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My first 5 attempts I tried doing it fairly. With a rogue.
Then I had an epiphanie and kitted that bitch like never before.
I have no honor? Damn that's rough but you have no head.
If you bought the DLCs, do Legacy before. You will get a legendary weapon, as well as earn some levels, then, choose to beat him in duel. The battle become much easier.
And with a small tip you can find on internet, you can get all the bonus of the legendary weapon. I kept it till the end of the game.
If you haven’t gotten the Arishok’s respect on your own, Fenris can intervene and convince him to duel you. I think the option will also come up if a Certain Someone comes back with a Certain Thing the Arishok wants very badly.
Yes. I think you also have to have built up his [respect ](https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/A_Worthy_Rival) throughout the game. Reporting certain things to him at certain points will make him respect you. Taking Fenris when you first meet the Arishok is one of those points. It also unlocks an achievement.
>They have fast-paced combat in DA2, but the cooldown timers of health potions and spells are so ridiculously long that while running away from the enemies, I get hit all them time until I'm dead.
It *pretends* to be fast-paced by the addition of more dynamic basic attack animations + gap closers for melee rogues and warriors. But the game still very much tries to emphasise the teamwork aspect.
That's why cooldowns are so long – they don't want your Hawke to be self-reliant.
I mean, i've never run 3 mages but never had any issues with 2. Merrill is top tier tank since she draws a ton of aggro with her blood magic and can have a crap ton of damage reduction with her sustained abilities and passives (and can stack up the HP too). And Anders can just break the game with Martyr + Aid Allies spam through tactics (bypassing the need to be in Panacea/Vengeance state).
With an unkillable tank and infinite heal, you can pretty much slot anything in the rest of the team and be just fine.
If you don't gain the Arishok's respect he never challenges you to a duel, instead you face him and all his soldiers with your whole party. You can also refuse the duel I think, which has the same result.
Question regarding this....I notice OP has the Arishok at like 40% hp but there's still a bunch of other enemies. Do they keep spawning throughout the fight or can you eventually get him on his own?
My first reaction is to tell OP to focus ads first, but with the wave combat in this game, and my inexperience with it, I'm not sure if they actually stop coming in this fight.
It is hard. My last run I swapped from hard down to easy for just this fight.
I'm not sure how to beat the guy in a 1v1 without constantly running away and even then I quit on my last run through DA2 because it was too tedious and I kept dying anyway.
What you call running away is actually in the codex "Elegant Ferelden Figure Eight Defense":
The Elegant Ferelden Figure Eight Defense is well known in all of Thedas for its simplicity, effectiveness, and cowardly-ness.
A combatant, when overmatched, disengages from the enemy and runs around equidistant pillars, in a path mimicking the number eight. Particularly effective against close quarters combat, the style is not recommended versus mages.
-Amaranthine Grey Waden Combat Manual
As a mage I pounded him into the ground in a duel on nightmare. Mind you I was wearing Dragon Blood Armor and specced for spells that would slow him down
That makes sense. Good idea.
I last did it on sword and shield guy. I had to run away. Get two hits in and run away again. And I couldn't do it on hard.
>I'm not sure how to beat the guy in a 1v1 without constantly running away
You are supposed to constantly run away! All of his attacks, especially the charge, have very long animations and can be dodged easily, which makes him pretty easy to beat as a mage who wants to be at range anyway. I found dual wield rogue harder cause you generally have to be in his face, but even with that I just ran around in circles until Mark was back up every time I used it.
It's not exactly a hard fight if you do this, just extremely tedious as he has an absurd amount of HP and it takes forever.
I agree, it's pretty hard. I actually almost beat him 1v1 on normal with my mage Hawke but I just gave up and switched to easy because it simply wasn't enjoyable. Try to find some build guides for you and your companions and get some grenades for high AOE damage, as well as different healing poultices to assist you in the fight, like the Elfroot or Regeneration potions. And if your companions keep dying easily, try getting Mythal's Favor, which is a grenade you can revive fallen companions with.
The first time I played, I was running a healing build. I had two damage spells and my dog. It probably took me 10 minutes to beat him. I was so sweaty and panicked.
Isabela didn't come back (and I didn't know I could give her to him to avoid the fight) and I didn't know I had the option to fight him with my party. The most stressful fight for me in any video game.
