What Is Rage? – Dragon Age: The Veilguard

In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, each of the three classes — Warrior, Mage, and Rogue — has a unique class resource that fuels their Abilities and a number of their other Skills. For Warriors, that resource is Rage, which is gained every time you take damage, or when you deal damage with weapons or shield toss, and it declines over time.

But how exactly does Rage work? What is it used for? And how can you generate more or increase your maximum Rage? This guide will go into each of those questions and more.

What Is Rage & What Is It Used For?

Rage in Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the Warrior‘s unique class resource (as opposed to the Rogue‘s Momentum and the Mage‘s Mana). If you are playing as a Warrior, Rage will become one of the most important aspects of your class.

At the start of the game, you will begin with 100 maximum Rage, and can see how much Rage you have at any given time during regular gameplay by looking at the bottom of the screen, where you’ll see an orange/yellow Rage Bar showing how much Rage you have at any given time.

The circular pips along this bar are Rage Points ; for every 50 Rage you have, another Rage Point is generated (though it will be lost if you fall below that threshold). These Rage Points are used on most of your Abilities, except for those that are on timed cooldowns instead. When you use an ability that costs Rage Points , it will activate the Ability and drain 50 Rage per point spent from your Rage Bar.

Most Warrior Abilities cost 1-2 Rage Points — the more powerful the ability is, the more it will cost you, but it will pay off in effectiveness (most of then the damage or the potency of its debuff against the enemies.)

Rage is arguably the hardest of the class resources to regenerate, and most of your Skill Tree will be filled with the ways for you to generate or retain more of it.

Still, some of the Equipment Traits and Skills will offer you more creative ways to spend Rage, like converting 25% into Stagger with your Shield Toss, should you decide to pick up the Staggering Toss Skill. Then, Skills like Explosive Anger or Violent Catharsis will reward you spending Rage by dealing 200% of the cost as Fire damage to the surrounding enemies, or by healing you for the exact amount of the cost, respectively.

Alternatively, the Enflamed passive will reward you not spending your Rage by increasing your Burn damage for the 20% of the Rage you currently have.

How Do You Get More Rage?

Warriors generate Rage by hitting and getting hit — pretty simple. Thing is, by default you have to deal damage that damage with your weapon or your Shield Toss, losing Rage if you spend too much time merely blocking or rolling around dodging, so it can feel slow and frustrating to work your way up to an Ability at the start of the battle, only to be stuck swinging your weapon around again (and, of course, there is only so many times you can get hit before there are no Potions or Companion Abilities to bail you out).

Thankfully, even outside of the Gear and Unique Items with special Traits (which you should still absolutely check out), Warriors get tons of ways to generate more Rage and retain more of it between battles.

Increase Maximum & Generate More

First way to deal with your Rage scarcity is to increase your maximum Rage — locate the three Depth of Fury nodes on your Skill Tree, which can add +50 Rage each, and see if you can drop by each on your way to your target Specialization.

Much more impactful, of course, would be a way to generate more of it, more quickly. This is where Rage tends to get more creative, and you can generate more of it while taking damage (Masochism), while hitting Afflicted enemies (Incite Violence — it also increases Rage from weapon hits in general), while defeating an enemy with a Strike Ability (Quick Strikes), with a Shield Toss and by striking Weakpoints (Seething Pitch), by performing Takedowns (Defy the Elements), and this is before we even talk about the variety of Rage-related Traits you will see on your Equipment.

Note that you can create very powerful synergies: if you pick up Defy the Elements to get Rage from Takedowns, for example, and then maximize your Stagger damage, you might just end up executing enemies one after another and filling up your Rage bar all at the same time.

If you opt in for something more simple, Enraged will increase your Rage generation by 10% across the board, and Furor will make your Charged attacks generate more Rage relative to their Charge level. In the list above we also mentioned that Incite Violence increases Rage from your weapon attacks in general. These passive boosts should fit into the majority of Builds.

Retain More Rage

Another way to help yourself trigger more Abilities is to either retain more Rage during a battle, or in between combat encounters. Rancor, for example, gives you 50% more time before your Rage begins to decay, which gives you more time to block and roll around the battlefield.

Alternatively, Enduring Rage will stop your Rage decay at 50% flat, which means that you can hold on to it between fights. With an increased maximum, this could mean that you can trigger some of your most powerful Abilities as your openers.

Companion Assistance

Your Rage regeneration doesn’t end with your own Skills: remember to look through you Companion Skill Trees to spot options that create synergies (an example we discussed earlier is regenerating Rage form Takedowns and then boosting Stagger damage), or for Upgrades and Passives that recover your Rage or reduce your costs directly.

• Bellara
  • Windfall (Time Slow – Passive): When the effect ends, you gain 50 Rage. This bonus is only applied during combat.
  • Hasten (Time Slow – Passive): While Time Slow is active, your next Ability use does not have a Rage cost.
• Emmrich
  • Surge of Life (Replenish – Upgrade): When activated, you gain 25 Rage. This bonus only applies during combat.
  • Essence Leech (The Bell Tolls – Passive): While Quietus is active, gain 5 Rage every second.
  • Windfall (Time Slow – Passive): When the effect ends, you gain 50 Rage. This bonus is applied only during combat.
  • Hasten (Time Slow – Passive): While Time Slow is active, your next Ability use does not have a Rage cost.
• Harding
  • Ability Rush (Adrenaline Rush – Upgrade): When activated, you gain 50 Rage. This bonus applies only during combat.
• Lucanis
  • Ability Rush (Adrenaline Rush – Upgrade): When activated, you gain 50 Rage. This bonus applies only during combat.
• Neve
  • Cold Comfort (Replenish – Passive): When activated, you gain 20 Rage. This bonus applies only during combat.
  • Windfall (Time Slow – Passive): When the effect ends, you gain 50 Rage. This bonus is applied only during combat.
  • Hasten (Time Slow – Passive): While Time Slow is active, your next Ability use does not have a Rage cost.
• Taash
  • Enrichment (Fortune’s Favor – Passive): Gain 10 Rage each second you are Invulnerable.

Alternative Approaches

If Rage doesn’t play well into your current build, you can put more focus on the cooldown-based Abilities: Warrior has a few powerful options, like Titan Stomp, which is a fantastic opener after charging into the thick of your enemies (and it Applies Overwhelm, which you can then Detonate with Lucanis or Harding).

And, how about converting all of your Abilities into being cooldown-based? Sadly, this is not something you will achieve with a Skill, but it is still something offered by a Unique Item — a heavy helm Field-Commander’s Helm (from Hossberg Wetlands) that changes all of your Abilities to a 60-second cooldown and counts half of your Rage as a damage bonus instead.

Remember to pay attention to the Traits on your items! One of them can very well change how you are using Rage in your playstyle entirely.

And there you have it: everything you should need to know about Rage in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Now, equipped with this knowledge, it may be useful to explore our Skill Tree Calculator in order to create the most potent, Rage-fueled Warrior you can!