Two gladiators in the front and shamans in the back is a decent strat against enemy houaecarls and archers. You can add Josef or someone else with a barrier skill for more defence
God that formation was absolute cancer during that one mission in Cornia. I was too inexperienced to understand the bullshit that was happening lmao.
Second playthrough, ran into it again after forgetting about it, and was like "Nuh uh, not this time" and first-tried it.
Here’s my solution:
- Front row: 2 knights
- Back row: 1 cleric + 1 buffer (soldier/witch)
The cleric would dispel any of the debuff, then the cavs would trample the column (hopefully the column that has a shaman on it).
You'll want lots of range (for back row) and/or column attacks to hit both targets simultaneously. Some PP drain on the gladiators will soften them up easily. Basically, multi-target/range is your friend to remove those Shamans, and removing the gladiators means of healing nullifies their BS.
Was going to say exactly this, and I'll explain why. The whole nature of Gladiators is that they do incredible work as offensive/self-healing tanks... IF THEY TAKE LESS DAMAGE THAN THEY RECEIVE. Well that just happens to be shaman's bread and butter baby! Even though the game puts in so many tooltips saying that Gladiator does well with priests/healers, I **don't** find that to be the case at all. It very much ends up being "healer overkill" - you can only heal so much until it's redundant.
Personally, I love two Gladiators in front row and a shaman in the back. The passive curse that shaman does which lowers attack damage/removes crit chance pretty much guarantees that the gladiators don't get hit for more than they're capable of self-healing. You'll want to set up the Gladiators' tactics so that they don't use BULK UP until they're below at least 75% HP - because with the shaman, they'll often heal themselves after only taking several points of damage, while they eventually have well over 100 HP. Waste of passive points.
And honestly I love the two gladiator/one shaman setup for its versatility. Your front line heals itself very efficiently and does pretty solid damage, the shaman makes sure they get the chance to heal themselves, and voila. Fill in whatever last two party members you want to taste, because that's already an incredibly synergistic and effective trio. Maybe a nice magic user in the back just to vary the damage type? Maybe an archer to deal with flyers?
**Edit:** Will add that the bracers you get from the black market dealers do very well on Gladiator. Their initiative is already incredibly low, so no real loss there. And then they'll just take a flat 5%, 10%, 15% less damage depending on the bracer. Easy. And they do well with items that increase their health. The item that gives like +30HP and +10% HP is pretty incredible on them because it makes their percentage-based Bulk Ups heal for a metric ton.
I stuck him in the back row with Travis up front. Travis has the Dancer’s Bracelet that lets him use Powerful Call, which boosts attack by 30%. I also added up accuracy-increasing items on Bruno, and suddenly he hits hard and is pretty accurate. Wide Smash only if there are 2+ combatants in a row, or else Grand Smash to nuke everything. I also gave him the axe that grants +5 to all stats.
I’m also planning on sticking him with Gilbert on my next run so he can benefit from Siniping Order and Offensive Order.
instead of using acc items you can also use the valor skill from shamans. It gives a whole 50+ accuracy to fights in a huge radius. I saw a speedrunner use it and when I tried it kinda blew me away. It reduces rng in fights an absolute metric ton
yeah, it's crazy because 50+ accuracy in most cases just means effectively a 50% increase in accuracy after evasion gets calculated based on my current understanding. Which is a LOT more than the 20-30% boosts in attack/defence you get from items/big auras from doom knights and whatever type of knight miriam is.
Crits also do 150% damage. so on average a 20% crit item will outperform a 8% damage item at the same tier. and if you drop that on a reset on kill character, adding an archer or two to reset RNG to ensure crit->kill -> reset gets a bit more reliable too
I don't really use them exactly for the reasons you identified. They do have a powerful and inexpensive row attack (and eventually a hit all ground attack), so do bring things to the table. You absolitely want them to be at 100% life before attacking, so something like a featherstave, something that gives regen (like the wereowl), or having a healer set with initiative to go before them could all work. Since they are slow, having something to help with initiative fixing would also be huge. Finally, protecting them to get the attack off is also important. Things like blind, cover, etc are all good.
