The perfect Dagger Duelist

[gvandinteren]

The Qatal Dagger is imo the second best weapon in the game, after the 2H Mace. It is the Mace that actually enables the Deathblow more often. I have tried various builds in my 1800h of play and have come to the conclusion that the following is the best in a vacuum.

Ingredients;
One good melee brother with high Initiative (like 115+). Thieves, Assassins, Oathtakers are the prime candidates or maybe a high rolling Ratcatcher, Belly Dancer or Gambler with good * or maybe just a standard bro with the Quick trait.

Level 1
Welcome to the team, br0. Here is your shield, your armor, your helmet and your spear. Don't do anything stupid, stay out of trouble, watch and learn. if you behave, by the end of the fight we will put some enemies for you on a silver platter to kill and get used to taking lives.

Level 2: Colussus
Obvious first pick is obvious. You don't want your promising brother to keel over by an unlucky double hit from a nasty Goblin or Marksman. Going from e.g. 52 to 70 (if you roll 4 in Hitpoints) is a big deal. The strategy of the brother does not change. Try and be not killed.

Level 3: Dodge
That is a juicy 12-15 to ranged and melee defense. This brother should now be relatively safe from freak ranged kills and can carry a reach weapon to more actively contribute to the fight. My preference is a polearm, for the extra +5% to hit.

Level 4: Student
With the primary survival perks in place, it is time to start levelling up more quickly.

Level 5: Dagger mastery
If you take Relentless over this, I will not fight you. It might actually be the better pick.

Level 6: Overwhelm
Based on what you picked at level 5, your bro can now overwhelm three times with a dagger or abuse Relentless and Overwhelm twice with any 1H weapon (probably Sword or Spear for the extra hit%).

Level 7. Nimble
This is the pick that is more obvious than all the others. Nimble is a HUGE power spike for this brother.

Level 8. Relentless (or Dagger mastery, depending on what you picked @ lvl 5)
Your brother is now completely functional. Starting the round with Wait, then jump to your target and perform two turns in a row is really powerful.

Level 9. Duelist
Now that we have finished the skeleton of the build, it is time to increase damage output. The vanilla Qatal has 20% Armor penetration. Adding +25% is more than doubling the attack to hitpoints

Level 10. Quickhands.
This perk will make the build more flexible and fixes some issues. The first issue that is fixed is that he can switch between daggers. Sometimes you want to puncture an enemy for their gear. This brother can do this in the middle of the battlefield, while the battle is still raging. A Hedge Knight will go down in two turns, easily. The second issue that is fixed, is armored opponents. This bro can 1v1 anyone, but armored opponents like Orc Warriors or Chosen take a heck of a long time to kill. With Quickhands, you can backpack a 2H Mace, that serves two purposes: first it allows you to Daze the enemy yourself and follow it up with Deathblow and secondly, the 2H Mace is much more efficient vs enemies with armor intact.

The strategy to Wait, jump to enemy, maybe stab once with Qatal, switch to Mace end-of-turn, next turn go first and hit with the 2H Mace, followed by the Qatal Deathblow is incredibly powerful. Most enemies will be quite harmless after these hits, with potential morale decrease, twice overwhelmed and dazed.

A third advantage of Quickhands is that you can backpack de Obsidian Dagger, if you have managed to beat the Witch Hut. The Obsidian Dagger is really nice in tough fights vs Humans, primarily southern armies and Barbarians. A Wiedergänger you create will serve as very useful meatshield. Enemies will put it high on their target list, because they see it as an easy to kill enemy (rather than being smart and consider it a quite harmless and ineffective enemy).

