How do you build your qatal dagger users?

[Thorak]

I just got a 3 star MSK assassin with high ini and want to make a dagger overwhelm bro. How do you normally build such a bro? I would assume duelist and dodge is standard without a shield? What about fearsome? Quickhand with 2h mace as backup? Relentless?

[Scathe]

you say 3 star melee skill but you don't mention melee defense. if he can get over 30 melee defense by level 11 you could consider duelist, but going dagger + shield is good too. dagger + shield is good with the old rondel dagger since puncture doesn't benefit from double grip. (pretty sure qatal does benefit from double grip) I wouldn't go full out for ini, just boost it when it rolls high and boost health/melee attack/melee defense as often as they are good. if he doesn't have the melee defense stars to go duelist, you can skip melee defense when he rolls a 1, and give him a shield.

I would go colossus - quick hands - pathfinder - dagger mastery - shield mastery or overwhelm - nimble - overwhelm or duelist. shield mastery and duelist being mutually exclusive.

[YuMMz]

I'm curious what others say. All my dagger attempts have been underwhelming. One thing to note, fatigue was a problem for me with the 3 attacks per turn option. Just something to be aware of.

[A5G_Reaper]

For daggerman, (Student)-(recover)-dodge-(gifted)-dagger mastery-footwork-nimble would be the core perk, with underdog and overwhelm fitted somewhere. Then depending on what role you want him to do. The ones in bracket are my personal choices and might be optional to someone else but I like it.

Massive burst #1: 2h mace, qatal, quick hand OR just bring a net for a less dedicated burst mode. Recommended recover and relentless due to how fast deathblow spam drains fatigue. Duelist is a very good choice.
Massive burst #2: Rondel. Recommended recover and relentless for puncture fatigue cost. Recommended crippling strikes and executioner to make use of the pure HP damage.
Pure overwhelm: Any dagger, shield. Highly recommended shield mastery and underdog, since he'll often sit there stacking overwhelm on one target for some time which allow other enemy to surround him. Relentless recommended. Must have very high initiative to offset the shield.

Massive burst 1 can make use of fearsome, duelist, berserk, headhunter, crippling strikes/executioner. Overwhelm is not recommended due to fatigue expenditure.
Massive burst 2 is about the same, but no duelist or headhunter.
Pure overwhelm is basically glorified shield tank. Hybrid with massive burst 2 is possible to switch to damage dealing once overwhelm is no longer needed.

[Thorak]

At lvl 1 he got 10 mdef with 1 star so rather good mdef, 58 MSK with 3 stars. 125 ini with 0 stars, no plan to increase that further no matter the build. 41 res with 2 stars so some kind of overwhelm+fearsome build sounds tempting. He only got 88 fatigue however. I have no other overwhelm char and I want something that help with champions/lindwurm and really strong single targets.

The fatigue drain sounds worrying. Is there any dagger build which has low fatigue drain? The daze from mace is a very nice debuff for single strong targets as well so maybe that's the build? How is qatal dagger without deathblow and duelist just spamming normal strikes with fearsome+overwhelm? 6*3 stamina for 3 strikes sounds manageable, but is it enough to penetrate armour to do 1 damage to trigger fearsome vs orc warriors for example? Tooltip says 37-56 damage when using double grip and 30-45 without double grip so I would say it seems to be working fine with both of the normal strike from Qatal and the deathblow.

[A5G_Reaper]

It's definitely a duelist material, might want that initiative in 150ish but you could use the hyena attachment to get mostly there. Add some good lvup roll and you're golden. Slap relentless on top to ensure he go first against mostly everything.

Normal dagger hit is very efficient, moreso if you can find named version with -cost it might even drop to fully fatigue neutral but it's really crappy against armor. The secondary attacks are great versus armor but on the other hand it's very costly to maintain. I think the mace-qatal build have the best tradeoff, since mace will whack off a large portion of the armor AND allow the most use out of your qatal. I dont think there's anything beside maybe warlord that could survive cudgel+deathblow and 3x deathblow on the following turn.

Just approach your fight differently, you're not tied to a single playstyle. Qatal normal hit with duelist is perfectly viable against medium and lightly armored target simply from being able to hit three times, it actually outdamage arming sword. Switch around a bit when you're approaching heavies, like taking rondel for shanking spree against orcs. Work in tandem with hammerbros for maximum efficiency. Stuff like that.

Here's why it's bad to operate in vacuum:

Double grip and duelist qatal deals about 17-25 damage through armor. That means if the target armor is less than 160 at minimum and 240 at maximum for it to deal 1HP damage, that's not even counting Battleforged comes in play.

Qatal deals 26-39 damage to armor.

Orc warriors comes in 280-400 armor and 240-360 armor.

Normal strikes will take forever to punch through the armor and kill a single orc warrior.

[Thorak]

After some consideration I have decided to go the dagger+shield route without fearsome like this:
Colossus
Gifted
dodge
dagger mastery
OW
nimble
backstabber
relentless
recover
shield mastery

The thought is to use a shield + rondel vs armored opponents and a shield + qatal vs no armor. I realized if I use the rondel I will trigger morale checks anyway and then backstabber is better to make sure I actually hit. I'll try this one out and see how it works.

[suejak]

I only browsed this thread, but I think a few people are confused.

Puncture builds (non-qatal dagger) are extremely fatigue-intensive and the return is generally not amazing. These do not benefit from double-grip or Duelist, and they cannot critical hit (i.e. they can't hit the head) -- all of these things apply specifically to the Puncture ability. Stab is different.

