Dawn Warrior Guide: Burst, HEXA Mastery & Bossing Tips

Dawn Warrior Guide: Burst, HEXA Mastery & Bossing Tips

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Class Overview
• Why Play Dawn Warrior
• Class Drawbacks
• Stat Window
• Inner Ability
• Alternative Inner Abilities
• Equip Window & 1H vs 2H Sword
• WSE Optimization
• Link Skills
• Hypers
• First-Fourth Job
• Sixth Job
• Hexa Skills
• Sol Janus
• OZ Rings
• How to Burst
• Culvert
• Animation Cancel
• Training
• Korean Search Terms
• General Resources
• Changelog
• Credits

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Introduction

The purpose of this doc is to provide a singular source-of-truth, comprehensive guide on how to play Dawn Warrior, along with specific nuances and details about the class. By having a single source of information it makes it easier to look up specific questions a player might have, as well as prevent any misinformation, misunderstanding, and miscommunication found in other guides created by those who don’t play the class.

The contents of this doc only reflect what is live on the GMS Maplestory servers, so some discrepancies may exist between MSEA and KMS if changes and updates have not made it to the GMS live servers; generally, there is a 6 month lag between what goes live on KMS vs. when it arrives to GMS.

For the most effective use of the doc, use Ctrl+F to search for specific keywords.

Class Overview

Dawn Warrior is a back-loaded, burst-oriented, support-esque class with a space-themed aesthetic.

The class can be considered both DPS and DPM as the entire burst duration is 40s, but the majority of the burst damage occurs during a short timeframe within that 40s.

The support aspect of Dawn Warrior comes in with the debuff True Sight, which debuffs a monster and provides an additional ~5% final damage to the entire party during the duration of the debuff (the debuff has 100% uptime as there’s no cooldown on casting the skill), which makes the class a true jack-of-all-trades that provides a little bit of everything.

Note: True Sight used to have a hyper skill passive that allowed the whole party to benefit from the 15% FD debuff, but this was nerfed in v.255 so now the 15% FD debuff only applies to yourself, while the party only benefits from the 5% FD debuff.

Dawn Warrior is not a combo class and does not have to manage a gauge, which makes the class ideal for newer players looking for a simpler class that does not require too much effort to damage output ratio, or as an easy boss mule that does not require too much in the way of resources like nodestones or memorizing specific combos while bursting.

WHY PLAY DAWN WARRIOR?

• Easy bossing
• Burst rotation: Instead of weaving together many short cooldown skills like Mercedes or Cadena, the majority of Dawn Warrior’s skills only need to be activated once or twice; the main burst attack can be held down for the duration of the burst.
• Class bind that you can cycle with Erda Nova bind.
• Above-average mobbing
• Cosmic Shower summon hits multiple platforms with 100% uptime.
• Soul Eclipse is a 40s full map attack (FMA) that full clears the map.
• Rift of Damnation has a huge attack range that easily full clears maps.
• Great support
• True Sight debuff provides the whole party an additional ~5% FD with 100% uptime.
• Lots of iframes
• Besides Genesis iframe and origin iframe, the class has 4 iframes: Blazing Assault, Luster Charge, the initial cast for Soul Eclipse, and when you reactivate Soul Eclipse before it expires.
• Good mobility
• Up-jump, Equinox Slash dashes and teleports through enemy attacks (e.g. Lucid sickles, Lotus phase 1 lasers, etc.).
• Aesthetic
• Pretty skills go brrrrrr

Class Drawbacks

• Still somewhat ping reliant
• While not as ping reliant pre-Ignition, swapping stances still relies on your ping. If you can’t reliably swap stances, you won’t generate Cosmic Orbs as quickly and your damage output will decrease as a result.
• Does not scale as well as some other classes in end game
• Dawn Warrior does not have as many final damage sources as other classes, so the damage output still lacks compared to other similarly funded classes, such as Mercedes, Night Walker, Xenon, and Demon Slayer.

STAT WINDOW

INNER ABILITY

Dawn Warrior’s ideal inner ability is Boss Damage, Buff Duration, and Dmg to Abnormal%. Dawn Warrior DOES NOT need Attack Speed +1 to reach Attack Speed 0 (AS0).

Previously, Dawn Warrior wanted Critical Rate in the Inner Ability in order to free up space within hyper stats, legion grid, and links, but with the addition of the Artifact system (an optimizer sheet can be found in ‘GENERAL RESOURCES’) in the Dreamer patch, the Critical Rate can now be supplemented in Artifacts. Since there now exists a free slot, Buff Duration 38% is preferable because it adds 3.8s to the Angelic Buster link skill ‘Terms and Conditions’ .

With the addition of Inner Ability presets, the viability of additional lines is also possible for just farming, but it’s ultimately your own preference on what you want to prioritize.

