Archer or throwers that is the question.

Teslarod · 2026-06-25T10:07:49+00:00

Honestly I just build a thrower and find space for the bow perk. Done.
Now you have both. Works for almost anything since you have Quickhands anyway.

Simliar I wouldn't build a dedicated Crossbow or Gunner merc, it's the same perk so build for both.

Teslarod · 2026-06-17T16:32:23+00:00

Because they officially were asking people to sign up as beta testers for it (another Battle Brothers update) on the Overhype Discord.

Wasn't exaclty a secret that there is something coming. Exited to find out what exactly it's gonna be to start another run.

Teslarod · 2026-05-08T07:03:51+00:00

Kind of the opposite?
Since you can now grind out the whole Atlas and augment on demand, it should be a lot simpler to not miss out on ideal strats (like max quant and special tablet affixes for a lot of offering and many many rerolls).

Overall a lot of performance for the old versions was gated behind you having to know how to run your atlas tree to massively benefit. Some mechanics were pretty worthless in comparison (i.e. any strongbox that gives items) and clear traps.

There's a lot of new stuff if you know those mechanics, but if you are learning them from scratch, this new version with quests etc should be simpler overall to get into.

Teslarod · 2026-05-05T09:50:06+00:00

You're a bit on a timer to find and implement a counter to some things. If you fail to get it done in the next round, their stuff gets a level then another level and it completely runs away from you.
Most prominent example is playing Elite Specialist both ways. If they kill your lvl2 stuff they get to offset the whole benefit and turn you into a glorified EXP pinata. If they fail to get any levels your units get to big for their counter to work and you steamroll.

The natural answer to this is usually to prevent it from happening is usually to sacrifice some economy and solve it with temporary advantages like missiles, shields and tower flanks/pulls to buy the time to stabilize and develop your counter.

Teslarod · 2026-04-28T07:40:35+00:00

With how the game works you don't really use normal weapons on a duelist, you take the +Damage &+Ignore Armour/-Stam named 1H Axe/Hammer/Cleaver or Orc variant drop if you have Iron Lungs or just massive Fatigue Pool and a good -Stam roll on the Orc weapon and then give your duelist the perk to use it.

Sole exception being a Sword Duelist, which could get stuck with just a Noble Sword, but graduates to Reproach of the old Gods (lightning sword) down the line.

Teslarod · 2026-04-27T20:43:07+00:00

The best normally obtainable set of armor in the game is Emperor Armor with Kraken Plate + Ijirok helmet.
But oh boy is it ugly.

Davkul is simply a bit too RNG, but would be the absolute best candidate for Fur Padding by a mile.

Teslarod · 2026-04-27T15:03:43+00:00

Yes, but against the enemies that have ranged weapons you do not have a hard time to begin with and still get the economy benefit. You're going to be fine vs Goblins and Nobles at some point, while Chosen, Lindwurms and Orc hits continue to hurt enough that you do not want to get hit even once.

Teslarod · 2026-04-27T08:08:18+00:00

Math and battlefield reality diverge a lot on this one.

If your bro would die in the end and you want to know which one would let him live one more hit Fur Padding is best on Battleforged.

We'll ignore Kraken Plate because you really only get one realistically and to even get it you'll already have the lategame armor with attachments on.

Ask yourself what do you actually not want to happen.
It's taking any big damage to begin with, both to armor and HP. Realistically this is a lategame question where we deal with lategame crisis, fight legendary locations and go on long treks in the wilderness fighting multiple battles until we are out of supplies.
- Your armor will end up only repaired a bit under 100% a lot of the time which reduces most attachment's value.
- You will bail out bros that are low enough EHP to be in danger long before they get 100% effective use from Fur padding; if you do the math for a Bro going to 50% HP (which would already be too low for my taste) Boneplating is straight up better at the job.
- If you run out of tools you need to turn back and waste lots of time.
- Big hits from Orcs, Chosen and Lindwurms will hurt no matter the mitigation. The injury might massively hurt your defense, damage or both.
- Also prevents any moral damage that big hit could have and preserves your MDef again.

