Dragon Age: The Veilguard ice mage build guide

Freeze your enemies solid with this frosty Evoker mage

The frosty Evoker is a force to be reckoned with / BioWare

You have the power to freeze and shatter your enemies with this Dragon Age: The Veilguard ice mage build guide.

It’s all about lowering the temperature to lock enemies in an icy prison, then exploding them in a shower of crystals, not only dealing devastating damage but looking pretty spectacular too.

Below we’ll show you what skills to grab, as well as what weapons, armor and items to equip in order to optimise this build. Before then, if you’re more comfortable wielding necromancy, this Dragon Age: The Veilguard death mage build destroys enemies. 

Dragon Age: The Veilguard ice mage build

1. How to play
2. Key skills
3. Abilities
4. Armor
5. Talismans/rings
6. Weapons
7. Companions
8. Runes

How to play

At its simplest, your ice mage will inflict two different status effects on enemies. These are chilled and frozen.

The chilled status effect deals cold damage over time, and slows movement and attacks. The frozen status effect, meanwhile, prevents the target from attacking or moving.

Unlike the necromancer build which relies on the stave, you can mix and match your stave with the spellblade. To do this, press down on the D-pad and switch between them. This means you can operate at both near and far ranges. 

When using your spellblade, well-timed blocks freeze enemies. Also, if you press X/square three times, you’ll plant an arcane bomb on opponents, which you can then explode by pressing Y/triangle. Your stave is useful because it lets you build up cold damage from a safe distance.

What you'll see playing as an Evoker / BioWare

Key skills

• Breathing Room: The radius of area abilities (like Frost Nova) is increased by 50%.
• Zone of Destruction: Hitting three or more enemies with an area ability enhances the damage.
• Block Mastery: Reduces block mana cost by 30%.
• Frost Shield: Enemies who inflict damage on you are chilled.
• Absorb: When you defend against an attack, staff energy is charged by 25%.
• Bolt Volley: Tap x/square then tap again as the bolt shoots from your staff to spawn an additional bolt.
• Supercharged: Projectile abilities deal 75% more damage vs. barriers.

Abilities

• Frost Nova: Freeze your enemies in a wide area, dealing 126 damage. Increase its effectiveness with the Breathing Room and Zone of Destruction skills
• Ice Blast: Hurls shards of ice while also applying weakened for your companion to detonate.
• Death Squall: Projects a burst of entropic energy to knock targets back and also detonate sundered.
• Vortex of Shadow: Your ultimate ability deals 4,320 cold damage and creates a vortex of dark energy in front of you, doing damage to anyone caught in it.

The all-important skill tree / BioWare

Armor

• Frozen Facade: When the frozen effect ends, it shatters, blasting enemies with 150 cold damage. You can get this with our Dragon Age: The Veilguard – The Heart of Corruption walkthrough.
• Arlathan’s Fall: This armor has no base defense but does 100+ ability damage. Purchase this from the vendor at Arlathan Forest after ranking them up to level 4.

Talismans/rings

• Glorious Ultimatum: +25 ultimate recharge rate at a cost of potion healing. In other words, potions will no longer heal you, but they will recharge your ultimate. Also, using an ultimate heals you to full.
• All Mother’s Copse: 20+ blast ability damage, 25+ blast ability damage vs barriers, gain 25 mana when a blast ability deals critical damage.
• Maw of the Black City: Your ability damage is always a critical hit. Find this with our guide to the Dragon Age: The Veilguard unique items locations.
• Essence Vortex: Abilities now cost +50 mana to activate and do 30+ ability damage. Abilities also now heal you.

What weapons, armor and items we recommend / BioWare

Weapons

• Chilled Grasp: This elemental orb does 341 cold damage at +9 upgrade level, and also offers +25 cold resistance.
• Coral tip: A unique mageknife dealing 60+ added cold damage. Also, triggering an arcane bomb also applies frozen.
• Glacial Rod: Does 338 cold damage, and heavy attacks apply an additional chilled stack when you have full staff energy.

Companions

• Davrin: His Death From Above ability detonates weakened, which pairs well with your Ice Blast ability. 
• Harding: Her Shred ability applies sundered, which pairs well with your Dark Squall ability. Also, she can heal you with Soothing Potion, which is handy since your own potions no longer heal you.

Runes

• Glaciate: When activated, all of your weapons do +20 cold damage for 20 seconds.