Drop Rate on the top line is generally preferred for farming fragments, but Meso Rate is also a decent substitution. Additionally, because Dawn Warrior Sun Stance breaks hard cap by itself, Attack Speed +1 could also be used as you would not need to use green pots to reach AS0 while training (note that Attack Speed +1 is still not better for bossing as Boss Damage is always better).

ALTERNATIVE INNER ABILITIES

MESO

While grinding, you may want to opt for a meso first or second line in your inner ability. This is fine and ultimately up to personal preference whether you’d trade the extra damage for the meso, or ignore one of the best in slot second lines (preferably abnormal damage) for meso while leveling. After all, we have access to enough damage to participate in and clear all the content in the game with or without an additional 8% damage or 20% crit rate.

DROP RATE

Drop rate is an extremely viable IA to run, given that it affects Oz Boxes, Pitched Boss, Nodestones, and 6th job Sol Erda/Fragments.

ATTACK +21

Damage to monsters affected by abnormal statuses is strictly better than this. Not the worst option if you are running low on honor though.

COOLDOWN SKIP

The only use case for Cooldown Skip in the Inner Ability is if you play in Interactive Servers and use the line to skip the Firestarter Ring skill.

ATTACK SPEED

Dawn Warrior does not need Attack Speed inner to reach AS0.

Attack Speed breakdown:

Base (2H sword) (6), Soul Speed (-2), Sun stance (-2), DSI (-1), Green Pot (-1)

6 - 2 - 2 - 1 - 1 = 0

For a more detailed breakdown on why Dawn Warrior uses a 2H sword, see the section ‘1H VS. 2H SWORD’.

EQUIP WINDOW

For the purpose of this guide, we will only focus on equips pertinent only to Dawn Warrior. General gear progression advice can be found on YouTube.

1H VS. 2H SWORD

TLDR: Use a 2H sword. Comparing potential lines 1:1 a 2H sword + Cygnus secondary will be better than a 1H sword + 22* primed Terminus Defender. Also consider the possibility that Nexon may release a pitched secondary which will make Terminus Defender even more useless.

Special thanks to Masterobert and the Meta Calc for helping do the math for the comparison.

In reboot due to no scrolls and no bonus potentials, a 22* Terminus Defender with the same potentials as a Cygnus secondary will NEVER make up the difference in damage due to the lower weapon multiplier on a 1H weapon (1.24) vs. a 2H weapon (1.34).

Note: In a prior patch the weapon multiplier for 1H weapons was mistakenly increased from 1.20x to 1.24x. Despite the mistake, Nexon decided to keep the new increased multiplier so the actual 1H weapon multiplier is 1.24x.

In reg server, if we assume that both weapons have the same exact flames and potentials we can isolate the secondaries in order to compare at what point a Terminus Defender becomes viable.

For sake of comparing apples to apples, we assume that both secondaries have the same pots (observing the correct potential tier for each item, as Terminus Defender has a higher tier for potentials). We will also assume that the Terminus Defender is prime scrolled in this comparison.

Secondary Main Potential Bonus Potential

Cygnus 40BD/30BD/9ATT 12ATT/9ATT/9ATT

Terminus Defender 40BD/30BD/10ATT 13ATT/10ATT/10ATT

With equal pots between the Cygnus secondary and Terminus Defender, the Terminus Defender comes out to -1.064% FD.

Based on this comparison, the inflection point needed for a primed, 22* Terminus Defender to beat out a Cygnus secondary with the same potentials would need an additional +3% ATT on the Terminus Defender: 36% ATT bonus potential on the shield would be BARELY better than a 30% ATT bonus potential on the Cygnus secondary.

KAISERIUM

A liberated Kaiserium (dropped from Hard Magnus, here is the questline to liberate it) is a decent alternative to an arcane as a placeholder until you get a Genesis weapon. You can transfer hammer a 22 Pensalir weapon to a Kaiserium and use the 21 Kaiserium until you liberate if you choose to. A 21* Kaiserium sits somewhere in between an Absolab and Arcane weapon in terms of usefulness.

Below is a breakdown of the weapon attack for Abso Saber, Liberated [Kaiserium], and an Arcane weapon. While Kaiserium provides a lot of weapon attack on the weapon itself, you miss out on the set effect if you were to use an Absolab or Arcane weapon.

TLDR: 21 Kaiserium > 18 Arcane, 19 Arcane > 21 Kaiserium (due to flame advantage on Arcane weapons).

WSE OPTIMIZATION

The most common format of discussing WSE (Weapon, Secondary, Emblem) potential lines is: Att/BD/IED.

Example: 6/2/1 means between the 9 lines of potential on your WSE you have 6 lines of attack, 2 lines of boss damage, and 1 line of IED.

