dragon age inquisition nolazy

Best Dragon Age Inquisition Classes TIER LIST

This Dragon Age Inquisition Classes will teach you which Dragon Age Inquisition Classes are the BEST and which ones are the WORST so you can know which ones to include in your party.

If you’re playing Dragon Age Inquisition you’re going to end up having to figure out which class you want to pick and which characters you want to include in your party. So, you’re going to want to know which classes are the best Dragon Age Inquisition classes so that you can make a viable party that’s capable of melting dragons and breezing through the game.

In there are three different Dragon Age Inqusition classes and each of the Dragon Age Inquisition classes has 3 different specializations to choose from.

Your options when it comes to Dragon Age Inquisition classes are Warrior, Rogue and Mage. The specializations available to Warriors are: Champion, Templar and Reaver. Mages get access to Necromancer, Rift Mage and Knight Enchanter. For Rogues, your options are Artificer, Tempest and Assassin.

Apart from the specializations, each class also has access to a variety of standard skill trees, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

While Dragon Age Inquisition classes are fairly balanced in the sense that there are reasons to include at least one of each class on your team, not every specialization is created equal. Some Dragon Age Inquisition classes are WINNERS and some are LOSERS.

As a result, it’s a good idea to get a sense of which Dragon Age Inquisition classes are the best and worst, and this tier list should give you a good idea of which classes are generally considered OP and which ones are generally considered to be underwhelming.

S Tier – Best Dragon Age Inquisition Classes

Artificer

best dragon age inquisition classes artificer

When it comes to Dragon Age Inquisition classes, Artificer is the best thing since sliced bread. Because Artificer has access to a talent that reduces cooldowns every time anyone in your party scores a critical hit and Rogues, especially Archers, have a variety of multiple hit moves with high crit rate, if you get enough crit on your equipment, which is not difficult, Artificers will have effectively no cooldowns at all.

When you combine this ability with the existing Looked Like It Hurt ability that all Rogues have access to in the Sabotage tree, which returns stamina for every crit, you can easily end up with infinite stamina as well.

To top it off, the Artificer’s Focus Ability, Hail of Arrows, is extremely powerful, verging on overpowered. Making use of the Artificer’s infinite abilities, high damage and powerful focus skill, it’s not difficult to melt through the high dragons spinkled throughout Dragon Age Inquisition in under 20 seconds once your build truly comes online around level 16 or so.

In terms of the weapon of choice for an Artificer, you’re going to want to go with Archery. In addition to being able to attack at range, which is supremely useful in Dragon Age Inquisition, Archer skills tend to out-damage dagger skills without the need to put yourself into harm’s way.

The way to play Artificer is to abuse the Leaping Shot and Explosive Arrows skills in the Archery tree, especially Leaping Shot. Leaping Shot fires a ton of arrows and hits about a dozen times if you’re up close which will instantly refresh an Artificer’s cooldowns, enabling you to use Leaping Shot over and over again without ever stopping.

When you get too far away, simply use Hook and Tackle from the Sabotage tree to get back in range and start it up all over again. The only thing that even comes close to what an Artificer is capable of is a Tempest, and Tempest can only compare to an Artificer for limited time on a fairly long cooldown.

A Tier – Best Dragon Age Inquisition Classes

Champion

best dragon age inquisition classes champion

A Champion may not output the same amount of damage as an Artificer, but since Dragon Age Inquisition encourages somewhat traditional RPG party roles, having a tank it incredibly useful and as far as tanks go in Dragon Age Inquisition, nothing comes close to Champions.

A Champion that’s invested in the Champion tree and the other Warrior trees related to tanking is essentially invincible. It’s rare to for a Champion to go below 90% guard, let alone die.

The only time you’re ever going to see your Champion in danger is against a monster powerful enough to wipe your whole team in seconds, and even then a Champion is likely to survive five times longer than the rest of your squishy, dead party members.

The only thing really going against Champions in Dragon Age Inquisition is that the party member Champion that you’re provided in the game, Blackwall, is perfectly decent and since the AI handles Champion skills fairly well, there’s not much to be gained by rolling a Champion yourself unless you particularly like the tanking playstyle.

When it comes to Dragon Age Inquisition classes, you’re almost always going to want to include a Champion in your party, whether that’s your own Inquisitor or Blackwall.

Tempest

best dragon age inquisition classes tempest

An Archer Tempest is the only one of the Dragon Age Inquisition classes that can challenge the Artificer for ultimate DPS supremacy and while it gets close to the point where you can pretty easily melt through most enemies in the game just fine as either class, the Tempest is definitely the weaker of the two.

