So how do you guys build reavers ?

[Marec]

Like seriously how do you play them ?
Because I tried a few games with them and am still unsure what affinity works best for them or what spellbooks to pick.
There are a few interactions I came to like a lot:
For example how well Reavers interact with the flanking mechanic. Early on with designate target and later on with the distracting dragoon shot. It almost feels like the reavers are made for the Sneaky race trait and by extension for the shadow affinity bonus flanking damage.
Or Dragoons kiting with Mana Addicts + Amplified Arrows ( no idea why you heal from your secondary targets as well)
Early on Ice Coffin + Overseer Subdue

But a satisfactory build path eludes me yet
So please feel free to write about how you enjoyed playing them the most.

[The Big Brzezinski]

Having them ride spiders around griefing everyone works pretty well.

[Fendelphi]

Personally, I would make sure to get a Mount as part of your Form trait. It will make your armies overall more mobile(when they consist of Harriers, Overseers and Dragoons, + whatever you have of other mounted/fast units). You might even want one of the special mount options for increased HP and additional effects. Or you can take the Mount Master and Hardy, and still have 3 points for something else(like extra damage or durability).
Distracted can be a nice debuff, but some enemies are immune to it.

Some tomes that I find works well with Reaver(you can pick and choose some or all).

- Tome of the Horde: Houndmaster can both apply and benefit from Marked. Spawnkin is an easy way to increase the damage output early on. Summon Irregulars is an easy way to pump out more Mercenaries and Harriers, while actively recruiting other things.

- Tome of Beasts: Call of the Wild is a low cost AoE buff that really helps your mounted units as well as animals. Wildspeakers are an easy way to add melee fodder to mark enemies for you. Animal Kinship is another easy way to add damage early on.

- Tome of Cryomancy: A battlemage that can become mounted and helps control the battle. Strategic damage spells that makes it easier to apply debuff/control effects on targets. Ranged physical(including a slow effect) and melee damage enchantments. Optional Ice elemental summon if needed. Combat spell that makes capturing enemies fairly easy.

- Tome of Glades: Glade Runners have a free action Mark+Sundered ability with long range. They work really well with Reavers, and they can even become mounted.
Summon Entwined Protector gives you the option for a Shield unit. Aspect of the Root gives your Polearm and Shield units a self-heal ability. Leafskin adds a bit of resistance and better mobility in forests.

- Tome of Souls: Increased survivability through Soul Overflow(nice buffer when cast early). Bone Horrors are a nice way to get a Shock unit for little effort(you can keep momentum going, rather than having to wait for recruitment). Soulbinders is a pretty nice damage buff for your Support and Battle Mage units.

- Tome of Scrying: Summon Watcher is a nice "Artillery" battlemage unit that can both stun and Mark targets. Mental Mark is a powerful AoE debuff that both applies 2 Marks on the targets, as well as 3 Sundered Resistance. The Guided Projectiles enchantment is a nice way to indrectly increase accuracy of your ranged units, by having them ignore the penalties for the target being Obscured(by terrain or other units).

- Tome of Artificing: Crit Enchantment is nice for the damage potential. Siege Magic improves your support and battlemage damage, as well as making sieges go a bit faster.
Iron golems are a nice Shield option, if you are dealing with things that constantly tries to poison, morale bomb you, or control you.

- Tome of the Dreadnought: Pinning Barrage is the Primary reason we might want this. A great mix of applying Marked, deal some damage, and maybe immobilize targets, in a fairly big AoE. The Ironclad also works great when you can easily stack Marked on multiple targets(makes its Barrage ability more consistent).

- Tome of the Great Transformation: This is a bit of an odd one. Skirmishers love life steal effects. Fetid Legion means more durability for a lot of your units(including most of your animals). This tome is great if you have already decided to go for Tome of Cryomancy and Tome of Souls. If not, there might be better options.

- Tome of Paradise: If you like Distracted and have taken the Sneaky form trait, Exhillirating Pollen is a great spell(improves morale for all your units. Chance to cause Distracted on all enemy units). The Major race transformation also provides a lot of durability(great if you go for a "horde" style of play with a lot of skirmishers) along with the strategic spell that improves max hp of all friendly units in the target province(as well as improving their health recovery after battles).
Fortress of Vines provides access to a lot of different plant units and improves the rank of all plant units recruited from the settlement(including your racial units, if they have become plant people). And of course, it makes it easier to reach Tome of the Goddess for the damage buff you can get there(+8 blight damage for Dragoon shot, which with various damage buffs become something like +12 Blight damage or more).


