Warrior Guide O' Hurs

[Hurs]

Hello everyone, my name is Hurs and today we are going to be talking about a class that is dearly loved by me... the Enchantress. When you hear the name of the class, you might assume that you will be playing as an Elf... which you will be. The Elves are a rather frisky bunch who--- Whoops! Wrong intro...

Anyway, today we are going to be discussing the Warrior class. This is a class that can be quite hard to play, and also quite easy to play depending on what role you want to fill. Before you begin on your journey, make sure that you are fine with looking at bear butt as this could be problematic later on.

Why play the Warrior?

Based on the latest patch (4/19/10):

The Warrior class is in much better shape than it was before this patch. We received some much needed improvements to our spells as you will see later on in the guide and both of our roles were improved (DPS and tanking). The Warrior now fits nicely with the other classes and is now playable to people who wouldn't normally have played it.


Class Roles

The Warrior really only offers up two class roles, as opposed to the Enchantress who offers three. These two roles are as follows: the tank and the 2H DPS. Keep in mind that you will probably see a lot of the latter form of the Warrior class, that is, people will run around with the 2H sword because it looks cool. While in my previous guide I stated that the person with the coolest looking weapon gets the ladies... well... that doesn't apply in this guide. Just forget it.

List of Spells

This bit is pretty simple... no room for being witty.

Level 2: Vengeful Slash (Slash your enemies for extra damage!) Cost 10. +Damage, +Knock-back per rank.
Level 4: Stomp (Blast enemies away from you in all directions!) Cost 20. +Damage, +Knock-back per rank.
Level 6: Taunt (Pull enemies away from your friends!) Cost 25. +Dodge chance per rank.
Level 8: Crippling Slash (Keep enemies from running away!) Cost 15. +5 Damage per rank.
Level 10: Rage (Do much more critical-hit damage to targets!) Cost 50. +1 Damage and +10Crit. per rank.
Level 12: Super Mega Slash (A massive knock-back strike!) Cost 15. +Damage, +2 Knock-back, per rank.
Level 14: Crushing Blow (Crush your enemy's ability to do damage!) Cost 20. Reduce Target damage -10 per rank.
Level 16: Restore (Increase your health regeneration!) Cos 20. Regen +4 for 5 sec. +10 heal per rank.
Level 18: Iron Blood (Extra armour protection!) Cost 30. +4 Armour per rank.
Level 20: Hell Scream (Terrify your enemies and sap their will to fight!) Cost 25. Reduce target damage -10 per rank.
Level 22: Evade (Increase dodge chance for 20 sec.) +5% dodge chance per rank.
Level 24: Beckon (Pull enemies toward your position) Increase rank to pull more monsters.

These spells can be broken up into two distinct roles:

Tank:

Level 4: Stomp (Blast enemies away from you in all directions!) Cost 20. +Damage, +Knock-back per rank.
Level 6: Taunt (Pull enemies away from your friends!) Cost 25. +Dodge chance per rank.
Level 18: Iron Blood (Extra armour protection!) Cost 30. +4 Armour per rank.
Level 20: Hell Scream (Terrify your enemies and sap their will to fight!) Cost 25. Reduce target damage -10 per rank.
Level 22: Evade (Increase dodge chance for 20 sec.) +5% dodge chance per rank.
Level 24: Beckon (Pull enemies toward your position) Increase rank to pull more monsters.

2H DPS:

Level 2: Vengeful Slash (Slash your enemies for extra damage!) Cost 10. +Damage, +Knock-back per rank.
Level 8: Crippling Slash (Keep enemies from running away!) Cost 15. +5 Damage per rank.
Level 10: Rage (Do much more critical-hit damage to targets!) Cost 50. +1 Damage and +10Crit. per rank.
Level 12: Super Mega Slash (A massive knock-back strike!) Cost 15. +Damage, +2 Knock-back, per rank.

Now I know you all are eager to question the decision of putting "Crippling Slash" into the DPS build. But, if we look closely, we see that it adds +5 damage per rank as opposed to the + damage that the other slashes boast. Now this may just be speculation, but I consider the + damage on the other skills to mean + 1 damage as opposed to +5. Someone can either confirm or deny this, but Crippling Slash does have the potential to deal the most damage out of all of the slashes.

Other:

For any of you observant folk, you probably noticed the two spells that didn't make it into either category:

Level 14: Crushing Blow (Crush your enemy's ability to do damage!) Cost 20. Reduce target damage -10 per rank.
Level 16: Restore (Increase your health regeneration!) Cos 20. Regen +4 for 5 sec. +10 heal per rank.

And it is probably fairly obvious to see why. Crushing Blow is a single target damage reduction spell that gets outclassed by Hell Scream. Restore is a health regeneration ability that doesn't really work too well in-combat (at least pre-patch) and is a waste of points.

NOTE:

The new patch added some stuff to our spells:

- Warrior 'Slash' abilities do a lot more damage.
- Warrior 'Rage' self-buff yields a higher DPS during the buff period.
- Warrior 'Iron Blood' provides more armor (but has a longer cool-down).
- Knock-back effects for the 'Mega Slash' have been reduced considerably.
- A chance to 'Stun' targets has been added to 'Stomp,' 'Hellscream' and 'Mega Slash.' Chance to stun targets increases with increased skill ranks.

Stat Allocation:

As far as attributes go, this is a good stat build for both roles:



This gives you a very well-built Warrior with both high health (relatively speaking) and a good hit and crit percentage. Here is the skill point spread for tanks:



The skills are pretty self-explanatory. Stomp is used for AoE aggro generation, Super Mega Slash for single target aggro. Iron Blood is my panic button (bumps armour to 122) and Hell Scream provides a nice AoE debuff that lowers the damage of all nearby enemies. Evade is another nice panic button that gives you +25%. Beckon, in my opinion, is a requirement for tanking. It allows you to gather up the mobs in a nice, tight pack which will make both your Archers and Enchantresses happy. Beckon can also be used as a way of pulling mobs off of your healers/dps.

The Equipment/Gear:

Alright, I am going to make this short and sweet (DEAR GOD, THANK YOU!) and start off with splitting the roles:

Tank: Armour, armour and more armour! Not armor... but armour. Make sure that you have a good armour count before focusing on adding in benefits such as H/s (health per second) and strength. Luckily, most of the gear with high armour has that kind of stuff on it anyway. As for weapons... there is an axe out there called the "Spiked Axe of Power" or something of that nature, that adds +2 to your armour count. That is about all it has going. I would really recommend grabbing a Flaming Sword of Blood or another high DPS weapon that offers the stats you want.

2H DPS: Dexterity, dexterity and more dexterity! While this may seem odd, Dexterity does add to your DPS, crit, hit, and dodge. Those are all very hand to have when you are trying to smack people. Unfortunately most Warrior gear has +Str on it, which wouldn't be a bad thing if it added damage. Anyway, just keep your eyes out for any chance of a dexterity bonus but don't be disappointed if you can't find the perfect armour piece. In terms of weapons, obviously use a 2H weapon that has a stat spread that you like and that provides high DPS. The level 30 2H of choice (or so I have seen) appears to be the Ruby Sword of Blood.

P.S: I lied about the short and sweet thing.

Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed the guide and thanks for reading ^_^

UPDATES:

4/20/10: Rewrote the "Why play the Warrior?" section.