ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Heavy armor blocks a lot of abilities of brawlers (and rogues), so it's not really an option. And with Spider-silk Robe it's possible to get 100% armor.

Only massive armor blocks brawler abilities, you can wear chainmail and the various mail-base artifacts just fine.

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60 Defense is generally the target I make for Defense heavy builds-this is enough to reliably dodge the majority of physical enemies, which tend to hover around 40 Defense, and get a 50%+ dodge rate on the high end types like Orc Berserkers and various physical bosses.

This is not achievable without Mobility, on a Brawler. Or a very good randart that happened to grant you tons of Defense. You can hit the lower 40 Defense(enough to dodge those grunts 50% of the time, which is pretty good) without it, though. So it's a matter of the kind of build you want.

Personally, I just ran with Molten Skin. Having said that, my Brawler was a little odd. Resists weren't a major deal on that particular build thanks to my skill choices.

The big difference is early, though. Mobility grants you easy 40 Defense in the earlygame, which is enough to horrifyingly wall everything physical up to Dreadfell(and give most of those enemies a fit), and this is pretty easy to achieve with earlygame light armor and Mobility. Brawler is generally fine later, so I don't regret that decision much.

Having said that, I will note that, had I not picked up the skills I did, I probably would have sunk a point into Armor Training for Chromatic Harness, in the later game. Given that these days one point gets you mail and the helms/gloves/heavy boots, there's not really any reason not to swap off to mail lategame anyways, unless you're doing weird things like me. At the very least, swapping to a resist armor for Vor/Rak'shor would be sensible, and using your Defense oriented light armor setup for Gorbat/Grushnak.

So that doesn't render Mobility bad, merely a sunk cost for an easier early game and an option later.

Yeah but you could also just hit Set Up or be surrounded (or at the least, "have as many melee enemies near you as possible") or do both and save yourself all the points.

Having won with 4 brawlers I don't find that there's a whole lot of very scary early game melee enemies that would make me want to invest in something I'd want nothing to do with lategame due to better options, much less when you can already dodge some of them pretty well without Mobility. I guess if you get lucky and any rares/randbosses you stumble upon who happen to be melee also happen to be too inaccurate to reliably do anything to you with max Mobile Defense then that's fine but not really reliable enough for me to consider it a point in its favor when all the big scary threats are nukers, especially if they're being triggershy on anything with travel time (for heightened reflexes).

And of course, as for late game stuff... well, too much Perfect Strikes or massive accuracy boosts going on to be entirely reliable, but what else is new?

Do note that I'm also partially biased against it because in order to spite people who insist brawler is a terrible class (they're wrong) and that AM for it is even more terrible and unplayable (they're also wrong) that I pick up AM/Fungus nowadays, and that gets a tad costly with racials on top of it.

Set Up's short term(and the Defense bonus is weaker unless you level it heavily...at which point, it's five points of Generic or Class and I value them about evenly for Brawler in general, generously.).

Specifically going for being surrounded to ramp up Defense...well, getting surrounded by more than two or three enemies(which you may as well grab on any build) means you're generating a suboptimal situation. You don't have good crowd control as a Brawler, so you don't do more damage per se, not really.

So you have to have enemies striking you enough less, after the Defense bonus, to net a positive...and that only happens if the enemies have sub-50% hit rates, in general. (For example, you'd need to be taking over 25% less damage from every enemy surrounding you, on average, to have going from four enemies to five surrounding you be positive. That's only really happening at fairly low enemy accuracy already.)



True enough, though I think people just don't notice the similar 100+ APR enemies as much. <_<



Brawler strikes me as one of the lower end classes, but it's stopped being horrible ever since Flexible Combat and the sweet glove ego tweaks. Class balance is generally good enough at the lower end that trying to figure out the worst class strikes me as an exercise in futility, which is nice.

What stat do you ditch for AM, anyways? Or do you just play it without the Will? Generic is generally something I find Brawlers have plenty of, so I can actually see grabbing it just for Fungus, really-the linked Brawler grabbed up 5 of Extract Gem just for extra cash, even with the random Mobility invest. Not something I found really obvious about them until I cleared one.

Set Up is short term, but you're a class that attacks innately faster than usual and it should be enough time to deal with troublesome enemies or thin out a crowd sufficiently if that's what you need.

