BadYeti in VG Ten Ton Hammer shares his tips for creating a Warrior and learning the ropes through the first ten levels.

The Warrior¡¯s primary role is to protect her allies. She draws the animosity of her enemies and mitigates incoming damage with her defensive skills. The Warrior?s secondary role is to deal significant damage while influencing the flow of battle with her Commands and Shouts. Of the three protective fighter classes, Warriors have the potential to deal the most damage and have the widest range of options for managing enemy aggravation (aggro). A Warrior will need to properly use her stances, special attacks and tactical maneuvers to fulfill her various group roles.

Dexterity and constitution are the Warrior?s primary attributes. Dexterity helps the Warrior trigger his powerful Finishing Attacks and evade incoming damage. Constitution gives him more hit points and higher resistances. While arguably not as important as the prior two attributes, Strength and Intelligence also benefit the Warrior.  Strength enables the Warrior to do enough damage to keep the attention of enemies, while Intelligence increases the magnitude of his Taunts and improves his combat perception.

Building a good Warrior takes some careful planning at the character creation screen and requires you to learn a handful of tactics in the lower levels.

Selecting the Right Race

Warriors of all races start with the same attributes, but the choice of race can affect how many points the Warrior automatically gets placed into its prime attributes.

Starting attributes:

STR	CON	DEX	VIT	INT	WIS
35	50	40	35	25	25

Each character gets 20 attribute points (AP) per level, starting at level ten. Six of your AP are placed for you automatically upon gaining the level, one per attribute.  An additional four points are assigned to attributes based on your race if you are not one of the human races. These preferred stats are intended to reflect the traits of your race.  You can place the remaining ten points (or 14 for humans) wherever you want to within their soft caps.

Human races have a soft cap of five points per attribute, while non-human races have a base soft cap of four points per attribute.  The non-human races, however, gain higher soft caps on their preferred stats. Thus, a human can develop into a more balanced character, while a non-human has the potential to become more specialized.

The table below shows the attribute scores at level 50 before gear and buffs for the Warrior based on selected race.  We?ve highlighted the best results for each of the primary attributes for you.  A Warrior will receive enough AP to reach the soft caps for any two attributes of your choice.

Racial Abilities

The other important factor to consider when picking the race for your Warrior is racial abilities. With their short durations and long recasts, racial abilities are less important than attributes in the selection process, but they can be used to pick between races that are otherwise equal. The racial abilities are listed below.
Thestran: Inspirational Commands
You will have 3 inspirational commands at your disposal: Inspirational Presence, Inspirational Wisdom, and Inspirational Tactics. Each command is a group buff that will add either 2% to mitigation, a 3% reduction to mana cost of all spells, or a 2% increase in damage. You may only maintain one command at a time, however you may have all 3 effects active at the same time. Recast is instant.
Human Ingenuity: + 10 bonus to all weapon skills, and dodge. Crafting: +10 Ingenuity
Harvesting: +5 Lumberjacking

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Dwarf: Earthen Embrace
For 60 seconds, this ability will turn your body to stone. Along with removing all poison effects, you will mitigate 25% damage and become immune to movement impairing spells such as knock back, stun, and snare. Recast is 30 minutes.
Small Race: 2% bonus to evasion
Crafting: +10 Finesse
Harvesting: +5 Mining

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Halfling: Pride of the Vael (WAR only)  or Shroud of the Vael (all but WAR)
Pride of the Vael: This ability will add a vast amount of hate to a single target, and apply a buff on the halfling for 30 seconds. All attacks during this time period will count for double aggro. Recast is 15 minutes.
Shroud of the Vael: This ability will remove 99% of aggro from a single target but keep the halfling in combat. Additionally, for 30 seconds afterwards, any spell cast or attack made will have its aggro reduced to 1% of normal as well. Recast is 15 minutes.
Small Race: 2% bonus to evasion
Crafting: +10 Reasoning
Harvesting: +5 Reaping

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Lesser Giant: Strength of Torsheim
For the next 30 seconds after this ability is activated, you will increase your max hit points by 50%. Hit point regeneration increases for 60 seconds. Recast is 30 minutes.
Large Race: 2% bonus to mitigation
Crafting: +10 Ingenuity
Harvesting: +5 Lumberjacking

