Is the Arbalest underpowered?

[the legendary neuts]

I'm not particularly impressed by the Arbalest class. Her speed is low, she doesn't do damage very well, she doesn't heal very well, and her debuffs aren't very impressive. She has decent HP, but her abilities have no tolerance for the front row -- this additionally makes surprise encounters much more dangerous when you have her on your team.

Her Sniper Shot gains crit rate on marked enemies, and is more or less equivalent to the Bounty Hunter's Collect Bounty, but her low speed gives enemies (especially bosses) a chance to disable her, move around, cast a protection spell, or just generally hamper her before she can use it.

Suppressing Fire is probably her most valuable ability, generally, for greatly tamping down enemy crits (and sometimes giving you lucky dodges), but using it effectively requires you to buff up her speed with something like Quirks (RNG) or the Quickdraw Charm (uses up a trinket slot). I've found the most success with the Arbalest by doing this strategy, but it can feel underwhelming compared to using the Quickdraw Charm for a different turn 1 debuff (e.g. Barbarian YAWP).

Her Sniper's Mark reduces dodge, which in my view is somewhat less valuable than reducing PROT (but still useful to have). Unfortunately, the Occultist has a very similar move (although the Occultist's dodge reduction is slightly less), and I'd say the Occultist is a much better use of a backline spot than the Arbalest.

Bola is...eeeh. The base Knockback chance is too low to be anywhere close to reliable, and generally single-space knockbacks (and pulls) don't tend to hamper enemies too much. It's mediocre damage to the two front enemies, and rarely anything more.

Blindfire... I'm not sure why you'd ever want to use Blindfire, honestly.

Her Battlefield Bandage again puts her in competition with the Occultist, a competition that she usually loses.

Rallying Flare has niche uses against some boss gimmicks (like the Sirens), but otherwise is a completely unremarkable skill.

Her camping skills are pretty good, though. +2 SPD to the entire party is great, and 35% healing to the party can save your ass in a pinch. I don't think it's good enough to warrant her a spot in a difficult quest, though.

[Lujo]

I generally just give her a speed trinket and an acc trinket, and put her into a team with a helaer and a non-dps guy who can mark for her. Then I mark things for her and she usually massacres with sniper shot. Her heal makes other heals better, so she's never in competiton with an actual healer (It also makes various self-heals do more). I don't consider her underpowered because of those two skills, one does tremendous damage and the other is a very nice support heal. I mostly bring her to boss fights, she up there with the BH in mindless damage spam.

The other stuff is mostly meh, true. I use bolas to hit the front row when it would also finish off a weakened 2nd row and vise versa. Flare is an anti-mark gimmick.

[Sir Francis]

On her own shes not very good, but shes the hero which benefits from combos the most.
No hero is underpowered who dishes out 3-5 crits for 60+dmg in one medium dungeon on average id say^^.
Shes the best boss killer, more burst than BH, also (keyword) backrow damage is rather hard to come by.
She usually kills the stresser on first round when marked and allows for more front-heavy party comps.
Her heal buff really amplifies the occultists heal to insane heights if needed, double synergy with that guy!
Blindfire is her only way of reliably hit the front row when no other enemy is left (standard situation) so blindfire is a must have.
Surpressing fire isnt really worth using however, since it doesnt kill stuff.
Her mark ability is a total waste of time, you want an occultiist doing that for her.
Bola and flare are just not worth using most of the time.

Shes one of my favourite heros and i had her with me on every of the 4 endgame missions.
Needless to say she delivered.

[Skeleton]

Blindfire allows the Arbalest to hit the front two rows when no other enemies are left. It also boosts her speed by an incredible amount past level 2 and 3 (this stacks three times as well). She's also one of the best burst dps characters in the game. Fantastic on bosses like Vvulf, or the Brigand Cannon. She's far from bad/useless. You just need a team built around her strengths. Love pairing her in parties with a Vestal/Occultist in P3, Shuffling Highwayman in P1, and a MaA in P2.

[Panfilo]

Arbalest works well in the right situations.

Low speed isn't a huge impediment, and wasting trinket slots to try to make up her weakness is just neglecting her strengths. On the first round, any hero that has bonus damage vs marked is always going to want to act after another hero has used a marking ability. Similarly, going a bit later on means you can heal to pull a hero off death's door vs an alternate situation where you attacked first, missed, then the hero ended up on death's door anyway.

Back row enemies tend to be stress attackers and being able to effectively knock them out via ranged is good. On a marking team Sniper Shot can give you nice crits.

Supressing fire can also be used to finish off multiple weakened enemies, or try to debuff multiple high PROT enemies.

I agree her sniper's mark is subpar, but so is Bounty Hunter's mark. Honestly in a marking team you want a Houndmaster doing the marking, he's going to be faster anyway and can reduce PROT. Alternatively, use an Occultist's mark because his is the only one that does damage on top of marking/debuffing the target.