However, what the Tempest does have going for it is that its kit is more interesting overall and instead of simply having a single OP skill like the Artificer, its whole talent tree is fairly interesting. Tempest also makes a much better Dual Wield Rogue than an Artificer, if that’s your thing.

Tempests are able to use a variety of “Flask” abilities that have incredibly potent effects. Fire Flask allows them to use abilities without any concern for stamina or cooldowns for 5-8 seconds, which allows you to deal equal damage to an Artificer for that period of time. Lightning Flask freezes all enemies, and Ice Flask makes you nearly invincible.

The main issue with Tempest is Ice Flask. For an Archer Tempest Ice Flask is fairly useless, but you still have to include it in your rotation in order to get a duration bonus for your other Flask skills. Dual Wield Rogues do get a lot of utility out of Ice Flask, but since you’re using it as part of your regular rotation, you’re not using it on demand when you really need it. Ice Flask makes the whole playstyle for a Tempest a little more clunky than it needs to be.

Still, when it comes to damage dealers among the Dragon Age Inquisition classes, Tempest is second-best, no contest.

Reaver

best dragon age inquisition classes reaver

Rounding out the other top, top tier Dragon Age Inquisition classes is the Reaver. It deals a ton of damage – not quite as much as a Rogue, but more than any other flavor of warrior – and when controlled by the player, it’s almost as unlikely to die as the Champion since it can refill its health pretty much on command whenever it wants.

The whole shtick with the Reaver is that it deals greater damage at low HP and has a unique damaging ability, Dragon Rage, that costs health to use, and then another unique ability, Devour, that deals damage and refills its HP.

The AI isn’t particularly good at managing this playstyle if you’re using Iron Bull in your party and tends to just chug all your potions every fight unless you strictly forbid him from using them, but when your Inquisitor is a Reaver, it’s one of the best classes in the game due to its powerful mix of high damage and high survivability.

If you’re making a Warrior and you don’t plan on acting strictly as a tank, Reaver is most likely the specialization you’re going to want to go for when you’re deciding on your Dragon Age Inquisition classes.

B Tier – Best Dragon Age Inquisition Classes

Assassin

best dragon age inquisition classes assassin

Assassin, like all Rogues, is capable of dishing out a lot of damage which already gives it an edge when it comes to Dragon Age Inquisition classes.

What makes the Assassin B Tier compared to the other Rogue specialization options is that maximizing its damage requires a lot more attention and even when it’s accomplishing its maximum damage potential, it still doesn’t come anywhere close to what an Artificer or a Tempest is capable of doing.

Still, an Assassin actually makes an incredibly powerful partner for an Artificer or Tempest. It’s not a bad idea at all to have both an Artificer/Tempest and an Assassin in the same party, because the capstone Assassin skill, Mark of Death, doubles all damage against a target for 8-12 seconds, meaning that an Artificer + an Assassin deals more damage overall than two Artificers or an Artificer and a Tempest would.

Aside from the Mark of Death skill, Assassin Rogues are focused on attacking from stealth for big crits, which means investing in crit damage goes a long way for this particular specialization.

With the right setup an Archer Assassin Rogue can easily deal 10,000+ damage with Full Draw and Long Shot every 10 seconds or so between the Stealth skill and the stealth provided by the Shot from the Shadows upgrade for Leaping Shot.

As with the other Rogue specializations, Archery tends to be the better option purely because of how the overall combat mechanics of Dragon Age Inquisition work and not having to deal with positioning tends to make Archer Rogues more powerful overall.

Knight Enchanter

best dragon age inquisition classes knight enchanter

Knight Enchanter only deals moderate damage, but it’s pretty much unkillable. The Knight Enchanter specialty mainly does two things: it dramatically increases the power of the Mage’s Barrier spell, and it gives two decently powerful melee-range spells.

The main mechanic of the Knight Enchanter is that it has a melee-ranged spell called Spirit Blade. When you cast other spells, your Spirit Blade ability builds up power, which you then unleash by slicing a few times from melee range.

Knight Enchanter also has another ability called Fade Cloak which grants temporary invulnerability and deals massive damage when it wears off in close proximity to an enemy.

In addition to that, the Knight Enchanter’s Barrier spells last long and regenerate as you deal damage, which is something none of the other Dragon Age Inquisition classes for mages can get.

As a result, the Knight Enchanter makes a fantastic support mage that’s still capable of dealing moderate damage. It rarely dies and has survivability that almost matches what the Champion is capable of.

There are two issues with the Knight Enchanter that relegate it to B Tier. First is that it only deals moderate damage. Its damage output compared to the other Mage specializations is not very impressive, so while it rarely dies, it also rarely makes any kind of noticeable impact during fights.

