in your character sheet to qualify for heroic dungeons.

    Assassination provides the most DPS out of all three specs. Combat is supposed to be close. That isn’t the case in my experience though.

    In case you haven’t seen it yet, everything you need to know about Cata raiding (stats, specs, etc.) can be found here. An in-depth Assassination guide is also here. Specs, stat weights, gems, etc. are all there.

    Here’s a gear list of sorts that you might find useful, sorted by slot. Note that I only queried armor so trinkets, rings, cloaks and weapons aren’t included.

That’s it for now. Hope you find the information useful.

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Death Knight Gems & DPS

Posted by on Apr 25, 2010 in Commentary | 2 comments

“Sayang” is a Tagalog word (that’s my native language, by the way) that expresses dismay, usually over something that is a waste or was wasted. When you find yourself saying “too bad” or “what a waste”, whatever situation you used it for would be within the appropriate context of the word. Boherrac and I were chatting in-game and he asked how my DK was, to which I answered that he was stagnating and that I was too lazy to do anything with him. He dropped the word then: “sayang”.

It was enough to send me thinking.

It was sort of a wake up call. Nothing groundbreaking, mind you, but it did make me want to gear my DK again, which I did earlier by giving him a couple of gems. Well, it was more than a couple, but I realized yesterday that I haven’t even bothered to put a meta on him for his DPS set. Seriously, WTF. I also switched to Blood DPS for the heck of it. I’m already dual-wielding with Sin so I figured that using a two-handed weapon would be a good change. It’s too early to tell if I’ll actually stick to it.

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