Dragon Age Veilguard Gate Champions Guide

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is filled with difficult side quests and optional challenges to spice your adventure up. One of the recurring fights you’ll encounter if you engage with the Gates side quests, are the ones against the multiple Champions in the game.

Blight Cyst

Most of them boast a similar moveset, usually with slight differences, and with varied resistances and weaknesses. What they all have in common, is that they’re usually considerably harder than the fights you’ll be faced with in the rest of the game, until you reach the latter parts of DAV’s bigger side quests.

READ: Dragon Age Veilguard Beginner Tips

This guide will help you deal with these foes, so you can tackle them earlier, reaping the very powerful rewards they drop directly, and the ones they hide behind their locked Gates.

When To Take Down Champions

Before we start, do not engage in these fights if you’re so below the appropriate level that your enemies have a red skull next to their name, as pictured below.

I did manage to take this one down while being level 17, but it took me more than an hour of non-stop attempts and the successful fight lasted 5 whole minutes. That might not sound like a lot, but it is a lot.

Underleved Warning

Although it was fun to get this extra challenge, it is not worth it. The XP you get is not much more than what you get from opponents of your level range, and the rewards will still be waiting for you when you come back at level 20 or above.

Furthermore, the Cysts these champions come from are always lower level than the actual enemy, usually 5 levels lower, specifically. Desmal, for example, was level 25, while his Cyst was level 20.

Champion Fights Guide

All champions are slightly different, but they all share the same moveset. The tougher ones will just add extra things on top of that base.

Entarus the Rekindled, for example, periodically shoots you with either Arcane or Fire bolts, depending on which version of him you rolled.

Entarus The Rekindled

Their base moveset is the true danger, though, as the additions are easy to understand, and would be easy to deal with, if the base moveset wasn’t such a handful by itself.

As all champions are blighted, you’ll want to kick off all fights by focusing on charged attacks. Drop your party’s spells, ideally ones that function as Crowd Control, like Neve’s Blizzard, and an ability that Sunders your enemy, increasing damage taken.

Every time you get a chance, use a charged attack, and, if you own any, use a weapon or equipment piece that buffs armor damage. Once the Blight Armor is gone, blow them up with your ultimate and rejoice, the hardest part of the fight is now done.

Champions are dangerous at all ranges, but I prefer handling them in melee, even as a Mage. Their attacks are harder to dodge when you’re close, but you’ll make them more likely to use parriable moves, which is the key to taking them down.

Parriable Attack

Parriable attacks are usually combos, so you’ll be in trouble if you miss a timing on a first hit. If you’re insecure about your parrying skills, wait for the last hit of a combo until you parry, it is almost always the third hit.

The parriable combos are either horizontal swings, very telegraphed and easy to parry, or a string of attacks that always goes like this: they slam their right side, then their left side, followed by a sword of baseball swing in front of them.

This is one of the easiest attacks to parry, just let them slam both sides, run in front of him, and parry when they wind up the swing.

Unblockable attacks are a different conversation entirely, and they’re what makes these fights so difficult. All champions have the following unblockable moves:

• Melee slam with a line of damage, usually leaves the area hit as a damage zone of whatever element the Champion uses.
• Wide swings while walking forward.
• Charge, sometimes twice in a row.
• Jumping Slam.
• Two to Three Stomps.
• Casting that throws projectiles.
• Ranged Laser

By far, the most dangerous one of these are the melee slams with lines of damage. The arenas you fight these guys in are usually small, and having area of denial attacks that linger is extremely dangerous.

Line Slam Attack

When they start stomping, just dodge away and get in some free damage if you’re ranged. Same for the wide swings, but only if you’re ranged, as they will track your movement if you try to circle them.

Ranged Laser

Dodge the charge to the side, and don’t get greedy to punish as they might repeat it right afterwards, catching you mid-animation. The ranged laser is only a problem if you’re not paying attention. The indication pops up much earlier, and you just need to spam dodges until it’s over.

When they kneel down with a hand on the floor and start throwing projectiles, stagger him in any way you can and that will cancel the attack. Battlemages don’t even need to use a spell, blowing up a prepped Arcane Bomb does the trick, but most spells will do so too.

Projectile Casting

Above all else, be patient, and don’t keep too much distance. These guys are very easy to parry and that makes them much less dangerous. Time spent stunned or staggered is time in which they can’t be oppressive, and gives you opportunities to heal.

Neve’s Blizzard is also excellent in all these fights, as none of them are immune to being Frozen, and getting an extra window of time is crucial in these longer encounters.

Good luck out there, and go unlock those gates!