Brigand Fusilier

One of the many hardened bandits, brigands and killers that the Ancestor hired as a mercenary army to retake the Hamlet after the people rebelled against him. Once the Ancestor died and no further payment seemed in sight, those same mercenaries turned to banditry, and they can be found raiding any of the areas surrounding the Hamlet. Expect no quarter from them, and offer none.

One of the members of the infamous "Brigands Brigade", the Brigand Fusilier is armed with a Blunderbuss which he uses to suppresses the bandits' foes with sprays of lead. His attacks also make it harder for your heroes to dodge, allowing the Brigand Cutthroats and/or Brigand Bloodletter to do more damage.

Behaviour
The Brigand Fusilier is a human type enemy that can be found in every dungeon, but is more common in the Weald. With their high speed, the Brigand Fusilier will generally act early on in the initiative order, using Blanket Fire turn after turn to debuff all party members and lower their dodge (so their allies will be more likely to land attacks). While their damage is fairly low, don't underestimate them: the damage and debuffs can start to add up quickly, and their attack poses a serious threat to anyone on Death's Door.

Guarding is ineffective, since the Fusilier hits the entire party. Likewise, trying to compensate by buffing the party's dodge will just eat up valuable turns. Your safest bet is to simply kill them quickly, or at least stun them while you wipe out the Cutthroats.

Brigand Fusiliers are always positioned on the back of the enemy formation, away from the range of usual front-liners such as Leper or Crusader. Their low HP, however, makes them extremely easy to take down by heroes able to target the back rows, such as the Grave Robber, the Hound Master or the Hellion. If immediate elimination is impossible, he is an easy target for stuns such as the Bounty Hunter's Flashbang or the Plague Doctor's Blinding Gas, able to give some respite from his attacks while the party fortifies itself with buffs, deals with front-line foes defending the Fusilier or prepares countermeasures. The Fusilier also has low resistances to both blight and bleed, so when direct targeting is arduous, damage over time abilities, which are often able to target the back rows, can be employed successfully.

Other effective measures against him are pull skills akin to Bounty Hunter's Come Hither or Occultist's Daemon's Pull, able to bring him to the front rows. When in the first row, the Brigand Fusilier will forfeit his regular attack in favour of Rushed Shot, a weak and inaccurate single target attack that allows him to back down to a safer position; this means that moving the Fusilier to the front position renders him all but harmless for a turn and buys you time to finish him off before he can go back on the offensive. This strategy also works with shuffle skills if he only has a single companion left (even though a Shuffle moves the target to a random position, it cannot leave it unchanged), which is nice since those are usually able to both stun and re-position him at the same time. Additionally, when he is paired with a Brigand Bloodletter, moving the Fusilier to the front makes it possible to hit both enemies with area of effect attacks such as the Crusader's Zealous Accusation or the Leper's Hew, inflicting damage on him while weakening the much tougher Bloodletter at the same time. On top of that, the Cutthroat will be moved to the back, and forced to use Harmless Poke.

Abilities
Apprentice =

Veteran =

Champion =

All Areas

 * Brigand Cutthroat
 * Brigand Bloodletter
 * Brigand Raider
 * Brigand Hunter

Bosses

 * Brigand Pounder
 * Brigand Matchman
 * Brigand Vvulf
 * Barrel O' Bombs