Octopath Traveler 2 Warrior Job Guide

This is an in-depth guide to the Warrior job in Octopath Traveler 2. We’ll break down the Warrior job including Skills and interaction with the other Jobs of Octopath Traveler 2.

What is the Role of a Warrior

Warriors are a job specializing in dealing Physical damage, while often bolstering their own physical abilities. They excel at using Sword and Polearms as weapons while having access to several single and multi-target skills. They’re also the only job that can taunt, drawing enemies to attack them to protect other allies.

Due to this, Warriors are often a great job or battle job for a character you want to focus on dealing physical damage. Their exceptional durability combined with armor can also makes them a reliable way to mitigate a lot of damage, especially if it’s physical damage.

In Octopath Traveler 2, Hikari Ku has Warrior as his main role. Hikari is the younger prince of a desert nation that is constantly at war. He worries greatly about his people who have suffered from ceaseless battles, praying for a world without conflict or bloodshed. His journey begins as he set off in search of like-minded allies, with the goal of bringing peace to his nation.

How the Warrior Job Has Changed for Octopath Traveler 2

Warriors still retain all of their self-buffs in Abide, Incite, and Stout Wall; but have gotten a new set of attacking moves. This makes them better single-target attackers, but also gives them a more options for quickly or reliably breaking foes.

Level Slash was replaced as a starting skill, gaining Aggressive Slash in its place. Aggressive Slash is much like their old Thousand Spears Skill, but with much more reasonable accuracy, SP cost but a lower hit count. It still targets randomly, but the higher accuracy makes it a much more useful skill.

Spearhead was replaced by Piercing Thrust for your second starter skill. Piercing Thrust is a much more offensive skill, having a semi-fixed crit rate of 25% that can be boosted to a 100% crit. This gives you a nice powerful single-target option to work with.

Cross Strike was replaced by Enervating Slash, a Skill that removes a target’s buffs and increases in damage for each buff it removes. This adds a lot of utility to the Warrior overall, which it previously lacked.

Finally, Thousand Spears is gone, being replaced by Vengeful Blade. This is a counter skill that uniquely will reduce the foe’s Shield Points when the counter is triggered. This gives you much more of a reason to use Incite in general, giving you a great way to actually take advantage of it early on.

Overall, the changes make the Warrior a much better job overall. Though Warrior as a job is now more focused on single-target damage, lacking any reliable AoE skills. Aggressive Slash and Vengeful Blade are their only options for hitting multiple targets in a single turn.

Warrior Skills: Overview and Recommendations

Like all classes, the Warrior has both Active Skills and Support Skills that can affect their combat ability. Below you can read the overview and recommendations for each skill individually, followed by a segment with recommendations on which skills to pick first and why!

Active Skills

Active Skills are skills used in battle, to either attack, provide buffs, or apply debuffs. Below are the Active Skills available to Warriors. Warriors have access to Aggressive Slash and Piercing Thrust by default, the other skills require the use of Job Points, or JP to unlock.

Among the Active Skills are Divine Skills, which are powerful skills that are unique to each class. These however cannot be unlocked until all other skills have been unlocked first, which requires a large amount of JP, in addition to their own unlock cost.

Aggressive Slash

• Skill Type: Sword
• SP Cost: 9
• Effect: Unleash a sword attack on random foes 3 times
• Boost Effect: Increases damage dealt and increases attack count by 1 per BP spent.

Aggressive Slash is an excellent skill for breaking a lone target, but can also be good for trying to break multiple low-shield foes with a sword weakness at the same. It’s overall damage isn’t amazing, but still does a fair bit when boosted thanks to the extra hits.

Piercing Thrust

• Skill Type: Polearm
• SP Cost: 12
• Effect: Unleash a powerful polearm attack on a single foe that has a 25% chance to deal a Critical Strike
• Boost Effect: Increases damage dealt, and Crit chance by 25% per BP spent.

Piercing Thrust is a skill that needs to use BP to be incredibly effective. While its high base critical chance is great, being able to boost its damage AND guarantee a Critical Strike makes it a powerful damage option. With it being a single-target it attack, this makes it exceptionally good for taking down strong foes, provided you have a decent polearm equipped.

Abide

• Skill Type: Buff
• SP Cost: 4
• Effect: Increases the user’s Physical Attack for 3 turns.
• Boost Effect: Extends buff duration by 2 turn per BP spent.

Abide is a great way for a Warrior to boost their damage output for very little cost. This alone can make them both potent and threatening during the early stages of the game. Considering the hefty 50% damage increase to both attacks and skills, it’s a great skill to use often.

Incite

• Skill Type: Buff
• SP Cost: 4
• Effect: Taunts foes into attacking the user for 3 turns.
• Boost Effect: Extends buff duration by 2 turns per BP spent.

