Dragon Age: Inquisition, like the previous two games in the franchise, has three main classes. These are mage, rogue, and warrior. Mages are qunari, elves, and humans who have a connection to the Fade, which means they remain conscious while dreaming, they can use magic, and they attract the attention of spirits.

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Mages are some of the most powerful damage dealers in Inquisition, but they are significantly less durable than the other classes, and their high damage output can attract the attention of enemies. They are also the only class that can cast barriers, and can activate Veilfire and raise debris to create bridges or to block tunnels. Mages also have special dialogue options, and the class has a specific connection to the conflict in the first act of the game.

Updated on July 08 2021, by Shayna Josi: Dragon Age: Inquisition follows its predecessors in many ways, but the class system has had something of an overhaul from the games that came before it. Some of these, such as the removal of healing, means class skills and abilities have changed to accommodate these updates. This means that knowing the ins and outs of the class system and building an effective Inquisitor and mage companion is more important than ever before.

Barriers

Barrier glyph Dragon Age Inquisition

Unlike the previous two Dragon Age games, there isn't a branch of magic for healing, and the Spirit Healer specialization isn't available. Instead, Inquisition works around protection. For the mage, this takes the form of Barrier, which forms a magical shield around the Inquisitor and their allies. For most Inquisitors, Barrier is going to be a key part of building a mage, and many of their abilities across the schools are going to support and supplement the basic Barrier spell.

Barrier's upgrades include:

  • Elegant Defense, which reduce the cooldown each time its cast.
  • Energetic Defense, which holds for longer before it starts to decay.

Which one choose largely depends on the Inquisitor's specialization. Elegant Defense serves most Inquisitors who don't choose the Knight Enchanter specialization, as the faster cooldowns allow more casting at higher levels, where the barrier is destroyed before it can decay on its own.

Schools of Magic

There are four schools of magic in Dragon Age: Inquisition, each of which has its own specific focus.

Winter

Ice Dragon Inquisition

Key abilities: 

  • Winter's Grasp - Winter's Chill (Upgrade)
  • Mana Surge 
  • Frost Mastery 
  • Wall of Ice - Ring of Ice (Upgrade)
  • Blizzard - Winter Winds (Upgrade) 

The Winter school of magic focuses on affecting the movement of enemies through the use of ice spells. These spells are intended to slow down and weaken enemies, but they also deal damage and are particularly useful for crowd control and rage demons. One of the best passive abilities in this school is Mana Surge, which makes the Inquisitor's barrier explode when enemies destroy it and freezes them. This is especially helpful if the player or an ally is surrounded by enemies.

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Winter spells also affect the mage themselves, with Fade Step allowing the mage to seamlessly move across the battlefield in an instant. Ice Armor gives the mage additional protection, which is particularly helpful when combined with Ice Mine. Wall of Ice and Ice Storm are the perfect combination for crowd control, as they affect enemy movements and can be used to create choke points or isolate powerful enemies.

Inferno

Dragon Age Inquisition Fire Sword

Key abilities: 

  • Flashfire - Blazing Trails (Upgrade)
  • Immolate - Wildfire (Upgrade) 
  • Pyromancer
  • Wall of Fire - Wave of Flame (Upgrade) 

The Inferno school focuses on dealing increasingly high amounts of damage. This school rains fire upon enemies, and is particularly adept at dealing AoE damage, as seen with Immolate and Wall of Fire's upgrade, Wave of Flame. Inferno spells also makes enemies panic and flee, spreading the flames across the battlefield.

The Blazing Trails upgrade for Flashfire spreads the fire across the battlefield at random and damages any enemies who come into contact with it. Immolate's upgrade, Wildfire, increases the damage dealt by 100% weapon damage, while also reducing the cooldown time by 4 seconds. Paired with the passive Clean Burn, the Inferno school makes for an Inquisitor who can deal constant damage and chaos.

Spirit

Hands Inquisitor Dragon Age

Key abilities: 

  • Barrier - Elegant Defense (upgrade)
  • Dispel - Transmute Magic (upgrade)
  • Rejuvenating Barrier 
  • Peaceful Aura

The Spirit school is vital to the support mage. Abilities in this school are fueled by the connection with spirits from the Fade – hence the term. The essential Barrier spell is a part of this school, and many of the Spirit school's spells are centered on this spell.

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Barriers are just the start of Spirit's usefulness, however. Mages with Dispel can prevent demons from exiting Fade rifts, an ability which can be the difference between success and failure. Dispel also helps removing pesky barriers from enemies. Peaceful Aura allows a mage to go unnoticed by enemies, a helpful boost when dealing high levels of damage from spells.

Storm

Dorian Storm Dragon Age Inquisition

Key abilities:

  • Energy Barrage - Energy Bombardment (upgrade)
  • Chain Lightning - Arcing Surge (upgrade)
  • Stormbringer
  • Static Charge 

The Storm school focuses on debilitating and damaging spells through use of the element of lightning. Energy Barrage is one of the most useful spells available to the mage, serving several hits to enemies and, if the Arcing Surge upgrade is used, lowers enemy resistance to the spellcaster's staff elemental magic. This makes enemies more vulnerable to the mage's basic attacks.

