Warrior Guide by Pug

This is less of a basic player guide and more of a specific class guide.  I will not be covering how to craft or how to set up filters, please refer to the player guide for that information.

### \*Filter update\*

You can download my "Pug Warrior Starter" filter from the filter menu (Pet loot chest > Filter button > Find Filter > search for that name and click download). The filter has everything you need set up to start farming from level 1 - you just update the rarity on the All Items/Boots/Cloak/Jewelry filters as your needs change. I added all of the potions so you can easily hide them as you see fit.

## Strengths:

1. Fastest move speed of all classes
2. Easy to cap physical damage reduction with heavy armor sets
3. Tanky skills/passives available to adapt to what you’re fighting/your playstyle
4. Strong single target damage with low cooldown shatter skill
5. Fun active playstyle with Leap and splash damage auto attacks
6. Still solid idle speed considering being melee due to splash damage

## Weaknesses:

1. Melee range - you will be getting pelted by enemies far more than other classes
2. Slower portal clear times compared to other classes
3. Lack of easy to use aoe skills.  Slam is great, but not when you are surrounded by enemies
4. Heavy reliance on armor to push higher levels (due to #1)
5. Multiple weapon specialization passives (which is great!) But makes switching weapon types a pain if you’re not training all of them equally.

## Race

The best race for either physical class, in my opinion, is Orc. The 10% xp bonus hurts compared to Undead's 35% but you get more bonus stats that matter (50% physical damage, 30% more Life/defense) versus Undead's 40% physical, 5% Life/defense plus some more mana.

Dwarf isn't a bad choice with it's 45% more Life/defensive stats and 25% physical damage. You can always compensate the lower damage with more strength investment, though that negates the bonus to life a bit, so you're just left with longer idle time :)

## Attributes

Dex, Vit, Con, Str

**Dexterity** will improve your chance to hit.  Keep adding points in this to maintain your chance to hit around 90 to 95% Whatever you’re comfortable with.  This will need to be constantly monitored as with each stage you advance to, your chance to hit will go down by a couple of percent.

**Vitality** will keep you alive of course - keep adding points here if you struggle to stay alive during a full stage clear

**Constitution** will raise your armor values.  It’s not enough on it’s own, so you would need to compliment this with armor values on your gear.  You can add stats to this to top off your physical damage reduction as it starts to drop from stages, but don’t go too crazy here, you can hit cap with armor and minimal investment into this stat relatively easily.  If you’re dropping too quickly to keep up it through con, it’s time to update your flat armor values on your gear.

**Strength** is your damage stat of course - dump the rest of your stat points into here.

Ratios are something that fluctuate too much in this game to suggest one to follow ad infinitum like you can in a lot of games.  Really just follow the suggestions above and you’ll be good.   Early game you can get away with having something like 4:1 str:vit but later on you’re going to end up being 1:1 or even 1:1.5 or more as enemies get higher level relative to your own.
Avoid putting any points into int or agi.  Int will do nothing for you (even with the unique lightning axe) and agi will not give you enough evasion on it’s own to be worthwhile.  You will be able to clear higher stages without points wasted there and instead invested into vit/dex/str.

## **What gear should I focus on getting?**

Warriors have it tough when getting optimal affixes on your gear.  There is a lot to choose from, and I’m sure I don’t have it figured out perfectly either, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

There will be times where you have to decide between some tough choices.  Hopefully reading through these will help you make those decisions more easily.

**\*Important note\*** I play mainly actively.  If you play more idle focused builds, these stat priorities may vary slightly.  Though my build runs idly just fine as well. I'll try to add caveats for idle players but they will be basically theorycrafted caveats :)

## **Armor:**

Movement Speed on cape and boots – these are the only slots this fits, make sure they both have this affix.

Total Attack Speed on gloves - this is unique to gloves and necklaces, attack speed is vitally important to warriors - stack this as high as you can get it.

Magic Find on every slot you can fit it, sacrificing this for more important prefixes is the route I would go personally, just don’t do it too often - giving up on 1 or 2 slots, 3 maximum isn’t going to be the end of the world.  More than that though and you will certainly notice the difference and it will hurt more in the long run.  Still super important to stack high.

Life % on every slot - this is basically non-negotiable.  Warriors need as much damage cushion as they can get. You \*might\* be ok getting rid of one of these in lieu of something else, but any more than that you're nerfing yourself too much.

