.

[qwerty]

.

[Poor huwhyte Carl]

But you gotta invest in strength just for the HP, right? Otherwise you'll get smoked in 1 hit.

As for evasion, yes, for melee setup you need to invest in it on SJ and go out of your way to have the Polly parrot, etc.

[valium]

Speed and charisma will be the best stats for your brawler, hands down. At least on supreme jerk.

[saycheese]

You don't need to invest in Speed if you make your Brawler super tanky with high armor, crit/elemental resistances, and hit points. If any of these things are lacking, you won't be able to tank hits on SJ.

You need Str to wear the best armor and to have a high health pool.

You need Int because the Brawler combo mechanic is based off your base crit chance.

You need Charisma to make him a CC machine.

You need COO.

Luck would be nice but the above stats take precedence.

Brawlers lean towards being played as a tank which is the reason Speed is not a recommended stat and Cordite has armor as a perk. Melee leans more towards being played as an offensive/evasive companion which is the reason why Speed is a recommended stat and its best armor is the one that raises Melee damage but only has medium armor.

[valium]

You will not get away with just high armor and health in the DLCs, which is the hardest content in the game. Things there will just hit too hard, you need to straight up avoid being hit at all. Which means high evasion, and stunning.

[saycheese]

Originally posted by valium:

You will not get away with just high armor and health in the DLCs, which is the hardest content in the game. Things there will just hit too hard, you need to straight up avoid being hit at all. Which means high evasion, and stunning.

Backline rangers need very high evasion. My backline all had around 100% evasion behind cover and a decent healthpool.

Melee can get away with less evasion since you can build him to be semi tanky with high health, decent armor, and good resistances.

My Brawler had very little evasion since I built him to tank hits. He was the only one that was built to absorb damage and did fine in SJ, often being the last man standing.

First Aid is good on a tanky Brawler since you can preemptively use a Med pack on yourself to boost your already high healthpool even higher, and to give you lasting power through 3 turns.

[saycheese]

Originally posted by qwerty:

how do I raise elemental resistance?

Armor, armor mods, trinkets, and the rank 9/10 AW pet are some ways to raise it.

Both my Brawler and Melee had around 90 to 100% elemental resistances iirc.

[Heau]

A dedicated medic is NOT stupid in this game. Not on SJ anyway.

If you are going to spend most of your AP running around and healing, there's ample you can do to make a dedicated medic use all of their AP for efficient purpose every turn. And as such, why would you waste all those skill points in a weapon proficiency you barely use instead of additional utility.

I started playing a dedicated medic after the crafting system was added and haven't looked back. I typically run first aid/armor modding/leadership, rushing armor modding 10 perk early where it shines.

Leadership+foam finger lets the healer trade all their AP to allies on the first turn. Foam finger is craftable pretty early. You can also consider quick slotting a damage overtime debuffing grenade, that's what I do before I can get foam finger. But if you are not sold, you can always grab explosives or mechanics to have more AP spenders on the first turn. I prefer to give mechanic to another melee to run around and disable generators with their 15 AP on turn 1. On subsequent turns running around healing + foam finger dumps all AP. If you play with at least one big guns specialist in the comp, demoralize suppressing fire opener is pretty solid too in the early game anyway. Albeit a major bullet sink.

You need strength to be tanky in this game period. Maximum effective health is the only way to smooth out adverse RNG. Evasion averages out to a lot of mitigated damage, but if you don't cover your bad rng string and die, needing a revive and working off of 2 AP that turn makes you really useless and likely to die repeatedly. Maximum effective health means max health, armor and resistances. And since the best armors have a strength requirement, it's just mandatory for a tanky build. Other people have told you how to get resistances. I'll just say you don't really get it until mid-late game. So it takes a while not to feel a bit squishy against the few energy/elemental damage enemies and is only the more reason why max health through strength is mandatory for (early) tankiness.


Also, your math about hit chance simplifies the problem far too much. It only holds if you went from 100% hit chance(which is impossible since the game caps at 95%) down to 85%. The further away your starting point is from 100, the more damaging hit chance loss is.

e.g. going from 100% hit chance to 75% hit chance averages out to a 25% damage reduction, not accounting for bad rng string complete misses on the strike meter.

Going from 50% hit chance to 25% hit chance is a 50% damage reduction on average.

You are severely undervaluing the value of awareness as a result, particularly for rifles. If somehow you magically overshot 95% hit chance on any and all target to the point you feel you lose offensive value from awareness, you can just use a shortened barrel weapon modifier which scales insanely well with burst fire weapons to trade some hit(-10% hit) for more weapon damage(+20 base weapon dmg). SMGs also have lower base hit chance than rifle and are the best weapons available to a rifle user at different points in the game. Finding an early ripper from the few places you can get vanilla end game weapons early can carry your entire run.

