The Champion is one of the three specializations available for the Warrior class in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Renowned for their seething fury and powerful fire-based attacks, Champions employ shields in conjunction with their primary weapons, allowing them to absorb damage while delivering substantial damage to foes at the same time.
This guide will explore the optimal Warrior Champion build in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. We’ll discuss everything from the ideal faction and race to the best equipment, including weapons, runes, and beyond.
Warrior Champion Build Overview
This build leverages the Champion’s focus on fire and flame-centric combat. The selected weapons, shield, and gear are designed to enhance these key traits, enabling you to maximize both your damage output and utility in battle.
- Faction: Grey Wardens
- Race: Qunari
- Active Skills: Blight Bane, Fury of the Forge, Driving Kick, Whirlwind, Cleaving Strike
- Ultimate: Flashing Fist and Warden’s Fire
- Trait: Shield Volley, Explosive Toss, Reverb
- Companions: Davrin and Taash
- Gear: Spellblade Longsword, Fade Touched Bulwark, Emberborn Shard, Stinging Blow, Champions Brilliant Regalia, Warden’s Strap, Sightless Skull, Andraste’s Will, and Unburnable Band
- Runes: Besiege, Regroup, and Defy
Best Faction and Race
For a Warrior Champion build in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the Grey Wardens faction is the ideal choice. This faction provides enhanced damage output and increased defense, aligning perfectly with the playstyle of both the class and the Champion specialization.
Furthermore, it offers increased damage against Darkspawn while boosting your faction strength earn rate. Though races do not offer any specific bonuses, we recommend choosing the Qunari for a more compelling role-playing experience.
Best Abilities and Level Progression
You can unlock the Champion specialization when you reach level 20 in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. After that, you’ll be able to equip three active skills. We suggest selecting the following:
Levels 1-10
Initially, you should concentrate on acquiring Fury of the Forge, your primary ability. This skill inflicts 366 fire damage and ignites enemies in flames. At this moment, you will likely have Driving Kick, which can provide some breathing room and push back enemies when you’re overwhelmed.
Next, focus on obtaining Whirlwind; this skill unleashes a whirlwind of steel that harms all foes in its path and concludes with a powerful final strike. Afterward, secure the Flashing Fist ultimate, which delivers 2,336 physical damage across four shockwaves.
Levels 10-20
Replace Driving Kick with Cleaving Strike. This ability inflicts over 500 physical damage in a wide arc, along with applying bleeding damage on enemies. Keep all other skills intact, swapping out your ultimate for Warden’s Fire at level 20. This ability deals 2,196 fire damage and ignites foes.
Level 20+
At this point, maintain your current abilities, except for Fury of the Forge, which you should replace with Blight Bane from the Warrior specialization tree. This skill inflicts double the damage but has a delay before activation, so you’ll need to refine your timing.
Best Traits to Choose
You can choose one trait that enables you to execute special maneuvers. For the Warrior Champion, we recommend Shield Volley during levels 1-10. This allows you to perform a shield toss and attack, which can bounce up to three times between enemies, dealing damage with each impact.
From levels 10-20, choose Explosive Toss, making your charged shield throw explode upon impact. Finally, at level 20+, select Reverb, which inflicts fire damage to your enemies when you execute a Perfect Defense. This skill can be challenging to master, but it’s extremely rewarding when performed accurately, and it becomes available in the Champion specialization tree.
Recommended Companions
The ideal companions for the Warrior Champion build are Taash and Davrin, as their abilities complement your build:
- Davrin: Davrin is an excellent choice due to his tank-like qualities and reliance on fire-based attacks. His abilities, like Heroic Strike, can inflict up to 200 fire damage while breaking enemy guards, providing invaluable backup. Additionally, his In War, Victory skill grants temporary invulnerability, enhancing your tanking abilities further.
- Taash: Taash also utilizes fire attacks, such as Fire Breath and Spitfire, complementing your damage output. Her Dragonfire Strike is particularly effective as it applies burning damage and dazes enemies.
Top Gear Choices
In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, you have nine gear slots available. For the Warrior Champion build, we recommend the following items:
| Main-Hand Weapon | Spellblade Longsword |
| Off-Hand Weapon / Shield | Fade Touched Bulwark |
| Two-Handed Weapon | Emberborn Shard |
| Helm/Vitaar | Stinging Blow |
| Armor | Champions Brilliant Regalia |
| Belt | Warden’s Strap |
| Amulet | Sightless Skull |
| Ring Slot 1 | Andraste’s Will |
| Ring Slot 2 | Unburnable Band |
Spellblade Longsword
The Spellblade Longsword is the top weapon for this build, offering an additional +40 fire damage when upgraded to Rare quality. The weapon ignites upon defeating an enemy, greatly enhancing your damage potential.
As you upgrade to Epic and Legendary status, you gain half of your fire resistance as extra fire damage output and can apply burning to charged attacks while the sword is ignited.
Fade Touched Bulwark
The Fade Touched Bulwark is an exceptional shield known for its outstanding defensive capabilities. It further enhances your playstyle by pulling enemies closer when you execute a perfect parry. When combined with the Reverb trait, this can lead to massive damage output.
Emberborn Shard
Though two-handed weapons aren’t strictly necessary, we suggest using the Emberborn Shard, a powerful axe. This weapon allows you to deal +20% weapon damage for each burning stack on the target; it’s a game changer when paired with your fire abilities and companion attacks.
Additionally, the axe can apply the burning status effect on enemies every time you defeat one.
Stinging Blow
The Stinging Blow Vitaar enhances your fire damage significantly. It boosts your flaming weapon damage and duration by +25% each, doubles the flaming weapon damage against already burning enemies, and grants an extra stack upon executing a final blow with a burning weapon. This synergizes well with the Emberborn Shard.
Champions Brilliant Regalia
This armor is tailored for fire resistance, making you immune to burning damage while also providing +25% fire resistance and +5% max fire resistance. It inflicts 150 fire damage and ignites enemies when your health is critically low.
Warden’s Strap
The Warden’s Strap belt not only provides 525 healing but also ignites nearby enemies every time you use a potion. Additionally, it boosts your fire damage by +15%.
Sightless Skull
This amulet enhances your control abilities by granting +20% damage and +25% stagger from control abilities. It improves precision when staggering enemies and grants 1 Mana per 50 staggers caused by control abilities.
Andraste’s Will
Andraste’s Will ring increases the duration of fire effects by +50% and grants an extra burning stack to your attacks.
Unburnable Band
Lastly, the Unburnable Band enhances your burning damage and boosts the damage dealt to burning enemies by +20%. It also provides another burning stack and extends all burning effect durations by +25%.
Best Runes
Runes enhance your abilities and build in various aspects. You can equip up to three runes at once. For the Warrior Champion Build, we recommend:
- Regroup: This rune refreshes your companions’ skills and abilities on cooldown while adding +10 damage to their actions.
- Besiege: This rune enables you to penetrate through armored foes, granting +10% damage against barriers for 20 seconds.
- Defy: This rune enhances your tanking abilities by allowing you to nullify 10% of incoming damage from your target. Additionally, it reduces damage taken by 10% when your health is low.