Reduced Cooldowns as desired (more if you’re playing actively, but still great for idle, depending on skill choices)  It takes 7 S tier cooldown essences to achieve 100% uptime on active mastery Hunger (with meditation passive) which is a great breakpoint imo.  If playing idle, I would shoot for 5 second cooldown on slam to ensure it goes off from autocasting consistently. This would also relax gearing difficulties significantly by allowing more room to breathe for more total armor slots or an additional flat armor prefix, etc.

Total armor % Fit these in where you can.  This is where the tough choices will come in, you definitely want a couple of these at least to maintain your damage reduction cap, and you will be fighting to find space for them if you’re trying to hit that 7 cooldown reduction threshold.  Good luck :)  This is where I would suggest giving up one or two magic find slots for it if you’re really hurting to cap out your armor.

Vit % on all non-jewelry - jewelry has more important suffixes

Str % on all non-jewelry at least - nothing to say here, moar damage.

Mana Regen as needed (yes warriors can benefit greatly from mana)  Keep in mind, these will increase in efficacy with more max mana from jewelry.  I use 3 S tier mana regen S’s with two S tier mana on rings and it’s a good amount paired with a huge mana potion. I could use more but it’s already a tight fit with the next two in the list.  I haven’t tested but I expect you could get by with less with an idle build.

Con% on 2-3 pieces should be enough. You want a few to make your attribute points you put into Con worthwhile.

Dex% on the rest of the non-jewelry suffixes that aren’t filled with mana regen or con - you need a lot of dex to maintain hit rate, especially when you start fighting enemies that are 7-10x your level by end game, so the more of these you can find space for the better.

**\*Important Note 2\***

You will want one piece of gear with a flat armor affix along with a % increased armor (as opposed to total armor %)  The higher level the flat armor affix, the better.  This will also be an item that you will be upgrading constantly as you level in order to maintain armor cap, so designating your chest piece to it is a good choice since it is the most common set item that drops. The third suffix on this item should be life% so this will account for one of your pieces that misses magic find. The combination of these two affixes on a piece of heavy armor will drastically increase your armor to the point where a freshly crafted flat armor piece will make it so you won’t have to add any points into con for several stages.

## **Jewelry**:

**Necklace**: Mages have their life leech on belts, physical classes have it on necks. This will be a 2nd piece that will have no magic find, sadly.
Prefixes you want are going to be:

* Physical Life Leech
* Increased Life Leech Rate
* Life%

Suffixes:

* +% All Resistances - unique to jewelry - you’ll want 3 S tier of these ultimately to always have capped resists.
* +% Total Attack Speed like I mentioned with gloves - this is unique to these slots, so stack this as high as you can
* +% Crit Damage - this is unique to weapons and necks, stack this as high as you can get it

That's it. Any other affixes on a neck are \**wrong*\* :P

**Rings**: While the neck is pretty cut and dry, rings are slightly more forgiving….but only slightly.

Suggested Prefixes:

* %Magic Find
* %Life
* + Mana - you can get by with only one of these likely if you’re playing idle, but two is pretty crucial for me when playing actively.  Remember having a higher mana pool will improve the rate that mana potions regen your mana as well as the mana regen essences on your gear.

Suggested Suffixes:

* +All Resistances - basically mandatory
* +Total Critical Strike Chance - mandatory…this can go on neck as well but I would not give up any of the three suffixes listed above for necks for this, you can still hit 100% crit chance with two of these and a high level local crit chance on weapon (eventually).
* +% Attack Rating - this is a ring/glove/weapon exclusive attribute, I stack this on both rings, but I have not tested whether this is better than +Dex…

## **Weapons:**

Hoo boy, this is a subject.  First off, what are our options?

Two-handed weapon: This will net the highest damage from skills, explained below.  Also only needing to keep one weapon updated while leveling is awfully nice compared to two :)

Dual Wielding: You get a 30% “more” attack speed buff when equipping two weapons.  “More” being the key word here.  Anytime you see “more” in game, it typically means that it is multiplicative, so 30% more attack speed will multiply everything after all of your attack speed on your weapons and gear.  This is a massive gain, however it might not be enough to compensate for the skill damage difference.   Also you will have a much harder time maintaining two weapons - this is an important note since the weapons you strike with alternate between your main hand and offhand when attacking.  So if you have a severely weaker weapon in your offhand, you are actually hurting your dps significantly since you are only attacking with the one up to date weapon every other swing.

