Gladiator Main Thoughts

[orthostatic]

Starting a new play-through and decided to choose a gladiator. Feels weak as hell with no end in sight, and now I'm thinking I should've just done Triarius again with the pickup gladiator later.

Earned only 3 stat points so far, all into Murmillo. Safeguard*1 and Safeguarding Stance*2. Hoping it gets better as it goes; thinking some of the weakness I perceive may come from lack of abilities on the scissor weapons I've picked up thus far.

Anyone else maining a gladiator? How's it going for you? How'd you start it off spec-wise?

[wirednight]

I started with Murmillo as well, went down and got all the passives pretty much, then jumped over to the the third tree and have just started to work on the passives there. Murmillo has the advantage of self-healing, heavy armor, and more importantly the ability to remove negative status effects from yourself, and with all the status effects that happen in this game, that seems pretty good.

That said the active skills so far seem... okay... not great but okay.

[Trolleur_Durden]

I tested a Retiarus/Provocator build during a gladiator mode run, and wasn't convinced at all by the Retiarus tree overall. Pulling enemies or pushing them back seems interesting on paper, but empirically, 99% of the time it was more efficient for met to simply kill them. The Provocator tree on the other hand is much better, and does something new, which is playing with the morale mechanics. Might not be that useful in lower difficulties where you can one-shot enemies with ease, but on Insane, I can definitely see the the benefit of routing a few enemies that you can't kill during your turn.

I've now started yet another playthrough on Insane/Ironman, and I am planning a Murmillo/Provocator build with my MC gladiator, with Daeneira staying a Princeps. So far my character isn't really shining because the enemy damage is so high that even with 4 armour, his HP drops fast. But I'm hopeful it's gonna get better later on, with more retaliation chances.

So far I find the gladiator slightly below average, especially when it comes to the last tier of abilites. All classes have at least one very strong tier 4 option (like Barrage, Finisher or Warcry), but the Gladiator has nothing especially spectacular, besides maybe Terrifying presence that can be exploited with clever positioning to demoralize enemies with ease. It's ok to have one for a more versatile group, but I wouldn't take more than one in my party.

That being said, I have a question regarding Improvised armor: does it replenish your armor if it was shredded? For example, if I have 0/2 armor and I use the skill, I'll get 1/3 armor for one round. Once the turn is finished, does the armor goes back to 0/2 or does it stays at 1/2?

[Gonzo]

Only problem I have with using the main character as a gladiator is the MC's background. It's highly unlikely (nay impossible) for the eldest son of a Roman family to be a Gladiator (unless he was cast out from the family for illegal activities and sold into slavery etc, which don't gel with the main game's plotline). Granted it's the role player in me which is causing me to bite off my nose in spite of my face for limiting the gameplay options, but it just feels "wrong". Likewise using Daeneira as a "Gladiatrix", would also be an extremely rare occurrence (yes they did exist, and were even banned from 200AD onwards). At best they would have featured as "Bestiarii" (fighting animals), or in Gladiatrix vs Gladiatrix matches as a novelty match (they certainly wouldn't have been in any matches fighting men). But now it's the historian in me also self limiting the game. But I feel indeed that making Bestia Tabat the Gladiator companion would make more sense (it's even in his backstory).

[AlexMBrennan]

Ok, but Expeditions Rome is clearly alternative history where Marian reforms never happened so it seems a bit silly to expect the game to follow real history in all other areas.

[wirednight]

Originally posted by Gonzo:

Only problem I have with using the main character as a gladiator is the MC's background. It's highly unlikely (nay impossible) for the eldest son of a Roman family to be a Gladiator.

That's not exactly true. While it is unlikely, and it was frowned upon in Roman Society, it wasn't totally uncommon. It was also "common" for a female of a high born family to become a female gladiator. Now when I say common in this case, it means that out of incredibly rare, but historically documented female gladiators, some were indeed high born females, who were using it as a way to not be pigeon holed into roman society.

When a high born male however became a gladiator, it was usually a fixed match (like Claudius did in Gladiator, or how the one archer in the beginner arena in the game was protected. It was more common in the provenience where the son of a Roman governor or other official would do it to stop being bored, but it did happen.

I like this article for female gladiators. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/35/female-gladiators-in-ancient-rome/

So from a actual historical standpoint, it makes more sense for a female character to play a gladiator then any of the other classes, because in this case it looks like it did actually happen.

[B Unit]

I haven't had a chance to play one yet but did fire it up to look at their skill tree. It's basically a tank type character that cant use a shield but has a counter strike chance instead. I'd rather the shield. Its other skills seem to revolve around morale damage and manipulating the enemies position - kind of disappointing if Im being honest.

[wirednight]

Originally posted by sweetchilliheat:

I haven't had a chance to play one yet but did fire it up to look at their skill tree. It's basically a tank type character that cant use a shield but has a counter strike chance instead. I'd rather the shield. Its other skills seem to revolve around morale damage and manipulating the enemies position - kind of disappointing if Im being honest.

