In the almost-week since my last Dragon Age: Inquisition post, I’ve put in a significant number of hours, made exactly one step forward in plot, gotten swamped by the newly available huge maps, chosen a mage specialization, and killed six dragons, two of them almost single-handedly. It’s been a wild few days of gaming and I have to say that, while I’m definitely still struggling to feel like I’m having fun with the world exploration stuff, I am absolutely loving combat as I’ve locked into a fun build that, as it turns out, is VERY popular on the internet due to its huge damage and nigh-invincibility. Sure, there’s a necromancer build that CAN do more damage, according to the forums and posts I’ve looked at, but playing a Knight-Enchanter Mage with gear that grants my character, Echo, guard on each hit means that I’m pretty much always invincible. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve taken actual HP damage (excluding the times I’ve jumped off of something I shouldn’t have because I was too impatient to walk around after fast-traveling) since I locked in my build on Sunday (nine days ago as you’re reading this), and I’ve beaten down two dragons that were three levels higher than my Inquisitor after the entire rest of my party stood in an AOE and instantly died. Sure, they were grueling and lengthy fights, especially the one against a dragon that had a huge amount of resistance to the damage type of Echo’s staff, but I was able to work my way through the entire dragon, including one that kept giving itself a full bar of guard, without ever one taking a hit to my Hit Points. It was exhilarating to discover that I could do this and then pretty boring to just keep up the same sequence of abilities for the next twenty minutes. The other four dragon fights, though, where most of my party survived or didn’t fall until the end of a grueling fight, were a lot more fun.

As any forum on the internet will tell you, the Mage’s Knight-Enchanter build can easily become one of the tankiest and most-invincible builds out there. The actual first and most basic ability for the build gives you a magic energy sword you can swing around with each press of the button the spell is assigned to. This spell blade deals increasing damage based not just on the normal stuff that is used to calculate damage (your attributes, the base damage of the weapon you’re using, attack power increases, etc), but also based on how many charges you’ve accrued. These charges accrue at a rate of five per hit you land, with a cap of ninety-nine, and spends half of those charges with each strike from your spell blade. You can alter the ability to increase the rate the charges accrue and spend them all in a single strike, but it’s usually better to stick with the normal version of the ability since you’re usually better off with moderate-to-high damage you can repeat than a single huge damage burst because one of the next abilities you can unlock after the spell sword is a passive ability that gives you a barrier based on the amount of damage you’re doing. Throw in a basic ability from a different tree (energy barrage) and some of the passives that alter how your barriers work and you can effectively build up a barrier that lasts as long as you’re in a fight so long as you can hit frequently enough to keep your spell blade charges up. Then, if you make a weapon or armor piece that has a Masterwork bonus that grants you Guard (which, for a Knight Enchanter Mage who doesn’t have the opportunity to alter how guard works with Warrior class abilities, is basically a type of extra HP) with each hit you land, you can say good bye to ever needing any kind of potions or seeing your hit points dip below their maximum. It’s truly a powerful build that can both dish out and shrug off damage endlessly through a fight.

The only downside to this build is that it can be difficult to get the number of hits and damage output you need if you don’t have a physically large target or tough boss to fight against. The crux of it, in actual play, requires dashing into melee distance (Echo, my Elven mage, is currently using a greatsword instead of a staff, since it can double up the energy blasts created by the Energy Barrage skill AND has a very high weapon damage number for where I’m at in the game) and then unleashing an energy barrage or some other multi-hit spell so I can get my spell blade charges up, my shield up, and my armor up. I can get the shield up against any target easily enough since that’s based on the damage dealt rather than the damage received (so overkilling a super weak foe still gets you a huge shield boost), but I need either a lot of targets or a really big target for all of the energy blasts to actually hit and generate the charges and guard I need. I learned this by going from my fifth dragon (second of the night) into a pretty normal battle and nearly getting my butt kicked because I played the same reckless way I’d played against the dragon and absolutely failed to generate the shield and guard Echo needed to not get beaten up by the cluster of enemies I’d dashed her into the middle of. The dragon I fought shortly after that? A walk in the park.

The upside to all this is that I know I’m pretty much set, combat-wise, for the rest of the game. When I killed my first dragon in this three day saga, Echo was just a level sixteen mage that had to actually work through most fights. Now, six dragons later, Echo is a level twenty-one mage who ends fights almost the instant they’re started and, if she somehow doesn’t, the rest of the party quickly cleans them up while I work on recharging her spell blade. It’s a really good system and makes map exploration a LOT faster since I don’t need to really stop exploring to handle battles. I’m also immune to the quiet voice in the back of my head that is always suggesting that maybe I SHOULD fight that thing on the horizon because don’t I actually need those experience points so I can get more abilities? Turns out that I’m actually struggling to figure out how to spend my ability points now since I’ve got my whole combat rotation figured out and don’t need any new abilities beyond the ones I’ve picked out. I mean, sure, I’m spending the points as they come up, but I’m past the point of really needing them for anything other than the stat boosts the passives provide. It’s a good place to be in as I try to wrap up this game in the last couple days (but week as of writing this) before Veilguard comes out. I might ACTUALLY get through Inquisition in time!