Skirmishing 101: The Warrior

 

If you have been following this series, then you could likely guess my opinion of the warrior. I don’t get along with melee soldiers and I don’t mix well with soldiers that perform area attacks. Therefore, combining the two attributes in one soldier is unlikely to win me over.

Attributes

Pros: If you can pack the mobs together, the warrior will tear them to pieces.

Cons: The warrior is a melee soldier with only medium armor. If an opponent that a soldier would normally ignore (such as one under CC or a Zealot of Pain) is in melee range of a warrior, then the warrior may damage it while attacking another mob.

Group Sizes: If you can get the warrior into a pack of opponents, then they will do more damage. This can make them useful in large group runs. Unfortunately, they are the most dangerous of soldiers in that they are likely to pull unwanted opponents.

Skirmishes: The warrior should work best in skirmishes with large crowds, especially if traited with a large number of area attack skills (such as Strike against Dannenglor and Protectors of Thangúlhad). Likewise, they would be least effective in low-density skirmishes such as Rescue at Nûrz Ghâshu (and soldiers with area attacks are serious liabilities in group runs for this skirmish since they could easily kill Golodir).

Armor: Medium

Damage: Melee (generally area attacks)

Skills

Five of the warrior’s skills involve area attacks. This means that if you want to equip four skills, you will need to include at least one area attack. Of course, since the main point of the warrior is to use area attacks, I suspect few players will see that as a problem.

Forceful Strike – High single-target melee

This powerful attack is the warrior’s most basic single-target skill.

Carving Strike – Low single-target damage; Medium bleed

This skill doesn’t do as much up-front damage as Forceful Strike but does add a bleed to help with the long-term damage.

Quick Sweep – Low area damage

This is the basic fast area attack. I hope it has a short cool down as I it does not compare well to any of the other area attacks.

Strong Sweep– Medium area damage

This area attack does more damage than Quick Sweep.

Whirling Wounds (Barter – Level 45) – Low area damage; Reduces target’s armor

The other method for improving Quick Sweep is to add debuffs along with the damage. In this case, the target’s armor is reduced.

Disarming Strikes (Barter – Level 55) – Low area damage; Reduces target’s defenses

I would think that a skill called “Disarming Strikes” would impose a disarm debuff rather than reduce defenses but perhaps I have unusual expectations.

Ultimate: Berserker (Barter – 50) – Improves armor penetration; -15% attack duration

This is just a buff for the Champion.

Ultimate: Blood-seeker (Barter – 60) – Low area melee damage; Ultimate bleed

This is a powerful area bleed attack. This is more likely to be useful in group skirmishes (or higher-tier skirmishes) where the trash mobs may have sufficient morale for bleed damage to be significant.

Training

The following traits are trainable by protectors (in addition to those that are trainable by all soldiers):

Medium Armor Training – Improves armor value of those that wear medium armor.

Physical Potency – Improves damage for melee attacks.

Conclusion

I’m still not particularly thrilled with this soldier. Therefore, I would like anyone who has had a great deal of success with the warrior to share how they manage it.

Next time, we will start to look at the various monsters you will face in a skirmish.

May your shield protect you and your spear never break,

Pineleaf Needles