A6 - Warriors: underpowered? Need good build.

[The_Najdorf]

I might be missing something, but aren't warriors underpowered wrt mages?

 

Warriors sometimes get lucky and deal a great hit, but on average they kind of suck, they often miss, when they hit opponent can still parry ,risposte...

 

I mean my mages do about the same damage as a warrior, but nearly always hit, hit from a distace, can hit many people at once and are much more versatile. Ok they need mana but that's not a big issue.

 

I dont seem to be able to make a warrior deal some serious damage consistently. ITs hard to scale them up very much, after a while strength and pole/sworld skills become too expensive...

 

How would you build a good warrior?

[Alorael at Large]

A mage will probably always do more damage more reliably, but you won't always be able to spam spells at your enemies. In previous Avernums, warriors really did have to just be tanks. Now, they can also be respectable sources of damage. And no, they should not ever miss once you're out of the very beginning of the game. In the beginning mages are definitely much stronger, but you can even it out probably by late in the demo area.

 

If you want your warriors to deal respectable damage, you need them to dual wield. You'll also want Dual Wielding, Blademaster, and respectable battle disciplines, which means boosting probably Melee a lot and Polearms and possibly Bows a bit less.

 

—Alorael, who highly recommends the right traits and race. A slith or nephil will give you more discipline access, but the nephil's bonuses are probably more useful to everyone but a spear wielder, and spears do slightly less damage anyway. Elite Warrior and Divinely Touched give you the necessary skill increases.

[Lilith]

Against a single target that doesn't have particularly high physical resistance, a warrior can do more damage than a mage, and without spending spell points. Warriors also get battle disciplines more easily, and battle disciplines are incredibly useful.

 

If you're missing a lot, you're doing something very wrong. Against most enemies you shouldn't really be missing at all, ever, except maybe with a dual-wielding character at very low levels. Elite Warrior and Divinely Touched are enormously beneficial, so hopefully you started out with them. You should also be blessing your party before any significant fight, which adds 20% to your chance to hit. Enemies with Parry and Riposte do get increasingly annoying later on, but on the other hand by that point your fighters should have some points in Parry too.

 

Don't neglect Quick Action, either. Having 10 Quick Action will give you a double attack about half the time, which basically means you're doing an average of 50% more damage per round.

 

Dual-wielders and polearm fighters are both pretty competitive at the start of the game, and a Slith polearm fighter will quite likely do more damage than a dual-wielder early on, although the dual wielder will start to pull ahead by the Eastern Gallery.

[Randomizer]

Warriors are much better now than in A4. But you need to increase their skills. Strength for armor and damage, endurance for health to last through a battle, melee or pole weapons for their attack, quick action for extra strikes,dual wielding if you are going with melee weapons (swords), and blademaster for more damage.

 

You can easily do comparable damage to a single opponent like a spellcaster and you are likely to survive their response. Hitting something shouldn't be a problem if you have increased your strength and weapon skill.

[The_Najdorf]

Yeah after a while you don't miss anymore but against stronger bosses that have about 25% chance of parrying and risposte it's still frustrating.

 

So yeah, now that I found the jade halaberd and invested serious points in pole weapons my warrior is neat, throughout the game (with 1 swords) he's been a meat shield. He was so useless I gave him some prayer skill so that he could at least heal himself a bit, which was more useful than the 30 or so damage he dealt 1 time in 2.

 

I was playing it safe investing in swords which was usually the good thing to do since you eventually got the demonslayer or some other cool sword, but looks like this time pole weapons are better (or you must go for 2 weapons).

 

Also from the beginning I was waiting to find a 2 handed greatsword which never came

[Lilith]

Yeah, ever since A4 all swords have been one-handed and all polearms have been two-handed. Dual-wielding allows you to do some impressive damage, though, and if you need to protect yourself the Bonding Knife is at least as good as a shield anyway.