Bola is weird.

[No One]

Admittedly I might be weirder for using bola on purpose.

Usually bola works out to push 2 on the front guy, and push 1 on row 2. Swaps row 1 and row 3.
Sometimes row 1 is pushed by 3. On crits? I think? Row 3 still ends up in row 1, row 2 still doesn't effectively move, but row 1 ends up in row 4.

If row 2 resists it's always push 1 on row 1.

Seems like it pushes row 2 first, then pushes row 1, but then row 1 is in row 2 and gets hit with the row 2 push effect.

[Okram]

I commend you just for using it, what's the use case for it?

[Nakos]

Enh ... it's a way for her to hit R1 and R2, that's mostly what I think of it as.

[Ghoul Hunter]

Flexibility skill that can also screw with the ordering of the opponent. It's a fine skill. People don't often value movement skills.

Example: You have two melee heroes up front who almost killed the front line, so arbalest uses bola to finish them off and then bring the back row to the front, leaving them to be finished off by melees on next turn.

[Icedfate]

the main complaint i have about movement skills is that often times, moving an enemy doesn't really diminish their threat.
many enemies can still use their attacks from any position.
one of the most annoying is the female cultist who can use her stress spell on anyone from anywhere.

and the groupers are just as deadly in the back positions as they are in the front. they just target different people.

thr crab pinchers can use arterial pinch on anyone from anywhere.
the fungal giants can do the tree smack from anywhere. .
virago is just as deadly in the front as the back.
many enemies have "dancing" skills that let them move back into their preferred positions after attacking.

as for bola, i did use that in the early game, but the sniper shot is just so much more powerful.
i personally do like using grapeshot, hew and zealous accusations, but all the "veteran" players say not to use the aoe damage skills.
then again, picking a aoe skill means there's some other skill you can't pick.

my arbalest usually runs with sniper shot, bandage, rallying flare (to remove marks) and i used to take blindfire to shoot at the last enemy in the front row, but the veterans say to take suppressing fire. . and i do like shouting "suppressing fire!".


also, you don't really "need" the arbalest to be able to hit positin 1. she is best used in conjunction with another hero who can mark the back line and then you use her to destroy the back line and then switching to heals while you stall on that last enemy.
she has her own mark skill, but you don't want her to be the one using mark. you want someone else to set it up for her

[Ghoul Hunter]

Actually looking at my arbalest now. Almost everything in her kit is subjectively useful or useless, based on the user's taste.

Suppressing fire: Why not just shoot the backrow? Better dead than debuffed. Not a must have skill.

Mark: She's the slowest marker, so get someone else to do it. This is the one skill I would say is a poor pick.

Bola: Allows her to hit front line. Not used often, but handy when it is relevant. Not a must have skill.

Blindfire: Good insurance if she gets pulled to the front. Doesn't happen that often, but useful when it does. Still not a must have skill.

Heal: The better I have got at this game, the less I need to heal. A dedicated healer can do all the healing I need, so having an emergency heal like this is very rarely used. Not a must have skill. I'd only take this if I was rolling with no healer.

Flare: Her most unique skill, and great for clearing a stun on the dedicated healer. Since she is slow, you can design her to clear any stuns that happen during the round. Still not a must have skill, though. Healers getting stunned and people getting killed is a rare occurrence, all things considered.

Arbalest is one of those characters that you can build in many ways, and there are no right answers. The only clear answer is that she's good at shooting marked targets. Everything else is a matter of taste. She's flexible like that.

[RopeDrink]

the main complaint i have about movement skills is that often times, moving an enemy doesn't really diminish their threat.

That depends solely on the enemy.

Like our heroes, most enemies cannot execute their most dangerous moves from non-prime positions, and most of their repositioning skills typically involve lower baseline damage and/or lower accuracy and/or lower crit-mods and/or removal of effects.

Slapping something like a Cultist Brawler to the back (so a Bone Courtier is moved up front) can remove the Courtier's stress-nuke (in favour of Stab in the Dark), while the Brawler is unable to apply bleeds until he stumbles back into range, all of which do far less damage, stress, and have far less chance of hitting or critting.

