Welcome into our ranks young recruit, by the end of this tutorial (hopefully) you will know how to wield our four weapons and make your own way through this M/P infested wasteland. If you’re really good you might get a nice red uniform too!

"Biggles: Er…. Nobody…um….
Ximinez: Expects…
Biggles: Expects… Nobody expects the…um…the Spanish…um…
Ximinez: Inquisition. " 

As soon as you enter the lands of Taborea you’ll adopt our first and most important creed: Magic is for pussies! We are real men, we use our brawn to beat stuff into the ground really hard and we don’t have to wear dresses to do it. But why are we the way we are? What do we have?

• A strange desire to chop heads from close range
• An easy to replenish energy source
• Ability to wear chain which gives us a decent end-game set
• Additional mitigation in the form of Regeneration powered by our manly 2 handed head-chopper
• A great "They did in fact expect the Spanish Inquisition " button in the form of Holy Aura
• Great defense against the dress wearing kind in the form of Improved Magic Barrier (25/25 Elite)
• An interrupt for those brave enough to try conjuring blasphemy for more than 1 second (20/20 Elite)
• Our devotion to the Pope blessed us with "at will" rage in the form of Bloodlust (30/30 Elite)

"Ximinez: Our chief weapon is surprise…surprise and fear…fear and surprise…. Our two weapons are fear and surprise…and ruthless efficiency…. Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency…and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope…. Our *four*…no… *Amongst* our weapons….Amongst our weaponry…are such elements as fear, surprise…."

Now that we know who we are, let’s look at out tools

Face Smashing

• Slash: Max it. It has a pretty good damage/rage ratio especially due to the high bleed. The other attractive feature of this skill is that it has no cooldown so it’s going to be your main rage dump until you get your 35/35 elite. After Opportunity just use this every 6 seconds for the bleed.
• Probing Attack: Max it. Your other opening skill, which has a bit lower damage than slash, but necessary to fire off the rest of your high damage combo. It would be excellent if it wouldn’t have the 4sec cooldown, but you can’t have it all.
• Soft Spot: Max it. Simply awesome, for 10 rage every 4 seconds you get to use an attack that does 1.5 times the damage probing does. It doesn’t get any better than this…or does it?
• Opportunity: Max it (when you get it). 35/35 Elite. Hello there Soft Spot’s older brother! 15 rage for double probing attack damage. What’s not to love? Well the 4 sec cooldown and you having to go down the chain (Probing->Soft->Opportunity), but it’s still a great skill.
• Two handed Weapon Master: Max it. You want to be a great inquisitor don’t you? Every great inquisitor smashes faces like the best of them and he does it by maxing this skill.
• Feint. Good skill if you expect some of those elusive individuals to cross paths with you: the damage is good, the cooldown is close to nonexistant and it costs no rage.
• Interrupting Strike. Your main interrupt, try to keep rage available for it if you face caster mobs. It’s nothing out of the ordinary but nice to have nontheless.
• AoE Skills. This is a mixed bag: you can generate the rage to drop all of them in quick succession due to bloodlust but doing so will require you hogging the priest full-time. In solo work i haven’t found these useful due to all the melee hate which prevents me from aggroing lots of stuff all at once; BC is good to catch a breath if you happen to face humanoid mobs though.
• Berserk. Useless until you gear up, useful if you outgear the enemy and your Regenerate can compensate for the loss in defense.

Preparing Faces for the Smashing

• Surprise Attack: 20 Pts. Your main "Face, meet Axe!" skill, embrace it and love it since it’s your only way to get from enemy to enemy faster than snail speed; it’s also a good interrupt agains humanoid mobs if they happen to open with a cast. The skill works fine with no points but you want 20 points to unlock shout.
• Shout. The Good: AoE stun and it’s already maxed. The Bad: 2 min cooldown and limited to 5 targets The Ugly: Needs 30 rage and is only 3 second long. Poor skill overall when compared to the mage’s Discharge, but nontheless it’s a good "ocrap" skill.
• Terror. Maxed it’s about 15 seconds of fear if you manage not to hit your target. The duration is ok, the cooldown isn’t horrid but it’s still a bit too high (at 45 sec). If you have spare TP this is an ok skill to pour some points
• Aggressiveness. This is your second contender for spare TP with a decent uptime for its cooldown it maxes at 70% extra rage generated which will make you stay at max rage for the whole duration of it.

