Frenzied Hyena tips

[ssumbra]

Been having some trouble with these sons of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lately, they are infuriating, by nature of their high initiative, the fact they are hard to hit and also the chery on top, the bleed damage. While i never had much problems with direwolves these guys always make me want to scramble my hair out. Appart from spearwall, which only works a little bit, anybody got tips for these guys? Theres clearly a better strategy than what im doing, but i will not invest into things like spear mastery since spears are quite bad against most other ennemies late game.

[Gilius Thunderhead]

One of the things to consider with the frenzied variant is that they have overwhelm - each attack (hit or miss) from the hyena will reduce your matk by 10 for the turn.

Ideally you'd want to pin down as many as you can with your best shield tanks and go shields up - if they eat the overwhelm your other guys should be able to focus them down

[Jean-Maurice Nya]

A solid second row with ranged and 2-tiles melee weapons should do the trick as they shouldn't be overwhelmed. They have low morale, so after few hits and kills it should be fine.

[ssumbra]

Originally posted by Gilius Thunderhead:

One of the things to consider with the frenzied variant is that they have overwhelm - each attack (hit or miss) from the hyena will reduce your matk by 10 for the turn.

Ideally you'd want to pin down as many as you can with your best shield tanks and go shields up - if they eat the overwhelm your other guys should be able to focus them down

Definately something i have to do, as right now my first line is quite thin (i only have 7 dudes, looking for quality), but your right that is indeed something to keep in mind.

Originally posted by Jean-Maurice Nya:

A solid second row with ranged and 2-tiles melee weapons should do the trick as they shouldn't be overwhelmed. They have low morale, so after few hits and kills it should be fine.

Yeah thats another great one, problem is early game nobody can hit ♥♥♥♥ and these hyenas are slippery, but ill try investing into better backliners.

[Santo]

They're probably too risky for early game unless you seriously outnumber them.

[Estieukua]

I don't think Frenzied ones appear much in the early game anyway.

Spearwall is very effective against them (and other masses of beasts) with mastery, and so it's well worth considering Spear Mastery on (e.g.) a shield tank or as a secondary mastery on a ranged character with QH.

It's hard (but not impossible) to get above 130 initiative (and thus be immune to their overwhelming) on your own characters. A more reliable and stat-saving approach is to have many characters who have fairly high initiative who also use weapons/skills that can lower enemy initiative (e.g. 2H hammers/maces for Stagger/Daze, polearms for Stagger, or just throwing nets). That way, you can engage lots of hyenas with a small number of defensive characters, so that only a few hyenas are able to engage your offensive characters and in a highly surrounded position at that (thus helping to negate any Overwhelms they apply initially), and then your offensive characters can apply initiative debuffs to several hyenas per turn, so that most of the nearby hyenas on each turn end up being behind your attackers in the turn order, unable to apply Overwhelm, and likely to be killed before they get the chance to apply many bleeds.

Alternatively, just having several offensive characters with the Adrenaline perk (and enough fatigue to use it for 3 consecutive turns) will achieve the same sort of thing as above (without needing specific weapons/skills to lower enemy initiative).

[ssumbra]

Originally posted by Estieukua:

I don't think Frenzied ones appear much in the early game anyway.

Spearwall is very effective against them (and other masses of beasts) with mastery, and so it's well worth considering Spear Mastery on (e.g.) a shield tank or as a secondary mastery on a ranged character with QH.

It's hard (but not impossible) to get above 130 initiative (and thus be immune to their overwhelming) on your own characters. A more reliable and stat-saving approach is to have many characters who have fairly high initiative who also use weapons/skills that can lower enemy initiative (e.g. 2H hammers/maces for Stagger/Daze, polearms for Stagger, or just throwing nets). That way, you can engage lots of hyenas with a small number of defensive characters, so that only a few hyenas are able to engage your offensive characters and in a highly surrounded position at that (thus helping to negate any Overwhelms they apply initially), and then your offensive characters can apply initiative debuffs to several hyenas per turn, so that most of the nearby hyenas on each turn end up being behind your attackers in the turn order, unable to apply Overwhelm, and likely to be killed before they get the chance to apply many bleeds.

Alternatively, just having several offensive characters with the Adrenaline perk (and enough fatigue to use it for 3 consecutive turns) will achieve the same sort of thing as above (without needing specific weapons/skills to lower enemy initiative).

I got them in the arena reliably as an enemy from day 14 onwards, which made it quite a challenge. Spear mastery to me is not very good, as it does too little since spears have the worst dps of all the weapons and are almost uterly useless against some enemies (the roman skeletons for exemple). The iniative part though i will try to implement, thank you for your advice.

[A5G_Reaper]

Frenzied hyena day 14 is kinda rough. You could try occupy as many of them as possible with a tank so that your other bros can focus fire them one by one, but it's still a risky deal. Better just avoid the fight before lv7 tbh.