Though, amusingly enough, now that I check my last 2 brawlers, one only had it at 1/5 and the other at 3/5, though I bet I'm a filthy cheater and swapped points to max it for the ambush/possibly Grushnak lobbies. Either way, at max it has a pretty good uptime for the defense it gives. (also the crit bonus is kinda neat though honestly I don't really use it for that, it's just cool to have.)

Also, why does being surrounded and getting enough defense to reduce most enemies' hit rates to be too low to matter suddenly mean it's suboptimal? Why does it even matter that you have bad aoe? Being near a bunch of dudes who can barely hit you doesn't suddenly impact your killing ability than being near only a couple of them unless you decided to get yourself surrounded by a bunch of enemies who can reliably hit you so you're spending more time trying to figure out how to get out, in which case... well, don't do that. You're really putting way too much thought into that, frankly--it's neither hard to do nor very dangerous unless you decide to willingly put yourself into a dangerous situation (which are rarely hard to gauge unless you're still unfamiliar with the game, which neither of us are), which is less about 'is mobility aaagh on brawlers or not' and 'I shouldn't do a bad thing because ow pain bad.' The reason I put that forth as a strategy is because I honestly routinely do it and it's yet to land me in particularly hot water. Also, it puts hairs on your chest, or something.


I think the thing with the insane APR enemies is that by then, unless it's some souped up randboss with GWF/Flurry/whatever, it's still not as scary/obnoxious as a buncha mages pelting you, especially since there's always the chance with some cripple/dominate gloves you might just blender anything dangerous in melee in a single flurry anyways, in the lategame.


I do agree recent ego tweaks have given brawler a huge boost. Heroic/of war-making gloves (or even gauntlets, which I happily won with on one of my brawlers--the aspd hit isn't that bad if the gauntlets are amazing enough!) are just ridiculously fantastic, nevermind what you can do with randart stuff. It's probably because I play them too much but for me they're my general go-to relaxation melee class, but yeah, arguments over the worst class tend to be pretty fruitless.

Because we all know it's marauder HO HO HO (nah they're really good later on, just a meh start)

I play AM without will, honestly. I mostly do it for fungus, but I do pick up a couple of points in Resolve for the hell of it and then waste a couple of points in Aura of Silence for no real reason. I enjoy Fungus too much, and some of the AM-gear is pretty baller (see: guardian's totem, and breath of eyal which I will gladly give up mail for). It's not really particularly optimal or anything, but it works just fine and I like Fungus and I didn't feel like I was missing out on much the couple of times I've done and won with it so my rule of thumb pretty much is just 'well, why not?' It helps that there are really good glove egos that aren't arcane, too, or else I'd probably be a lot more apprehensive about doing it.

Also I swear to god it took me like an hour to write this due to non-stop distractions and multitasking and stuff, jeez, and now I wanna play another brawler.

edit: upon further checking there's only like 7 roguelike brawler wins. This is unacceptable!!!

Yeah, I'm not knocking Set Up, just noting that it's hard for it to really compete with staying at the same level of high Defense. Having said that, yeah, Mobility takes a category point, so if you have uses for those(I didn't really care about the unlock categories for Class, personally, though choking a mage has appeal), it's a good option too.

Also, it can be stacked with Mobility, which then multiplies it, for sweet "Oh you're one of those annoying 70+ accuracy jerks, nope, you're still not reliably hitting me" fun.



Force of habit makes me play in as enclosed of space as possible for a physical fighter, because it's so often better than being in the open.

You generally eat far more attrition damage, unless you're a Bulwark, doing it the other way. I've generally found I eat too much for my taste even at 40-50 Defense.

Though, I suppose that might be a matter of paranoia and not strictly something you need to absolutely plan for, yeah, outside of Grushnak and Gorbat. (I don't want to be mobbed by summons in an open area in Gorbat-and, admittedly, they have so much accuracy that it's rather moot for this discussion. Grushnak's obvious, though. The next highest physical threat later in the game is...probably Temple of Creation or whatever it is? Wouldn't really want to be in a crowd, there, either, but it's hard to manage to be due to the design...)



It might be Marauder, anyways, honestly. I think they mostly suffer from being a bit dull and a bit "generic set of dualwielding skills+Skullcracker", similar to how Rogue felt a little much like "generic set of dualwielding+stealth" up to a point, back when I played one.

I generally am inclined to say Rogue, incidentally, but Rogue's legitimately good if you know how to play them, too...just tricky to play. Then again, I'm biased and got one of the worst RNG draws a Rogue can get late in the game, too. They've also notably improved at being distinctive over the last sets of little tweaks, which is really nice.

