Best Dragon Age: The Veilguard Spellblade Build

Discover how to create the best Spellblade build for Dragon Age the Veilguard, including faction, skills, companions, level progression, and more!

BioWare’s fourth installment of their hit series, Dragon Age the Veilguard, features deep character customization and build options. Players can earn skill points from level 1 to 50, selecting active, passive, traits, and ultimate abilities. Each protagonist, “Rook,” can bring two party members (companions) in exploration and combat, each with their own skills and equipment.

This guide will walk you through the best Spellblade builds in Dragon Age: The Veilguard and explain critical choices: factions, specialization, companies, skills, and more.

Everything About Spellblade Build in Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Spellblade build in Dragon Age: The Veilguard helps you to tear your enemies down with ease. This build uses fire, burning, electricity, and shock to detonate arcane bombs in combat. This Storm Killer build overwhelm your enemies at close range and fry them out with electric-based abilities. Use lightning magic for devastatingly defenseless and locking down your enemies on a battlefield. Melt your enemies into hot piles of goo with burning and shocked effects while dropping extremely powerful and unrelenting meteors onto their heads.

However, this build is not effective for close range in the game and offers a very complicated combat playstyle. If you want to make your enemies explode and chain lightning onto their friends while all your weapons are permanently shocking them this build is for you.   

Spellblade Build Pros	Spellblade Build Cons
Versatile	Complex Combat
Unique Debuff	Close Range
Great Damage	Combo Dependent

Features and Mechanics for the Build in Dragon Age: The Veilguard

The following list presents all the essential Spellblade Mage Build Features and Mechanics in Dragon Age The Veilguard:

• Arcane Bomb: Arcane Mark builds up over time when you perform Light Attacks with your Orb. It turns into Arcane Bomb, which can be triggered by Heavy Attacks.
• Mana: Mana is the Mage class specific resource that generates automatically overtime.
• Block: Successful blocks will cost the Mage some of their Mana resource, which can get eaten up quickly.
• Heavy Attack: Shot a bolt of energy at your enemy, also used to trigger Arcane Bombs.
• Faction: Shadow Dragons
• Race: Elf
• Active Skills
  • Ability 1: Dark Squall
  • Ability 2: Frost Nova
  • Ability 3: Void Blade
• Ultimate: Thunderous End
• Specialization: Spellblade
• Best Companions: Lucanis, Davrin
• Runes
  • Regroup
  • Crystallized
  • Overflow

Arcane Bomb

In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the Mage class can use their Orb weapon to inflict a target with Arcane Marks by hitting it with light attacks. After enough damage has been dealt, generally after about three hits, the Arcane Mark turns into an Arcane Bomb.

Then, you can use your heavy attack to trigger the bomb into an explosion of damage. This is something you should take advantage of in a close melee fight while you are waiting for you abilities to come back from cooldown.

Mana

Mana is the class resource that Mages generate and use in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and you can see the bar directly below your slotted abilities in the HUD. Some Mage abilities will have an associated cost of Mana, generally two ‘pips’ or more. Furthermore, using a skill will eat up your full bar early on in the game.

Therefore, you will not want to have more than two Mana cost abilities on your bar for the first half of the game. Your Mana bar will grown in size, but this will take time leveling. Additionally, as you level you want to look for passives and traits on the Mage skill tree which will help boost the generation of Mana.

Block

As a Mage you can block in two ways. First, if you are wielding your staff, a block will generate a magical orb of defense that surrounds you. Secondly, if you are using your orb and dagger, you will block with your physical weapon. These can both be triggered by the same block keybind, so don’t worry about swapping between weapons just for a block.

However, successfully blocking an attack will cost some of your Mana resource. Moreover, if you have to block successive attacks, this can entirely use up this precious resource. It’s best to only use a block if you have to. Retreat to range away from enemy mobs and let your mana regenerate.

Heavy Attack

The heavy attack action for Mage’s in Dragon Age: The Veilguard requires a longer animation and cast time, but generates a stronger hit. With your staff, you will cast a powerful charge of elemental magic depending on the damage type of your weapon. On the other hand, with your dual-wield weapons you will make a large slash with your dagger. Additionally, the heavy attack is what triggers the explosion of an Arcane Bomb. Therefore, be strategic about your use of the Heavy Attack and only fire it when you are trying to execute a specific effect like this.

