Dragon Age: The Veilguard Warrior Guide - The best Warrior builds for Rook

Whether they're wielding the classic sword and shield or the equally classic two-handed great weapon, Warriors are at the core of Dragon Age: The Veilguard take on medieval fantasy (and frankly, pretty much every other take on medieval fantasy, too). That said, the Warrior's job changes a bit in the context of The Veilguard's revamped approach to combat and fights in a party. Read on for some detailed tips on how best to build and play a Warrior Rook in our Dragon Age: The Veilguard Warrior class guide!

A Warrior Rook fights on the front lines directly, using either a one-handed weapon and shield to balance offense and defense or using a heavy two-handed weapon to sweep away foes with might blows. Warriors mainly deal physical damage, though each Warrior specialization and several abilities can put out large amounts of elemental damage. The Warrior also has access to ranged attacks, though these are mainly for dealing damage while the Warrior closes the distance, rather than as a main source of damage output.

How Do Warriors Work in Dragon Age: The Veilguard?

Warriors build Rage in a yellow gauge by dealing damage as wellas taking damage. While individual hits and ability uses don't build up as much Rage as Rogue dodging or parrying to build Momentum, the sheer amount of attacks you'll put out just in the normal course of combat will fill your Rage very quickly. Unlike previous Dragon Age games and other titles with a focus on multiple classes and party combat, The Veilguard allows Warrior builds to put out tremendous amounts of damage. In fact, compared to most other RPGs, the Warrior's role as a tank is rather diminished. In fact, Warrior Rook has no dedicated taunting skills at all, though in practice this makes little difference since most enemies will focus fire on Rook on their own.

When using a sword and shield, Warrior Rook has access to both a block and parry ability, and can bash enemies with their shield as a heavy attack. The flipside is that Rook's normal attacks tend to have smaller arcs and a more linear area of effect. Meanwhile, the two-handed weapon is great for large, arcing high-damage strikes that hit multiple enemies.

Warriors also have some great, easy to access knockback moves, allowing Rook to push enemies over cliffs, killing them instantly. Even some bosses are vulnerable to these techniques!

Warrior Rook also has a default ability and Ultimate unlocked and accessible at all times:

• Driving Kick - A incredible drop kick attack that launches Rook feet-first at an enemy, dealing high damage, stagger, and knockback. Your friend wherever there's a high place to knock enemies from.
• Flashing Fists (Ultimate) - A powerful AOE ultimate that causes heavy physical damage in an area around Rook.

What's the Best Warrior Specialization in Dragon Age: The Veilguard?

The skill trees for each Dragon Age: The Veilguard specialization naturally trend towards favoring a specific style of play, so building towards one specialization or another will give you the most damage when playing towards that style. While you will be using both weapon sets in combat regardless of your choice, the Slayer favors two-handed weapons, the Champion favors the sword-and-shield, while the Reaper favors the ranged shield toss and life-draining abilities.

Specializations are accessible at Level 20, and each Specialization has two branches to choose from. You can choose just one branch at level 30, but at level 40, the second branch unlocks, allowing you to obtain all the Specialization skill nodes if you choose.

Due to the placement of skills, each specialization favors certain elemental types and ability types. Even when you hit the level cap of 50, and after getting all of the Fen'harel Statues, you won't have enough points to unlock every node in the skill grid, so you'll always be specialized in one way or another.

Here are the ability types. Some abilities may have more than one type tag, meaning perks and passives will apply both their effects.

• Projectile - Fires a projectile of some kind that moves toward the target at speed.
• Strike - Draws a line between the target and the caster, hitting instantly if there's no obstruction (like "hitscan" in shooters)
• Smash - Ability that explodes, doing collateral damage to enemies in a small area around the target
• Area - Defines an area on the ground that's then affected by the spell (aka an AOE circle or a zone in other games)
• Control - An ability that hinders targets' movement in some way
• Duration - An ability with effects that linger over time (this is different from applying a DOT Affliction like Burning or Necrosis)

Lords of Fortune Slayer

A Rook following the path of the Slayer is the classical great weapon smash-and-sweep specialist. They fight with an extremely aggressive style and go ham on foes, whaling away with a massive weapon and dealing extreme knockback and stagger damage.

