You have decided to play a warrior in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, but you’re not quite sure how to make the most of the class? MeinMMO provides you with a Reaper build for warriors that can take down bosses in seconds.
What kind of build is this? Reaper is one of the specializations for warriors in The Veilguard. As a Reaper, you sacrifice life and take high risks to deal a lot of damage.
In our build, we focus on damage through necrosis and abilities, as well as health drain for defense. This makes you strong enough to take down bosses and large groups of enemies in a short time, even on the highest difficulty.
Warriors are the ideal class for beginners, but the Reaper build requires a bit more practice. MeinMMO goes into detail and explains everything you need for the build.
A tip upfront: If you want to get the absolute maximum out of the build, choose the Veilguard as your faction during character creation. This increases your maximum suffering stacks by 1. However, this is not strictly necessary.
Leveling as a Warrior – Here’s how to do it best
Until Level 20, you cannot choose a specialization, and until then, it is not advisable to restrict yourself to necrosis. How you skill here is largely up to you, as you can reskill at any time outside of combat.
Depending on how well you assess your reaction times, you can take two different paths at the start:
- Agile Blade => Rage => Spectral Bastion; This focuses on high defense and allows you to withstand attacks better.
- Counterstrike => Concentrated Retribution => Titan Crasher; For this route, you must be able to parry perfectly, otherwise you’ll gain no advantage from the skill points. You deal more damage but live more dangerously.
After this, you should head toward Bloodied Assault, from where you can reach the Reaper specialization. Pick up everything along the way that increases your damage and pay special attention to:
- Damage through suffering and especially necrosis
- Damage and improvements for Shield Throw
- Necrosis stacks
- Improvements for duration skills
- Two important nodes are also collateral damage and breathing room (besides the brawler specialization).
In the Reaper tree, you want to choose the lower path first to further increase your necrosis damage. Only at Level 40 do you also skill the second branch.
Remember that using a skill makes you invulnerable for a few frames. You can thus evade dangerous attacks or even interrupt enemies.
Reaper Build for Warriors: The Best Equipment
You play the Reaper Build with sword and shield, as this is the only way to fully exploit the strengths of your advantages. Weapon attacks with a two-handed weapon deal more damage, but weapon damage is the smallest part of what you deal.
The following items should be collected and improved as quickly as possible:
- Dark Shard (main hand): Increases necrotic resistance, necrotic damage, and triggers necrosis. At the highest level, you deal additional necrotic damage against targets that are already at maximum stacks of suffering.
- Defender of the Necropolis (shield): Inflicts necrosis on shield throws and deals damage to secondary targets when they are affected by necrosis.
- Striking Misfortune (armor): Increases necrotic resistance and necrotic damage. Additionally, you remove all suffering when using necrotic skills and even become unyielding when you suffer necrotic damage.
- Watchman’s Pouch (belt): Increases necrotic damage and applies necrotic damage and necrosis stacks to nearby enemies when you consume a potion.
- Precious Corruption and Necrotic Jade (rings): Increase necrotic damage and damage through necrosis, as well as their duration and maximum stacks.
You can choose the helm depending on what you currently lack:
- Crow’s Call mask makes your normal attacks stronger, making you less vulnerable to enemies that are immune to necrosis.
- Death Mask further increases your necrosis damage.
- Iron Veil is particularly strong until the “endgame”, before you possess the other helms at epic or legendary quality.
In our guide, we explain in detail how the system with improvements and upgrades works.
For neck pieces, “The Burden” is a good choice: This means you can never have more than 70% health, but deal more damage when you have low health. Alternatively, you can use the Magister’s Pact for more damage or the Warden’s Key for more defense.
We do not recommend a two-handed weapon for this build. If you still want to use one, the Crystal Great Axe is a good option. However, you should NOT upgrade it to legendary level, as this will change all necrotic damage to frost damage. This can be useful against enemies with immunity to necrosis – so it’s the ideal secondary weapon.