Qatal builds are not fatigue-intensive. Even Deathblow is pretty low-fatigue. Qatal builds are pretty nutty strong and arguably overpowered. All qatal skills benefit from Duelist, double-grip, critical hits, etc.

There's a lot to say on this topic, but I actually think the roleplayer qatal builds are the strongest -- high-initiative Overwhelm with Dodge and all that stuff. Duelist is essential here.

A Duelist qatal Deathblow is basically a winged mace Duelist attack, which is one of the strongest in the game. The difference is you can do three Deathblows per turn, which is nutty strong.

I don't recommend shield-qatal as a late-game build. I don't really see the point.

[Thorak]

Originally posted by suejak:

I only browsed this thread, but I think a few people are confused.

Puncture builds (non-qatal dagger) are extremely fatigue-intensive and the return is generally not amazing. These do not benefit from double-grip or Duelist, and they cannot critical hit (i.e. they can't hit the head) -- all of these things apply specifically to the Puncture ability. Stab is different.

Qatal builds are not fatigue-intensive. Even Deathblow is pretty low-fatigue. Qatal builds are pretty nutty strong and arguably overpowered. All qatal skills benefit from Duelist, double-grip, critical hits, etc.

There's a lot to say on this topic, but I actually think the roleplayer qatal builds are the strongest -- high-initiative Overwhelm with Dodge and all that stuff. Duelist is essential here.

A Duelist qatal Deathblow is basically a winged mace Duelist attack, which is one of the strongest in the game. The difference is you can do three Deathblows per turn, which is nutty strong.

I don't recommend shield-qatal as a late-game build. I don't really see the point.

Interesting. It doesn't change my build that much if I want to go that path instead. It's shield mastery or duelist depending on where I want to go so no need to decide until lvl 11.

[turtle225]

I had a lot of success with the Viper build like so:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2223289524

Ridiculously good in 1v1's and the Arena. I have him flanked by Mace bros to setup Deathblows for him. You can do the whole QH Mace thing to make him self sufficient, but I like having teammates do that instead.

Qatal is bad against Ancient Dead so I switched him to a 2H Mace for those fights as it still does very well without mastery. On a non-limited origin you can just bench for Ancient Dead fights.

Fatigue wasn't a problem at all, and I wouldn't waste any levels or Recover on it.

[Thorak]

Originally posted by turtle225:

Fatigue wasn't a problem at all, and I wouldn't waste any levels on it.

Interesting. I see you picked pathfinder instead of recover. I thought I would run out of fatigue by going that path. If that is not the case then it would certainly be a preferable solution as I won't have to waste turns on recover.

2H mace is always a backup as it doesn't require mastery and is very fatigue neutral as you say. I might try that one instead. I am running manhunter so I won't be needing underdog however as I rarely get outnumbered, and if I do it will be my indebted martyrs that will take the heat. Backstabber or fearsome is the question then, how useful did you find fearsome to be in that setup?

[turtle225]

Fearsome was great, even with just regular 50's Resolve. I wouldn't drop it. Fearsome + Overwhelm + 3 attacks makes him very good at disabling enemies in 1v1.

Have a buddy toss a Net on elites like Swordmasters and the 3 Overwhelms + any Fearsome drops all lower the chances of them freeing themselves too.

You mentioned Warriors before and Qatal can very easily break them, but you want to have allies weaken the armor a bit first. Attacking fully armored Warriors will be poor.

[Nerdgasm]

Originally posted by suejak:

I don't recommend shield-qatal as a late-game build. I don't really see the point.

Legends speak of an unbreakable shield which dazes when it blocks an attack.

[ForceEcho]

Originally posted by Nerdgasm:

Originally posted by suejak:

I don't recommend shield-qatal as a late-game build. I don't really see the point.

Legends speak of an unbreakable shield which dazes when it blocks an attack.

Now that would make a cool qatal build

[Tephros83]

Originally posted by suejak:

I only browsed this thread, but I think a few people are confused.

Puncture builds (non-qatal dagger) are extremely fatigue-intensive and the return is generally not amazing. These do not benefit from double-grip or Duelist, and they cannot critical hit (i.e. they can't hit the head) -- all of these things apply specifically to the Puncture ability. Stab is different.

Qatal builds are not fatigue-intensive. Even Deathblow is pretty low-fatigue. Qatal builds are pretty nutty strong and arguably overpowered. All qatal skills benefit from Duelist, double-grip, critical hits, etc.

There's a lot to say on this topic, but I actually think the roleplayer qatal builds are the strongest -- high-initiative Overwhelm with Dodge and all that stuff. Duelist is essential here.

A Duelist qatal Deathblow is basically a winged mace Duelist attack, which is one of the strongest in the game. The difference is you can do three Deathblows per turn, which is nutty strong.

I don't recommend shield-qatal as a late-game build. I don't really see the point.

I mean, it would be, but nets aren't an endless resource or you're tying up another guy to stun/daze instead of using that guy to make aoe attacks. Two single-target bros right next to each other doesn't sound nutty strong.

I'm thinking a qatal dagger specialist that alternates with a 2h mace is a good one to try, ideally with duelist too, but it's still just theory to me.

I kept intending to make a dagger specialist overwhelm light tank, but always ended up taking taunt instead of dagger mastery as the last perk. Particularly in the arena, I feel unwilling to give up taunt or other tank perks just to get one extra overwhelm.

[Tephros83]

Originally posted by Nerdgasm:

Originally posted by suejak:

I don't recommend shield-qatal as a late-game build. I don't really see the point.

Legends speak of an unbreakable shield which dazes when it blocks an attack.

The game is basically over at that point, but true that is good synergy, would be better if quick hands still worked on shields.