Slayers:

• Favor physical damage, and abilities with the Smash and Strike types, with some Area types also easily accessed from the tree.
• Inflicts immense Stagger damage.
• Charge up their biggest hits to unlock even more damage and mayhem.
• Love hanging out with Mage companions who can repeatedly apply Weakened to detonate.
• Can strip enemy armor gauges like they're not there.
• Balance their high weapon damage with ability damage by favoring medium armor.
• Love to slice down crowds with Whirlwind and augment their damage by triggering buffs on Takedowns.
• Relies on the party for healing and additional buffing abilities, with potions as a backup.

The Slayer is the perfect specialization to just wade in and start swinging, with little concern for advanced control tactics. Opening fights with Heroic Leap or Driving Kick starts things off with a big slam, and can eliminate initial waves in a single blow. Their signature ultimate, For Gold And Glory, goes off like a nuclear bomb and has the largest default area of effect of any AOE ultimate.

One wrinkle is that at high difficulty levels, the Slayer is particularly squishy, and favoring two-handed weapons means that they don't have easy access to a reliable block ability. Their ranged abilities are also somewhat perfunctory, making barrier-equipped enemies more of a pain to deal with. Finally, Slayers also have some trouble accessing all the Arcane Detonations they can get, needing to go out of their way to unlock abilities that apply Overwhelmed and only getting to detonate Weakened in their tree without branching out.

Mourn Watch Reaper

The Mourn Watch might be better associated with necromancy-specialized Mages and undead, but the Reaper draws on their mastery of life and death to tap into a surprisingly tanky life-drain specialization. Reapers can engage at a relatively longer distance compared to Slayers and Champions, thanks to their access to abilities that throw out projectiles like they're a ranged class and their advantageous use of the shield toss.

Reapers:

• Love Necrotic damage and the Necrosis and Siphoned debuffs.
• Can heal most of the damage they take via life-draining abilities, avoiding or blocking the rest.
• Have great compatibility with Mage companions that can detonate Sundered, and Rogue companions that can detonate Overwhelmed.
• Can apply Sundered and detonate Weakened while concentrating skill points in their tree, with some synergy with Control abilities that apply Overwhelmed nearby.
• Can boost their ranged damage by mixing armor pieces and equipping the Eclectic Armorer perk.
• Are the kings of Duration attacks, with a side order of Projectile attacks.
• Are born to delete Undead enemies.

Reapers live to kill and kill to live, thanks to their repertoire of abilities that apply Siphoned and last a long time, dealing Necrotic damage.

Reapers are also particularly fond of the Shield Toss ranged attack,a nd can make the ability bounce multiple times between whole groups of enemies. They have strong synergy with Mage companions like Bellara and Neve that can lock enemies in their zones of death, as well as with Lucanis, who can take advantage of his skills to push his Necrotic damage to new heights. Their Necrotic damage focus works great against Undead and Antaam, two fairly common enemy types, although they do suffer from the fact that Darkspawn resist Necrotic, keeping them from achieving peak effectiveness against some of the game's most common enemies.

Grey Warden Champion

The ideal archetype of a tanky, armored Warrior, the Champion blends defense and offense while wearing the bulkiest armor and bashing foes with the heaviest shield one can carry.

Champions master the Shield Bash and learn to use their skills and military training to turn any point near them into a burning hell for their enemies, particularly Darkspawn.

Champions:

• Turn defense into offense by focusing on using the shield as both a source of protection and damage output.
• Love stacking powerful buffs by using and abusing the perfect defense mechanic.
• Throw out huge amounts of Fire damage that coats entire areas in burning pitch.
• Are the masters of Area and Control abilities, with many nodes near the specialization bearing those tags.
• Are the number one best class to go up against Darkspawn with.
• Love Heavy Armor and its ability to take hits and resist getting disrupted or knocked around.
• Have slightly lower abilty damage, using clever passives to capitalize on the Burning debuff and and augmenting weapon strikes.

