Warrior or Knight: Wut Even?

Hey guys, I'm sure I can find most of this information using the search engine, however I wanted to make a thread so all the information I am interested in can be found easy on one page, also it won't be the same repeated guide over and over on google, this is opinion with experience I am after.

To the point of my post! What are all the rolls and stratergies for a swordsman based class? give me you're own insight into your characters, what rolls are you trying to fill? Which class does best for this? Is their a class better for soloing ot partying? How did you spec? what skills are making the difference to your DPS/Tank?

Just anything you have on a Warrior or Knight, give me what you can!

So you admit that you can find the information you want easily if you just search for it, yet still have the gall to ask us to just spoonfeed the information to you?

Yeh no.

I should have expected one prick to come out with a smart alleck response, what did you get one sentence in and think "Awh man this guy is so lazy screw him wahwahwah"

I've seen so many guides, and I'm sick of them, I know how to build generic rolls, and Every guide is the same poop with a different stench, same old builds, maybe if you bothered to read this is asking for opinionated views, people who have experience of their own and not just a copy of someone elses experience.

Maybe if you used your brain, those guides you read ARE formed from peoples experiences in the game. Like the knight guide thats pinned at the top. It doesnt even give you a build. It gives you a description of what the skill does and an opinionated viewpoint on the skills based from experience in the game . Which is exactly what you're asking for. I haven't personally read the warrior guides that are stickied so i can't vouch for those.

It all comes down to your own words. "I'm sure I can find most of this information using the search engine"

you are lazy, you said so yourself, you just want it all in one page so you dont have to go look for it yourself.

Can't make a guide without experience. Let me rephrase actually, can't make a decent guide without experience.

I should have expected one prick to come out with a smart alleck response, what did you get one sentence in and think "Awh man this guy is so lazy screw him wahwahwah"

I've seen so many guides, and I'm sick of them, I know how to build generic rolls, and Every guide is the same poop with a different stench, same old builds, maybe if you bothered to read this is asking for opinionated views, people who have experience of their own and not just a copy of someone elses experience.

The thing is...most of those guides are pretty accurate about how to play your class effectively, so calling it "poop" is really kinda disrespectful to the ones who spent time on making them. =\

Anyways, I'll try my best to answer your questions though:

What are all the rolls and stratergies for a swordsman based class?

Tank definitely, and secondary DPS if built as such.

give me you're own insight into your characters, what rolls are you trying to fill?

For me, protecting the party. Even if it means I die, say, if someone makes a bad pull and aggros a huge amount of mobs, or if the healer DCs and I'll grab the mobs so that my party members can get away. Also providing my one buff and shield fortress when necessary. This class makes me really feel that I'm doing something for the party other than being a meatshield.

Which class does best for this?

I don't know for sure since I've only rolled a Knight, but I'm thinking they do it best due to shield fortress. But that's just my opinion.

Is their a class better for soloing ot partying?

Assuming we're still talking about Knight and Warrior, I think they can solo equally as well, if not maybe the warrior doing it slightly faster. Again, I don't have a warrior so I can't say for sure.

How did you spec?

Tank build by following one of the posted guides on the forums. (Rollchan's Knight guide)

what skills are making the difference to your DPS/Tank?

I haven't gotten far enough to know really haha.

sephiroso, should really be banned from this forum he does nothing but argue with people and make offensive posts. its the only thing i see him here doing, nothing helpful >>"

Sephiroso, Ive seen your influence on the boards, I couldn't care lezs what you think, I'm well aware of everything you've posted, buuuuut, I'm not lazy. I've been playing MMOs for half my life, I've read hundreds of guides, whats wrong with sparkng up a friendly discussion on a community forum? "No thats insane, theirs already guides online! you must never speak of this!"

I have a warrior with a great build and I ain't changing that, I just wanted to open a discussion about said class, while also compiling possibly usefull information.

Take your subjective childish insults elsewhere, I am not impressed.


and Acroshin! Thank yooou! Im sorry this thread is slowly turning into a flame war, but I really appreciate the friendly contribution!