Best Faction

Shadow Dragons is the best faction to choose because the Resourceful bonus grants you faster resource generation. This is a use bonus for any class but is highly recommended for mages with high-damage abilities. You will need a lot of Mana to cast your strongest abilities.

The secondary choice is The Mourn Watch, because of the Acute Afflictions bonus that allows you to apply an additional affliction stack on targets. A mage build can especially benefit from this by using various elemental spells that can inflict burning or chilling. Various abilities can also inflict Overwhelming and Weakening, which companions can detonate.

Below are all the bonuses for the Shadow Dragons and Mourn Watch factions in Dragon Age the Veilguard:

Shadow Dragons Bonuses	Mourn Watch Bonuses
Light in the Dark: gain reputation with the Shadow Dragons more quickly	Recognized Name: Gain reputation with the Mourn Watchers more quickly
Never to Rise: deal increased damage vs. Venatori	Return to the Grave: Deal increased damage vs. Undead and Demons
Resourceful: your class-specific resource regenerates slightly faster	Acute Afflictions: You can apply an additional affliction stack on targets

Factions give you three bonuses in character creation and reputation in Dragon Age: The Veilgaurd when you ally with them as part of the larger conflict. There are six factions to choose from, and you can’t change the faction once you select it. Faction reputation is used in the faction-specific stores to purchase weapons and armor.  Select the faction of their choice based on story narrative vs. a small bonus on a battlefield. 

Best Race

Elf (Elves) is the best race for the Mage build because of their naturally strong connection to the Fade. The Elven people in the current Dragon Age games are descended from a formally powerful civilization that had once contained magical wonders beyond imaging. Even so many years after its destruction, the lineage of the Elves still makes them formidable Mages.

Your best secondary choice for race in Spellblade build is Humans. Humans are the most versatile race in Thedas, capable of being powerful warriors, cunning rogues, or adept mages.

In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, your choice of race will be mostly based on your roleplay choices, as well as what you like the look of best. In The Veilguard, no stat bonuses are connected to the individual races. Therefore, your race choice largely influences the story, dialogue choices, and how the world responds to you. Finally, the Dwarven race is the one exception to the rule of ‘any race, any class’ in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. If you wish to play as a Dwarf, you cannot choose the Mage class. This is due to the lore and history of the Dwarven race, where they cannot dream and lack any magical ability.

Best Skills and Abilities

The best Mage skills in Dragon Age: The Veilguard are Dark Squall, Frost Nova, and Void Blade.

Dark Squall is a projectile spell that you can use as a crowd control skill. When it hits, it will knock back your enemy, and it is a great way to get an attacking enemy away from you. It does not have a Mana cost but has a long cooldown of 60 seconds. Therefore, you’ll need to make strategic choices about when to use it.

Frost Nova is a fantastic crowd control skill that bursts and area of frozen ground around you. This will inflict any enemy standing inside of it with Frozen, and will freeze them in place so you can your companions can get in some easy DPS. However, when you have the extra skill points you should grab with Wall of Fire ability. Swap this out for Frost Nova whenever you are facing enemies resistant to cold damage.

Finally, Void Blade is one of the class specialization skills available to Spellblades. This ability will dart you into enemy melee ranged for an electricity-based strike that will cut through the void and blast your target and other nearby enemies. Be careful with the timing because the animation takes a second and your enemy can sometimes move out of range.

Below are the recommended skills, abilities, ultimate, and trait for the Mage build in Dragon Age the Veilguard:

• Abilities
  • Skill 1: Dark Squall
  • Skill 2: Frost Nova
  • Skill 3: Void Blade
• Ultimate: Thunderous End
• Trait: Mortal Concentration

Best Specialization

The Spellblade’s build unique ability and ultimate:

• Void Blade: A strike blast ability that helps you to dash forward and slash enemies dealing electric damage and detonating Sundered.
• Thunderous End: You summon an avatar of the storm to fly out and explode in a large area dealing electric damage and applying two stacks of shock to enemies.

Starting at level 20, players can select one of three specializations from their class honeycomb skill tree. Specializations are similar to “subclasses,” adding one ability, one ultimate, and a variety of other passives to your build and character. Your specialization choice will be vital because it determines your character’s overall gameplay in combat. However, you can participate in the character screen at any time to redo your skills and specializations.

Level Progression

Our leveling progression section for the Spellblade build is to provide you with a step-by-step leveling guide, which skills to take, and why. However, this section is complex and requires many hours of gameplay. Therefore, this section will be a work in progress and will be updated and advanced more in the game.

