History GameBreaker / DragonAge

* In ''Awakening'', peopel can choose a third specialization at level 22. This is unbelievably effective, given the fact that on the second playthrough...you can get two of the new (incredibly effective) specializations. (Even Keeper, which doesn't match up to Battlemage, the other new specialization, isn't bad when a player knows how to use it.)

* Another nice way to fatten your purse comes by exploiting a bug during the Asunder quest in the Deep Roads. Once all the demon's parts have been acquired, you need to put them on an altar for reassembly. The demon can then be set free for a very decent reward in gold. Thing is, this rewards can be gained up to four times at once by positioning your party around the altar, pausing the game and having each of them interact with the altar individually. Resuming the game then triggers the ensuing cutscene four times in a row and, well, you get the point. Very handy for players without access to the ludicrously valuable Reaper's Cudgel.

* Another nice way to fatten your purse comes by exploiting a bug during the Asunder quest in the Deep Roads. Once all the demon's parts have been acquired, you need to put them on an altar for reassembly. The demon can the be set free for a very decent reward in gold. Thing is, this rewards can be gained up to four times at once by positioning your party around the altar, pausing the game and having each of them interact with the altar individually. Resuming the game then triggers the ensuing cutscene four times in a row and, well, you get the point. Very handy for players without access to the ludicrously valuable Reaper's Cudgel.

** The Belt of Urgency when used by a Reaver. Since Reaver's can [[CastFromHitPoints reduce their own health at will]], they can sit comfortably below the 50% marker and gain a noticeable increase to their attack speed. This boost stacks with the attack speed bonus of [[LimitBreak Rampage]], and can be combined with Rampage's free Dragon Rage spam and a Mighty Offense Potion to get results not far behind the Artificer's Rain of Arrows and Leaping Shot combination.

** Andraste's Sacrifice (Villa Maurel, Emerald Graves) for Mages and Rogues grants an on-hit chance effect to taunt nearby enemies. That is usually the opposite of what you want, unless that Mage is a Knight-Enchanter. This allows Knight-Enchanters to divert aggro even better, making a normal sword-and-board warrior moot.

* The Necromancer (both the single-player specialization and the multiplayer character) has a passive ability called Simulacrum, which causes a spirit doppelganger of the Necromancer to rise when the Necromancer is knocked out. Said spirit can be controlled like the character themselves and casts spells without mana cost. The Game Breaker comes when the Necromancer is equipped with a Heal on [=Hit/Kill=] passive. The Simulacrum's attacks can trigger these passives, restoring the Necromancer's health even while they are knocked out—resulting in the Necromancer instantly reviving once the Simulacrum ends. A Necromancer can charge into battle, get their head smashed in, nuke everything in ghost form, and the push themselves out from underneath the pile of bodies.

* From the Feastday Gifts DLC we have the Qunari Prayers for the Dead: an item that can be used over and over so long as Sten in your party and conscious. It's effect? Bringing any fallen party members back to life. Very handy in some of the tougher boss fights. The real game breaking element is that you're invincible during the cutscene, and if you watch it all, the party is restored to max health and mana, so as long as Sten is alive, your party is essentially immortal. This can be cheesed to astonishing effect.

** Andraste's Sacrifice (Villa Maurel, Emerald Graves) for Mages and Rogues grants an on-hit chance effect to taunt nearby enemies. Seems pretty stupid, until you realize this allows Knight-Enchanters to divert aggro even better, making a normal sword-and-board warrior moot.

** Flaming Array and Chilling Array, upgrading Fire Mine and Ice Mine, respectively. These upgrades let the caster create three mines directly in front of them, which arm instantaneously. These mines form an excellent line of defense against melee attackers but can also be used for offense by Knight-Enchanters. Chilling Array has the added benefit of triggering Ice Armor (50% damage reduction), while Flaming Array summons three mines that inflict 1.600% weapon damage... each.