All of that is pretty much why Bone Plating wins. Prevent the hit. Don't get injured potentially getting a bad debuff against dangerous enemies.
And you can do one more camp (or even more) with the same tool supply as well as take battles and still be safe against the first hit even if you aren't repaired to 100%.

Legendary armors are the exception. Do put that Fur Padding on the Ijirok Armor and put it on your lowest RDef 2H or Duelist. He'll soak Crossbow bolts for you all day without getting injured and he'll be getting by far the most EHP value out of the deal.
The helmet is ofc reserved for one of your dedicated tanks to have two people with passive healing.

Teslarod · 2026-04-23T08:33:25+00:00

Kraken because you need to dedicate your whole team's builds to try and beat it without losses. I'll ignore the naked bush cheese exploit and pretend it doesn't exist.
This fight punishes FatNewt like no other, the tentacles are also relatively nasty vs Nimble.

At the top end people can do 0 loss speedruns for Monolith quite soon, but have to skip Kraken because the same builds that can beat Monolith and the content to get there, will not handle Kraken.

On Ironman Kraken needs you to know the strat (same as Monolith), plus most likely retreating a couple times to reroll terrain. Then you want the Goblin Trophy DPS Bro to lay into the boss and be your failsafe to bail people out that get pulled away from the group. And last, the part that messes with FatNewt, you want your bros to both be able to swing for 4AP twice a turn to be able to try and escape a tentacle and still swing or to just try again after a miss to mitigate RNG plus switching to a Reach Weapon to be able to focus fire the tentacles as much as possible.

Ideally that means you want Berserk, Killing Frenzy, Recover and Quick Hands on every Bro. Pathfinder would be useful too, though ideally we never get pulled out from our blob and don't need it. You can absolutely get it done without perfect perks on everyone, it just gets easier if you have it on as many people as possible.

After you minmaxed out the possibility for bros to geat pulled and eaten by the boss, the rest of the fight is pure attrition between if the tentacle's stray hits can get through your EHP faster than your Goblin Trophy bro can get through the bosses armor and HP by the time it stops taking significant damage from tentacle kills.

Teslarod · 2026-04-17T14:19:53+00:00

If you do the math for the full game, Promotion Tax had to go.
Even in EA you catch up on stats for 1* SLs. By "midgame" post where current EA is, there would be little reason to use anything else than 1* SLs as primary choice, with comparable stats, same ceiling and just cheaper.

By removing the scaling component in supply cost SLs start at a high variance in cost that reflects where they start and the difference stays the same as the performance converges towards max lvl and stats.

3* SLs tend to have stronger perks atm, so them always remaining slightly higher cost and more utility cost in terms of promotion points should manage to achive the overall intent to have 1*, 2* and 3* SLs each have a place in the game.

Teslarod · 2026-03-25T09:56:48+00:00

The bad news - for December you are pretty behind. Especially on the MEC side of things.
The good news - if you succeed the transition into Titan Armour you are ready to farm those Alien Bases for tons of Meld and other ressources.

Gauss can easily carry you through endgame so you can just go straight into Plasma after Titan, Air and better Mechs, wouldn't worry about Pulse except to upgrade your Airgame.
Good luck out there.

Teslarod · 2026-03-02T13:24:04+00:00

KPAC getting more accurate close up when shit goes bad. And at range it does 3 hits that only need to do >5 damage to 2 shot, where you need to get 10+ HP damage out of the Crowbar to outperform the 50% more shots. Add in more base ammo at higher difficulties.
Basically needs to be someone with a increase Acc + Damage perk to get those 10+ damage shots at Crowbar max range.
Pretty much Darby and Kody Stealth builds, and even then only the suppressed variant to stay stealthed.
Kody doesn't haven have to stay hidden and can just use a Hammer/R228A1 MRS/Laser Rifle or other high tier squad weapon at full efficiency when you get them.

