Weapon and Shield DPS

[LooksLikeDaniel]

I’m making a sword and board city elf but I’ve been thinking about making her a bit more dps-ey rather than going full tank. Is this even possible and if so, how do I do it?

[ADEC Inc]

That would be difficult cause shield is categorically the worst dps build, but in the long term could work. Shield Mastery causes your strength to be added a second time to shield attacks. That doesn't include Assault, but it does maximize the weapon damage for Assault. Overpower will actually be weakened slightly by Shield Mastery, unless a bugfixing patch is applied. Unfortunately, that would also fix the bug preventing Shield Wall's damage penalty from applying to you, which you certainly wouldn't want in this case.

Basically just pump a ton of str and not so much dex as you normally would. Try to freeze or petrify enemies before using Overpower to shatter them. Always hit a boss with Death Hex so you can get many critical hits with Assault.

[Luck-E-lynx]

With high enough strength you do respectable damage per hit, but you would likely have to sacrifice in other area's (Defense, stamina or health pool)

Berserk is best- gives damage boost when active. "Resilience" and "Constraint" not bad pick ups as well. While "Final Blow" can do a lot of damage in a single hit. It is usually not worth the loss of all your stamina. Besides with you putting more emphasis on strength your willpower likely not as high (which cuts the damage output.)

Reaver- "Aura of Pain" can offer some additional AoE damage when surrounded. Can switch to Blood Frenzy for fighting single enemies, but damage boost is inconsistent as based on your health, and I have never really liked the drawback.

Give your character a single "poison-making" skill so it can use high level poisons that Zevran makes. I recommend "Quiet Death" (+10 nature damage) or "Concentrated Crow poison" (+6 nature damage) "Demonic poison" is also good damage (with the benefit of being spirit damage for golems and others enemies immune to nature damage) but ingredients a lot harder to come by.

Have Mage using "Haste" (better attack speed) and/or "Flame/Frost weapons". (best used with a party of 3 melee as it does not benefit ranged weapons)

High cunning Bard using "Song of Courage" (again for better damage)

With damage runes. Elemental with Silverite for situation damage to darkspawn (that you face a lot of.)

[briarroot]

You can obviously play whatever style suits your fancy but generally speaking, and not considering any mods etc, for Warriors to get the highest Damage-per-Second use a Dual Wield build. To get the highest Damage-per-Hit use a 2-Hand build.

Yeah, there are some nice offensive moves with Shields which include stuns etc, but 1-Hand Warriors with Shields are going to be mostly defensive builds. Kind of sucks, I know, but that's how this game was designed. There are a few shields with good stat boosts but in the end, even with your Mage using Haste, your 1-Hand Warrior won't be doing a great deal of damage compared to the other types.