Best Warrior Skills To Unlock First In Dragon Age The Veilguard

Key Takeaways

• Warriors in Dragon Age: The Veilguard offer satisfying combat with diverse character-building options.
• Early-game warrior skills like Fortifying Shots and Fiery Resolve provide essential buffs and augment damage.
• Abilities like Titan Stomp, Bloody Advance, and Counterblow enhance offensive capabilities and skill combos.

The Dragon Age series is iconic for a myriad of reasons. The intense storyline, incredible relationships that can be built, and absolutely sublime worldbuilding are just a few of the reasons that these games are so loved among fans. One of the most intricate and nuanced pieces of the lore in this game comes from the mages and their relationship to the Fade, but for every powerful mage, there’s an armor-clad warrior that can match their strength.

Warriors provide some of the most visceral and satisfying combat in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, proving useful in a host of quests and having excellent utility as both frontline damage dealers and immovable tanks. Players who choose the warrior class might be expecting the most straightforward of the three RPG archetypes, but there are some incredibly broad options for character-building here. Warriors should prioritize these skills in the early game as soon as possible until the options for more diverse builds present themselves later on.

1 Fortifying Shots

Projectile Skills Are A Fantastic Ability

• Effect: Defeating an enemy with a projectile skill grants Resistant.

An excellent ability, especially for those among the Grey Wardens who enjoy fiery projectiles or the various projectile skills of the Mourn Watch. This excellent passive skill grants the player Resistant on projectile attacks.

Resistant is a great all-around defensive buff, and counts as an “advantage” which frequently comes up as conditions for other skills in Veilguard. Many early skills in the game are projectile-focused and getting this ability ASAP is a great way to augment them.

2 Fiery Resolve

An Excellent Complement To Perfect Defense

• Effect: Gain Flaming Weapons on Perfect Defense.

Perfect for all warriors, though especially fire-focused Grey Wardens, this ability grants fiery, burning weapons on a perfect defense, which is something players who take up the warrior skill tree will be doing a lot of.

Fiery weapons add an excellent amount of impact to both light and heavy strikes, and they’re a great way to continue ramping up the damage that a warrior does in any one battle with no drawbacks.

3 Titan Stomp

A Powerful And Lightweight AoE Attack

• Type: Area, Control
• Damage: 335 Physical
• Effect: A high stagger AOE that affects Overwhelm.

Warriors operate in an interesting niche in Veilguard because not only are the first three companions in the game not warriors, but they all have a strong emphasis on burst damage with limited AoE options.

This makes Titan Stomp a must in the early game as it’s a great way for players to shore up on the party’s offensive capabilities with a hard-hitting and incredibly useful wide-area attack that can be acquired quickly.

4 Bloody Advance

A Potent, Lethal Attack That Hits The Mark

• Type: Projectile, Duration
• Damage: 465 Necrotic
• Effect: Applies bleeding, and enemies impaled with necrotic spikes will burst on a shield toss attack.

One of the best necrotic skills in the game, rivaling the skills of even the Death Caller, this skill is a lethal projectile-focused attack that can hit multiple enemies and also debuffs them in a very unique way. After this skill is used, follow-up attacks cause affected enemies to explode with necrotic damage, meaning answering this skill with a shield throw is an excellent way to deal high burst damage quickly.

5 Staggering Toss

Early Game Stagger Is Vital

• Effect: Shield Toss converts 25% of your current Rage into Stagger.

Toward late game, increasing the stagger of enemies tends to become harder, unless players have a dedicated build focused on building it up – usually at the cost of damage. This is why it’s vital to get a head start on stagger build-up early on.

Stagger lets players perform takedowns on foes, and as offensively minded warriors will always have a high rage, this ability allows them to quickly dispatch enemies with ruthless efficiency and skill.

6 Counterblow

The Linchpin In The Warrior’s Moveset

• Effect: Allows a counterattack after a perfect defense.

As mentioned above, perfect defense is one of the most relied-upon skills in the warrior’s moveset – it’s the class that will be relying on this concept the most, so it’s important to buff its effectiveness in the early game.

This skill lets players follow up a perfect defense with either a light or heavy attack that deals incredible damage. While it might make sense to go for the high-damage heavy attack, a light attack follow-up to perfect defense can be strung into a combo.

7 Fury Of The Forge

Direct, Focused, Fiery Attacks

• Type: Strike, Projectile
• Damage: 372 fire
• Effect: Focused burst damage that applies burning.

While the warrior might have to use AoE to cover for their companions’ focus on burst damage, it’s always good to get a little burst damage themselves. Fury of the Forge will help trivialize those difficult early-game bosses that tend to give players so much trouble.

This ability is a stable and reliable complement to warriors of almost any build. It’s a cheap skill to use, but it deals high damage on a focused target, and as a projectile skill, it will greatly benefit from some of the aforementioned skills on this list, such as fortifying shots, while also being able to trigger the debuff on bloody advance for some huge single target damage.