The Best Enchantments and Runes for the Build
- Main Hand: +40 additional necrotic damage
- Shield: +20% damage at low health
- Armor: +250 health
- Helm: Any resistance
- Neck: +20% damage through necrosis
- Rings: +25% duration skill damage and +20% rage generation
- Deadly Terrain: +50% radius
- Reaper: +25% ability damage at low health
- Spectral Bastion: -15% duration of cooldown
The best rune for the build is Hunger. This increases the effect of health drain and grants weapon attacks additional health drain upon activation. Ideal for situations where your potions have run out. The best alternatives are:
- Scourge: Increases necrotic damage
- Ascend: Lowers your health to 1 and you cannot heal for 10 seconds, but you gain flame weapons, Accelerated, Increased Damage, and Rage will be maxed.
- Crystallize (especially at the beginning): Freezes nearby enemies. Beware: This does not interrupt attacks, only delays them.
How to Play the Reaper Best
The playstyle is quite simple: You build up necrosis stacks on targets with weapon attacks and Deadly Terrain, and then continue attacking to trigger the effect of Dark Shard. At low health or against weakened enemies, use Reaper. In an emergency, use a potion or the rune.
One of your main sources of damage is also your shield throw. This is particularly useful against bosses and dragons that keep jumping away from it. This way, you maintain necrosis stacks on the enemies and take them down, even if they try to escape from you. Remember that you can throw the shield a second time if you catch it with a block “when it returns to you”.
You should best use Spectral Bastion to interrupt enemies or ignore damage from abilities you can no longer evade. If you are good at parrying perfectly, you can gain an advantage from precision.
For companions, it’s best to take Emmrich and Lucanis with you.
Lucanis’ Equipment and Skills:
- Cruel Helix with “Attack my target causes necrosis”
- Swings Antivas with “Critical ability hits reduce cooldown”
- Trevisoer Poignard
- Antivan Bladekeeping set
- Skills: Adrenaline Rush, Abhor, Eradicate
Emmrich’s Equipment and Skills:
- The Hermetic Pendulum with “Causes Quietus when breaking barriers”
- Rudiment of the Lich with “Detonations remove necrosis and cause necrotic damage in an area”
- Crowned Focus
- Singing Seal
- Skills: Last Rites, The Hour Strikes, Entwining Spirits
With Lucanis, you basically only use Adrenaline Rush on cooldown. Emmrich makes targets vulnerable to more damage via The Hour Strikes and regularly passively uses Entwining Spirits, allowing you detonations with Reaper.
Remember to let both “attack your target”; otherwise, you won’t benefit from, for example, Lucanis’ ability to make your target vulnerable to necrotic damage. If you are looking for more builds or guides for the game, you can find everything collected in our overview: Dragon Age: The Veilguard – All guides for getting started, decisions, puzzles, and more
Later on, you should also invest in rage generation, defense, or active skills. Skills grant you +15% skill damage, which is very important for this build.
Skills for the Reaper Build
The goal of the build is to apply many necrosis stacks to the enemy and to use abilities while your companions support you. For this, you should ideally use the following skills:
- Spectral Bastion: Increases your defense and deals damage and staggers to enemies that attack you. The use also knocks nearby enemies back, allowing you to push enemies off ledges.
- Deadly Terrain: Contaminates the ground around you and deals damage to enemies. Additionally, you generate necrosis stacks on enemies this way.
- Reaper: Swings a scythe through all enemies in front of you and drains a significant amount of health from them. You can heal yourself even without potions. You also explode weakened enemies.
As your ultimate, you use Ghost Storm, which creates a tornado in front of you and pulls in enemies. The storm moves and drains life from the targets.
Remember that using a skill makes you invulnerable for a few frames. You can thus evade dangerous attacks or even interrupt enemies.
Reaper Build for Warriors: The Best Equipment
You play the Reaper Build with sword and shield, as this is the only way to fully exploit the strengths of your advantages. Weapon attacks with a two-handed weapon deal more damage, but weapon damage is the smallest part of what you deal.
The following items should be collected and improved as quickly as possible:
- Dark Shard (main hand): Increases necrotic resistance, necrotic damage, and triggers necrosis. At the highest level, you deal additional necrotic damage against targets that are already at maximum stacks of suffering.
- Defender of the Necropolis (shield): Inflicts necrosis on shield throws and deals damage to secondary targets when they are affected by necrosis.