I kind of agree with this but not fully. The shield is what makes the Princeps such an amazing class, is it's ability to simply ignore the over-abundance of archers. Maybe not their status effects, but the near-constant rain of arrows makes them useful.

On the other hand the Gladiator will pretty much ignore the over-abundance of status effects which the game tosses at you. Between the amount of arrows that do various effects, and the tons of torches, pilium, oil, poison effects that can be picked up and used, it's nice to have a class that just shrugs these off. It's self heal helps with the rest of the damage it takes too.

Otherwise the other skills... yeah kind of disappointing with the rest of the active skills out there.

[Atma]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

Ok, but Expeditions Rome is clearly alternative history where Marian reforms never happened so it seems a bit silly to expect the game to follow real history in all other areas.

Oh man, this is weird, but I think we... agree?

[raphoux69]

What make you say that the marian reforms never happened in Expedition Rome ?

[0027]

I bought 3 glads, 12/0/8 8/12/0 and 3/5/12

Sadly not able to level one from scratch, which really blows, otherwise I would choose something like 9/1/9 with 1 point to spare somewhere

The self healing blows, its 10% and its garbage, and takes away your good buffs.

Often times its best to just kill the enemy as some one above mentioned.

The best thing i found is dropping a smoke bomb, and then taunting guys in. You get to retaliate and ignore, and then they just miss. Its GOD mode. Smoke bomb only has 2 charges and must be constantly replenished though (items should just replenish auto when u visit camp, very annoying to have to click, that is a quality of life thing they need to change cause its just a waste of actual time)

They have nothing for ranged.

Best to manipulate around fire.

Seem to do virtually no dmg.

The talent to make them wear heavy armor is garbage too, its a total waste. The reason is, their gladiator armor, which is the only armor that has RETALIATION, is NOT HEAVY... so to wear it, you do not need the talent, and NOT WEARING it, is totally pointless, because you want as much retaliation as possible

We are talking 22% retaliation vs 1 armor and -1 speed for heavy

NOT WORTH

They also stole the debuff talent from princeps, gave it to the glad... and gave the princeps a low and high cover talent, completely forgetting that they had "protect"

making an end tier skill COMPLETELY USELESS... why on EARTH would you want to SHARE or TAKE DEBUFFS, ,onto the tank, with no way to cleanse them?

They didnt think that out what so ever.

The debuff removal + protect was one of my fave aspects of the princeps

Devs gotta relook at this tree business

[Trolleur_Durden]

The upgrade of the heal skill gives a buff allowing you to parry attacks when retaliation procs, and the upgrade of that upgrade allows you to parry ranged attacks. I'm pretty sure it's by far the best out of the 3 stances, because it's possible to have a fairly decent retaliation percentage chance.

The talent to wear heavy armour isn't great indeed, considering that I tend to favor lighter armours anyway because of the lesser movement malus. Keep in mind that it also allows you to wear heavy helmets, but considering there's retaliation % on gladiator helmet too, I'll agree with you that it's garbage.

And yeah, the main issue I have with the class atm is the lack of damage. It's simple: there's literaly nothing in the tree oriented towards damage-dealing, making the gladiator even worse than the Princeps when it comes to damage dealing.

I'm just starting act 2 on my Insane run and so far, my MC gladiator was noticeably the worst of my team. Luckily there's companions to carry you. I'll wait until the end of the game before making my mind about the class, but I suspect it's not gonna be really positive.

[kooto]

Not only lack of damage but gladiator must use crapy gear to get retaliation %. Retaliation is the main feature to do more damage but for that you need to take damage. Retaliation does not work against ranged, against "ranged-melee", cant retalate if you are disarmed. And on top of that scissors cant be modified(it is bug most likely).

How to make gladiator better? I would change to 100% retaliation chance without gear dependency.

[Trolleur_Durden]

I've recently discovered that he can actually use pikes like the triarus, and the gladiator trident that you get at the beginning of act 2 has retaliation chances too. This makes the damage and positioning much better, because you can attack from further away. Haven't tested the retaliation with it though, so I don't know if it can happen at 1 hex of distance.

[wirednight]

The main problem with the gladiator, and I've said this above, is that it's not great at anything, it's a jack-of-all trades class. They simply grabbed features and skills from all the other trees (except the Sagittarius) and crammed them all together on three trees with little rhyme or reason, added a few newish morale skills, and called it good.

It's a patch work class with very little though or direction for it. It's why you can wear Heavy Armor but there are not heavy armor with Retaliation. You can see this in other classes (like the above Preceps comment about cover) where they thought it would be cool, but didn't really think about synergy.

Because the gladiator is just a patch work class, the synergy issue is compounded.

[GoMeZ-T.T ™©®]

I played the class. and I like it. it is good and useful. but yeah right, it is not really better then the rest. but parry is good. and taunt I also like. the only thing that bad is, that it lacks movement. I can never get into position with that class. which is just CRAP. they should give it 2 extra movement, to get closer into the melee brawls.