Character Roles

Each of your companions will have a specific role to play if your party is to fight as an efficient unit. The following role descriptions include a few recommended sample character builds to show the extent to which your companions can be empowered by pursuing a very specific direction.

Tank

The role of the tank is to generate the most threat, drawing in all enemies or occupying the efforts of a boss so that your foes focus all attention on the tank and leave other characters alone. To this end, the tank is a sponge for damage and needs to be heavily armored, preferably possessing a high Constitution and enough Strength to equip the best. Assigning one character as a tank effectively protects weaker characters from facing too many assailants.

Holding the interest of so many enemies at once requires an understanding of the Threat system. Although you can create a warrior Hawke in the tank mold, Aveline has been clearly crafted for this role – right down to her Guardian specialization and her unique Gift shield.

Healer

In prolonged battles on higher difficulty settings, you will find your party suffering low health, unconsciousness and injury. The role of the healer is to monitor their companions and restore health when necessary. All spells having a set Cooldown, the healer benefits from possessing additional healing spells to share out simultaneously.

A healer will still spend their other time in either support or offense. Of the many options available, we suggest you pursue the Primal tree as a complement to Aveline. This opens up several cross-class combo opportunities and is especially effective at following up on her Staggered opponents.

Thanks to his Vengeance personal tree, Anders is the best choice for healing and support, though only a mage Hawke can opt for the Spirit Healer tree.

Damage-Dealer

A damage-dealer speeds up the process of dispatching the opposition by inflicting massive amounts of damage in very little time. As revealed in the table below, this can be achieved by virtually any character provided you specialize them accordingly.

When facing massed opponents, the damage-dealing role – also known as “nuke” – is best fulfilled by a mage with an array of offensive AoE spells. To get the best bonuses for damage, it is important that the mage chooses the Elemental or Primal discipline and first fills out the entire tree (with upgrades), rather than spreading themselves thinly over both. Furthering their career, the mage can consider debuffer spells or specialization trees.

When it comes to inflicting large amounts of pain on single opponents, you have various options. A warrior in the Two-Handed Reaver/Berserker tradition can work wonders, with Fenris as your companion exemplar, but there is also plenty of provision for the role to fall to a rogue:

Isabela’s capacity as a damage-dealer is of such ferocity that she is likely to draw threat to her (and thus away from the tank). This is not necessarily a bad thing, though, as you could employ Isabela in an off-tank role (with the Across the Bow and Savvy talents being especially useful).

Archer rogues can also deal large amounts of damage while enjoying the (relative) safety of range – a most welcome feature when Nightmare’s friendly fire comes in. Varric is geared to be a very effective archer. This is especially true as the game uses base weapon damage in calculating the power of special moves, which greatly advantages Bianca. Taking Subterfuge for escape and Sabotage for combo potential, the archer sets up Stunned, Confused and Disoriented enemies for others while reserving Punishing Lance and Shattering Arrow for Brittle victims.

Additional Roles

Debuffer/Saboteur

This mage support role takes the entire Entropy tree, packing superbly useful Hexes for reducing enemy capabilities. Every sensible mage can cheaply cast Horror for a quick holding fix on many enemies otherwise immune to Stun. But it’s the further upgrades and progression to Entropic Cloud that really make a difference when you need to incapacitate devastators, assassins and bosses – either to take them down quickly or to get rid of all other foes before the effect wears off.

Lockpicker

It’s frustrating to pass up locked treasure chests or suffer traps, because you will lose out on thousands of XP over the game and on valuable loot. If you happen to find any items with a related property (bonus to lockpick or bonus to disarm traps) then hold on to them. Even if they’re weaker than other pieces in your inventory, you can equip them purely for the duration of the task of opening a locked chest or disarming a trap.