Keeping an Intact Face

• Regeneration: Max it. No nonsese healing skill which continues working while being stunned, feared or silenced and it gets an ok benefit from us using a 2h weapon
• Enhanced Magic Barrier. It’s great for solo work, it brings those magic mobs back to "cake" level and the elite actually makes it better than the priest one:EMB advances at 1%/level (with the additional 0.1%/level flat damage reduction of course) while the priest one advances at 0.6%/level. It might also make you a "1st choice" for a melee DPS if a magic damage dominated end-game dungeon gets released.
• Defender’s Roar. 15/15 Elite. This is kind of "meh" because it only has 50% uptime and it running out in the middle of combat isn’t that nice. Still if you predict a fight will run for less than 1 min it’s a useful buff to use since it’s the equivalent of 70-80 stamina
• Survival Instinct. This is an interesting one for us because unlike other classes we can trigger this whenever we want with bloodlust, so for very short fights (<30s) we can actually play as a tank. Other than that it’s an ok "ocrap" button with a cooldown which is still a bit too high though.

Keeping our friends’ faces intact

• Taunt. No nonsense "Hit me now!" skill. It upgrades at an ok pace (0.25 sec per level) and has a bearable cooldown if you’re not tanking. Useful in instances but i wouldn’t hurry to upgrade it: a knight or any real CCers should notice a random mob wandering into the rest of the party pretty easily.
• Group taunt. Horrible horrible skill. 5 minute cooldown for an "I’ll die now, kthx" skill.
• Defensive Formation. Help your knight tank that boss even if his gear wouldn’t allow him. Good skill for progression, otherwise it’s a "meh" panic button
• Instant Heal and Regenerate. Use them if your priest doesn’t seem to be keeping up with the enemy damage or is silenced, since a dead party does not damage. Use them only as an emergency though, don’t try to act like a real healer.

"Now, Cardinal — the rack!"

Let’s talk about gear a little. 

You’re a damage dealing class. You’ll want to stack strength and p.att on your gear to keep up on the charts with your party mates. Strength gives 2 p.att per point so if you want to go "full damage" on a piece of gear, with 3 open mod slots you’ll want for example: Strength IX, Strength VIII and Might IX because Strength VII gives only 17 str (which is less than 40 p.att). From the yellows, Barbarian stands out as the best mod for the job, and regarding runes you’ll want Aggression. You’ll also want to put some Dexterity on your gear to keep your hitrate at a decent level.

You’re a melee damage class, which means you’ll be in the thick of things eating those AoEs so you’ll need a good amount of stamina/HP. The thing about W/P is that you don’t want to stack it too high because Bloodlust scales with HP and you want your regenerate to cover your health loss in a timely manner (you don’t want to hog your priest).

Rage scales with weapon speed so that isn’t a factor in choosing a weapon, but keep in mind that swords have a higher accuracy because they have a higher max. Weapon Skill. If somehow you’re interested in static damage skills (interrupting strike, surprise attack) you might want to know that you’ll want to use axes because the extra damage is dependant on the weapon damage not DPS.

When it comes to transmuting armor and you don’t depend on set bonuses keep in mind that the higher armor bonuses you get from the chest, pants and head pieces while the lowest from the cape, gloves and boots. This might be a good time to use cloth boots for the stamina bonus or lather gloves for dex bonus if you need the mods. Keep your jewels up to date as well, if you hit that HP sweet spot concentrate on getting good rings and neck instead of spending effort on earrings.

You’ll want to have consumables with you at all times:

• Food is very important for us manly types, our big brawn and big bellys have to be maintained so our enemies cower in fear as soon as we appear on the battlefield! P.attack or P.damage food will make your life quite a bit easier by upping your overall DPS (now that we can’t use Amplify attack from our own priest any more).Alternatively, if you can’t find any or can’t cook the +crit chance food is a decent DPS increase, especially if you have the Vahtos set and/or high leveled rings for the additional crit power.
• As a respectable Warrior of God you cannot have a good meal without a good Dessert, after all Ambrosia was the gift of Gods and it’s not wise to refuse the will of the Gods! The pdef and mdef deserts aren’t really as good as their offensive counterparts but i recommend keeping small stocks of "immunity deserts": Laor Forest Tart (50), Rainbow Crystal Candy(24) or Crisp Doughnuts (10) against physical and Forestsong Soft Cake (38) or Sweet Fruit Bread (14) against magic
• You remember those Gauls, especially Asterix , right? Like he proved numerous times, every good warrior needs Potions to unlock every ounce of potential in himself, and as someone who aspiers to a nice red uniform you don’t want to get left in the dust, do you? Like everyone, you’ll want to have some instant big HP restore potions (800/1200). You will also appreciate having some Stimulant (17) (or the better Strong Stimulant) on hand when you want to kill those average quest elites or when you bite more than you can chew. For party play Potion of Rage (or it’s upgraded version Strength of Battle) is mandatory for those times you can’t afford the 20% HP loss from Bloodlust and, as a damage dealing class, using Pacification Powder (25) (or the better Tranquility Powder) when your tank is having trouble with his aggro will get you bonus points. For general use, especially at high levels you might like using Elixir of the Sage (19) (or its better and more expensive counterpart Hero Potion (47) )