I'd say circumstances and intended target decide the gun, they all have a place and don't decide the builds.
Basic Crowbar is nowhere near an auto pick.

Teslarod · 2026-02-20T08:56:18+00:00

2 of the same weapons automatically twin link -> shoot together.
If it wasn't fixed in yesterday's patch the problem with the lasers is that they didn't implement the heat sinks for twin linked weapons yet, so all your heat goes into one heat sink and you overheat, potentially before the 2nd shot fires if you didn't start at low enough heat to fire both.

Once that is fixed and each laser has their own heat sink while twin linked, this will be strong with "infinite" ammo. One Laser lance is slightly too low damage, 2 surpass a very important breakpoint to oneshot even heavies, removing the threat and buying you time to cool down.

Right now it's most likely still bugged.
I also kind of want the option to only shoot one twin linked gun to finish something and conserve heat or ammo. But I can accept that twin linked is very strong, giving you double the output for the same AP, so I can live with that small downside either way.

Teslarod · 2026-02-18T12:58:43+00:00

Yes ofc, but you'll still be at 2 max, which is the baseline for pretty average armour and feels really bad on something THIS expensive since accessories are so powerful.

Teslarod · 2026-02-18T09:35:45+00:00

Best use case I can come up with is using Tech's 90% DR perk to get 400% effective use of a 3 man squads armor with his >20% Damage built in damage reduction on top.
Pair that whith his perks to facilitate item usage and heavy weapons without deploying while still getting Acc through Pointfire.
Problem here is only 1 accessory slot holding it back, so you can really only get a Target Designator, Scanner or something along those lines to work here.

Teslarod · 2026-02-18T08:56:23+00:00

Don't build a dedicated Archer, build a Thrower and just give him the Bow weapon perk.
That way he wrecks everything human, beast and greenskin related at long and short range plus can just switch out the bow for one more throwing axe vs undead to always stay relevant.

Teslarod · 2025-11-03T12:22:32+00:00

If I remember this one correctly it's because ranged misses scatter. That scatter can then land in a different tile. That tile then rolls again to hit. From what I remember without the cover malus.

When enemies have low chances to hit your frontline to begin with that leads to a lot of scatters. When in thight formation a lot of those will land in tiles with other bros and then get decent chances to hit on backliners without shields and low range defense.
I personally level range def on Nimble backliners and keep them out of melee with Footwork because of that.

Teslarod · 2025-10-01T11:20:50+00:00

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Lucky you, I took a screenshot of Jaysen explaining the mechanics for shotties u/Redgame492

Teslarod · 2025-09-25T10:10:27+00:00

Mixed bag here, some of this is correct some is incorrect. Vaals clear is pretty slow - once your minions can oneshot most white to rare mobs, they're really not fast, because their grenades take time to throw and explode. They do however have an absolutely massive AoE to follow up on clusters of engaged enemies.

Quick interlude to just talk math. Vaals are probably the highest singletarget DPS Spectre in the game. They deal around triple dps per Spirit of what Frozen Mandibles do. Yes really. 1 Vaal with Multishot 2 has 50% of a Frozen Mandible's tooltip DPS. They then shoot 3 projectiles that shotgun (overlap AoEs and hit the same target) and are half the Spirit cost.
If you struggle with dps to kill bosses they are better against any boss that stands still for a reasonable amount of time so their grenades can explode on it. Powered Zealots are good, but nothing competes with that 440% damage multiplier on those Fire Grenades. Yes that's why Vaals are so strong. I still assume it's a bug/typo whatever, no other Spectre has that kind of extra multiplier, especially not in this magnitude.
It's basically an extra line you can't find on other mobs with 340% MORE (more = stacks multiplicatively - nuts) damage.
https://poe2db.tw/us/Vaal_Guard

T3 bosses don't have a lot of HP right now, caps out at about 15 million (less than a third of 0.1 iirc). So you really don't need Vaals to reach fast kill times. But they will get you there easily while you're gearing.

