One thing that some articles allude to, but few spell out, is how important your damage rating is on your warrior. When your warrior is created, he will randomly be assigned a damage rating based on his strength and size. This damage rating can make or break a warrior. Realize that this article focuses entirely on your warrior's basic career (before he graduates to the Advanced arenas). First, I will talk about the possible damage ratings your warrior can have.
Little Damage -- For the most part, this is crippling to a warrior in basic. A few types of warriors can run successfully with little damage, but for the most part, this rating will kill a basic career. Doesn't mean it can't be fun, though.
Normal Damage -- The very least that most managers should consider to be successful. Still, it is not as much as I'd like most of the time, but I can work with Normal. But you'll still see often that normal damage warriors have difficulty finishing off their opponents.
Good Damage -- Here is where we start to see the sweet spot! Good damage is just fine for most warriors. More is better, but Good works!
Great Damage -- Great Damage can be the difference between fantastic performance and average performance. Highly recommended.
Tremendous Damage -- Tremendous Damage is nice, but once you have great damage, the increases in doing damage don't matter as much. More is better, but Tremendous is the last rating of damage that you'll see dramatic difference in performance with.
Awesome Damage -- Awesome Damage is fun and is the last damage rating where you won't cripple the rest of your abilities in basic. It is possible to get Awesome Damage with 21 strength and 11 size, which still leaves a reasonable amount of points for other more important stats.
Devastating Damage -- In basic, I do not recommend spending the points required to get Devastating or Super Human. It is a complete waste of points. Unless you're doing it to have the novelty and have fun with it.
Super Human Damage -- This is the highest possible rating a new warrior can get. It requires 21 strength and 20 or 21 size (basically half your points).
But what rating does my particular warrior need? Now I will try to give recommendations for how to identify the needs of your warrior in particular.
First, Pure Defensive warriors don't care all that much about how much damage they do. If you aren't planning to win by damage, there is no need to do damage. So Little is fine in this situation.
If you have access to high damage weapons (SC (most common), BS, BA, GS), damage also isn't as important. I still recommend normal or better, but these weapons do superior damage and can help overcome a smaller damage rating.
Next, Aim Blows, owing largely to their high attack and low endurance burn, are the most well suited offensive/hybrid warrior to be able to overcme the curse of little damage.
Finally, if you have enough endurance, you can simply keep swinging and swinging until you finally take down a warrior. Most of the time, though, your opponent will try and swing back, which usually makes this strategy uneffective.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, certain types of warriors are MUCH better with higher damage ratings.
Parry Ripostes are the first style I will mention. Rippers have a notorious habit of letting their opponents swing. Because of this, they need to make their own swings count. I do not intend to ever run another Parry Riposte with less than Good damage. It is simply too hard to get them to finish fights otherwise.
All offensive warriors, but especially Bashers, also would much prefer Good damage or better. I single out bashers because their weapons tend to not do as much damage as other types of warriors have available.
Finally, Lungers need a good combination of endurance and damage. They want to run with very hot rhythms, so they aren't going to win a lot of longer fights. Normal damage lungers are fine if you have good or better endurance, but if you have normal endurance, you almost certainly want good or better damage.
My main intention for writing this article is to help newer managers understand that damage rating (which is one of the most variable attributes on a new warrior) often goes hand in hand with success. I cannot stress enough how much little damage will hurt the vast majority of warriors out there (and how much good or better damage will tend to help a warrior). The only caveat is that with damage, more is not necessarily better if it means you're sacrificing in other areas!