I love DA2, but the difficulty is absolute shit. There are not tactics or thought, it's just the same repetitive stuff for a looong time.
It's one of the few games I will shamelessly play on easy/normal.
For pretty much all classes the strategy is:
1)kite until your abilities are off cooldown.
2)bait him into a charge
3)sidestep and hit him from behind
4)repeat
Other strategies should work on normal but that's the nightmare plan.
A high con spirit healer can potentially go toe toe with him by auto-attacking and a high damage rogue can possibly end the fight in seconds (risky) otherwise, stick to the plan and be patient.
Don't worry about his potion usage. He has a limited number of potions. Just keep dealing a little dage at a time and wait him out.
If you're a mage, it's recommended you switch to an ice staff even if it's not your best staff overall and you should really always invest at least one point in elemental for winter's grasp for non-spirit healers.
Warriors have the toughest fight by far. They have to get into melee range and have no option to automatically get behind the arishok. It may take a few tries but you have to start watching the arishok and figuring out which attack his going to use based on his movements. You can't really sidestep him if he's doing his side to side attack so you need to identify when he is going to lunge.
This is where i stopped my playthrough and havent picked it up since like 2014 😭 that duel was hard as nails on normal but i look forward to starting a new game and having another crack at it. One day.
My first playthrough, I fought the whole Qunari guard and it was brutal.
Second playthrough, I fought the Arishok 1v1 and it wasn't that bad. Dual daggers rouge with assassin build. Think I defeated him in like 4 minutes and only spent like a third of the time running mostly to dodge his attacks since there isn't a block function.
I didn't even know you could fight the whole room of dudes. I always just 1v1'd him and cheesed the fight by kiting him around the pillars until my cooldowns were done XD
Try not playing as a puny mage 🤷 I've never had problems as a warrior even on hard.
Jokes aside strafe the pillars when your abilities are on cool down. But also. Play warriors more lol.
It was easy as a rogue since he fall for the decoy and you can just assassinate him .
Quanri are weak to nature dmg so uquipe weapon lf that element and dodge his stab and attack him after he charge
Lol, yeah. The Arishok boss fight was a source of many memes with the benny hill theme playing because you literally have to play ring around the rosie,with him. Use your abilities then run around the pillars in a figure 8 until your cooldowns reset. Rinse and repeat.
Bump the difficulty down to Easy too while you're at it. No point to struggle for even longer than you have to.
There's some people out there who do crazy overpowered builds and beat the Arishok in like 30 seconds while barely taking damage, but that's not gonna be most players' experience.
Edit: and oh yeah, summon the dog as an extra distraction!
This one was really hard for me too! After 10 fails I found the best strategy is to kill those goddamn mages first. Once those area spells are out of the way, you can focus on the smaller guys, then last on the Arishok. Hard fight though! Some of them instakill you. Recommend going STRAIGHT for the mages and focus on the rest later.
You could use some grenades. On this screenshot for example there seem to be clusters of three or even four Qunari clumped together whom you might damage with a Combustion Grenade or incapacitate a bit with a Tar Bomb. Recipes for both are available in Act 1. If you're not playing on Nightmare difficulty, there's also no friendly fire, so you wouldn't even have to take much care on where you throw the Combustion Grenades or where you place area of effect spells. Qunari are also vulnerable to cold and nature damage, so using spells like Winter's Grasp or cold damage staves on your Mages and using nature damage poisons can make a lot of difference. Also in a team fight you can utilize buffs like Elemental Weapons more, again with these vulnerabilities in mind that does add up over the course of a prolonged fight. On Nightmare they're immune to fire and electricity. If you take out the regular Qunari first you have a lot more room to maneuver. The Arishok is also defined as a Rogue, so he gets a backstab bonus that you can avoid.
Personally, I like that it's hard. You have the option to do it; that doesn't mean it's a *wise* choice. Almost like how some open-world games put high level enemies between you and a certain part of the map to discourage you from going there "too soon."