Level 11. Berserk and Killing Frenzy
This is simply to increase damage output. If you have been able to find a Qatal Dagger with -2 or -3 to fatigue per use, you have a Fatigue-Positive build and Berserk is the obvious way to make use of that fatigue. Even with a normal Qatal Dagger, it will provide some extra activities, directly after a kill. If you lean heavily on Fearsome in your team, Fearsome will fit perfectly on this brother and might arguably by better than Killing Frenzy. If you play a team that is bigger than 12 (Peasant Militia, for example), you might not get the mileage you want out of Berserk and Killing Frenzy, since you will have less kills per battle on your name. Take the previously mentioned Fearsome instead and maybe another generically useful perk like Pathfinder, Fortified Mind, Steel Brow or even Gifted.

A perk that specifically does not make the cut is Underdog. Underdog is my level 6 autopick for practically all melee builds. But not this one. Overwhelm is good in 1v1 fights. It is not very good when engaged with multiple enemies. You will therefore try and pick 1v1 fights, making Underdog a dead perk. Even if you get engaged by two enemies, it is only +5% to their hit probability, which will matter once every 20 swings that target you. If you get engaged by more enemies, you are misplaying this brother.

This is what you bring into fights:
Easy Brigand/Southern army fights: Qatal Dagger, 2H Mace, normal dagger
Hard human fights: Qatal Dagger, Obsidian Dagger, 2H Mace
Goblins: Qatal Dagger, Goblin Pike
Orcs: Qatal Dagger, 2H Mace, Throwing Net
Ancient Undead: Qatal Dagger, 2H Mace, Throwing Net
Wiedergänger: Qatal Dagger, 2H Mace, 1H Cleaver
Webknechts, Direwolves, Hyenas: Qatal Dagger
Nachzehrer: Qatal Dagger, 2H Mace
Ifrits: Qatal Dagger, 2H Mace
Alps: Goblin Pike (no, I don't spend Throwing Nets in this very easy fight)
Unholds: Qatal Dagger, 2H Mace, Throwing Net
Hexes: Qatal Dagger, 2xThrowing Net
Lindwurms: Goblin Pike for damage, Whip for the 2x Overwhelm

You want to primarily level Melee Attack and Defense, followed by Hit Points, followed by Fatigue/Resolve. This brother does not need a lot of Fatigue with light armor and weaponry. Also, because he is not getting hit much and therefore does not face many morale checks, resolve can be a bit lower than usual for melee units.

That's it, i think! Let me know your comments. Am I awesome, am I terrible or maybe somewhere in between?

[turtle225]

I really like Qatal bros, though I'm more partial to the Fearsome/Pathfinder route myself and no Zerk/Frenzy.

I feel like Fearsome is way too good to skip. 3 Overwhelms + 3 opportunities for morale checks makes for an absolute 1v1 demon.

[A5G_Reaper]

Just a personal addition, I feel like 2h mace-qatal build is one that gets exponentially better the more people have it in your lineup. By their lonesome they're rather awkward with the weapon swapping, but when moving in a small group (or heck, everyone because why not) anyone that go first can set up the daze and the rest follow up with deathblow spam to utterly eviscerate enemies one at a time.

I keep telling myself to actually go try it out but somehow always ends up with my usual build

[Santo]

Originally posted by turtle225:

I really like Qatal bros, though I'm more partial to the Fearsome/Pathfinder route myself and no Zerk/Frenzy.

I feel like Fearsome is way too good to skip. 3 Overwhelms + 3 opportunities for morale checks makes for an absolute 1v1 demon.

I go this route too with Dagger specialist. Pit one against an Orc Warlord and the guy can route the entire orc party by himself.

[Jean-Maurice Nya]

I'd use fearsome too. But mostly because my two main stats are melee defense and resolve and therefore I don't see the point of not taking fearsome.
Assassin builds require mobility, so there's a high chance I take pathfinder too, but I might go for fortified mind...

[Melkolf]

I very rarely take pathfinder, finding fortified mind is often more useful. I also fail to see how pumping Mdef rather than INI on a Dodge bro is all that useful, except in very rare circumstances where the bro has decent MDef stars. When building one of these bros I seem to have more lasting success with unstarred high INI than 1-2 starred MDef.