1h weapon and shield:  You do not get the 30% attack speed buff with this option, but it is easier to maintain a weapon and a shield versus two weapons.  Shields also get a 200% modifier to armor flats, so you shouldn’t have a problem maintaining the 75% damage reduction with a shield plus an armor+armor% affix on it.  Shields also grant a chance to block attacks and spells, boosting your survivability by a fair amount.  The Intimidate Active Mastery also boosts blocking rate, which will only apply if you have a shield equipped.   In my opinion, shields could use a buff before I would consider losing half of my damage vs a two-hander, but I think it’s still a viable option if you really like the idea of being a bit tankier.

I’ll just be blunt (haha) and say the Groundshaker Unique mace is best in slot.  Currently, two-handed weapons are just better in terms of raw damage.  Skills deal damage based on the weapon’s damage, and when you are dual wielding, it only takes one weapon into account (whichever’s weapon’s “turn” it is is what is used when calculating skill damage)   So you’re doing almost half as much damage with skills when you are dual wielding.  The implicit stat on this mace that allows splashes to crit is also \*massive.\*  In my opinion, this should just be a baseline to all splash damage, it’s extremely potent and really hard to give up once you hit 100% crit chance and start stacking high crit damage%.

That being said, the Set Swords Balmung and Mimung are still fantastic, and if your idle build avoids autocasting, chances are you can attain higher dps with these than with a two hander, but your clear speed on stages will suffer drastically since you are no longer splashing.  So the only spot these may rank higher is on boss fights.  This is strictly a theory, as I haven’t tested these properly yet.  But given each set weapon has additional phys damage % implicits, the attack speed bonus when you are dual wielding, on top of no longer needing ANY points in dex, dumping those into strength…AND sword specialization being insanely strong, yeah.  I think you’ll do more boss damage.  (Throwing shatter spam in though complicates it, I would need some heavy testing to compare the two, but I think 1.9x damage from two handed shatter would eventually overtake the dps from two 1h weapons.)

Ooookay, with that out of the way, what affixes do you want on a weapon?

Flat physical damage - the highest level you can find.   The scaling on damage flats is crazy and you will often notice an AAAA damage flat will do more damage than an S damage flat very quickly with just a small % of difference in item level.  Keep that in mind when hunting for a new flat.  Bonus for going for AAAA flats, is that it leaves room for upgrades if you happen to find an AAAAA or S later on without having to remake the whole weapon.

% Increased Weapon Physical Damage - You won’t make it anywhere if you only have one of these two - the higher your flat damage goes, the more this one pumps it up.  These don’t scale as badly, so if you luck out and find an S tier one, this will late you quite awhile.

% Increased Weapon Physical Damage & Flat attack rating  this is what the community calls a hybrid affix since it increases two stats.  This is the best choice for the third prefix.  You can swap this for physical life leech if you are desperate and do not have it on your neck yet.  The attack rating won’t make a massive difference, but please note that this is also a flat essence, so scaling on it will vary drastically.  You \*will\* notice a difference in attack rating if you manage to get a super high item level version of this.

Increased Critical Strike Damage - crit damage is huge, especially as your crit chance gets higher.  Early game you can forego this for either total attack speed or total crit chance, but not for very long, maybe until million or billion levels.

Increased Critical Strike Chance  - Note that this is regular crit chance, not total.  The values are higher for local crit chance versus total.

Increased Attack Speed - as above, this is local attack speed, not total.

## **Skills**

Ok, this section is going to vary heavily whether you want to play with an idle build versus an active build.  I will list the skills and my thoughts on each for both styles with a tl;dr recommendation at the end of each.

## **Idle Skills**

**Pounce** - This is an amazing skill while playing actively, and the idle mastery allows this to be auto-cast.  It sounds nice, and can pay off when it times it properly, but frequently you’ll only pounce a minimal distance against the enemy you’re fighting, and the damage it does isn’t going to be game changing, even with both tiers filled out - Your choice on this one, might increase your clear speed massively, or simply be a dps loss depending on when it casts.

**Slam** - Auto-casting slam can be great - especially if it gets timed while you’re approaching enemies as it will often hit a lot of them.   You would want to add a lot of points, if not max, the general mastery as well to lessen the cast time, or you’ll endanger yourself while you’re casting it since you’re not swinging/life leeching during that time.

**Might** - A lot of people sure use this skill, however please note that the “increased” strength is additive, not multiplicative.  So if you’re taking this skill, it’s for the armor piercing and not for the strength later on.   Early game it will feel very strong though since it is more of a relative boost compared to the rest of your str% increases from your gear.

