Favorite Learns... These can make or break a warrior. For many veteran managers, a warrior's favorite learn can mean he becomes a tourney warrior (or loses his status as a tourney warrior). It can mean retirement or the dark arena or a place on the manager's roster for life.
What is a good favorite learn?
Unfortunately, the answer 'depends'. First, you must understand the difference between a warrior's natural learning and favorite learn. Every fighting style has a natural order for learning skills. While the actual result can be dramatically different (learning is random and is affected by other things besides your warrior's fighting style). Here is Assur's best attempt to give the natural learning order for each style. Take this list with a grain of salt. The only list Assur will put any confidence on is the Bashing style. He's run enough and is familiar enough with their patterns to say with some confidence that the order is correct (even with the vast difference that individual warriors learn).
Aimed Blows: Attack, Riposte, Parry, Decisiveness/Defense, Initiative Bashers: Attack, Decisiveness, Parry, Initiative, Riposte/Defense Lungers: Initiative, Defense, Riposte, Attack, Decisiveness, Parry Parry Lungers: Parry, Initiative, Defense, Attack, Decisiveness/Riposte Parry Ripostes: Riposte, Parry, Attack/Defense, Desisiveness/Initiative Parry Strikers: Parry, Decise, Initiative, Attack, Riposte, Defense Slashers: Initiative, Attack, Decisiveness, Riposte, Defense/Parry Strikers: Decisiveness, Attack, Initiative, Defense, Riposte/Parry Total Parries: Parry, Defense/Riposte, Attack, Decisiveness/Initiative Wall of Steels: Initiative, Attack, Parry, Defense, Decisiveness, RiposteAnother thing to note is that some styles just plain learn poorly while other styles learn very well. In particular, Parry Lungers and Parry Strikers have the worst top two learns (learns that just do not work well together). Meanwhile, Strikers have one of the best patterns for the early game.
After that, there is a lot of magic that happens that nobody understands completely which affect how a warrior learns. Some of it is randomness, too.
BUT... in addition to all of this, every warrior, when created, gets assigned a favorite learn. It is believed by Assur that this roll is completely random and every favorite learn is equally likely. This roll can make or break your warrior. Some managers even design certain warriors with the hope that they will get a certain roll. Some styles want particular learns almost universally (Parry Ripostes love parry favorite learn, Slashers love decisiveness, etc). But most of the time, you will have an idea of what your favorite learn is early on in your warrior's career.
Hopefully it will help your warrior win. Sometimes you can even tailor your warrior's strategy to use this favorite learn. Other times, you should just ignore that learn and still fight the warrior how it was originally designed and intended.
Just as I will tell you that ignoring your warrior's favorite weapon and fighting rhythms are an important part of your development as a manager (don't always ignore these things, but feel free TO ignore them), I will also tell you that you can consider how to change your strategy to win based on what and how you are learning, but don't force it. A big, strong basher with favorite learn defense is not going to win many fights by dodging. Keep going hot with that warrior.
-- Assur