I also find pumping FAT a couple of times necessary, just to be on the safe side especially in the absence of Pathfinder with Fearsome.

It's rare to find a fresh recruit with the perfect starting stats/stars even trait mix, so I tend to play the bro as he develops rather than stick to a major template. However, the OP's leveling list is much the same as I go, although I will bring QH in a bit sooner, often replacing Student for it - if I need a bro to level more quickly I'll spend dosh on training rather than a perk point. That way I get both a more useful perk earlier plus quicker levelling.

[A5G_Reaper]

Originally posted by Melkolf:

I very rarely take pathfinder, finding fortified mind is often more useful. I also fail to see how pumping Mdef rather than INI on a Dodge bro is all that useful, except in very rare circumstances where the bro has decent MDef stars. When building one of these bros I seem to have more lasting success with unstarred high INI than 1-2 starred MDef.

I also find pumping FAT a couple of times necessary, just to be on the safe side especially in the absence of Pathfinder with Fearsome.

It's rare to find a fresh recruit with the perfect starting stats/stars even trait mix, so I tend to play the bro as he develops rather than stick to a major template. However, the OP's leveling list is much the same as I go, although I will bring QH in a bit sooner, often replacing Student for it - if I need a bro to level more quickly I'll spend dosh on training rather than a perk point. That way I get both a more useful perk earlier plus quicker levelling.

+6 initiative = +0.9 dodge defense.

[Ninth Hour]

I'm contemplating trying the OP's build with the following candidate. I think he has the stats for it and dagger mastery would be thematic for a cultist. What do you think?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348350316

I do wish that the melee skill were higher (just 89 at level 11) but, if I'm not mistaken, this as good as one can get with a cultist (max roll and 3 stars to boot). If there had been space, I would have taken Gifted to boost it further. Besides MAtt and MDef, how should I spend my level up points- e.g. how many level ups to health, initiative or resolve?

I want to include both Fearsome and Overwhelm, which would mean high initiative and resolve but I'm not sure what values of both would suffice and I won't be able to increase both at every level-up.

Even light armor, main weapon, and pocket-carried weapons take quite a chunk of initiative away, so I'm guessing I'll need at least 3 to 4 level-ups in initiative to keep the value at 100+?

It's too bad that, with this build, you can't take both Fearsome and Killing Frenzy. I can see how you can make an argument for either. I have yet to see Fearsome work for me in an obvious way and am motivated to continue testing it. However, undead enemies are immune and some creatures have such high resolve that you will never break them, whereas Frenzy applies to any creature, so it is a bit of a painful trade-off.

I guess the solution would be to have two dagger dueilsts- one with Frenzy as the final perk. And the other with Fearsome, and use them as the situation demands. But finding the right convergence of stats and stars for this build seems kind of rare, as you need 4 stats to be good. Often I will find someone with great resolve and initiative but lacking in melee skill or defense.

[A5G_Reaper]

Originally posted by Ninth Hour:

I'm contemplating trying the OP's build with the following candidate. I think he has the stats for it and dagger mastery would be thematic for a cultist. What do you think?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348350316

I do wish that the melee skill were higher (just 89 at level 11) but, if I'm not mistaken, this as good as one can get with a cultist (max roll and 3 stars to boot). If there had been space, I would have taken Gifted to boost it further. Besides MAtt and MDef, how should I spend my level up points- e.g. how many level ups to health, initiative or resolve?

I want to include both Fearsome and Overwhelm, which would mean high initiative and resolve but I'm not sure what values of both would suffice and I won't be able to increase both at every level-up.

Even light armor, main weapon, and pocket-carried weapons take quite a chunk of initiative away, so I'm guessing I'll need at least 3 to 4 level-ups in initiative to keep the value at 100+?

