Battle Brother Builds

Some Battle Brothers builds I have been playing with thought I would share and get some opinions on what other people are having success with.

The Game has been updated so that this guide is really no longer relevant to the game's current build, I will probably update once the game has finally been fully released.

Rapid Firing Archers

This is the build that I have been running on my Archers 6 points in Offense with the remaining 4 in Utility. Fast Adaptation, Sundering Strikes, and Executioner all give the build some extra power to get it going. For Tier II Berserk is a must, it gives you the extra AP on kill to advance on your enemies to continue the chain killing, and sometimes you just use it to equip your third quiver for the turn in cases where you shot 20 arrows off in one turn Quick Hands in the utlity tree covers the cost of your first one but sometimes against masses of unshielded enemies it can happen.

For Tier III I take Perfect Focus this is one of the major parts that ties together this combo and actually allows for these archers to devestate lesser armored enemies, and sometimes take down Orc Warriors or to the brink of death.

For the 4 Points in Utility tree Quick Hands as previously mentioned to allow you a free quiver swap and sometimes if the enemy surrounds you, pulling out your melee weapon allows you to chain kill just as easily sometimes. The other two Tier I perks I take are Bags and Belts to carry two additional quivers and usually a sword and blunt weapon of some type and Pathfinder not necessarily because it's required but because the other perks you would pick are arguably useless on this build.

The other crucial part of this combo that allows it to work and let you almost endlessly fire arrows is Tier II Battle Flow this will reduce your current fatigue by 33% upon kill.

At levelup on my Archers I would only improve three stats Fatigue, Melee Skill and Ranged Skill.

The argument could be made that Melee Skill is not really important on Archers and while I kind of agree, mine are from Sellsword backgrounds so in my mind it was a tossup between a Defense Skill to even out the killing power or just fully go Glass Cannon in case anyone does ever reach them.

Fatigue scaling is important to really let these guys shine my archers have around 120-140 fatigue which allows them 3-4 Aimed Shots and 5-7 Quick Shots in order to start their Chain Killing fatigue restoring shenanigans.

Drunken Sword Saint

Now these guys are also 6/0/4 perk tree killing machines but instead of killing enemies from afar they get up close and do it with scary effectiveness.

This character in particular works very well for his job because he has the trait 'Drunkard' which gives him +10% Damage, +5 Resolve, -5 Melee Skill, and -10 Range Skill. The Damage really helps this guy shine because he is after all only using a one handed sword which gives him Double Grip and affords him an additional +25% Damage modifier. It's a very noticeable difference in damage just to show you the increase I have a brother in my group with an identical perk setup and leveling to this guy but his damage range with the same weapon is 45-74 meanwhile the 'Drunken Double Gripper' has a damage range of 61-112.

So let's talk about the perk choices Tier I pretty much only has 4 choices to me I don't usually mess around with destroying shields especially not on my guys running Noble Swords since I can't, I don't usually stun anyone deliberately at this point in the game because why stun them when you can just kill them? This leaves Fast Adaptation, Executioner, Sundering Strikes, and Bloody Harvest. Now if you don't have a weapon that can hit multi hex tiles that you are planning to use on the character that makes this decision easy and you take all except for Bloody Harvest. Now if you were going to do this build with a Flail perhaps I would probably switch out Fast Adaptation for Bloody Harvest.

Tier II There's not really much 'choice' here either, Berserk is a must for almost any class that already spent 3 points in the Offense Tree and the only other thing we want is Full Force which gives us yet another Percent damage based increase dependent on our current armor 'Heraldric Mail' the difference is huge Double Grip Drunky's damage is 61-112 with the perk and Heraldric Mail equipped, naked however his damage decreases to 61-68. The other 4 perks 2 of which are literally useless on melee only characters, compared to the other two that are essentially almost just as useless when it comes to practicality, again Debilitation might 'work' but I just plan on killing anything that would be deemed a large enough threat to debilitate. But on characters that can't gain the full benefit of Full Force, yet even in something like Chain Mail I would probably like it more, I could see someone maybe opting to pick Head Hunter just because.

(The Math on the 10% calculation didn't really make sense on why it would be a 54 point max damage difference when Heraldric Mail should technically by itself only increase max damage by 32 10% of 320 = 32, apparently %Dmg modifiers stack?)

Tier III Perfect Focus again will combo this with Battle Flow to walk through your enemies.

