Have you decided to play a warrior in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, but aren’t sure how to get the most out of the class? MeinMMO gives you a reaper build for warriors that can kill even bosses in seconds.
What kind of build is this? Reaper is one of the warrior specializations in The Veilguard. As a reaper, you sacrifice your life and take great risks to deal a lot of damage.
In our build we rely on damage from necrosis and abilities as well as life drain for defense. This means you are 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 little more practice. MeinMMO goes into detail and explains everything you need for the build.
A tip in advance: If you want to get the absolute maximum out of the build, select the Veil Watch as your faction when creating your character. This increases the maximum suffering stacks by 1. However, this is not absolutely necessary.
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You cannot choose a specialization until level 20 and until then it is not advisable to limit yourself to necrosis. How you skill here is largely up to you, as you can change skills at any time outside of combat anyway.
Depending on how well you estimate your reaction times, you can go two different ways to get started:
The path should then lead you to Bloody Advance, from where you can get to the Reaper specialization. On the way, take everything with you that increases your damage and pay particular attention to:
In the reaper tree, you want to choose the lower path first to further increase your necrosis damage. Only at level 40 do you master the second branch.
Later you should also invest in anger generation, defense or active skills. Skills each grant you +15% skill damage, which is very important for this build.
Skills for the Reaper build
The aim of the build is to put lots of Necrosis stacks on the opponent and use abilities while your companions support you. The best way to do this is to use the following skills:
As an ultimate, you use Ghost Storm, which creates a tornado in front of you and pulls enemies closer. The storm moves, draining life from targets.
Remember that using an ability makes you invulnerable for a few frames. You can avoid dangerous attacks or even simply interrupt opponents.
The ideal spec for the build looks something like this.
Warrior Reaper Build: The Best Gear
You play the reaper build with a sword and shield because this is the only way you can exploit all the strengths of your advantages. Weapon attacks with a two-handed sword do more damage, but weapon damage is the smallest part of what you deal.
You should collect and improve the following items as quickly as possible:
You can choose the helmet depending on what you are missing:
In our guide we explain in detail how the system works with improvements and upgrades.
“The Burden” is a good choice for neck parts: this means you can never have more than 70% health, but it deals more damage when you are low on health. Alternatively, you can use the Magister’s Pact for more damage or the Guardian’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 ax is a good choice. However, you should NOT upgrade this to legendary level, otherwise all necrotic damage will be converted to frost damage. However, this can be useful, for example against enemies with immunity to necrosis – making it the ideal secondary weapon.
The best enchantments and runes for the build
The best rune for the build is Starve. This increases the effect of life drain and grants additional life drain to weapon attacks when activated. Ideal for situations where you’ve run out of potions. The best alternatives are:
This is the best way to play the reaper
The playstyle is fairly easy: you build Necrosis stacks on targets using Weapon Attacks and Deadly Terrain, then continue attacking to trigger Dark Shard’s effect. If you have low health or weakened enemies, use Reaper. In an emergency, a potion or the rune.
Your shield throw is also one of your most important sources of damage. This is particularly useful against bosses and dragons that constantly jump away. This way you keep necrosis stacks on the enemies and finish them off even if they try to elude you. Remember that you can throw the shield a second time if you “catch” it with a block as soon as it returns to you.
Spectral Bulwark is best used to interrupt enemies or ignore damage from abilities that you can no longer dodge. If you are good at parrying perfectly, you can take advantage of precision.
It’s best to take Emmrich and Lucanis with you as companions.
Lucani’s equipment and skills:
Emmrich’s equipment and skills:
From Lucanis you basically only use Adrenaline Blast on cooldown. Emmrich makes targets vulnerable to more damage through The Hour Strikes and regularly uses Entwining Spirits passively, allowing you to detonate with Reaper.
Remember to let the two “attack your target”, otherwise you won’t benefit from Lucanis’ ability to make your target vulnerable to necrotic damage. If you’re looking for more builds or guides for the game, you’ll find everything collected in our overview: Dragon Age: The Veilguard – All guides for getting started, decisions, puzzles, etc