In Dragon Age, the Veilguard, level progressions are gained through experience points (EXP) through different activities such as completing quests and defeating enemies. You reach a higher level at certain levels of EXP, rewarding you with a skill point.  The max level is 50, with 50 skill points to spend. The skill tree (honeycomb) comes in two main sections: Core class tree and specialization.

Complete a basic puzzle or interact with the Fen’Harel altars to gain one skill point as a reward. You will gain 15 skill points by simply tracking down all 15 altars in the game. Unselect the purchased skills to refund individual skill points, which will not cost you anything. Once you reach a max level and get all the Fen’Harel altars then you will get a total of 67 skill points that help you to unlock 40-45% of the skill tree.

Each skill point can be spent on a variety of skills (abilities):

• Diamond Nodes: Active abilities, which you can slot three at a time
• Hexagonal: traits or passives.  Traits require a button combination to execute an additional ability, while passives give you a passive bonus.
• Circular Nodes: these are minor passives like small stat points. 

Levels 1 – 10

As a Mage in Dragon Age: The Veilguard your priority is to quickly unlock your first two abilities after Arcane Shot in the Mage Core. Since class specializations cannot be unlocked until Level 20, we will instead head up into the Control section for the Frost Nova ability.

Next, head through the skill tree to the right towards the Shadow Dragon section for the Dark Squall ability. This ability detonates Sundered, so you want to pair it with a companion who applies this affliction. Two options are Harding’s Shred ability or Lucanis and his Debilitate ability.

Here’s a list of skills to select from levels 1 to 10 with the Best Spellblade Build in Dragon Age The Veilguard:

Level	Skill	Tree	Type
1	Mortal Concentration	Core	Trait
2	Charging Spirit	Core	Trait
3	Frost Nova	Control	Ability
4	Frostbite	Control	Passive
5	Frost Shield	Control	Greater Passive
6	Shellbreaker	Shadow Dragons	Passive
7	Imbued Takedown	Shadow Dragons	Greater Passive
8	Underestimated	Shadow Dragons	Passive
9	Dark Squall	Shadow Dragons	Ability
10	Downfall	Sustain	Greater Passive

By Level 10, your active Mage ability bar should contain: Arcane Shot, Frost Nova, Dark Squall, and Destructive Light (Ultimate).

Levels 11 – 20

Next we can now head down into the Antivan Crow section of the skill tree towards the Spellblade specialization. Ideally, you should travel the path and unlock traits, passives and upgrades in order to unlock the Spellblade right at level 20.

Additionally, you’ll also unlock a couple of abilities along the way. However, there isn’t a reason to switch out your active abilities yet. If you want to test out and try Wall of Fire or Storm Surge, then by all means feel free to do so. However, only switch out Storm Surge with Dark Squall and note that your status effect type is now Overwhelmed. Be sure to bring companions that have abilities which can detonate it.

Here’s a list of skills to select from levels 11 to 20 with the Best Spellblade Build in Dragon Age The Veilguard:

Level	Skill	Tree	Type
11	Wall of Fire	Sustain	Ability
12	Velocity	Sustain	Passive
13	Essence Eater	Sustain	Greater Passive
14	Deterioration	Antivan Crow	Passive
15	Imbued Reaction	Antivan Crow	Greater Passive
16	Underestimated	Antivan Crow	Passive
17	Storm Surge	Antivan Crow	Ability
18	Shellbreaker		Passive
19	Spirit Blade	Antivan Crow	Trait
20	Thunderous End Void Blade	Spellblade	Ultimate Ability

At Level 20, your active Mage ability bar should contain: Dark Squall, Frost Nova, Void Blade, and Thunderous End (Ultimate). Wall of Fire is an available flex ability you can swap in for Frost Nova when you are facing Cold resistant enemies.

Levels 21 – 30

Now that you have Spellblade unlocked, from Level 20 on you will want to focus on unlocking the other passives and traits in the class specialization tree. However, only some will be available until you reach Level 30.

Therefore, we will also start to branch out into other areas of the skill tree. You should prioritize unlocking passives that will increase your mana regeneration rate. Or unlocking traits that will give you mana back under certain circumstances. The more mana you can generate, the more often you’ll be able to fire off your Void Blade ability.