[Heau]

Effective health is generally defined as a measure of the total unmitigated damage you can endure before dying.

Its taken as a measure of robustness against poor rng. I.e. if a long string of enemy attacks hit you because you don't have 100% avoidance and therefore, such a thing will happen at some point, how much can you endure. And in W3 in particular, with it being a turn-based game with extremely high healing capabilities at relatively low cost, what matters is to push your effective health high enough not to die in one enemy turn.

You keep thinking in terms of averages. But it takes a lot more than one turn of events to converge to the mean.

It is a lot more important than the net average damage mitigation you can achieve in just about all games. First get your effective health high enough to to mitigate bad rng, then look to further improve your over RNG based mitigation to make your resources (mana in rpgs, AP in turn-based, items and/or cooldowns depending on context, etc.) more efficient and to lower the odds of those worst-case scenarios happening in the first place. In a game where healing do a % of max health rather than a flat amount, max health is fairly efficient anyway.

There's also ample unavoidable damage from explosions and such which aren't mitigated by evasion. I'm not saying evasion is bad. I'm saying you just can't neglect strength, armor and resistances for tankiness. healing twice as a worst case scenario costs 6 AP. Reviving, costs about 11 AP to the dead guy and 5 or 6 AP to the reviver also applying a heal.

[saycheese]

In regards to hit chance, there is really no reason not to pump up Awareness on all your ranged companions. Many enemies on SJ have less than 95% hit chance when they are out in the open, let alone when they are behind cover or at odd angles/elevation. I wouldn't prioritize it early on but eventually you'll want to max it out.

In regards to Charisma, I value it highly on Brawlers and SMG because I use their Torrent Strikes often and because I also use these two characters to powerlevel the rest of my team. I set Charisma to 10 on both of these characters as soon as possible.

I value Charisma moderately for Melee and HMG. I use their Torrent Strikes more sparingly since they can't build up Strike Meter quite as fast as Brawlers and SMG. These two typically have 2 Charisma for much of the game and then get bumped up to 7 by end game.

I don't value Charisma much for Small Arms and Sniper. Small Arms has Trick Shot to quickly generate Strike Meter and I found that having high Charisma made very little to no difference in combat. Many Sniper rifles have built-in Strike Meter generation so even with low Charisma, you can build up Strike Meter at decent pace so long as you are shooting twice per turn. Both of these archetypes have Charisma set to 2 for the entire game. I use Lucia for Small Arms and she's able to build Strike Meter at a decent rate with just 2 Charisma. With Trick Shot, you'll be able to use her Torrent Strike once or twice per turn.

[valium]

The attacks that go through evasion can be entirely avoided by focusing down those that can do it, or stun them, or whatever else to take them from the fight. Then avoid traps/barrels.

Strength is necessary for melee builds, of course, that is how you do damage, and what is needed for the best armors, but it is not getting you as much survivability as stacking as much evasion as you can.

You will get enough attribute points to max speed/coordination/charisma/strength on brawlers, and speed/coordination/intelligence/strength on blade/blunt builds.

[Big E]

Originally posted by saycheese:

You don't need to invest in Speed if you make your Brawler super tanky with high armor, crit/elemental resistances, and hit points. If any of these things are lacking, you won't be able to tank hits on SJ.

Worst take for a brawler imaginable.
Speed is the primary defensive stat.
Charisma is their primary "offensive" stat. Brawler damage is non-existent the early game. They pump out stuns and whatever status you attach to their weapon.
Don't make a character to "take hits" on SJ. A single enemy will down your 500hp-60 armor tank and laugh at you with their 80% crit chance and double pen.
WL3 is an action economy. Stun, Evasion, anything that reduces hit, crit, or AP in enemies(demoralize/suppression combo is insanely strong). And as always, death is the best CC.

I run a brawler AND Melee in SJ, they pump out stuns and status effects. More than viable, they're strong. Just don't waste time with breaking for armor or HP on SJ if another stat is available.

[Big E]

Originally posted by valium:

You will not get away with just high armor and health in the DLCs, which is the hardest content in the game. Things there will just hit too hard, you need to straight up avoid being hit at all. Which means high evasion, and stunning.

+1
Don't listen to anyone telling you otherwise. Having a "tank" is a noob-trap in WL3.

[Heau]

Originally posted by Big E:

Originally posted by saycheese:

You don't need to invest in Speed if you make your Brawler super tanky with high armor, crit/elemental resistances, and hit points. If any of these things are lacking, you won't be able to tank hits on SJ.

