So why is this build so underrated by many?
Because it's a crappy build that only sort of 'works' because it has an exceptional Swordmaster as a base. But again, even the dumbest melee build will sort of 'work' with 95 attack and 66 defense.
The main point of pumping Initiative is not, as you say, for dodge (that extra amount of defense is negligible): it's in order to get the extra damage when you Lunge. You got a background that starts with a heavy penalty to Initiative and Fatigue, and that is going to get the Old trait, which means a further heavy penalty to Initiative and Fatigue. Once your Old Swordmaster has 95 starting Initiative, he will be 6 Initiative away from lunging with a penalty to damage, which will quickly become heavier and heavier, since between Lunge and Footwork this is a Fatigue-intensive build, without the stats to support it. So you are left to slash away with a not very good sword that has its main advantage turned into a disadvantage.
This is completely wrong in just about every way:
- Dodge is amazing for defense on this build - you can easily get your initiative up to 120-130 on a Swordmaster by level 11, so after all the equipment penalties, it should be 100+. It was 103 on my dude. So at around 100 Initiative, the defense bonus to dodge would be 15 mdef and rdef, or in other words, the same as a standard shield. This is negligible?
- I don't think building a Lunge damage build is very practical. First, you need like 187 Initiative for it to double regular attack damage, and how many backgrounds would allow for that? And those probably have crappy mattack and mdef stats in most cases. But even if you do, lunge is so fatigue heavy to use and situational, it's next to impossible to spam it, so why make a build around its damage? To me, lunge is a lot more useful as a mobility thing, to ensure getting 2 hits every round at least, and to get around the battlefield, while doing most damage with regular attacks.
- Old trait is not guaranteed, on my previous swordmaster, I got the getting old event without getting the old trait, he just asked for a salary decrease. If you do get it, you can find an item which negates it on one guy.
- my build is not fatigue intensive at all, read the perks I selected. I had 64 fatigue at level 11. With light equipment (fencing sword, lamelar armor, sallet helmet), you don't need much fatigue, and with Sword Mastery you barely spend any on attacks, just limit your use of Lunges to be situational and you will be fine.
You really are a poster-child for the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Yes, more ad hominems please, they just let me know I am winning more.
You lucked into an exceptional specimen (we are talking about a 0,01 outlier at the very least), and you managed to butcher it into possibly the worst build/role combination. Only way you could have done anything more stupid would have been turning him into a ranged unit.
Uh, wrong, as I already mentioned, I didn't luck into anything, he was the third Swordmaster I hired in this campaign, I let the first 2 go because I wasn't happy with their stats. Nice try though.
Leveling initiative in order to get defense is a bad trade-off if done in order to get extra defense, since it's at most 1 post of temporary defence for every 6-7 points of Initiative, which comes of course at the price of not leveling up other stats.
Wrong again, your track record on being wrong is stellar. There is no trade-off since every level I would level up mdef first, and only then if nothing else was more worth it, I would dump points into Initiative. Since he was going to suck against ranged anyway, I didn't spend points on rdef, he already had high resolve and I put some points into that also, and as for health, he had no stars in that, so I could only increase it by like 2 points per level. 5 points of initiative per level > 2 points of health for a guy built around damage avoidance.
That's how you end up with a 11 level mercenary with 63 hp with Colossus,
This was more than enough for something like 100 battles. This guy almost never gets hit, when he rarely does get hit, the 120/110 armor takes care of it, and if something gets past that, Nimble will take care of it.
On the other hand, leveling initiative makes a lot of sense if you choose the fencing sword, since damage modifiers are really rare in Battle Brothers. Which means you have to select an appropriate background/specimen (which you didn't), and be able to manage fatigue properly.
Now you are just engaging in a really silly circular non-argument, something like "you didn't use this great build of mine on this guy, for which you would've needed another guy anyway..." Lol.
Getting the most out of a Lunging build is not especially difficult: of course, you need at least a passing understanding of BB mechanics. Which brings us to...
1. I wasn't going for a Lunging build, so I don't even know why you keep bringing it up.
2. However, I will humor you, and question the feasibility of a lunging build in general. To use Lunge consistently and not just like a closer like I was doing, you would need to use Lunge (~20 fatigue) and then I guess Footwork back so you can use it again (another ~20 fatigue). What kind of a build would allow you to constantly burn 40 fatigue per turn and still remain functional? But even if you could, and even if you had enough Ini to use it for full damage (twice the normal attack damage), for which you would need an entirely different background (itt only ratcatchers, jugglers, and maybe thieves have that kind of Ini), you would still get only 1 Lunge per turn, so your dps would be exactly the same as a guy doing 2 normal attacks per turn, except he d inflict 2 injuries in that time, AND those backgrounds have shitty other stats, so it would be way worse.
The funny thing is that you seem to feel so clever for crippling your super-Swordmaster into a dumb mobility-based build focusing on Footwork and a neutered Lunge: guess what, with 71-66 defense, it's the very last kind of build that needs to waste a perk with Footwork or using a Fencing Sword just to jump around, since with that monstrous level of defense he can just waltz into and out of enemies' faces without the need to waste perks or fatigue (and thus futher reducing the Lunge damage). Didn't you learn anything from enemy Assassins/Swordmasters?
I got him Footwork for defensive purposes (getting out of tight spots), not for offense. So like if he suddenly gets hit for massive damage and needs to gtfo out there without risking another hit (which BB has a lot of). Is it the best perk for him? Maybe not, but literally doesn't have anything to do with the main argument at hand.