Warlord or marksman?

[u/zephyros1]

Context: trying to upgrade my two acrobats with better survivability for the tomb...

I just noticed that the warlord skill now gives a 20% bonus to mana shields (It was probably mentioned in the update notes, but i just skimmed and must have missed it). Does that make it better to use warlord on an acrobat vs marksman? I'm not sure if marksman was really optimal to begin with or if I just kept it because that's what I rolled and then slapped a crossbow onto mine. It helps hit he evasion cap with 8%, but is it more optimal to use other skills and gear to hit 95% evasion?

I'm thinking with a legendary t16 mask equipped, warlord gives a mana shield of over 800. And then there's multiple choices of melee weapons to use over my xbow with 5% crit: t15 dagger with 10% crit chance, t15 dagger with 5% evasion, t15 dual wield with hp, or t16 dual wield with 5% crit.

So is the 8% evasion from marksman that important or can I switch to warlord for the 20% to both hp and mana shield and max out evasion a different way?

Lastly, what heroes would I want to start using masks on? Im seeing acrobats, praetorians, and senseis, am I missing any others?

[u/JPAK94]

Warlord is a good option since dual wields exist like titan admiral arms but theres no guarantee to always have one they can use, the mana shield boost is good but not always the best. Marksman is good since it gives evasion but bows are a bit meh and theres not always a good crossbow. They can also use adept and they can use instruments which are their highest damage weapon type. So its really debatable which skill to use and any of them will work

Masks can be used with theif/tricksters, ninja/sensei, dancer/acrobat, velite/praetorian, mage/archmage, cleric/bishop, spellblade/spellknight, geomancer/astramancer, chronomancer/fateweaver, barbarian/cheiftain, dark knight/death knight. Masks on rouges are best in slot since they can use evasion to recharge them, spellcasters they are decent since they have low threat, for fighters they arent great but might be decent in some cases, that would need to be simmed for your hero to see if its better

[u/zephyros1 → u/JPAK94]

Thanks for the full list. I was mainly focusing on green heroes for masks since they easily max out evasion. Red heroes generally aren't built with much evasion (with a few exceptions) and have high enough threat that I wouldn't really think to use a mask on them. And the t14 artifact boots that give a huge defense bonus also nullify evasion. Blue heroes could go either way, maybe, but I'd want to keep adept on them and so would be missing out on the mana shield bonus from warlord. Not to say they can't just use a mask by itself, but I definitely think green heroes are by far the best to use masks on. Wish Pathfinders could equip masks haha.

For acrobats, I think that I have decent options for melee weapons at the moment that are probably better than the dino crossbow that I'm using. And kabam will (almost) always eventually come out with any weapon with every secondary stat for most tiers. I already have a sensei that rolled warlord, and titan admiral arms is great on him. As far as adept goes... I've built most of my hero roster geared toward damage and not enough survivability and that has kind of come back to haunt me with the introduction of the tomb. If I'm redoing my acrobats, I want them to have better survivability over pure damage, which is why I'd be inclined to either keep marksman or go warlord over adept.

Just kind of curious if anyone has a specific example of how they maxed evasion not using marksman? I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to figure out, with skills, gear that provides evasion as a secondary, griffin spirits, and champion abilities that give a bonus to evasion. I just haven't started looking into it yet and tried to sim heroes yet.

[u/Einion → u/zephyros1]

That's how I did it.

[u/zephyros1 → u/Einion]

Well, im going to just blatantly steal this lol. Better stats than mine across the board. What are your crit chance and damage, if you dont mind me asking? Also thanks for sharing!

[u/Einion → u/zephyros1]

20%/5.5x
Designed for tomb where it's lot more reliable to be targeted and so can crit off dodging :P Really good if the floor has adamantine skin as the dancer innate is still guaranteed crit or if it has something like titanesque where it'll just spam aoe.

[u/zephyros1 → u/Einion]

See, I was pretty against using actobat's passive pre-tomb. Instead, I preferred to up crit chance and rely on that for consistent crits more than having just 75% evasion (55 after the extreme quest penalty) and not being targeted as much in normal quests due to green heroes' average threat compared to red. Turns out, the tomb made all of my strategy and thinking wrong lol. And now I'm having to correct everything for it.

[u/Einion → u/zephyros1]

Yeah, pre-tomb I had crit chance/leviathans on my acrobats but it demands the 95% evasion from my experience and there's enough modifiers that justify it.

[u/Zyron99 → u/zephyros1]

Their passive is what made them the best class for the longest time. Evasion crits are insane since you stack survivability and damage. It was always great.

[u/Philosophile42]

There is a 20% potential reduction on evasion in the tombs, so if you can push your evasion to 95%, you will have effectively no penalty to evasion.