Dragon Age: The Veilguard - Best Slayer Build (Skills, Companions, Gear)

By Jorge A. Aguilar "Aggy"

Published Nov 9, 2024

Followed

Thread

Custom Image by: Katarina Cimbaljevic

Quick Links

Best Skills For a Slayer Build
- The Skills You Need To Focus On

Best Gear For a Slayer Build
- You Can Look For Really Good Gear

Best Party Combos For a Slayer
- The Right Party Makes All The Difference

The Slayer Build in Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a specialization for the Warrior class that is a relentless, damage-focused powerhouse. This essentially sacrifices defensive capabilities in favor of maximizing offensive potential. This makes it great for players who don't want to deal with all the strategies and just want to defeat an enemy in just a few blows. This is a change in what the Reaver class was, and it was more like a class that caused enemies to get hurt when they tried attacking the player.

This is supposed to be the high-risk, high-reward playstyle that Reavers used in previous Dragon Age games. However, it seems like this was changed to focus more on offense-only attacks. It's a simplification of the old class, and this change makes it easier for players to use it effectively. This means it should be easy to pick up and use with no problem, as it's pretty simple.

Best Skills For a Slayer Build

The Skills You Need To Focus On

Dragon Age: The Veilguard Rook main character looking at Crossroads hub area with party

The Slayer specialization in Dragon Age: The Veilguard thrives on maximizing damage output. To truly dominate as a Slayer, you'll need a skillset focused on maximizing stagger damage, detonating status effects, and delivering swift, powerful blows. This means your attacks must be able to destroy your enemy quickly so that you can move on to the next one before you start taking damage. Luckily, there are a lot of skills that help with this.

Bellara from Dragon Age The Veilguard next to other images of her.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard - The Best Build For Rogue

The Best Build For a Rogue in Dragon Age: The Veilguard will revolve around your chosen playstyle and the specialization you want to pick.

Posts 1

Skill	What It Does
Heroic Leap	This skill is a must-have for its ability to detonate Weakened, deal significant damage, and knock enemies back. It's an excellent tool for starting fights, breaking enemy formations, and setting up follow-up attacks.
Driving Kick	Driving Kick's strength lies in its ability to detonate Weakened and stagger enemies; it also doesn't have a cooldown.
Whirlwind	This AoE attack delivers high stagger and damage, making it ideal for clearing crowds. It's a powerful choice for taking on large groups of enemies and creating space for yourself.
For Gold and Glory (Ultimate)	This ultimate ability delivers massive AoE damage and stagger, which leads to swift ends to encounters.
Charged Smash	This ive ability turns all your Smash skills into Charged Attacks, boosting their damage and stagger potential. You can unleash devastating blows when you combine this with ives that improve Charged Attacks.

that you won't be able to use every special move all the time. These are normally best used at the very start of each engagement. If you're not the type to use strategy, which you likely aren't if you use this particular specialization, then using all your special moves first weakens your enemies by a good deal. It will often just take them out quickly, so you can basically overwhelm them with just one party member.

If you're not happy with your damage output or something, feel free to respec Rook in DA: The Veilguard. This way, you're always doing your best.

Best Gear For a Slayer Build

You Can Look For Really Good Gear

A Rook from Dragon Age the veilguard with the skill tree in the background — Custome Image by Akshay Bhalla

The best gear for a Slayer build in Dragon Age: The Veilguard focuses on maximizing damage, stagger, and rage generation while mitigating the build's inherent lack of defense. This gear setup prioritizes damage output and rage generation for a Slayer build, maximizing their ability to quickly deal significant damage and stagger enemies. The Woodsong Cleaver or Blight Killer gives a solid damage boost, while the Captain's Heater, with its stagger enchantment, helps disrupt enemies and set up for takedowns. Really, you can mix and match and just use the below as a base to build on.

Gear Slot	What To Equip	Why You Should
Main	Woodsong Cleaver or Blight Killer	Provides a good balance of damage and stagger, and the Blight Killer option offers additional bonus damage against Darkspawn.
Off-Hand	Captain's Heater	Maximizes stagger potential, which is crucial for setting up Takedowns and keeping enemies disrupted.
Alt Weapon	Winged Glaive	A solid option for ranged damage, but prioritize a weapon that aligns with your companion's synergies.
Helmet	Carastes Double-Hat	Offers a much-needed defense boost for the Slayer's lack of survivability.
Armor	Brawler's Decorated Leathers	Provides additional defenses, a crucial factor for the Slayer's relatively low survivability.
Belt	Reinforced Binding	While not enchanted, this belt provides a significant boost to defense, making it a valuable choice.
Amulet	Heart of Andraste	Boosts critical strike damage, increasing the Slayer's burst damage potential.
Ring 1	Bleeding Shard	Increases the duration and damage of Necrotic effects, allowing for potent damage-over-time effects.
Ring 2	Amaranthine Loop	Accelerates Rage generation, enabling you to use more abilities more frequently.

This is an RPG, so you'll always find better weapons and gear. It's generally a great idea to just change as better gear comes along.

There's plenty of reasons why you should stick with the gear above, for example, Bleeding Shard increases the duration and damage of necrotic weapons. However, as you level up weapons and find better gear, you will likely find things you'll like to use better. This is an RPG, so never assume you should keep the same weapons or gear in a build. This is an excellent way to have a fantastic meta-type build for those who don't want to do all the work.

Best Party Combos For a Slayer

The Right Party Makes All The Difference

Dragon Age: The Veilguard has eased up on its RPG roots and has become much more open to companions and how to play. However, one thing that's hard to change is that you need certain classes in your party to be your best. This means you play the heavy damage dealer or a tank, so you need a secondary fighter (rogue or warrior), a ranged archer, and a mage. Basically, the best combination of romanceable companions in your party will be the characters below.

Bellara (Veil Jumper), Harding (Scout), and Neve (Detective): This team excels at applying Weakened and Sundered status effects. Bellara and Harding can both apply Sundered with their abilities, and Neve can ively apply Weakened, making you a detonation machine. Harding provides additional ranged DPS and utility with her bow and magical abilities, while Neve's Time Slow and other control spells offer valuable .
Lucanis (Assassin), Taash (Dragon Hunter), and Emmrich (Necromancer): This team offers a blend of damage, , and crowd control. Lucanis strips barriers from enemies, leaving them vulnerable to your attacks. Taash provides powerful up-close combat and crowd control with his axe and abilities, while Emmrich's Necromantic abilities inflict status effects and can even revive fallen allies.

If you prefer certain characters in your party, feel free to switch them out. At the end of the day, you can survive without having some , but the idea needs to be two fighters, a rogue archer, and a mage. This will get you through every puzzle and keep you fighting fit in the worst of battles. If you want more info on companions, watch the video above by Dantics, which shows you what they all look like and how they act. This has worked in every Dragon Age before and will do you well in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

Video Credit: Dantics/YouTube