* In ''Awakening'' characters can choose a third specialization at level 22. This is unbelievably broken, given the fact that on the second playthrough...you can get two of the new (incredibly overpowered) specializations. (Even Keeper, which doesn't match up to Battlemage, the other new specialization, isn't bad when a player knows how to use it.)

* Sword and shield is also extremely powerful when stacked with dexterity, dodge + % and defense+ items. Making the tank nearly impossible to hit, add spell resistance from Templar, enchantments, auto-health regen as well as awakening's broken carapace skill (First 15 sec of skill makes you immune to damage, the second half absorbs a percentage of damage that actually manages to land). For even more fun, give the tank a good dagger to take advantage of that high dexterity. Even without maxed out dexterity it's still a massively overpowered build option if you focused on maxing out your armor. It's possible to solo [[ThatOneBoss the Harvester]] on Nightmare difficulty because you're just so tough that it can only inflict ScratchDamage.

* Much like Arcane Warrior before it, the Knight-Enchanter specialization for mages is hilariously broken. Videos of Knight-Enchanters easily solo-ing High Dragons on [[HarderThanHard Nightmare Difficulty]] with the rest of the party dead appeared very quickly. On their own, the Knight Enchanter's abilities are simply powerful. What really destroys the game's difficulty is the synergy with spells of every other school, with not a single combination precluding another aside from limited skill points. To sum up: when the Inquisitor tells fellow Knight Enchanter Vivienne that they are the finest mages in Thedas, it is NotHyperbole.

** The Fireball spell. The damage is nice, but the real power is that it can knock down all but the largest enemies. An enemy that has been knocked down takes ''just'' long enough to pull themselves up that the mage can cast a spell with a long charge time, such as Inferno or Mass Paralysis, without having to worry about interruptions.

* The Tempest specialization for rogues has an ability called Flask of Fire which allows the Rogue to use all abilities with no cost or cooldown for 5 seconds. Normally that wouldn't be too impressive except that this effect also applies to Focus abilities, which are designed to be extremely powerful with the trade off of having to build the Focus resource in order to use them. With the only drawback removed they are exactly as overpowered as one might think. The Tempest's own Thousand Cuts ability with full tier 3 Focus can take off about 30% of a High Dragon's health in 2 seconds and it can be used whenever Flask of Fire is itself off cooldown, which is every 30 seconds. If the player is ''really quick'', it is possible to [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill it is possible to use Thousand Cuts twice per each Flask of Fire]].
** There's also the Archery skill Full Draw, a devastating blow at the beginning of an battle: When used on an enemy at full health, it hits for a whopping 1600% weapon damage, making it the single most massive attack bonus in the game. Flask of Fire means that you can do this multiple times, allowing you to land multiple devastating blows over the course of the five second duration. This can quickly thin the enemy ranks at the beginning of a fight, and at the end, you can use Stealth, and be hidden for 30 of the 32 second cooldown for Flask Of Fire. While the attack may lose some of its sting after the first hit, it is still one of the strongest attacks an archer can use, with an 800% damage bonus. When upgraded, it puts enemies to sleep, allowing Mages or Warriors to do [[CombinationAttack very nasty things to the target]].
** The latest patch of the game in 2015 has nerfed the Thousand Cuts exploit. But there is a compensation tactic one can use with Tempest. As a Rogue, get the Throwing Blades skill. Upgrade the skill so that each blade thrown does more damage. Get the Flask of Fire, and upgrade it so there is no cool down when using skills for 5 seconds. What you get is a powerful skill to spam for 5 seconds and do damage almost as brutal as Thousand Cuts.

* ''The Descent'' DLC adds a quartermaster to your first camp in the Deep Roads who buys items for several times what any other merchant will. You can set up this camp shortly after reaching Skyhold, and money problems become a thing of the past... at least until the game was patched so the merchant buys items for normal prices.

