In-depth look: Warrior

The warrior is a soldier profession with mastery of a wide range of weapons, using adrenaline to become as deadly as it is versatile.

Warrior concept art.

Abilities

The warrior's role is largely defined by the weapon they wield in their main hand. Each weapon type has a particular flavor and type of damage that it inflicts.

Adrenaline is the warrior profession's unique mechanic. As the warrior attacks adrenaline is built up which increases the damage of the warrior's attacks. It can also be spent on a single powerful burst attack. Each weapon set has a single burst skill which has a variety of different conditions that improve with more adrenaline.

 Special skill types

• Banners — The warrior summons banners to buff his allies. A banner can be picked up and carried around to move the buff, or it can be planted in an area to convey the buff, allowing the warrior to continue fighting. One example is Banner of Courage, which increases the melee damage of allies within its range.
• Chains — A set of three skills that share a single skill slot, chains go off in sequence if you are hitting your target. For example, the sword chain skills Sever Artery, Gash, and Final Thrust are all on the same key, so rather than making a sword warrior spend three slots, they stack to fill only one slot. Chains effectively give a warrior two extra weapon skills on a weapon set allowing for a larger selection of skills and abilities.
• Charge Skills — Skills can be held down to power them up for more impressive attacks. A warrior with a mace can wind up the powerful skillObliterate and release it at four different power levels to do increasing amounts of damage.
• Shouts — Shouts are skills that affect a large area and give bonuses to allies or debuff enemies. A warrior could use the shout On My Mark to lower an enemy's armor and call a target out to allied party members.
• Stances — These are toggle skills that let you turn on an enhancement at the cost of energy regeneration. For example, a warrior could hitBerserker's Stance which drains his energy, but gives him adrenaline regeneration. It can then be toggled off so the warrior is able to regenerate his energy pool again.

Traits

A warrior gains traits through training physically, by defeating enemies, and by eating and drinking.

A warrior has two general trait lines to choose from: Power and Tactics. They also have trait lines for each of the weapons they can wield.

See list of warrior traits.

Attributes

Warriors can put attribute points into Strength, Agility, Vitality, and Perception, the other attributes being considered minor for this profession.

Armor

The warrior is a soldier profession and thus wears heavy armor.

 

Weapons

 Two-handed

• Hammer - Pounds the ground with area-of-effect attacks that can stagger groups of enemies.
• Greatsword - Sweeping area-of-effect attacks while being able to move quickly between groups of enemies.
• Longbow - Massive fire AoE damage used to keep hordes of enemies at bay.
• Rifle - After taking aim, a warrior can quickly volley bullets against a single target or pierce groups of enemies with one shot.

Main-hand

• Axe - Can quickly build up adrenaline and can deliver powerful high damage attacks.
• Sword - Quick and mobile, with many opportunities to cause bleeding.
• Mace - Has powerful stunning attacks, leaving enemies susceptible to further blows.

Off-hand

• Shield - Provides defensive abilities.
• Warhorn - Buffs damage output.
• Axe
• Sword
• Mace

There are nineteen different combinations of weapons that a warrior can wield. A warrior has two active weapon sets and can easily switch between them, but doing so in combat induces a cooldown to prevent continuous switching between weapons. This cooldown can be decreased by equipping the Weapon Mastery trait once gained.