Behold the Best Hero of DD2! Progenitor of guard, taunt and riposte, immobilize and block! our tanker and our stress healer!

He got voted to have a video last because he's so easy to slap on any team and win. (Not shitting on anyone using him, genuinely just saying that he is incredibly versatile)

It's almost comically annoying how versatile and strong MAA is. Every time I'm stuck at the cross roads trying to come up with a new team comp and I struggle to fill the last slot, 95% of the time MAA fills it perfectly if I didn't have him on the team already.

I care about the Crush nerf history, Shuf. Tell me more 🥺

The fun part about this game is slacking off at work you get to academically study the mechanics and you actually get better that way than by playing the game sometimes.

The think with MaA is that in this game, everyone has around: 1 really good or busted move, 1-3 good moves, and the rest are bad or very situational, meanwhile MaA has like 3 (or even 4) straight up busted moves, 4 good moves, 2 situational but good moves and then courageous abandon

MaA is so easy and powerful I'm not surprised not that many people wanted a guide for him haha

The man, the myth, the legend, THE MAN AT ARMS

MaA and HWM and solid S tier picks for this game. Insane damage backed by insane defense. If you have both of them in one team, you can steamroll anything.

You speak very highly of defender and i agree that its a great move but i literally never use it. Just goes to show how incredibly strong this dude is.

Bulwark in particular saved my ass with the updated Obsession boss, as with Bulwark you can essentially loop taunt indefinitely with Retri/Stand Fast. I did have a backup Hellion to use Toe to Toe in case he couldn't do one for some reason or all of his taunt tokens were likely to be consumed, but this path basically "solved" the Obsession update for me.

Leper actually does have DOT with upgraded ruin how could you forget?

I think Price of Pride has the blind to give it notable anti-synergy with Strategic Withdrawal: with PoP, you can’t just rotate crush/withdrawal as easily since there’s a chance you’ll miss it due to the speed token. Still very strong though!

IMO, crush healing on combo instead of block token is very good for him since he could heal kind of reliably depending on the party.

For trinkets, it isn't exactly broken but it's fun to run the on-hit trinkets like dagger or sprakleball and just cycle Retribution and Bellow.

Bellow is my favourite MAA skill. Yell at things, especially when it adds debuffs or DOTs. And killing crits and riposte is awesome when needed. Old man yells at bad guys

Im so happy MaA is so good in this game ! He was one of, if not my fav. Character in DD1 !

Thank you for the guides! They have really helped me step up my game, though I am still stuck on Act 3 boss for like two weeks now. Getting closer each time though...

this left me wanting more. you said in a previous video that understanding MaA is key to beating the game but i dont feel like i gained a better understanding of who he really pairs well with in what path. i guess im saying i wish the teammate section was longer

I think people probably didn't ask for a MAA guide because he's obviously S++ God Super Saiyan 4 tier in any rank performing any role for any confession.

How to use courageous abandon: Don't Jokes aside if you actually want to do a courageous abandon build you'll want to run vanguard (for damage during cooldown) stand fast *unupgraded*, and go to the tangle to get the stone mount trinket. This allows you to stand fast turn 1 for block that gets upgraded at turn end and then generate regular block next turn start for a max damage abandon on turn 2. A second tank is ideal but not neccesary since you can afford to have MAA get hit once after using stand fast.

Just ran through chapters 3-5 with the same MAA. Truly is a house of a character.

MAA is the character you pick if you want to win some of the most brutal/unfair fights in the game. (Stares at act 3 mountain boss) But thanks for another great guide vid shuff, now I can make the most busted hero even MORE BROKEN thanks to the knowledge you imparted on us.

I never use him cuz he's op but after failing a thousand Act 3 runs I may finally give in

Might have been good to have this one as the first :p hes so good

Can’t wait for mods. Gonna get my boy Crusader back.

perhaps the one of the strongest old men in all of video games? is there anything the funny old man can't do?

Act 3 and Act 4 MVP

Nothing has ever felt as good as giving him encore when hes on deaths door. Strategic withdral into crush is 2 attacks and heals 55%

The Black Reliquary Series was great! Please continue it!

MaA gives me vibes of old school Houndmaster with how versatile and ubiquitous he was in team comps.

Ayo Shuffle dropped another vid

I'm surprised Calibrating Censer was not mentioned. Which paired with Stone Mount make a sick combo. Also, Stone mount improves Retribution as well as the standard saving mastery tokens.

Y’know the he’s not immortal weakness kinda hit me hard I just lost a very jolly MAA from a unlucky bleed on deaths door he was one turn away from being healed but died with no - death blow resist, rip out to him he just wanted to hum tunes and make friends with the entire team

I really enjoyed these man. I hope more dd2 videos are coming

Thanks for the advice, Shuff! Appreciate it! :)

If you ask me, the only weeknes he has is that Retribution has a cooldown XD MAA would be op even if he only had Upgraded Retribution in his kit and no other move in my opinion. XD Personally thou, I don't see why defender is better in general than retribution. Defender doesn't do damage or interact with tokens like Retribution does, Retribution also generates block tokens which is good enough, and with Defender, you have to be able to predict where the enemy will attack and defend the right target, and then if the enemy decides to hit someone else, that's bad, Retribution will blanket defend the whole party pretty much on top of the damage and things (also, just like a DOT, retribution checks death door, finished a lot of enemies with it). The only two times I would press defender over retribution is when. A: A big telegraphed attack is coming that can't be redirected with taunt or B: Someone is on death door in my team besides MAA so I wanna save their ass (which won't happen often since I'm already pressing Retribution every time I can so MAA is taking most of the damage anyway and then defender won't help the other character against cleaves regardless which is when others are most likely to go low)

Alas. The long awaited video.