For Dawn Warrior, the most ideal setup is 7/2/0 or 8/1/0 (even considering boss damage from familiars), but 9/0/0 is also perfectly acceptable. Dawn Warrior does not need any lines of IED on WSE because the class has so many sources of invisible IED that won’t show up in your stat window (IED bonus from leveling your trinodes, True Sight, etc.).

Once you hit late/end game with full links and legion you will naturally hit 96-98% IED in your stat window without any IED lines on your WSE.

This applies to reg server as well, but for bonus potentials you will want as many Att lines as possible.

SECONDARY

Since you will be using a 2H sword, the Cygnus Knight secondary from Princess No is BIS.

Cooldown/CD Hat

Dawn Warrior does NOT benefit from a cooldown/CD hat. Even for training purposes, a CD hat is not ever worth using over a stat hat because none of our short CD skills are affected by a CD hat.

Note: Post 2-min burst change, KMS recommends -2 for QOL and ROR, but it shouldn't be a big difference between stat hat and CD. -3/-4 will most likely be a damage loss.

LINK SKILLS

For more information on specific link skills and their effects, see Nexon’s official site.

Link skills are another area where it depends on your own personal stats to know which skills are most efficient; if you’re low on IED you might want to use the Luminous link skill; if you’re low on crit rate you might want to use the Phantom link skill. What link skills you want also depends on whether you’re bossing or training, but this guide will only cover ideal bossing link skills.

The suggested link skills below are what you should be running while bossing:

Cygnus Blessing is our built-in link skill, so there’s no reason not to keep this max level.

True Sight and Mage Link both automatically activate Thief Link so it’s best to use both. The remaining links are just standard bossing links.

Like mentioned above, other links such as Luminous really just depends on your own personal stats and if you’re low on IED you should use it. Other link skills like Spirit of Freedom are really nice to have, but eventually not necessary if you have hands and don’t die during bossing. Use your own discretion when filling out the rest of your link skills.

HYPERS

STATS

Hyper stats are largely dependent on your own individual stats and what your character needs. You will always want to maintain 100% crit rate, but the other stats can vary based on where you are in terms of progress in the game.

A popular hyper stat calculator can be found here: https://brendonmay.github.io/hyperCalculator/

SKILLS

There are 2 different passive hyper skill setups you can use: one for bossing and one for training.

Bossing:

For bossing, you want to allocate every point into buffing True Sight. Increasing the duration of True Sight is important since this allows you to get your full burst off without having to recast True Sight mid-burs; True Sight - Enhance is the debuff that provides a flat 10% FD increase to only yourself; Defense: Additional -10% is preferable over similar IED skills for Divide and Slash and Cosmic Shower/Burst because you’ll be providing the IED buff for everyone in the party rather than just your own attacks.

• True Sight - Persist Duration: +20 sec
• True Sight - Enhance: 10% Final Damage to Only Yourself
• True Sight - Guardbreak Defense: Additional -10%
• Cosmic Shower/Burst - Reinforce: Damage: +20%
• Divide and Slash - Reinforce Damage: +20%
• Divide and Slash - Spread Max Enemies Hit: +1

Training:

You will never need to use True Sight while training, so there’s no point in leveling it up.

Investing in Cosmic Shower and Cosmic Burst is recommended to help your summons one shot while mobbing, though allocating the IED buff on either Cosmic Burst or Divide and Slash is just personal preference since mobs do not have much defense to begin with, so the effectiveness of either option is marginal.

• Cosmic Shower/Burst - Reinforce: Damage: +20%
• Cosmic Burst - Guardbreak Enemy Defense Ignored: +20%
• Cosmic Shower - Persist Duration: +10 sec
• Divide and Slash - Reinforce Damage: +20%
• Divide and Slash - Spread Max Enemies Hit: +1

For active hyper skills, you will level each one by default.

• Glory of the Guardians: Standard class buff that gives +10% damage.
• Blazing Assault/Luster Charge: A dash that provides a 1.8s iframe after each dash. After you use the first dash you have 5s to use the second dash for a second iframe. If you don’t use the second dash within 5s of using the first dash, the skill will go on cooldown for 45s.
• Cosmic Forge: Provides +10% damage and increases your maximum orb stack from 5 to 10. Since it has a 180s cooldown you will always want to use this along with your main burst skills: Rift of Damnation, Cosmos, and Soul Eclipse.

FIRST-FOURTH JOB

There’s not much to discuss from the first to fourth job for Dawn Warrior since you’re going to max everything anyways.

These are the skills from each job that you will use forever (excluding things like passives, flash jump, Hero’s Will (Cygnus Knights’ Will), Maple Warrior (Call of Cygnus), etc.).