**War Stomp** - This is a panic button through and through.  The damage is rather insignificant, especially with the idle mastery.  And since you can’t control the auto-cast - it stops being a panic button.   Pass.

**Shatter** - Your bread and butter single target damage skill.  Without it you are just nerfing yourself.  Auto-cast does weaken it, but it has no attack animation, so it won’t disrupt your autoattack swings, it’s strictly more damage on a short cooldown.  Pick this for sure. Note that the tier 3 general mastery is pretty rough - with enough cooldown reduction you could potentially always be refreshing the debuff before it ever falls off, so it would end up being pretty awful.

**Sprint** - more move speed - insta-pick.

**Incremental Fortress** - the reduced skill power on this idle mastery is rough, but it can still be handy without any skill points if you’re trying to fight a high level helheim boss or portal boss, so swap it in if you’re fighting something hard that you want to kill and you’re not quite capped on armor (or resists with the general mastery)   I personally would avoid this idle mastery.

**Retaliation** - I love this skill so much, especially early game.   The idle version’s skill power reductions hurts it A LOT however, and without the ability to crit, it’s usefulness will diminish quickly.  Give it a shot, it can often take care of normal mobs for you (and ranged ones with it’s general mastery) depending on how high level they are compared to you.  Significantly increases clear speed.  With the idle mastery it will become useless as soon as you start fighting things 2 or 3x your level I would imagine, though. (by useless I mean it ends up not killing anything by the time you make it there and kill it with your weapon swings)

**Frenzy** - straight damage increase with the idle mastery - pretty easy pick for an idle build

**Intimidate** - this skill is pretty solid with it’s idle mastery.  The skill power reduction sounds like a lot but it’s still a noticeable amount of damage reduction with max investment.

**Hunger** - The idle mastery diminishes this quite a bit compared to the active mastery.   However it’s a source of life leech recovery per second which the only other source of this stat is on the Unique Vampire’s Thirst belt, so even at 50% reduced skill power it’s still a solid buff.

## Idle Skills TL;DR

Sprint - Frenzy - Hunger - Shatter - Slam - Intimidate would be a solid idle build in my opinion. Swap out Intimidate for Pounce if you're farming easier content for higher clear speeds.

Sprint - Might - Frenzy - Retaliation - Shatter - Intimidate would be a less mana intensive option. (again dropping Intimidate for Pounce if able)

I would skill up the masteries in that order (aside from pounce), personally, but it's up to you!

## **Active Skills**

**Pounce** - I personally would never NOT take this in an active build.  It will get you out of so many sticky situations. If you shoot for the 7 cdr affix threshold it will have ~3.5 second cooldown :)

**Slam** - It’s hard to give this skill up as an active build.  You can really take advantage of the line area of this skill while kiting mobs, if you have them trail you enough - they’ll be perfectly lined up for it.  Easy pick.

**Might** - I don’t feel like 10 levels of mastery are worth it for a small amount of armor piercing this gives. The active mastery increases damage you take as well, but gives a MORE strength buff which is massive.   Experiment with this if you have the scrolls to spare maybe, I haven’t tested it too much yet myself, I seem to be doing good enough damage and having a hard enough time staying alive without it :)

**War Stomp** - this is your token panic button.  The damage is minimal and stun has diminishing returns, so it’s a little lackluster for an already tight 6 skill slots.  If you find yourself needing a panic button, it does it’s job well.

**Shatter** - your bread and butter single target damage skill.   With 7 cdr affixes and meditation passive this will have a 1.7 second cooldown.  The active mastery will make it hit more often on the important high level bosses that you’re going to be spamming it on as well.  Easy pick. Note that the third tier of the general mastery is actually bad for you if you have enough cooldown reduction as you will activate it again before the debuff falls off.

**Sprint** - the Active mastery on this skill is both amazing and horrible at the same time.  You will reach insane move speed between packs with it if you’re simply auto-running.   However if you’re trying to kite incredibly deadly enemies, this skill will kill you more often than not :)   It’s also incredible in helheim and in portals, improving clear speed drastically.   I would prioritize your mastery points in other skills before this though, it’s still a good move speed buff between pulling packs of enemies with no mastery point investment. (and no dangerous side effect!)

