Nimble perk: build advice

[mrbunnyban]

Heya. With the new perks in place, I thought I would try some of the redesigned perks, in this case Duelist and Nimble. I figured that Nimble should work well with a lightweight high initiative build that uses Nimble, Dodge and Duelist. I figured it should work well with weapons which do not have much armor piercing, namely swords and cleavers. Maybe daggers too but dagger doesn’t need duelist. Throw in Footwork and you’d have a brother well suited for hunting down enemies in the backline after the enemy frontlines have been tied up.

My nimble dagger brother is doing sort of okay because his dagger has zero weight (this brother does not have duelist). My sword brother is not complete so not sure about that. My cleaver brother though… only once I actually got the Nimble perk do I realise cleavers weight a tonne. Even stuffing the brother in lightweight armor does not seem to make nimble worthwhile (maybe 28% chance?).

I’m a little bummed out. The cleaver is the best weapon to benefit from Duelist so that every regular hit causes bleed. Maybe I should have treated him like a 2-hander?

My other problem is that in order to get initiative to good levels, I had to push up only initiative, health, fatigue and of course melee attack. As long as they don’t get hit Dodge will provide the defence bonus. After the first hit however they will die like a fly. I try to have them hold a kite shield until they engage then use quick hands to put it away once in melee in order to increase the odds they are not targetted. But kite shields are really heavy and significantly reduce nimble’s effects, even when in backpack!

Do you folks use the new Nimble perk? How has your experience of it been so far?

[nope100500]

I don’t use nimble builds myself, so this is theory-craft.

I think ‘strong’ perk is the key. https://steamcommunity.com/app/365360/discussions/0/135510148090203490/
Dagger (0) + named leather armor/helmet (within 20 budget) + strong (-10) => about 80% nimble remaining.

Stat-wise I’d go for usual Melee and both defenses, plus fatigue on bad rolls for 3 primary stats. Rest just must good enough from recruitment. You need other stats, but can’t skimp on attack or defenses.
Def from dodge is nice, but even best initiative roll of 6 gives you 6*0.15 = 0.9 of both defs, that is lost on 1st hit.
Directly taking even 2 point-roll of def gives more and won’t go away on 1st hit.
You’ll have enough initiative to go first against most enemies due to light armor anyway, I think.

Finding right recruit is going to be hell though – talents in melee att and least one of defenses, with decent starting values in all other stats and ‘strong’ trait.

[mrbunnyban]

Whaaaaat? That tip on the strong trait is VERY interesting information, thank you for sharing.

[Wargasm]

Yeah. The Strong trait also means you can wear armour with up to 10 fatigue without it lowering your initiative or Dodge bonus.

I haven’t yet got to try out the new Nimble, but I think that thieves and gamblers would be ideal for it, since they (especially thieves) tend to start with higher melee and ranged defence skills, as well as higher initiative.

With the old Nimble (I mean the recent old Nimble, not the olde old one that doubled melee defence from all non-shield sources), I managed to get one thief to have typically ~70 defence in battle against both melee and ranged attacks (for the ranged defence, that included the typical bonus from the Anticipation perk). That was from high base defences, high starting initiative (bolstered by 3-star talent so that the Dodge bonuses were +20 even in a mail hauberk – the penalty to initiative and fatigue having been reduced by the Brawny perk), and also the +10% confident morale bonuses (courtesy of a sergeant blowing a trumpet in the first round of battle) and the Lone Wolf bonuses (activated by withdrawing from the pack after attaining confident morale). Bonuses around 10% don’t mean much when a stat is low, but they become significant when it’s already high. In the new game, the Lone Wolf defence bonuses are increased to 15%, and so it might be worth taking for a nimble dodging character who already has high defences and just needs an extra boost to make hits almost impossible. The 15% resolve bonus could help with attaining confident morale now that the Rally the Troops skill no longer raises morale beyond steady (and with avoiding dips in morale due to being surrounded). Gamblers tend to have high resolve as well as high initiative and (sometimes) high defence skills. The only problems with using Lone Wolf to bolster defences now are that (a) the enemy AI tends to be more defensive, so that a Lone Wolf character can’t readily be used to catch archers etc., and (b) the Underdog perk only nullifies 3 of the possible 6 hit bonuses from opponents surrounding a character (although high initiative and the Overwhelm perk could compensate for that).

But, to get Nimble to work, you will need a character to have good base melee defence, because even a +20 Dodge bonus would mean that uber-skilled opponents (e.g. swordmasters) might still have a hit chance close to 75% (and 75% of 75% is still above 50%).

I wouldn’t use the Footwork perk for such a character, because with super-high defences you should usually be able to stroll through the melee at will without getting hit (and without using so much fatigue).

The perks I’d choose for a nimble character would be:

– Definite: Nimble, Dodge, Anticipation, Overwhelm
– Probable: Brawny (if wearing any meaningful amount of armour), Underdog, Pathfinder, Adrenaline (so that they can use Overwhelm against direwolves and necrosavants)
– Possible: Lone Wolf, Fortified Mind (to make it easier to gain the +10% confident morale boosts, and in case of morale checks from being surrounded), Hold Out (in case of one-off hits inflicting injuries that lower defences), Nine Lives (again just in case of one-off hits, and since hit points probably won’t be high on this character), Weapon Mastery (maybe daggers for greater nimbleness, initiative and overwhelming ability), Duellist (if using a one-handed weapon other than a dagger), Reach Advantage (if using a two-handed weapon), Gifted (just to get their defences that little bit higher), or maybe even Taunt (so that they can lure enemies away from vulnerable allies or opponents)

The main attributes I’d increase would be melee defence and ranged defence, and after that I’d go for initiative and resolve. I wouldn’t bother much with attack skills, since their whole purpose is to be hard to hit themselves (and to distract opponents for the benefit of allies with better attack skills). I also wouldn’t bother much with hit points (since they should only get hit once in a blue moon, if effective) but I might use the Hold Out or Nine Lives perks as security. Neither would I bother much with max fatigue, since more max fatigue equals more potential for initiative to plummet.

[ImzFrozen]

You might want to check this: https://steamcommunity.com/app/365360/discussions/0/135510393201997782/

[mrbunnyban]

Thanks for the responses and links guys. Certainly gives me some food for thought. I’ll keep playing with my badly perked up brotehr buut but there is much I can do to improve my builds in the future.

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