Best Fighter Build in Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader (Beta)

If you’re looking to get up close and personal with your enemies in Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader, then you’ll love this fighter build.

With the beta for Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader being available for a little over a month now, we’ve had some time to learn how the game works. Even with only four options for starting doctrines and three advanced doctrines, the leveling system is still quite in-depth. This allows some interesting and powerful builds to be made, even in this early version of the game.

The doctrine we’ll be going over in this guide will be the Fighter. Billed as the close-quarters class of the game, the Fighter can dish out and survive a lot of damage. But if built in a certain way, the Fighter won’t be taking much damage at all. Keep reading as we’ll go over the best Fighter build in the beta of Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader. Let’s get into it.

Preface

Before we get started it’s important to preface this build with the fact that the game is still in beta. That means that all this information is subject to change. This also means that some aspects of the build may not function as intended.

Regardless, we have used this build in our playthrough of the beta and have not noticed anything wrong yet. We were able to get through all the available content without issue. With that said, let’s get on with the build. 

The Agility Fighter Build

This is a melee-focused build that focuses heavily on agility. This allows your character to zip around the battlefield slaying all your enemies and dodging any attack that comes your way. This build also focuses on getting our Heroic Action (Daring Breach) as quickly as possible to maximize the damage we can dish out.

The way we build in the beginning will help us become this hurricane of destruction we hope to become. The Origin and Homeworld of your character are just as important as your initial stats, so we’ll take a look at our recommendations for those as well.

Homeworld: Forge World – Locomotion Implants

The first thing we’re going to focus on is the first option in character creation that affects our build: the Homeworld. For this option, we choose Forge World – Locomotion Implants. While the attribute buff to Toughness is nice, the bonus to Intelligence won’t be used.

The minus to Fellowship isn’t the best for reasons we’ll explain in the stats section, but it’s not the end of the world. The main reason we take this Homeworld is for the Locomotion System feature that comes with it.

Essentially what this fun passive does is give your character a bonus to Movement Points and Dodge based on your Agility bonus. This is huge as we will be pumping our Agility for most of the build, and the bonus to MP and Dodge will let us sprint around encounters and avoid getting hit.

Origin: Ministorum Priest

Next down the list is our Origin. For this option, we choose the Ministorum Priest. While the Toughness and Willpower bonuses are nice, the main reason we’re taking this is because of War Hymn.

Why you might ask? Because War Hymn allows us to give our character Momentum by doubling our Willpower bonus. And it gives even more if we are surrounded by enemies.  

The reason why Momentum is so important is because it’s the resource that lets us use our Heroic Action (Daring Breach). What Daring Breach does is restore all our Action Points and Movement Points, with more based on our Agility bonus. This also makes it so performing attacks doesn’t get rid of our MP. This is big because it lets us dish out some serious damage to a boss or clear some chump mobs.

Doctrine: Fighter

Since Triumphs and Darkest Hour are not implemented yet, the next thing down is our Doctrine. Since this is a Fighter build, you should (unsurprisingly) probably take Fighter.

Stats

Before we go over the stats you’ll want, we should go over how stat bonuses work. From our understanding, when the game speaks about a stat bonus, it’s talking about the tens place in that stat.

For example, if you have a Strength score of 30, then your Strength bonus will be 3. If you have a Willpower score of 45, then your Willpower bonus will be 4.

With that out of the way, we can talk about the stats we’re going to focus on. While the stats can be tweaked based on how you plan on playing, you want to ensure you get your Weapon Skill and Agility as high as you can in character creation. These are going to govern your ability to hit and dodge. A higher Willpower will mean more points to Momentum and Toughness health, but you can mess with the numbers if you want.

You can get a look at our recommended stat breakdown below:  

Stat	Amount
Weapon Skill	40
Ballistic Skill	30
Strength	30
Toughness	40
Agility	40
Intelligence	35
Perception	30
Willpower	40
Fellowship	30

Fighter Leveling

Finally, we get to the first half of this build. As we go through the Fighter Doctrine, we’ll be upgrading our Agility, with a secondary priority on Weapon Skill so we can continue hitting our foes. We also invest heavily in Coercion.

While there will be companions who do the persuasion skills way better than you, there are some situations where you can’t mooch off their excellent scores. As someone who loves dialogue options in Owlcats Games, I went all in. You can choose a different skill if you want, however. It will largely come down to who you keep in your party. 

With that said, here’s the level breakdown for Fighter:

Level	What To Take
1	Charge
2	Sworn Enemy/Coercion
3	Thick Skin
4	Coercion
5	Desolation/Agility
6	Endure/Coercion
7	Agility/Carouse
8	Carouse/Nimble
9	Daring Breach Upgrade II
10	Epicentre of Slaughter/Weapon Skill
11	Break Through The Lines/Coercion
12	Agility/Carouse
13	Mincer
14	Weapon Skill/Athletics
15	Daring Breach I

We mostly take abilities to up our damage or our survivability. The upgrades to Daring Breach are also taken to help double down on our ability to kill attacking enemies.

Advanced Doctrine: Assassin

Once we max out our basic Doctrine we are given access to an advanced one. For this choice, we are taking Assassin. The Assassin Doctrine is going to up our lethality a ton.

We’re also going to switch up our focuses a little. As we level, we’re going to focus on upgrading our Lore Xenos. This will be very handy when traversing the different worlds. 

Assassin Leveling

A quick note, this is when you should decide what weapon you want to stick with. We personally decided on Power Weapon Expert, but you should choose whichever you found yourself sticking with. 

With that here are our selections for Assassin: 

Level	What To Take
1	Seek For the Opening
2	Death Whisper/Lore Xenos
3	Killing Spree/Lore Xenos
4	Lore Xenos
5	Agility/Lore Xenos
6	Power Weapon Expert/Agility
7	Lore Xenos/Macabre Dance
8	Carmine Whisper/Lore Xenos
9	Agility/Lore Xenos
10	Awareness/Lone Killer
11	Agility/Lore Xenos
12	Dispatch Upgrade I
13	Agility/Lethality Thickens
14	Weapon Skill/Lore Xenos
15	Elusive Shadow/Lore Xenos
16	Awareness/It Will Not Die
17	Weapon Skill/Awareness
18	Vicious Game/Awareness
19	Weapon Skill/Awareness
20	Dispatch Upgrade II

With Assassin, we are taking abilities to get as much damage out as possible. We also increase our Awareness towards the end, since we cap out our other skills and Awareness is always useful.

Join the High Ground!

And that’s our guide for the best Fighter build in the beta of Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader. Have you gotten your hands on the beta? What build has gotten you through the Koronus Expanse?

Let us know down in the comments below and don’t forget to subscribe for more content in the future!

Happy gaming!