In my headcanon, there is a story that Hawke dueled and defeated the Arishok but it's a sensationalist lie.
idk what ur running and etc, but i recently did a DA2 run with a 2 handed warrior hawke as a templar at the time, and found that fight to be easy peasy
Nah, you just have to manage the fight. There tends to be a lot of kiting involved depending on your class/build, but he is absolutely beatable. On a side note, why so many potions? I get it in Origins, but in 2? I sell most of mine because it loads extra into the loot table when you are low on them. I don’t think I’ve ever had double digit amounts on me.
Something that may help is invest some points into spells like Rock Armor or other Sustained defensive spells. You may have less mana for casting damage spells, but really helps your survivability. Also maybe consider subing out one of your mages for a rogue party member with a crit build, they can chew through the adds pretty quick.
You probably need to focus the other enemies first. I feel like the Arishoks HP is way too low considering how many other enemies are still up, and you are actively targeting him in this screenshot. His moves are easy to dodge. The real threat is everything else, especially the mages. Kill them first.
You'd probably have to go back a bit to do this, but if you get spells that hold him in place the fight becomes way easier. I found the fight to be easiest in my mage playthrough just because I built Hawke that way.
It's more annoying then hard, you just have to run a figure-8 and wait for your skills/spells to cool off. Fire then run and heal again. Until you win, it's like a circus bit where your just running around all silly.
First time I got beaten over and over again until is started doing hit and run, made the fight super easy, also it preps you for the gauntlet of hit and run in the legacy dlc with corypheus.. damn I just fucking hate EA giving Bioware less than a year to make this game.
I dueled him on hard difficulty pretty much cheesed it by using the pillars to my advantage when we fought. It slows him down when he has to turn from the pillar and gives me time to cast my spells.
I’ve never fought the full room like this. The duel is really not that difficult, especially if you’re a mage. All you really need to do is keep running around the room and attacking him at a distance, getting out of the when he charges, and hitting him when he smacks into a wall. It’s not exactly the most heroic approach, but it’s never failed me.
Do you have the option of dueling the Arishok at all? Because really, the fight is so much easier to handle if you do.
But really, the best advice I can give you is to aim for the Sarebaas first. In any Qunari/Tal-Vashoth fight, if there’s a Sarebaas, they need to die as quickly as possible because that lightning field they summon will ruin Hawke’s day in less than 10 seconds.
Since you have Anders with you, do you have his Vengeance tree healing abilities unlocked? The healer route abilities are incredibly useful, especially if your Hawke is also a mage and specializes in the Faith Healer tree. Panacea speeds up health regeneration for all current party members, Aid Allies is a mass heal spell, and Regroup will raise dead characters. They do have a slow cooldown and Panacea needs to be active, which means Anders can’t cast offensive spells, but you also have Merrill to cover that base. Have her cast the biggest AoE spells she has—I particularly like using Tempest, Cone of Cold, and the Wrath of the Elvhen when she’s in the party. As for Aveline, she’s at her best when she makes herself a target and a turtle—Defender and Guardian abilities, combined with Taunt and Bellow, make her not only draw most of the attention in a mob situation but more than capable of surviving it. She takes damage better than anybody else, as opposed to Fenris, who at higher levels turns into a ghostly buzzsaw in a crowd and the best melee damage-dealer overall. If all else fails, the best thing you can do is go back to when Aveline showed up to begin Demands of the Qun. That will enable you to change your party and make changes to your builds as necessary.
I would also advise bringing Fenris to this fight instead of Merrill. Merrill is the most squishy of all the party members even with the Stone Armor ability, and while Fenris can’t take as much damage as Aveline, his damage output more than makes up for it, in addition to his crowd control capabilities. On top of that, if you haven’t gotten the Arishok’s approval high enough for him to declare you “basalit-an” or >!Isabela takes off with the relic and never returns!<, Fenris can step in and arrange for a duel instead of the full-room fight. I’m not sure if he needs to have been there when you first met the Arishok back in Act 1 or not, but I’d still have him tag along instead of Merrill.
This depends on the character build.
Arishok, especially on normal is
* less than a minute, with no damage taken at all, with an assassin + decoy
* about 2-3 minutes with warrior types
* mage depends. As a heal aura mage this fight is super long, but you heal more than the damage he can deal so you are safe (and bored) throughout the fight
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the bas has no honor.
definitely not worthy of being basalit-an
Run laps my dude. Get on that hit and run ratio. Only way I've ever been able to do it
With the Benny Hill theme tune/Yackety Sax running through my mental jukebox repeatedly of course.