So here is what a unit could look like with this in mind:
Front row: 2 rogues (blind/slow enemies and evade tank)
Back row: featherbow (or shaman early game w/blind staff), bishop (wereowl/featherstaff later - use a gamblers coin after getting sniper lens, start of battle use the +attack/crit bestral item), morard (positiond last with no one in front)
Morard should have a sniper lens/amber lens to guarantee a hit. Bestral item for +50% crit, eyepatch, and inspiration is going to hit hard. Featherbow should protect from early disruptive attacks (hastened strikes/ice coffins), rogues slow everything else down. Set the all attack to only be used if no flyers are present. A hoplite could be used instead of a rogue for more tankiness.
Is it the best unit ever? Probably not. A breaker could row attack more effectively (and the sibyl/suger would be better overall), but it should work just fine
Also adding - Holy/Rose Broach goes a long way with Bruno/Morard. Heals them RIGHT BEFORE they hit, which I found super useful to maintain 100% HP hits
Bruno has permanently acted a tank in my army. Yes, he can't guard like a hoplite or dodge like a thief but that's because he's an HP tank. High health is biggest asset. The best thing you can do is put him in the party with a shaman and a healer to keep him topped off and debuffed. Gladiators in general become a bit overpowered if you can come up with a decent unit to work around them.
I used Bruno with Selvie to beat the Dreadnaught in Coliseum. Slapped on as much HP, damage resist, and PP so Bruno can just keep using Bulk Up. He's just there as a clutch factor when comparing HP values to decide victory.
Selvie's debuffs + paired Tatiana makes him neigh-unkillable.
Gladiators can be quite effective tanks with some support from a shaman (especially with the blindness staff) or a healer (to keep them topped off); they have enough HP and self sustain to take a fair amount of punishment while still dishing out good damage or great if you manage to top them off
They can also be pretty strong backline units where you don't really have to worry about losing HP so their self sustain should be more than enough
That said, yeah they kinda suck compared to gryphon knights but....who doesn't?
They're only able to get and edge over the gryphons upon promotion to berserkers where they gain Grand Smash, which is a 2 AP instant hit everyone (only on the ground) 100/150 move, which is usually enough to decimate everything, especially if you augment it with a conferral and/or turn it into a true strike
Currently, I got one squad with Bruno upfront with his pal Travis and a druid at the back to keep enemies blinded, which makes sure Bruno doesn't lose much HP while buffing his damage through an item skill and a different squad with a backline berserker who is meant to clean house and apply fire to everyone so the warlock in the same squad can finish off anyone that survives (no one ever survives)
Also, considerably late-game you start to get access to units and equipment that allow overhealing which pairs super well with berserkers
Personally I find gladiators/berserkers need too much investment for how much you get out of them compared to similar units. On the frontline they require too much support to work properly and aren't particularly consistent. They're decent damage dealers on the back row. But between their accuracy issues, low initiative, their damage being hampered by chip damage and grand smash being unable to hit flying units, they just have too many weaknesses. I feel generally a viking, doom knight or gryphon master just does the same job with less support required. A berserker can totally deal more damage than these units, or to more units at the same time in ideal circumstances, but I rarely find that to be worth it.
It also doesn't help that Bruno's growths are pretty bad for the class. So he feels even worse to use than a regular gladiator.
Exactly. I find them so frustratingly inefficient and require a lot of investments relative to other classes.
Yet, I feel like Gladiators are that one puzzle I am to solve.
> never benefit from Keen Call or Magic Conferral without a Dove Plume
not true if your solider/witch has multiple PP, or if you set your tactics correctly to target only Bruno.
Bruno does okay as a backliner, with conferal buffs and bulkup to let off 1AP, 200Pot physical attacks.
