DW Melee Artificer Build

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of updates lately. I haven’t played more than a few hours of DA: I over the past couple months. University has been taking up most of my time, and working on my Witcher site.

Well that, and I’ve also been playing lots of Path of Exile (best indie game ever). Having said that though, I will still continue posting new DA: I content. And hopefully the DLC is coming out sometime soon!

Dragon Age Inquisition: DW Artificer Skills Bar

The one build I’ve been hearing a lot about is the dual-wield Artificer. It sounds weird at first, because Artificer is usually played as a ranged specialization. However, a DW artificer works rather well, because you can use your trap abilities more effectively than a ranged Artificer. This build is very fun to play due to high mobility, good damage, and blowing things up!

The core mechanic of the Artificer spec doesn’t really change whether you’re ranged or melee – you’re still relying on the combination of the Opportunity Knocks and Looked Like It Hurt passives, to quickly regenerate stamina and reduce cooldowns whenever you crit.

Both Elemental Mines and Spinning Blades have multiple attacks that can crit, so they work well for this build. In addition, the Artificer provides powerful passives for the entire party – 5% extra crit chance, 10% damage, and 10% longer status effect durations.

Basic Gameplay

  • Put down your Fallback Plan teleport and Stealth
  • After you get close to enemies, open with either Elemental Mines if the enemies are grouped up/high in number, or Spike trap if they’re too spread out
  • Use Spike Trap on single targets, especially Archers and Mages to stop their casting; it is also possible hit more than one target with your Spike Trap
  • Use Spinning Blades as your main DPS skill, while your traps are on cooldown
  • Use Evade to close the distance, or to get out of a dangerous situation
  • Use Twin Fangs only to activate combos (on a frozen target, for example) or when other DPS skills are on cooldown
  • If you ever get in trouble, use Fallback Plan to teleport to safety
  • For your last skill, you should pick up Mark of the Rift, or use Flank Attack / Poison Weapons if you’re using this build on Varric

Points Spent: 21+

Point Allocation:

Dual Daggers: Twin Fangs / Dance of Death / Sneak Attack / Flank Attack / Bloodied Prey / Unforgiving Chain / Spinning Blades / Neverending Spin

Subterfuge: Stealth / Evasion / Evade

Sabotage: Caltrops / Looked Like It Hurt

Artificer: Spike Trap / Opportunity Knocks / Set Them Up / Elemental Mines / Throw Everything  / And Take Them Down / Fallback Plan / Tricks of the Trade

Dragon Age Inquisition: Dual Wield (DW) Artificer Build

Dragon Age Inquisition - skill legend

Items:

This build benefits a LOT from critical chance and +stamina gear. More critical chance means you reduce your cooldowns/get stamina back more often. Meanwhile, additional stamina means that you throw more elemental mines and can use your other abilities more often.

Try to craft gear with materials that give critical chance, and pick up a Superb Amulet of Stamina (+50 stam) which drops off the Sandy Howler dragon in the Hissing Wastes.

Superb Stamina Amulet Dragon Age Inquisition
50 extra Stamina is a big deal!

 

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