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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Krensky" data-source="post: 5495557" data-attributes="member: 30936">Your sibling, if you leave them behind or take Anders with you, makes some cameos in Act II and can be re-recruited in Act III depending on your choices in this game and Awakenings (or what Warden preset you took). As an aside, it's not the only loss you'll face.Also, frankly, Aveline is an excellent tank. Companion armor upgrades make a big difference come Act II, especially once she gets some rune slots. Also, the Shield of the Knight Herself is an amazing shield (190 armor, 1 rune slot, +88 attack, +5% critical chance, and anytime someone hits her in melee she smacks them back for her full basic damage instantly without interrupting her tactics or actions.. Lastly, Indomitable in her skill tree and Resolute in Defender make her peerless. No one pushes her around.Fenris, like Carver, is not a very good tank, but the two handed bit should have made that clear. He's great for dishing out pain, and can pull the largest magic resistance in the game.Carver is ok, but he's temporary, doesn't have a specialized tree, and only has one armor upgrade.Although not a companion (he's a summon mode), the Dog is does OK tanking and decent damage.For Rogues, Isabella brings tons of damage and some light tanking ability and some fun crowd control abilities. I also found her romance more interesting then Merrill's. It requires some more effort and is more emotionally rewarding because she has more issues then Merrill.Varrc is the man, a virtual paragon of masculinity (even Isabella says so) and with Bianca, an early armor upgrade and his plot immunity are great. Sebastian is interesting, but I found Varric more fun.Anders is a pain as a healer. To use the group heal or resurection ability he needs to reserve 40% of his mana. I've found that potions and resurrection grenades to be more useful. The lack of Ser-Pounce-Alot is keenly felt.Merrill is a delight, even if she's crazy and dangerously naive. She also requires more thought in leveling since she really benefits from maxing out Con for her Blood of the First mode, along with hunting down gear with the Blood Magic quantity. I've been playing her more normal though, and she still does great laying tons of magical smackdown. Not having access to creation (and hence Heal) is a big minus though.Bethany suffers the same issues as Carver, but she's more useful while shes's around in act one with decent damaging spells and access to Creation. For the record, Aveline and Varric are not romance partners, and Sebastian is only available for romance by a female Hawke and it'll be a chaste relationship. The other characters (well, other then your siblings) are available to either a male or female Hawke, but they all take work.I'm playing a Rogue with Duelist and Assassin. My default party is Aveline, Merrill, and Varric, but I mix it up a lot since the banter's half the fun and I wanted to max out my relationships (which is harder then it looks for some characters). Sebastian is my problem child there. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /></blockquote>

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