For this guy's utility points they are the exact same as his brother archers, Bags and Belts to carry additional weapons unhindered because if this build works well you are going to break that weapon of yours you start the battle with unless you swap it out and I have accidentally broken weapons in one turn by chain killing enough enemies.

Secondly Quick Hands to allow the free action of swapping weapons once per turn.

Pathfinder allows us to move with less Fatigue and AP hindrance, and frankly because the other perks are for my purposes useless with this character.

Tier II Utility brings us back to the awesome Battle Flow, which again ties this wombo combo killing machine together and will allow you to march forward and kill your enemies until your AP doesn't allow you to move any further and you killed your way into and out of melee range.

When stat leveling this build I leveled Fatigue, Melee Skill and Melee Defence.

Having a large pool of fatigue allows you better chance to combo off and slay hordes of enemies, Melee Skill will allow you to hit more often against the more defense minded foes, and for situtations where you weren't able to kill your way to safety having a good amount of Melee Defence will help you survive, and as long as you're getting hit in the chest you can tank quite a few hits.

For instance with Heraldric Mail, a Noble Sword, and plain Hood I have 93 Fatigue which allows me to take a step forward activate perfect focus swing 5 times with my sword each attack costing 10 fatigue and upon kill you're refunded 33% current fatigue, and 4 AP from Berserk which allows you to move into range of another victim and repeat the process.

Captains

So while the other two classes are there for killing your enemies like any respectable mercenary would be, this next build doesn't really shine by itself and yet is essential not only in my composition but I can't imagine a team composition that doesn't afford this style of character one of it's twelve slots or more likely two of it's twelve slots.



Now my build for this guy isn't really what I would call 'optimal' wanting what I do now, but I also haven't found the right character to replace him yet, waiting for a 'Fearless' Trait Adventurous Noble. So this is what I currently have for the moment.

The most important part of this character is his ability 'Rally' found in Tier III of the Utility Tree, it costs 8 AP to use and reduces the fatigue of allies by half of the Rallying character's Resolve in this case I have 84 Resolve so any allies with 4 tiles of this character will have 42 fatigue restored upon using Rally.

This enables 'Free' activations of Perfect Focus allowing many more attacks than you would normally be allowed for those builds you may have read before this one. If you can make it so that this guy's turn comes after all your perfect focuses even better, low Initiative not bad in this merc's case.

Captain is also probably another trait one would want to run on this character seeing as how you already would want to be leveing this merc's resolve almost every level, and I in particular neglect leveling resolve on my other characters because I feel this guy can just share his to the group.

Of the Tier I Utility perks you don't want to be the Merc at level 11 with Student but other than that I can see the validity behind any other choices except maybe shield bash and I dislike taunt personally because my style is more about killing the enemy. Frankly this guy just wants to be Rallying the troops any time he can be anyways so if he can't do that I generally just want him to be able to take hits and throw some punches via two range tile weapons and the crossbow.

In terms of character flexibility I believe the Mercs who main the Utility tree have some more flexibility than other characters because the Utility Tier II choices are great, unfortunately this guy never gets to shine as the hero but he is such a great support who allows for crazy things to happen, and sustain in fights where you are seriously outnumbered you'd wear yourself out otherwise. I don't even wanna level his replacement, being without Rally even for a short time would be a huge combat effectiveness nerf to my company.



Again this guy is also not as good as he could be for me but suitable replacements are hard to come by and he's still something the party doesn't want to go without.

Tier III of the Utility tree 'Inspiring Presence' grants all of your characters start every battle at confident morale unless prohibited by character traits, don't have party members with the insecure trait if you can avoid it. Confident morale gives everyone who can benefit from it +5 Melee Skill, Melee Defense, Ranged Skill, Ranged Defense. Which brings even more value to characters who consider the Tier I Defense perk 'Hold Out' which doubles the benefits so it would be +10 to each of those stats instead. Which can be better for some characters whose initiative doesn't work well with 'Dodge' or who don't wear enough armor to maximize the benefits from 'Battle Forged'.

Characters who run Inspiring Presence and let me reiterate this is the most your group can benefit from a single perk so not running one of these guys is a real waste. They bring excellent value to the party albeit could not stand one on one against other more combat oriented members of your group, they themselves can take some interesting build paths after the initial 6 point investment in Utility.

Again I don't really like what I did in particular with this guy he functions as a behind the frontline support who uses a bow and will sometimes switch to a billhook or just go in for kills himself since he is quite tanky.

