The Mother (strategy)

The Mother's Capabilities

 * During the fight, The Mother uses her tentacles (similar to the Broodmother from Origins, save that these tentacles are of Elite rank and much more potent).

Preparation
 * She calls forth Childer Grubs in great quantities.
 * She can unleash a Scream debuff like the Origins Broodmother.
 * She can cast Glyph of Neutralization, and will typically do so at least once to shut down the party's spellcaster(s).
 * In a manner similar to the original Broomother, she can Grab a party member and damage them; her grab is considerably stronger than most the player will have encountered thusfar, second only to the mauling Grab of High Dragons and the Queen of the Blackmarsh.
 * Finding all of the yellow crystals throughout the Tevinter ruin leading up to the fight (requires a Rogue for the final set) and placing them in the stone circles in each Tevinter Tower grants three special area-of-effect abilities; one heals the party, one briefly paralyzes (despite the description indicating a stun) foes, and the last conjures an Inferno-like spell.
 * If you decide to aid the Architect in destroying the Mother, he grants a fourth ability called Architect's Pyre, another potent area fire spell.

Spellcaster
Area-of-effect abilities are a godsend when the Childer Grubs are summoned en masse. Due to their ability to use Overwhelm, they can incapacitate the party with relative ease. Friendly-fire damage is almost inevitable in the cramped quarters of the fight, however, so there are a few specific spells of particular utility. Aditionally, having two mages with the Spirit Healer specialization at maximum talent investment is incredibly helpful.
 * 1) Blood Wound - a Blood Mage with three talent points in the specialization is invaluable; when the grubs are released, this Mage can activate Blood Magic and casts the spell, then turn it off to conserve health. This results in all of the Grubs becoming immobilized for a considerable length of time as well as suffering Spirit damage-over-time. Coupled with a brief AoE such as Fireball, a cone spell, or Hand of Winter, this can make annihilating the Grubs extremely simple.
 * 2) Battlemage Abilities - Hand of Winter, Draining Aura, and Elemental Chaos are all handy here if Blood Wound is unavailable. Ideally, Hand of Winter will freeze most of the Grubs around the mage, making them easy targets for other party members. Draining Aura provides several spike heals for the user, as well as continuous damage, and Elemental Chaos can augment this greatly.
 * 3) Mage Auras - Repulsion Field and Arcane Field can also prove useful against the Grubs; Repulsion Field continually knocks them down, making them unable to attack or use Overwhelm, while Arcane Field greatly assists in providing damage. Both are, unfortunately, somewhat mana-costly for their effects, and are thus somewhat inferior to Battlemage talents or Blood Wound.
 * 4) Spirit Healer Talents - Group Heal and Lifeward are extremely useful for maintaining the party, especially the tank. Having the Healer(s) set to use Group Heal when any party member falls below 30% health increases its utility as a sort of panic button, while setting the Healer to cast Lifeward on any party member The Mother grabs can mean the difference between that member's life and death in her grasp.

Warrior
Warriors have a lot of tricks to deal with the children. Massacre clears out childer grubs with ease. Some talents in Dual-wield tree or Two-handed tree also have excellent AoE capabilities. A shield specialized warrior takes little damage from childer grubs and tentacles alike and can use taunt to keep them busy, or use Champion's war cry to send them flying.
 * 1) Dual-wield: can do real horrifying damage to the mother if built right. If he/she is a Spirit Warrior, make sure a mage give the mother affliction hex, which increases damage by a lot. With spirit form, berserk and momentum, a dual-wield warrior does excellent, consistent damage to the mother. With the help of affliction hex and mark of death, and weak points if possible, and warrior activates unending flurry, the mother will suffer from horrifying burst damage and will go down before you realize it.
 * 2) Shield: with only massacre, a shield warrior's AoE is a bit lacking, but warrior talents can make sure the childer grubs do not leave the shield warrior before they die, and with warrior's high armor, especially with Guardian's fortifying prescence, those childer grubs do laughable damage to the warrior while others use AoE abilities to finish them off.
 * 3) Two-hand: only a bit less armor, so can still tank grubs, though a bit more difficult. However, he/she has many AoE abilities to blast the childer grubs away. Both shield or two-hand warriors' damage to the mother is nowhere near a dual-wield one, but they are better at fighting scrubs.

Rogue
Rogue abilities are not that useful, usually rogues are best when dealing with mini bosses, but the Mother is not a mini boss. Still, rogues do have their weapon talents. Many abilities such as bard's song of courage benefit the whole group, so rogues are still great during the boss fight. General Advice
 * 1) Dual-wield: similar to dual-wield warriors. However, a bit inferior because backstabbing is difficult, and daggers are not a good AoE weapons. Also stamina replenishing is a bit of a problem, your warriors and mages will never leave childer grubs for your feast of the fallen. Neither do you have second wind. So it comes down to the basic, drink stamina droughts. The only AoE ability is flicker, it's better than nothing. Legionnaire scouts can take grabs suprisingly well, so a Dual-wield rogue is best sent after the mother. However, if the mother is paralyzed then it can be backstabbed easily.
 * 2) Archer: One of the most consistent damage source to the mother itself. Burst shot a cluster of tentacles if they are clustered, and scattershot almost always hits every enemy in such a small room. Mother cannot move itself, cannot grab an archer or whatever, and since an archer will primaryly hit the mother, childer grubs will never look for the archer. Maybe tentacles will look for you, if they do, it's time to move a little bit. You won't be using a hell lot of stamina using the above two abilities, so if you are an assassin, make sure Mark of Death is on the mother as often as possible. Warrior Archer is similar.
 * Do not be afraid to use the special 1 use abilities, as they can turn the tide if things get out of hand. Also as discussed above, everyone in your group should have some AoE capabilities to unleash upon the childer grubs. Spell/ability Cooldown should never be an issue.