* Much like Arcane Warrior before it, the Knight-Enchanter specialization for mages is hilariously broken. Videos of Knight-Enchanters easily solo-ing High Dragons on [[HarderThanHard Nightmare Difficulty]] with the rest of the party dead appeared very quickly. On their own, the Knight Enchanter's abilities are simply powerful. What really destroys the game's difficulty is the synergy with spells of every other school, with not a single combination precluding another aside from limited skill points.
** The Knight Enchanter's Fade Shield passive is the big one in the spec itself. Every time the Knight Enchanter causes damage, they gain some barrier. With a strong enough weapon, the Knight Enchanter can keep the barrier up permanently, and enemies can not damage health as long as a barrier is up.
** Spirit Blade behaves like a standard melee attack that costs mana and is three times as strong as a mage's normal staff attack. It's also spirit elemental, making it very safe to use. It causes more damage to guard and barrier, which are normally difficult to get through, and this extra damage translates into even more barrier from Fade Shield, so the mage becomes a tank that is especially adept at killing other tanks. When upgraded, it gains the ability to reflect projectile attacks, covering ranged enemies. Spirit Blade is also the only ability to benefit from runes.
** Fade Cloak makes it very easy to avoid telegraphed attacks from bosses, but the upgrade allows the Knight Enchanter to TeleFrag any enemy they're standing inside when the effect ends. This causes a very large amount of damage, which translates to a very large amount of barrier from Fade Shield for when the Knight Enchanter is visible again. Fade Cloak ''also'' provides an instant wakeup from those annoying knockdown attacks used by enemies such as Terror Demons.
** The Combat Clarity passive improves mana regeneration by fifty percent when in melee range, ensuring that the Knight Enchanter always has mana for Spirit Blade. Veiled Riposte causes damage to any enemy that hits the Knight Enchanter's perma-barrier. Knight Protector decreases the degeneration rate of all barriers cast by the Knight Enchanter, on any target.
** The Knight Enchanter's [[LimitBreak Focus Spell]] is Resurgence: the ultimate full-party heal. In a game that otherwise has no healing spells, this is even more powerful than it would be normally.
** Rejuvenating Barrier in the Spirit Tree increases mana regeneration by thirty-five percent whenever the user has a barrier active, which for a Knight Enchanter is all the time. This stacks with Combat Clarity for a total of eighty-five percent faster mana regeneration. Very helpful since Knight Enchanters can struggle with mana management when using other spells.
** No standard passive ability breaks the game more in the hands of a Knight Enchanter than Clean Burn. Every time a mage with Clean Burn casts a spell, all active cooldowns are reduced by one second. Combined with Spirit Blade, which has no cooldown, a Knight Enchanter can rapidly speed through the cooldown period of all of its other spells. That means an enormous increase in damage and crowd control. A sufficiently skilled Knight Enchanter can even negate the need for a [[StoneWall sword and shield warrior]] because it becomes possible to keep a permanent barrier on the entire party.
** A mage that has Clean Burn also has Flashpoint. Every time the user gets a critical hit, one spell can be used with no cooldown. [[NoKillLikeOverkill Two upgraded Fade Cloaks in a row]]...
** Chaotic Focus is normally very risky for mages, since the user's barrier is cut in half to increase a fire spell's damage. With Fade Shield, a Knight Enchanter automatically gets back a significant chunk of the barrier they lose when Chaotic Focus activates.