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Varanjar: Endless Fortitude
For the next 30 seconds, this ability will cut the cost of all endurance/energy spells by half while increasing your spell and melee damage by 25%. Recast is 30 minutes.
Large Race: 2% bonus to mitigation
Crafting: +10 Problem Solving
Harvesting: +5 Quarrying

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Vulmane: Spiritual Bond
This ability will apply an effect to every member in your group, allowing 35% of all damage done by them to return to you in the form of health for 20 seconds. Recast is 15 minutes.
Animal Reflexes: 10% bonus to run speed. Crafting: +10 Problem Solving
Harvesting: +5 Skinning

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Kojani: Spirit of Jin
This ability will immediately restore 45% of energy and hit points to the target. This ability has a diminishing effect on any target that has benefitted from this ability (used by another player) in the last 10 minutes. Recast is 30 minutes.
Human Ingenuity + 10 bonus to all weapon skills, and dodge. Crafting: +10 Ingenuity
Harvesting: +5 Lumberjacking

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Goblin: Hex of Ghalnn
Whoever is afflicted by this hex will return 3% of the mana and hit points for every hit that is made on them. The effect lasts for 60 seconds. Recast is 15 minutes.
Small Race: 2% bonus to evasion
Crafting: +10 Reasoning
Harvesting: +5 Mining

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Half Elf: Symbol of Jin
This ability will apply a rune to every member of the group for 60 seconds, which will mitigate damage by 15%. Recast is 30 minutes.
Human Ingenuity: + 10 bonus to all weapon skills, and dodge. Crafting: +10 Finesse
Harvesting: +5 Skinning

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Orc: Fury of Ghalnn
For the next 5 attacks after this ability is activated, you will receive a 10% increase to damage and 50% of all the damage you do will return to you in the form of hit points. Recast is 15 minutes.
Large Race: 2% bonus to mitigation
Crafting: +10 Problem Solving
Harvesting: +5 Quarrying

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Wood Elf: Form of Nature
When this ability is activated, you become and okami and all movement impairing spells will be stripped from you, and for the next 30 seconds your run speed will be greatly increased. You will also be immune to all movement impairing spells during this time. Recast is 30 minutes.
Elven Wisdom: 2% reduction in energy cost
Crafting: +10 Finesse
Harvesting:: +5 Lumberjacking

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Qaliathari: Swiftness of the Sands
For this next 10 seconds, you will evade all melee attacks and spells. Recast is 30 minutes.
Human Ingenuity + 10 bonus to all weapon skills, and dodge. Crafting: +10 Ingenuity
Harvesting: +5 Lumberjacking

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Gnome: Forge Crystal
This ability allows you to operate a variety of devices, only available to gnomes, which are able to materialize a energy crystals. Crystals will have several common effects, ranging from percentage based mana, health, and endurance heals to several uncommon, rare, and even ultra rare effects such as prismatic group resist buffs, rune and damage shields, minion summons, and more.
Small Race: 2% bonus to evasion
Crafting: +10 Problem Solving
Harvesting: +5 Mining

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Kurashasa: Symbiotic Armor
When this armor is active you will be protected by a proc (a process that fires under certain conditions). In addition to a rune that mitigates 25% of all types of damage, you have a chance to apply an effect to all enemies within a 20 meter point-blank radius when you attack, cast a spell, or receive damage. Anyone affected by this debuff will become snared and slowed. Recast is 30 minutes.
Animal Reflexes: 10% bonus to run speed. Crafting: +10 Reasoning
Harvesting: +5 Skinning

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Mordebi: Curse of the Ancients
This ability stuns the target for 8 seconds, and reduces the aggro range to 0. The target will not assist/aggro while stunned, and the effect does not generate any aggro. Recast is 30 minutes.
Human Ingenuity + 10 bonus to all weapon skills, and dodge. Crafting: +10 Finesse
Harvesting: +5 Reaping

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Varanthari: Desert Skin
For the next 15 seconds after this ability is activated, you will mitigate 35% of all damage, and every mob that attacks you has a 50% chance of being stunned for 2 seconds. Recast is 30 minutes.
Large Race: 2% bonus to mitigation
Crafting: +10 Problem Solving
Harvesting: +5 Quarrying

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Level 1-10 Tactics

CCongratulations on joining the ranks of Telon?s finest Warriors!  You?ll find that if you?re careful in how you build and play your new Warrior, she?ll grow to become capable of dishing out impressive amounts of damage when going all-out on offense and still be able to tank with the best of them when she needs to.