Another example - Fungal Scratcher:
It is infinitely better to be hit by a Harmless Swipe instead of a Groping Swipe or Rend the Marked. When pushed, they cannot apply blight, cannot decimate a marked target, lose 30% accuracy, deal less damage (even if it hits), and have no chance to crit (even in Champion).

Their only consolation prize is that their usual companions, Fungal Artillery, have a counter-play - seeing as they have a back-move that can be more dangerous than their marking skill if you don't deal with them before throwing out displacements willy-nilly.

Naturally, it's better to not be hit at all - but given a choice between core skills (or) a "Stop pushing me back" skill, it's a no-brainer - and there are a plethora of examples.

If you cannot outright kill or stun a foe to prevent ALL of their attacks, a movement skill can be used as a soft stun. You typically wouldn't vie for a movement skill over a flat kill or stun in general, but there are an uncountable number of scenarios where they will reduce intake.

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by RopeDrink:

If you cannot outright kill or stun a foe to prevent ALL of their attacks, a movement skill can be used as a soft stun. You typically wouldn't vie for a movement skill over a flat kill or stun in general, but there are an uncountable number of scenarios where they will reduce intake.

I think the major problem with movement skills (ones that move an enemy) is opportunity cost. It's not that there aren't situations where they're good, but almost always, there's some other skill useful in 100% or almost 100% of situations and I'd rather have a skill I can always use than one where I might get two or three chances to use it in the course of even a long dungeon.

I generally prefer damaging skills that move the hero rather than the enemy, because it avoids the catastrophic scenario of having to waste a turn or even more just moving back into a useful position. A really bad shuffle that would otherwise take 2-3 heroes' actions for the round can be seriously mitigated by even one self-move skill.

ARB/MUS has so many better skills that I can rarely see Bolo as an option.

[Icedfate]

the BH stun uppercut pushes enemy back, but that's just bonus. I'm 99% using it for the stun effect.

the only movement ability i found useful is the occultist one, because it has a fairly good chance of pulling the back line guy into the front line. works good on virago.

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

the BH stun uppercut pushes enemy back, but that's just bonus. I'm 99% using it for the stun effect.

I rarely use BH because he's so reliant on marking gimmicks. However, the MAA stun Rampart is majorly kino, not only moving BH himself but also with a bonus knockback. Other than Crusader's stun, which is good enough at causing damage you can often forego Smite, it's my favorite stun on a heavy hitter character. (Best all around is obviously PD's two stuns.)

[Icedfate]

don't misunderstand. I only bring BH for mark synergy, but i also include the uppercut in his skills. although, i see guides saying to use the flash bomb instead, so i'm no expert.
I don't have 2k+ hours like some of these folks have.

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

don't misunderstand. I only bring BH for mark synergy, but i also include the uppercut in his skills. although, i see guides saying to use the flash bomb instead, so i'm no expert.
I don't have 2k+ hours like some of these folks have.

I think that is his most useless skill and I am very skeptical of any guides that recommend using it.

[RopeDrink]

There are too many scenarios where marking an enemy before a slap won't beat simply hitting or stunning them without a preamble, so I typically keep marks off my bar (with only two exceptions). As such, my BH's usually have Collect > Finish > Uppercut > Flash.

The main draw of Flashbang is its ability to hit R4, and having good range (thus usable if the BH is OOP), and that's about it. Sure, it might shuffle as well, and that can be situationally handy, but its prime use is to stun R4 and little else.

Uppercut and Rampart - stuns that push the enemy back - are very strong, as you have various opportunities to completely neuter a foe and potentially limit another via team displacement, not to mention that they both deal damage (unlike Flashbang, Disorient, and Blinding Gas, etc).

Given a choice between stunning R4 (vs) pulling it, stun is simply better. A good team won't feel compelled to drag enemies into range just to hit them, whereas there are plenty of times you might wish to stun one back-rank priority while dealing with another.