"Fang: You are hereby charged that you did on diverse dates commit heresy against the Holy Church"

Solo Work

The "Snap, Crackle and Pop" will be your bread and butter routine when facing enemies by yourself. Draw at least two of them to have a good amount of rage generation (regenerate and eventually a HP pot should be enough) and spam your high DPS rotation: Slash-> Probing Attack->Soft Spot->Opportunity; until you get Opportunity you can use that cooldown on Slash or Bloodlust (depending on your rage generation). 

"Puny Mortals!".When trying to farm daily items from mobs lower level than yourself you can rival the killing speed of a mage by drawing as many enemies as you can handle (and you should be able to tank quite a few between upgraded chain armor, regenerate and a potion) and Smiting all those unbelivers with a few swoops. With that many mobs hitting you, a single Bloodlust should be enough to launch each of those 3 AoEs (Blasting Cyclone, Whirlwind and MoonCleave) in quick succession.

"Hah, an enemy worthy of my time!".As a Warrior of the Gods, descendant from Hercules himself, you should be able to handle some of those heathens who call themselves "The Elites". Low HP quest elites should be doable provided you keep your regen at a good level and have updated potions and gear. When going agains these the whole secret is to go "all-out": Frenzy, Stimulant, Aggressiveness, damage boosting food and start spamming those skills (avoid using Bloodlust as the damage is pretty high in burst) while keeping youself alive with regenerate, potions, holy aura, survival instinct and immunity dessets.
Party Play

"Snap, Crackle hold the Pop". Most of the time, unless you heavily outgear the instance some crowd control will be needed and depending on your party composition and player skill you might be needed to handle some yourself. In this situation you need to be careful with the rage, always try to keep above 30 so you can fire that Terror or Shout and don’t use Slash since the bleed damage will break the "fear" effect. When doing damage in this "stance" try going on the Probing chain.

"Groin Attack". When facing caster mobs start with Bloodlust so you can interrupt immediately, always be aware of what the mobs are doing since one interrupted spell provides quite some mitigation and it doesn’t cost the healer mana or cooldowns.

"Buddy, how about a hand here?". You work in tandem with your knight, always. Watch what he’s doing and adapt accordingly; you are his support, his safety net.

• A mob escaped from him? Taunt him and bring it back into his range so he can WW shield it back. If it’s possible, try not to tank it yourself for long periods of time because it puts an incredible strain on your healer if you’re not overgeared. This is one of the reasons "Group Taunt" is terrible on non W/Ks.
• Boss entered berzerk due to some unfortunate turn of events…and the healer is struggling to keep him alive through the high burst? Pop Defensive Formation since he can always manually disable it after the danger has passed.
• Tank aggroed quite a few mobs and they take a while to kill? Drop those AoEs and try to stay close to him in threat on the adds. Mobs that change targets to one that’s 1 meter away from the tank are easier to regain than mobs that went on a stroll towards the mage 300 meters in the back.

While you’re not off-tanking most of the time in the purest sense of the word, your contribution might just make it easier for the tank in unforseen circumstances.

"Holier than thou". Talk with your priest, know his limits ask him if he’s ok with keeping an eye on you more often than usual so you can use Bloodlust liberally. But remember, what he says is law, if he tells you "i can’t keep up both of you" (the tank and you) after the first 3 battles it doesn’t mean "i’m just kidding, go ahead and try to commit suicide, i’m going to heal you anyway" but it really does mean that using Bloodlust is risky and you have to use it sparingly (or only relying on your own support)

Credits go to Balathorn.