The first ten levels go by quickly, and you?ll find that most of your opponents are not too dangerous.  Any class can comfortably solo most of the content that?s designed for these early levels, and the Warrior is no exception.  Even so, be sure to select your battle sites and targets carefully.  While you have the potential to put out a lot of damage on a single target, your lack of crowd control options, snares or healing makes additional enemies (adds) extremely dangerous to the Warrior.

Your new Warrior will find himself in an outpost not too far from his race?s home town.  Look for nearby non-player characters (NPCs) with yellow shields floating over their heads.  These NPCs have quests to offer you, and these quests will do a great job of introducing you to the game and the world of Telon.  By the time you finish all of the quests in your starting area, your character will have some nice equipment, a few coins in his purse, a half-dozen or so levels under his belt, and directions to his home town.  At this point, head to your home town where you can expect to find a new set of quests that will introduce you to diplomacy, crafting, grouping and eventually point you to a nearby dungeon appropriate for burgeoning adventurers.

Throughout this process, be sure to visit your trainer every time you gain an even-numbered level to learn new attacks and other abilities.  Heavy Fighter Instructors provide basic training to all three of the protective fighter classes, and can be found in the starting outposts.  Beginning with level six, however, some abilities have to be acquired from a more specialized Warrior Instructor.  A Warrior Instructor can be found in your home town, and the other major cities around Telon.

Learn to Exploit Your Enemies? Weaknesses

For your first few battles, fighting with your warrior is going to be as straightforward as possible.  Until you?re able to afford a bow, you?ll begin combat by running up to an enemy and smacking it with your weapon, occasionally throwing in a Brutal Strike for some bonus damage.  But in almost no time you?re going to reach level two, and gain access to the main offensive combination that you?ll be using up until level twelve, when Leap Attack will take over the dominant role in your offensive strategy.

This combination takes advantage of Vanguard?s Weakness system.  The Weakness system is designed to reward players for properly executing specific combinations of abilities, typically involving more than one class.  Although the Warrior can participate in many cross-class Weaknesses, it is one of the only classes that is capable of using this system without any outside help.

¡°Staggered¡± is the Weakness that you?re going to learn at level two.  Executing Devastating Blow will inflict Staggered on an enemy for six seconds.  So long as the Staggered effect is on your enemy, every time that you hit it with Brutal Strike you?ll exploit that Weakness and gain a 50% bonus to damage.  If you time your attacks perfectly, you?ll have just enough time to get off three Brutal Strikes before Staggered wears off.  This four-attack combination consumes 96 out of your 100 endurance, so be sure to have a full bar prior to starting it.

A Stunned Enemy Can?t Hurt You (or Your Allies)

Let?s face it: your Warrior is stunning.  She?s going to develop a variety of ways to throw her enemies for a loop, and she?ll even pick up a couple of them prior to level ten.
Kick is learned at level two.  While not dealing a lot of damage, Kick is going to become a mainstay of your repertoire.  It has a low cost, a fast animation, it?s usable in either stance, and it has a chance to briefly stun your opponent.  Even the shortest stun will interrupt the casting of a spell.  Use this against casters or as an inexpensive way to try to trigger a Finishing Attack.  I promise that last sentence will make sense in just a few paragraphs.

Stunning Bellow is the more reliable stun.  You?ll pick this baby up at level four.  You can use it to incapacitate any mob for up to four seconds.  Use it to put a halt to incoming damage if you just took a huge spike and your healer is failing to keep up; use it to immediately stop an enemy from beating up one of your friends if your other snap-aggro tools are unavailable; use it to interrupt a particularly obnoxious spell from being cast; or use it to stop a runner from stumbling back into his crowd of easily-angered friends.

Finishing Attacks and Counterattacks and Rescues!  Oh My!

