Anyone ever use the "Combat" tree of the valk?

Essentially, you transform her from her usual "favorable auspices" support unit to a counterattacking healbot.

Take counterattack at level 2 for 9 AP, fanaticism level 3 for 5(+5) AP, and Martial inspiration at level 4 for 7 AP. if you have 15 AP to spare from your comp, you can also take "master fencer", but that isn't as necessary. on turns 1, 4 and 7, she opens with martial inspiration, then goes into counterattack stance and you put her into a defensive position. on all other turns, she can apply regeneration to someone on your team before going into counterattack stance. She works well paired with other units to go for a surround. I would probably send her into a 2-wide choke with my kotl and use her in defensive stance during key turns, while kotl is given parry and waits till the end of the turn before activating.

The idea behind this is that if the enemy ignores her, then she simply heals your important units every turn. If the enemy attacks her, she'll be doing a lot of retaliating. But this is all conjecture and I was wondering if anyone had any actual experience.

hm, dunno, I always end up sniping down the valk with archers or mages so I don't have to worry about her potential as support. It never occured to me that I should engage her in melee. Whereas the enemy melee units usually get paired with on or two spare units that just dont attack but stand there if the odds are bad.

The idea behind this is that if the enemy ignores her, then she simply heals your important units every turn. If the enemy attacks her, she'll be doing a lot of retaliating. But this is all conjecture and I was wondering if anyone had any actual experience.

yeah that is the aim. I tried it in closed beta like that (which is 100% like it is today) and it was was an interesting surprise especially as it wrecks wolven, returning THREE attacks and dealing lot of damage (+1 DAM bravery / +1 DAM fanaticism / +3 DAM martial inspiration = 5 extra potential DAM as the PoB!). It is a cool option just harder to play than the FA bot.

Nope, favorable is soo much game breaking for not take it. We'll see after the patch.

I really like the combat Valk but it is really only very effective vs bots and bad/unaware players. Instead of doing extra melee damage against the better players they will likely ignore it in favour of other targets, and take out your Valk with ranged attacks. You could use a 1 hex bottle neck and a unit with taunt to de-buff any attacker engaging the Valk, but she would still likely just be avoided or shot/spelled to death. The combat Valk does do way more damage than normal though which I found made her pretty useful even when unable to exploit 'counter attack'. A FA Valk is really a cheaper, safer, and more generally useful unit than the combat build in most lion companies.

two main problems of combat Valk are:

- high cost combined with low tou and mostly no healing able to cast on her
- counteratack working until end of turn - that forces to make first activation with Valk mostly combined with deffensive stance to be somehow effective... but if you waste first activation for a deff stance on offensive unit - then you suffer consequences
especialy with wolfen DOD and undead unit prices - while for upgrading Valk tree alone - Ram almost gets another Skelly...