Temporal Warden's an option(rather ehn payoff for having to juggle fighter/mage stats), but again, there's a lot of interesting and useful tricks there and they have to juggle less than usual(build up Will, use the Str/Mag buffs). And as mentioned, Brawler might be one, I dunno, they still have really amazing damage later on.

The important thing is that I'd rather run and hide than commit myself to calling one of those the worst, which means the balance is probably pretty good.



The sad thing is, IIRC, I think I would have been equivalent to Roguelike on my Brawler run(only one other death, which was post Blood of Life) but I got buried in sand.

Yep. Play that much, still die to sand. The saddest of horns is required. Was so annoyed at myself...

Well, I don't mean to say that Set Up will keep you at the same defense as someone maxing Mobile Defense and still investing in Tactical, just that it can keep you firmly competitive against some enemies which is all I can ever ask for. I actually think it's kind of one of those undervalued skills at times, but then again most people hate marauder, most people don't play brawler, and I... cannot recall if anyone else even gets the tree innately, but I don't think so. So that's probably not a surprise!


I dunno, most Grushnak enemies don't tend to be terribly scary by the time I get there, barring awful combinations of rares in the barracks floors. Plus asides from that they're kinda bad at pinning you down in dangerous locations. I'll see how it goes next time I run through it with a brawler, I tend to autopilot the prides so some details get kinda fuzzy. I've never really noticed Gorbat summons being an issue. It could suck getting pinned down by multiple dogs I guess but at least they're pretty squishy by that point. Temple of Creation nagas aren't generally that dangerous to melee classes, but they are admittedly incredibly obnoxious. (I also tend to forget about it until I'm like halfway done with the prides, so that could change things! Sometimes I even forget to do it until after all of the prides. Doing it sooner before you've gotten to partake in a lot of the superior east gear would probably be a big pain, though., and I thiiiink most people prefer doing it before prides, so that's a fair enough point.)


I do think Marauder is legitimately... kinda awful but it's mostly the early game. But then, that's the point where a class needs to make a good impression, especially on someone who unlocked it, and it starts off as.... uh. Umm. Yeah. I like the idea of it, but I dunno how you'd make it more.. exciting, I guess? Better to play? Something to maybe set it apart more from rogue since it's basically a rogue with way more defense and some cool built-in status resists. Off-topic, but whatever, balance chat is interesting.

Rogue is pretty much one of those 'hilariously awful if you have no idea what you're doing, absolutely ridiculous if you do' kinda deals so it's a bit more polarizing. I'm down with the class but I also play gimmick massive armor rogue and skip stealth and throw on a big boy weapon in my mainhand, which isn't quite as manly as tiger_eye's rogues but at least it's a start. I can't entirely blame people who are entirely put off by the class though, especially if you just came from bulwark or something, cause that is harsh.

The thing with Brawlers is that at least at the start, a single decent pair of gloves will set you up really easily since you can generally snag a respectable t3 from last hope or whatever. It's just that finding that first pair can be kind of a drag... but on the other hand, Tactical Mastery makes it pretty easy to dodgetank Bill even if your damage is completely awful, so hey, that's something.


Of my 4 brawlers, 2 were on adventure, 1 was adventure but 0 deaths, and one (ghoul brawler OH YEAH) was roguelike. I think I'm gonna go on a brawler spree for a bit because I've been too busy to play in the past couple of months and now I have free time again, so hey why not.

My current brawler went the light armor route. It turned out that the Prides weren't much problem. With Mobile Defense my defense was over 70 (over 80 by High Peak), triggering Counter Attack + Flexible Combat all the time. The crowds of minions seemed to melt away while I concentrated on casters.

And when counting your on-hit effects, don't ignore the Bloodcaller ring. 15% chance of healing adds up when you're hitting several times each turn.

Edit: He finished High Peak today. The stair bosses kind of melted in front of him (even the bone giants), and even the final battle was relatively easy.

is this guide still efficient?

It doesnt seem to me that the Pugilism tree is dependant on dex anymore. Also, I think 5/5 counter attack, especially with maxed Mobile Defence can work wonders.

Also, a retarded question, but isn't the gloves tooltip kinda bugged? Comparing between two gloves shows red/green numbers at random it seems, and things like (-1, +8.8 ) when the worn glove is actually way better... or is it taking something obscure in account?