An optimal version build of him I could see myself using would probably be some form of 4/0/6 0/4/6 building depending on what I felt the group needed to round out on.

Knights

These guys are here to take hits, and cleave through swathes of enemies.



This is one of the most recent Knights I have leveled up and wanted to experiment with Perfect Focus over Killing Frenzy which my other Knights currently use, Perfect Focus is just a much more satisfying ability however you have to build the character appropriately in order for it to be really good and it's not always as satisfying when I'm more used to the Battle Flow, Perfect Focus combo.

The Killing Frenzy allow your damage to spike pretty good after scoring a kill and then it allows you to maintain it so long as you keep killing. The Offense build is pretty much the standard I feel on most melee characters with maybe some exceptions Bloody Harvest for those AoE's, Sundering Strikes to help penetrate that armor, and I kinda wish I chose Executioner over Fast Adaptation at this point in the game.

Berserk again is a must and Full Force just better if you're planning on wearing heavy armor than the other options currently present in Tier II of Offense.



Now for Tier I of the Defense tree There's really only 4 options for Two-Handed weapon users considering two of the perks are related to shield users. I feel Battle Forged is a must, reducing armor damage by 20% can save your life or prolong the effectiveness of your armor, and save you money from repairs. Dodge is also great 15% of your initiative added as melee/ranged defense until first hit more in line with my style of not getting hit. Hold Out as mentioned in the captain build is good for doubling the Confident bonus that all my guys start out with each battle so I prefer it over Colossus which gives 25% hit points I'd rather just have more combat stats as opposed to 17 more HP which rarely ever are touched anyways.

Yeah, every once in a while a knife wielding enemy or Lost Soul might get a hit on my HP pool but for most enemies you usually don't have to worry about direct HP loss maybe if this becomes more of the norm HP will be more valuable but as the game stands now I'm not sold on HP.



Lastly I take Fortified Mind because Lost Souls are annoying with my build and these guys make it so they are pretty much useless and also not only that but I don't particularily like Rotation very much any time I have a guy in danger I can just have my group kill their way out of it. Nimble doesn't apply to two handed weapons. I could care less if they somehow manage to crit my head although it's scary, it doesn't happen often enough to warrant me picking a perk to stop it I feel, Anticipation kind of silly considering these guys can take arrows llke needles, and on my first playthrough I really liked the idea of Nine Lives however it's not all that practical I feel especially when offense is your best defense. Frankly I can see when they introduce more fear/mind control enemies this becoming a mainstay in more builds.

For stats leveling I mainly focus on Fatigue, Melee Skill and Melee Defense.

(Drey is kind of the exception to Hold Out over Colossus because he was one of my first Hedge Knights back when Confident morale wasn't guaranteed like it is now, so it just made more sense to have a perk that would actually always benefit me.)

Crusader's Adventures

Recently discovered place Supposedly (Even)


Outnumbered and Surrounded 3 to 1 against the undead...easy



Victory



Before Archer Volleys



After two archers averaging 3.5 kills can get way more ridiculous than this when facing masses of orc young, bandits, wiedergangers/ghouls etc.



Grouped just how I want em



Magnus showing off



Cleanup

[♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥]

@Lynx(GER) Yeah this is ancient kinda just keep it as a relic, for a reminder on some old bros and how the game used to be.

[Lynx]

Updated 2017, wtf.... is there no aktual Guide there?

[♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥]

@ÆRGØ Haha yeah I have really fond memories of the old builds of the game where one of your guys could chain kill 10+ enemies in a single turn, sort of miss it but totally understand it was probably for the best to change it.

[Hadrian Jenkins]

We are all the OGs

[ÆRGØ]

Very interesting to see how the game used to look in the beginning.

[♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥]

Updated Guide Link ----> http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=883011975&tscn=1490802119

[Comguitoz]

@♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ where can i find it?

[♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥]

For anyone checking this Guide out still I've compiled a new guide that is actually relevant to the current state of Battle Brothers it's still a bit of a WIP but already has more information put together than this one has.

[LowFatMilk]

Cool, I just got this game and am loving it! Saw your guide and that you have like 900+ hours, so any guide and advice from a seasoned veteran like yourself will be taken very seriously and with great appreciation :)

[♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥]

@LowFatMilk Yeah, I probably will, But I'm putting some hours in to get a new feel because quite a bit has changed with this last update.