FIRST JOB

• Rising Sun/Falling Moon: The main “gimmick” of Dawn Warrior is switching between Rising Sun and Falling Moon stance. Either stance has its own unique attack for many skills and provides different buffs depending on which stance you’re in.
• Solar Slash/Luna Divide: Your mobbing/bossing skill you’ll use permanently. This gets naturally boosted by passives from each job advancement.
• Soul Element: A toggle that generates an orb every time you swap stances. You will see the number of orbs you’ve generated on skills that use orbs like Cosmic Shower and Cosmos. Always have this toggled on no matter what.

SECOND JOB

• Equinox Cycle: This skill combines Rising Sun and Falling Moon and alternates between them after every attack. You must be in either Rising Sun or Falling Moon stance first in order to toggle this skill. Always have this toggled on no matter what.

Note: You will never use Cosmic Matter and to be honest it’s probably not even worth using even in second job over Solar Slash/Luna Divide.

THIRD JOB

• Cosmic Shower: Your summon that’s used for mobbing and bossing. The default duration is 45s, but every orb that gets consumed adds another +3 to the duration for a max duration of 75s (10 orbs when Cosmic Forge is used).
• True Sight: Your debuff skill that adds ~15% final damage when used on an enemy (15% only applies to yourself, 5% only applies to the rest of the party). When bossing this debuff should always be applied to the boss since there’s no cooldown. You will never use this skill while mobbing.
• Bluster/Flicker: Your rush skill. Since this skill doesn’t have a cooldown it’s worth using while bossing as a movement skill.
• You can animation cancel this skill with Equinox Slash to move even further (covered in the ‘Animation Cancel’ section).

FOURTH JOB

• Cosmic Burst: Shoots stacked orbs at the enemy. You can choose to have this skill manually activated (you use the skill) or automatically activated (auto shoots orbs when you reach the max number of orbs). A small number of people keep this manual to not ruin their stacks for skills like Cosmos, but 99.99% of Dawn Warriors have this set to ‘Auto’, which is what I would recommend. Right click the skill to set to ‘Auto’ and you’ll see a small ‘A’ on the skill itself.
• Impaling Rays: Class bind that binds for 10s and has a 2m cooldown. The bind duration can increase based on the amount of damage you do with the bind itself, but it takes a crazy amount of damage to increase the bind duration by even a fraction of a second. Any boss where you’d be able to increase the bind duration you’re going to kill in a couple of hits anyways so it’s not really worth worrying over.
• Equinox Slash: This will be one of your most used mobility skills. This skill dashes a short distance and acts as a teleport, meaning any attack that happens between the start and end point of the dash is avoided (ex. You can use this skill to dash between Lotus P1 lasers). Additionally, you can use this skill to clip onto a platform that you’re slightly below. You must be in Equinox Stance in order to use this skill.
• Example of using Equinox Slash to clip onto a platform:
• Example of using Equinox Slash to dash through an enemy attack:

FIFTH JOB

This guide won’t cover what nodestones are and how to use the V-Matrix. Look that up yourself.

SKILLS

The skills you get from advancing to fifth job are:

• Rift of Damnation: Your de facto burst skill that makes a giant purple sword and lasts 30s. This skill is good for mobbing as well since the attack range is so large. Rift of Damnation also has the added benefit of creating a full stack of Cosmic Orbs when you 1) activate the skill and 2) every time you swing the purple sword. This skill has the option to turn ‘Action Customization On/Off’. If you turn this on, it means you have to use your key assigned to your basic attack to use the giant purple sword. If this is turned off, your Solar Slash/Luna Divide key will automatically swing the sword if this skill is active. You should NEVER turn on ‘Action Customization’. You will know if it’s turned on if there’s a lock on the skill (DO NOT HAVE A LOCK ON THE SKILL).
• Soul Eclipse: A giant sun FMA that lasts 20s and kills everything on the screen. While mobbing, cast this and go take a quick bathroom/water break. This skill also contains 2 iframes: one 3.5s iframe right when you cast the skill and one 5s iframe when you “cut” the sun. In order to cut the sun, press the skill again before it expires. Cutting the sun is also a big chunk of your 40s burst damage so make sure not to let the skill expire without cutting.
• Flare Slash: Passive skill that auto procs. Switching stances reduces the cooldown of the skill. This skill is NOT affected by cooldown hat.
• Cosmos: Takes your stacked orbs and creates a spinning planet around you. The more orbs you stack, the more damage the skill does so ideally you want to use Cosmic Forge before casting Cosmos so you get 10 orbs instead of 5.

Here’s a chart of the number of attacks Cosmos does based on the number of orbs you have stacked when you activate it (you should only ever use Cosmos with 5 or 10 stacks in bossing):

TRIOS

With the release of 6th job 3rd and 4th masteries, you will need to boost Equinox Slash to at least level 40 (not including the levels from enhancing the note slot) in order to upgrade the 4th HEXA mastery.