Most of the guides that are around are completely wrong because they're made from opinions from players who don't even have a years worth of experience on this game... Not once have I ever read a guide in any of my MMO experiences that was "da best guide eva". They're only guides and they're only good to get you started past level 15. You guys shouldn't be bowing down to guides made by people who have less than a year's worth of experience. I've had to restat/reskill twice because of some stupid guides saying skill A or skill B is worthless and it turns out to be completely wrong.

Either way, back on topic:

Both Knight/Warrior are capable of tanking. It just depends on the kind of tanking because each class utilizes different skill sets. Knights have better overall damage soaking skills and can protect the entire party. They're overall well balanced and good for general tanking.

Warriors on the other hand have better damage and are better for burst/boss tanking. Endure gives a flat +40% damage reduction and allows you to move. Shield Fortress gives +50% and also +25% to the entire party but you cannot move or do anything while in that state. This gives Warriors a slight edge over kiting mobs or bosses without losing DPS.

Knights have slightly more defense as well and their +20% dmg reduction Aura Shield is usable every 60 seconds. It's only half as effective as Endure, but also has half the cool down time making this skill very good for mob control as you can pop it on every time you get mobbed. You can also combine it with Shield Fortress for even more dmg reduction, but those are rare cases and usually not really needed to do.

Pick out whatever you like. Both classes are good, but if you prefer a bit of damage and burst then you want to go with Warrior. If you prefer to survive better and sacrifice a slight amount of damage then pick Knight.

Edited by Varunax, 06 June 2013 - 08:47 PM.

Most of the guides that are around are completely wrong because they're made from opinions from players who don't even have a years worth of experience on this game

first off, you're actually wrong. most of the really detailed guides in most of the class forums(if not all) are written by people who are from sea/kro2 so yea, they actually do have a years worth of experience on the game. like rollchan's knight guide, and klyde's rogue guide just to give 2 instances i know offhand.

also, its not like you even need a years worth of experience to form a correct opinion about skills in a game such as this anyway.

also, most the other guides that aren't necessarily written by people from the other servers, their guides aren't wrong. i haven't read all of them, but i have read most and they are all mostly right. so not sure where you get off saying most are completely wrong. i mean, assuming the "guides" you are talking about are the pinned guides, which are the only ones that matter.

We only have two guides that know what they're talking about.

kRO was just released last year and SeaRO was released a few months ahead of NA. Nobody even has more than a years worth of experience.

We only have two guides that know what they're talking about.

kRO was just released last year and SeaRO was released a few months ahead of NA. Nobody even has more than a years worth of experience.

again as i said, its not like you even need a years worth of experience in a game like this. don't even need that long in WoW to have an informed and experienced opinion on how to correctly play a class to make a guide about it.

also, speaking from swordsman forums alone. there's 3 skill builds that all know what they're talking about. 1 for knight and 2 for warriors. lubu's may seem a little out there but he gives sound advise. i already know of klyde's rogue guide which is just as legit as rollchan's knight guide. and im sure if i browse at all the other pinned guides from the other classes they'd all be legit too.

Edited by sephiroso, 06 June 2013 - 09:18 PM.

Do you think people are still using WoW guides posted after a month release of the game? I don't think so. That's my point.

At this stage, we only know of a few roles because nobody has gotten used to their understanding of how the game even works and the guy who wrote the Warrior guide even says he really only does solo. That leaves room for improvement on raids and WoE which all require team effort.

Example is that the guide stickied doesn't even mention skills like Bowling Bash. So should we max it or leave it at level 1? What's the pros and cons and why would we use it?

Nobody really knows and anybody who actually uses the skill can tell it's really just there to build rage. The point investments don't boost the damage up very much. What about Aura Strike? As much as a bread and butter skill this sounds like for Knights, it isn't the same for Warriors. It does decent damage maxed, but it burns a lot of rage if spammed and leaves us vulnerable without a Tension Relax ready which consumes 100% of our rage.

So yes, there's a lot of unanswered things and a lot of speculation at this point.

Edited by Varunax, 06 June 2013 - 09:28 PM.

Do you think people are still using WoW guides posted after a month release of the game? I don't think so. That's my point.

