Warrior

# General Description

A warriors true challenge is to control his stamina to be ready to strike when the opportunity presents itself. You will naturally regenerate your stamina over time, assisted with your basic attacks while spending it with devastating abilities.

 Weapons | Great Axe

## Resource

Warrior uses a resource called stamina that regenerates at 8 stamina per second. The max of 100 stamina can be increased through masteries, and the regeneration can also be increased through stat allocation. Whenever something dies around a warrior, the roar of battle overwhelms nearby warriors instantly regenerating their stamina.

## Weapon Style

Great axe Expert - Bladewave now applies a stacking bleed. Your LMB becomes Advancing Strike which increases in damage with every attack up to the third attack. Your RMB becomes Steelwake, a channeled AoE attack that deals damage to enemies around you.

# Class Skills

### Main Class Passive

 War Fervor - Whenever an enemy player, player controlled unit or creature dies nearby, instantly gain full Stamina.

### Baseline Abilities

 Advancing Strike - Basic melee swing that deals 220 Physical damage. Each consecutive attack deals 35% increased damage up to the 3rd swing. | Cooldown: 0 sec

 Deflection - Enter a parry stance for 1.5 second, reducing the damage you take by 20% and preventing the next harmful melee swing, dealing 200 Physical damage to the attacker, or reflecting the next missile while redirecting it to your crosshair if possible. Successfully preventing an attack reduces cooldown by 3 seconds. | Cooldown: 9 sec

 Neck Breaker - Lunges to the enemy, dealing 200 Physical damage and interrupting their spellcast or protection effects such as parry, block, evasion, deflection and only preventing that specific ability to be used for 6 seconds. | Cooldown: 17 sec

 Courageous Leap - Performs an aerial impaling attack towards the target location, shocking enemies struck for 0.8 seconds and dealing 100 Physical damage. Shocked enemies can only use their basic attacks. Not hitting an enemy will increase your movement speed by 25% for 2 seconds. You're immune to immobilize effects during the leap. | Cooldown: 16 sec

 Killing Edge - A merciless attack that deals 500 Physical damage and increases your Swiftness by 15% for 4 seconds. If the enemy is at or below 20% health, they are instantly killed, buff duration is doubled and cooldown is instantly reset. Deals 150% bonus damage to PvE bosses at 20% health or less. | Cooldown: 9 sec

 Bladewave - Strike a conic area twice to deal 400 Physical damage each time, applying a stacking bleed that deals 30 Bleed damage every 2 sec and slows enemy movement speed by 50%. | Cooldown: 7 sec

 Steelwake - Hold to spin and strike all enemies nearby dealing 270 Physical damage every 0,33 sec. Slow effects are suppressed and you move 10% faster during Steelwake. Has a chance to reset the cooldown of Bladewave if any enemy is hit. | Cooldown: 0 sec

### Masteries

 Helpless Slaughter - Dealing damage to an enemy with no allies within 15 meters increases your damage by 30% for 5 seconds. Damage bonus is halved in 1v1 arena.

 Dormant Steel - Dealing direct damage with Advancing Strike or Bladewave grants you a stack of Dormant Steel. Your next Steelwake will consume all stacks and will deal 40% more damage and provide 40% extra movement speed bonus for 0.25 seconds per each stack consumed.

 Thrill of Battle - Taking damage, you restore Stamina equal to 2% of the damage taken. Dealing damage, you move 15% faster for 2 seconds.

 Trained Soldier - Increases your maximum Stamina by 50% and its passive regeneration by 2 per second.

 Desperate Measures - Being struck by a crowd controlling effect reduces the cooldown of Courageous Leap by 1 second per each second of the applied effect up to 2 seconds.

When your health drops below 35%, all your cooldowns are reduced by 30 seconds. This effect has a 90 sec cooldown.

 Honorguard - Increases your health, armor and elemental resistance by 5%. Courageous Leap grants 30% damage reduction to you and your allies nearby your destination for 4 seconds. Increases your threat generation in PvE encounters.

