They have some "favorite" class builds in the guide, and a support oriented Mage is one of them. The disciplines recommended for that build are all Spirit/Winter except for Immolate/Wildfire from Inferno. They also have fairly detailed info on how to get approval from all of the possible party members in the game (labelled as spoiler filled, so I only glanced at it for now).
Yeah I think it's best to leave the relationship stuff a mystery. It's fun to figure it out as you go along. I'm actually enjoying pissing off one of my people every chance I get. I'm also wondering if I should pursue the transgender man/cow sex relationship. That's groundbreaking stuff right there. The spirit mage can raise people from the dead during a battle. 90%of the time you don't need it but it can be priceless during a boss battles. I had one battle were all of my party died twice and I just just kept running around dodging attacks until the cool down on my revival expired. My next top tier spell unlock will be the blizzard. I hope it's worth it. I took ice wall before that and I think it's totally worthless in battle. The only advantage is I get 50% armor when I'm next to it. Kind of wish I took the ice trap instead.
This is the breakdown for their Mage build: Barrier/Elegant Defense Spirit Peaceful Aura Spirit Immolate/Wildfire Inferno Dispel/Transmute Magic Spirit Winter's Grasp/Winter's Chill Winter Revival/Life Ward Spirit Rejuvenating Barrier Spirit Fade Step/Frost Step Winter
After about 5 hours of play, I've finally stopped mentally comparing the game to Skyrim and started to enjoy it on it's own merits. Getting used to thinking about combat and leveling as a group takes awhile, but I can see the benefits vs. Skyrim: there's more variety to the combat experience, and you don't have to worry about being trapped into a character build you don't like. The world doesn't really seem as "open" as Skyrim, but so far it's a fair trade-off due to less dead space in the maps. You really don't have to move very far to find new locations or places of interest...or at least that's been the case in the Hinterlands. Getting the guide was a good choice too. Helps cut down on the time spent pondering the various leveling options within the disciplines for each character.
I had to stop comparing it to Skyrim as well. It may be as large as Skyrim but like you said it's not as open and the maps are broken up. The combat mentality is different too since there are 4 party members. I decided to take the specialization of rift mage. I seems like it will match my play style best.
So far, it seems like it's fairly rare to get higher rated armor or weapons in loot drops, but not so rare to get good accessories like rings, belts, and amulets. Crafted items from schematics seems like the way to go for better arms/armor right now.
Item drops do seem rare and having to share them makes it difficult to keep everyone with proper leveled gear. If you haven't noticed yet you'll probably be forced to do missions with every team member at some point so you'll want to rotate your older gear down to the members you don't use. Varric will only use his crossbow so you'll want to collect all the upgrades for it. I've read that crafting weapons isn't that great but I haven't tried it to know for sure. However, I have crafted armor and that's a great way to go. I crafted some level 15 equivalent armor for my level 12 mage. Normally level 15 armor drops would locked until I level up but it seems I can wear anything I craft. I haven't made armor for everyone because I don't want to waste resources. Collecting materials seems more important in this game than most others I've played.
The warrior in my group is currently using a one-handed sword that I crafted from non-rare materials and it's significantly better than anything I've seen being sold or dropped so far…higher damage + additional bonuses. I'm not as far into the game as you though. My created character is Level 6 and the rest of the party is currently Level 5. The best dropped items always seem to be for Rogues. I think Varric may be the only member of my party that is currently using dropped armor. The rest is either bought or crafted. I need to try crafting some mages robes...
Graphically this game looks much worse than advertised. Yet another casualty of this generation of perpetual disappointment. But how is the game in terms of gameplay? Is it really boring like DA Origins? Or really shit like DA 2? Or actually good? E3 2014 Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnXlKrBItc0 Actual Gameplay: PS4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ZQ4uGDJEo PC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT_N_GY33Yg Graphically it looks like Mass Effect 3 to me. Mass Effect 3 looked good, on old gen systems.