The required trios are as follows:

• Node 1: Cosmic Burst / Cosmic Shower / Solar+Luna
• Node 2: Cosmic Shower / Equinox Slash / Cosmic Burst
• Node 3: Solar+Luna / Equinox Slash / [any other skill]

PRIORITY

The order in which you level your skills should be as follows:

• THEN
• THEN
• THEN
• Weapon Aura is a nice fourth option as it provides +6% FD for 140s fully leveled. You should not use node shards to craft your trinodes, but instead save them to craft your boost nodes in the priority outlined above since you’ll naturally max out your trinodes over time from opening nodes.

COMMON SKILL NODES

With how few slots Dawn Warrior needs in the V-Matrix, you can pretty much use every decent skill available with room to spare. Since leveling decent skills only increases the duration that the skill lasts, there’s not really a priority list of which decent skills you would want first since it depends on whether your focus is grinding or bossing when you’re starting out.

That being said, the following decent skills are what I’d recommend you incorporate into your V-Matrix as fast as you can, as you get the biggest benefit from these early on. The decent skills not listed here can just be added as you unlock slots during your progression at your own discretion for what you feel is most important (grinding or bossing).

• Decent Speed Infusion: Required to hit AS0. Huge quality of life for mobbing and AS0 is a big damage increase for bossing.
• Decent Sharp Eyes: Helps you hit 100% crit rate for training/bossing (adds crit damage as well).
• Decent Holy Symbol: Adds exp/drop rate for leveling.
• Erda Shower: Extra summon you can place down to help clear mobs.
• Decent Combat Orders: Gives +1 level to almost every skill in 4th job to boost them to level 31.

Note: At level 245 you will receive a quest ‘[Moonbridge] Cygnus Awakens’. This quest allows you to upgrade your Empress Cygnus’s Blessing into Transcendent Cygnus’s Blessing which is just a better version of the skill. Don’t forget to do this quest on any Cygnus Knight (you just have to talk to an NPC).

SIXTH JOB

ASTRAL BLITZ

Dawn Warrior’s origin skill that’s unlocked with 6th job is called Astral Blitz. The animation takes ~7s to cast, during which the enemy gets bound and you are invincible (iframe). Additionally, the skill adds +10% FD at max level for 20s from the moment you activate the skill. As is standard with all origin skills, the cooldown is 6 minutes.

• (Skill Node) Astral Blitz: A sword forged from your own soul cuts the formless space to reproduce the Big Bang.
• Lv. 30: MP Cost: 1,200, invincible during casting. Chase Cut: 48 times, Damage: 2,100%, Max Enemies Hit: 15, Number of Attacks: 5. Afterwards, triggers 24 Big Bang, Damage: 2,062%, Max Enemies Hit: 15, Number of Attacks: 7. Increases final damage by 10% for 20 seconds when used. Cooldown: 360 seconds.

HEXA SKILLS

For Hexa Skills, Dawn Warrior’s Mastery Node is Solar Slash/Luna Divide, and our boost nodes are Cosmos, Rift of Damnation, Soul Eclipse, and Flare Slash.

• (Mastery Node) HEXA Luna Divide: [Luna] Uses the moon to slice through enemies in front. Lv. 30: MP Cost: 35, Damage: 830%, Max Enemies Hit: 8, Number of Attacks: 6.
• (Mastery Node) HEXA Solar Slash: [Solar] Attacks enemies in front with the power of the sun. Lv. 30: MP Cost: 35, Damage: 830%, Max Enemies Hit: 8, Number of Attacks: 6.
• (Boost Node) Cosmos Boost: Boosts Cosmos. Lv. 30: Cosmos Final Damage: +60%.
• (Boost Node) Rift of Damnation Boost: Boosts Rift of Damnation. Lv. 30: Rift of Damnation Final Damage: +60%.
• (Boost Node) Soul Eclipse Boost: Boosts Soul Eclipse. Lv. 30: Soul Eclipse Final Damage: +60%.
• (Boost Node) Flare Slash Boost: Boosts Flare Slash. Lv. 30: Flare Slash Final Damage: +60%.

Note: In order to unlock your mastery core to start leveling, your V-Matrix trinodes must be level 40 WITHOUT including the levels from boosting the node slot.

Use the sheet below as reference for HEXA leveling priority. Feel free to change up your own order of leveling depending on your own goals. If you’re unsure of how to approach it, follow the sheet as it is.

The sheet is mostly focusing on burst/party play, so in case you're aiming to push solo content - it is recommended to level the mastery skills earlier than the sheet suggests (especially Solar Slash/Luna Divide), ONLY IF you're capable of having decent damage uptime outside of burst. Otherwise, follow the sheet. If you’re trying to setup a basic bossing mule, then it’s probably worth to unlock every skill to level 1 first before following the chart.

When pushing to clear burst-only bosses in a party setup (ex. Kalos), it is fine to delay or even ignore Solar Slash/Luna Divide for a while, since it doesn't get used at all during burst.