At this stage, we only know of a few roles because nobody has gotten used to their understanding of how the game even works and the guy who wrote the Warrior guide even says he really only does solo. That leaves room for improvement on raids and WoE which all require team effort.

Example is that the guide stickied doesn't even mention skills like Bowling Bash. So should we max it or leave it at level 1? What's the pros and cons and why would we use it?

Nobody really knows and anybody who actually uses the skill can tell it's really just there to build rage. The point investments don't boost the damage up very much. What about Aura Strike? As much as a bread and butter skill this sounds like for Knights, it isn't the same for Warriors. It does decent damage maxed, but it burns a lot of rage if spammed and leaves us vulnerable without a Tension Relax ready which consumes 100% of our rage.

So yes, there's a lot of unanswered things and a lot of speculation at this point.

If you meant Lubu's guide, he only tells you what crucial skills to get for his playstyle. He's not giving you a skill by skill build. There's a difference between a guide and a build. A build is something someone tells you to get a, b, c, d, not e, but get f. A guide is where someone explains what a-f does, and tells you why you might want to get f over e.

I'm not talking about LuBu's guide. His guide is solely battle tactics, obviously.

The guides that are up are good for general info. That is the point of a guide afterall. WoW guides hang around but they either get updated or tossed by the wayside when signifant changes happen. Also gotta condicer WoW guides have a TON of info explaning the mechanics of each class/spec. It's info compied over the years.
Hell I was on Maintankadin as my pally for a while. The math the people do there is insane.

Now compaire to the info we have in RO2. We have so little info. We only know the basic DPA for a couple swordie/knight/warrior skills. I have no idea what the other classes have done math wise on theirs. DPS is another matter. Recentlly Timmmt was kind enough to compile a warrior/knight tank stat info with database valuies in AoD gear+including the self buffs for each class.

Info like that is so scarce, or locked away in kRO2. Which I'd like to add for every person who claims to have played kRO2, all they have are opinions. No hard info, math, proof of mechanics/encounters/etc.

Again the guides are great for general info. But we lack the in-detail stuff. Not to mention dicussion is light.

Edited by SonicTMP, 06 June 2013 - 09:33 PM.

Well stryfe's warrior guide clearly talks about Bowling Bash so in the rotation part and its in both the skill builds he listed, one has only 1 point, the other he maxes it...o.o

The guides that are up are good for general info. That is the point of a guide afterall. WoW guides hang around but they either get updated or tossed by the wayside when signifant changes happen. Also gotta condicer WoW guides have a TON of info explaning the mechanics of each class/spec. It's info compied over the years.
Hell I was on Maintankadin as my pally for a while. The math the people do there is insane.

Now compaire to the info we have in RO2. We have so little info. We only know the basic DPA for a couple swordie/knight/warrior skills. I have no idea what the other classes have done math wise on theirs. DPS is another matter. Recentlly Timmmt was kind enough to compile a warrior/knight tank stat info with database valuies in AoD gear+including the self buffs for each class.

Info like that is so scarce, or locked away in kRO2. Which I'd like to add for every person who claims to have played kRO2, all they have are opinions. No hard info, math, proof of mechanics/encounters/etc.

Again the guides are great for general info. But we lack the in-detail stuff. Not to mention dicussion is light.

the stuff Timmmt did only showed what we already knew. Warriors are better tanks stat wise. We already knew as warriors get better gear, they get better avoidance than knights. Sure, we may not have known necessarily to what degree before Timmmt put it all out for us, but we already knew that(at least anyone who did any amount of research)

The only reason WoW guides are compiled over the years is get this, the game has been out for years. Also the mechanics WoW deals with is way more than what this game is. which is why is aid its not like you need years worth of experience to give an educated and correct detailed guide on a class in a game like this. i mentioned WoW being the way it is because it actually has fleshed out numbers and skills and there's very few bugs regarding the skills and what they do. its another story altogether with this game.

Besides which, its not like the OP(which this all started from him asking for advise and general info on the warrior/knight which he would have gotten from stryfe's warrior guide and rollchan's knight guide) was asking for detailed info like Timmmt's post on defense analysis between warrior/knight.

