Man-At-Arms in Darkest Dungeon

The long-awaited May update came out for Darkest Dungeon, bringing a bunch of new content is the form of character classes, bosses, and a bunch of smaller tweaks and polish. But probably the best part of the update is the Man-At-Arms, one of the two new playable classes. In fact, the class is so good, I expect that it will be nerfed in the next update.

All of the character classes in Darkest Dungeon have 7 different abilities, which are typically a mix of healing, support, mob control, and attack. For the Man-At-Arms, this includes a standard melee attack, a weaker attack that shuffles the enemy and has a chance to stun, a minor ailment that reduces all enemies dodge and speed, a buff that increases accuracy for all allies, and a similar buff that instead increase speed and dodge. These are fairly vanilla and about on par with other melee-type classes.

But where the Man-At-Arms shines is his other two abilities. First is his Defender ability, which increases his Protection by 20% and automatically takes all damage that targets the selected ally until his next action. The added protection means that many attacks will fail to do any damage against him, and allows him to easily protect your weakest ally. Given how often enemies seem to instinctively target your healers and other support characters, this is a major asset.

The Man-At-Arms' other ability is where he really shines, however. This ability is called Retribution. You still get to make a single target attack against a single foe, dealing about half damage. He then gets a 10% bonus to Protection, and inflicts the "Marked" status condition on himself, which makes enemies more likely to target him. From that point on, whenever he is attacked (either by a single target attack or even as part of your whole group), he gets a free attack against that enemy, and has a small chance to stun the attacker as well. This is, as they say, "stupid good." It's quite common for him to get three or four extra attacks over the course of a battle, and since most battles probably average four to six rounds, this can easily double his damage output.

At any rate, I've been having a ton of fun with the new content, and can't wait for the full game release sometime later this year. While Darkest Dungeon is technically still in Early Release, there's plenty of content here for your money. Be sure and check out my review from earlier this year, and pick up this game today. You won't regret it.