Dragon Age The Veilguard best Spellblade build

The best Spellblade build introduces you to a different way of fighting with magic in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

Mage is traditionally the glass cannon class, exchanging survivability for raw damage. Although all the Mage's specializations keep this trait in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Spellblade puts you in the front line of battles.

To help you prepare for dashing forward into groups of enemies and bursting demons up, we've prepared this guide explaining the best Spellblade build, covering the best skills, weapons, armor, accessories, enchantments, and how to play this class.

On this page:

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

How to play Spellblade in Dragon Age The Veilguard

The Spellblade has nothing in common with the traditional Mage you have been playing as up until Level 20. Once you have chosen to follow the path of the Spellblade, you will abandon the safety offered by long-distance attacks with a stave and spells. This specialization focuses on melee combat. You will be closer to enemies, but not without good tools to deal with them. Spellblade has access to longer sequences of normal attacks and low cooldown skills to quickly burst enemies.

Spellblade is a fairly straightforward class to learn. Besides using skills and Light/Heavy attacks, you want to make the most out of the Shocked status. Many skills in the Spellblade kit and pieces of equipment inflict enemies with the Shocked effect, which causes damage over time and lowers the enemy's Stagger gauge. Whereas these properties of the Shocked status are great, the advantages of inflicting this status onto enemies go beyond when you're playing as a Spellblade. This is because, due to some passive abilities, you can receive lots of buffs when facing Shocked enemies, from causing more damage or receiving less damage from them.

Despite how high your damage output is, you should never forget that you're fundamentally a mage. In other words, you're pretty squishy! Do not fall for the illusion that you can face a horde of demons just by yourself if you run out of Mana - learn when to retreat and re-engage. As a Spellblade, you're mostly limited to being an Electricity-magic user. Depending on the pieces of equipment you have, it's possible to work with Fire and Electricity, but even so, all your main skills cause Electricity damage.

By considering all of these aspects, we can establish a simple gameplay loop during combat. First, use your skills to apply Shocked before starting your Light Attack combo. When facing a single enemy, try to trigger the Astral Orb effect with a Heavy attack. As an example, cast Storm Surge, Void Blade, then Light attacks. When handling too many enemies or in situations where you are overwhelmed, use Tempest to clean the area.

Dragon Age The Veilguard best Spellblade skills

Even though Light and Heavy attacks are the bread and butter of this build, you will need to unlock specific skills to make it work. First, as with all the other specializations in the game, you must reach Level 20 to unlock the Spellblade and its unique abilities. You want to get all the skills available in the Spellblade skill tree. Be sure to put the Spellblade's signature Ultimate skill Thunderous End and the Void Blade in your hotbar.

To fill the other available spots in your hotbar, you should select the Storm Surge and the Tempest skills. The former gives you some mobility to move away from enemies while hitting them, and the latter is a good area-of-effect ability to deal with situations when you feel overwhelmed by the number of enemies or when they are too sparse.

Passive abilities are crucial for this build and shouldn't be overlooked. Be sure to unlock Meditation in the Shadow Dragon segment and Reclamation in the Burst segment to secure consistent Mana recovery. At the same time, Conductor and Debilitating Shocks are two hard-to-miss passive abilities when opening the path to the Spellblade, but you want to run with this build to buff your attack and defense when facing Shocked enemies.

Dragon Age The Veilguard Spellblade weapons

To become this terrific mix of assassin and magic user, the Spellblade requires a good set of Orb and Mageknife; every Mage can carry one stave, and one set of orb and knife. Different from the more conventional Mage, Spellblade is an orb-knife-centered specialization because it's heavily focused on using abilities triggered by Light and Heavy attacks using the knife. This means the stave is the least important aspect of the build.

