Floater

The floater is one of the Swamper units in Urtuk.

Traits
 Floaters roll 1 of the following traits 

 Only in Desolation difficulty 

Base Stats
STRENGTH: 4

VITALITY: 10

AGILITY: 33

CONCENTRATION: 4

Tactics and Builds
The floater is a ranged unit that's better built around his high speed, stamina pool and spamming attacks, especially since pipetubes only take 30 stamina to fire. That means, that by raising his agility to 48 (or what's the same, spending 15 points on agility), he will be able to shoot 7 times before running out of stamina between turns. Although this may seem like an impossible thing to do, it's quite feasible, especially considering the floater has access to ranged support, enabling multiple shots before his next turns comes around.

Stat distribution


 * His initial low strength notwithstanding, pipetubes are some of the lower damage weapons in the game. For this reason, it's best to ignore the strength stat until you reach viridium/mithril tier weapons and all your other stats have already been properly leveled up.
 * Vitality is not the most important stat for ranged units. However, given how floaters have to be closer than crossbows to the enemy lines, it'd be wise to spend at least enough points here so the floater can tank a hit/shot or two.
 * Agility, as mentioned, is important to make him act faster and spam as many attacks as possible without running out of breath. For the early-mid game, reaching enough AGI for 151 stamina should be enough. Later, you may up that number to 182, for your next stamina breakpoint. More than that is not necessary stamina-wise (even with optimal set-ups shooting more than 8 times rarely happens, especially since waiting thanks to withdrawal gives him some stamina back).
 * Concentration is the pillar for the floater's strongest builds that revolve around hitting full focus. More about those will be explained later, but in terms of how many points to allocate, let's say as many as you can while also leveling vitality and agility when necessary. Once your focus generation is 165-180%, you can stop leveling concentration, or just leveling it enough so it offsets the per-level focus generation penalty.

Role in fights

Basically a ranged, status/debuff applier to enemies, the floaters main strength besides his ability to spam attacks, is his unique trait, withdrawal, that allows him to move forward for a shot, then retreat back behind the safety of your tanky units. Not only that, but withdrawal allows you to use the "wait" command if you don't move to its full range. In other words, if you shoot once (and crit) with the floater, you'll be able to move 2 tiles anywhere and your turn will end. However, you may opt to move 1 tile or none at all and just wait, which will allow you to regain half your stamina, more speed and, if you have patience and no crit stacks, give you a crit back (basically you'll act faster, will be able to virtually use 50% more stamina and get more crits).


 * An exception to this, is if you have another extra attack available to the floater, either by the berserk shaman ability or focus ability when using withdrawal. This means you may be able to move all the possible tiles without ending your turn, then attack again and, if it's a crit, repeat the process. This is indeed pretty strong as it can allow the floater to extend his range enormously. One of his best builds is based around this, with the floater having the berserk focus mutator, improviser, action man and high focus generation. This will allow him to spam crits on your enemies and keep attacking with his high focus while repositioning to attack and debuff other enemies or move back to safety.

Naturally, in order for the floater to inflict his status his attacks can't be blocked. Against armoured targets his effectiveness plummets as pipetubes armour shatter is laughable, but this can be circumvented thanks to sharp eyes (or valdor piercer for valdors).

When positioning, try to put him right behind your melee units. If he's two tiles back he won't be able to shoot at the enemy unless there's an elevation difference (ranged support won't trigger if there's risk of friendly fire).

If going for a high concentration build, try to feed him the focus concentrate! for even greater performance.

As with other units, try to use your floater against his strong vs targets. Especially important since a max lvl strong vs will guarantee a critical, which will in turn allow you to use withdrawal.


 * Scavengers: pretty standard, go for the unarmoured units until you have a high enough sharp eyes to pierce armour. Watch out for the marksman higher range and the elites that have first strike.
 * Swampers: his usefulness is diminished here as 2 units will clear his status bleed/poison (marauder and spearman). However he can still apply other debuffs to those and the other units don't have natural resistance to clear poison/bleed.
 * Forsaken: useless against defenders under most scenarios (except stunned/panicked/out of breath) and units standing near them. Use him to debuff dangerous units such as the berserker or axeman.  Be wary of the long ranged snipes from the snipers that will usually be directed at your floater. Also watch out for axemen grabs if caught out of position, they can kill you quickly.
 * Necroreavers: very useful here, poison is helpful to chew through their large health pools and their lack of armour allows floaters to reliable apply his effects.
 * Valdors: performs very poorly due to their armour unless you have valdor piercer (mandoralen boss reward) and a high focus build, in which case he can be the armor-breaker of the team.
 * Beasts: good unit against them, most are unarmoured and bleed/poison is very good against their large health pools.
 * Werebeasts: same as beasts
 * Vampires: unarmoured faction, good unit against them (poison also cripples the vampire's healing).