Here’s a list of skills to select from levels 21 to 30 with the Best Spellblade Build in Dragon Age The Veilguard:

Level	Skill	Tree	Type
21	Finale	Spellblade	Passive
22	Blast Efficiency	Spellblade	Ability Upgrade
23	Deterioration	Spellblade	Passive
24	Arcane Strike	Spellblade	Ability Upgrade
25	Meditation	Shadow Dragon	Passive
26	Light Armor Mastery	Shadow Dragon	Greater Passive
27	Early Frost	Shadow Dragon	Passive
28	Mana Infusion	Control	Greater Passive
29	Meditation	Control	Passive
30	Veil Fury	Spellblade	Trait

Best Companions

The best companions for a Spellblade Mage build are Lucanis and Davrin because of their ability to combo sundered and overwhelm. Lucanis is critical for your combos and can detonate your overwhelm infliction and apply sundered. A secondary choice would be Harding, who applies Sundered with her Shred ability.

Davrin can play defense for your whole party by using the skill Battle Cry to taunt enemies and keep pressure off of you. Additionally, his skill ‘In War, Victory’ can provide Rook a temporary invincibility buff to keep you alive. A more damage-focused tank would be Taash, though it would have lower survivability.

Companion 1: Lucanis

• Active Skills and Abilities
  • Ability 1: Adrenaline Rush
  • Ability 2: Eviscerate
  • Ability 3: Debilitate
• Primer Ability: Debilitate (for applying Sundered)
• Detonator Ability: Eviscerate (for detonating Overwhelmed)

Companion 2: Davrin

• Active Skills and Abilities
  • Ability 1: Battle Cry (Taunt)
  • Ability 2: Death From Above
  • Ability 3: Heroic Strike
    • Flex: In War, Victory
• Primer Ability: Heroic Strike (Overwhelm)
• Detonator Ability: Death From Above (Weakened)

Best Spellblade Mage Equipment, Items, Weapons

As a Spellblade Mage in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, most of your abilities will deal Cold Damage to enemies. However, you will sometimes face targets who have resistance to Cold damage, and consequently your DPS against them will be weak. However, you can offset this effect somewhat by using weapons that deal fire or necrotic damage.

Overall, look for items that boost your mana regeneration, elemental damage, and resistance.

Gear Slot	Best Item	Best Upgrades
Main Hand	Glacial Rod	Weapon Damage
Off-Hand	Enchanted Athame	Mana Boost
Alternate Weapon	Veilsong	Stagger
Helmet	Carastes Double Hat	Mana Regeneration
Armor	Dalish Wraps	Mana Regeneration
Belt	Tincture Kit	Healing
Amulet	Light of Starkhaven	Weapon Damage
Ring 1	Glacial Talus	Mana Regeneration
Ring 2	Band of Smoke	Cold Damage

Best Runes

The best Rune for the Spellblade Mage build in Dragon Age the Veilguard is Surge because it has both an active and passive trait that greatly boost your mana regen. Secondly, Vivify not only passively boosts your mana regeneration but triggers the active effect that will instantly restore all of your ability cooldowns. Additionally, using your next ability is free.

Finally, the Overflow rune is a great choice for survivability, with a great passive that increases the amount of potions you can carry by one. Crystallize is also a good rune for mages that helps with crowd control, acting as a free cast of Frost Nova. Another flex option is Regroup, which refreshes your companion’s cooldowns instantly.

The best runes for a Spellblade Mage build in Dragon Age: The Veilguard are:

• Vivify
• Surge
• Overflow

Build Summary – Spellblade

FAQs About Spellblade Build in Dragon Age The Veilguard

Question 1: What faction should I pick for a Spellblade build?

Answer: Shadow Dragons is the best faction to choose for the Spellblade build your class-specific resource regenerates slightly faster and deals increased damage in combat.

Question 2: Does race matter in Dragon Age the Veilguard?

Answer: Race is a part of Rook’s identity as their Dragon Age class or faction, and their ancestry can affect dialogue choices in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. The selection of race to play will also determine the story and how the world at large responds to you.

Question 3: Can builds be changed in Dragon Age the Veilguard?

Answer: There are certain things like appearance that you can change. However, you are unable to change the faction after picking up one and you can change the specialization but not the class.

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• Dragon Age: The Veilguard – Backgrounds (Factions) Explained
• Dragon Age: The Veilguard – All Companions and Everything We Know
• Dragon Age: The Veilguard Classes and Specializations
• Dragon Age: The Veilguard – All Playable Races