Fighting a Grey Warden Champion is kind of like walking into a raging forest fire: You basically just burn alive trying to get closer. Champions have excellent close range Area and Control abilities at their disposal, and extreme synergy with Fire damage and the Burning debuff. Anyone that reaches the Champion will also find themselves unable to deal any damage, thanks to the Champion's mastery of Perfect Defense. Champions are excellent fighters against Darkspawn and almost any enemy that's easy to parry.

This means that they're a bit more gear-dependent than the other two classes, as some of their best synergies will depend on finding the right weapons and accessories to fully capitalize on their frequent use of the Perfect Defense mechanic.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard Warrior Builds and Tips

Due in part to the slightly open nature of Dragon Age: The Veilguard and its exploration zones, it's not so efficient to give players a step-by-step build, because more often than not, one will want to respec and reassign skill points based on different threats as well as different or new gear setups. Instead, we'll recommend key sets of skills to target along with battle strategies to take advantage of their strengths.

As a general rule for all Warrior Builds, try to select passives that improve Rage generation and Physical Resistance whenever available. Alternatively, certain armor pieces like the Field-Commander's Helm can also negate the need to generate and spend Rage at all, converting Rage abilities into cooldown-based ones.

Even with Perfect Defense and parries, Warriors won't avoid taking damage, and some high-level enemies like Ogres and Dragons hit very hard even on default difficulty. It's best to minimize the damage you do take as much as possible to reduce your reliance on healing companions and potions.

Grey Warden Burninating Champion

This is a classic sword-and-board archetype with particular emphasis on military coordination. The Grey Warden Champion parries hits with ease by relying on Perfect Defense, which can trigger big buffs that last longer thanks to synergistic passives. They also carpet the battlefield in flame to burn out the evil and set off Flaming Weapons and apply Burning to enemies.

Gear pieces like an upgraded Fade-Touched Bulwark shield and Spellbound Longsword will be great weapons for a Champion, and accessories like the Warden's Signet will further enhance the Champion's emphasis on fire damage and burning application.

Ability Loadout:

• Titan Stomp, Blight Bane (or Groundbreaker), Grappling Spear, Warden's Fire Ultimate

Key Skills (Non-Specialty)

• Counterblow - Allows the Champion to add powerful counterattacks whenever they pull off a Perfect Defense or parry.
• Focused Retaliation - Adds the Precision (automatic crit on the next attack) as an extra reward for landing a Perfect Defense.
• Titan Stomp - A powerful Area Control AOE Overwhelm-applying stomp that knocks enemies around and inflicts huge stagger. An excellent crowd control ability that's useful at every stage of the game.
• Return to Sender - Your Perfect Defense and parries will reflect enemy projectiles. Excellent for when you're fighting in melee and being targeted by enemy mages or archers. Just remember to hit the button before they land!
• Grappling Spear - A single-target Control Projectile ability that applies Overwhelm and hauls a target toward you while doing Fire Damage. Pair this with a Rogue buddy that can detonate your Overwhelm to take advantage of an Arcane Detonation AOE.
• Unbroken Finale - Enhances the shield strike combo to add a powerful knockback to the end of the chain.

Key Skills (Specialty)

• Ultimate: Warden's Fire - A massive Fire AOE that applies Burning to enemies.
• Blight Bane - a shower of Area Projectile grenades that detonates Weakened and applies Burning to foes.
• Reverb - A Fire shockwave emits from Rook when landing a Perfect Defense.

Notable Passives and Enhancements:

• Heavy Armor Mastery, Falter, Collateral Damage, Third Degree, Reinforcement, Breathing Room, Explosive Anger, Sly Strike

Slayer Physical Striker

The Slayer is a physical damage killing machine that jumps into the fray with Heroic Leap and pretty much starts swinging and spamming abilities until everything is either dead or staggered. In the latter case, using Takedowns will finish off many enemies not outright dead or open up large bosses to the coup de grace.

Anything not killed immediately by the Slayer's opening moves will suffer through a Whirlwind of heavy physical blows, and eventually, the bomb drop that is the For Gold and Glory Ultimate.