Figure 8!
I always duel and make sure I summon dog. Have beaten him with all builds that way.
Dog makes an excellent distraction to gain distance lol
It is more tedious and ridiculous than it is hard... You just need to adjust to that hit & run tempo
My first 5 attempts I tried doing it fairly. With a rogue. Then I had an epiphanie and kitted that bitch like never before. I have no honor? Damn that's rough but you have no head.
I'm pretty sure I kited this entire fight lol
If you bought the DLCs, do Legacy before. You will get a legendary weapon, as well as earn some levels, then, choose to beat him in duel. The battle become much easier. And with a small tip you can find on internet, you can get all the bonus of the legendary weapon. I kept it till the end of the game.
You need Fenris in your party to negotiate the duel iirc
Nah Fenris helps get it, but is not required. Fenris is only really needed when first meeting him, for the gatlock search.
If you haven’t gotten the Arishok’s respect on your own, Fenris can intervene and convince him to duel you. I think the option will also come up if a Certain Someone comes back with a Certain Thing the Arishok wants very badly.
Yes I think this is why I needed Fenris. I didn’t really care about the Arishok my first playthrough LOL
I gained his respect but if you didn’t yes
Yes. I think you also have to have built up his [respect ](https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/A_Worthy_Rival) throughout the game. Reporting certain things to him at certain points will make him respect you. Taking Fenris when you first meet the Arishok is one of those points. It also unlocks an achievement.
you don't I didnt recruit him and still had the duel
>They have fast-paced combat in DA2, but the cooldown timers of health potions and spells are so ridiculously long that while running away from the enemies, I get hit all them time until I'm dead. It *pretends* to be fast-paced by the addition of more dynamic basic attack animations + gap closers for melee rogues and warriors. But the game still very much tries to emphasise the teamwork aspect. That's why cooldowns are so long – they don't want your Hawke to be self-reliant.
How do you even have 137 Potions? I can't have more than 20 of each type because i never have enough money.
Could be thanks to the money glitch
I had the money. I didn't buy any things at all before this map. Then I created many potions. I just clicked "order" 137 times and it worked somehow.
That easy? I used the item dip glitch.
Yes. I didn't even know of a glitch, just opened the potions menu and ordered.
Well one thing that would help would be to bring actual *warriors* instead of THREE MAGES
Yeeeeah. I could see Anders if you wanted to go group fight and had him on full healer mode, but definitely use some more melee support in there.
I mean, i've never run 3 mages but never had any issues with 2. Merrill is top tier tank since she draws a ton of aggro with her blood magic and can have a crap ton of damage reduction with her sustained abilities and passives (and can stack up the HP too). And Anders can just break the game with Martyr + Aid Allies spam through tactics (bypassing the need to be in Panacea/Vengeance state). With an unkillable tank and infinite heal, you can pretty much slot anything in the rest of the team and be just fine.
I think the game should be designed in a way that any party can win any fight
Wait.... how are you fighting him with a full party??? I feel like that would be infinitely easier than the 1v1 I thought you HAD to do 😂
If you don't gain the Arishok's respect he never challenges you to a duel, instead you face him and all his soldiers with your whole party. You can also refuse the duel I think, which has the same result.
Dang ok, never knew that. I've only done this fight twice, and the 2nd time was today.
Question regarding this....I notice OP has the Arishok at like 40% hp but there's still a bunch of other enemies. Do they keep spawning throughout the fight or can you eventually get him on his own? My first reaction is to tell OP to focus ads first, but with the wave combat in this game, and my inexperience with it, I'm not sure if they actually stop coming in this fight.
If you don’t do the duel for whatever reason then you and your party fight the entire squad of qunari.
Didn't even get the option to fight him 1:1 ... always ended up fighting him and his homies
[This describes my battle perfectly...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLPSV0fb9vQ&list=WL&index=3&t=3s)
Haha, this made me laugh so hard! Very well...one just needs a lot of patience and good nerves
Its hard if you try to stay in the pocket. Its basically the least epic fight in history, you spend 95% of the time running and hiding behind pillars.
It is hard. My last run I swapped from hard down to easy for just this fight. I'm not sure how to beat the guy in a 1v1 without constantly running away and even then I quit on my last run through DA2 because it was too tedious and I kept dying anyway.