Sol Janus is 100% self preference since it only helps in grinding, hence why you won't see it in the sheet (there's no right or wrong way to go about it, it's completely up to you).

When you upgrade HEXA Stats, typically you’ll want to upgrade I and II at the same time.

HEXA leveling guide optimized based on fragments (including the Ascent skill):

Optimized based on energy:

Dawn Warrior’s Mastery Core HEXA Solar Slash/Luna Divide also has an updated animation with a buffed horizontal and vertical hitbox, which makes it more effective in bossing and mobbing as the range is increased.

Solar Slash/Luna Divide pre-6th job:

Solar Slash/Luna Divide with 6th job:

Some players claimed that the new animation for Solar Slash/Luna Divide felt clunky or slower, but after testing the number of attacks with and without green pot, it was the exact same between pre- and post- mastery core.

SOL JANUS

Sol Janus is a common Hexa mobbing skill that will be released during the Dreamer patch. This skill is an additional summon that not only adds a passive EXP gain, but also acts similarly to Erda Shower and will allow you to clear mobs more easily and lazily. With the addition of this skill, pretty much every map in the game will become viable so rotations are much more flexible. Additionally, Sol Janus benefits from all the passive buffs from Equinox Cycle making the skill much stronger on Dawn Warrior than other classes without any sort of shadow partner/passive buff skill.

Because Dawn Warrior has access to Cosmic Shower, Erda Shower, and the Sol Janus summons this allows some maps to be entirely afk farmable.

For every 10 levels of Sol Janus, it will allow you to place one additional summon starting at one summon at level 1.

Priority for leveling Sol Janus is entirely personal preference, with most people choosing to level it to level 10 to be able to use two summons.

Rotations can be created on maps using this simulator: https://maplemaps.net/

An example of a rotation generated from the website can look something like this:

The amount of energy and fragments required for each level of Sol Janus can be found below:

[Tables and charts omitted for brevity in this summary]

Additionally, the amount of damage for Dawn and Twilight Janus can be found below:

COSMIC SHOWER VI {#cosmic-shower-vi}

The second mastery node Dawn Warrior receives as a part of the Dreamer update is called Cosmic Shower VI. This skill is an active skill that buffs your existing Cosmic Shower skill. This skill also unlocks with Equinox Power and both skills level up together. Detonate the power that lies within the merged celestial body, consecutively activating the sword energy of blinding sun rays and the cold moonlight. Activates automatically if Equinox Power is not on cooldown when landing Solar Slash, Luna Divide, or Styx Crossing. Unaffected by attack reflection.

• Lv. 30: MP Cost: 60, automatically activate solar and lunar blades consecutively. Damage: 6500%, Number of Attacks: 5, Max Enemies Hit: 8 Cooldown: 20 sec
• Cosmic Burst VI/Equinox Slash VI/Equinox Power II: Commonly referred to as M3/M4, both Cosmic Burst and Equinox Power are passive skills that automatically proc, while Equinox Slash VI increases the damage of the existing Equinox Slash, while also passive damage to both HEXA Cosmic Shower and HEXA Cosmic Burst. Note: Refer to the ‘TRIOS’ section for updated nodes in order to level up Equinox Slash VI. Overall, the net FD gain from max leveled M3/M4 is about ~15%.

OZ RINGS {#oz-rings}

The best oz rings for bossing are ROR4 and WJ4. Cont4 is for replacing an existing 22 ring, good for culvert (in place of a 22 ring) and dojo (if you're lazy and don’t want to ring swap), but it is not better than ROR4 for Dawn Warrior. For sweaty bossing, you can swap between ROR4 for your big burst to a 22* stat ring or WJ4 for your off burst (just Cosmos).

Note: ROR4 and WJ4 will still remain BIS for DW even after the 2-minute burst changes.

With the release of the Dreamer patch, you are now able to swap Oz rings while summons/projectiles are out. Details on how to setup the configuration to ring swap can be found in this reddit post.

For dojo you can use any mix of ROR4, WJ4, Cont4, Risk Taker 4, Crisis HM 4, and Crit Damage 4.

There are endless configurations on if X ring at Y level is good for Dawn Warrior, but it’s not worth using in place of a stat ring in my opinion (the only exception being ROR3/CONT3). Do your own damage tests with different ring combinations to know what’s viable for you.

HOW TO BURST

ifallenDawn in Kronos created a good video guide on how to burst with your origin skill. The gist of the burst order looks like the following, and the entire process should happen within 45s:

Buffs Pre-Burst

• Buffs to activate before you start bursting. These 4 skills last for the full duration of your burst.
• Auto-Attack Skills
• Pre-Burst
• Extra damage that will auto-attack while you are actively bursting.

