Man at Arms camp skills

[Panfilo]

Man at Arms is unique in that all his camp skills are buffs. This gives him enormous utility especially early on.

Weapons practice: Getting +10acc, +20% damage and +3% crit makes you all around better offensively. If you are building your MaA to be an active fighter then it might be worth it. Note that retribution's mechanic means you'll be attacking enemies far more times than any other hero, meaning far more opportunities to crit. However, I find him better as a dedicated tank, and take those bonuses and pass them on to more offensive heroes .

Instruction: By far one of the best, it costs the same respite to grant other heroes the same buff he can put on himself. There are lots of heroes that will benefit from it. I often put it on Arbalest, Bounty Hunter, or Hellion for example. Leper benefits well too.

Maintain equipment: Ohe of the cheapest stat boosts available in terms of respite, increasing your dodge can pay off if you're defending other allies frequently. Having a lot of both dodge and PROT might sound paradoxical, but given the fact that heavy use of defend means the MAA is likely going to be the target of over 50% enemy attacks in the entire dungeon every little bit counts.

Battle Tactics: While the bonus is sightly smaller the entire party gets it, which is a pretty good deal for 3 respite. Dodge, while random, can inevitably help in the most critical situations, and every little bit helps.

[geepope]

Originally posted by jerjare:

Weapons practice: Getting +10acc, +20% damage and +3% crit makes you all around better offensively. If you are building your MaA to be an active fighter then it might be worth it. Note that retribution's mechanic means you'll be attacking enemies far more times than any other hero, meaning far more opportunities to crit. However, I find him better as a dedicated tank, and take those bonuses and pass them on to more offensive heroes.

I generally don't find much reason to bother specializing the MaA as a dedicated tank since you can take any random MaA, use Guard twice, and have a max prot wall covering 3/4 of your team. Plus, even offensively specced MaA can negate a lot of damage with strategic use of the stun from Rampart.

Defensively specced MaA lets you get more use out of the Guard + Riposte combo, but it's slooooow and unreliable by comparison. It'll negate a lot of damage and dish a lot of it back out, but most of the time you wind up taking more damage than if you just started bashing heads to begin with.

My take: at higher levels most heroes can really use +10 ACC camp buffs, and most of them aren't as good as this one, so the damage is just gravy. Incidentally, it happens to put the MaA very close to Crusader-level damage, which is pretty damn good.

[Panfilo]

Guard+ Riposite funnels most of the enemy attacks onto the man at Arms and he'll be hitting enemies far more often in that state abyssal anyway. Bolster is also a really good buff as well particularly if the MaA ends up going last during an ambush and he can't finish off any enemies.

[Panfilo]

I'm curious about the utility of his very rare shield which gives him a bunch of buffs but only works if he's in position 4. My concern is that he only has 3 abilities that work back there, so I guess he would be alternating between guard+ Bolster+guard+command. I suppose you'd probably want a Vestal in there third position so you could make the most out of his bonus healing.

I know that concentrating on using guard means 3 of my party members have full health and minimal stress while the MAA has 25% health and 75 stress. I guess this is a good trade off and if the extra healing and dodge keep him alive longer then all the better.

[[SIN7] jacojarek56]

Originally posted by jerjare:

I'm curious about the utility of his very rare shield which gives him a bunch of buffs but only works if he's in position 4. My concern is that he only has 3 abilities that work back there, so I guess he would be alternating between guard+ Bolster+guard+command. I suppose you'd probably want a Vestal in there third position so you could make the most out of his bonus healing.

I know that concentrating on using guard means 3 of my party members have full health and minimal stress while the MAA has 25% health and 75 stress. I guess this is a good trade off and if the extra healing and dodge keep him alive longer then all the better.

I think it might have been a concession to his nature as commander above being a frontliner, as well as encouraging players to use his guarding skills and group buffs...

[Panfilo]

Oh I figured as such. I was just wondering about its effectiveness. Figure give him a Tough Ring or something with that build since you're not really dealing any damage, and use a Vestal or Occultist to turboheal any damage.

It sounds like it would be nice in long battles- sure wish I had it on the Brigand 16 pounder. Bonus ACC to consistently hit the Matchman, and guard to keep your front liners from getting bled by the cutthroat. You'd get nice speed, dodge, and ACC through the battle

[[SIN7] jacojarek56]

Originally posted by jerjare:

Oh I figured as such. I was just wondering about its effectiveness. Figure give him a Tough Ring or something with that build since you're not really dealing any damage, and use a Vestal or Occultist to turboheal any damage.

It sounds like it would be nice in long battles- sure wish I had it on the Brigand 16 pounder. Bonus ACC to consistently hit the Matchman, and guard to keep your front liners from getting bled by the cutthroat. You'd get nice speed, dodge, and ACC through the battle

Definitely agree. Back in corpse and hound I had three of them for the buffing XD

Pounder fight he'd be VERY useful for that, but i'd insist on using him in combat. You need every chance to kill that damn Lighterman...and all the damn bandits with it.