The character creator in Dragon Age: The Veilguard is incredibly deep. You can fully manipulate almost every aspect of your Rook, from their race down to their hair and eye color. Once you’ve finally settled on what you want to look lik,e you will need to make an even more important choice: what you want the game to play like. You will be presented with three choices for what class you want to be, each one with its own skill tree, specializations, weapons, and approach to combat. Unlike your skills or appearance, once you pick a class in the character creator, you’re stuck with it. There’s no changing your mind unless you are willing to start the game over with a new character. The game will give you a brief explanation of the classes, but it won’t be enough to make an informed decision. Here’s a detailed look at what you can expect from each class and whether or not it would be right for you.
Warrior
The Warrior class is the tank of the group and is perfect for players who want to be in the heart of the action. They wear heavy armor and can swap between a sword and shield or a single two-handed weapon like an axe. You will still have some ranged options, such as throwing your shield and a few abilities, but the main focus is building up rage and unleashing strong melee abilities or areas of effect (AoEs).
The Warrior’s three specializations are Reaper, Slayer, and Champion.
Going for the Reaper path is a high-risk, high-reward option where you sacrifice your own HP to boost your damage, but are also leaching that life back when you land hits. The ultimate ability is siphoning an AoE whirlwind that can bail you out of a tough spot.
Slayers are specialists in two-handed weapons. These are slow but hit the hardest and can easily stagger multiple enemies at once.
Finally, Champion lets you soak up damage and pull all the agro for your team while countering with fire-based attacks and AoE abilities.
Rogue
The Rogue is a fast and deadly, but squishy class. You can choose between either dual blades to deal heavy damage, but risk getting hit yourself, or a bow to stay safe and chip away at enemies from afar. This class is the damage-per-second (DPS) specialist of the group, but also the most versatile thanks to having equally strong melee and ranged options, as well as plenty of traps and tools that can change the flow of battle.
Rogues can spec toward either the Duelist, Saboteur, or Veil Ranger specializations.
The Duelist is the most straightforward in that you will get abilities centered around dealing high-damage attacks with your blades and bonuses for parrying and dodging. The best skill automatically lets you unleash a flurry of attacks as you bounce from one enemy to another.
Saboteurs let you play with all kinds of fun traps, such as bombs and auto-turrets, to wear down enemies. This class favors the bow since you will mainly be providing support to a main tank.
Lastly, the Veil Ranger is purely bow-focused. Each skill improves your ranged abilities or lets you imbue your arrows with magic to deal different damage types and abilities that bounce between multiple targets.
Mage
Last up, the Mage shouldn’t surprise you with its basic approach to combat. You’re going to be sitting back and unleashing devastating elemental spells in most scenarios. You will also have a suite of buffing spells for yourself and your party members. This is the weakest class in terms of HP and can only wear light armor, but gives plenty of options for crowd control and high damage to stay safe. However, there is an option here if you want to be more of a battle mage and play more aggressively.
Mages can lean into Death Caller, Evoker, or Spellblade specializations.
The Death Caller is something of a lich, not unlike the Reaper class for Warrior. However, you don’t need to sacrifice your own health to power this class. Instead, you will use the enemy’s HP to power your attacks in AoE blasts or create an aura around yourself that saps enemy HP automatically before bursting.
The Evoker mainly uses ice-based spells to both prevent enemies from moving and deal high frost damage. The most powerful of these is the Vortex which will draw all enemies toward it and deal continuous damage over time to any enemy caught in it.
Spellbades are the most unique in that it lets you make a sort of melee magic build. This class is lightning-focused and lets you dash in and attack with close-range lightning attacks or summon an avatar to fight for you.