There are quite a few different characters you can recruit to your party in Dragon Age: Inquisition, and while they all fit into a few different classes, every character also comes with their own unique skill tree. These skill trees give every character their own combat flavor, and do a lot to distinguish them from each other.
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For Varric’s part, he’s a Rogue like Cole and Sera, with all the usual Rogue trees, along with his very own Artificer tree. This tree compliments more or less any build a Rogue could come with, but in this case, we’re going to fit it into a heavy-damage, ranged build.
Best Skill Choices For A Ranged Build
This build is going to be using Varric’s own special weapon, Bianca. Bianca can be upgraded throughout the game, keeping it on par with other weapons at various levels.
Skill-wise, this build is going to make use of the Artificer tree, the Archery tree, and the Sabotage tree. As with all builds, feel free to respec and experiment around with it, but this guide will provide a good foundation for what you’ll need.
Skills that are needed for tree progression but aren’t integral to the build will be skipped over in this guide, but they’ll still be counted in the skill point total.
The Best Skills In The Artificer Tree
The Artificer tree is going to accomplish two goals by doing one thing: setting traps. Varric is going to be able to protect himself by surrounding his immediate vicinity with a comical number of booby traps. Those traps are going to keep enemies off Varric, and they’re going to deal heavy damage to those enemies, as well.
|
Skill |
Upgrade |
Description |
|---|---|---|
|
Spike Trap (Active) |
Pyrotechnics |
A trap that detonates when an enemy gets too close, launching them into the air. With the Pyrotechnics upgrade, it’s going to launch a wider radius of enemies. |
|
Set Them Up |
N/A |
Traps deal 25% extra damage. Varric also gains +3 Willpower. (Willpower increases a Rogue’s attack, as well as increases magic defense.) |
|
Opportunity Knocks |
N/A |
Gain a half-second cooldown reduction every time an ally gains a critical hit. Varric also gains +3 Cunning. (Cunning increases critical hit chance and ranged defense.) |
|
Hail Of Arrows (Active) |
N/A |
Fire every archery ability used in the next 12/25/40 seconds (depending on the Focus used) twice, effectively doubling Varric’s damage, but possibly doing more than double due to the possibility of critical hits. |
|
Elemental mines (Active) |
Throw Everything |
Throw a wide variety of traps with different elemental effects; with the Throw Everything upgrade, Varric throws traps until his stamina is empty, with 1 trap for every 5 stamina. |
|
Fallback Plan (Active) |
N/A |
Place a lantern prior to engaging the enemy, and Varric automatically leaps back to the lantern when his health gets low, regaining the same amount of health he had when he placed the lantern. |
|
And Take Them Down |
N/A |
Increase the entire party’s critical hit chance by 5%. Varric also gains +3 Dexterity. |
|
Tricks Of The Trade |
N/A |
Increase the damage and duration of status effects allies apply to enemies by 10% each. Varric also gains +3 Willpower. |
- Total Skill Point Investment: 10
- Total Willpower Gain: 6
- Total Cunning Gain: 3
- Total Dexterity Gain: 3
These Artificer skills are going to enable Varric to have a much easier time using the skills in the next tree, Archery.
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The Best Skills In The Archery Tree
The skills in the Archery tree are very straightforward: they give Varric special skills to use with Bianca. While these skills might be straightforward, they don’t lack in power, and much of the damage in this build, particularly to targets with larger health pools, is going to come from this tree.
|
Skill |
Upgrade |
Description |
|---|---|---|
|
Death From Above |
N/A |
Deal up to 25% extra damage when firing at an enemy from above. Varric also gains +3 Cunning. |
|
First Blood |
N/A |
Deal 15% extra damage to enemies at 80% health or above. Varric gains +3 Dexterity, too. |
|
Long Shot (Active) |
Archer’s Lance |
Fire a shot that does extra damage the further you are from the target, maxing out at 600% damage at 15 meters from your target. With the Archer’s Lance upgrade, this shot pierces through enemies. |
|
Strafing Shots |
N/A |
Varric can move faster without losing out on accuracy. He also gains +3 Dexterity. |
|
Explosive Shot (Active) |
Chain Reaction |
Varric fires an explosive arrow that deals damage to the target, and enemies nearby. With the Chain Reaction upgrade, the explosion deals 25% more damage for every enemy nearby, up to a maximum of 100% extra. |
|
Pincushion |
N/A |
Every consecutive arrow fired at the same enemy will do 5% bonus damage, resetting every 10 seconds. In addition, Varric gains +3 Dexterity. |
|
Full Draw (Active) |
N/A |
Enemies at full health are dealt 1,600% damage, while enemies below full health are dealt half that. |
- Total Skill Point Investment: 11
- Total Cunning Gain: 3
- Total Dexterity Gain: 9
The bulk of your active damage is going to come from these skills, while the bulk of your passive damage is going to come from the Artificer skills.
We’re running low on skill points, but we have a few left that are going to be useful in the Sabotage tree.
The Best Skills In The Sabotage Tree
While it’s possible to obtain more skill points than this, many people are going to start running out of skill points at around 27 overall. Sometimes even less, depending on how you progress through the game. At maximum, this gives us six points left (and only one more active skill slot), but luckily, everything we really want from the Sabotage tree is on the same side.
|
Skill |
Upgrade |
Description |
|---|---|---|
|
Poisoned Weapons (Active) |
Infected Wounds |
Hitting an enemy with Varric’s weapon poisons them, dealing damage per second. Infected Wounds allows Varric to deal 25% extra damage while the ability is active, on top of the damage over time. |
|
Fighting Dirty |
N/A |
Varric’s poison effect lasts 25% longer. He also gains +3 Dexterity. |
|
Explosive Toxin |
N/A |
Enemies that die while poisoned explode in a toxic mist, dealing damage over time to enemies in the radius. Varric also gains +3 Dexterity. |
- Total Skill Point Investment: 4
- Total Dexterity Gain: 6
Although gaining Toxic Cloud would be nice, this build does not have the active slot to run it. For situations where you’d like more multi-target damage and can sacrifice the single-target damage, you could swap this in, though Explosive Shot and Explosive Toxin already fill a similar niche to this skill.
The Completed Varric Ranged Build
All told, this build costs 25 skill points. It’s got a very nice balance between defensive and offensive skills with the traps and the Archery skills, such as the Hail Of Arrows skill, which lets you supercharge your Archery skills when needed.
Your finished Tactics slots will include:
- Spike Trap
- Hail Of Arrows
- Elemental Mines
- Fallback Plan
- Long Shot
- Explosive Shot
- Full Draw
- Poisoned Weapons
Aside from the defensive nature of many of the Artificer skills, Fallback Plan is going to help keep Varric on his feet and out of danger without too much trouble. Paired with a group filling out the other roles, Varric is going to contribute a huge portion of the damage, alongside bumping everybody else’s damage up slightly with the critical chance boost he provides.
Alternative Varric Builds
You can also run Varric with a Double Daggers build, and have it be extremely effective. It does forego using Bianca, but his traps are going to be used much more often when enemies are always in closer range of him.
That build would skip all the Archery skills, and invest much more heavily in the Sabotage tree, along with the Double Daggers tree.
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