Best Fighter build in Avowed: Skills, stats, equipment, and more

Playing a pure melee Fighter build in Avowed without magic is possible and actually quite powerful. The build I'm going to describe in this guide is quite possibly the easiest build not just as a Fighter, but in general. I call it the Immortal Barbarian, because I use a two-hander to jump into the fray and lay waste to enemy hordes while being near-unkillable (for reasons I'll soon discuss).

Before we get into the guide, let's get this out of the way: Avowed practically begs you to hybridize your build with Abilities from multiple trees. That is arguably the fun way to play the game, but for this build, we are going to stick to Fighter skills for most of the game, and we'll never touch the Wizard Skill tree.

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Pros and cons of playing a pure Fighter build in Avowed

The only exciting way to play is to take on enemies out of your league (Image via Sportskeeda || Obsidian Entertainment)

Pros

• Comes online very early.
• Only have to maintain two gear pieces with upgrade materials.
• Both durable and capable of high damage.

Cons

• Weak to crowd-control and freeze accumulation.
• Can get boring due to chaining the same execution animation every fight.

The biggest advantage of playing this Fighter build is it practically makes you immortal in Avowed. We are going to rely mostly on the Barbaric Shout to get temporary health and stunlock all enemies to death, including bosses. You get the two main gear pieces for this build (more on that later) in Dawnshore itself, and after that, it's smooth sailing.

As long as you play your cards right, beating the whole game deathless after you hit Level 8 is a possibility.

The advantage is also actually something of a disadvantage, and not in the way you were probably expecting. This build relies on stunning and executing enemies, which deals enough damage to take on enemies a few tiers ahead of you; it also makes you invulnerable during the special attack animation. And there will be a lot of that going around, because you build up Stun mighty fast.

Due to this, the build is quite cheesy, and it can become a boring playstyle as you're clearing through the latter half of the campaign.

There are some exciting new tools we get at Level 20-23 that freshen up the Fighter gameplay for this build, but depending on how much of Avowed you're exploring, you might be near the end of the game by that point.

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Best stat spread for a Fighter build in Avowed, and which attributes to level

Don't mind the horns, he's just chill like that (Image via Sportskeeda || Obsidian Entertainment)

We pick the War Hero background for flavor, but that's up to your roleplay preference, since it doesn't have any real gameplay effects. As for our attributes, here's the starting stat spread for the best Fighter build in Avowed:

• Might - 3
• Constitution - 2
• Dexterity - 2
• Perception - 0
• Intellect - 0
• Resolve - 3

The one thing you basically don't need at all is Intellect, since you can offset the lack of Accumulation resistance by chugging Grog. As for your attribute priority, you will want to purely level up Might to 11, and Constitution to 5 first. Then focus on Perception for the crit chance.

Here's the base stat spread at Level 25:

• Might - 11
• Constitution - 5
• Dexterity - 2
• Perception - 5
• Intellect - 0
• Resolve - 3

With +2 Might from Kai's training and +2 from the Woedica Totem bonus, you will hit the Might Cap (15). For the other companion training points, you want:

• +2 Dexterity from Marius
• +2 Resolve from Giatta
• +2 Perception from Yatzli

A downside for our stat spread on this Fighter build is that you'll almost never get to do Intellect-gated dialogue checks, and there are a lot of those in Avowed.

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Best Fighter Skills to use in Avowed (Early, mid, and late game)

The good news is you unlock the main schtick very early (Image via Sportskeeda || Obsidian Entertainment)

You will, of course, need to start this Fighter build off with the basic Charge skill. This deals good Stun and interrupts all action on your target, but here's the thing: only use it at close range. As a gap-closer, this Skill often gets stuck on terrain, and does not work very well for that purpose.

Here's what the Ability leveling order for this Fighter build:

Lvl 1	Charge
Lvl 2	Armored Grace
Lvl 3	Toughness
Lvl 4	Survivalist
Lvl 5	Respec to get Charge, Armored Grace, Toughness Rank 2, and unlock Barbaric Shout
Lvl 6	Brawn
Lvl 7	Scavenger from Ranger Tree
Lvl 8	Barbaric Shout Rank 2
Lvl 9	Toughness Rank 3
Lvl 10	Barbaric Shout Rank 3
Lvl 11	Brawn Rank 2
Lvl 12	Armored Grace Rank 2
Lvl 13	Armored Grace Rank 3
Lvl 14	Parry from Ranger Tree
Lvl 15	Brawn Rank 3
Lvl 16	Critical Strike from Ranger Tree
Lvl 17	Devastating Criticals
Lvl 18	Critical Strike Rank 2
Lvl 19	Devastating Criticals Rank 2
Lvl 20	Flurry of Blows from Ranger Tree
Lvl 21	Critical Strike Rank 3
Lvl 22	Flurry of Blows Rank 2
Lvl 23	Clear Out
Lvl 24	Clear Out Rank 2
Lvl 25	Flurry of Blows Rank 3
Lvl 26	Clear Out Rank 3
Lvl 27	Into The Fray
Lvl 28	Into The Fray Rank 2
Lvl 29	Into The Fray Rank 3
Lvl 30	Retribution

The build gets its first big power spike at Lvl 5 with Barbaric Shout, and fully comes online at Level 8, with its Rank 2 upgrade. Long story short, the second upgrade grants you temporary (blue) health equal to your current health, doubling your ability to tank.