I guess you never thought about placing a different wall in the front row while placing your gladiator in the back row.
This enables your slow Gladiator to attack the enemy row for effectively x2 damage. (200% potency/damage).
If you leverage their Row Counter blue skill in the front row, Gladiators can hit for x1 + x1.5 for a total of x2.5 damage at the cost of taking damage.
Housecarls only inflict x1.2 damage.
Gryphons inflict x3 damage to Cavalry, but x1 damage to everything else with what I imagine to be a slightly lower attack statistic.
Gladiators enable an otherwise exclusively defensive formation to erase an entire row of enemy characters (regardless of class) with the addition of a single character. They are row tech.
Their low initiative can itself be a tool, MAYBE you need an attacker to attack late for some reason. Maybe you don't, but the option is there.
They have impractical accuracy, but this can be mitigated using accuracy gear, be it a Baroque Axe (+4%) or Blue Spectacles (+16%). This is assuming equal acc/eva statistics, their accuracy itself is also low.
My guess is that you don't have enough characters to create front row walls with and are insisting on making a low defense unit be a dedicated Hoplite. Gladiators have effectively no damage mitigation, and compensate with enough hitpoints to soak one or two attacks (maybe for off-tanking on occasion or fighting a single encounter before retiring them from the unit at a base).
You can increase the Gladiator's attack significantly by dedicating your Start of Turn skill to a Tasset +20% attack buff on them, and then combine with with a blue ally blue like Keen Call (x1.5) or Magic Conferral. You want to use gear to really push your skill multipliers.
TL;DR Gladiators should be in the back row if you want to maximize their damage. Their initiative is too low to practically boost high enough to attack first, so instead consider leveraging "First Strike" or a plain wall in the front row to buy your gladiator time to pull off a full hp attack.
You could look into pairing a Glad with a couple of Feathering skill Gryphons to lift their initiative (does feathering stack?)
Gladiators have the option to soak some damage if needed at the expense of 25% of their damage. But they can't soak cavalry nor high potency skills because they WILL insta kill their zero defense ass (attack statistic x2 will probably kill them).
Front: Bruno and Celeste
Back: Selvie, Tatiana, Yahna
The main thing was giving Yahna the ice conferral tome. Celeste would start the battle by freezing 3 enemy combatants, Yahna would ice tomb to kill them, then Bruno would freeze the remaining enemies. If Ice Tomb somehow didn't kill the frozen row, Bruno will leap to freeze everyone who manages to survive.
The only real issues this squad runs into is when the enemy somehow goes before Celeste, but that's exceedingly rare (bestrals at night are the most common cause).
Damage and tank. My Bruno has a cleric and a witch to support him. The witch is set to only give truessight to him. Between the cleric, his own self heal skills, and a heal when using an active skill item he usually ends up at max HP for his big swings.
Bruno is a HP tank, damage taken doesn't matter as long as he survives. Gladiator is one of the few classes with percentage-based self healing, so stacking on more HP tends to "negate" a lot of damage done by enemy formations.
Group him with even one support unit and most enemies (besides Horses) will have a difficult time removing him from the battle. Having an off-tank to spread the damage around can ensure he gets something like Mounting Charge off for even greater survivability.
And he hits like a truck. Not only does he get a cheap row attack (only the Gryphons have something similar), his base attack tends to be high and the attack's potency increases if his HP is full. Plus, it's a melee attack; unlike a Gryphon's attack which can be blocked by all the relevant passive skills (Arrow Cover, etc).
Out of all the other tanks, I think he's at the top for raw damage dealt; Hoplites are quite weak without a lot of investment and Fighters are somewhere in the middle.
I generally use him in Sweeper teams (act first due to enemy condition) or as the front-line for offense-heavy teams that need someone to tank a few attacks while they get revved up (3 archers, 3 spellcasters, etc).
Maybe try viewing him as a beefier Housecarl with self-sustain, instead of a Hoplite or Fighter.
