All apply and detonate skill combos in Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Using abilities to apply and detonate effects in Dragon Age: The Veilguard is an important step in upping your combat game. These combos combine skills from multiple characters to deal extra damage.

Our Dragon Age: The Veilguard combo guide will explain how to apply, prime, and detonate effects, and then we’ll list all of the abilities that go into these combos.

How to apply and detonate skills

Your companions all have a couple of abilities that work even better when paired with someone else’s. Some skills either apply or detonate one of three effects: Overwhelm, Sundered, or Weakened. Applying an effect primes the target for an explosion, and then another skill can detonate that effect for a bunch of extra damage. By default, these explosions only affect the target, but as you level up your companions’ skills, you can convert them to deal damage over an area.

When applied, these priming effects impact your target in different ways. Overwhelm means the target takes additional stagger damage, Sundered means the target takes more damage in general, and Weakened reduces their damage output. But detonating a combo results in the same explosion.

The easiest way to see this is in the Ability Wheel (R1/RB or tab). If you or your companions have any skills ready to go (not on cooldown) that can pull off a prime-detonate combo, they’ll be highlighted with arrows and a flag that says combo opportunity. The order you select the abilities matters here, so make sure you pick the applies first, and then the detonates after.

Like we said in our beginner’s tips, fights in Dragon Age: The Veilguard are kind of a wash until they’re not anymore. These combos are a great way to give yourself an edge once the fights get hard.

All apply and detonate skills list

Your player characters will have seven to nine abilities that will either apply or detonate an effect, depending on the class you chose during character creation. All of your companions will have two each.

The full list of the abilities that can create combos are:

For more Dragon Age: The Veilguard guides, see our explainers on how to change appearance, how to romance characters, and how to start companion quests.