Champion is one of three specializations for the Warrior class in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. The champion is known for their fiery rage and deadly fire attacks. They wield shields alongside their main weapons, letting them tank damage and deal damage simultaneously.
This guide will look at the best Warrior Champion build in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Below, we’ve covered everything from the best faction and race to the best gear, including weapons, runes, and more.
Warrior Champion Build Overview
Our build draws on the Champion’s inherent fire and flame-centric combat. The weapons, shield, and gear perfectly complement their integral traits, allowing you to maximize your damage output and utility.
- 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
The best faction to choose for a Warrior Champion build in Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the Grey Wardens. This faction grants you increased damage output and increased defense, going hand in hand with the class’ and the Champion specialization’s playstyle.
This faction also grants you increased damage against Darkspawn and increases your faction strength earn rate. While races don’t grant you any bonuses, we recommend using the Qunari purely for role-playing.
Best Abilities And Level Progression
You can branch into the Champion specialization once you hit level 20 in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. After this, you’ll be able to equip three active skills. We recommend going with the following:
Level 1-10
At this stage, your focus should be on getting Fury of the Forge, your main ability. It deals 366 fire damage and inflicts burning on enemies. You will likely have Driving Kick at this point, which helps give you some breathing space and send enemies flying back. Use this when you get piled on.
Now shift your focus on getting Whirlwind; the ability is pretty self-explanatory and unleashes a whirlwind of steel that damages everything it hits and ends with a final massive blow. And after that, get the Flashing Fist ultimate, which does 2,336 physical damage in 4 shockwaves.
Level 10-20
Swap out Driving Kick for Cleaving Strike. This deals over 500 physical damage in a wide arc and inflicts bleeding damage on enemies. Keep the rest as is except the Ultimate. At level 20, you will gain access to the Champion skill tree, so swap out your ultimate for Warden’s Fire. This deals a ton of damage at 2,196 fire and applies burning to your enemies.
Level 20+
At this stage, we’ll keep our abilities as is except Fury of the Forge, which we’ll swap out with Blight Bane from the Warrior specialization tree. This deals twice as much damage but there is a delay before the ability triggers. So you’ll have to work on your timing.
Best Traits You Can Choose
You have the option to pick one trait that lets you pull off a special maneuver. For the Warrior Champion, we recommend going with Shield Volley at levels 1-10. Strike a shield toss with a shield attack, and it will bounce up to 3 times between an enemy and deal damage with each bounce.
From levels 10-20, go with Explosive Toss, which makes your charged shield throw explode on impact. And at level 20+, go with Reverb, which lets you inflict fire damage on your enemies if you initiate a Perfect Defense. This can be tough to master but is very rewarding if executed properly. This is unlocked in the Champion specialization tree.
Recommended Companions
The best companions to pick for the Warrior Champion Build are Taash and Davrin, as they both synergize well with our build:
- Davrin: Davrin synergizes well with the Warrior Champion, given how he is also a tanky fighter who mainly uses fire-based attacks. Abilities like Heroic Strike can deal up to 200 fire damage while also breaking their guard, making him an excellent backup. Other abilities like In War, Victory grant you invulnerability for a short period, further enhancing your tanking capabilities.
- Taash: Taash also uses fire attacks like Fire Breath and Spitfire, allowing you to continue damage build-up. Her Dragonfire Strike ability is particularly useful as it applies burning damage to enemies and dazes them.
Top Gear Choices
You have nine gear slots in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. 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 best weapon for this build because it lets you deal an additional +40 fire damage; when upgraded to Rare Rarity. It automatically catches on fire whenever you kill an enemy.
Reaching Epic and Legendary status adds half your fire resistance as additional fire damage output and lets you apply burning on charged attacks while the flaming weapon is active.
Fade Touched Bulwark
The Fade Touched Bulwark is an excellent shield as it provides some of the best defense in the game. However, it works with this class because it can pull enemies close to you when you execute a perfect parry. When coupled with the Reverb trait, this has the potential to deal an insane amount of damage.
Emberborn Shard
While two-handed weapons aren’t necessary, we recommend filling out your gear slot with the Emberborn Shard, a great axe. This axe allows you to apply +20% weapon damage per burning stack on target; this is a game changer when coupled with your fire and burning-based attacks and companions.
This great axe also lets you apply the burning status effect to your enemies whenever you defeat one enemy.
Stinging Blow
The Stinging Blow Vitaar for the Warrior Champion grants you several fire-based bonuses, letting you maximize your damage output. Firstly, it increases your flaming weapon damage and duration by +25% each. Secondly, it doubles flaming weapon damage against enemies who are already burning.
Lastly, it grants you an additional stack whenever you execute a final attack on an enemy with a burning weapon. This ability goes hand in hand with the Emberborn Shard.
Champions Brilliant Regalia
For the armor, we’re going with the Champions Brilliant Regalia. This armor grants you fire resistance in several ways. Firstly, it makes you immune to burning while granting you +25% fire resistance and +5% max fire resistance.
Secondly, it lets you do 150 fire damage and apply burning to enemies whenever you reach critically low health levels.
Warden’s Strap
Warden’s Strap is another fire-centric gear in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. It grants you 525 healing but also applies to burn nearby enemies on every potion use. This belt also increases your fire damage by +15%.
Sightless Skull
The Sightless Skull amulet grants several bonuses to your control abilities. Firstly, it gives you +20% control ability damage and +25% stagger from control abilities. It also grants you precision when you stagger an enemy with a control ability and grants you 1 Mana per 50 staggers dealt by control abilities.
Andraste’s Will
Andraste’s Will is a ring that increases your burning duration by +50%. Additionally, it also grants you 1 more burning stack.
Unburnable Band
The last piece of gear, the Unburnable Band, increases your burning damage and the damage you deal to burning enemies by +20%. It also grants you an additional burning stack and increases the duration of all burning attacks by +25%.
Best Runes
Runes accentuate your ability and build in different ways. You can select up to three runes at a time. For the Warrior Champion Build, we recommend the following:
- Regroup: This Rune refreshes your companions’ skills and abilities on a cooldown while adding +10 damage to their abilities.
- Besiege: Besiege essentially lets you break through armored enemies by granting you +10% damage against a barrier for 20 seconds.
- Defy: Defy works to enhance your tanking capabilities as it lets you negate all damage from your current target for 10%. You also take 10% less damage when you’re at low health.