There are a lot more, some of them very niché, but fun. But I think this is enough for now.

[6h0$t942]

Their marksmen and cannons go well with Ferromancer variations. Golems hold the frontline and the musketeers can lay waste. The book of scrying is good for that.
Book of winds give you the wind barrier elemental and the +range.
The book of dreadnoughts or constructs gives support units the heal construct/ overload construct, and the book of alchemy gives a status cleanse. So you can set up the overseers to be mechanics.
Dont have much use for dragoons myself. rather have a musket.

[IlluminaZero]

I like the society trait "Fabled Hunters" to assure I start with a Magelock unit. Reaver is also the one society that I ALWAYS choose a ranged hero as well.

The reason being that the entire "Marked" -> "Focused Aggression" mechanic is useless until Tier 2 UNLESS you have a Ranged hero and/or Magelocks. I prefer to have a ranged hero as +20% damage (addendum: actually wrong, 10%xMark, potentially +50%!) will scale with high hero damage. (In contrast - There is no difference between a hero and an infantry unit marking targets)

Reaver is also the only faction so far that I like to choose Champion for over WK, ES, and Dragon Lord. Namely as Champion's "Command" ability has amazing synergy with the positional ranged units like Magelocks and Cannons.

In a general sense I feel like you need to build around high ranged damage to really get the most out of Reavers. If you're emphasizing melee as Reaver culture you're wasting culture's potential IMO.

[Bishi]

I like Zeal and Pyromancy for an opener. Zealot fodder with some good spells and economy boosters. Inquisition for more economy boosts and Inquisitors if I want to just Subdue everything with Overseer support. Spells and enchantment are good here too.

Where things really start to get really spicy is when you decide between Wind and Contruct. Wind if you like Magelocks and Construct as the tome tax/boost for Dreadnaught. For the other tier 3 you can decide between Devastation and Cleansing Flame.

Pretty fun way to play as Reavers if you want to just crusade everyone. I would recommend defender Champions/Heroes to consider as well. Ranger is pretty good especially with snapshot immobilizing, but this culture really benefits from something to hold the line and taunt divers.

[IlluminaZero]

I'm not really certain why would you want a melee hero as Reaver.

Mercenaries are a solid unit. The negative; that being it's upkeep cost, really shouldn't be a big deal since a lot of early game income is going to be from aggressive map clearing anyways. Its really just negative incentive to mass Mercenaries - Which is likely a given since massing tier 1 is generally pretty bad unless you're going all-in on a rush. Not only will they not scale to later rank troops but using multiple stacks for clearing the map will lead to bad exp gains for your heroes.

If you're doing a do-or-die rush Mercenaries being a tier 1.5 unit is actually good anyways.

The real problem with Reaver's as a culture is that without any ranged units the entire culture gimmick; that being boosting ranged damage, is useless until Tier 2.

The more melee you go the more you are wasting the Reaver's main battelfield gimmick. Not taking advantage of the potential +50% ranged damage boost with something like a Ranger hero is a huge waste. Doubly so if you're doing things like going Golems to supply a dedicated tank frontline.

[✧Starshadow Melody✧]

I don't build reavers, I don't have that DLC. :P

[Bishi]

I agree, however I laid out options for whatever the player needs to do balance out their composition. I don't like copy-pasta builds so this general game plan affords some breathing room and options every game with a single faction.

I.e I wouldn't go Construct with only Defender heroes as an example. Anyway, you are right that as far as cultural units go, it is a wait until tier 2 to finally get the ball rolling. I tend to just abuse subdue on dangerous targets and zealot meat-shields. I however would rather have Defenders if I am going to build around Magelocks and picking up Winds forgoing Golems. I have to make up for my tome choices elsewhere sometimes and the pc and heroes can do that.

[IlluminaZero]

Yeah I feel that. Doubly so if you're doing something like "cult of personality" or double hero where you can use hero defenders in place of Mercenaries. I don't like static metas myself.