**Incremental Fortress** - This skill is great for tankiness.  However it does almost nothing if you are already capped on armor and resists, unless you spec into it’s active mastery.  Then it will increase your max physical damage reduction cap which is fantastic, however the mana regen penalty it brings is almost impossible to counteract at max level.  With my 3 mana regen S tier affixes and 2 S Mana affixes, it still drains my mana with no hope of recovering it. I can afford 2 points into it while maintaining a positive mana regen.  Not really worth it. Untrained or simply trained into it’s general mastery however can be a god-send when climbing helheim if your armor and resists start to suffer from the increasing penalty.  Worth trying out, but only if you need it.

**Retaliation** - when I first tried ranged retaliate, I was in love.  Early to mid game this skill is amazing.   Later on when your crit rate starts to near cap and your crit damage climbs, you’ll start clearing higher and higher level enemies and this skill falls by the wayside a bit too much unfortunately.   Absolutely take this with ranged retaliate early, but be ready to swap the points out by end game unless it changes to allow crits :)

**Frenzy** - if you’re dual wielding, this skill is a no brainer, the active mastery is fantastic.  If you are using a 2 hander weapon, the active mastery \*does nothing\* for you at the moment.  Though this may change in the future.   Still though, untrained frenzy is still a solid dps increase.  It will compliment your weapon specialization as well by having them proc more often :)   Missing the buff stack duration doesn’t hurt too badly, stacking 5 stacks of this takes barely any time.

**Intimidate** - You can easily get by without this early to mid game, but by late game this starts to look more and more appealing.  This is another active mastery that has caveats as well.  The active mastery requires you to have a shield equipped, otherwise you will not receive any increased block chance.  After all, 25% increased chance of 0% is still 0% :P

**Hunger** - Amazing - easy pick.  With 7 cdr S affixes and meditation passive you will have 100% uptime on this and your survivability will increase dramatically (as opposed to having those 1-2 second windows where you’re panicked and not leeching as fast lol) The active mastery on this is 10% \*more\* vitality which is massive, another reason to reach towards 100% uptime on this.

## Active Skills TL;DR

Early Game:
Retaliation - Shatter - Hunger - Slam - Sprint (rank 0) - Pounce (rank 0) - raise mastery levels in that order, in my opinion.

Mid-Late Game:

Shatter - Slam - Hunger - Intimidate (only taking active mastery if using shield) - Pounce - Sprint

Note - Incremental Fortress and Frenzy are skills to sub in as needed, and can be perfectly useable without mastery point investment. Replace sprint if you need one or the other, and maybe slam if you need both for a boss.

## **Passives**

Overkill - Seems like a no-brainer pick at first, however since it’s only the overkill damage that gets transferred, it can end up being rather weak if you’re really pushing high levels for xp.  Great pick for low level fast farming in stages or portals, but otherwise look elsewhere.

Treasure Hunter - This passive it to help make up for warriors lower clear times compared to other classes.  If you can survive what you’re farming, throw this on, keep it leveled.

Axe Specialization - Obviously these depend on what weapon you’re going for.  This is certainly a powerhouse of a passive, but chances are you’re using the splash mace or set swords.  I might experiment with this one when I hit stage cap though.

Sword Specialization - So many extra attacks.  When this thing chain procs it can just delete things and it’s hilarious.

Mace Specialization - This was recently changed and is now fantastic.  Not as much dps as sword spec, but the fact that it’s ranged is a godsend.  Love this passive so much.

Spear Specialization - boring but effective.  Though there aren’t any unique spears in game yet to really take advantage of it.

Cheat Death - Great all around passive, if only for the “more” vitality.  The free res when you’re dying is nice, but if it triggers, chances are you’ll just be dying shortly after again :)

Big Game Hunter - more uniques monsters = more loot - nuff said - if you’re farming easier content having this and treasure hunter on is a no-brainer

Meditation - this is probably the best passive for active play, I shouldn’t need to explain why.  Having multiple shatters in a row with no cooldown is huge.

Unbreakable - This passive will be needed late game, go ahead and level it when you get the chance.  It doesn’t sound like much but by end game you will be starving for every tenth of a % this gives.

My usual go to for an active playstyle are Mace Specialization, Meditation, and either Treasure Hunter or Cheat Death depending on if I'm pushing stages for xp or portals for loot.
For Idle I think I would choose \_\_\_\_ Specialization, Treasure Hunter, Overkill or Cheat Death depending on the difficulty of enemies

I think that about does it - I think I’ll leave out the level by level section that I did with the mage guide since I expounded on skills and passives as much as I did.  The main important note from that was “hey resistances really matter by level 1 Billion to 100 Billion.”  Keep your armor up, keep your weapon topped off and you’ll be good.