Warrior-Skald

The Warrior-Skald

The Path of the Warrior-Skald is the path of the soloing minstrel. With increased damage and efficiency with War-Speech skills and, if traited far enough, a new War-Speech skill that is easily the most damaging ability in the minstrel's possession, the Warrior-Skald makes up for what he loses in healing ability in damage and solo-capability.

Enduring Morale

• Acquire: Use Ballad of Vigour 2,000 times.
• Effect: Increases your maximum morale. This just makes the minstrel tougher. Like Power of Song, this trait only gives the Minstrel more of what he could get from gear or virtue traits, and since it takes up a valuable class trait slot, it can be controversial to equip. Still, this is one of the better traits of the Warrior-skald line, and a minstrel may consider it if he wishes to focus on this line.

Harmonious Melody

• Acquire: Use Ballads 1,500 times.
• Effect: This trait increases the time in which the Minstrel has to use his tier-dependant ballads, by 5 seconds. Note that this also affects the duration of the healing bonus associated with tiering up ballads. Out of all the traits in this line, this is perhaps the most useful to a healing minstrel, but clever planning can negate most need for it. Best for a hybrid DPS/healing build.

Herald's Hammer

• Acquire: Hit enemies with Herald's Strike 700 times.
• Effect: Doubles the damage done by "Herald's Strike." Have this slotted if you are soloing. The extra damage in combination with the skill “Noble Cause” is really nice. It also pairs well with Heralded Resolve, but not so much in War-Speech mode.

Light in the Dark

• Acquire: Use Ballad of Resonance 1,000 times.
• Effect: Tier 1 and 2 Ballads do a little more damage. This is a good trait to slot when you’ll be soloing.

Medium Armour-Use

• Acquire: Complete "A Song of the Company" quest.
• Effect: Allows you to use medium-armor. Many minstrels choose to slot this. It gives us better armor and therefore more survivability. However, all our top armor sets are light armor, and Medium armor with good Minstrel stats is rare. This trait is very controversial, and its use often depends on what a Minstrel has available to him at any one time.

Powerful Voice

• Acquire: Use your cries (Piercing Cry, Cry of the Valar, etc.) 300 times. (not each, all together)
• Effect: Power cost of all cries and ballad is reduced slightly. Cries are not a big drain on power, but ballads are, so this is a very nice trait to have for the minstrel who uses ballads regularly.

Tempo of Bravery

• Acquire: Use Ballad of the Stout 1,500 times.
• Effect: Increases your in-combat morale regeneration. Again, like Power of Song and Enduring Morale, this trait just gives more of what can be gotten from other sources. Still, it's a nice hands-off way to fill up your slots in the Warrior-skald line, if soloing is what you're after.

Unrelenting

• Acquire: Land critical hits with Piercing Cry 100 times.
• Effect: Your piercing Cry gain 25% more chance to critical, and when it does, it stuns the target for a short period. This pairs well with War-speech, which increases piercing cry's critical chance by an additional 25%, making it crit, and thus stun, more than half the time.

Call of War

Legendary

• Acquire: Verses of the North
• Effect: This legendary trait is a powerful boon for the soloing Minstrel. It increases his chance to critically hit, as well as the damage done by critical hits, with his 3 War-speech dependant skills: Call of Orome, Call to the Second Age, and Call to Fate by a VERY large amount. Of the 3, Call of Fate especially benefits from this trait, as it already includes a huge bonus to damage from critical hits. A solo minstrel with this trait can perform some rather impressive DPS, though he still doesn't match up to classes which specialize in it.

Warrior-Skald is very handy for solo’ing, and if you love seeing large 1,500+ damage above the enemies head.