It's too bad that, with this build, you can't take both Fearsome and Killing Frenzy. I can see how you can make an argument for either. I have yet to see Fearsome work for me in an obvious way and am motivated to continue testing it. However, undead enemies are immune and some creatures have such high resolve that you will never break them, whereas Frenzy applies to any creature, so it is a bit of a painful trade-off.

I guess the solution would be to have two dagger dueilsts- one with Frenzy as the final perk. And the other with Fearsome, and use them as the situation demands. But finding the right convergence of stats and stars for this build seems kind of rare, as you need 4 stats to be good. Often I will find someone with great resolve and initiative but lacking in melee skill or defense.

Bro is a chad. For the build you want, melee skill and defense every level. You can take resolve once and he's good to go for the most part, spending the remaining 9x on HP and initiative and maybe a bit of fatigue.

[Scathe]

it depends on the end goal of your campaign, if you're looking to raid the black monolith, piercing attacks are resisted by their ancient legionairres and ancient honor guards, you're better off just loading up on brothers with heavy armor and 2h greataxes and 2h flanged maces. this bro could hold a 2h flanged mace too. of course, a legendary quatal dagger could be worth it.

[Ninth Hour]

Originally posted by Scathe:

it depends on the end goal of your campaign, if you're looking to raid the black monolith, piercing attacks are resisted by their ancient legionairres and ancient honor guards, you're better off just loading up on brothers with heavy armor and 2h greataxes and 2h flanged maces. this bro could hold a 2h flanged mace too. of course, a legendary quatal dagger could be worth it.

Well, I plan to experience everything I can in the current campaign. Having fought Honor Guards and legionaries on multiple occasions, I have learned that Greataxes and 2-Handed maces are indeed the preferred weapons against them. Greatswords' split attack are decent against the pikemen too, even though they don't always give one-hit kills. Having a few of these weapons, as well as polehammers, long axes, and billhooks allowed me to finally defeat their camps by day 100+, whereas I struggled to do so at days 50 to 70.

I found that long axes and billhooks are almost mandatory, as it is tough to break through or outmaneuver the phalanx, so it helps for your Battleforged bros to press up against the front line and strike the pikes in the second rank (there don't seem to be to-hit penalties for that). Once the pikes are gone, the front rank is relatively easy to mop up.

In fact, other weapons almost seem redundant, as I have yet to encounter any enemy that does not succumb to greataxes. long axes, and 2-handed maces to the face. But as a relatively new player, I'm still trying out different builds. Worst case scenario, I don't deploy him against undead or use him as a back-up axe/mace/hammer wielder.

Even though I can now win against them, I don't particularly enjoy fighting Ancient Undead, as it always feels like a frantic DPS race to kill their pikemen before they get too many hits in. Even with high level bros, the battles are never relaxed, as it takes just a few unlucky misses on your part for one of the team to take heavy damage. Heavy armor does mitigate some of the risk but the fights can still feel harrowing even with proper maneuvering and tactics.

I thought Nimble tanks were supposed to do fine until the end game but I find that they don't do particularly well in Ancient Dead fights, even with shield specialty, as there are lots of pikemen and they all have Fast Adaptation, making it likely that they will hit your Nimble characters and shred their armor, just through the number of lucky rolls they will eventually get (if you don't kill them quickly enough).

It does not help that, even though I have busted a lot of camps now, at day 150, I have yet to find a single named weapon, so my DPS is limited to mundane tier 3 Greataxes and Maces (I found one 320 durability helmet and a suit of leather of 126 durability, in all my forays). It looks like I might have to start searching the edges of the map in hope of getting some.

[A5G_Reaper]

Originally posted by Ninth Hour:

Originally posted by Scathe:

it depends on the end goal of your campaign, if you're looking to raid the black monolith, piercing attacks are resisted by their ancient legionairres and ancient honor guards, you're better off just loading up on brothers with heavy armor and 2h greataxes and 2h flanged maces. this bro could hold a 2h flanged mace too. of course, a legendary quatal dagger could be worth it.