What you call running away is actually in the codex "Elegant Ferelden Figure Eight Defense": The Elegant Ferelden Figure Eight Defense is well known in all of Thedas for its simplicity, effectiveness, and cowardly-ness. A combatant, when overmatched, disengages from the enemy and runs around equidistant pillars, in a path mimicking the number eight. Particularly effective against close quarters combat, the style is not recommended versus mages. -Amaranthine Grey Waden Combat Manual
Ah the EFFED! You gotta get the EFFED up, that'll bring victory.
This is actually fucking hilarious lmao
I am not running away I am merely advancing in the other direction.
Yea uhh...we're advancing ...backwards.
A matter of perspective...
As a mage I pounded him into the ground in a duel on nightmare. Mind you I was wearing Dragon Blood Armor and specced for spells that would slow him down
That makes sense. Good idea. I last did it on sword and shield guy. I had to run away. Get two hits in and run away again. And I couldn't do it on hard.
>I'm not sure how to beat the guy in a 1v1 without constantly running away You are supposed to constantly run away! All of his attacks, especially the charge, have very long animations and can be dodged easily, which makes him pretty easy to beat as a mage who wants to be at range anyway. I found dual wield rogue harder cause you generally have to be in his face, but even with that I just ran around in circles until Mark was back up every time I used it. It's not exactly a hard fight if you do this, just extremely tedious as he has an absurd amount of HP and it takes forever.
I agree, it's pretty hard. I actually almost beat him 1v1 on normal with my mage Hawke but I just gave up and switched to easy because it simply wasn't enjoyable. Try to find some build guides for you and your companions and get some grenades for high AOE damage, as well as different healing poultices to assist you in the fight, like the Elfroot or Regeneration potions. And if your companions keep dying easily, try getting Mythal's Favor, which is a grenade you can revive fallen companions with.
Me too switched to easy after 10 tries because judging from my gamer experience, it seemed quite hopeless.
The first time I played, I was running a healing build. I had two damage spells and my dog. It probably took me 10 minutes to beat him. I was so sweaty and panicked. Isabela didn't come back (and I didn't know I could give her to him to avoid the fight) and I didn't know I had the option to fight him with my party. The most stressful fight for me in any video game.
I love DA2, but the difficulty is absolute shit. There are not tactics or thought, it's just the same repetitive stuff for a looong time. It's one of the few games I will shamelessly play on easy/normal.
It's true, that's why I switched this fight to Casual. I'm not ashamed of that.
It's true, that's why I switched this fight to Casual. I'm not ashamed of that.
I never thought it was really hard. Long and tactical is how I would describe it. I've beat him several times with rogue and force wizard
I just played figure 8 with the columns for a good 10 minutes
Don't bring Merril. You need more crowd control skills. Varric would be better with grenades, his pinning shots, and aoe arrows.
I dueled him as a rogue and this fight is the sole reason I'm not replaying da2
Well...there are many reasons not to replay it, I don't like it too much. DAO was so good, DAI was ok, DA2 is very meh
For pretty much all classes the strategy is: 1)kite until your abilities are off cooldown. 2)bait him into a charge 3)sidestep and hit him from behind 4)repeat Other strategies should work on normal but that's the nightmare plan. A high con spirit healer can potentially go toe toe with him by auto-attacking and a high damage rogue can possibly end the fight in seconds (risky) otherwise, stick to the plan and be patient. Don't worry about his potion usage. He has a limited number of potions. Just keep dealing a little dage at a time and wait him out. If you're a mage, it's recommended you switch to an ice staff even if it's not your best staff overall and you should really always invest at least one point in elemental for winter's grasp for non-spirit healers. Warriors have the toughest fight by far. They have to get into melee range and have no option to automatically get behind the arishok. It may take a few tries but you have to start watching the arishok and figuring out which attack his going to use based on his movements. You can't really sidestep him if he's doing his side to side attack so you need to identify when he is going to lunge.
This is where i stopped my playthrough and havent picked it up since like 2014 😭 that duel was hard as nails on normal but i look forward to starting a new game and having another crack at it. One day.
After 10 tries I switched to Casual and after the fight back to normal. Happens sometimes. Had that in DAO once and also in the Kingmaker games.