Also I mentally got Dark's "cull the weak" mentally mixed up with Reavers. It occured to me while posting that earlier message that Reavers and Dark are kinda opposites in regards to the melee <-> ranged relationship they have. IE Reaver melee is about setting up big damage and accuracy boosts for Ranged. Dark ranged is about setting up melee damage (IE 20%), life steal, and helping survivability with weakened.

Basically - In the same way that I personally prefer to have Ranged Heroes with Reaver to compliment the potential 50% damage boost I also think that Dark is begging for melee heroes to maximize "cull the weak" usage.

[CrUsHeR]

Reavers are pretty strong, but some of their core mechanics don't work for some reason.

1. Focused Aggression - this seems to get resisted in at least 90% of all melee attacks. So if you want a target Marked, you need to use a spell. IIRC you also no longer have a free Mark skill on heroes since the hero class system.

2. Harriers - their Throw Net ability has the issue that it is both a cooldown-based skill and an accuracy-based skill. Even if you only use it with a displayed 90% chance, it seems to miss or fail in at least 60% of all attempts, leaving the Harrier exposed and having wasted a turn. Probably this is also why the AI is completely unable to keep these guys alive in auto-battles.


So for good builds, honestly you can do just about everything. Using constructs and materium affinity suggests a Materium build, which also works. And it is just about the opposite of an Industrial build because all your units are made for aggressive offense rather than slow grinding defense. Chaos is the other part of its affinity, and likewise an option.


HOWEVER. If you check how the Subdue ability works - targets can be instantly removed from battle if they are 1. Immobilized 2. Frozen 3. Stunned. So take a look which tomes are doing that.

Cryomancy: absolute no-brainer. You get the insta-freeze spell, the frost spirit, and Blizzard to reduce status resistance. Bonus if you subdue a Brewery Ogre in your first battle, who can freeze up to 3 targets at once. Same as with all Freeze-based builds, your only enemy are Burning effects which your enemies may apply to themselves through "on fire" ground tiles and AoE skills.

Tentacle: Also hilarious. Constricted is very handy because it doesn't conflict with Burning effects. So you can summon the tentacle, have procs from battlemages and support units, and most of all the Constrictor unit to Pull (and thus constrict) units where you want them.
If going against Umbral Demons, this is definitely the top choice because you need Burning effects on the demons to stop their Curse Eater ability.

Beyond that, you can for example use a Mage hero/lord to stun all connected enemies at once. Easier if you debuff with Lightning Torrent first. A Dragon Lord can also reliably freeze whole groups. Also the Cryomancer Ascension Perk seems to work with more than just base attacks.

[CrUsHeR]

BTW one really big issue for me.

If you run some kind of build which can defeat enemies with spells alone - example Astral+Shadow - you can't really do that with Reavers.

Their Scout doesn't have any kind of damaging attack, so if you get into battle with them only, the battle instantly ends with a defeat. Which really sucks.

[Toddasaurus Rex]

I've found a couple really solid interactions
-Gifted spellcasters society trait: More marks, more debuffs, more damage.
-Tome of Discipline: T1/starter pick does wonders, that third hit stun can really juice your brawling to keep the frontline trading hits while your magelocks do really good work with focused aim, monks aint half bad to team up with harriers either to exploit the nets. If something gets locked down by the net, a monk jumps in to pummel it.

Naga transformation with seafarers is hands down my favorite way to run reavers, dragoons become downright hilarious whenever they get knocked into slip away they can flank and glock something on the following turn, for magelocks its a free distance creation tool if something gets in close and they can fire immediately without moving the next turn.

[Lans The Gryphon]

Tome of Severing is another late-game option that helps. Severing golem is nice to weaken your foe in addition to being a formidable DPS. you can also buff it with Tome of Dreadnaught' s support ability (which you most likely will take already). Spellward is a nice cherry on top.

[Marec]

Oh wow, I got a lot of different replies. Lets try to get a discussion going :)
First of all, thanks for the detailed response Fendelphi. It has a good summary of the strength of different tomes and undead and plant reaper are things I will try soon.