From Lvl 15 onward, your basic gimmick of stunning and executing enemies is fully operational. After this point, I chose to go with the pure-melee crit build approach, but you can also go for some multiclassing departure at this point if you want to.

By the time you get Flurry of Blows (Lvl 20), you are an unstoppable killing machine with this Fighter build, and you can deal with anything Avowed throws at you.

Check out: All Fighter Skills in Avowed

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How to play this Fighter build?

There's a lot of kicking their teeth in (Image via Sportskeeda || Obsidian Entertainment)

The main hook, as we have mentioned before, is Barbaric Shout. Activate this to start off the fight, and whittle down enemies with Normal or Power Attacks (which one you use depends on your weapon, as we'll discuss later), and finish them off with Special Attacks.

Due to the unique armor we use, you will get two separate Barbaric Shouts back-to-back, so it will be enough to clear through enemies. I have cleared the game on Hard using this strategy with barely any trouble.

After Level 20, you want to cast Acceleration (Giatta's Skill) and Barbaric Shout to start, and then Flurry of Blows when you need more damage or Acceleration runs out.

The one big weak point is the lack of elemental resistance. Especially on Path of the Damned difficulty, you want to stock up on a lot of Grog and use them as a way to deal with various accumulations.

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Best Equipment to use for a pure Fighter build in Avowed

This is the BiS weapon if you want to deal big stun (Image via Sportskeeda || Obsidian Entertainment)

There are two centrepieces to this Fighter build, and you get both quite early on. In other words, there's no major gear swap you'll have to do. You can just focus on keeping the two following gear pieces upgraded and then go with whatever helpful items you find for the other slots.

The first is the Unique Armor Stelgaer's Pride, obtainable from the Intimidating Feline Codpiece Treasure Map. This makes it so that you cast Barbaric Shout automatically when you take damage higher than 30% of your Health, which is quite easy to trigger consistently in all the fights.

What's more, you get the temporary health from the Level 2 upgrade when it triggers. The effect does not put your actual Barbaric Shout on cooldown, meaning you'll eventually have near-permanent uptime of this Skill.

The second, and equally important part, is the weapon we use. As we gain the big secondary health pool to tank with, the best option is to go with an all-out offense approach. This Fighter build specifically is optimized for the following weapons: you want to either use The Philosopher's Riddle or Horsecutter.

The Philosopher's Riddle can be obtained very early into the game, and you want to get its Cutting Retort unique enchantment upgrade. After this, you have to basically spam power attacks after you Shout.

Horsecutter, meanwhile, has more of a mobbing approach as it can apply stun in an AoE. With its Cull the Herd enchantment, you can deal a 3-hit combo to deal big stun to surrounding enemies.

In our testing, The Philosopher's Riddle works a bit better for single-target DPS due to its Poison Accumulation, but Horsecutter also has its strong points. The choice is down to whether you want a more fluid normal attack playstyle, or stick to a very static power attack-fishing combo.

Here's the best equipment to use at the endgame for this pure Fighter build in Avowed:

Slot	Equipment
Weapon	Horsecutter/The Philosopher's Riddle
Armor	Stelgaer's Pride
Gloves	Tranton Family Gauntlets
Boots	Tranton Family Greaves
Trinket	Thirdborn Tira Nui Badge
Ring	Ring of Pain Amplification
Ring	Ring of Prosperity's Fortune (if you don't have a lot of Gold, use Ring of Major Deflection)

Your secondary weapon slot can be whatever you want situationally. I personally swap between a Moonstrike and a regular Grimoire when I need it for environmental puzzles.

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Best Companion combo for a Fighter build in Avowed

The best-case scenario for us (Image via Sportskeeda || Obsidian Entertainment)

Since you are a frontline build as a Fighter, the most important companion in Avowed is Giatta. As the only healer, Giatta will often bail you and your other party member out of hairy situations, and as you optimize your build near the lategame, you'll eventually not need any healing potions at all.

Giatta Skills

Here are the most important Giatta skills you should unlock, in order of priority:

• Purification - Boosted Essence
• Acceleration
• Acceleration - Extended Acceleration
• Acceleration - Time Shift
• Acceleration - Evade Attacks

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The other companion slot is a toss-up between Kai and Marius. I prefer Marius for the loot-scanning ability that comes in handy a lot.

Marius Skills

You want the following skills, in order of priority:

• Wounding Shots
• Wounding Shots - Exposing Shots
• Binding Roots - Grasping Roots
• Shadow Step
• Shadow Step - Assassinate

You will, of course, need to swap Marius out sometimes. For example, Yatzli is downright mandatory for a part of the main campaign. Giatta, on the other hand, is a constant.

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If a barbarian build is not your jazz, you may be interested in the polar opposite: a pure Wizard build in Avowed. Stay tuned for more Avowed news and updates on Sportskeeda.