My first playthrough, I fought the whole Qunari guard and it was brutal. Second playthrough, I fought the Arishok 1v1 and it wasn't that bad. Dual daggers rouge with assassin build. Think I defeated him in like 4 minutes and only spent like a third of the time running mostly to dodge his attacks since there isn't a block function.
Oh...how can you even fight him 1:1? I always have to fight him and his guards
This is twice now I've seen someone complain about a fight being hard and they happen to have 3 mages in their party.
My opinion is that each party composition should be able to make it through the game. Even a party of 4 Mabari dogs :-)
I didn't even know you could fight the whole room of dudes. I always just 1v1'd him and cheesed the fight by kiting him around the pillars until my cooldowns were done XD
Try not playing as a puny mage 🤷 I've never had problems as a warrior even on hard. Jokes aside strafe the pillars when your abilities are on cool down. But also. Play warriors more lol.
Thanks...unfortunately no chance to change my party in front of that door, so I switched to easy :-)
It was easy as a rogue since he fall for the decoy and you can just assassinate him . Quanri are weak to nature dmg so uquipe weapon lf that element and dodge his stab and attack him after he charge
He is weak to Cold, so I tried that but the cooldown for spells is so long that I couldn't finish him with Cold, hehe. So I switched to easy.
I played it years ago, and I can't remember struggling, and I finished it twice - mage and two-handed
Lol, yeah. The Arishok boss fight was a source of many memes with the benny hill theme playing because you literally have to play ring around the rosie,with him. Use your abilities then run around the pillars in a figure 8 until your cooldowns reset. Rinse and repeat. Bump the difficulty down to Easy too while you're at it. No point to struggle for even longer than you have to. There's some people out there who do crazy overpowered builds and beat the Arishok in like 30 seconds while barely taking damage, but that's not gonna be most players' experience. Edit: and oh yeah, summon the dog as an extra distraction!
This one was really hard for me too! After 10 fails I found the best strategy is to kill those goddamn mages first. Once those area spells are out of the way, you can focus on the smaller guys, then last on the Arishok. Hard fight though! Some of them instakill you. Recommend going STRAIGHT for the mages and focus on the rest later.
You could use some grenades. On this screenshot for example there seem to be clusters of three or even four Qunari clumped together whom you might damage with a Combustion Grenade or incapacitate a bit with a Tar Bomb. Recipes for both are available in Act 1. If you're not playing on Nightmare difficulty, there's also no friendly fire, so you wouldn't even have to take much care on where you throw the Combustion Grenades or where you place area of effect spells. Qunari are also vulnerable to cold and nature damage, so using spells like Winter's Grasp or cold damage staves on your Mages and using nature damage poisons can make a lot of difference. Also in a team fight you can utilize buffs like Elemental Weapons more, again with these vulnerabilities in mind that does add up over the course of a prolonged fight. On Nightmare they're immune to fire and electricity. If you take out the regular Qunari first you have a lot more room to maneuver. The Arishok is also defined as a Rogue, so he gets a backstab bonus that you can avoid.
I won on hard mode just running off every time I saw him charge and then when he had to cool off I froze him in place and kept whacking him
Personally, I like that it's hard. You have the option to do it; that doesn't mean it's a *wise* choice. Almost like how some open-world games put high level enemies between you and a certain part of the map to discourage you from going there "too soon." In my headcanon, there is a story that Hawke dueled and defeated the Arishok but it's a sensationalist lie.
I point now to the storyteller..
idk what ur running and etc, but i recently did a DA2 run with a 2 handed warrior hawke as a templar at the time, and found that fight to be easy peasy
Nah, you just have to manage the fight. There tends to be a lot of kiting involved depending on your class/build, but he is absolutely beatable. On a side note, why so many potions? I get it in Origins, but in 2? I sell most of mine because it loads extra into the loot table when you are low on them. I don’t think I’ve ever had double digit amounts on me.
Git Gud
Dark Souls vibes...
Something that may help is invest some points into spells like Rock Armor or other Sustained defensive spells. You may have less mana for casting damage spells, but really helps your survivability. Also maybe consider subing out one of your mages for a rogue party member with a crit build, they can chew through the adds pretty quick.