### Prime skills

 Puncturing Throw - Throws a deadly weapon that deals 900 Physical damage to the first enemy struck and reduces its healing taken from all sources by 30% for 5 seconds. | Cooldown: 6 sec

 Slayer's Pursuit - Increases all damage dealt by 10% for 10 seconds. Hitting enemies during the duration increases the damage bonus by an additional 1% (up to 40%) and extends the buff duration by 0.5 seconds (up to 20 seconds). | Cooldown: 35 sec

 Wind Slash - Cut upside down with impossible force and speed, causing winds to rush forward, dealing 500 Nature damage and incapacitating the enemies struck for up to 3 seconds, depending on the distance. | Cooldown: 25 sec

 Endurance - Absorbs damage equal to 25% of your maximum health. Lasts 7 seconds. | Cooldown: 35 sec

 Valor - Removes all movement impairing effects and makes you immune to crowd control effects for 5 seconds. | Cooldown: 45 sec

 Bashing Momentum - When activated, your next damaging ability will stun all the enemies struck for 0.5 seconds for every 100 damage it deals, up to 3 seconds. | Cooldown: 22 sec

# Tips and Tricks

A good warrior will use Neck Breaker to stop another warrior from using Parry, alot of people don't know this works and rarely or never use Neck Breaker in a Warrior Vs Warrior duel. Also using Neck Breaker as a gapcloser is also very beneficial when chasing a Outlaw or any other classes, but it's range is relatively short.

Courageous Leap is often looked as a engage/chase/escape tool, but it can also be used for interrupt, alot of people know that Courageous Leap interrupts, but it's rarely seen used when a warrior is already in the basic attack proximity. Quickly look into the ground and tap the Courageous Leap ability to interrupt the enemy if your other interrupt spells is on cooldown.

# Example Build 1

Masteries: Trained Soldier, Desperate Measures, Thrill of Battle.

Prime Skills: Bashing Momentum, Endurance, Wind Slash.

Perk: Revival/Healing

Allocation: 15 Critical, 10 Swiftness, 10 Acceleration, 5 Vitality

This is a very standard build for 1v1, it gives you best of both worlds of survivability and uptime with your stamina and speed.

Use Courageous Leap to interrupt/chase enemies, and follow up with Bladeweave. It's important to utilize Bladeweave's bleed effect by using it before Steelwake because of it's proc chance of refreshing the cooldown. Bladeweave is your bread and butter skill, so use it whenever it's available.

Bashing Momentum is a MUST for warriors, it helps them dish out their damage and lock down enemies while performing their attacks, it pars really well with Bladeweave/Steelwake. Try to avoid combo Bashing Momentum with a basic attack, where it will stun them for 1~ sec and will give you very little efficiency with your prime skill.

Use Wind Slash to catch up to enemies if your Courageous Leap is on cooldown, or use it to wait out enemy's buffs. This is especially useful for Witch's Forbidden Soil spell. And for disrupting spellcast aswell!

Endurance is really useful for nasty bursts and dueling, it's pretty standard prime skill and can be a game changer if used correctly.

# Example Build 2

Masteries: Desperate Measures, Helpless Slaughter, Dormant Steel.

Prime Skills: Bashing Momentum, Slayer's Pursuit, Wind Slash/Valor

Perk: Revival/Healing

Allocation: 15 Critical, 10 Swiftness, 10 Acceleration, 5 Clarity (Clarity is optional, it's for making up for the loss of stamina recovering, feel free to put the last 5 point where you please)

A very aggressive, glasscannon build for the warrior, you deal alot of damage when stacking up your mastery Dormant Steel and using Slayer's Pursuit together with Steelwake. This build is preferred for 2v2, 3v3's where you have a pocket healer that can sustain you and make up for your glasscannon playstyle. This build works in 1v1, but can be very punishing if you misuse your cd's or your opponent have high burst or consistent damage.

This playstyle is very delicate, you need to choose your moment and know when to jump in, read your opponent movement and take notes of your opponent playstyle.

First of all, you start with Slayer's Pursuit right before you engage with your Courageous Leap, quickly use Bashing Momentum and follow up with Bladeweave, attack two times for the fourth Dormant Steel proc and use Steelwake, pray for RNG that your Bladeweave procs and use it when it pops up, then proceed with Steelwake again. If you get low on Stamina, remember to hit as many times as you can for proccing Dormant Steel for your next rotation for huge damage phase.

Use Slayer's pursuit always before engage for the extended duration and damage buff it gives you, Courageous Leap will give ticks for your Slayer's Pursuit.