Starting at level six, your life as a warrior will start to change focus.  Much of your attention will begin to shift from abilities that you have full control over to those for which you must react to the combat that?s going on around you.  Level six brings you your first ¡°reactionary ability¡±, Decimate.  Warriors gain three types of reactionary abilities, and you?ll have one example of each by the time you hit level ten.

Finishing Attacks ¨C These deal huge amounts of damage or hate, and will become the core of your Warrior?s offense, especially after level twelve.  Finishing Attacks become available only after scoring a critical hit (crit) with one of your other special attacks, but must be launched immediately after becoming available.  Using any other ability prior to the Finishing Attack will cancel its availability.

Decimate is your first Finishing Attack, and you?ll want to use it every time it becomes available, as its damage greatly exceeds that of any of your other abilities at this level.  Make sure to always save enough endurance to fire off these attacks.  You?ll hate yourself if you have a Finishing Attack light up, but don?t have enough endurance to actually use it before you lose the opportunity.

Counterattacks ¨C These deal impressive damage, though not as much as Finishing Attacks, and will become available after either parrying or blocking an incoming attack.  Their primary benefit is that they have zero endurance or energy cost, so you can consider them ¡°free¡± abilities.  As with Finishing Attacks, using any other ability prior to the Counterattack will cancel its availability.  Riposte is your first reactionary of this type, and will become available at level eight.

Rescues ¨C Rescues are defensive maneuvers that force enemies to attack you rather than one of your allies.  Prior to using a Rescue, you must  select an offensive target that is munching on one of your allies, select the defensive target that is being munched on by that enemy, and be within five meters of them.  Protect is your first Rescue, and will become available at level ten.  It?s going to be your only way to guarantee that enemies are locked onto you for many levels.  Get used to using it.

Selecting the Right Stance for the Job

The first thing you should do when you hit level eight is to track down your Defensive Stance quest.  If you can?t find one in your home town, and it is missing from some of them, you should visit one of the neighboring cities.  Once you have found and completed the quest, you?ll be granted Defensive Stance and have the option of toggling between that and your Offensive Stance.  This tactical option plays a huge role in what abilities will be available to your warrior and how well you?ll perform in executing those abilities.

Most of your high-damage attacks and Finishing Attacks will only be available in Offensive Stance.  Offensive Stance also increases your accuracy by 10%, increases your damage by 10%, and reduces your mitigation by 20%. On the other hand, most of your best aggro-management and tanking tools will only be available in Defensive Stance. While you?re in Defensive Stance your hate will increase by 40%, your blocking (evasion) will increase by 15%, your mitigation will increase by 15%, and your damage will decrease by 15%.

Since there is no ¡°balanced¡± stance for you to choose, the net effect of selecting one stance relative to the other, in addition to their different ability portfolios, will be:

Attribute	Offensive	Defensive
Damage	+25%	-25%
Accuracy	+10%	-10%
Blocking	-15%	+15%
Mitigation	-35%	+35%
Hate	-40%	+40%

Be aware that these mitigation adjustments are calculated additively rather than multiplicatively, as is the norm for other mitigation modifiers in the game.  For example, if a player?s base armor class offers 20% mitigation, and that player were to receive any other 20% mitigation reduction, it would result in final value of 16% mitigation.  However, if that character were a Warrior and were to receive a 20% mitigation reduction due to being in Offensive Stance, their mitigation would be dropped all the way down to 0.0%.

This means that under most circumstances, a Warrior in Offensive Stance will have the lowest mitigation in the game, even lower than casters.

Some players believe this is a bug, but there has been no comment from developers, so its unclear as to whether this behavior is by design.  For now, be aware of this and recognize that even though you are a tank, so long as you?re in Offensive Stance you are a tank with less mitigation than even your robe-wearing allies.

Time to Make Some Friends

This talk of allies brings us to the topic of grouping.  Most of the time when teaming up with others, the Warrior?s role is going to be to absorb damage, to ¡°tank¡± for the group.  If you?re tanking for a group, be sure that roles and expectations are clearly communicated.  Ask for any relevant beneficial spells (buffs) that your allies could provide to you, and understand which party members will be responsible for handling any adds, either through crowd control or off-tanking them until the primary target is dropped.  I suggest establishing that you will be the only person to pull mobs, at least until you become comfortable working with your group.  This reduces the likelihood of multiple pulls and allows you to generate the initial hate.  You?ll find some excellent ideas for macros that can help with this communication in the Ten Ton Hammer Hotkey Guide.