Just to quote him, these are the kinds of questions he was asking

"What are all the rolls and stratergies for a swordsman based class? give me you're own insight into your characters, what rolls are you trying to fill? Which class does best for this? Is their a class better for soloing ot partying? How did you spec? what skills are making the difference to your DPS/Tank?"

You can't tell me all of that isn't answered in rollchan's or stryfe's guides.

Only ones that aren't probably are the subjective questions. "Which class does best for this?" "Is there a class better for soloing or partying"

Edited by sephiroso, 06 June 2013 - 09:41 PM.

We didn't know the actual values, no one put up a complied set of info for all to see. Plus the database isn't perfect. They don't show the set bonus which is kind of a big deal.

Yeah WoW has been out for years. That info didn't exist at first and it also changes alot each expansion. This game has not been out as long. While RO2 is a wowclone, it still has enouigh differances that should be noted.

Like animation times effect DPS. Or the fact that parry acutally = half damage. OR that you can dodge/parry magic. Something you can't do in WoW since magic uses a different mechanic vs melee.

This is info most don't have and something the guides don't really cover.

Stryfe and Roll cover tanking. There's no outspoken warrior thats gunning to show what a war dps can do. And I'm still getting raid geared so i can test myself vs ranger/wiz in guild who outgear me.

Edited by SonicTMP, 06 June 2013 - 09:46 PM.

Stryfe's a tank.

He designed a MT and OT build. His DPS build makes absolutely no sense. I'm OT and I don't agree with his OT build. For all his builds, he sacrificed Rage Strike and Berserk which are some of the most important Warrior skills. Why be a Warrior if you're going to sacrifice important Warrior skills? The only reason why he left in RS was for the DPS build which he clearly has a lack of understanding of. He didn't even bother to get Defender or Battle Tactics for his DPS build and for some odd reason got Tension Relax level 3 which is useless without Endure. Level 1 Brandish Storm on a DPS? Okay...

All his builds max out Aura Strike which eats away rage like nothing. Parry level 4 is a waste.

Like I said, it's all opinion. He should have stuck with making a guide strictly for tanks and not just thrown in a few cents trying to create other builds he doesn't know.

Edited by Varunax, 06 June 2013 - 09:47 PM.

We didn't know the actual values, no one put up a complied set of info for all to see. Plus the database isn't perfect. They don't show the set bonus which is kind of a big deal.

Yeah WoW has been out for years. That info didn't exist at first and it also changes alot each expansion. This game has not been out as long. While RO2 is a wowclone, it still has enouigh differances that should be noted.

Like animation times effect DPS. Or the fact that parry acutally = half damage. OR that you can dodge/parry magic. Something you can't do in WoW since magic uses a different mechanic vs melee.

This is info most don't have and something the guides don't really cover.

Info like parrying = half damage is something you can easily see in game. You don't even need to know that it halves damage, the game says it reduces damage, thats all thats really important to know. Also, by deduction you can easily see defense/parry dodges both physical and magical damage as there's no magic defense stat. So again why would info like this be in a guide when it should be known already.

Also as for the actual values of the defense comparison. Yeah i acknowledged that no one put out the exact values, but the information as a whole was already known that warriors came out on top due to defender. So us knowing the actual values changes....nothing. We just know by how much better they are at knights in dodge/parry. and how much better knights are in defense. Warriors scale better with gear, every warrior tank guide i read said this. Same reason warriors low lvl get such a bad rep cause they don't come into their own until their gear catches them up to knights.

Since no one wants to read this much, tl;dr, I like warriors better than knights, even though I have a knight.

Reality check. Other mmorpgs don't include magic in the ability to parry. WoW doesn't. I highly doubt everyone is just goign to assume magic gets reduced like physical damage in this game.
Also there is no info on how much reduction parry gives. It just says reduces damage. You need to do testing or get that info from someone who has to figure out it does half damage when parry.
You should know this if you're going to bring that argument up. Takes a couple seconds to mouse over the stats.


And yes we've been told warrios scale better. We did not answer WHEN they out scale knights and exactlly by how much when you factor in defender and whatnot. You certinally didn't provide that info, neither did the guides. And there are several people who are interested in that info seeing reactions from the thread.