Wind Slash is used as a damage control attack, chase attack, interrupt attack or stun a healer for 5 second, depending on the distance, the closer the longer the stun is. You get ticks for Slayer's Pursuit for each enemy you hit with it. Valor is mostly used if you face a heavy CC team, having your Slayer's Pursuit or Bashing Momentum dried out without using it's potential can be devastating for your damage and can lead you to a huge disadvantage from the get go.

# Matchups (Easy, Medium, Hard)

### Wizard

The Wizard is a class with high burst, good disruption but only has one major mobility tool.

The Wizards main goal will be to hit you with a  Conjure Lightning, to follow up with  Meteor Strike into a final  Ice Beam. This combo without mitigation will do close to 60% of your health depending on your traits and stats. To help the wizard accomplish this he has a couple of useful spells a warrior must be wary of.

The first spell a wizard will use is his  Flash Freeze then follow up with  Conjure Lightning.  Flash Freeze is a big AoE circle that roots you in place. Since it is a big AoE some wizards might try to get a sneaky hit on you if you walk too close to a corner of the pillar your hiding behind. However, use this fact to your advantage and if possible try to bait out the freeze while dodging it by running back and forth with mount.

Of course this is not something that is possible to pull off consistently. Rather, a warrior has a couple of spells of his own to counterplay. The most suitable spells are  Endurance,  Wind Slash and  Valor. Most builds include atleast one of these, most likely two. Endurance works decently well. It will block the full  Meteor Strike though, a bit of damage from the  Ice Beam will probably leak through. The  Ice Beam will also root you so while you sit in that root use  Deflection to parry any  Ice Blast or  Draining Bolt.

 Valor leaves you with a few more options however it is limited in other matchups, if you manage to  Valor his  Conjure Lightning you're in a great spot to counterplay.

 Wind Slash works well to interrupt his spell cast once, however it does not spell-lock like  Neck Breaker. Also consider that the duration of the  Wind Slash incapacitate is lowered the further away your target is, which means if the timing is off you might still be in trouble if the wizard gets free too early. A sneaky and difficult but effective play is to send your  Wind Slash just at the same time his  Conjure Lightning goes off. If the wizard is not way too far away he will get free at the perfect time for him to just barely be able to cast  Meteor Strike, however if you timed your  Wind Slash right you will get free from  Conjure Lightning with just enough time to be able to  Courageous Leap on top of the wizard away from the  Meteor Strike. It's a very brave play but once you start getting a feel for the range/duration of  Wind Slash and the wizards timings it can be quite consistent.

Just be aware that when you leap on him he can use  Hurricane Wave to stop you mid air, to play around this you can jump a bit to the side of him although you lose out on the stun or else it's a matter of mind games and timing.

Once you reach a wizard he will probably try to get away with  Teleport, however if you catch him using  Courageous Leap stun you can hit a  Bashing Momentum and get some good opening damage and around 4 stacks of  Bladewave.

However your problems don't stop there, wizards often play with a spell called  Dictate Fate. It places a blue circle on the ground and at the wizards will he can reset your character back in time to the state it was in at the point the spell was cast. This affects your HP and your position but not cooldowns.  Dictate Fate is a very difficult spell to play against however there are some usefull strategies that can all be considered depending on the circumstances.

 Dictate Fate lasts for 10 seconds, if it expires it will not be activated. Walking behind a pillar can be very effective to counter this spell and just wait out the 10 seconds. Just remember  Meteor Strike and  Conjure Lightning have a 20 second cooldown so your window of opportuniy will be much shorter if you wait 10 seconds.

Another way to try and lessen the impact of  Dictate Fate is to have 2 charges of  Courageous Leap ready and simply leap, get teleported back and leap again. If you manage to land on the wizard and not get teleported back you can use  Bashing Momentum and get some more damage on to him. This of course sacrifices both your  Courageous Leap stacks and leaves you incredibly vulnerable.

 Dictate Fate resets your HP back to what it was before so simply walking toward the wizard and eating any damage won't do too much because your HP will reset anyway. Compared to running behind a pillar you now have a chance to catch up to the wizard and try to hit him back. However a wizard does not have to activate  Dictate Fate so if you don't force the wizard to use the ability he will only get free damage on you. If you've taken too much damage you can sacrifice a  Courageous Leap charge to try and force the wizard to reset your hp.