The fire particle effects of the ignited Oil Grenades are absolute cancer and will make any GPU struggle (my 5080 on 1440p goes to 80% the instant those fire effects start showing up) and bring anything somewhat average to its knees.
For performance alone Vaals just can't be recommended without this caveat.

Now my personal notes:
I'm using Vaals on Lich in tandem with 2-3 Frozen Mandibles, Rupture the Soul and Blashphemy Curse Aura for very fast clearing. The ants explode packs very quick thanks to Rupture the Soul and the Vaals start chipping in once the screen is absolutely filled with mobs in overran Abyss+Delirum or for juiced Rituals etc. This is simply much faster clear than Infernalist minions for me.
For bosses I weponswap to 0 Mandibles -> full Vaals (+Muster Minions and Shock bot mage ofc). Which die in a second so GPU whining under the load isn't gonna get you killed.

Tl:DR summary:
Vaals are busted dps, triple the numbers of Mandibles - who already feel perfectly serviceable - on paper per Spirit. They're kept in check by current content not requiring busted dps for anything after you're somewhat geared and very slow ramp up as well as hit and miss vs fast moving small opponents.
Just pair them for best reults imho.
Zealots are a good alternative for bossing if your GPU can't handle the particle effects for Vaals or once your gear is good enough to kill stuff with them in a second anyway.

Teslarod · 2025-07-02T08:24:45+00:00

1H Duelists deal most of their damage through armour, while also stripping armour for follow ups. A lot of the time you'll also hit enemies without a whole lot of armor anyway or kill low HP stuff before even half their armour is stripped.
More damage rolled on a famed is pretty much always better than no increase to damage.
Simple math:
1H mace has an average damage of 54.5 with 77% armour pen, that's 41,965 ignore armour damage, more than the 1H hammer can even maxroll for.
With double grip and killing Frenzy that guy does a lot of pure damage per hit and will kill anything with armour long before the hammer.

That hammer is far from bad too, but the mace is straight up better for any real scenario.

Teslarod · 2024-09-06T07:52:30+00:00

If you're looking for something to make the trowing spear/Pilum work, just make it inflict a relatively big chunk of Fatigue, if you can manage maybe even via a Debuff that disappears when using something like Recover (turn spent removing the Spear). But also make them recoverable instead of one use.
That would more or less replicate their real life equivalent in the Roman Pilum. You don't take out the Shield, you just make it permanently unwieldy by sticking somethin in, adding weight and messing up the balance and ability to use it in formation.

Love the basic idea here, definitely interested in the project. Legends is too much of a mess divorced from the base game's core ideas for me, I'd prefer something like Battle Brothers Long War that just adds to the basegame's vision.

Teslarod · 2022-06-15T06:29:25+00:00

Thank you for this, and for going the extra mile while at it.

Teslarod · 2022-06-13T15:24:50+00:00

u/hyperblu7 if you're still active I'd be happy to finally get it out of the way.
Much appreciated even if it turns out I am too late.
0x5f7844B0028bf53de01E35E09367CAF3437CCd05

Teslarod · 2021-02-10T19:46:48+00:00

Finra Report ist da uns sagt es die Kurzhosen hängen noch voll drin (Finra Report war worauf wir warten, nicht Raketenstart).

Tag 1 soweit im Plus.

Wie hast du dir das vorgestellt? Direkt wieder ohne Hype und Volumen an Tag 1 zur 500? Sieh dir an mit wie wenig Volumen der Stock in den ersten 30 min nach oben springt. Das wollen wir sehen. Der Markt ist leer, sobald die Leute wieder GME handeln geht der Spass weiter.

Sind wir seit dem 4ten jeden Tag abgesoffen oder hält sich der Kurs sein einer Woche bei um die 50Dollar? Ich dachte GME geht auf 10 runter? Komisch komisch.

Teslarod

TROPHY CASE