StillLogicZ's Tactics Load-outs on the BioWare Forums.
The above is an amalgamation of various different guides I've found, notably: If you're not interested in giving up a slot for a dedicated healer, it's going to be very difficult to keep Alistair effective. Ultimately, it comes either micromanaging Alistair as your de-facto main (which takes practice), or a decent tactics load out (specified above) if that's not your thing.įinally, I can't stress enough how much a sword and board tank like Alistair needs a good healer. It's really hard to unintentionally mess up building Alistair: there are so few "tanking" choices in the game that you'll eventually get everything you need by level 15-ish anyway.
Weapons: Sword and board: long swords and the largest shield you can find.
Favor equipment that has stamina regeneration and secondarily, on "tanking" stats like Constitution, Resistances, Armor, etc.
Armor: Equip the heaviest you can find: ultimately, you'll be wearing massive armor.
Enemy: Health < 75% → Use ability: OverpowerĮquipment choice is not particularly difficult, and I've found you don't need to worry about min/maxing to make him effective, so I'm not going to bother with a mostly unnecessary list of exact gear you need to have.
Enemy: Health >= 75% → Use ability: Shield Bash.
Self: Surrounded by at least three enemies → Use ability: War Cry.
Self: Surrounded by at least two enemies → Use ability: Taunt.
Enemy: Nearest Visible → Use ability: Shield Pummel.
Self: Being attakced by a ranged attack → Activate mode: Shield Cover.
Self: Being attacked by a melee attack → Activate mode: Shield Wall.
Note because of my reliance on a dedicated healer, Alistair does not use any sustainability/survival abilities. TacticsĪs mentioned above, I didn't want to micromanage Alistair, so I used the following to handle pretty much every encounter. Note you don't need Master Combat Training until you get Shield Mastery, so spend your skill points on Combat Tactics to make sure you can use your abilities.
Shield Expertise (Weapon and Shield, 2nd line, tier 4).
Getting to the third tier of the first line of Warrior Talents and all the lines of Weapon and Shield talents should occupy most of your time.
Talents: Concentrate on filling out the tactics load-out described below.
If you need a talent that requires the next level of Combat Training get that, otherwise, get Combat Tactics. Alternate between selecting the two based on what talents you're about to pick up.
Skills: Combat Training and Combat Tactics don't bother with the rest.
If you've built your healer well, you don't need to get fancy with Constitution and Willpower. Pop a couple points into Dexterity when talents require it.
Specializations: Templar, then Champion.
You're locked in with the relatively useless Templar specialization, but once you reach 14 and can choose a second, definitely pick Champion. Obviously, Alistair is going to be a warrior. So I've built him around me not having to do anything with him: prioritizing his tactics load-out and passive skills. However, you really need to make sure you have a good Spirit Healer (like Wynne) backing him up. The aggressive behavior, combined with the tactics loadout described below, makes the AI pretty smart and hands-off. I've found letting Alistair run on auto-pilot works really well. I'm playing through Dragon Age: Origins again with this specific goal in mind, so I'll outline what I've done: Overview