I've encountered so many new players who think maa isn't good and it's just wild to me because he is so good and can do so much in this game

Can’t recall the name of the trinket but the shambler one woth the eyes on it is amazing with bellow. The trinket applies 5 blight, burn, and bleed if u have 5 stress. Bellow procs this as an aoe with insane damage output. Using bolster to stay around 5 stress auto wins fights. And use the stress healing potion too if needed

Vanguard mma best mma He dishes the damages and serves the drinks

You know MaA is the best hero in the game when its weaknesses are - Has too many good moves - No DoTs (an actual weakness) - Can die

Stone Mount is so fucking good on this guy, it saves you like three or four Mastery, it's insane.

I love your content as I am learning this game. One suggestion though, I watched your hero guides and it’s a bit frustrating because your builds are all predicated on having literally EVERYTHING unlocked (all skills, paths, trinkets, etc). It would be really helpful to have some guides on how to work through the game when you only have base skills (at least not operating under the assumption that you have everything unlocked). I’ve got a pretty good pile of hours in so far and while earning candles to unlock paths and class trinkets isnt hard, I only have 2 heroes who I’ve unlocked all skills for (Plague Doctor and Highwayman). It’s hard implementing some of your guides/advice when I literally dont have access to most of the skills and/or items. This is just a suggestion for possible additional videos/guides. As I said I LOVE your content and am learning a lot, it’s just that I can’t implement a lot of the strategies/synergies since I dont have most of the skills/items unlocked/available. Thanks!

Finally! Thank you!

You should do a video about what characters they might introduce next.

Thank you for these guides ❤

I would like to see Sprawl and Tangle first since they appear starting at the Denial Confession

With redoubt he invalidates the act 5 boss completely because he can guard the person in the one v one but the redoubt damage still triggers. Definitely the most op character in the game by far.

I think if they made courageous scale off of block better it wouldn’t be such a meme, maybe have the upgraded version not vuln you after.

MAA and Seraph is ridiculous imo. Whatever path you pick for MAA, Seraph will fill in the blank with HP heal, more dmg, more defense or DoT removal. Obviously you then add some reach and its as close to gg as possible.

you know, standart trinket and full stagecoach armor is 1 turn courageos abandon whitch will be like 40 dmg crit

Watching this video today maa has been super nerfed in like ever ability lmao

Stone Mount is S tier on MaA.

Turns out he was a crap officer but good at hitting things, not dying, and shouting.

Niiice

only thing i disagree with is CA being the worst setup move. That title goes to Backdraft. That shit got nerfed into oblivion

Really shuff i didnt think you're favourite path for Maa would be sergeant! Why is that? i'm genuinely curious. Subjectively i think that vanguard is the best if you use him as a medium tank/medium dps, but bulwark is better as a pure tank, and also his damage, while reduced is not that bad. The only think sergeant has is move res which is good against leviathan amd ambition and thats it i think, so other than act 4 i wouldnt use sergeant, he just frees a slot from a moving ability and uses stand fast as a fifth ability, which again bulwark does better. I dont know it seems that the other 2 paths beat sergeant in every aspect except against 2 bosses

Are we gonna ignore the fact that the most broken character in the game has only 2 bad skills and they are unlocked at the very end and together? Definetely no bias there

Can you do a cultist trinket guide. Like everytime i have no idea where to put them in my team and ill just throw the +hp and have one guy outlive everyone or throw on the dmg one and have that person only get 3 turns and die

You know a character is STACKED when you have to put "not immortal" in the list of weaknesses. MAA has no chill

IS works especially well with MAA becose he can gift tokens (defense).

Possible weakness: low crit rates, much like Leper

Maybe Man At Arms had the least amount of votes because he doesn't need a guide. He's one of few characters where it is fairly obvious what he should do, and he is easy to play well.

I do feel like Man-at-Arms has another actual, notable weakness to a greater extent than other heroes have- debuffs. To elaborate: Man At Arms has the default, kinda bad Debuff Resist that eats every Debuff ever. Other heroes either have Dodge/Dodge+ Access in their base kits (most dodge-y heroes, your Jesters and Grave Robbers and Highwaymen and such), higher Debuff Resist (Occultist), or otherwise ways in their base kit to just get around Debuffs/access to Debuff-resistant paths (Runaway with Hearthlight+, Leper with Reflection and Tempest Path, etc.) To contrast Man-At-Arms just sits there behind a mountain of Block tokens like you say and just takes it. Depending on the match-up, he might just get screwed out of his main strategy entirely by Atrophic Cut, or endlessly stunlocked eating meat and tanking relationships in the Harvest Child fight because he can't avoid or resist the debuff to save his life, etc. It's not usually a big deal and it's got a lot of play-around with combat items but it feels enough of a thing to warrant mention.

So you're telling me that two of his weaknesses are that he has 5 skill slots like everyone else and that he's not immune to dying??

for the algorithm

It's wild (or not) how people don't care about DD2

Why do you often suggest getting stress heal mastery early? I feel like quickly killing backline or something that'll let you kill a boss early is preferable.

Only reason he is the last is cuz every team probably has one and we got tired of seeing him

He's simply so broken that you don't need a guide to play him

weaknesses ? WTF are Weakenesses ?

He may be the most important, but making a guide for him, well... i DARE you to NOT use him "correctly"

I think that man at arms isn’t really op. He has a lot of ways to counter what bosses and enemies do, but that shouldn’t be so rare to make the one that can seem op in comparison. The thing that DD2 lacks for me is more token interaction, it feels like the token system is done with that in mind but they forgot to do movements that do so.

Courageous Abandon is awful. I tried it. It's not worth all the setup and drawback. You're better off just smashing and riposting with regular moves. This move is way, way undertuned in all possible directions. I even used it with a trinket that buffs it, still not worth it in the slightest.