I'm currently playing through the game on each class, and I will be sharing my thoughts with regard to character builds. Today we will be looking at the Fighter class, which is a melee-focused hacky slashy guy. Their dedicated weapons are melee (one-handed), heavy melee (two-handed), and polearms (two-handed, longer reach). Fighter has much more of a focus on using your weapons as all of their skills are on medium to long cooldowns.
To become a Fighter, you must reach level 10 as a Novice and obtain the quest "Strength and Honor" from Enok, then read the tome he gives. This cannot be undone, so make sure this is the class you want.

Somewhat paradoxically, despite being the dedicated tank role, Fighter seemingly has less self sustain than the other two available classes.

I've decided to introduce a 5-point grading system for each skill to give a better idea of what I think of each one. A 1 (●○○○○) means it's almost never worth taking, and a 5 (●●●●●) means it's almost always worth taking.

I will be updating these guides as my opinions and the game itself changes. If you have any criticisms or thoughts of your own, please feel free to share them.

Not much changed this update (besides a heavy nerf to Cyclone) so I didn't have to change much for the guide.

I will eventually make guides for subclasses but not until they get more fleshing out and polish.

In games with limited available slots for active abilities, I find that there's one primary rule you need to follow: Use your abilities, or lose them. If you find that you aren't using an ability often, it's almost always better to swap it out for another ability you will get more use out of.

Experiment. Try different stuff. Learn what you like, and what you don't like.

Your choice of race is largely inconsequential as it only dictates what skill you start with permanently unlocked in your book. All racial skills are able to be learned via scrolls.

I picked Chang, mainly because I'm based and like mousegirls, but also for their Sturdy skill, which is very useful for a tanking playstyle.

As a Fighter, your primary stat is strength, which is what all of your class skills scale off of.

Because of the fact that you're going to be up in the enemies' ass all of the time, vitality is also incredibly important. In fact, just for the lulz I went with a full vitality build. 10/10, no notes, would throw my face repeatedly at enemies again.

No other stats really matter much for Fighter.

Enchants will play an important role, especially once you get to later levels. Some gear comes with enchants, which is a nice bonus.

Magical, Manafont and Precise will not be useful for you. Magical and Manafont both have to do with magic and MP which you will not be generally using a lot of. Precise gives dex power which Fighters do not use. It does give phys crit, so it's better than nothing, but don't settle for this if you don't have to.

Guardian and Lively can both be considerations to make yourself more tanky, especially because you'll be up in enemies' faces a lot.

Killer will be your most sought-after enchant, but I recommend getting at least a couple pieces with Energetic or equipment pieces with +max stamina baked in, because your base stamina otherwise will be quite low for how much you'll be blocking and using stamina skills.

Fighter has a couple of skills that are split between either two-handed weapons or one-hand and shield. It's important to keep that in mind when picking your skills.

●●●●○ Execute - Newly added skill, carried over from what was originally a classless skill. This does very good damage and is a dash which pierces targets. I think this was a vast improvement over the original skill and makes for a good filler ability on both single and multi target. Gives you a little self heal now too!

●●●○○ Stomp - Basic AoE skill, and also slows enemies and reduces their defense. A decent pick.

●●●●● Rage - As I said in my Mystic guide, buff skills like this are easy picks. The only time where you shouldn't take them is if you're coordinated and stacking multiple classes.

●●●○○ Lethal Strike - WE ARE SO BACK lethal strike mobility is back!!! Anyway, it's okay overall. Feels like it has an internal cooldown that's a little too long, but it's a start. And it's really the only mobility we get.

●●●●● Blood Gush - Damage over time skills are typically very strong in games like this, and this one is no exception. Very good option.

●●●○○ Cyclone - It's in kind of a weird spot right now. Its nerf got reverted somewhat but they also killed an exploit that allowed you to turn the weapon into a beyblade. Overall, it's pretty okay now.

●●○○○ Shockwave - This mostly seems like stomp but worse. It has a further range plus a coin flip on a stun, but does worse damage and has a slightly longer cooldown. It also requires a heavy melee.

●●●○○ Shield Bash - Stuns are good. Just make sure you use them. As long as the enemies are grouped together it can hit multiple. It's essentially an extra defensive that does decent damage. Recommended if you're going for a shield build.

●●●●● Bulwark - Very good passive. Reduces the stamina tax from blocking, and at max rank increases the parry window and the stagger on enemies post-parry.

●●●●● Reflect - Does thorns damage on block or parry, and increases parry window and stagger time. It's very strong.

Fighter surprisingly does not suffer from the same issue as other classes currently, as available options to them (however few they may be) are actually rather strong.

●●●●○ Sturdy - Very good tanking ability. Makes it so that for 8 seconds you auto-parry all attacks, effectively meaning you're invulnerable for 8 seconds. Though, unparryable attacks will still only be blocked. Also, if the enemies are being very mean you might end up sort of stunlocked because of the parry animation interrupting you.

●●●○○ Inner Focus - Guaranteed crit on your next attack. It's not as good as on bandit imo, but anything that hits for a lot a single time (Like Execute, Stomp, or a heavy melee charge attack) actually works for this quite well.

●●●●○ Recovery - Now that there are more options for healing, Recovery may not be completely mandatory anymore. However, it is still one of the stronger options available.

●●●●● Strength Mastery (previously Weapon Mastery) is now just straight up good. You get bonus damage and charge attacks on anything that scales off Strength.

We also got two new classless skills you can learn from Enok (both Strength scaling):

●●●●● Multi Bash - Crazy good. Does a lot of damage, has a pretty short cooldown, and can hit multiple targets.

●●○○○ Taunt - Very situational. It's a taunt, and has a higher def reduction than stomp and for longer (likely stacks too) but more than twice the cooldown. If you're going for a tank build specifically this is pretty okay.

●●●○○ Rock Toss - This is a bit of a weird one. Its damage is actually higher than you might expect, it has a low cooldown, it hits from range, and it generates threat on the target you hit. Though, it requires you to carry around rocks as ammo, which kinda sucks. Overall, it's good, better if you're trying for a tanking sort of playstyle.

●●○○○ Adrenaline - Newly added, and it's actually pretty good. The problem though is that stamina is already really easy to manage. Just take a break and it comes back quick. There is a world where this is actually bordering on broken as you barely use MP as is so having an instant stamina refill sounds really good, but nothing actually necessitates this. Probably has a better use case in PvP.