Bola is excellent. It lets you finish off a Grouper that a Pelagic Guarding is defending by damaging them both (guarding enemies can't guard vs AoE attacks) and vs 2nd row fungal zombies, cultist gladiators, etc you can put them in the 'crappy damage' position.

Blindfire is better than you give credit for. You just want to avoid using it when corpses are present. But if you are out of position for any reason and there's only 1 or 2 targets its fine. The speed boost is a nice benefit.

Her heal is the only heal that gives bonus % to other heals. This meshes really well with more abilities than you think; A Vestal using Judgement gets more HP back, an Abomination converting back to human form gets more HP back, interacting with a curio or camping immediately after the battle gives more HP back. There's lots of potential for it and if you aren't running a dedicated healer then it synergizes well with self or support heals (Battlefield Medicine).

I agree rallying flare is niche, and they should really improve it (I would have it affect the front 3 rows) However, this is another example where low speed isn't a bad thing; a hero that already took an action that got stunned can have the stun flared off, but had the Arbalest been faster she might not be in a position to do this. Thus your faster hero is free to take his action next turn when he'd normally be clearing off the stun debuff.

Her camping skills, along with the Plague Doctor's, let you get through some dungeons without a dedicated healer. You can use their small heals as opportunities arise, and if you get beaten down pretty badly in a room encounter camp and pretty much heal all your guys up back to full for just a bit of time spent. Marching order is good, and I still think Restring Crossbow is good when combined with many of her other abilities.

She is excellent with Houndmaster, Occultist, Bounty Hunter, and any other heroes that benefit from marked targets or have move skills as well.

[avaririot]

I think its one of the better classes. Arbalest/Crusader is the one combo that can do short to mid runs without a healer.

[Snarplord XVI]

I've found that she is a must-have in any party with a Bounty Hunter.

[Enfild]

Originally posted by Sir Snarplord: Legacy Edition:

I've found that she is a must-have in any party with a Bounty Hunter.

Not realy, houndmaster can be far more usefull, than arbalest.

[Delthea]

I've found that she's crap. If you're using a team that marks for her, that could make her situationally useful, but everything she's good at, others are better at.

[amk320]

I think she's fantastic.

I've got eagle eye (+3% crit), unerring (+10% ranged damage), and deadly (+1% crit) locked on her. I give her the bandana trinkets. The orange one that adds damage, and the blue one that adds crit and accuracy.

She routinely crits and does some of the highest damage next to the Bounty Hunter's crits I've seen yet. Her heal, while lackluster, gives extra oomph to your regular healer's heal.

[Snarplord XVI]

Originally posted by Enfild:

Originally posted by Sir Snarplord: Legacy Edition:

I've found that she is a must-have in any party with a Bounty Hunter.

Not realy, houndmaster can be far more usefull, than arbalest.

Unless you're in the Cove, in which the Houndmaster sucks.

[Panfilo]

Houndmaster is a good, versatile character but Arbalest will be doing more back row damage than Houndmaster and pull a hero off Death's Door, which the Houndmaster cannot. You can always take both to get the best of both worlds; I like to mark with houndmaster to sniper shot with Arbalest.

[Panfilo]

Originally posted by amk320:

I think she's fantastic.

I've got eagle eye (+3% crit), unerring (+10% ranged damage), and deadly (+1% crit) locked on her. I give her the bandana trinkets. The orange one that adds damage, and the blue one that adds crit and accuracy.

She routinely crits and does some of the highest damage next to the Bounty Hunter's crits I've seen yet. Her heal, while lackluster, gives extra oomph to your regular healer's heal.

This is a good setup, though the extra 1% crit might not be as consistently useful as +5 ACC especially vs particularly annoying enemies like the crow boss or dogs.

[Delthea]

+4 crit makes anyone good. Totally keep her in that case.

Houndmaster is still good in the cove. Just gotta put a bleed trinket on him.

[Panfilo]

No, some heroes are getting more out of +4% crit than others. Jester and Grave Robber get high crit, but the comparatavely lower base damage of their abilities limits the effectiveness.

Bounty Hunter is not going to be doing high damage crits to enemies standing the 4th position, which puts Arbalest ahead of him in that department. Bounty Hunter's ranged abilities are awful.

[Ramond]

Originally posted by jerjare:

Blindfire is better than you give credit for. You just want to avoid using it when corpses are present. But if you are out of position for any reason and there's only 1 or 2 targets its fine. The speed boost is a nice benefit.

In fact I don't think Blindfire can target corpses. I use that skill relatively often and it has never occurred to me lately (I remember it did way back in EA). So no need to worry about corpses anymore, makes the skill that much more versatile too :)