Burst Skills

• Summon Soul Eclipse and activate Rift of Damnation. From now until the end of your burst you will use Rift of Damnation as much as you can.

Prepping End of Burst

• With ~22s left in your burst, proc these skills in this order to maximize the end of your burst. Astral Blitz provides a +FD buff for 20s from the moment it gets activated and will apply that buff for the rest of your burst.

End of Burst

• At max stacks with Impenetrable Skin and while Terms and Conditions and ROR are both still active, cut Soul Eclipse. Since Cosmos has a 60s cooldown you will cast this with Terms and Conditions when it comes off cooldown as your offburst while the rest of your skills are still on cooldown. An example of how to front-load burst: [diagram omitted]

BUFF SEQUENCE

With the addition of the buff sequence feature you can insta-cast and automate many of the above skills. As of right now you cannot sequence ‘Soul Eclipse’ or ‘Cosmos’ so those still need to be manually cast, but the following configurations are what are recommended.

• ‘Weapon Aura’ on sequencing is personal preference, though your uptime will be better if it is manually cast rather than only cast every 3 minutes due to how the skills stack. The name of each sequence corresponds with the type of burst you will be doing: ‘Burst’ refers to a backload burst (usually when you solo) which needs to be followed up with ‘RoR’ for the backend of the burst, whereas ‘Front’ refers to a front-loaded burst which you’ll typically do in a party.
• ‘TS’ or ‘True Sight’ allows you to instantly cast ‘True Sight’ without any animation and will no longer require any sort of animation cancel - ‘Sharp Eyes’ and ‘Hyper Body’ can be replaced with any skill, just sequencing requires 3 skills to be slotted in before use so you can place any skills here that you want.

Special shoutout to @Kaopei for setting these up.

CULVERT

The optimal culvert rotation requires both a CONT4 and ROR4 to be optimal. If you don’t have either, it’s best just to experiment what’s optimal for you.

The following is a step-by-step instruction on the culvert rotation for Dawn Warrior:

Note: This new 2 minute culvert rotation is just a rotation found from a KMS DW YouTuber. It’s subject to change while people still figure out the ideal rotation as this one doesn’t seem too great. Use with caution and common sense.

ANIMATION CANCEL

Note: The origin animation cancel was patched as of 2024/11/21. Additionally, the ‘True Sight’ animation is unnecessary now (see ‘BURST SEQUENCE’ section for more details), but is still possible to perform.

There are two skills that you can animation cancel as Dawn Warrior by using Equinox Slash: Bluster/Flicker and True Sight.

When you animation cancel Bluster/Flicker it allows you to combine both dash skills so that you dash the length of both skills combined. In order to perform this, use Bluster/Flicker and use Equinox Slash before the dash from Bluster/Flicker ends.

Dashing with only Bluster/Flicker:

• Dashing with Bluster/Flicker + Equinox Slash:

True Sight is the second skill that can be animation canceled with Equinox Slash. After you activate True Sight and you see the animation start to appear, quickly use Equinox Slash so that you’re not locked into the True Sight animation.

Holding down an arrow key and casting True Sight without canceling the animation locks you in the animation:

Canceling True Sight with Equinox Slash lets you move immediately after casting True Sight (you can see the True Sight proc just briefly before Equinox Slash):

TRAINING

Since Dawn Warrior has its own summon with Cosmic Shower which has a 100% uptime there’s a lot of flexibility with which maps are good for training.

In the Dawn Warrior discord in #grind-rotations there are suggested maps from Vanishing Journey to Shangri-La pinned in the channel. Since there are so many areas and map selections for both reboot and reg server, specific regions will not be covered in this guide; however, this wiki site can be used to lookup the mob spawn count for most maps in GMS along with things like mob HP, base exp, and map layout.

When trying to find a good rotation, you generally want to find a spot where Cosmic Shower and Erda Shower hit as many platforms as possible. The hitbox on Cosmic Shower is very generous and can hit 3 separate platforms if placed in the right spot (try to put it on hard to reach platforms so you can just set it and forget it).

Since Erda Shower largely acts the same way as Cosmic Shower in that it can hit 3 separate platforms, you’ll generally try to put Cosmic Shower in one top corner of the map and Erda Shower in the other top corner of the map, but rotations can vary depending on the map.

Use Soul Eclipse or Cosmos to move around the map and loot between loot cycles.

Additionally, a Google Sheet containing common maps and videos/images of rotations has been compiled for Arcane River and Grandis maps for both Heroic and Interactive servers.

KOREAN SEARCH TERMS

The following are the Korean spellings for various Maplestory terms, which can be used to search YouTube for additional content. Additionally, this doc courtesy of @Minastory can be referenced as well.