Being a taunt, Incite in combination with Stout Wall can allow a Warrior to redirect and soak up a lot of Physical Damage fairly easily. Be wary though, as this can also draw single target spells to you as well,.

Enervating Slash

• Skill Type: Sword
• SP Cost: 7
• Effect: Nullify all positive status effects on a single foe, then unleash a sword attack. This attack increases in power with the number of nullified effects.
• Boost Effect: Increases Damage dealt.

Enervating Slash is a great option for tougher Challenge opponents and bosses that like to empower themselves. Due to the nature of nullifying any buffs on the target, it’s quite useful for that utility alone. With it also being fairly low cost as well, it can be used often enough to make some encounters much easier.

This skill seems to sacrifice your own buffs if you hit targets that are not affected by a positive effect of their own. It is unknown if this affects the damage of this skill or not. This can be a thing to be cautious about, especially since it can mean taking the time to buff back up.

Stout Wall

• Skill Type: Buff
• SP Cost: 4
• Effect: Increases user’s Physical Defense for 3 turns.
• Boost Effect: Extend Buff duration by 2 turns per BP spent.

Stout Wall can really allow Warriors to shine in their Challenges, but also as Tanks for physical damage. This provides a hefty 50% boost to your Physical Defense, making you incredibly resistant to all types of physical attacks.

Vengeful Blade

• Skill Type: Sword
• SP Cost: 6
• Effect: Grant yourself the ability to counter physical damage with a sword attack 2 times. The Counterattack will reduce the enemy’s Shield Points regardless of weaknesses.
• Boost Effect: Increases the number of counterattacks by 1 per BP spent.

Vengeful Blade is a great early skill to pick up, especially if you purchase a decent sword. The nature of countering physical attacks works exceptionally well early on, as most enemies will not attack with exclusively magic.

The additional breaking power this can provide when struck by multi-hit attacks can also turn a fight in your favor thanks to it not requiring a weakness to be struck. It works well in combination with Stout Wall to reduce the damage you do take.

Divine Skill – Brand’s Blade

• Skill Type: Sword
• SP Cost: 30
• Effect: Unleash a tremendously powerful sword attack on a single foe.
• Boost Effect: Required maximum boost to use.

Brand’s Blade is easily one of the strongest Warrior skills, dealing immense damage when properly equipped. While it’s not Hikari’s strongest sword skill, it is for the early game. If you get a foe broken and have the user buffed up, this can and will very easily exceed the initial damage cap. If you intend to use it often, make sure you use Deal More Damage with it.

Which Warrior Skills you should take first

Since Active Skills can be taken in any order in Octopath Traveler 2, it’s worth considering the benefits of taking each skill. The cost for the next skill increases as you pick skills, so take the time to plan which skills you’d want to make sure you never feel weak.

Personally, I highly recommend Vengeful Blade as the first skill to unlock. It’s a great skill that works consistently with the early influx of physical attacks. Once you start to encounter more Elemental Attackers, it falls off a bit. However, it remains a great skill for most of the early game, which will allow you to easily earn another skill or two.

If you’re not planning to use Throné early on, Abide can be a great early option as well. This gives you consistent access to a Physical Attack buff without the use of her Blessing of Darkness Talent.

Incite can be a great fourth skill, to get more value from Vengeful Blade if you chose it as a first skill. Though you’ll definitely need some form of a healer from your party to make it a safer option. Since you’re all but guaranteed to take damage early on, having means of recovery not tied to items is a great thing. Though thankfully healing items are incredibly cheap.

Of the Skills, Enervating Slash is definitely one of the lowest priorities. Many early encounters don’t have foes capable of applying buffs to themselves or others to take full advantage of the skill. While it’s a powerful skill in the right situations, it will feel lacking early on.

Support Skills

Support Skills are passive bonuses that can be mixed and matched with Support Skills of other classes after unlocking them. Support Skills are unlocked alongside your Active Skills, being tied to the number of unlocked Active Skills for the class. These provide stat boosts or other combat effects entirely passively and do not need to be activated beyond applying them to a character.

Bolstering Break

• Total JP Cost: 130
• Effect: Increases Physical Attack when Breaking an enemy’s Shield.

Bolstering Break is great for physical attackers like the Warriors due to the reliability and usefulness of the effect. The effect will trigger regardless of which party member breaks an enemy, and grants additional duration to the buff for each break.

Summon Strength

• Total JP Cost: 630
• Effect: Increases equipped character’s Physical Attack by 50.

This is a great early Support skill for jobs that specialize in physical attacks. Due to the nature of it being a flat bonus, it falls off later on when this is less of a power increase compared to the equipment you find.

Latent Power Plus

• Total JP Cost: 1,630
• Effect: Increases the amount of Latent Power Gauge gained by the equipped character.