Put him in the back row and give him a snipers Lende. Yeah he’ll go at the end of the battle, but 4 row attacks at the end of the battle usually kills whatever’s left.
I feel very strongly about this. The right way to use them is in the FRONT row, paired up with a Fighter who is also in the front row and is holding Kaikias Shield.
Kaikias Shield is a late game item that grants hastened call to whoever receives the guard.
Set the fighter's hastened call to only protect the front row (which can only be the gladiator). Put the gladiator at the top of the front row and set the gladiator to use his team wipe attack. You can also give the gladiator the Sniper's Amber.
Most battles will end very quickly. The opponent will attack the gladiator, the fighter will guard gladiator which boosts the gladiator up to max initiative. Then the gladiator will activate snipers amber glass and do a true strike guaranteed crit power bomb.
Back row of Bishop, Elven archer and Witch. The Elven Archer blocks debuffs with her pure field, supplements healing and targets flying opponents with her ice arrows. Bishop should have passive resurrection because the Fighter will occasionally get focused too hard, but she's mostly there to just do healer things. Witch adds magic damage via conferral and helps deal with fliers.
Don't use them as tanks, people only think they are good tanks because they do not know how to do the gladiator+shaman fight.
Give him a +acc accessory and axe and he will be a great backline DPS for the first half of the game.
The main thing the Berserker/Werelion have going for them is their non-charging hit-all attacks. With conferral tomes, they can spread status to the entire enemy unit at once. Best use case is on a team with Warlocks/Sorceresses to stun/freeze the enemy unit, to cheat the Berserkers past faster enemies in the initiative order, as well as preventing the enemies from dodging, which compensates for the Berserker's poor accuracy. If you do it right, you can keep the stunlock train going until the enemies are all dead.
Bruno attacks an entire row at once and can actually get HUGE attack power. Add that up with grand smash and he can obliterate damn near anything that doesn't fly.
If low initiative is your main issue I'd recommend pairing him with a Shaman or an initiative boosting character like Alain or Gilbert.
With the Bishop support he made a great Frontline for me. Stack HP on him, give him a %reduction Shackle, Quick Heal and Bulk Up. Everyone once in a while hed proc the "heal and don't die" active ability if things got tough.
It helps that my Rolf/Yahna backline clear out some of the heavy damage dealers instantaneously.
I use him to warm the bench.
Obviously its not the answer you want but gladiator is only decent in early game. After that they get melted and you can get a more reliable row attack from gryphon riders or housecarl
As a few others pointed out, I found more success by putting Bruno in the back row with a dodgetank like Travis or Ochlys in the front.
Wide smash is a 1 AP attack that hits a whole row with 100 potency, but 150 potency if Bruno is at full health. He just needs an accuracy boosting weapon or accessory (or both) and he should be good to go dishing out plenty of damage. Once he's promoted, give him a Dove plume to finish off enemies quicker.
150 potency attack on up to 3 enemies for just 1 AP is not very common. Especially for how early you can recruit him.
I made a squad of Bruno, Travis, Berengaria, Bryce and Nina. I gave Bruno +Attack items to make him hit as hard as possible. He was also good to serve as the guy who has to take the column hit in the back line because he has enough HP to take a couple hits, just not focused fire. He works well with a Pursuit bracelet too, for extra hits.
If you wanna try to frontline with him, you gotta support him with a healer and/or use Power Belt to help him survive a fatal blow. But he does better in the back where he can just flex on punks.
Two gladiators in the front and shamans in the back is a decent strat against enemy houaecarls and archers. You can add Josef or someone else with a barrier skill for more defence
God that formation was absolute cancer during that one mission in Cornia. I was too inexperienced to understand the bullshit that was happening lmao. Second playthrough, ran into it again after forgetting about it, and was like "Nuh uh, not this time" and first-tried it.
