ATTN archer builds: You don't need Anticipation anymore.

[turtle225]

Nimble is so broken now that you can drop whatever defensive perks you were using to keep your archers alive. Nimble and Colossus are all you need.

With 100 hp (after Colossus) you can take 5-7 heavy crossbows to the body or 3-5 heavy crossbows to the face before dying. How about the much more common normal crossbow? 6-9 to the body or 4-6 to the face. How about Goblin Bows? 9-14 to the body and 6-10 to the face. That's before you die mind you.

Average Hunter has 53 base hp so average no star Hunter gets to 83 (87 with Gifted) if you take hp every level which after Colossus is even highter than the 100 hp example I used meaning more shots you can eat and less you have to care about avoiding them.

Anticipation which was once considered the best defensive perk for ranged bros is now a wasted pick. Don't bother with Dodge, Steelbrow, Nine Lives, Footwork, or whatever else you might have fancied either because you won't need them.

EDIT: Ranting aside, assuming that the devs fix Nimble at some point (hopefully sooner rather than later), I advise you to skip Anticipation at your own risk. If you don't mind that risk then drop Anticipation and the rest and build some super archers.

[peterebbesen]

Let's just say that you aren't the only one hoping that Nimble gets a rework, soonest, before this turns into "Skyclad Brothers: A Game of Bestial Exploration".

Current casualties of Nimble rework:
1) Heavy armour, once favoured for almost everybody on the front row, now mostly for tanks and those with low base hitpoints
2) Medium armour, once favoured by mid row reach 2/range hybrids
3) Light armour, once favoured by nimble duelists and archers
4) Several defensive perks once favoured by light armour wearers (apart from Nimble) are now in much lower demand (though naked bros on the front line will still want the added protection)
5) Repair bills

It is amazing how liberating it is just to stack hitpoints with the colossus perk and strip naked. Armour is now something for plate tanks, the unhealthy, and the under-seven.

Now, it has to be admitted that the existence of damagetypes that don't get get Nimble treatment complicates matters, as poison, bleed, and miasma sees no mitigation.

So armour still has a place and my point 4) about other defensive perks? Yeah, that one was deliberately overstated.

So those casualties, while severe, weren't mortal; merely heavy injuries.

But I'm still impressed by how much damage was done to the balance between no/light/medium/heavy armour wearers by that simple Nimble change, and by how very cheap and effective the "let's strip and grow healthy, bros" is. :D

[Piggy]

I don't see why I would skip taking those perks? Sure I can survive 6-7 crossbow shots with the perks u recommended but I'd rather not take a single shot of those. I will tho of course try this out for fun tho I still think my naked brothers should have Dodge and anticipation so they can take alot of hits and be able to dodge them.

[DTDrain]

Originally posted by Kirito-kun:

I don't see why I would skip taking those perks? Sure I can survive 6-7 crossbow shots with the perks u recommended but I'd rather not take a single shot of those. I will tho of course try this out for fun tho I still think my naked brothers should have Dodge and anticipation so they can take alot of hits and be able to dodge them.

You do realize this thread isn't actually about archer builds but just another Nimble rant, right?

Not that I disagree with the OP, Nimble is just stupid now. Even if it didn't break balance, it certainly breaks immersion.

[Something completely different]

Originally posted by turtle225:

Nimble is so broken now that you can drop whatever defensive perks you were using to keep your archers alive. Nimble and Colossus are all you need.

With 100 hp (after Colossus) you can take 5-7 heavy crossbows to the body or 3-5 heavy crossbows to the face before dying. How about the much more common normal crossbow? 6-9 to the body or 4-6 to the face. How about Goblin Bows? 9-14 to the body and 6-10 to the face. That's before you die mind you.

Average Hunter has 53 base hp so average no star Hunter gets to 83 (87 with Gifted) if you take hp every level which after Colossus is even highter than the 100 hp example I used meaning more shots you can eat and less you have to care about avoiding them.

Anticipation which was once considered the best defensive perk for ranged bros is now a wasted pick. Don't bother with Dodge, Steelbrow, Nine Lives, Footwork, or whatever else you might have fancied either because you won't need them.

And then nimble is fixed and we can all start over again because our archers die when someone sneezes on them thanks to this fabulous bit of advice.

[peterebbesen]

To add to DTDrain's explanation, and not being quite as tongue in cheek as my earlier post in this thread, before taking those defensive perks were a near no-brainer choice for archers that wanted to live; Now, if you go Nimble (which you also did before, most likely) the competion those defensive perks face from offensive perks is greater; after all, there are only so many perks to go around.

Another consideration is that enemies tend to attack those they have a good chance to hit.

Thus, if you spend many perks on archers to be hard to hit as well as Nimble, more enemy shots will be targeted at non-archers than others. Which, depending on how hard to thit those targets are, may result in either more or less damage inflicted on your team than if your archers weren't so hard to hit.

But damage to the team isn't equal - it matters who gets hit. Unless there's a lot more damage dealt to the team when the archers aren't very difficult to hit than when they are, you'll probably prefer to have the archers without those extra defenses, because if all the damage your archers are taking is ranged (usually the case) then having that shifted to your melee bros is a bad deal overall.

All that being said, the OP is a rant, and my first answer to that played along part of the way. Naked Nimble isn't a no-brainer, not at all. But it is scarily effective at a low investment cost of levelup skills and perks.

[Primitive Dog Owner]

Originally posted by DTDrain:

You do realize this thread isn't actually about archer builds but just another Nimble rant, right?

It's both a nimble rant and an archer build discussion.

Old archer builds are based on dealing with a possibility of getting 3 hit KO'd.

That possibility is gone, so builds may change.

If your archer has 400 effective HP, but his defenses are too high, enemies will not shoot at him, preferring more vulnerable characters. You would be better off if some of that damage was spread to him.