** Mana Surge allows a mage to cast one spell for zero mana cost every time the user's active barrier depletes. With Fade Shield, a Knight Enchanter can use a single attack to gain a small amount of barrier, let that deplete, and then get the effect. This can be done very frequently and is great for expensive spells like Winter's Grasp and Lightning Cage that Knight Enchanters normally struggle to use effectively. The AOE freeze effect that is supposed to be Mana Surge's main draw is just gravy.
** Ice Armor is considered near-useless for most mages, but an ice focused Knight Enchanter will spend most of their time near frozen enemies, ensuring they remain hard to kill [[UpToEleven even if they somehow find themselves without a barrier]].
** Fade Step makes it significantly easier to get in range to use Spirit Blade.
** Stormbringer is a free nuke every fifteen seconds to a random enemy within twenty-five meters of the user. The Knight Enchanter's fighting style ensures that they will always be in range.
** Static Charge is an extra line of defense for most mages. For the Knight Enchanter, who will likely be hit while spamming Spirit Blade, it's even more damage [[UpToEleven on top of Veiled Riposte]].
** Add a Masterwork armor with Fade-Touched Silverite (which grants 5 Guard on hit), and you have ''another'' level of defense that you don't have to micromanage. At this point even on Nightmare difficulty, the only things that can possibly get past your defenses are the various rogues that appear in the DLC (backstabbers and rapid fire archers deal so much damage in a single strike it's basically an insta-kill).
** To sum up: when the Inquisitor tells fellow Knight Enchanter Vivienne that they are the finest mages in Thedas, it is NotHyperbole.
** As of Patch 10, the Knight Enchanter has been nerfed, as the Spirit Blade now requires other attacks and spells to build up charges in order to increase damage, but also loses charges whenever Spirit Blade is cast. This has the obvious drawback of having significantly reduced damage, but it still means the Knight Enchanter retains all of his/her tanking abilities.
*** All is not lost, as the Spirit Blade has a new upgrade: Amplified Blade, which builds up charges faster, but expends all of it in a single attack. This doesn't sound that beneficial until you consider Amplified Blade as a sort of LimitBreak, building charges with other attacks before walloping your enemies with a single, massive strike. And it still activates [[CooldownManipulation Clean Burn]].
*** The last patch also gave the Knight Enchanter various Sigils to use on their armor. Of particular note is the Sigil of the Great Bear, which doubles the wearer's mana pool while cutting mana regeneration in half. The reduction to mana regeneration rate seems like a bad thing, until you realize that mana regeneration is percentage based to begin with. So while the relative amount of mana recovered per tick is reduced, the absolute value recovered per tick remains the same[[note]]Base mana regeneration rate for a mage is six percent of maximum mana per second. At the normal one hundred maximum mana, this is six mana per second. Sigil of the Great Bear alters this to two hundred maximum mana and three percent mana regeneration per second. Three percent of two hundred is six.[[/note]] The real advantage is that this mathematical formula effectively doubles the value of additional mana regeneration effects such as Combat Clarity and Rejuvenating Barrier. While wearing a Sigil of the Great Bear, Combat Clarity alone causes the Knight Enchanter to effectively gain small amounts of mana while using Spirit Blade, and adding Rejuvenating Barrier improves that effect even more.
*** Another late addition is the rare amulet, Andraste's Sacrifice. Wearing it improves both the user's cooldowns and mana regeneration rate. The cooldown bonus makes Clean Burn even more powerful, while the mana regeneration bonus stacks with Combat Clarity and Rejuvenating Barrier and is effectively doubled by a Sigil of the Great Bear. Normally, the chance of an aoe Taunt is not something any mage would want, but it allows a Knight Enchanter to completely replace a sword-and-shield warrior.