- Striking Misfortune (armor): Increases necrotic resistance and necrotic damage. Additionally, you remove all suffering when using necrotic skills and even become unyielding when you suffer necrotic damage.
- Watchman’s Pouch (belt): Increases necrotic damage and applies necrotic damage and necrosis stacks to nearby enemies when you consume a potion.
- Precious Corruption and Necrotic Jade (rings): Increase necrotic damage and damage through necrosis, as well as their duration and maximum stacks.
You can choose the helm depending on what you currently lack:
- Crow’s Call mask makes your normal attacks stronger, making you less vulnerable to enemies that are immune to necrosis.
- Death Mask further increases your necrosis damage.
- Iron Veil is particularly strong until the “endgame”, before you possess the other helms at epic or legendary quality.
In our guide, we explain in detail how the system with improvements and upgrades works.
For neck pieces, “The Burden” is a good choice: This means you can never have more than 70% health, but deal more damage when you have low health. Alternatively, you can use the Magister’s Pact for more damage or the Warden’s Key for more defense.
We do not recommend a two-handed weapon for this build. If you still want to use one, the Crystal Great Axe is a good option. However, you should NOT upgrade it to legendary level, as this will change all necrotic damage to frost damage. This can be useful against enemies with immunity to necrosis – so it’s the ideal secondary weapon.
The Best Enchantments and Runes for the Build
- Main Hand: +40 additional necrotic damage
- Shield: +20% damage at low health
- Armor: +250 health
- Helm: Any resistance
- Neck: +20% damage through necrosis
- Rings: +25% duration skill damage and +20% rage generation
- Deadly Terrain: +50% radius
- Reaper: +25% ability damage at low health
- Spectral Bastion: -15% duration of cooldown
The best rune for the build is Hunger. This increases the effect of health drain and grants weapon attacks additional health drain upon activation. Ideal for situations where your potions have run out. The best alternatives are:
- Scourge: Increases necrotic damage
- Ascend: Lowers your health to 1 and you cannot heal for 10 seconds, but you gain flame weapons, Accelerated, Increased Damage, and Rage will be maxed.
- Crystallize (especially at the beginning): Freezes nearby enemies. Beware: This does not interrupt attacks, only delays them.
How to Play the Reaper Best
The playstyle is quite simple: You build up necrosis stacks on targets with weapon attacks and Deadly Terrain, and then continue attacking to trigger the effect of Dark Shard. At low health or against weakened enemies, use Reaper. In an emergency, use a potion or the rune.
One of your main sources of damage is also your shield throw. This is particularly useful against bosses and dragons that keep jumping away from it. This way, you maintain necrosis stacks on the enemies and take them down, even if they try to escape from you. Remember that you can throw the shield a second time if you catch it with a block “when it returns to you”.
You should best use Spectral Bastion to interrupt enemies or ignore damage from abilities you can no longer evade. If you are good at parrying perfectly, you can gain an advantage from precision.
For companions, it’s best to take Emmrich and Lucanis with you.
Lucanis’ Equipment and Skills:
- Cruel Helix with “Attack my target causes necrosis”
- Swings Antivas with “Critical ability hits reduce cooldown”
- Trevisoer Poignard
- Antivan Bladekeeping set
- Skills: Adrenaline Rush, Abhor, Eradicate
Emmrich’s Equipment and Skills:
- The Hermetic Pendulum with “Causes Quietus when breaking barriers”
- Rudiment of the Lich with “Detonations remove necrosis and cause necrotic damage in an area”
- Crowned Focus
- Singing Seal
- Skills: Last Rites, The Hour Strikes, Entwining Spirits
With Lucanis, you basically only use Adrenaline Rush on cooldown. Emmrich makes targets vulnerable to more damage via The Hour Strikes and regularly passively uses Entwining Spirits, allowing you detonations with Reaper.
Remember to let both “attack your target”; otherwise, you won’t benefit from, for example, Lucanis’ ability to make your target vulnerable to necrotic damage. If you are looking for more builds or guides for the game, you can find everything collected in our overview: Dragon Age: The Veilguard – All guides for getting started, decisions, puzzles, and more