Second, the AI doesn’t handle the fairly complicated Knight Enchanter mechanics very well, so unless you’re making a Knight Enchanter for your Inquisitor (which is very fun and I do recommend), the Knight Enchanter party member, Vivienne, tends to not live up to a Knight Enchanter’s full potential.

Still, my opinion is that out of all the Mage specializations among the Dragon Age Inquisition classes, Knight Enchanter is the best.

Rift Mage

best dragon age inquisition classes rift mage

Rift Mage is close behind Knight Enchanter in terms of utility. It’s a very different playstyle and much more in-line with what you think of when you think of a traditional mage. In addition to the universal Mage skills (Ice, Fire, Electricity), it also gets access to several additional damaging skills that apply knockdowns and debuffs.

With a Rift Mage on your team, between the Rift Mage skills themselves and the crowd control skills in the Winter and Storm trees, regular enemies spend most of their time unable to move.

In addition to that, Rift Mage damage is fairly high. No Mage specialization is capable of outputting the kind of damage a Rogue is capable of, but Rift Mage deals enough damage that you notice it during the fight.

For a Mage Inquisitor, when it comes to Dragon Age Inquisition classes, I tend to think Rift Mage is the most fun since you get to constantly knock monsters around and you deal decent damage, usually in a fairly large AoE. Ultimately, if I’m being objective, the Knight Enchanter is probably better overall, but the difference between the two is marginal and both are very fun to play as.

Like the Knight Enchanter, the party member available for Rift Mage, Solas, is not ideal. Not because of AI – the AI handles Rift Mage spells just fine – but because Solas is involved in the story and may not always be available.

C Tier – Best Dragon Age Inquisition Classes

Necromancer

best dragon age inquisition classes necromancer

Necromancer isn’t a terrible class, but it’s not very memorable overall. The party member available for Necromancer, Dorian, is probably the most likable and interesting of the Mage party members, so if you’re not a Mage yourself, you’ll probably end up rocking a Necromancer in your party anyway and that’s just fine.

The main problem with Necromancer in terms of Dragon Age Inquisition classes is that is deals about the same damage as a Rift Mage with its DoTs, but it doesn’t get the additional crowd control utility that the Rift Mage gets and its core mechanic, raising corpses to fight for you, is fairly useless during trash encounters and completely worthless during boss fights.

Also unlike most class specializations with some useful skills, the Necromancer’s two best skills, Walking Bomb and Spirit Mark, require purchasing every single skill node in the tree, most of which are just wasted points.

For those reasons, I wouldn’t recommend making your main character into a Necromancer if you chose to go the Mage route. When it come to Dragon Age Inquisition classes, it’s just not a standout.

However, if you’re not a Mage, Dorian is probably your best option to fit a Mage into your party since he’s always available and the AI manages his skills properly.

D Tier – Best Dragon Age Inquisition Classes

Templar

best dragon age inquisition classes templar

So now we come to the bottom rung of the Dragon Age Inquisition classes. Templar isn’t bad, it’s just not as good as either of the other Warrior options. The main problem with the Templar specialization is that almost all of its skills are only effective against demons.

Sure, you fight a lot of demons in Dragon Age Inquisition. In fact, probably half the monsters you fight in the game are demons. But the demons are not particularly challenging fights for the most part. The big fights tend to be against High Dragons.

Pretty much the only thing Templars have going for them when they’re not fighting against demons is a party-wide 15% damage buff, which is definitely a good skill, but it’s not enough to be a compelling reason to choose being a Templar.

If Templar skills worked, even with a diminished effect, on all enemies, they’d probably be in B Tier or at least C Tier, but as it currently stands, which Templar skills do have some effect on all enemies, it’s not enough to provide a compelling case for choosing the Templar specialty over Reaver or Champion.

Actually, the main thing Templar has going for it is that its skills are so unattractive that after you grab the damage buff you can invest more points in the other Warrior skill trees, which is a pretty good option since you otherwise don’t have enough points to max out Weapon & Shield, Vanguard and Battlemaster for a tank.


That about covers it when it comes to the best Dragon Age Inquisition classes tier list. Be sure to check out the Games Section or the Main Page for more game guides, and click here for more guides related to Dragon Age Inquisition.

Author

  • Ryan Night

    Ryan Night is an ex-game industry producer with over a decade of experience writing guides for RPGs. Previously an early contributor at gamefaqs.com, Ryan has been serving the RPG community with video game guides since 2001. As the owner of Bright Rock Media, Ryan has written over 600 guides for RPGs of all kinds, from Final Fantasy Tactics to Tales of Arise.

Similar Posts