Energy Barrage and Chain Lightning both hit multiple targets, and are good spells to use in conjunction with equipment crafted with Fade-Touched materials, especially ones which work on chance per hit. Static Cage is a good ability for crowd control, and the passives in this school deal damage to enemies across the battlefield even if they aren't being attacked by the Inquisitor or their allies.

Specializations

Like other classes in the game, the Mage class offers three different specializations for the Inquisitor to choose from.

Rift Mage

Dragon Age 4 Solas

Key abilities: 

  • Veilstrike - Punshing Down (upgrade)
  • Stone Fist - Unblockable Force (upgrade) 
  • Pull of the Abyss - Devouring Veil (upgrade)
  • Firestorm (Focus ability)

Rift magic is a very new form of magic, and originated when the Breach appeared. Rift magic draws from the raw power of the Fade, and uses this power to throw enemies across the battlefield. Solas is the mage companion who specializes in this field, and the book to learn the specialization may be found on his desk.

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In a practical sense, Rift Mages use AoE spells to control the battlefield. Pull of the Abyss pulls enemies caught in its rift to a central point, at which point Veilstrike can be used on the enemies all gathered together. Veilstrike's upgrade, Punching Down, also weakens enemies, causing them to deal less damage. Firestorm unfortunately is only effective against certain types of enemies, and they often end up running out of its range. A better option for a Rift Mage would be to spend points on other AoE spells in the other schools.

Necromancer

Dragon Age Inquisition Dorian

Key abilities: 

  • Horror - Terror (upgrade) 
  • Simulacrum
  • Spirit Mark - Wisps of the Fallen (upgrade) 
  • Walking Bomb - Virulent (upgrade)
  • Haste (Focus ability) 

Necromancy takes all sorts of forms across fantasy games. In Inquisition, Necromancy is the specialty of Nevarra, where the mortalitasi death mages oversee vast crypts of corpses possessed by spirits from the Fade. Dorian is a Necromancer, and the book to learn the specialization may be found in his library.

Players from previous Dragon Age games will notice many spells from previous games consolidated into this school. Walking Bomb is one of these, in particular Walking Bomb with the Virulent upgrade, which infects surrounding enemies with the curse. As many of the spells in this specialization rely on panicking enemies, these spells work well with the Inferno school.

Knight-Enchanter

Dragon Age Inquisition Vivienne

Key abilities: 

  • Spirit Blade - Defending Blade (upgrade)
  • Fade Cloak - Decloaking Blast (upgrade)
  • Disruption Field - Charged Disruption (upgrade) 
  • Resurgence (Focus ability)

Knight-Enchanter was incredibly overpowered upon Inquisition's release, which was addressed in a patch. Though not as powerful as before, the Knight-Enchanter is still a popular build.

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Knight-Enchanters use a blade of pure spirit energy, Spirit Blade, summoned from the Fade. Charge is built when the Inquisitor deals damage using basic attacks or spells, which makes the Spirit Blade more powerful. Energy Barrage from the Storm school is incredibly helpful for charging the Spirit Blade due to its number of hits, as is the Charged Disruption upgrade for Disruption Field. Fade Shield restores the player's barrier every time they deal damage, while other passive skills support the barrier. A properly built Knight-Enchanter can solo dragons, making this a specialization well worth considering.

Weapons

Dragon Age Inquisition Revenant Staff

Best crafting metals: 

  • Dragon bone (fire) 
  • Ice Dragon bone (ice)
  • Veil Quartz (electricity)

Staves are the only weapons available to mages, the exception being the Blade of Tidarion. Staves deal elemental damage and, unlike in Origins, are capable of dealing critical hits. When crafted with Fade-Touched materials, these weapons are especially deadly. Though there are a number of named special staves available to be looted in Inquisition, the most powerful staves will always be ones that are crafted with rare and powerful materials.

One of the better Fade-Touched effects to aim for when crafting a staff is Guard on Hit. Combined with the Storm spell Energy Barrage with the Energy Bombardment upgrade, it results in multiple hits, bars of guard, and reducing enemy resistance to the staff's elemental damage.

Additional Tactics

Dragon Age Inquisition

As a mage, the Inquisitor's party will preferably need at least one rogue and one warrior in the party, with the warrior being a tank rather than an attacker. If there is one other mage in the party at all times, the Inquisitor has the freedom to not have to focus on barriers, and instead focus on damage.

Warriors like Cassandra or Blackwall are best in a party for a mage Inquisitor. They both can attract and soak up enemy damage, leaving the more vulnerable mage Inquisitor to deal damage from afar. Solas is good at crowd control and weakening enemies with his Rift mage specialization, while Sera's Tempest specialization is great for dealing damage along with the mage Inquisitor.

NEXT: Dragon Age: Everything We Know About The Next Installment's Story (So Far)