[Estieukua]

Originally posted by ssumbra:

Spear mastery to me is not very good, as it does too little since spears have the worst dps of all the weapons and are almost uterly useless against some enemies (the roman skeletons for exemple).

It sounded before as though you hadn't even tried Spear Mastery. If you have it on several characters around your formation, it is very strong against hyenas/wolves and most other beasts, because Spearwall remains active (and can be re-activated) once enemies breach it, meaning that the cumulative number of attacks is vast (more than enough to compensate for the low damage per attack), and the +20 chance to hit of each attack means that the user doesn't need good melee skill (60 or so is good enough to rout beasts).

Spearwalling is fairly useless against ancient dead skeletons, but the type of characters to which I give Spear Mastery (e.g. shield tanks, throwing duelists) can be useful against ancient dead with their other skills.

That said, initiative/Adrenaline works well enough on its own so long as you can use a few shield tanks to tie up lots of hyenas - but frenzied ones have Backstabber and can be very dangerous to early-game tanks who don't have perks like Underdog, Nimble and Resilient.

[ssumbra]

Originally posted by Estieukua:

Originally posted by ssumbra:

Spear mastery to me is not very good, as it does too little since spears have the worst dps of all the weapons and are almost uterly useless against some enemies (the roman skeletons for exemple).

It sounded before as though you hadn't even tried Spear Mastery. If you have it on several characters around your formation, it is very strong against hyenas/wolves and most other beasts, because Spearwall remains active (and can be re-activated) once enemies breach it, meaning that the cumulative number of attacks is vast (more than enough to compensate for the low damage per attack), and the +20 chance to hit of each attack means that the user doesn't need good melee skill (60 or so is good enough to rout beasts).

Spearwalling is fairly useless against ancient dead skeletons, but the type of characters to which I give Spear Mastery (e.g. shield tanks, throwing duelists) can be useful against ancient dead with their other skills.

That said, initiative/Adrenaline works well enough on its own so long as you can use a few shield tanks to tie up lots of hyenas - but frenzied ones have Backstabber and can be very dangerous to early-game tanks who don't have perks like Underdog, Nimble and Resilient.

They can be dangerous indeed. I never considered a build with spear mastery or adrenaline as i found the former to be underwhelming and situationnal, just like axe mastery. I understand your point, as it would be quite good against the corpse eating guys (cant spell their name the nachedezer or something), direwolves or the spiders. Adrenaline to me always seemed liek something that wasnt worth it. 25 fatigue is so expensive id rather buy something else. That is my view though, in no way is it more valid. I understand your point, it is valid and i am compensating right now using tips that were given to me previously.

[ssumbra]

While we are at it, i would apreciate tips for gladiators, these guys destroy me all the time and im thinking of making a flail build.

[A5G_Reaper]

Originally posted by ssumbra:

While we are at it, i would apreciate tips for gladiators, these guys destroy me all the time and im thinking of making a flail build.

Gladiator is a stats check. Their weapons, tankiness, melee skill, and melee defense are among the upper end of all enemies in the game so you need considerable level and gear to match them.

Nets will help a lot to ensure you'll actually hit them, and they sometimes waste AP breaking out. 2h mace will greatly weaken them if you can land the hit. Cleavers will kill them the fastest, again if you can consistently land the hits.

[Jean-Maurice Nya]

For gladiators I tend to bring guys with overhelm (including an archer with quick shots) and duellists with nets. The fearsome skill is pretty useful usually as they have low resolve. Their range defense is lower than their melee defense so you should hit more often, with fearsome and overhelm they should see their stats go down enough for your melee to finish them.
Try to have high initiative too as they have overhelm themselves and you don't want them to diminish your chances to hit.

[ssumbra]

Originally posted by A5G_Reaper:

Originally posted by ssumbra:

While we are at it, i would apreciate tips for gladiators, these guys destroy me all the time and im thinking of making a flail build.

Gladiator is a stats check. Their weapons, tankiness, melee skill, and melee defense are among the upper end of all enemies in the game so you need considerable level and gear to match them.

Nets will help a lot to ensure you'll actually hit them, and they sometimes waste AP breaking out. 2h mace will greatly weaken them if you can land the hit. Cleavers will kill them the fastest, again if you can consistently land the hits.

Originally posted by Jean-Maurice Nya:

For gladiators I tend to bring guys with overhelm (including an archer with quick shots) and duellists with nets. The fearsome skill is pretty useful usually as they have low resolve. Their range defense is lower than their melee defense so you should hit more often, with fearsome and overhelm they should see their stats go down enough for your melee to finish them.
Try to have high initiative too as they have overhelm themselves and you don't want them to diminish your chances to hit.

Thank you both for the tips, overwhelm is something i didnt think about, a great idea and yeah nets i was already using. Ill try something, since ive got a game thats not on ironman i can pretty much try certains fights as much as i want to see what works the best and what dosnt, i will try to utilize what you guys sugested.