Dragon Age The Veilguard best Reaper build

In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, as you put together the best Reaper build, you turn into a powerful magic user, capable of slowly feeding from your enemies' lives.

The class is one of the few aspects of your character that you can't change during a playthrough of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. That's why you should consider all the possible builds for the Warrior class before choosing it, even though you can easily respec them.

To help you, we've prepared this Dragon Age: The Veilguard Reaper build, detailing the best skills, equipment, enchantments, as well as a rundown on how to play Reaper.

On this page:

• How to play Reaper
• Best Reaper skills
• Reaper weapons
• Reaper armor
• Reaper accessories
• Reaper enchantments

How to play Reaper in Dragon Age Veilguard

In general, Reaper is characterized by focusing on dealing damage over time and offering you tools to keep yourself alive during fights. Even though this is a specialization of the Warrior class, the path in the skill tree you have to go through to unlock Reaper forces you to ignore many skills and passives that would make you more akin to the traditional tank warrior.

To make the most out of this class, it's important to keep your skills on cooldown. Most of your damage will come from Bleeding stacks, which cause low but consistent damage over a period to enemies hit by your skills. So, keeping the stacks ticking is crucial. Later, a passive skill you unlock allows you to convert a percentage of Necrotic damage into life.

While Reaper offers such a great balance between damage and sustain, this build depends on an aggressive approach during fights. This is because you need Rage, the resource Warrior uses to cast skills and that is generated when you deal or take damage. Use basic attacks as fillers to generate enough Rage to cast your first skills during a fight and don't forget to cast Spectral Bulwark - which doesn't cost you rage - to handle the incoming damage.

Best Reaper skills in Dragon Age The Veilguard

The skills you use depend a lot on how you enjoy playing the class, but for this Reaper build, there are some abilities which you need to use. The bread and butter of this build is the Bloody Advance skill. By using it, projectiles are shot toward enemies dealing Necrotic damage, inflicting Bleeding, and impaling enemies. In case Bloody Advance is followed by a charged shield attack, then it will cause a small explosion dealing damage to nearby enemies.

The second most important skill for this build is Reaper, a simple slash attack that summons a spectral scythe to hit enemies in front of you. The cost of Rage is higher when compared with Bloody Advance, but you want to always cast it since Reaper applies Siphon, a stack that causes Necrotic damage for a period and heals you based on it. And let us not forget about Spirit Storm, the Ultimate Ability of this specialization.

Among the skills you can unlock from the Reaper specialization tree, prioritize the greater passive Living Decay, which turns 2% of Necrotic damage into HP while also increasing its penetration by 50%. Now, when spending the remaining skill points, focus on unlocking nodes that increase Rage generation, Necrotic damage, and Projectile/Duration damage.

Dragon Age The Veilguard Reaper weapons

Although this Reaper build doesn't require a specific weapon to work, you can find a couple of great options in Dragon Age to increase the damage caused by your character. We're considering options that you can easily find or buy from shoppers.

Dark Shard is among the best swords for this build because it causes Necrotic damage and applies Necrosis upon landing Critic hits. Unfortunately, you can only find this weapon in a chest in the Grand Necropolis.

Another good option for this build is the Woodsong Cleaver. You might want to equip this weapon because of the amount of Rage it helps generate. By gaining more Rage per attack or hit taken, you ensure you have a considerable pool of resources to cast your skills.

As a Warrior, a shield is as much as defensive as it is an offensive item. Among the ones available in the game, the Necropolis Defender is one of the best for this build. In its Uncommon version, this shield causes Necrotic damage and if you can upgrade it, this shield will apply Necrosis to the first enemy hit by it.

Dragon Age The Veilguard Reaper armor

Armor in Dragon Age The Veilguard is great for increasing your damage output and generating resources. None of the options listed here is fundamental for the build to work, but, depending on your experience with the build, they might meet some of your needs.

The Browler's Decorated Leathers is at the top of our list because of how much it offers in terms of generating Rage and making the most out of this resource. The uncommon version is already pretty useful since it generates a +15% Rage. But this armor holds a huge potential if you eventually upgrade it to Epic, which unlocks the passive of increasing your defense if you have Rage above 50.

Another solid option for this build in general is the Pursuant's Implements. With good defense and great Ability damage numbers, this armor is great for the mid portions of the game. If you eventually upgrade it, you can increase the number of Potions you hold and generate Rage when using them.

Carastes Double-Hat is a good option to buff the effects of Browler's Decorated Leathers or complement your build if running Pursuant's Implements. This helm assists in generating Rage and increases the Ability damage when using skills of the same type. Since all the ones we selected for this build share the Duration type, this buff is activated.

Dragon Age The Veilguard Reaper accessories

Accessories are a great way of complimenting the build and working on aspects you feel are lacking. For this build, there are many good options, but for general purposes, we have selected a few suggestions.

Both the Necrotic Jade and Precious Decay rings buffs really well this build. While the former increases Necrosis damage, Damage against enemies inflicted with Necrosis, and the affliction duration, the latter increases Necrotic damage.

The Token of True Flight works perfectly with this build since it buffs the damage of Projectile skills. Considering how fundamentally important Bloody Advance is in your basic skill rotation, this accessory makes killing enemies a quicker and easier job.

Another interesting option is the Magister's Bargain, which has a similar effect to the Token of True Flight but involves Duration skill. But, if you upgrade it, you can unlock its passive, which generates Rage whenever you kill an enemy.

Dragon Age The Veilguard best Reaper enchantments

Enchantments are perfect to improve the pieces of equipment you already have and make them have a better synergy with the skills we have selected. Consider your own needs and the pieces of equipment available to you at certain moments in the game before enchanting your gear.

Among the skills, the ones you might want to enchant are Bloody Advance, adding a -15% Cooldown affix, and Reaper, giving it +2 Meters. We want a quicker cooldown on Bloody Advance, because Rage generation will eventually become faster than the skill cooldown, and a longer range for Reaper will make your life easier during fights.

As you might imagine, if you plan on enchanting your weapon, the best option is to add the +40 Added Necrotic Damage. For the armor, you definitely want to add the +10% Ultimate generation and the +15% Affliction duration. These two will make your character stronger regardless of the level you are or the other pieces of equipment you have.

Lastly, we need to enchant the accessories. Go for the +20% Necrosis damage and +1 Max Necrosis stacks when selecting the ones for your amulets. These affixes work so well with the final skills we get for this build that makes them even better. The rings have some great enchantment options as well, such as +25% Projectile damage and +25% Rage generation.

Enjoy your time fighting evil elven gods!