Well, I plan to experience everything I can in the current campaign. Having fought Honor Guards and legionaries on multiple occasions, I have learned that Greataxes and 2-Handed maces are indeed the preferred weapons against them. Greatswords' split attack are decent against the pikemen too, even though they don't always give one-hit kills. Having a few of these weapons, as well as polehammers, long axes, and billhooks allowed me to finally defeat their camps by day 100+, whereas I struggled to do so at days 50 to 70.

I found that long axes and billhooks are almost mandatory, as it is tough to break through or outmaneuver the phalanx, so it helps for your Battleforged bros to press up against the front line and strike the pikes in the second rank (there don't seem to be to-hit penalties for that). Once the pikes are gone, the front rank is relatively easy to mop up.

In fact, other weapons almost seem redundant, as I have yet to encounter any enemy that does not succumb to greataxes. long axes, and 2-handed maces to the face. But as a relatively new player, I'm still trying out different builds. Worst case scenario, I don't deploy him against undead or use him as a back-up axe/mace/hammer wielder.

Even though I can now win against them, I don't particularly enjoy fighting Ancient Undead, as it always feels like a frantic DPS race to kill their pikemen before they get too many hits in. Even with high level bros, the battles are never relaxed, as it takes just a few unlucky misses on your part for one of the team to take heavy damage. Heavy armor does mitigate some of the risk but the fights can still feel harrowing even with proper maneuvering and tactics.

I thought Nimble tanks were supposed to do fine until the end game but I find that they don't do particularly well in Ancient Dead fights, even with shield specialty, as there are lots of pikemen and they all have Fast Adaptation, making it likely that they will hit your Nimble characters and shred their armor, just through the number of lucky rolls they will eventually get (if you don't kill them quickly enough).

It does not help that, even though I have busted a lot of camps now, at day 150, I have yet to find a single named weapon, so my DPS is limited to mundane tier 3 Greataxes and Maces (I found one 320 durability helmet and a suit of leather of 126 durability, in all my forays). It looks like I might have to start searching the edges of the map in hope of getting some.

Against ancient dead, you can wait on turn 1 and then step back twice. On turn 2 wait again, and they should rush you without shieldwalling. This gives most bro at least a full turn of free attack, two if their initiative is higher than the skeletons (a very low bar to clear, they got like 20 initiative). This largely turn them into a massive joke as a lategame faction.

Does the nimble tank have indomitable? That's still the best tank perk you can get, otherwise a few lucky hit and they're out of the fight.

PS: Ancient dead does not get fast adaptation, it's the noble that spam that perk.

[Ninth Hour]

Originally posted by A5G_Reaper:

Against ancient dead, you can wait on turn 1 and then step back twice. On turn 2 wait again, and they should rush you without shieldwalling. This gives most bro at least a full turn of free attack, two if their initiative is higher than the skeletons (a very low bar to clear, they got like 20 initiative). This largely turn them into a massive joke as a lategame faction.

Does the nimble tank have indomitable? That's still the best tank perk you can get, otherwise a few lucky hit and they're out of the fight.

PS: Ancient dead does not get fast adaptation, it's the noble that spam that perk.

Thanks for the tips. The Nimble tank indeed has Indomitable as well as Colossus, Dodge, Shield Expert, Taunt, Underdog, and Pathfinder (for the FAT savings). However, no Rotation or Recovery, as I chose Fast Adaptation and Gifted instead which, in hindsight, may not have been the best choices (I wanted him to at least be able to hit something with a sword). But I was inexperienced and did not appreciate how many perks were needed for a pure tank (I essentially turned him into a partial tank and secondary attacker).

Because his Fatigue pool is only 74 at level 12, with all equipment, I have been quite hesitant to use Indom for fear that he will be out of FAT by the time he really needed it. But given that I did invest in the perk, I should probably use it. My problem with all these activated perks is figuring out the right time to use them (it's the same issue with Recovery). One use of Shield Wall and Indom and he will be mostly out of FAT.

