Warlander Tips & Tricks for Victory

Warlander is an exciting new online game that pits two teams against each other in a MOBA-like Hack-and-Slash battle to see who can take out the other side’s castle first. There is a lot of nuance to the title, and with it being so new, many people have found themselves plagued with questions but not with so many answers. That’s why we’ve put together this Warlander Tips guide to help you make the most out of the game from the second you start playing. 

Warlander Tips Guide - Classes and Character Creation

The first thing you need to wrap your head around is the character creation and class system. Right now, there are three different classes to choose from whenever you make a new character. We’ve briefly outlined them below: 

Warrior

Pretty much exactly what you think it is. The warrior is a high-health and high-defense unit that is best when it comes to getting stuck in. They move slowly but have some devastating melee attacks, with a decent ranged option to help back up their friends. They also unlock a bunch of highly-damaging special moves and start the game with a barrier ability that even puts Reinhardt to shame. This is a great class to pick if you really want to get stuck into combat or if you enjoy playing tank when under support conditions. 

Mage

Mages are considerably physically weaker than Warriors but pack a lot of punch. They have access to a powerful, rapid-fire ranged attack and can learn some truly devastating special moves. You start out with fireballs, Lightning strikes, and calling a team of archers, and even these can be instrumental in destroying enemy installations and buildings. They are, however, incredibly frail, so you'll need to rely on teamwork with your squad if you want actually to survive long enough to do some damage. 

Cleric

A support class, the cleric is best suited to buffing and healing your allies, as well as providing faster construction on siege weapons and when preparing defenses. As you might expect, the cleric is mid in both melee and ranged combat but can hold their own in either for short periods of time. Their greatest strength lies in working with their squad to make the most out of field advantages. Crafting siege items to attack, repairing defenses, and of course, keeping your other squad-mates alive with healing and defensive/offensive buffs. 

Tips for Character Creation

• Make sure you check the basic equipment window. When you start, typically, your characters will be completely devoid of extra armor, so make sure that you add any basic stuff you have to hand before finishing character creation.
• Be careful about giving your character a title too early. When you start a match, you have to play as untitled characters first until you’ve unlocked enough Valor for higher-ranking ones, so flooding your character deck with titled characters is a bad plan.
• Make sure to check the ‘Talents’ window as well. Like basic equipment, you’re often missing these by default, but you should start out with enough to equip a talent in each slot.

Warlander - First Match Guide

Once you’ve completed the tutorial, you’re basically told to go on your own. Once the intro is completed, you can start a regular match at any time on the home menu, but you might be shocked to learn that you don’t know everything you need to know to get started properly. We’ve briefly outlined some tips about how matches work below to help you get into the swing of things quickly.

• At the start of a match, you will be automatically sorted into squads. Each squad has a randomly assigned leader and is made up of 4 people.
• Each squad will choose a role to perform throughout the match, Assault, Defense, or Special.
  • Assault squads are straight up trying to attack the enemy base as hard as possible.
  • Defense squads are tasked with defending the home base to prevent enemy intrusion.
  • Special squads are supposed to shoot around the map, capture towers, repair defenses, and build siege weapons to attack the enemy.
  • The number of assault/defense/special slots depends on what tactics your team votes for at the start of the match.
• Assault Tactics has three assault squads, one special, and one defense.
• Balanced Tactics has two assault squads, one special, and two defenses.
• Special Tactics has one assault squad, two special squads, and two defense squads.
• Even if you get a role you’re not happy with, try to stick to what your job role actually is rather than running off to do what you like. It’ll give you more chance of winning and will stop other players from getting annoyed with you. 

Warlander Gear and Abilities

Once you’ve got a match under your belt, you can start to think about more powerful equipment and titles for your characters and learn new special abilities that can really help you turn the tide in battle. You unlock new equipment by completing missions and leveling up your characters, but you can't just go about equipping stuff willy-nily, as there is a complex layer of mechanics in place to help balance the game.

You'll need to take these factors into account when using new equipment and abilities, as they can change the delicate balance of your team. 

CP

When you start the game, your characters are typically locked into 250 CP, which is the minimum upper limit of your CP. These points are required to equip things to your characters, basically as a form of balancing. The more powerful an item or ability you have, the more CP it costs for you to attach it to your character. This prevents you from just overloading yourself with all of the best equipment and abilities and railroading every other player. 

Titles

You can bestow titles on your characters once you meet certain requirements. Most titles require a certain level of XP with a character, and some require extra things, such as defeating enough enemies or completing tasks. These titles are the only way to raise CP, so if you want a powerful character, this is how you get it. Titles also have the effect of limiting how quickly a character can get into battle. 

Titles are earned by playing each class and earning points - and you'll unlock more powerful titles the longer you play, but bear in mind you're going to want a team that also has non-titled characters to help build up your points in game to start playing your well-geared characters!

Equipping New Gear

As you play through matches, you’ll unlock rewards, from new armor and aesthetic options to new weapons that can make your characters much more powerful. One thing to watch out for is the big yellow number to the left of all of your equipment sections. This yellow number is the current CP cost of that equipment, and that is also true of any new stuff you want to equip. Generally, the more powerful an item is, the more CP it’ll cost, and the later into a match, you’ll be allowed to use the character in battle. 

Building Your Warlander Deck

In the main menu, you can put together different 'decks' filled with the character's that you've created. You can put up to 5 different characters on a team, and who you put in has a huge impact on how your match will play out. Firstly, you need to make sure at least one of your characters is untitled, or you want to be able to use a deck, and you'll also have to have a decent balance of titled characters, or you'll be underpowered too far into the match. We've set out some rules and tips to help you get a handle on things. 

Team Rules

• You should have two untitled characters and three titled ones, with the titled character becoming progressively higher ranked. Think of this as trying to ramp into your more powerful characters rather than having huge power gaps where you end up waiting for your OP characters to unlock.
• Have a blend of different classes. In most cases, you want all three classes to make an appearance somewhere in your deck.
• Experiment to build a team that suits your playstyle. If you're hyper-aggressive and impulsive, lean into high-risk/high-reward skills that prioritize DPS. For a more cautious player, stick to support and barrier abilities. Of course, the best approach is to blend both options. 

Advice for Building Teams

As you start out the game, you're not going to have access to a lot of different abilities or weapons from the get-go. Instead, focus on getting used to each of the different classes you have and how they perform in each of the three different roles they may have to fulfill. Even before you unlock most of your abilities, you need to know how each class performs its basic roles. 

Start out by making a team with at least one of each class, and go into a few games. Play with each one for a while, and make sure you try to follow whatever job your squad has been given. This should give you a greater sense of what each class is capable of and may help you discover which you prefer to use in general. Just don't get too attached to a single class if you can help it. 

Remember to ramp into your titled characters. Ranks range from 1 - 5, and generally, the higher that number is, the fewer of those characters you want in your deck. Early on, stick to having at least two untitled characters, but as you keep improving, you can reduce that number down to 1. Remember, the better you are at completing tasks and missions in-game, the quicker you can access your powerful characters.