The Rogue Class Starter Guide

Learn the ins and outs of the Rogue class in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Discover weapon choices, combat mechanics, and essential abilities to dominate your foes.

The Rogue class in Dragon Age: The Veilguard excels at quick, lethal attacks and managing enemy barriers. This guide covers weapon options, combat techniques, and key abilities.

The Rogue’s Weapons

Rogues are dual-wielders, with choices for your main hand (Saber or Broadsword) and off-hand (Rapier or Longsword). The specific weapon types within these categories do not affect combat performance, only aesthetics. For ranged combat, you’ll use a bow, with options for a Longbow or Shortbow, which also only differ in appearance.

Dual Wield Combat

Your primary melee attacks involve a Light Attack combo (five hits) that deals significant stagger damage. For enemies with armor (indicated by a yellow bar), utilize the Heavy Attack combo (three hits). Charged attacks can be performed by holding either the Light or Heavy attack buttons. Charge the Heavy Attack against armored foes and the Light Attack against unarmored ones. These charged attacks can be chained into a follow-up attack, with Light for stagger and Heavy for armor damage.

Bow Combat

The bow is crucial for depleting enemy barriers (blue bars). Aiming for weakpoints, typically the head, with your bow significantly increases barrier damage. Integrating bow attacks with your melee strikes is essential for maximizing the Rogue's effectiveness, regardless of specialization.

Abilities

Rogues deal Necrotic, Bleed, Electricity, and Physical damage. Specializations influence damage types: Duelist focuses on Necrotic and Bleed, Veil Ranger on Electricity, and Saboteur on Physical. Each specialization grants unique abilities and an Ultimate.

Core Abilities

• Static Strikes: Fires twin lightning bolts that deal Electricity damage and apply Weakened.
• Pilfer: Steals a Potion from an enemy, applies Bleeding, and the stolen Potion is consumed. Deals Physical/Bleed damage and detonates Overwhelmed.
• Toxic Dash: A dash attack that applies Necrotic damage and Necrosis. Deals Necrotic damage and applies Sundered.
• Hurricane of Blades: A spinning attack dealing Necrotic damage multiple times, with the final hit being stronger.
• Lightning Flask: Throws a flask that explodes, dealing Electricity damage in an area and creating an aura that applies Shocked.
• Explosive Trap: Throws a trap that detonates when enemies approach, dealing Physical damage and highly likely to disrupt enemies.
• Explosive Daggers: Throws daggers that stick to targets and explode, dealing Physical damage and applying Sundered.
• Rain of Decay: An area-of-effect attack that deals Necrotic damage over time.
• Reeling Bolt: Fires a special arrow that deals high Stagger damage, applies Shocked, and pulls nearby enemies towards the target. Deals Electricity damage and applies Weakened.
• Lighting Quiver: Fires multiple electric bolts across a large area, hitting random enemies. Deals Electricity damage.

Specialization Abilities

• A Thousand Cuts (Duelist Only): A rapid slicing attack dealing Necrotic damage up to 16 times, with a powerful final blow.
• Fortune’s Blast (Saboteur Only): Deploys a turret that attacks the nearest enemy and explodes, dealing heavy Physical damage and disrupting nearby foes.
• Storm’s Path (Veil Ranger Only): Fires a massive blast from the bow, dealing Electricity damage to all enemies in its path and detonating Overwhelmed.

Ultimate Abilities

• Concussive Barrage: Fires a barrage of bombs that deal Physical damage and significantly increase the duration of any Staggered condition.
• Murder of Crows (Duelist Only): (Description truncated in source text)