Among the options available in the game, an easy orb to find is the Thunderclap, which causes Electric Damage, builds lots of stagger and has great potential if you end up upgrading it to Epic, a rank that unlocks its passive of leeching health when damaging Barriers. A second good option is the Stormsphere. Although it has lower base stats than Thunderclap, it requires less investment in terms of upgrades to become really good for this build. By getting a Rare version of it, your Agile attacks will apply Shocked. Once you have unlocked at least the Electrical Burns Greater Passive, you can consider running Urthemiel's Ash, because of how much it improves the application of Burning.

The list of options is considerable when it comes to mageknives, but for this build, it would be better to use the ones like Spellcaster's Stiletto or Enchanted Athame. These two mageknives come with passives that assist you in having a good Mana sustain. Even though we have a couple of abilities in our skill tree that help recover Mana, they aren't enough. However, if you’re feeling Mana is not an issue, then you can run Split-Hilt Dirk to give more damage and apply Shocked, or Sharpened Dragonbone to buff the rest of your party.

Dragon Age The Veilguard Spellblade armor

For Spellblade, armors are great to compensate for the lack of damage or sustain in other pieces of equipment. In case your Mana is taking too long to generate which affects how fast you can kill enemies, consider wearing the Jumper's Leathers. All three passives of this armor are great and the first two - the easiest ones to unlock! - increase your maximum Mana and the percentage of Mana generated.

The chances of taking a lot of damage playing Spellblade are considerably high since you will be engaging in close-range combat. To make your life a bit easier, you may want to use the Researcher's Coat armor. In the Rare version, this piece of equipment recovers Health based on the damage you caused. Exactly what you may need as a squishy Mage who is throwing knife attacks at giant dragons.

The helms follow the same logic. You can choose to use the Carastes Double-Hat which already increases your Mana generation considerably in its uncommon version. On the other hand, if you're looking for ways to increase your damage output, the Antivan Parade Helm is a great option for this build. It increases the duration and damage of Shocking Weapons against Shocked enemies.

Dragon Age The Veilguard Spellblade accessories

As an initial but extremely useful accessory for this build, you want to get the Glacial Talus ring. It is a great Mana generation source in case you haven't acquired pieces of Armor or a mageknife that plays the battery role for the build. For the second ring slot, you want to run Thrumming Rock. This ring increases the damage of Shocking Weapons and Electric Abilities.

While there are some overpowered options of amulets that you find later in the game, like the one you can get from the Heart of Corruption side mission, you can find solid options that work well with this build earlier. The Crow's Perch Medallion is among the best considering it will buff your Strike abilities like Void Blade and Storm Surge. If you upgrade it to Rare, it will also heal you based on the damage of Strike abilities.

Dragon Age The Veilguard best Spellblade enchantments

No enchantment is mandatory for this build to work, so you can feel free to experiment and see what you think is better for your character. However, we would like to suggest some solid options that you should consider picking. First, for your weapons, +20% Final Attack Damage for the knife and +25% Arcane Bomb Trigger Damage are useful options considering the number of times this build triggers from effects.

You may want to consider putting defensive enchantments in your armor pieces when you have a good grasp of who - or what - you're about to face. When this is not the case, consider going for more offensive options, such as +15% Affliction Duration or +10% Ultimate Generation. The former helps you sustain your damage and all the effects that unfold from hitting Shocked enemies, while the latter allows you to use your strongest skill more consistently during a fight.

Rings have great Mana generation enchantments if the ones you're wearing don't have this effect. But if you looked for the specific accessories we listed in this guide, this won't be necessary. Instead, put +25% Strike Ability Damage. At the same time, you want +20% Shocked Damage or +1 Max Shocked Stacks for your amulet.

When it comes to enchanting skills, you have great options to make your kit work even better. First, put +75% Damage while Shocking Weapons in Void Blade. With this, if this skill doesn't kill the enemy with one hit, it will probably take a huge chunk of health. Next, you want -15% Cooldown Duration on Storm Surge. This is your escape ability and you want to have it up quickly for emergencies. Lastly, for Tempest, the Radius +2m is what you're looking for. This enchantment will make sure that more enemies are hit by the skill.

Have fun playing Spellblade in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.