Best Weapons For Duelists In Dragon Age The Veilguard

Key Takeaways

• Duelists in Dragon Age: The Veilguard excel at Bleeding and Necrosis attacks with weapons like rapiers and cutlasses.
• Key weapons like Storm Needle, Dark Shard, and Antivan Rapier boost damage, penetration, and afflictions for Duelists.
• Weapons like Bloodletter’s Twinblade and Cordova’s Toothpick enhance Bleeding effects and charged attacks heavily.

Duelists in Dragon Age: The Veilguard are fast Melee attackers capable of inflicting Bleeding and Necrosis with deadly precision and lightning speed. They’re proficient in combat using Rapiers, Cutlasses, and Swords and use a combination of these to deliver incredible combos and shred their enemies to pieces.

With a lot of weapons to pick from, Duelists are a privileged Specialization that does not need too much Ranged Damage to succeed and overcome challenging enemies. So, here are the best Weapons for this class.

1 Storm Needle

A Reliable Option, Acquired Early On

• Uncommon: +20% Penetration
• Rare: Critical vs. enemies with High Health
• Epic: Melee Critical hits ignore Defense
• Legendary: Melee Critical hits deal 30% of the damage in an area around the target

The Storm Needle is a great Off-Hand weapon, that greatly boosts Critical damage and is optimized to reinforce Duelist builds that work around the Precision Advantage. It also increases Penetration, a stat that is quite rare in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and serves to overcome enemies’ defenses.

The Duelist Rogue can take advantage of all the extra penetration of this blade, but its most broken feature is perhaps its ability to ignore all types of Defense with each Critical.

2 Dark Shard

Powerful Against Armored Enemies

• Uncommon: +15% Heavy attack damage
• Rare: +25% damage vs. Armor
• Epic: Gain Enhanced Damage when breaking an enemy’s Armor
• Legendary: Enhanced Damage now also grants +50% damage vs. Armor and Barrier

The Dark Blade is a Main Hand weapon primed to destroy Armor and Barrier from enemies, and ideal for Heavy Charged Attacks. The Duelist has some powerful Charged Attack combos, and this blade greatly enhances its efficiency.

To make things even better, each time the Duelist breaks the enemy’s armor with this weapon it gains Enhanced Damage, a buff that empowers all its attacks for a fixed amount of time. Combined with certain Duelist Traits, these Weapon Perks can turn the Rogue into a meat shredder.

3 Antivan Rapier

The Duelist Weapon Par Excellence

• Uncommon: +15% Necrotic Resistance
• Rare: +15% Necrotic damage
• Epic: Critical hits apply Necrosis if not already applied
• Legendary: Whenever Necrosis is applied to a target, instead of an affliction deal 100 Necrotic damage in an area around them

The Antivan Rapier is the Duelist weapon par excellence, with the capabilities to greatly empower Necrotic attacks (which are the basics of Duelists) and also boost all Necrotic Afflictions applied on the enemies.

To top it off, it turns Necrosis DoT into an Area Damage effect which causes Necrotic damage to every enemy surrounding the afflicted target. Complete this with one of the coolest designs of all Rogue weapons, and players will be slashing their enemies with unparalleled style.

4 Bloodletter’s Twinblade

Great For Bleed Builds

• Uncommon: +30% Charged attack damage
• Rare: Apply Bleeding on Charged attacks while at maximum Momentum
• Epic: +50% increased Momentum generation and Stagger vs. Bleeding enemies
• Legendary: When Bleeding enemies attack, you do not lose Momentum or Adrenaline

The Bloodletter’s Twinblade is a weapon designed to be paired with weapons that cause bleeding, like Cordova’s Toothpick. It not only empowers Charged Attacks and Momentum generation but also Stagger damage against Bleeding enemies. Especially useful against end-game enemies.

Its Legendary Perk is a passive that remains in effect for as long as the Duelist has the Bloodletter equipped, and prevents Bleeding enemies attacking the Rogue from breaking the Adrenaline passive. Adrenaline buffs all damage once the Rogue completes a 10-hit combo, as long as it doesn’t take damage.

5 Golden Grassblade

For Those Who Want To Build A Tank Duelist

• Uncommon: +30 Defense
• Rare: Reduce incoming damage by 5% for every missing Arrow, up to 25%
• Epic: Weapon attacks gain +10% of your Defense as bonus damage
• Legendary: Gain +20 Defense per active Advantage

The Golden Grassblade is an elegant elven Cutlass that is designed to be paired with weapons that generate Advantages, and since the Duelist is a master at gaining a lot of combat buffs, it also benefits from having it equipped. Having this weapon active will turn the Duelist into a Dodge-Tank of sorts.

More so if the players pair it with certain accessories and Belts that also generate Advantages, like the Twin Buckle Binding, or the Warping Wrap.

6 Cordova’s Toothpick

Greatly Empowers Bleeding

• Unique Perk 1: +6 maximum Bleeding stacks
• Unique Perk 2: This weapon deals very low base damage
• Unique Perk 3: All hits with this weapon apply Bleeding

Cordova’s Toothpick is a Cutlass designed to enhance Bleeding and pairs nicely with weapons that benefit from applying this affliction to enemies, like the Bloodletter’s Twinblade. It grants six extra stacks of Bleeding to enemies (the base maximum is three, so that means a total of nine Bleeding stacks).

It also causes all hits from the blade to apply Bleeding on foes, so it’s basically used for Bleed Builds, alongside the Bleeding Shard ring and other accessories.

7 Proving Steel

A Weapon To Boost Combos And Gain Momentum

• Uncommon: +20% Charged attack damage
• Rare: Gain Immovable on every third Charged attack
• Epic: Generate +20% Momentum while you have Immovable
• Legendary: While you have Immovable, you no longer lose Momentum when hit

One of the most broken weapons the Rogue has, which increases Charged Attack damage, Momentum Generation, and makes the Rogue become Immovable every third attack. This Combat advantage makes the Duelist immune to interruptions and CC, and that’s incredibly useful.

The Legendary passive from this blade also grants the Rogue the ability to conserve Momentum (their main resource) even after being hit, as long as they have Immovable active. This pairs great with a Perfect Block build, or even a Combat Buff generation build.

8 Cutthroat’s Sword

Perfect For Critical Builds

• Uncommon: +20% Critical damage
• Rare: Gain Precision on Perfect Dodge
• Epic: +10% Precision effectiveness
• Legendary: Gain 25% Penetration while Precision is active

The Cutthroat’s Sword is another Primary Weapon focused on generating Combat Advantages. The weapon is intended to pair with the Duelist focused on the Perfect Dodge build, which will also grant Precision, making the next hit a guaranteed critical.

It also increases Precision effectiveness by a certain percentage and grants extra penetration with Precision-empowered attacks. This makes breaking enemies’ defenses so much easier, more so if the Duelist has a Dodge/Critical build, which is fun to play, but extremely difficult to handle.