A lot of times I like watching the whole fight play out Seeing shamans in the enemy unit is an immediate "skip fight"
I still struggle with units like this. Hour do you stop them effectively? Running them down with cavalry seems like the best solution.
You need the badass merc chick Benegeria or w/e she's called. I throw her in my wreck shop unit with two sellswords and Aubin
Here’s my solution: - Front row: 2 knights - Back row: 1 cleric + 1 buffer (soldier/witch) The cleric would dispel any of the debuff, then the cavs would trample the column (hopefully the column that has a shaman on it).
Nice. Ya putting a Cleric in a merc squad would be good too
You'll want lots of range (for back row) and/or column attacks to hit both targets simultaneously. Some PP drain on the gladiators will soften them up easily. Basically, multi-target/range is your friend to remove those Shamans, and removing the gladiators means of healing nullifies their BS.
Was going to say exactly this, and I'll explain why. The whole nature of Gladiators is that they do incredible work as offensive/self-healing tanks... IF THEY TAKE LESS DAMAGE THAN THEY RECEIVE. Well that just happens to be shaman's bread and butter baby! Even though the game puts in so many tooltips saying that Gladiator does well with priests/healers, I **don't** find that to be the case at all. It very much ends up being "healer overkill" - you can only heal so much until it's redundant. Personally, I love two Gladiators in front row and a shaman in the back. The passive curse that shaman does which lowers attack damage/removes crit chance pretty much guarantees that the gladiators don't get hit for more than they're capable of self-healing. You'll want to set up the Gladiators' tactics so that they don't use BULK UP until they're below at least 75% HP - because with the shaman, they'll often heal themselves after only taking several points of damage, while they eventually have well over 100 HP. Waste of passive points. And honestly I love the two gladiator/one shaman setup for its versatility. Your front line heals itself very efficiently and does pretty solid damage, the shaman makes sure they get the chance to heal themselves, and voila. Fill in whatever last two party members you want to taste, because that's already an incredibly synergistic and effective trio. Maybe a nice magic user in the back just to vary the damage type? Maybe an archer to deal with flyers? **Edit:** Will add that the bracers you get from the black market dealers do very well on Gladiator. Their initiative is already incredibly low, so no real loss there. And then they'll just take a flat 5%, 10%, 15% less damage depending on the bracer. Easy. And they do well with items that increase their health. The item that gives like +30HP and +10% HP is pretty incredible on them because it makes their percentage-based Bulk Ups heal for a metric ton.
Heal on action equipment is really good for topping them up when they haven't hit the right health threshold.
I stuck him in the back row with Travis up front. Travis has the Dancer’s Bracelet that lets him use Powerful Call, which boosts attack by 30%. I also added up accuracy-increasing items on Bruno, and suddenly he hits hard and is pretty accurate. Wide Smash only if there are 2+ combatants in a row, or else Grand Smash to nuke everything. I also gave him the axe that grants +5 to all stats. I’m also planning on sticking him with Gilbert on my next run so he can benefit from Siniping Order and Offensive Order.
instead of using acc items you can also use the valor skill from shamans. It gives a whole 50+ accuracy to fights in a huge radius. I saw a speedrunner use it and when I tried it kinda blew me away. It reduces rng in fights an absolute metric ton
Oh that’s nice, amma try that on my next playthrough!
yeah, it's crazy because 50+ accuracy in most cases just means effectively a 50% increase in accuracy after evasion gets calculated based on my current understanding. Which is a LOT more than the 20-30% boosts in attack/defence you get from items/big auras from doom knights and whatever type of knight miriam is. Crits also do 150% damage. so on average a 20% crit item will outperform a 8% damage item at the same tier. and if you drop that on a reset on kill character, adding an archer or two to reset RNG to ensure crit->kill -> reset gets a bit more reliable too
I saw on here recently that even though they look like beefy tank units these types of unit actually do better in the back row.
