I would probably try and patch negative ranged defence up to 0 at least, but if that would take away too many levels from other stats I'd feel iffy about that bro in general.

I... Don't know what that youtuber was doing, but in my experience, Riposte is pretty terrible.
It can be good, if you have a truly insane brother, with incredible stats, and Iron Lungs, and a great sword, but otherwise, you don't do very much damage, you fatigue out very quickly, you need to put yourself in dangerous positions to make use of it.

I personally do not think swords are underrated, they are pretty good early on, good base damage and bonus accuracy, and fall off later when armour becomes more relevant and your bros own melee skill is improved.

Originally posted by Sneeze:

=> How bad is having negative range defense?
Is it something you patch, or not really? If so, how do you work around this weakness in an otherwise good bro (oathtaker)

Not really a problem if you position him in ways where he won't get shot at. The AI is very prone to shooting the interior of your formation, wherever you have the most bros clumped together.

Put the guy with negative ranged defense on the outside of the formation and they won't really shoot him.

Originally posted by Sneeze:

=> What is your opinion on Riposte?!

Not really a fan.

Originally posted by Sneeze:

=> What is your opinion on Riposte?

In almost 2,000 hours of playing I once had an amazing bro with riposte who could singehandedly decimate the enemy back line. One time he stammed out in a bad spot and was immediately dead.

That is how that ability works.

I rarely make much use of swords and Riposte, but I have occasionally made use of Riposte (not always on characters with the mastery perk).

It's tempting to consider it if you get a rare 1H sword with a bonus to ignore damage and a lower fatigue-per-skill cost, because then Riposte (with mastery) would be fatigue-neutral for someone with Iron-Lungs (maybe someone with strong base defence and decent/good but non-elite melee skill, who could operate as a Duelist but take out a shield if things got iffy).

It's worth noting that, because Riposte is actually a slashing attack, the penalty to hit-chance without mastery (-10) merely cancels out the base bonus to hit-chance (+10) of the Slash skill. The skill and perk tooltips don't make this clear.

There were times in the past where I used swords with Riposte on shield-tanks in the Black Monolith, and they actually did a surprising amount of damage (and killed several necrosavants) despite only having melee skill in the 60s.

I sometimes have rare 1H swords as a back-up weapon on throwing Duelists who have Quick Hands and Bags&Belts, and might arm with the sword (and a shield) and use Riposte if the thrower gets swarmed by lots of small beasts who don't have much armour to ignore.

The most common use I've made of Riposte in the past has probably been situational use on Duelist characters who don't have the mastery perk. I sometimes build defensive spear-Duelists with Indomitable and Recover (because they're less boring than pure shield-tanks), and switch them to a sword once several enemies have engaged (maybe a shield as well if those enemies don't have much armour).

Riposte is best combined with Indomitable, because enemies with shields or polearms are highly inclined to use push/hook skills (which have a good bonus to hit-chance) to cancel the Riposte.

However, it's best to become engaged with several enemies before using the skills, because both skills reduce the willingness of most enemies to engage to start with (although masses of orc young will mindlessly charge into an Indomitable character, thus removing themselves as a threat to less defensive characters who don't have the skill).

Mostly, however, my mercenaries are "sellswords" not because they sell their use of swords but because they profit from selling looted swords (which have an inflated value) in marketplaces.

Ranged defence on melee bros is irrelevant. I just move my melees out of range on turn one and that's it. They take some damage but not too much (especially if they start battle in second line). Another option is just charging forward in melee. It's much more dangerous, especially against mass crossbows and goblins, but fights ends faster.

Riposte is bad. It requires a lot of fatigue which means you give up a lot of melee defence(high fatigue builds can't use dodge and, usually, gifted). And its damage is underwhelming which means it will take several turns to kill somebody. Riposte is probably great against brigands, but everything is great against them.

There are 3 major enemies in vanilla: orcs, goblins and ancient dead. Riposte is bad vs all of them.

Of course there is very small chance that your youtuber discovered something interesting, but it's impossible to say without watching video.

Thanks for the replies already!
The youtuber is PuggoReborn, in his video 'worst to best origin': he was talking about the 'Lone wolf' origin, so it could be specific to this origin, and it could also just be this approach for the early game (he says that he sells the greataxe of the hedge knight and give him a 1h sword for riposte..).

Ah, I love this game ; so much to learn and to play with!

Originally posted by Sneeze:

Thanks for the replies already!
The youtuber is PuggoReborn, in his video 'worst to best origin': he was talking about the 'Lone wolf' origin, so it could be specific to this origin, and it could also just be this approach for the early game (he says that he sells the greataxe of the hedge knight and give him a 1h sword for riposte..).

Ah, I love this game ; so much to learn and to play with!

the hedge knight starts with a longsword, not a greataxe, for lone wolf, unless he has mods. you may be interested in how well riposte did for my black monolith tank once, fatigue neutral to riposte with a second wind potion, and he has a legendary goblin sword with minus fatigue cost so fatigue neutral riposting and swinging twice was possible... battleforged so not losing out on dodge bonuses anyway..... I shared my monolith victory here - https://gtm.you1.cn/app/365360/discussions/0/3114773449955229259/

with screenshots showing the final damage at the monolith and my tank put out respectable damage...

that said I view riposte as an edge case, definately nothing to build a lone wolf around from the start... you need a good tank and you need to invest like 3 3 rolls in melee offense on the tank to be where my monolith tank was...

I've found this famed pike : https://ibb.co/yVRrgYW
(if you don't see the image: 70-102 dmg ; 30% ignoreArmor ; 125% effVsArmor; + 17% chance to hit head)
This makes it better than a longaxe damagewise + bonus to the head. Would you build something around Headhunter with this weapon?

I always thought the negative ranged defence was specifically to offset naturally high combo mdef/ini origins like oathtakers or adv noble, with a few of the more frequent perks. If you took dodge on them without negative stats they would basically be immune to ranged attacks, but it also makes sense lore-wise.

The only time riposte works is when you stack all the anatomist potion onto a single chad. It's way too punishing for a regular bro to make use of. Damage is meh for something that consistently put the user in a significant danger to make use of, enemies would rather not to swing at riposting bro, and even if the bro got the stats to make it work he'll run out of fatigue so fast just from getting attacked.

Originally posted by Sneeze:

I've found this famed pike : https://ibb.co/yVRrgYW
(if you don't see the image: 70-102 dmg ; 30% ignoreArmor ; 125% effVsArmor; + 17% chance to hit head)
This makes it better than a longaxe damagewise + bonus to the head. Would you build something around Headhunter with this weapon?

No single-target reach weapon is good enough to use as primary equipment (i.e. something you specifically build around) unless it's like day 50 or less, the damage profile is just too low to deal with lategame challenges. Would still make a real good quickhand spare weapon for 2h bros though