In addition to the short-term Rescues described earlier in this article, beginning Warriors will have access to a handful of other group-oriented abilities to aid them on their way to level ten.
Taunt, acquired at level eight, is an ability familiar to any gamer who has prior experience with massively multiplayer online games (MMOs).  It?s used to draw the ire of an enemy.  In Vanguard, however, Taunt is a much weaker ability than players may be used to.  In Vanguard?s system, 1 Hate = 1 Damage, as it relates to aggro-generation.  When you take that into account, you?ll see that Taunt generates far less aggro than any of your other abilities.  Its value comes from the fact that Taunt is powered by your energy rather than your precious endurance, and that it doesn?t reset your combat timers.  Use it to supplement your main aggro-generators.  Taunt and other +Hate abilities are improved through Intelligence at the rate of +1 Hate per 2.5 Intelligence.

Rend Armor applies a long-duration mitigation debuff on an enemy.  Use this when you?re grouped with a lot of melee combatants who?ll be able to take advantage of this debuff.  Don?t bother expending its high endurance cost for quick battles, or if you?re in a caster-heavy group.

Taunting Strike, available at level ten, is your bread-and-butter tanking ability.  To use this, you need to be in Defensive Stance.  It generates a lot of hate, especially when you take into account the 40% bonus from Defensive Stance, and has a very fast refresh timer and animation.

Press the Attack is your first Battle Command, and you?ll get it at level ten.  It increases the damage of one ally of your choosing by 20% for eight seconds.  Wait until you?ve got solid hate built up, then drop this baby on your ranger friend and watch the critter crumble.

Waylay, acquired at level ten, is a positional attack.  You can only use it when you have allies flanking the enemy.  It does a decent bit of damage, but its endurance cost is pretty steep.  Only use it when you have endurance to burn or when you really need to maximize your burst damage

Whack-A-Mole Your Way to Victory

Speaking of endurance, you may as well begin familiarizing yourself with combat timing in the early levels while the stakes are still low and you haven?t yet built any bad habits.  The are two components of combat timing for Warriors to keep in mind: timing as it relates to endurance regeneration and timing as it relates to auto-attack. Endurance is the key resource that Warriors use to launch almost all of their attacks, and therefore you want to be efficient in its regeneration.  A Warrior who is out of Endurance is a Warrior who is not going to be hurting anyone.  Endurance regeneration is paused for just over two seconds every time that an endurance-based ability is used.  This means that you will not be regenerating any Endurance if you are just spamming attacks as quickly as the global cooldown will permit.

The second component of combat timing to consider is how it relates to auto-attack.  Your Warrior?s auto-attack is also reset and put on pause for just over two-seconds every time you fire off a special attack.  This means that if you time things poorly, you can go through an entire combat and receive very little, or even none, of your potential auto-attack damage.  While there are times when that might be useful, like during your ¡°Staggered¡± four-attack combo, in most cases it would represent a significant loss of efficiency.

Fortunately the two timers are reset by the same events and are of pretty similar duration.  Keep them in mind and experiment with their effects on combat until you become comfortable with them.  A practice that some Warriors find useful is to time most of your special attacks to follow immediately after your white auto-attack numbers pop up and your endurance regeneration ticks forward.

What Does the Future Bring

At this point you should have a great feel for how the Warrior plays up to level ten.  It?s a versatile and fun class.  You have the capacity to deal a tremendous amount of damage when dual-wielding weapons in Offensive Stance. This offensive capacity will expand even further in just two more levels, when Leap Attack enters your arsenal.  You also have the ability to switch to Defensive Stance and break out a shield, gaining a whole different suite of defensive and aggro-management abilities.

As you go out into Telon, practicing your hard-earned skills, know that you will constantly be learning new abilities that bring more tactical richness to your Warrior.  You?ll gain more stuns, Commands, Shouts, Rescues, Counterattacks, Finishing Attacks and other unique abilities.

It?s a bright future for Warriors.  I hope to share it with all of you.