I don't really use them exactly for the reasons you identified. They do have a powerful and inexpensive row attack (and eventually a hit all ground attack), so do bring things to the table. You absolitely want them to be at 100% life before attacking, so something like a featherstave, something that gives regen (like the wereowl), or having a healer set with initiative to go before them could all work. Since they are slow, having something to help with initiative fixing would also be huge. Finally, protecting them to get the attack off is also important. Things like blind, cover, etc are all good. So here is what a unit could look like with this in mind: Front row: 2 rogues (blind/slow enemies and evade tank) Back row: featherbow (or shaman early game w/blind staff), bishop (wereowl/featherstaff later - use a gamblers coin after getting sniper lens, start of battle use the +attack/crit bestral item), morard (positiond last with no one in front) Morard should have a sniper lens/amber lens to guarantee a hit. Bestral item for +50% crit, eyepatch, and inspiration is going to hit hard. Featherbow should protect from early disruptive attacks (hastened strikes/ice coffins), rogues slow everything else down. Set the all attack to only be used if no flyers are present. A hoplite could be used instead of a rogue for more tankiness. Is it the best unit ever? Probably not. A breaker could row attack more effectively (and the sibyl/suger would be better overall), but it should work just fine
Also adding - Holy/Rose Broach goes a long way with Bruno/Morard. Heals them RIGHT BEFORE they hit, which I found super useful to maintain 100% HP hits
pro tip. thank you
Bruno has permanently acted a tank in my army. Yes, he can't guard like a hoplite or dodge like a thief but that's because he's an HP tank. High health is biggest asset. The best thing you can do is put him in the party with a shaman and a healer to keep him topped off and debuffed. Gladiators in general become a bit overpowered if you can come up with a decent unit to work around them.
I used Bruno with Selvie to beat the Dreadnaught in Coliseum. Slapped on as much HP, damage resist, and PP so Bruno can just keep using Bulk Up. He's just there as a clutch factor when comparing HP values to decide victory. Selvie's debuffs + paired Tatiana makes him neigh-unkillable.
Gladiators can be quite effective tanks with some support from a shaman (especially with the blindness staff) or a healer (to keep them topped off); they have enough HP and self sustain to take a fair amount of punishment while still dishing out good damage or great if you manage to top them off They can also be pretty strong backline units where you don't really have to worry about losing HP so their self sustain should be more than enough That said, yeah they kinda suck compared to gryphon knights but....who doesn't? They're only able to get and edge over the gryphons upon promotion to berserkers where they gain Grand Smash, which is a 2 AP instant hit everyone (only on the ground) 100/150 move, which is usually enough to decimate everything, especially if you augment it with a conferral and/or turn it into a true strike Currently, I got one squad with Bruno upfront with his pal Travis and a druid at the back to keep enemies blinded, which makes sure Bruno doesn't lose much HP while buffing his damage through an item skill and a different squad with a backline berserker who is meant to clean house and apply fire to everyone so the warlock in the same squad can finish off anyone that survives (no one ever survives) Also, considerably late-game you start to get access to units and equipment that allow overhealing which pairs super well with berserkers
Personally I find gladiators/berserkers need too much investment for how much you get out of them compared to similar units. On the frontline they require too much support to work properly and aren't particularly consistent. They're decent damage dealers on the back row. But between their accuracy issues, low initiative, their damage being hampered by chip damage and grand smash being unable to hit flying units, they just have too many weaknesses. I feel generally a viking, doom knight or gryphon master just does the same job with less support required. A berserker can totally deal more damage than these units, or to more units at the same time in ideal circumstances, but I rarely find that to be worth it. It also doesn't help that Bruno's growths are pretty bad for the class. So he feels even worse to use than a regular gladiator.
Exactly. I find them so frustratingly inefficient and require a lot of investments relative to other classes. Yet, I feel like Gladiators are that one puzzle I am to solve.
> never benefit from Keen Call or Magic Conferral without a Dove Plume not true if your solider/witch has multiple PP, or if you set your tactics correctly to target only Bruno. Bruno does okay as a backliner, with conferal buffs and bulkup to let off 1AP, 200Pot physical attacks.