* Bow wielding [[TrapMaster Artificers]] have a particularly potent [[EliteTweak combination of abilities]]. The two central abilities are their [[LimitBreak Focus Ability]], [[RainOfArrows Hail of Arrows]], and Leaping Shot in the Archery tree. Also necessary are Opportunity Knocks in the Artificer tree and Looked Like It Hurt in the Sabotage tree: Opportunity Knocks [[CooldownManipulation reduces all active cooldowns]] every time the user gets a critical hit, while Looked Like It Hurt restores the user's stamina on every critical hit. For this to reliably work, the Artificer needs a critical hit rate of at least fifty percent. When Leaping Shot is used during Hail of Arrows with the mentioned passive abilities, the shear number of hits can completely negate Leaping Shot's cooldown while fully restoring the Artificer's stamina, making it possible to continuously spam it the entire time Hail of Arrows is active. Against small enemies, Hook and Tackle can be used to make sure that every shot hits. Against large enemies, Hail of Arrows lasts long enough that the Artificer can just run back into position. Even a High Dragon on Nightmare Mode can end up losing ''at least'' half of its HP by the time Hail of Arrows ends.

** Consuming Fire, the new upgrade for Immolate, when used by a Rift Mage with the Restorative Veil and Clean Burn abilities. When the target is weakened by one of the Rift Mage's unique spells, Restorative Veil allows the caster to continuously spam Immolate with no concern for the escalating mana cost, allowing the Rift Mage to spam Clean Burn in much the same way a Knight Enchanter can with Spirit Blade.

** Terror, the new upgrade for Horror, completely immobilizes any enemy that does not resist panic and has at least twenty-five percent of its health remaining.

** The BloodMagic spell Blood Wound, which ''boils the blood'' of all nearby enemies, as well as paralyzing them for the duration of the spell. Yup, another room-clearer, and one that makes all other damage spells parlor tricks in comparison. Some strategy guides actually advise ''against'' spells like this, since they turn pretty much every battle into walks in the park. The only limit is that enemies without blood are not affected, but there aren't enough of those to push it out of gamebreaker status. Also? This spell has no friendly fire.

** Consuming Fire, the new upgrade for Immolate, allows the user to spam it repeatedly for the next eight seconds, only costing ten additional mana for each additional use. It's not particularly powerful on its own, but each extra use of Immolate will activate Clean Burn.

*** Another late addition is the rare amulet, Andraste's Sacrifice. Wearing it reduces both the user's cooldowns and improves mana regeneration rate. The cooldown bonus makes Clean Burn even more powerful, while the mana regeneration bonus stacks with Combat Clarity and Rejuvenating Barrier and is effectively doubled by a Sigil of the Great Bear. Normally, the chance of an aoe Taunt is not something any mage would want, but it allows a Knight Enchanter to completely replace a sword-and-shield warrior.

** The Knight Enchanter's [[LimitBreak Focus Spell]] is Resurgence: the ultimate full-party heal. In a game that otherwise has no healing spells, this is even more powerful than it be normally.
** Rejuvenating Barrier in the Spirit Tree increases mana regeneration by thirty-five percent whenever the user has a barrier active, which for a Knight Enchanter is all the time. This stacks with Close Combat for a total of eighty-five percent faster mana regeneration. Very helpful since Knight Enchanters can struggle with mana management when using other spells.

*** Another late addition is the rare amulet, Andraste's Sacrifice. Wearing it reduces both the user's cooldowns and mana regeneration rate. The cooldown bonus makes Clean Burn even more powerful, while the mana regeneration bonus stacks with Combat Clarity and Rejuvenating Barrier and is effectively doubled by a Sigil of the Great Bear. Normally, the chance of an aoe Taunt is not something any mage would want, but it allows a Knight Enchanter to completely replace a sword-and-shield warrior.

** Spirit Blade behaves like a standard melee attack that costs mana and is three times as strong as a mage's normal staff attack. It's also spirit elemental, making it very safe to use. It causes more damage to guard and barrier, which are normally difficult to get through, and this extra damage translates into even more barrier from Fade Shield, so the mage becomes a tank that is especially adept at killing other tanks. When upgraded, it gains the ability to reflect projectile attacks, covering ranged enemies.

** The Close Combat passive improves mana regeneration by fifty percent when in melee range, ensuring that the Knight Enchanter always has mana for Spirit Blade. Veiled Riposte causes damage to any enemy that hits the Knight Enchanter's perma-barrier. Knight Protector decreases the degeneration rate of all barriers cast by the Knight Enchanter, on any target.
** The Knight Enchanter's [[LimitBreak Focus Spell]] is Resurgence: the ultimate full-party heal. In a game that otherwise has no healing spells, this is even more powerful than it already sounds.

** Coming Through, the new upgrade for Combat Roll, does 250% weapon damage to anyone the warrior passes through, turning a handy mobility talent into a hard-hitting, relentlessly spammable AreaOfEffect attack...that is also a handy mobility talent.