Home / Dragon Age / Dragon Age: Inquisition Multiplayer – Best Class to Play Before Bioware’s Next Nerf Patch

Dragon Age: Inquisition Multiplayer – Best Class to Play Before Bioware’s Next Nerf Patch

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I finally found some time to get into the Dragon Age: Inquisition multiplayer (more on that later), and I have to do this post before Bioware nerfs the hell out of my favorite class, the Elementalist.  IMHO, The Elementalist is the best class to play with on Threatening or Perilous mode.  It’s great for crowd control and does a significant amount of damage and self-healing, which means that it will probably get taken down a notch when the next DA:I patch comes out … so you better play it while you can!

Here’s my guide on how to spec out your Elementalist and maximize his potential (scroll down for pictures instead of video):

Elementalist starts with Immolate and Winter’s Grasp at Level 1.  It’s not a bad setup on Routine – Winter’s Grasp comes in especially handy when baddies get too close.  Just freeze them solid!

spec

I always start spec-ing out my Elementalist to get to Firestorm as quickly as possible (Level 6 is the earliest you can get it).  Firestorm is one of the best powers in multiplayer and is great for crowd control – it does a decent amount of damage but most importantly, it knocks down all the little mooks in its ring of death.

The next power you want to spec out after Firestorm is Death Siphon.  This is crucial to your survival because it restores your health every time an enemy is killed.  You don’t even have to score the kill yourself or be near a downed enemy – sometimes I go run for treasure chests that are all the way across the map from where the enemies are dying and my health still goes up.

Now the rest of the powers you can spec out in whatever order you want.  I like to build up to Barrier and then get more offensive powers.

At this point, you should have Firestorm and Barrier in two out of your four open power spots.  What you want to do with the two power spots that are left is up to you, but here’s what I recommend – Wall of Fire and Stonefist.

Wall of Fire does great crowd control, burning and panicking any enemy that runs through it.  It doesn’t do a ton of damage but every time the enemy runs into the fire, they get re-damaged, so it can really add up.  Some people take Fire Mine instead but I recommend against doing this – though the 1600% damage might look good, the Fire Mine only affects one enemy and more often than not, enemies don’t even step on it unless it’s placed perfectly.  In the heat of battle (especially on Perilous), who has time to lay mines perfectly?

Stormfist is great because it knocks enemies down, giving you the same amount of breathing room as Winter’s Grasp’s freeze would give you – except with 500% damage instead of 200% damage.  That being said, Winter’s Grasp can freeze bosses like the Venatori Commander and the Arcane Horror – so if that’s important to you, go with Winter’s Grasp.  Just don’t spec out Immolate – it is pretty useless on higher levels.

Lastly, you want to spec out your Defiant passive power that adds +5 magic and +4 cunning.  There, now you have the best Elementalist in your arsenal!

Do you like this Elementalist build?  Let me know in comments! 

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14 Comments

  1. We agree to disagree here Robine… :D
    I would not dismiss Immolate so quickly as it has extremely low mana cost, fast CD and 100% urn break rate (unlike most attacks ;)) so you can spam it really fast. Also I like to keep Winter’s Grasp around as it creates a perfect shatter combo with Stone Fist. Also ignoring them means two wasted development point anyways… :) Having Barrier is handy if you are the only spellcaster on team but being teamed up with a good Keeper invalidates it’s necessity totally. :) We agree on the Firestorm, though. Firewall – not so much. You cannot tell it apart from the Venatori Commander’s :D
    I would say your build is best for solo play and random team, but when playing with friends in organized setup I prefer mine… :P

    BR,

    Arnie

  2. Hi Arnie! I didn’t realize Immolate has a 100% urn break rate (ugh those urns are so annoying) … that could be useful! My build is definitely the best for crowd control and perilous mode … of course, you can do any build if you have a great, well-rounded team of 4 :) Sadly, I’m always playing random lobbies because none of my friends are ever on when I am!!! :( Maybe you’ll play with me some time?

    • I am shutting down the Dragon Age business for the holidays as I will be running around seeing relatives and stuff but I would be delighted if we could play sometime next year, my fair lady! XD
      And while we are at the topic I would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a spectacularly Happy New Year and thank you for all that you did here – it was and always is fun to read your elaborate posts and to see your awesome creative stuff… XD

      All the best!