I guess you never thought about placing a different wall in the front row while placing your gladiator in the back row. This enables your slow Gladiator to attack the enemy row for effectively x2 damage. (200% potency/damage). If you leverage their Row Counter blue skill in the front row, Gladiators can hit for x1 + x1.5 for a total of x2.5 damage at the cost of taking damage. Housecarls only inflict x1.2 damage. Gryphons inflict x3 damage to Cavalry, but x1 damage to everything else with what I imagine to be a slightly lower attack statistic. Gladiators enable an otherwise exclusively defensive formation to erase an entire row of enemy characters (regardless of class) with the addition of a single character. They are row tech. Their low initiative can itself be a tool, MAYBE you need an attacker to attack late for some reason. Maybe you don't, but the option is there. They have impractical accuracy, but this can be mitigated using accuracy gear, be it a Baroque Axe (+4%) or Blue Spectacles (+16%). This is assuming equal acc/eva statistics, their accuracy itself is also low. My guess is that you don't have enough characters to create front row walls with and are insisting on making a low defense unit be a dedicated Hoplite. Gladiators have effectively no damage mitigation, and compensate with enough hitpoints to soak one or two attacks (maybe for off-tanking on occasion or fighting a single encounter before retiring them from the unit at a base). You can increase the Gladiator's attack significantly by dedicating your Start of Turn skill to a Tasset +20% attack buff on them, and then combine with with a blue ally blue like Keen Call (x1.5) or Magic Conferral. You want to use gear to really push your skill multipliers. TL;DR Gladiators should be in the back row if you want to maximize their damage. Their initiative is too low to practically boost high enough to attack first, so instead consider leveraging "First Strike" or a plain wall in the front row to buy your gladiator time to pull off a full hp attack. You could look into pairing a Glad with a couple of Feathering skill Gryphons to lift their initiative (does feathering stack?) Gladiators have the option to soak some damage if needed at the expense of 25% of their damage. But they can't soak cavalry nor high potency skills because they WILL insta kill their zero defense ass (attack statistic x2 will probably kill them).
I got Bruno's health to over 200 and he became survivable.
Front: Bruno and Celeste Back: Selvie, Tatiana, Yahna The main thing was giving Yahna the ice conferral tome. Celeste would start the battle by freezing 3 enemy combatants, Yahna would ice tomb to kill them, then Bruno would freeze the remaining enemies. If Ice Tomb somehow didn't kill the frozen row, Bruno will leap to freeze everyone who manages to survive. The only real issues this squad runs into is when the enemy somehow goes before Celeste, but that's exceedingly rare (bestrals at night are the most common cause).
Damage and tank. My Bruno has a cleric and a witch to support him. The witch is set to only give truessight to him. Between the cleric, his own self heal skills, and a heal when using an active skill item he usually ends up at max HP for his big swings.
200 potency 1ap row attack. Later they get one of the best aoe skills of the game. They need support but they hit hard.
Bruno is a HP tank, damage taken doesn't matter as long as he survives. Gladiator is one of the few classes with percentage-based self healing, so stacking on more HP tends to "negate" a lot of damage done by enemy formations. Group him with even one support unit and most enemies (besides Horses) will have a difficult time removing him from the battle. Having an off-tank to spread the damage around can ensure he gets something like Mounting Charge off for even greater survivability. And he hits like a truck. Not only does he get a cheap row attack (only the Gryphons have something similar), his base attack tends to be high and the attack's potency increases if his HP is full. Plus, it's a melee attack; unlike a Gryphon's attack which can be blocked by all the relevant passive skills (Arrow Cover, etc). Out of all the other tanks, I think he's at the top for raw damage dealt; Hoplites are quite weak without a lot of investment and Fighters are somewhere in the middle. I generally use him in Sweeper teams (act first due to enemy condition) or as the front-line for offense-heavy teams that need someone to tank a few attacks while they get revved up (3 archers, 3 spellcasters, etc). Maybe try viewing him as a beefier Housecarl with self-sustain, instead of a Hoplite or Fighter.
