Are Nimble Tanks Viable?

[Phil85]

I haven't played for a while, so was wondering how viable the nimble tank is today. I typically haven't used them, preferring nimble ranged units instead.

[Hykal]

If you have the HP but not the FAT, it does well enough. Nimble's good for facing down an Orc Warrior. Battleforged's better suited for taking a lot of chip damage like Undead.

[Phil85]

Do you need special armor to make it viable? I just recall my nimble tanks dying quickly after losing their armor in the past.

[bison]

I personally much prefer the battleforged tank over the nimble.

I generally try to avoid picking tanks up but if the brother has 2/3 stars in initiative and stars in melee defense with a star in resolve I feel like it can be a consideration. Typically I can get higher melee defense on the nimble brother but once the armor/shield goes its pretty tough, a string of bad luck will end the nimble brother faster.

I like taking bone plating on the nimble bro too which gives you that extra armor hit of survivability.

That said I had an amazing nimble tank that had 66+ MD with dodge and even after he lost his 2 shields did well on the chosen camps and survived.

[sikker]

I've had one for 270 days and he's been just as useful as my battleforged tanks. Overwhelm is really good because it can protect everyone instead of just protecting himself. Usually if you have a tank with high melee defense enemies will simply ignore him and go for the non tanks. So you have to use indom on everyone and that just drains your fatigue. With overwhelm you can reduce damage against damage dealers without them having to spend fatigue/AP on it.

However he doesn't really have a place in the legendary locations. He'll be great against the Ijirok if he can overwhelm him but I'd rather have battleforged tanks in every other legendary fight.

He's still better than battleforged against some lategame enemies though. Mainly Chosen, Schrats and Lindwurm. He's worse against greenskins though.

Oh and he just uses raider armor with a sallet helmet. That's all you really need on a nimble bro.

[jfoytek]

They are viable yes

But I will still take battleforge every single time because while they are viable they are not great!

Nimble is cheep but as the game goes into late game you have basically handicapped yourself because battleforge is far superior late game!

With Battleforge your always taking the best stats (Fat, MDef, Matk) - So never really gimping your character...
With Nimble your taking HP and thus FAT suffers....

[Hykal]

It's less that Nimble is better than Battleforged or vice versa, but more accurately they do different jobs.

Battleforged does very well against holding the line. They're great at putting at both ends of your frontline, preferably with spear mastery. If you need one bro who goes off away from the line, to hold himself against a mob of Undead or beasts, that's the role of the BF tank.

The Nimble tank on the other hand excels at keeping down big damage threats like Barb heavies, Schrats, and Unholds. They'll last longer against these targets, but they'll be hopelessly outpaced by a mob.

Yes, BF edges out a bit overall, but it's easier to build a Nimble tank than a BF tank.

[anaphylactic god]

no

[Estieukua]

Indomitable tanks are the best. Nimble and Battle-Forged are mere options ;-)

But it's not that uncommon, as campaigns go on, to get (a) a rare helm that's -4 fatigue (with ~175 durability) or -8 fatigue (with ~240 durability), and (b) a rare armour that's -20 fatigue (with ~250 durability). Put Light Padding on the body-armour, and then you can be ~50% Nimble while wearing armour that's just about heavy enough to make BF a decent option.

[Whatever100500]

You can't make a nimble supertank who can Shieldwall+Indom cycle whole monolith, but nimble tank can be decent enough with some limitations.
Better use of nimble is making moderately survivable characters with little stat + perk investment though (since forged is very much all or nothing).

[turtle225]

Yes it is viable. I do it all the time.

[Phil85]

Thanks for all the replies. It sounds like BF tanks are better late game, but nimble can work in many cases. Is there anything special about an "indomitable tank" other than using indom, shield wall and recover as much as possible? Is using overwhelm worth taking for a tank?

[sikker]

overwhelm is worth it on a nimble tank with dagger spec so you can overwhelm 3 times per turn. you don't need any melee skill for it, it will still proc if you miss. You're already saving 1 perk slot because you don't need brawny so you're only losing out on a throwaway perk like gifted or taunt.

indomitable tanks can keep indomitable up permanently with adrenaline. If you indom you'll have it up for the entire turn and the next one because you usually go after the enemies. Then you can use recover and adrenaline in the same turn, and the next turn you just indom at the start and repeat the cycle.

A nimble tank can do the same with adrenaline. Or you can be cheeky and try to do it without adrenaline. When you're worn out it will reduce your initiative and you can go behind the enemy, then you recover and it will raise your initiative so you go in front of them again. But this takes a lot of practice and knowledge about the enemy stats and it won't work against certain enemies, the safe way is to just pick adrenaline.

[Estieukua]

Some people use Indomitable tanks that do nothing but use Indomitable. The fatigue requirements for this are very low (i.e. 44+ with gear), since no weapon is needed and no other skill is used besides Indomitable.

To keep Indomitable+Shieldwall active whenever under attack, you need 84+ fatigue in gear. However, Shieldwall doesn't add that much more defence, because Diminishing Returns halve all defence points over 50.