With how powerful some Latent Powers are, this Support Skill works very well for many jobs. Increasing the Latent Power you gain from Break and damage makes it viable for damaging and non-damaging builds.

Deal More Damage

• Total JP Cost: 4,630
• Effect: Increases the damage limit for the equipped character from 9,999 up to 99,999 instead.

This is the pinnacle of damage-related Support Skills. With many jobs being able to cap out their damage to 9,999 very early with their Divine Skills, this can heavily bump their damage up. Depending on character level, gear, and Support Skill combination; you can very easily hit this increased cap in the later stages of the game as well.

Warrior Job Synergies

Below you will learn which secondary Jobs best complete the Warrior as a starting Job and how the Warrior Job synergizes and performs best as a secondary job with other starting jobs!

How Hikari Synergizes with Other Jobs

Hikari himself doesn’t have many great options for synergies. Hikari can however make exceptionally good use of the Merchant’s Full Power Support Skill. This gives Hikari consistent access to both powerful single and multi-target attacks.

This can overall make Hikari much less reliant on SP for quickly ending encounters. For bosses that are weak to Sword, it can also allow a Boss to be broken with Hienka and then the additional turn can be used to unleash a powerful hit. Or it can simply be held for a max damage Tenretsuzan.

Check out our Hikari Character Guide to learn about this character and their unique actions within the game. You can also check out our Walkthrough of their story, for hidden items in their story and boss strategies.

How the Warrior Job Synergizes with Other Jobs

Warrior works exceptionally well with a job that allows it to spread its self-focused buffs of Abide, Stout Wall, and Vengeful Blade. This type of synergy allows the Warrior to shut down physical attackers, while simultaneously empowering your own physical attackers.

Should the party be hit by a party-wide melee attack while Vengeful Blade is spread, every character will retaliate and remove a Shield Point from the attacker, should they survive the hit.

Other great synergies for the Warrior class are those that enable expand the number of weapon types they can use. In a lot of cases, this can also empower Hikari’s Learned skills, enhancing them with additional status effects and scaling their damage.

Any effects that increase the number of turns or attacks the Warrior can get can also be exceptionally powerful. All opportunities to deal extra damage or get off extra skills are great for any job, but the Warriors are one of the few jobs that gain a ton of value from it.

This makes the Warrior an interesting sub-job option for Throne as her Latent Power, Leave No Trace, allows for two actions in a single turn. This can allow the use of a Buff or Debuff followed by an attack, or a break with an Aggressive Slash followed by a stronger hit.

If you’d rather a Warrior focus on pure damage output, they can also be paired with a class like Dancer that can handle the buffing for them. This allows them to focus their turns and SP to end encounters quickly, rather than needing to set up first. With Agnea specifically, this also allows the application of multiple buff effects through her Dance Session Talent.

A Dancer can also be highly beneficial to a Warrior for their Divine Skill, Sealticge’s Seduction. This allows the effects of Aggressive Slash, Piecring Thrust, and Enevervating Slash to hit all foes. This makes Aggressive Slash exceptionally strong for breaking, while the remaining two skills are great for burst.

Additionally, Warriors can also work exceptionally well with the Dancer Support Skill Invigorate and Inspire. This grants the Latent Power Gauge charge to Abide and Stout Wall, giving extra incentive to use them regularly. This can even be enhanced by the Warrior’s Latent Power Plus Support skill to increase the amount earned.

Cleric is a great option to pair with a Warrior as well. This can allow them to use Incite to taunt foes, while the Cleric bolsters their defenses and keeps them healed. With the Cleric’s ability to boost both defensive stats, as well as reduce damage by a percentage, this can make for a potent pairing.

The Armsmaster is a decent advanced job to use with Hikari, between access to all weapons and Hikari’s Ultimate Stance EX Skill, he has a lot of breaking potential. While it doesn’t improve over his base skills much, he does gain a few decent options out of it.

While Arcanist isn’t the strongest offensive choice for Hikari, it does make him an interesting supportive option. With the Arcanist’s Seal of Diffusion skill, Hikari can spread the effects of Abide, Stout Wall, and even Vengeful Blade. Giving your full party a boost of Physical Defense and the ability to counter physical attacks makes for a fairly strong option.

Hikari isn’t the greatest choice for the Conjurer job, save for his natural bulk. Without the use of extra Support Skills, his base Elemental Attack isn’t high enough to really benefit from conjuring any of the elements. While you can give him a decent Staff to try to shore up that weakness, it’s not going to be a fantastic option overall.

The Inventor Job can be great for Hikari though, as the bulk of its damaging skills are physical. It also gives him a fairly solid option to break foes weak to elements with Elemental Bomb Bottle, which he’d struggle with otherwise on his own. Though you’ll be a bit starved for BP, since many inventor skills need it to be great, similar to many of the Warrior skills.

This concludes our in-depth Job Guide for the Warrior.