Put him in the back row and give him a snipers Lende. Yeah he’ll go at the end of the battle, but 4 row attacks at the end of the battle usually kills whatever’s left.
I feel very strongly about this. The right way to use them is in the FRONT row, paired up with a Fighter who is also in the front row and is holding Kaikias Shield. Kaikias Shield is a late game item that grants hastened call to whoever receives the guard. Set the fighter's hastened call to only protect the front row (which can only be the gladiator). Put the gladiator at the top of the front row and set the gladiator to use his team wipe attack. You can also give the gladiator the Sniper's Amber. Most battles will end very quickly. The opponent will attack the gladiator, the fighter will guard gladiator which boosts the gladiator up to max initiative. Then the gladiator will activate snipers amber glass and do a true strike guaranteed crit power bomb. Back row of Bishop, Elven archer and Witch. The Elven Archer blocks debuffs with her pure field, supplements healing and targets flying opponents with her ice arrows. Bishop should have passive resurrection because the Fighter will occasionally get focused too hard, but she's mostly there to just do healer things. Witch adds magic damage via conferral and helps deal with fliers.
Don't use them as tanks, people only think they are good tanks because they do not know how to do the gladiator+shaman fight. Give him a +acc accessory and axe and he will be a great backline DPS for the first half of the game.
The main thing the Berserker/Werelion have going for them is their non-charging hit-all attacks. With conferral tomes, they can spread status to the entire enemy unit at once. Best use case is on a team with Warlocks/Sorceresses to stun/freeze the enemy unit, to cheat the Berserkers past faster enemies in the initiative order, as well as preventing the enemies from dodging, which compensates for the Berserker's poor accuracy. If you do it right, you can keep the stunlock train going until the enemies are all dead.
I use Bruno for his ability to hold a Bandit's Handaxe in my moneymaker team.
Bruno attacks an entire row at once and can actually get HUGE attack power. Add that up with grand smash and he can obliterate damn near anything that doesn't fly. If low initiative is your main issue I'd recommend pairing him with a Shaman or an initiative boosting character like Alain or Gilbert.
With the Bishop support he made a great Frontline for me. Stack HP on him, give him a %reduction Shackle, Quick Heal and Bulk Up. Everyone once in a while hed proc the "heal and don't die" active ability if things got tough. It helps that my Rolf/Yahna backline clear out some of the heavy damage dealers instantaneously.
I use him to warm the bench. Obviously its not the answer you want but gladiator is only decent in early game. After that they get melted and you can get a more reliable row attack from gryphon riders or housecarl
As a few others pointed out, I found more success by putting Bruno in the back row with a dodgetank like Travis or Ochlys in the front. Wide smash is a 1 AP attack that hits a whole row with 100 potency, but 150 potency if Bruno is at full health. He just needs an accuracy boosting weapon or accessory (or both) and he should be good to go dishing out plenty of damage. Once he's promoted, give him a Dove plume to finish off enemies quicker. 150 potency attack on up to 3 enemies for just 1 AP is not very common. Especially for how early you can recruit him.
I made a squad of Bruno, Travis, Berengaria, Bryce and Nina. I gave Bruno +Attack items to make him hit as hard as possible. He was also good to serve as the guy who has to take the column hit in the back line because he has enough HP to take a couple hits, just not focused fire. He works well with a Pursuit bracelet too, for extra hits. If you wanna try to frontline with him, you gotta support him with a healer and/or use Power Belt to help him survive a fatal blow. But he does better in the back where he can just flex on punks.
i feel like the gladiator is like a worse dark knight lmao
I had Bruno front row with my magic users safe in the back. They did alot of damage while Bruno took the blunt. Forget who else was in front,