Without using Shieldwall, his Melee Defense is 65 (higher once Dodge bonuses are factored in), so he hadn't needed Indom in most fights.

[A5G_Reaper]

Originally posted by Ninth Hour:

Thanks for the tips. The Nimble tank indeed has Indomitable as well as Colossus, Dodge, Shield Expert, Taunt, Underdog, and Pathfinder (for the FAT savings). However, no Rotation or Recovery, as I chose Fast Adaptation and Gifted instead which, in hindsight, may not have been the best choices (I wanted him to at least be able to hit something with a sword). But I was inexperienced and did not appreciate how many perks were needed for a pure tank (I essentially turned him into a partial tank and secondary attacker).

Because his Fatigue pool is only 74 at level 12, with all equipment, I have been quite hesitant to use Indom for fear that he will be out of FAT by the time he really needed it. But given that I did invest in the perk, I should probably use it. My problem with all these activated perks is figuring out the right time to use them (it's the same issue with Recovery). One use of Shield Wall and Indom and he will be mostly out of FAT.

Without using Shieldwall, his Melee Defense is 65 (higher once Dodge bonuses are factored in), so he hadn't needed Indom in most fights.

A pure tank or a pure damage dealer is much more preferable than a weird mix of both because the stats and perk split made them a lot worse than a specialist at either.

As for using indom/shieldwall, that depends on the enemy. If shieldwall can dunk their hit chance to less than 10% then only shieldwall every turn. If it doesn't then only indom every turn. You cant really afford both, so dont really bother unless the tank is near death.

Worth noting that any point of mdef past the first 50 will only have half efficiency, this is a soft cap. So you need somewhere around 110 mdef (equivalent of 80) to drop most enemies to 5%. Quite difficult to achieve without many factors converging.

By the way, a named shield with -3 fatigue cost combined with a bro with iron lungs (or second wind potion) will allow the bro to use shieldwall every turn without recovering. This can be key in fights where the slightest lapse in shieldwall uptime can ruin your day.

[noobermenschen]

Interesting. When I get my hands on a rondel dagger I have given some thought to turning one of my better melee guys into an armor farmer.

Not to derail with a n00b question, but are two handed weapons really that much better than a one handed weapon, where you not only have two attacks but also a shield?

[UnluckyNoob]

Originally posted by noobermenschen:

Not to derail with a n00b question, but are two handed weapons really that much better than a one handed weapon, where you not only have two attacks but also a shield?

Yes. The only advantage of 1H + shield is better melee defence. Decent 2H bro with dodge will have around 60 mdef mid combat and decent shield bro(with decent shield) will have around 80 which means he'll be roughly 2 times more durable. Also enemies will sometimes waste their turns breaking shield.

The list of 1H + shield disadvantages is VERY long.
1. 1H+shield deal roughly 1/3 of 2H damage per swing. And it not only deal less damage/turn but also consume much more fatigue.
2. With 2H you may move and attack at the same turn without losing damage.
3. 1H have no AoE attacks.
4. Damage perks(berserk/killing frenzy) works much better with 2H.
5. There are no 2 and 3(goblin pike) range attack. 1H attacks only have 1 tile range.
6. 1H + shield require much better recruit because of high fatigue consumption. Shield additionally consume a lot of fatigue.
7. If you use 1H + shield bros you have to use blacksmith retinue.
8. 1H + shield can lvl up initiative only with special builds and thus will usually take his turns after enemies. Which means taking extra hits.
9. No initiative means no overwhelm. Overwhelm on 2H bros may sometimes fix defence difference. 2 stacks of overwhelm(1 from 2H and 1 from swordlance backliner) and enemy will only have 5% chance to hit your 60 mdef 2H frontliner.
10. Shield reduce your defence against flails. That's old well known issue but I've never heard it was fixed.

So I do not recommend using shields even in early game except on dedicated tank bros.