Bioware has published on their development blog, a new entry called Lethality and Leveling. It offers us a closer look into warrior gameplay and a better idea on how building your class works when you are a higher leveled character in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
In the game, the character you create will be referred to as Rook. If you choose warrior, that class revolves more around close range combat and defense. Skills, Traits, Runes, and Abilities can be customized to best suit your playstyle.
The Warrior has many different kind of builds. For example, you can build your class around causing fire damage by using skill points on your ability tree.
Later in to the game you will receive “Specializations, which grant powerful Abilities” these will come with “a unique Ultimate Ability”. A specialization for the Warrior class is Grey Warden Champion. The Grey Warden Champion is great for people who are focusing on an incendiary build.
If you are okay with a few minor gameplay spoilers, below is a list of the Specialization Areas described in the Dev Journal.
Warrior Rook Specialization Areas:
- Reaper – Become night’s blade. Steal life and risk death to gain incredible, unnatural abilities
- Slayer – Leap into the fray. Wield massive, punishing weapons while rushing enemies to deal devastating blows.
- Champion – Be the shield. Shrug off damage while summoning righteous fire down on enemies.
Rogue Rook Specialization Areas:
- Duelist – Draw your steel. Parry and dodge past enemies to gain strength with every strike.
- Saboteur – Set the stage. Deploy explosives and turrets that devastate enemies, then pick them off with arrows.
- Veil Ranger – Hunt the enemy. Snipe enemies from afar using artifacts that charge arrows with dangerous, powerful magic.
Mage Rook Specialization Areas:
- Death Caller – Embrace the dark. Drain life from enemies and cast spells that writhe with the essence of death itself
- Evoker – Call the void. Freeze enemies in their tracks, then summon the deepest cold to tear them apart.
- Spellblade – Be the storm. Channel potent spells for close-quarters combat infused with lightning’s wrath.
Now lets talk about the basics of combat. There are four core moves that all three classes share include jump, dodge, light attack, and heavy attack, which can all be chained together. Each attack, light and heavy, can be charged to cause more damage.
Each class will also be given the option of ranged attacks, blocks, parries, and the ability to control your Companions’ combat strategy. One of the coolest things about the combat is that you are given two weapon sets you can seamlessly switch between in the heat of battle.
You are also given an ability wheel that makes it possible to pause the battle, and strategize your next move. Vulnerabilities and resistances of enemies can also be seen in this mode.
Buffs, Debuffs & Crowd Control
Some Abilities feature buffs or debuffs to aid your fight. The Dev Journal explains, “For example, Davrin has the Heroic Strike Ability which applies the Overwhelmed debuff to enemies. This will increase the enemies' Stagger and make it easier for Rook to perform a Takedown. There are also Area of Effect Abilities to help the party defeat large groups of enemies. Controlling the field of battle is a key consideration in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Players will need to consider which buffs/debuffs or crowd control Abilities will work best for each situation.” (Dev Journal, Par. 11)
It is also worth mentioning that the abilities, like previous games, pull from your mana bar/momentum/rage bar. You can build up this bar by landing basic attack hits. You can also gain it by other means depending on your class.
- Warriors build Rage by taking and dealing damage,
- Rogues build Momentum by dodging attacks and parrying successfully,
- Mages regain Mana passively over time.
Abilities can include coordinating effects that will result in a massive blow when properly executed with your companions. This is done from the Ability Wheel.
To top it all off, your skill tree is fully refundable so that you can play around with different builds throughout your experience.
All of this together creates a very vast array of options. No matter what class you choose, the playablility of each class seems endless. See what abilities work best for you, how they interact with companions, then rinse and repeat however many times you would like.
There is still so much more information to come in the coming weeks. Keep it locked in here as we continue our coverage of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
If you have questions of your own, the Developers will be hosting a Q&A on Discord August 30th.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is set to release October 31st 2024. Pre-order here:
https://www.ea.com/games/dragon-age/dragon-age-the-veilguard/buy