The Slayer's one wrinkle is a relative dearth of elemental damage in their strongest abilities, but there aren't any enemies resistant to physical damage, so it's less of a problem than it looks like.

Ability Loadout: Whirlwind, Cleaving Strike (or Titan Stomp), Heroic Leap (or Driving Kick), For Gold and Glory Ultimate (or Flashing Fists)

Key Skills (Non-Specialty)

• Whirlwind - The classic heavy Area Smash ability used by many a fantasy barbarian, Whirlwind staggers and disrupts any enemies in a short radius around Rook, inflicting multiple hits.
• Cleaving Strike - a knockback Area Strike that pushes enemies away and inflicts Bleeding. A potentially strong synergy with companions like Lucanis and certain accessories that boost damage on bleeding or afflicted enemies.
• Titan Stomp - The most easily accessible Area Control ability and many Slayers' only Overwhelm-applying move, Titan Stomp pairs excellently with the Slayer's other abilities.
• Flames of Victory - a powerful passive that triggers Flaming Weapons when Rook performs a Takedown. The sheer amount of stagger a Slayer can output basically guarantees frequent activation of this passive.

Key Skills (Specialty)

• Heroic Leap - Your bread and butter opener, this ability has both Strike and Smash tags, helping it benefit greatly from a huge number of passives you can pick up along the way. It also detonates Weakened
• Arc of Destruction - This node adds a powerful follow-up to your sprinting attacks, a great extra strike for when you close the distance.
• Violent Catharsis - Any Rage you spend comes back as healing, giving you a great avenue for healing outside the usual sources.
• Ultimate: For Gold and Glory - A huge bomb with extreme stagger and a massive AOE.

Notable Passives and Enhancements:

• Triple Threat, Medium Armor Mastery, Shieldbreaker, Overhand Smash, Incite Violence, Fighting Dirty

Reaper Vampiric Sniper

It might seem odd to use "Sniper" on a Warrior archetype, but that's what the Reaper can do compared to the Champion and Slayer. The Reaper can Shield Toss with wild abandon, bouncing it their metal plate off multiple enemies and building Rage while it does, while using abilities to inflict Necrosis and do Necrotic damage that Siphons health from enemies.

Up close, the Reaper applies Bleed and relies on heavy Damage-over-Time to drain enemies dry, keeping the Reaper topped off on health as they die.

Ability Loadout: Deadly Ground (or Spectral Bulwark), Bloody Advance, Reaper (or Titan Stomp), Spirit Storm Ultimate

Key Skills (Non-Specialty)

• Shield Volley - Bounce the shield off a single enemy multiple times, quickly stripping Barrier and building Rage.
• Titan Stomp - Your main Area Control ability, this pushes enemies away and applies Overwhelm. Picking it up also opens up several Projectile-enhancing passives along the way.
• Staggering Toss - Improves the Stagger potential of the shield toss.
• Bloody Advance - A Sundered-applying ranged attack that also synergizes with charged Shield Toss to cause high Necrotic damage.
• Spectral Bulwark - A useful Necrotic Duration Smash damage aura that protects Rook from melee enemies and staggers them.
• Master Throw - further improves your Charged Shield Toss
• Deadly Ground - a useful Area Duration ability that hits enemies with Necrotic damage and gives Rook Enhanced Damage so long as she remains in the field.

Key Skills (Specialty)

• Reaper - A Duration Strike that detonates Weakened and applies Siphon, feeding Rook with an enemy's health.
• Death's Throw -Turns the Shield Toss into a major source of Necrotic damage.
• Living Decay - Any Necrotic damage you deal heals a trickle of health, ultimately making this one of the most powerful self-healing passives in the game.
• Let it Linger - Turn the Reaper into a machine that applies debuffs with every shield toss.
• Ultimate: Spirit Storm - A poweful whirlwind of Necrotic damage that siphons health from enemies it gathers and passes over.

Notable Passives and Enhancements:

• Devastation, Perfect Throw, Death's Blessing, Eclectic Armorer, Shot Chaser, Double Shot, Desperation, Explosive Toss, Time Management, Salt in the Wound

Check out more Dragon Age: The Veilguard guides via our guide hub!