I prefer to keep Indomitable+Riposte active whenever under attack, which requires 82+ fatigue in gear and allows the tanks to contribute a surprisingly decent amount of damage (with Sword Mastery, Riposte has +10 chance to hit instead of -10, and 65 melee skill is enough to give you a 50% chance to hit enemies like necrosavants).

The fatigue requirements for this are very high, and much easier to achieve in Nimble armour, but you can get occasional wildmen, farmhands etc. who can meet the fatigue requirements while wearing the heaviest armour and without even needing Brawny.

In a near-permanent state of Indomitable, whatever armour you may be wearing, Nimble and Battle-Forged are only optional extras, since Indomitable basically provides both together (the BF-like effect being much stronger than BF itself).

In some respects, heavy armour (with or without BF) is more desirable than a Nimble build, because you want your initiative to be as low as possible, so that you can almost always be behind (e.g.) orc warriors when you need to Recover+Adrenaline.

On the other hand, enemies like orc warriors (and honour guards, unholds and several others) can still end up behind you in the turn order in lengthy battles (especially if someone else has been dazing/staggering them with 2H maces/hammers), and in this scenario it's more desirable to have Nimble as back-up protection ... except, if you do go Nimble, you'll encounter this scenario more often, since your initiative will be higher. So it's about 50-50 (Nimble versus heavy armour), but rare efficient heavy armours make it tempting to use Light Padding Replacement and be 50-60% Nimble in heavy armour (taking ~60% of HP damage is very good when you're in heavy armour and are hard to hit).

Since enemies like orcs and barbarians can always remove your shield (even a rare orc one with 100 durability), it sometimes seems tempting to forego a shield altogether, thus freeing up fatigue and perk points so that you can (e.g.) wear the heaviest armour and take BF (without Brawny) and/or be more offensive and take Duellist and Killing Frenzy (the latter options being tempting if you have a rare 1H sword that's unusually effective vs armour).

Alternatively, if you get your fatigue to 82+ in armour and while holding a sword, you can start battles vs orcs/barbs etc. holding a shield, and use Indomitable+Riposte, and by the time you need to Recover and start again there's a pretty good chance that your shield will have gone and that you'll have 82+ fatigue available.

BTW: Resilient is quite a valuable perk for an Indomitable tank against barbarian chosen, since it means that you can always Recover into Indomitable (and use Riposte as well) after being dazed by their 2H maces. It's also valuable in the goblin city, to diminish the duration of curses and thus lower the risk of being Punctured/Poisoned.

There are other possible variations (perhaps a bit dirty) on the Indomitable tank build:

- You can carry a dagger (reduced fatigue requirements) and take Dagger Mastery and Overwhelm, and then, every other turn, apply x2 Overwhelm against the most threatening enemy (who may be more of a threat to nearby allies) before using Indomitable (for this, the fatigue requirement in gear is only 68+) ...

- You can forego large shields to reach 82 fatigue in-gear fairly easily, and then level initiative instead of fatigue and take Dodge+Relentless as well as Adrenaline+Recover+Indomitable (if initiative is ~13 points higher than fatigue, you'll still get +8 Dodge when utterly exhausted) ...

I haven't yet trialled the latter against large orc parties (and warriors are sure to always be behind you when you want to Recover, but you often won't need to use Adrenaline to go first, even against berserkers and youngs). However, it's surprisingly effective vs barbarian chosen, since they tend to use Adrenaline (because your initiative is still higher than theirs after you've used lots of fatigue) and then they have already acted in the turn once you need to Recover ... or, if they waited turn to decide whether to use Adrenaline again, you can then use Recover+Adrenaline yourself and still be ahead of them in the turn order if they also use Adrenaline ... but there are occasions when a couple of chosen get to attack you after you've used Recover (and both hit you with an 8% chance), and Nimble is invaluable back-up protection when this happens ...

[Phil85]

So is it worth using taunt for tanks? If you use indom, won't the enemies just ignore your tank and attack a softer target? Would you take shield mastery with an indom tank? If you don't use shield wall, it still helps somewhat.
Lots of good info to digest. Thanks! I will experimenting with a few of these builds and see what happens.

[Estieukua]

Enemies generally always favour attacking the target that's either easiest to hit or easiest to damage. So a tank will always be low-priority if other targets are available (being hard to hit and using Riposte are even more off-putting for enemies than using Indomitable). Taunt does reliably get one enemy to attack a tank in most situations against most enemies. But I tend to leave tanks separated from the rest of the formation by one tile, so that they can individually engage as many enemies as possible and oblige them all to attack versus Riposte+Indomitable (you can also use the 2 leftover action points to move through zone-of-control to engage extra enemies).

Shield Expert does seem great for survivability (and for knocking enemies off height elevations with the +40 chance to hit) in the earlier game, and great for some late-game fights if you've found a durable rare shield with high defence values. On the other hand, it seems nearly futile against orcs and (especially) barbarians, and you never want to risk a special rare shield in those fights ... so I tend to regard it as an optional perk, but do pick it most of the time (I suppose it at least forces orcs and barbs to waste more time splitting shield rather than attacking).

BTW: I just tried out the Dodge+Relentless with Adren+Recover+Indom tank variation against an orc warlord's camp, and it sucked arse (although the tank with the best defence did survive the battle without much armour damage).