Worst take for a brawler imaginable.
Speed is the primary defensive stat.
Charisma is their primary "offensive" stat. Brawler damage is non-existent the early game. They pump out stuns and whatever status you attach to their weapon.
Don't make a character to "take hits" on SJ. A single enemy will down your 500hp-60 armor tank and laugh at you with their 80% crit chance and double pen.
WL3 is an action economy. Stun, Evasion, anything that reduces hit, crit, or AP in enemies(demoralize/suppression combo is insanely strong). And as always, death is the best CC.

I run a brawler AND Melee in SJ, they pump out stuns and status effects. More than viable, they're strong. Just don't waste time with breaking for armor or HP on SJ if another stat is available.

Tanks are noob traps only because the actual solution to making a true tank isn't all that intuitive.

You clearly haven't figured out how to make a proper tank but found success playing melee as CC bots. The secret sauce to true tanks is crit resistance. Primarily from cyborg tech trinket. Both are entirely viable. The game isn't so difficult not to offer a lot of leeway in builds anyway. Hell, you can make a true tank either a cc bot or a high dps brawler since that depends mainly on whether you go int or charisma as 4th stat.

My last playthrough, my super tanky brawler soloed the patriarch's daughter at the track for fun.

The true tanky version however gives you a much better protection against encounters you don't have initiative to. There's no ironman in this game so reload is just a click away and people don't care too much about that. But it is certainly one possible angle for minmaxing to want to play the entire game without any reload and hopefully with as little gruesome res-chain cycle recovery fights. Proper tanky builds let you do that.

[saycheese]

Originally posted by Big E:

Originally posted by saycheese:

You don't need to invest in Speed if you make your Brawler super tanky with high armor, crit/elemental resistances, and hit points. If any of these things are lacking, you won't be able to tank hits on SJ.

Worst take for a brawler imaginable.
Speed is the primary defensive stat.
Charisma is their primary "offensive" stat. Brawler damage is non-existent the early game. They pump out stuns and whatever status you attach to their weapon.
Don't make a character to "take hits" on SJ. A single enemy will down your 500hp-60 armor tank and laugh at you with their 80% crit chance and double pen.
WL3 is an action economy. Stun, Evasion, anything that reduces hit, crit, or AP in enemies(demoralize/suppression combo is insanely strong). And as always, death is the best CC.

I run a brawler AND Melee in SJ, they pump out stuns and status effects. More than viable, they're strong. Just don't waste time with breaking for armor or HP on SJ if another stat is available.

I ran both Brawler and Melee on SJ as well and the Brawler did fine being built as a tanky companion. Your own experience will vary depending on how far you go towards making your Brawler tanky but I personally chose everything I could (background perks, equipment, armor mods, skills, AW pets, etc) to make my Brawler tanky. I even had maxxed Armorsmith on another character for the bonus to armor. As I stated previously, you need very high defensive stats in all areas to survive hits on SJ and your mention of 60 Armor is actually pretty low. I dont have the game installed anymore to check but I think my Brawler was in the 80 to 90 armor range IIRC.

Why would you want to make your Brawler tanky? I did it because it allowed me to skip Speed which in turn allowed me to max out COO, INT, STR, and CHA.

You then have a flexible Brawler that can tank hits and dish out damage (from high INT/STR) or CC (from high CHA) as needed.

You don't have to make your Brawler tanky to have success with him but to state that you can't play him tanky is just false and short-sighted.

[Big E]

Originally posted by saycheese:

I ran both Brawler and Melee on SJ as well and the Brawler did fine being built as a tanky companion. Your own experience will vary depending on how far you go towards making your Brawler tanky but I personally chose everything I could (background perks, equipment, armor mods, skills, AW pets, etc) to make my Brawler tanky. I even had maxxed Armorsmith on another character for the bonus to armor. As I stated previously, you need very high defensive stats in all areas to survive hits on SJ and your mention of 60 Armor is actually pretty low. I dont have the game installed anymore to check but I think my Brawler was in the 80 to 90 armor range IIRC.

Why would you want to make your Brawler tanky? I did it because it allowed me to skip Speed which in turn allowed me to max out COO, INT, STR, and CHA.

You then have a flexible Brawler that can tank hits and dish out damage (from high INT/STR) or CC (from high CHA) as needed.

You don't have to make your Brawler tanky to have success with him but to state that you can't play him tanky is just false and short-sighted.

Link a video or playthrough of this working? My experience in 400 hours is that a single Godfisher Harvester can down my melee tank, 565 HP, 76 armor, 40% crit resist in a single turn on SJ.
A harvester has 12AP, 175 base hit chance, 230-290 flat damage, 70% crit chance, and 2.2x crit damage. A single crit getting through is insta-down for everyone but the tank, and since they swing 3-4 times, converting 2 hits will more often than not, down a tank.
This again, is a single enemy.
I would be thrilled to see a video of your brawler tanking hits in a big fight like the Steeltown finale or the Godfisher farm in Yuma.