[quote name='The Crotch']Well, there's your first problem. You don't want a fairly balanced guy. You want a guy who's really good at only a couple things. Tanking (shield with massive armour and an emphasis on dexterity, albeit with enough strength to wear the heaviest armour) or DPS (medium/heavy armour with a two-hander and emphasis on strength) are the main ways for a warrior to go. Alistair and all human warriors start slightly skewed towards tanking, whereas Sten is DPS, and there's another, in my opinion better, DPS warrior out there, too.
Also, before fighting, use Morrigan's herbalism to make some lyrium potions/healing poultices if you need them. Nothing fancy; the weakest level of item should do. And make sure nobody has injuries by spending a night camped out first, too.
Now, as for the fights. Holding off too long on the Denerim alley fights can be bad because if you wait too long, you'll have to fight a million
ing archers with that son of a bitch scattering shot attack, and sure, some well-placed spells can
up their day, but it's still
ing bullshit what mass archers can do. Regardless, you may wish to hold off on those until Morrigan is more powerful. So, moving on to the fight with the assassin, Zevran.
If my memory serves, Zevran, that woman, and a few others will attack you from the ground, with more archers on the high ground and a few traps protecting them, yes? Alright, first up, if you have something like forcefield or crushing prison or paralyze for Morrigan, deploy that right away. The mage is your priority. Lobbing a fireball into them is also a good way to disrupt the mage, but make sure you don't target a charging enemy/let your guys run in to it. Stonefist. Winter's Grasp. Just keep the damn mage grounded. Use Alistair's shield bash and stun attacks. Use the dog. Anything to keep her from murdering your face.
Odds are, though, your Morrigan has none of those spells. Hopefully, however, she DOES have cone of cold or whatever the hell it's called. Have her cone of cold as many enemies as she can. Enemies will likely focus on Alistair and/or yourself earlier, so she can run up and freeze their asses in relative safety Get the mage in there if you can, too. When they're frozen, have Sten (and/or yourself, if you use two-handed weapons) use mighty blow on the strongest frozen enemy
with a white name. Anyone who survives the freezing will probably be pretty pissed at Morrigan, so let them get close and then let off a mind blast (she should come with that spell). Use Morrigan to heal as needed, if she has that spell (you should have picked up the spirit healer book in Denerim, which has a very nice party-heal spell). Ignore Morrigan's shape shifting abilities. If she runs low on mana, just use a lyrium potion.
From there, it should pretty much be a matter of finishing off a wounded Zevran and killing the archers taking potshots. Careful of traps - sending Leliana to run up by them is probably your best bet; note that she doesn't have to complete her full animation to disable a trap, so she can do it much faster than she seems to at first.
Leliana is of little use in this fight, other than the traps. She takes a
long ing time to become a decent fighter, though if you don't play a rogue, she's your only real answer to traps and locks. The traps in this place are not so bad that I'd bother using her, though. Drop her and pick up Sten. If you're a tank, consider swapping out Alistair for the dog. While the dog eventually falls behind the other party members, he's still got a cheap knock-down and area-of-effect stun ability that an be handy, and the overwhelm skill he eventually gets is one of the most enjoyable god damn things in the game.[/QUOTE]
Thank you! My first try with this strategy I won fairly handily. Looks like I won't have to start over...for now...
