COMPANION BUILD

Alistair’s Tank Build - The Juggernaut

The build is pretty straightforward and makes Alistair the Ultimate tank to stand his ground against the strongest enemies. Alistair is a very popular companion, first, he is the first one to join your ranks. Second, he offers unique and entertaining banter throughout the journey.

Regarding the build mechanics, the build will rely on heavy or massive armor to have a very high armor value. This will help to reduce incoming damage.

Defense stat, allows for the avoidance of enemy attacks, ensuring that Alistair does not incur any damage. This will be optimized for the latter part of the game, and the good thing is that this does not create any kind of animation that would slow damage output.

The last part is drawing aggro, this will be achieved with the help of a few talents, but mainly, having sufficient strength and access to Threaten. The latter will be invaluable as each hit will slowly increase threat levels, ensuring that enemy attention is drawn to him.

Attributes

In this section, I would like to review the recommended attributes for Alistair Tank Build. You will be required to pick them every level up, so optimizing and not wasting any of them will prove vital for the build.

There are a few goals that you want to reach first:

Dexterity: 26 - unlocks all the talents in the Weapon and Shield tree. You should continue investing in it later on. But this is what I recommend to have as a starting goal.
Cunning: 12 - unlocks more tactics slots via Combat Tactics skill.
Strength: 42 - allows wearing heavier armor and improves weapon damage.

Here is my recommended way of reaching it:

You might see that one attribute is missing - the Constitution. The main reason is that you should be getting some of it from equipment. Moreover, the HP boost is very low. If you feel comfortable you can invest some points, but generally, this is not needed as good Armor and high Defense value will overcome this.

You could also play around with +2 Dexterity and +1 Strength once you reach 42 Strength. This way you would have a bigger improvement to defense at the cost of lower Threat generation.

Skills

This section will go through recommended skills to optimize the character. These unlock general utility actions or improve combat capabilities in terms of new talent levels or tactics slots.

Specializations

To be fair, you can play around with other Specializations like Berserk or Reaver if you are into more offensive playstyle.

Talents & Spells

In this section, I would like to go through the recommended talents for Alistair Tank Build. They are important in optimizing the various bonuses and what actions are unlocked.

Templar

I would not give this tree a high priority. The last ability is unlocked late into the game, and by that time you will probably have a mage with Mana Clash. The talents here I kind of wasted.