[No One]

I wouldn't normally take suppressing fire. Though admittedly I wouldn't normally take an arbalest at all.

There isn't a real use case for bola, I was mainly using it because I had never used it before. Made the ARB into a movement bot, and put CRU/LEP in front, so the ARB would put row 3 into row 1 for them to kill. Jester as fourth, because leper. It was awkward, as I had no real way to get to row 4 except for the ARB slowly plinking them down. I did +crit the leper so he would often destroy corpses, but if that didn't happen it would be a giant stallfest later to recover from the distinctly suboptimal battle.

The main problem with move is that stun exists. You need +move, especially on bola, but that means in any fight where a move skill is best skipped you have a dead trinket slot. There's two non-boss enemies in the game that are immune to stun.

The reason hew/accusation and so on aren't usually great is that all the major threats are in the back. All the stress casters, spearmen, arbalests, 100% of champion-exclusive elites...
The design of DD is that the enemy front tanks so the back can do damage, but Red Hook forgot about this and gave nearly everyone an assassination skill. There's no tradeoff you need to make to shoot over their heads, yet stuff like bola is still balanced against the idea that attacking the back is difficult or costly. This balance is especially farcical on an arbalest of all things.

Move skills also summon turn order RNG. Meanwhile my stun team with 9/11/9/8 speed doesn't need to care who goes first, which allows nearly the entire team to go before the enemy team, especially once I get some +speed quirks; a far more valuable trait than any move skill.




Only party I can recommend with an ARB is ARB-CRU-HM-BH, and she takes +heal instad of +damage or +debuff. Certainly not +move, and the party doesn't need it. Don't use marks on the back: it only invokes turn order RNG. Just hit them until they die.
The cool thing about blindfire is the speed bonus makes it kinda a free shot. If your ARB goes after the thing you want to shoot, you can blindfire and will probably go before it next turn, effectively doing damage for free, while also opening up the ability to shoot row 1. on the other hand, the ARB very rarely doesn't want to be spamming bandage when there's only one target left. Also that BH can punch 1 into 2 and let her shoot it anyway.

Although I can't recommend it as 'good' per se, ARB-GR-HWM-OCC is very amusing, assuming you have plenty of +crit trinkets. OCC can't hit row 4 from 1, but he can use vuln hex from 1, and everyone else can help make up for the lost damage. I like to put so much speed on the ARB the OCC stuns instead, though.

The arbalest is theoretically a healer who can do damage, but then you can't take any of her huge +damage trinkets, for various reasons. If you have a healer already, then...HM. Pierces armour, has cry havoc. Generally OP.
You could do something like ARB-VES-CRU-MAA for infinite HP, but you're at serious risk of being spider'd to death. Still not enough HP to survive 30-point spit crits, because nobody has that HP, and not enough speed to stop them from happening.

[Icedfate]

I'm not speaking from authority here. as i still feel not fully experienced in this, since i still haven't beated it or tried the DLC yet, i just bought the DLC, haven't tried it yet

but


regarding the knockback, it seems that most of the time the bola just swaps the positions of the front 2 units and those are usually both units that like to be in the front 2 positions, so they don't care if their positions get swapped.

actually, movement skills don't seem that good in general.
it seems that most enemies have attacks that are still effective regardless of their positions.
like the dead priests with the goblet can do it from any position except the very front.
the female cultists can do their stress attack from any position.
groupers are just as deadly from the front s they are in the back.

i mean, movement skills are not useless.
some things, like the virago, if you can pull that to the front, you can kill it easily. but the bola skill is not gonna be useful for that.

from what i could gather, the arbalest is best used as an off healer and on a mark team, with a different unit doing the mark, so the arbalest can fir their shots off at the marked enemy in the back positions.

a team i have often used is ARB/OCC/BH/BH
or perhaps ARB/HM/OCC/BH could also work, an the OCC is there for marking and healing. the HM is there for marking, damage and stress healing, the BH is there for hitting rank 3, while ARB can hit rank 3 and 4.