Best Warrior build in Dragon Age: The Veilguard – Companions, abilities, weapons & more

The Warrior in Dragon Age: The Veilguard is an absolute brute in a fight, serving as the strongest out-and-out brawler in the game at launch. Able to dominate the battlefield and cut down enemies quickly, here’s everything you need to know about getting the most out of your build.

As is to be perhaps expected, the Warrior is the tankiest and most forgiving of The Veilguard’s three classes. In addition to being able to soak up a lot of the damage that enemies give out, it’s also an absolute monster in both single-target and group fights, turning some of the game’s most challenging encounters into trivial moments.

In our tier list, the Warrior sits alone in the S-Tier as the shining example of potency in Thedas. There are several ways to build it out, depending on whether you prefer dealing massive damage or speccing into being a tank, but all work well while completing the game’s many quests.

With all of that in mind, this is our breakdown of the best way to build a Warrior in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

Best Warrior build in Dragon Age: The Veilguard

The Warrior is the class in Dragon Age: The Veilguard that offers the most different ways to play, with severable viable approaches on the table. In its most basic sense, players can switch between a sword and shield or a two-handed weapon, with the latter doing more damage but considerably slower. Certain two-handed builds also allow for high stagger damage to quickly delete enemies with takedowns.

In our recommended approach, we generally stick with sword and shield to take advantage of some incredibly potent abilities in the Warrior’s arsenal. The innate tankiness of the class should mean that you won’t need to mitigate extensively for incoming damage and can instead focus on maximizing output.

Though the class is obviously melee-focused, the core of our build centers on throwing our shield to deal big damage in both single-target and group settings. Alongside this, maximizing critical hit chance and lowering enemy resistance will allow you to squeeze out every ounce of damage.

The Mage and Rogue can use their superior movement to stay clear of enemy damage in The Veilguard. Conversely, your best bet on the Warrior is well-timed parries, with the advantage here being more significant attack windows against normal-sized enemies.

Best specialization

• Best specialization: Reaper

Warriors have three specializations available to them, unlocking at Level 20 (the same as the Mage and Rogue). The Reaper spec tree leans further into the shield throw approach to combat, adding a nice mix of leech and general buffs into the equation.

Slayer is heavily focused on two-handed weapon play, prioritizing huge single-hit damage procs over everything else. The final option is the Champion tree, which borrows from the fantasy of the Grey Wardens to wield the shield again, as well as supporting the party more generally.

We recommend going with the Reaper spec, as it’s easily the most potent damage option of the three right now. Necrotic damage is also proving to be pretty spectacular compared to burning or freezing enemies, so this also lends itself to taking advantage of that.

Best skills and abilities

• Necrotic abilities: Reaper, Spectral Bulwark and Bloody Advance

Our general gameplay loop as a Reaper Warrior revolves around bouncing shield throws to deal massive damage. The Shield Volley trait in the core section of the Warrior tree makes this possible, and it isn’t unusual to hit for up to 7000 damage, depending on enemy resistances and critical hits.

The immense prowess of Necrotic Damage allows it to play a central role for us as Warriors, and all three of our active rotation abilities output damage of this type. The first of these abilities is Reaper, which calls for a spectral scythe to sweep through enemies in an arc in front of the player.

The next is Spectral Bulwark, which places a barrier between the enemy and our Warrior. The third choice for most players should be Bloody Advance, which throws a fan of blades that seek out enemies, an ability that works best when facing groups of enemies.

Dexerto/Bioware

As well as being excellent abilities in their own right, they synergize very well when used in combination with each other, or our Shield Throw. By taking the trait Unyielding Focus, we gain the immovable trait when casting Spectral Bulwark. This stops enemies from interrupting our Shield Throw charging and makes fights a lot safer.

Bloody Advance applies Sundered and impales enemies with crystals that explode when the enemy is subsequently hit with a Shield Toss. Reaper detonates Weakened enemies and applies Siphoned, which effectively acts as life steal for the player.

Our chosen Ultimate is Spirit Storm, and this also operates as a life steal, becoming increasingly potent when more enemies step into its area of effect.

Despite all of those spectacular, explosive abilities being great fun to play around with, the Shield Throw is what the build is all about. In many cases, you will find yourself able to output higher DPS just by using your attacks, rather than wasting time channeling abilities.

Best stats and gear

• Necrotic Damage
• Stagger
• Rage Generation

There is a ton of different gear to pick up in Dragon Age, and the right choice depends on its rarity, which will directly define exactly how powerful it is. For our Warrior build, the primary stat to build into would be additional Necrotic Damage.

A good example of this would be the Dark Shard Legendary Longsword, which works brilliantly in tandem with the Necropolis Defender shield. Both add directly to Necrotic Damage, with the former also applying the Necrosis status effect to enemies on a critical hit.

As a Warrior, any boost you can provide to straight-up Physical damage will also work really well and you should quickly see tangible improvements to outgoing damage. Lastly, Stagger is a really powerful tool that you can rely on for quick, high-damage hits and executes.

For armor, the Hall of Valor is an excellent source of gear once you have the requisite Level 4 rep to trade high-level gear with the merchant. The Extravagant Plate unique armor is on sale there and it offers a massive buff to ability output and defense, instantly transforming the Warrior into an unkillable monster.

The Diminish Rune also works very well, weakening all enemies around the player. This then leaves them open to further detonations from Reaper, or by using one of our companions to achieve the same effect, as explained in the next section.

Best companions

• Neve Gallus
• Taash

The Warrior is so self-sufficient that you can afford to put all of your companion resources into producing the most damage possible. As such, you’re best off looking for those who synergize well with the player, as well as each other, for maximum impact.

As such, Neve is our favorite choice to complement this Captain America-style shield-tossing build. Not only can she detonate the Sundered we inflict with Bloody Advance, but she’s also able to apply Weakened, allowing us to then detonate that status with Reaper.

Taash is a great foil for Neve as she gives us another way to detonate her Weakened foes, which comes in particularly useful when you run out of Rage.

That’s our complete guide to building the ultimate Warrior in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. If you fancy seeing how the other half live, we have also prepared guides for the game’s other two classes – Mage and Rogue.