Did some further checks to re-affirm some suspicions regarding "parry rate". And found a somewhat shocking "twist".

Although "parry 100%" is confirmed and indeed existent. It seems "parry" can only take "effect" during the "animation". For example, if you take 1~4 mobs and activate "100% parry", your bound to basically parry ALL the incoming damage. Another example is, if you take nearing 10 mobs and activate "100% parry", you'll parry most of it, but not ALL of it.

What I've noticed from doing the 2nd example, was that I seemed to have parried all the incoming attacks once I did the animation (and shortly after it), but hits that came in once the "animation" completely ended were received as "normal". Re-affirmed myself by testing it on 1~4 mobs mobs (about 5 tests per mob group . . . so 20 tests total), and found myself parrying all the hits (seeing as though with little mob amounts they don not hit "fast" enough to "out-speed" the "parry animation". Raid boss wise, single target, and "safely" up to 3 for sure . . . you'll parry it all. But if you find yourself to be receiving hits "too fast" or "too many incoming damage", your "animation" will struggle to keep up.

So heres the further summary regarding the "100% parry". 100% parry indeed exists so long as they hit within your "animation" (in warrior-perspective it would be "as long as the huge sword is in front of you to take the hits").

Says that parry only parries within your animation frames so that's something to think about.

He designed a MT and OT build. His DPS build makes absolutely no sense. I'm OT and I don't agree with his OT build. For all his builds, he sacrificed Rage Strike and Berserk which are some of the most important Warrior skills. Why be a Warrior if you're going to sacrifice important Warrior skills?

A tank Warrior needs to focus on Defender, Endure, Parry, and Tension Relax, if you don't have any of them you are not fit to be called a tank plain and simple. Berserk plays against a tank's purpose by eating 10% dodge, while Rage Strike is mostly unneccesary beyond 1 level just to have it because Brandish Spear has better AoE control and Aura Strike has better sustained DPS for threat generation.

The Warrior skill tree is inherently designed in such a way that you need to sacrifice one side of the tree in order to fully obtain the other, it would be ludicrous to expect tank Warriors to have Rage Strike 5 or DPS Warriors to have a developed Defender tree.

The only reason why he left in RS was for the DPS build which he clearly has a lack of understanding of. He didn't even bother to get Defender or Battle Tactics for his DPS build and for some odd reason got Tension Relax level 3 which is useless without Endure. Level 1 Brandish Storm on a DPS? Okay...

Defender on a DPS build is a toss up; on the one hand the sturdiness is definitely nice, but it runs against the basic idea of a DPS build because it saps 10% attack, take or drop according to your needs. Battle Tactics depends entirely on whether you're doing int crit DPS (aka: Lubu) or just straight up str crit, for the latter Battle Tactics is completely useless for obvious reasons. Tension Relax 3 is most definitely useful even by itself, it allows eternally self-sustained soloing and you have an emergency heal when running dungeons and raids because healers will obviously not prioritize you. Endure/Parry, either pick up or drop depending on whether you really want it or not and whether you still have points left.

As for the level 1 Brandish Storm, I assume it's there for mobbing purposes which is definitely viable.

All his builds max out Aura Strike which eats away rage like nothing. Parry level 4 is a waste.

Aura Strike and Bash are a Warrior's primary source of damage, and also by extension threat generation for tanks, barring some special builds you need to max Aura Strike. Aura Strike also consumes a constant level of rage regardless of what level it is, level 1 or 5 they both consume the same amount of aura/rage.

As for Parry 4, I'm personally maxing Parry in my build but I guess you could shave a point off if you already have lots of parry from gear and stats.

Edited by kingarthur6687, 06 June 2013 - 10:04 PM.

Stryfe's a tank.

He designed a MT and OT build. His DPS build makes absolutely no sense. [...]

I'd like to point out that he left spare skill points for players to add to their preferred skill in each build. There's even 3 left over for his DPS build in which you can max battle tactics with; he didn't say it was completely useless, just gets a lot of hate (which was true at some point). I took a garner at the build just now and he gives neutral reasoning about his choices, ie. Level 1 Brandish Storm on DPS because your job (in his opinion) is to maximise single target damage.