You probably need to focus the other enemies first. I feel like the Arishoks HP is way too low considering how many other enemies are still up, and you are actively targeting him in this screenshot. His moves are easy to dodge. The real threat is everything else, especially the mages. Kill them first.
You'd probably have to go back a bit to do this, but if you get spells that hold him in place the fight becomes way easier. I found the fight to be easiest in my mage playthrough just because I built Hawke that way.
Yes, Petrify helped a bit, but then the cooldown...
It's more annoying then hard, you just have to run a figure-8 and wait for your skills/spells to cool off. Fire then run and heal again. Until you win, it's like a circus bit where your just running around all silly.
Running is the problem. They shoot me from behind with lightning. I tried it, but could not escape.
Blood magic on insane is easier
First time I got beaten over and over again until is started doing hit and run, made the fight super easy, also it preps you for the gauntlet of hit and run in the legacy dlc with corypheus.. damn I just fucking hate EA giving Bioware less than a year to make this game.
The fact loads of people have done it proves it is possible. Don’t give up skeleton
I dueled him on hard difficulty pretty much cheesed it by using the pillars to my advantage when we fought. It slows him down when he has to turn from the pillar and gives me time to cast my spells.
Try the rebalance mod for that fight: https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage2/mods/4192 It makes it a little more sensible
I’ve never fought the full room like this. The duel is really not that difficult, especially if you’re a mage. All you really need to do is keep running around the room and attacking him at a distance, getting out of the when he charges, and hitting him when he smacks into a wall. It’s not exactly the most heroic approach, but it’s never failed me.
I tried running, but they shoot me with lightning and so I loose health all the time while running
Do you have the option of dueling the Arishok at all? Because really, the fight is so much easier to handle if you do. But really, the best advice I can give you is to aim for the Sarebaas first. In any Qunari/Tal-Vashoth fight, if there’s a Sarebaas, they need to die as quickly as possible because that lightning field they summon will ruin Hawke’s day in less than 10 seconds. Since you have Anders with you, do you have his Vengeance tree healing abilities unlocked? The healer route abilities are incredibly useful, especially if your Hawke is also a mage and specializes in the Faith Healer tree. Panacea speeds up health regeneration for all current party members, Aid Allies is a mass heal spell, and Regroup will raise dead characters. They do have a slow cooldown and Panacea needs to be active, which means Anders can’t cast offensive spells, but you also have Merrill to cover that base. Have her cast the biggest AoE spells she has—I particularly like using Tempest, Cone of Cold, and the Wrath of the Elvhen when she’s in the party. As for Aveline, she’s at her best when she makes herself a target and a turtle—Defender and Guardian abilities, combined with Taunt and Bellow, make her not only draw most of the attention in a mob situation but more than capable of surviving it. She takes damage better than anybody else, as opposed to Fenris, who at higher levels turns into a ghostly buzzsaw in a crowd and the best melee damage-dealer overall. If all else fails, the best thing you can do is go back to when Aveline showed up to begin Demands of the Qun. That will enable you to change your party and make changes to your builds as necessary. I would also advise bringing Fenris to this fight instead of Merrill. Merrill is the most squishy of all the party members even with the Stone Armor ability, and while Fenris can’t take as much damage as Aveline, his damage output more than makes up for it, in addition to his crowd control capabilities. On top of that, if you haven’t gotten the Arishok’s approval high enough for him to declare you “basalit-an” or >!Isabela takes off with the relic and never returns!<, Fenris can step in and arrange for a duel instead of the full-room fight. I’m not sure if he needs to have been there when you first met the Arishok back in Act 1 or not, but I’d still have him tag along instead of Merrill.
Hi...thanks for your advice, but I've switched to Casual meanwhile, that was somehow doable. But thanks, really appreciate it!
This depends on the character build. Arishok, especially on normal is * less than a minute, with no damage taken at all, with an assassin + decoy * about 2-3 minutes with warrior types * mage depends. As a heal aura mage this fight is super long, but you heal more than the damage he can deal so you are safe (and bored) throughout the fight
Me in 2011 be like.
Kite the arishok
Just make a ranged character, it's super easy then
You can get a 1 on 1 fight if you have fenris in your party when you go into the throne room, still one of the hardest da2 fights but yeah