This was backed up by in game experimentation, when I did goblin city in t-shirts my nimble ranged with legacy defensive picks were not targeted much, my party was much weaker as a result, all damage was focused on the melee, who were able to handle it but only just barely. If the goblins had shot at my archers more I would have won by a larger margin.

Over on reddit they have an archer build thread, these builds all give up some offense or HP for legacy defensive picks, it's not clear this is still optimal.

If I had an archer with stars in HP I might even try taking less ranged defense and no defensive perks (but full HP perks), and trying to get the enemy to focus their ranged fire on him.

That said, this is so dumb that my desire to spend a lot of time on these builds is limited, I assume they'll be nerfed at some point.

[DTDrain]

Fair enough, I hadn't considered the damage spread so I guess non-defensive nimble archers are the new meta or something.
Since I refuse to even attempt a naked build I'll just have to take everyone's word for it.

[Abel]

I don't think targeting only has to do with Ranged Defense, it's also about proximity. Though I have often seen Marksmen target exposed Archers in the back with very low chances to hit.

[Primitive Dog Owner]

Proximity also effects chance to hit, doubly so on units with anticipation

I admit I am not clear on what crteria the AI uses to determine who it targets, but I assume chance to do damage factors in somehow

Under the pre-DLC system my fully defensive archers eventually got to a point where they would usually be ignored by the enemy ranged, presumably because the hit chance was very low AND easier targets were available

On the other hand, non-defensive polearms advancing along side them would routinely be targeted when left exposed, that was something you could count on.

I exploited this somewhat pre-DLC by making a non-defensive standard bearer with high armor / HP, trying to get the AI to target him

EDIT: Pre-DLC they do target archers in the back at low percentage chances, but I would attribute this to

a) lack of better, unobscured targets
b) archer looks vulnerable, since he can be 3 hit KO'd

It seems like targeting archers is less common if you provide other, better targets and make your archer less vulnerable.

[peterebbesen]

Originally posted by Abel:

I don't think targeting only has to do with Ranged Defense, it's also about proximity. Though I have often seen Marksmen target exposed Archers in the back with very low chances to hit.

It is most definitely not determined solely by RD. RD's impact on to-hit% is definitely part of it, as seen through testing in pre-1.0.17 and still observed, where high RD gets shot at less often than low RD, but what other factors are involved is anybody's guess.

My own guess is expected damage (hit%*median damage) based on armour and weapon properties, though possibly weighting life damage higher. And were I in charge of design, there'd also be a small an anti-archer bonus component to the weighing too, because suppressing all enemy ranged is a definite bonus, so all else being equal, targeting enemy archers should be the default - but who knows. Those are just guesses.

[Khalunka]

Never liked to play 'cheating' which is the same as doing nimbles builds right now. Everyone has its taste its just not mine. If wanted to play a cheating-easy game I would install minecraft and have fun building castles fighting skeletons. Sorry but if you like the broken nimble, you dont actually true-like how Battle Brothers should be.

[Khalunka]

Anyway, its been sometime we dont get an update. Im sure developers are working to fix many things because players feedback. Lets just wait a bit.

[turtle225]

Originally posted by Something completely different:

And then nimble is fixed and we can all start over again because our archers die when someone sneezes on them thanks to this fabulous bit of advice.

I'll admit this is something to be careful of. I really do hope the devs do something to Nimble but if they do overhaul it then it will run the risk breaking all-in Nimble builds. I think it's a necessary eventuality if they don't want to watch the meta devolve into Naked two handers.

I still have Anticipation on my archers because I took it as 3rd pick like I always did before realizing that Nimble is so strong.

But pre-dlc there were a lot of debates on which defensive line to use to keep your archers alive. Most agreed that Anticipation was necessary and many begrudgingly took the rng dependent old Nimble. But beyond that it really came down to player preference. I liked Steelbrow, some liked Nine Lives or Dodge, etc.

Now you don't have to think about it, you just hp gorge and become invincible. In battle you don't have to make a tough decision of whether to keep your shield bro in front of your archer or moving him forward to assist the melee because your archer is invincible now anyway so might as well rush in with all of your blockers.

Sorry for the rant in the OP, I couldn't sleep last night.

[Tephros83]

Originally posted by turtle225:

Nimble is so broken now that you can drop whatever defensive perks you were using to keep your archers alive. Nimble and Colossus are all you need.

With 100 hp (after Colossus) you can take 5-7 heavy crossbows to the body or 3-5 heavy crossbows to the face before dying. How about the much more common normal crossbow? 6-9 to the body or 4-6 to the face. How about Goblin Bows? 9-14 to the body and 6-10 to the face. That's before you die mind you.

Average Hunter has 53 base hp so average no star Hunter gets to 83 (87 with Gifted) if you take hp every level which after Colossus is even highter than the 100 hp example I used meaning more shots you can eat and less you have to care about avoiding them.

Anticipation which was once considered the best defensive perk for ranged bros is now a wasted pick. Don't bother with Dodge, Steelbrow, Nine Lives, Footwork, or whatever else you might have fancied either because you won't need them.

I think the two problems with this thinking are that it is likely going to be fixed before you're done with the current team. And even if not the game is better if you have the discipline to not use this exploit by not picking it or picking it but wearing light armor anyway.

Devs have expressed they think a change is needed but are wary of going too far with a nerf and need to think carefully about it.

[turtle225]

Originally posted by Tephros83:

I think the two problems with this thinking are that it is likely going to be fixed before you're done with the current team. And even if not the game is better if you have the discipline to not use this exploit by not picking it or picking it but wearing light armor anyway.

I agree with both points. I only have one naked bro and the rest of my Nimble in light armor despite it being worse because it definitely does make the game more fun.