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

- Tome of Scrying: Summon Watcher is a nice "Artillery" battlemage unit that can both stun and Mark targets. Mental Mark is a powerful AoE debuff that both applies 2 Marks on the targets, as well as 3 Sundered Resistance. The Guided Projectiles enchantment is a nice way to indrectly increase accuracy of your ranged units, by having them ignore the penalties for the target being Obscured(by terrain or other units).

My experience with scrying has been rather disappointing. In theory, the increased accuracy sounds good, but in practice, there are usually not that many obscured targets, and those are effectively countered by marked stacks. Also, cannons always hit. Watchers are an interesting summon, but Reavers are already pretty ranged heavy and the Watchers' Dmg is comparable to Magelocks. The stun is nice when it hits, which is not that certain with a 60% chance.

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

- Tome of the Dreadnought: Pinning Barrage is the Primary reason we might want this. A great mix of applying Marked, deal some damage, and maybe immobilize targets, in a fairly big AoE. The Ironclad also works great when you can easily stack Marked on multiple targets(makes its Barrage ability more consistent).

Ironclads, like Shrine of Smiting, do not benefit much from marked targets. As a mythic unit, the engraving of focus does not apply, so there is no dmg increase for them, and without buffs, cannons and magelocks outperform them badly.
I find it surprising that you found Pinning Barage useful, it only has a 60% chance to apply Immobilized, and with the status resistance of enemy units, it will be resisted by higher tier units most of the time. Even worse, it doesn't have much physical dmg.

[Marec]

Originally posted by IlluminaZero:

I like the society trait "Fabled Hunters" to assure I start with a Magelock unit. Reaver is also the one society that I ALWAYS choose a ranged hero as well.

The reason being that the entire "Marked" -> "Focused Aggression" mechanic is useless until Tier 2 UNLESS you have a Ranged hero and/or Magelocks. I prefer to have a ranged hero as +20% damage (addendum: actually wrong, 10%xMark, potentially +50%!) will scale with high hero damage. (In contrast - There is no difference between a hero and an infantry unit marking targets)

Reaver is also the only faction so far that I like to choose Champion for over WK, ES, and Dragon Lord. Namely as Champion's "Command" ability has amazing synergy with the positional ranged units like Magelocks and Cannons.

In a general sense I feel like you need to build around high ranged damage to really get the most out of Reavers. If you're emphasizing melee as Reaver culture you're wasting culture's potential IMO.

I completely agree, ranged heroes are king with Reavers.
Rangers with True Shot and a few marked stacks can deal a devastating amount of Dmg early on.
Cooldown reset and Command was a powerful combination, too bad it was removed.

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Tentacle: Also hilarious. Constricted is very handy because it doesn't conflict with Burning effects. So you can summon the tentacle, have procs from battlemages and support units, and most of all the Constrictor unit to Pull (and thus constrict) units where you want them.
If going against Umbral Demons, this is definitely the top choice because you need Burning effects on the demons to stop their Curse Eater ability.

Self-immobilizing Overseers are fun, but unfortunately Constricting Focus has a pretty low chance to apply.
And Constrictors are good at pulling enemies, but the difference between Mercenaries and them is only +1 armor and 2 dmg for an extra cost in infrastructure.

Originally posted by Toddasaurus Rex:

-Tome of Discipline: T1/starter pick does wonders, that third hit stun can really juice your brawling to keep the frontline trading hits while your magelocks do really good work with focused aim, monks aint half bad to team up with harriers either to exploit the nets. If something gets locked down by the net, a monk jumps in to pummel it.

Naga transformation with seafarers is hands down my favorite way to run reavers, dragoons become downright hilarious whenever they get knocked into slip away they can flank and glock something on the following turn, for magelocks its a free distance creation tool if something gets in close and they can fire immediately without moving the next turn.

Focused aim sounds good, definitely need to try that. Never thought about naga reavers, maybe I will try that as well.

Originally posted by Lans The Gryphon:

Tome of Severing is another late-game option that helps. Severing golem is nice to weaken your foe in addition to being a formidable DPS. you can also buff it with Tome of Dreadnaught' s support ability (which you most likely will take already). Spellward is a nice cherry on top.

Disruption and a spell jammer are good, I`m not so sure about the severing golem, isn`t it also a mythic unit and thus doesn`t benefit from your marked dmg boost?