Prefix

• Dawn Warrior 소울마스터/ 소마
• Sixth Job 6차

Infix Map Names

• Vanishing Journey 소멸의 여로/ 여로
• Reverse City 리버스시티/ 리버스
• Chu Chu Island 츄츄 아일랜드/ 츄츄
• Yum Yum Island 얌얌 아일랜드/ 얌얌

Suffix

• Farming map 사냥터
• Kills 마리, 마릿수
• 6 min BA 6분측정
• WAP 재획
• Vac pet 자석펫
• Lazy Rotation 뇌빼기

GENERAL RESOURCES

All credit goes to the respective creators.

Website designed to simulate and help estimate rates with Sol Janus https://maplemaps.net/

Artifact Optimizer [Maplestory] Legion Artifact SuckHard/BrendonMay’s Maplestory Tools https://brendonmay.github.io/

Maple Meta Calculator https://www.patreon.com/MetaCalc

mastermysty’s Node Guide for All Classes https://mystyjl.github.io/reference/NodeGuide.html

KMS Culvert/Dojo Conversion https://141.kr/suro.html

Flame Score Calculator https://starlinez.github.io/games/maplesto ry/item-flames

GMS Meta Calculator https://www.patreon.com/MetaCalc

Legion Solver https://xenogents.github.io/LegionSolver/

General Guide to Game Elements https://whackybeanz.com/

Reboot Progression Spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14Rz2NGWRes7NRIf4ZGjBCdEPzop0cBGV-vSX0yMLiAw/edit#gid=1193071867

Minastory KMS Search Terms https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lnXJyTuZhBwdNTHOagBO_Gi0JS2Ic8L14sos0kQHML8/edit

Maplestory Legion Discord Server (has links to all other class servers) https://discord.gg/maple-legion-8626727

63404025896

CHANGELOG

Sep 24, 2025

• Updated various sections to reflect 2 minute burst changes

Jul 18, 2025

• Added updated HEXA skill leveling guide for M3/M4
• Updated trios to reflect new required nodes
• Added section for M3/M4 and corresponding FD gains

Jun 16, 2025

• Added update to ‘OZ RING’ with additional note on BIS rings post-2 minute change
• Updated ‘LINK SKILLS’ to reflect addition of Mo Xuan and Sia links
• Added ‘BURST SEQUENCE’ section

... (more changelog entries omitted for brevity)

CREDITS

Paul (Naughty, Scania): Main author. Maintains Dawn Warrior guide and Discord channel. You can contact via Discord pmik for feedback. Dawn Warrior Discord for questions. YouJelly (YouJelly, EU Reboot): Contributor. Created the Hexa Skill efficiency graphic and moderates the Dawn Warrior Discord. Jordan (iFallenDawn, NA Reboot): Contributor. YouTube guides and Discord moderator. Lite (AstralLite, NA Reboot): Contributor. Training rotations and Google Sheet maintainer. Dawn Warrior community moderators and contributors across various regions.

CRAYONS

Source

• Crayola, Sakura, Stabilo, Eberhard Faber, Staedtler, Crayon Rocks, Maped, Ninghai Zhenyang, RTP Cra-Z-Art, Stadium Crayons, MEGA Brands

Crayons, encompassing a diverse range of color pigments enclosed within wax casings, have recently witnessed a tremendous surge in demand across the globe. This growth can be attributed to several key factors such as the rising popularity of coloring activities among children and adults for therapeutic purposes, the growing adoption of art as a recreational hobby, and the increasing awareness regarding the developmental benefits of arts and crafts in early childhood education.

Furthermore, advances in technology have allowed manufacturers to offer an array of innovative product variants such as washable, scented, glitter, metallic, and neon crayons, which have consequently enhanced their appeal and versatility in various artistic applications. The proliferation of social media, coupled with the growing online presence of art communities and influencers, has also played a pivotal role in promoting crayons as desirable art tools, expanding their consumer base significantly.

Crayola, a subsidiary of Hallmark Cards, is one of the largest and most recognizable brands in the crayon industry. It offers a wide range of crayons, from traditional to specialty ones like glitter crayons or metallic crayons. Other leading brands include Staedtler and Sakura, well-known for their high-quality and innovative crayon products.

In terms of new entrants, companies like Ninghai Zhenyang and MEGA Brands have gained traction in the market by offering competitive pricing and unique features in their crayons. Additionally, companies like Crayon Rocks and Stadium Crayons have introduced eco-friendly and ergonomic crayons, catering to the growing demand for sustainable and child-friendly art supplies.

Ultimately, crayon taste and preferences vary based on the individual, so it’s a personal choice of which brand you end up going with.

DAWN WARRIOR COLORING BOOK

This section contains illustrative pages of the Dawn Warrior coloring book with portraits and character silhouettes. (Images provided in the document.)

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Last updated: Oct 10, 2025

Art by @MM_booroo on pixiv.net

Dawn Warrior Discord

END OF DOCUMENT