Warrior Mechanics - The WarriorReadme.doc:

Melee: Warriors do their damage in melee range (8m)

HEAVY ARMOR!: Heavy Armor = Higher Armor stat = Higher % of damage ignored = Higher Mitigation

Kinetic Energy (KE):

Note: Warriors in Wildstar do not work like Warriors in WoW or GW2! KE =/= Rage/Adrenaline

1: The Warrior generates Kinetic Energy from using specific skills (Builders). At certain KE thresholds, specific skills are unlocked (Finishers).

2: KE starts at 0. This means that Warriors have no front-loaded DPS.

3: KE is constantly decaying at a current rate of ~50KE/GCD. If you aren't hitting things with your Builder, you'll keep losing KE. This means that Warriors depend a great deal on staying on their targets and their DPS will suffer when they can't (e.g. high mobility fights and being kited).

4: KE is not expended. That means that as long as your KE stays above the minimum threshold, you can spam your Finisher to your heart's content.

Onslaught Stance: Increases damage by +35%. Yay.

Overdrive: The "Ultimate" ability used in Onslaught Stance. It gives you a 8s buff that stops KE decay and jacks up your damage but increases incoming damage and reduces incoming heals. Often kept for those moments when your other cooldowns are ready and you want to get an important kill like a flag carrier or Zone of Control (ZoC) camper.

PVP vs PVE:

It is written that, " If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles". This build attempts to do just that, selecting the skills that work best with the Warrior's traits in a PVP environment. I've already covered how the Warrior works, but what about PVP?

Four characteristics stand out in PVP vs PVE:

Mobility: In every game involving PVP, players move as much as they can in order to get into an advantageous position. Any good PVP build provides the tools for getting the player around quickly and/or do the opposite to their enemies.

Burst: Killing your enemies in the shortest amount of time is absolutely critical. The longer it takes to do so means risking complications like enemy teammates coming to support, your target's GTFO skills coming off cooldown, your CCs wearing off and so on. This is of special consideration in Wildstar, where Shields continuously regenerate.

Crowd Control (CC): In a game where each class has an entire AMP tree and Skill set (Utility) to apply CCs, you can expect a great deal of CC effects to be flying around. Either accept that you're going to get smashed and plan accordingly or stack up on any CC-breakers/immunity skills and use as needed.

Healing: Mobs rarely heal themselves in PVE, if ever. Players get heals all the time in PVP, be it from themselves or from other players. Not surprising when you consider that three of the six classes in Wildstar can be Healers. There are many ways to deal with that, not the least through the aforementioned Burst and CCs.

Skills:

The Skills I picked:

The lynchpin for this entire build is . Each consecutive swing reduces the next swing's CD, which means the more times you swing it, the faster it attacks. In order to get a lot of swings, you need to pool as much KE as you can. Getting lots of swings in a short space of time is the very definition of Burst. The Tier 4 and 8 bonuses make it all the more powerful.

is the Builder you'll use to get the KE needed. Tier 4 isn't worth it because

, because of the need for mobility. Getting twice the number of charges makes this a no-brainer.

, because of the proliferation of enemy heals. There will be lots of heals in PVP and you don't want those heals to interfere with your gank. Tier 4 significantly increases number of times you can use this skill since you will be critting quite often.

: More friendly CCs in PVP is good. Timing it to get Interrupt damage buffs is even better.

provides tremendous utility for a melee class, particularly in groups. Tier 4's Snare makes doubly sure your targets don't get away. And yes, you pull ALL targets inside the telegraph to you.

: True CC immunity (as opposed to applying Interrupt Armor) is a very powerful ability in an environment filled with CC effects.

is a peculiar sort of CC. It's ranged (good) has a long duration (great) but can be destroyed (bad). Great for tying up lone enemies, bad for deploying when engaging enemy packs and their overlapping AoEs

The Skills I didn't pick:

: I already have a Finisher, and this one is more suited for sustained damage, not burst.

is pretty good on paper, as the sheer amount of CCs in PVP mean you get more opportunities to use it. However, there are better picks and it's hard to get it to increase your Burst.

, like is the very antithesis of Burst. Damage over Time (DoT) =/= Burst.

is a ranged CC and is a viable alternative to . I personally prefer the persistence of 's effect, though.

: see

: Like CCs, debuffs proliferate in PVP environments, so much so that I don't expect to able to get all, or even a specific debuff off me. Better for me to depend on my mobility skills to stay on top of my target or GTFO.

Taunts are powerful tools in PVP, but as a DPS Warrior i'm less interested in keeping my friends alive and more in making my enemies dead.

: See .

: See .

: See ..

is particularly powerful in organized teams where their members can use its damage buff to focus single targets with devastating effect. If you're in such a team, swapping out for this isn't a bad idea.

: See ..

Tactics:

There is no such thing as "Do X, collect Kills" in any game that takes PVP seriously (at least, not for very long), but here i'll try to give a basic rundown of what you should keep in mind when using this build.

There are 5 tactical considerations as a Warrior in PVP:

1: Preparation
2: When to Gank
3: When to Abort
4: Team Fights
5: Using Overdrive (Innate)

AMPS:

Assault Tier 1:

Sword Master - Mandatory. Gear accordingly.

Strikethrough - Recommended. If you invest in this branch go all the way to Mastery, which gives you WoW's Overpower.

Assault Tier 2:

Critical Hit - Mandatory. Your job is to kill things. Mastery is Optional for group PVE and not recommended for solo/levelling PVE or PVP due to the really low HP threshold.

Assault Tier 3:

Unfair Advantage - Optional. Best used in PVP where CC is flying all over the place. Unfortunately, there's not enough AMPs to go around. Trading off points from Unstoppable to get this might be the best tradeoff.

Assault Power - Optional. If you do get this, go to Mastery to unlock for the alternative build described in the Skills section. Where all the AMPs will come from, I have no idea.

Physical Damage - Mandatory. Most of an Assault Warrior’s DPS is Physical, particularly for builds. Go to Mastery, as it synergizes very well with your Crit AMPs in Tier 2 and stacks very quickly with your spam.

Utility Tier 1:

Bust Out - Lots of CC = lots of CC Breaks = lots of AMP procs.

Combat Tactics - Mandatory, if only because it's the path to the higher Tiers. Mastery is optional, as an addtional 12s off Overdrive isn't that useful.

Utility Tier 2:

Momentum - Mandatory. Less KE decay means a Warrior who starts smashing faces sooner and longer, which is great.

Kinetic Burst - See above.

PVP Offense Tier 3:

Recklessness - Mandatory. Increases your DPS when you need it most...when your enemies are in range.

No Escape - Mandatory. Gives you extra mobility when you need it most...when your enemies are about to die.