The thing about the graphics is that it's a different approach. It's a hybrid of realism and animated film styles. It can seem a bit lacking when you first start playing, but as you go along and get more exposure to what they're going for, it works. You're not going to think that it's a graphic gold standard, but it's not disappointing. Gameplay wise, all you have to get used to is the party style combat and strategy, which takes some time. Where Skyrim tended to be about solo combat and character development, Dragon Age is about team combat and team development. There's a LOT of options when it comes to that, and it's fun. Plus, the team AI is good. It's not like Skyrim where your adventuring partner can be as much of a liability as an advantage.
I actually find the E3 trailer to be pretty accurate. It uses some impossible camera angles, slow motion, and cherry picked action shots but other than that it looks about the same as Ultra settings on my system. Compared to ME3 it's more detailed, sharper, and it has a lot more going on with foliage, water, fire, and sunlight than ME3 was ever capable of. If you didn't like Dragon Age 1 or 2 you wont like this one.
If you think your party is being unusually quiet or there is a lack of music check out the banter bug. I think I experienced it in the first part of the game. Apparently it can be triggered by not traveling to a location immediately after it's opened on the war table. The work around is to go to the war table and travel somewhere. I'm also experiencing a Blizzard bug that prevents me from casting it sometimes. It's particularly annoying because my character is built around that skill.
I've experienced a bug that drops some of the audio during combat (usually the sound effects/music). Seems to happen at random when exiting character or inventory menus back into gameplay. Usually disappears by just quickly entering/exiting menus again.
According to Polygon, the PS4 and PC versions of the game will be getting a major update/patch today. Sounds like it should be fixing some of the audio bugs, among other things. I came across another glitch yesterday where I could no longer switch between characters. The only way out of it was to save and quit to the main menu, then load the save.
Damn. They haven't provided a list of fixes. I really hope they fix the blizzard bug. The only fix is to quit and restart or to travel back to the main keep. For some reason that unlocks it again. It sounds like they may improve tactical view. It's almost unusable on the PC and I've never used it. It's supposed to give a better view of the battle field but the zoom is so limited that the regular view is better. It also sucks that there is no way to bind mouse buttons. I would love to bind search to a thumb button. As it is now I have to stop moving and reach across my keyboard and that means I don't search as often as I should. I've also felt that radar kind of sucks too. The range is too small to be useful. I'm constantly switching to the map to locate stuff that's 5 seconds away but not on radar. Enemies get into attack range before they even appear on radar and if they run away they go off radar and are hard to follow. Seeing the direction to the waypoint is really the only useful thing that it does. I've read Blizzards notes on the patch and sadly they say this patch will lay the ground work for the next patch which will fix keyboard/mouse issues.
I haven't minded the radar system. True, it's not that far-ranging, but it's enough to make you aware of enemies before they're in range for attack. Tactical is something I've mainly used to get advance HP ratings for enemies or to pause combat and check how many enemies are left (especially for closing rifts that have teleporting demons…cheating bastards). I had been thinking that maybe the range of radar/tactical view would improve based on character skills, items, or inquisition perks, but maybe that's not the case.
Well the radar did improve with the patch. It now shows things that pop up in a search. I've also mapped the search and pause buttons to my mouse with the Razor mouse software. It works pretty well.
I think they fixed the Blizzard bug but it doesn't matter now anyway. Winter doesn't compliment rift mage so I respected everything through Inferno. I also have a pretty good investment in spirit and I'm debating if I should stick with it. The power to resurrect party members is very useful but probably only needed against really hard bosses.
You must never have tried to close the rift that's in the river gorge near the farm early in the game. The difficulty level is ridiculous compared to some of the others. I've tried that a few times at level 4-6 and had the entire party killed off each time. That's the only place I've ever had any of the characters die. I finally have the 1st tier revival skill for Spirit at Level 7, so I'll probably try again soon.
Hmm. Not sure about that one. There is a rift in the Emerald Graves that has been impossible for me so far. My mage gets insta-killed and the rest die in 5 to 20 seconds. I can't even use revive. It would probably come in handy with dragons. The last one I fought killed everyone but my tank in just a few seconds. My tank lasted a good 8 minutes but did almost no damage. It was so boring I was happy when he finally died. I think I could pull my ranged guys way back and maybe keep them alive while the tank keeps him busy. Archers might be best as dragons seem to be immune to most magic. I managed to collect a 30% fire resistance ring which should help with the fireballs I can't dodge.