      • Happy holidays to you, too! Haha I hate my voice, I sound like a 12 year old – and yes, my mic is terrible :D I don’t have good enough gear yet to get 300+ DPS but I agree, you just sit there and spam powers and the mobs die, gets a little boring!

    • Any class can be OP to be honest. IMHO too much is depending on the gear you have. The skill is less important if you have 300+ DPS… You just clickclickclickclick-everymobdies-youdominatetheboardnomatterwhatyouplay… XD There is only the perilous difficulty giving you some pause if you have LVL20+ all purple gear… This I do not like too much. In ME multiplayer play style, skill, teamwork did really matter – I do not feel that here that much… :/

  3. I’m really sorry but I’m new to your site so I didn’t know where to leave this so that you could see it but could you do an updated Tap Campus Life hack? I know I shouldn’t really be asking here because it’s not related to this particular post but your last one was over a year ago and it would be really helpful to have a new and updated one :) thanks for reading and I’m sorry if I annoyed you by commenting this request in the wrong place :/
    Have a lovely day <3

  4. I’m glad to see you posting mulitplayer stuff, but this will not steer me away from my Reaver, mainly because I don’t like playing mages so much. Can’t wait to see more!

  5. I like some of these ability choices, but I would trim down the number you take to just four or five, and make everything else a passive. By having any more than 4 abilities, you’d be wasting the benefits from a possible passive. Sometimes you have to take an extra, because you may not want one of the starting abilities (which is what happened to me with the Archer…I didn’t want Caltrops).

    I’m guessing that’s why Bioware built in the ability to “prestige” your characters, so you can re-roll them with a more focused approach.

  6. Thank you so much for this! Love my keeper, so lm so glad to see someone else seeing the benifit of barrier. Reblogged to my tumblr. I just started playing DAMP after 2 runs of SP. Only been playing for 3 weeks? I am always unsure what to do with my points. Especially since you can’t respec the character. Do you have any more build tips? I do not play tanks, so any warrior build tips you have would be great.
    Also tips for knowing when to move up in difficulty or for first-timers on perilous. I just tried threatening for the first time yesterday. I was so nervous, but it was almost easier than routine. Everyone maybe knew what they were doing? To be fair i was the team tank.

    Clearly I am a multiplayer virgin. :)

    • Reaver, how to be OP with reaver, the first thing you want to get is Rampage, then get Dragon-Rage and the 2nd perk. so far you have 4 abilities, most people like mighty blow, but i dont use that as my 4th ability, since it comes with the level 1 character, i replace it with war-horn. run into a mob, blow the horn, start up the rampage and feast on the dragon rage, at the end of the rampage duration, all of the enemies should be dead and your health at max. cause rampage heals you when you inflict damage. then the rest of the points just spam on passives

  7. Btwitter I found your post like right after I got this class, so I am happily following along. I haven’t played it on threatening yet though.

  8. i completely agree on how the Elementalist is one of the best classes in the multiplayer game. I tend to disagree on skill setup though. I use Fire Trap instead of Immolate due to the amazingly high damage output it has as well as lets you get some good damage and health at the same time if left at the right spots. I use it mainly when running from hordes and then drop in front of me drop barrier then run past trap causing all enemies following me to walk right over it and die a funny and ironic death. I still use Winter’s Grasp though since it has been very useful on the Venatori Commander. She gets easily frozen and then bam drop Firestorm on her and she just dies off. And obviously Barrier is the life save skill that normally rarely needs used. The best thing though is to run a game with Keeper/Elementalist/Necromancer/Arcane Warrior. Using all super skills is ridiculous. These super skills I refer too are Firestorm/Static Cage/Rift/Blizzard. Mix all in one then you have Spirit, Fire, Ice, and Lightning magic damage just destroying everyone who is stupid enough to enter the ring of destruction.(Thats my name for those skills.) Over all though any class can be amazing but obviously not everyone will know how to play each style of combat. I honestly prefer my Legionnaire, Keeper, Elementalist, and Assassin. (Still can’t make up my mind on favorite overall mage type). Btw I do play on the Xbox 360 version almost daily. Anyone willing to run perilous day in and day out just hit me up. Me and my friends pull lvl 1s through it all day normally. Name is GT.

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