Wizard is a lot about surviving his aggressions when they occur and inbetween each wave of damage you have to avoid being kited around at all cost. Uptime is key in this matchup and because of the wizards strong disruption it makes it quite difficult to play. Playing  Valor vs a wizard seems to be the mst succesfull strategy, however this leaves you vurlnearable in other matchups, always consider who your next opponent is going to be.

### Ranger

A Rangers main goal is to kite you for as long as possible, the rangers key to winning is keeping uptime on  Tar Blast fire damage over time effect stacking  Poison Spikes while keeping distance from you.

The difficulty vs a ranger is very dependant on the ranger. If the ranger has the patience to kite you around for days the matchup is ranger favoured, however as soon as the ranger looses patience and overextends the warrior cuts ahead.

This matchup is not easy for either part. A warriors main goal in this matchup is to keep being in range of the ranger to deal consistent damage while being careful to avoid  Tactical Bomb or blocking the damage with  Endurance.

A general matchup will start out with the ranger trying to dismount you using  Ricochet. The damage is negligible however being dismountet means you will have to engage using a charge of  Courageous Leap. This leap is also very predictable and can often be countered using the rangers  Evasion. If the ranger manages to dodge the stun wait out the damage reduction buff from  Evasion by using parry and then close the distance using  Neck Breaker, conserving your last  Courageous Leap charge. Now use  Bashing Momentum and start stacking  Bladewave using  Steelwake to animation cancel the second hit and reset the cooldown on  Bladewave, the goal is to get 4 stacks of  Bladewave during the stun and then after stacking up to 6 and never letting them fall off.  Deflection is a incredibly strong spell in this matchup since you can deflect  Explosive Shot and in some cases even  Tactical Bomb.

The rangers main burst combo is using  Ranger's Net to hit a easy  Explosive Shot, following up with  Tactical Bomb into a second  Explosive Shot and a  Swift Strike to stack  Poison Spikes  and for the free damage since the ranger is safe in melee range while you're stunned. Inbetween these bursts of damage a ranger will try to kite you through her  Tar Blast fire damage while keeping  Poison Spikes up. The most effective way for a ranger to succesfully do this is to place  Tar Blast around a tree or pillar and lighting it on fire while running around said pillar. At this point it's important to minimise the damage you take and to deal as much damage as possible to the ranger, this is the warriors time to shine! Do not fall behind. Keep  Bladewave up for the slow and be very mindfull of  Evasion, using bladewave into  Evasion won't make the DoT refresh and there is a high chance of you losing your stacks as a result.

Best case scenario is being able to  Deflection the rangers  Explosive Shot when she uses  Ranger's Net and moving out of  Tactical Bomb since it has a quite long delay before going off and it's red circle is easily detectable on the ground if you're attentive. If you mange to avoid this combo you're in a good spot since you can use your  Endurance to avoid damage if the ranger manages to get 3 stacks of  Poison Spikes +  Tar Blast fire since the damage from these effect can get overwhelming and often creep up and suddenly it's too late to counter.

While focusing on the mechanics above you need to be getting damage on to the ranger and not falling behind out of range. It won't matter if you dodge  Tactical Bomb combo if you're not able to capitalize on the rangers downtime inbetween.

Since rangers rarely play  Aimed Shot it's a perfect opportunity for a warrior to use spells usually reserved as interrupts as gap closers, most good rangers will be counting  Courageous Leap uses to know when you're vulnerable however a sneaky  Neck Breaker to get into melee range can be very effective to keep uptime, especially in combination with  Steelwake to ignore slows and if you use  Thrill of Battle you'll be getting a lot of stamina from the rangers hits and Damage over time while, as long as you are in range to get hits, the movement speed will be a great advantage to keep dealing damage. Using  Wind Slash to cancel  Ravenfeather Cloak mid air often gives you a element of suprise because the ranger will have planned a play where she has the range advantage and will now have to quickly reconsider and if you keep pressure up the ranger might very well make a mistake of two in these situations.

# Hall of Apex

* Week 1: Berg^2
* Week 2: Zigga The Zow
* Week 3: Berg^2
* Week 4: Malacis
* Week 5: PaskA
* Week 6: PaskA
* Week 7: Berg^2
* Week 8: Malacis