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With Dragonica Online going into full release next week, we thought we’d take this opportunity to take a strategic look at the classes available in this MMO. We’ll be starting off by taking a look at the Warrior class and its first two promotions, the defensive Knight and the bruising Gladiator. This class is a little disadvantaged when it comes to the bare mechanics of the game, but it can still be quite useful and powerful with the right setup.

At its most basic, the Warrior can be said to be Dragonica Online‘s version of group control. Warrior skills tend to hit multiple opponents in a good sized area, allowing them to easily prevent monsters from reaching the more squishy and vulnerable long-range classes. Warriors are also good at hitting enemies that are in the air or lying prone, and can even use certain skills to take enemies from prone position to standing, allowing the Warrior to then set up a link into an airborne attack. With the right combination of skills, Warriors can turn any situation into a long and damaging combo.

Probably the most important skill to Warriors is Blade Storm. A move which generates a powerful tornado that strikes airborne enemies for impressive damage, Blade Storm is strong enough that it’ll be one of your main attacks well into the second job. Coming in a close second are the three hammer skills; Hammer Blow, which delivers a powerful strike and has a good chance of causing a Stun effect; Ice Cold Heart, which delivers Ice elemental damage and inflicts Slow; And the oddly named Vitality of Youth, a flaming hammer that causes Burn, slowly draining the foe’s HP.

Knights, the more defensive class change available to Warriors, are probably the more difficult to use. Knight abilities tend to focus on increasing defense and avoiding damage with shield equips, with their offense suffering as a result. On the whole, it’s best to focus on the offensive skills available to the Knight, as well as the abilities that increase evasion rather than those that focus on pure defense, since taking too many hits will make it hard to score well on Mission Maps. Knights are, however, excellent characters for players who prefer to go solo, since the combination of high defense, HP, and reasonably solid attacking power means that Knights can cover all the bases pretty equally.

Gladiators, on the other hand, are the offensive side of the Warrior class. Wielding a two-handed sword nearly as big as they are, Gladiators fill the “slow but powerful” slot for Dragonica, and tend to deal with skills that boost their attack, focusing power into one decisive blow. The down side to this is that Gladiators take a lot of planning and care to use, carefully setting up attacks and executing them. They’re also more vulnerable than most to higher level monsters, which tend to be able to evade attacks by lower level characters rather easily.

Due to one thing and another, Warriors can be a challenge to use. Unusually for a primary physical class, Warriors represent a sort of high-risk, high-reward proposition, especially Gladiators. With planning, Knights and Gladiators can be formidible opponents, but because of the care and caution they require to be truly effective, they make a poor choice for novice players.