Swamper Engager

The Swamper Engager is an odd beast, combining bleed-based traits with mobility and a billhook. He is an earlygame dominator that falls off as time goes on, but he can always hold his own on a frontline and be useful to a team.

Swamper Engagers can roll either Athletic or Leeching Criticals. There is some debate about which is better, and you cannot discount the usefulness of either. Leech Crits allows you a sustain option when Blood Drinker doesn't work (and that will happen sometimes), while Athletic gives 12 very useful stat points. Athletic helps you get the stats you need for success early on, while Leech Crits helps more past the midgame.

Swamper Engager’s stat spread is fairly simple. Get to 126 Stamina to use a Charge + 3 Engaging Strikes against a ranged opponent. After that, the next Stamina breakpoint is 172, to allow Charge + 4 attacks in a turn (and you will be attacking a lot!). Aside from that, place large numbers of points in VIT and a lesser sum in STR, aiming for a HP well into the thousands. While Billhooks are not the greatest weapon, the sheer number of attacks that Engagers get makes up for it, and gives STR a decent return on investment. CON is a viable choice in the lower difficulties, but in Epic and Desolation, it's generally not a good idea to place points in CON because of lower returns (get it from mutators instead.)

Swamper Engager has a broad range of mutators he can use. Aside from the obvious Light Foot, HP and sustain are always good. Strong Body (farmed from Zone 1 Bandit Hideout bosses) and Overdose are the best mutators to use for a multiplicative HP boost. Rage is an excellent option to reliably score Critical Strikes on a unit that has so many Crit-based mods, and you can use this alongside a (leveled) Vigorous for yet more sustain. On-hit Crit mutators like Poisonous Criticals and Tiring Criticals obviously synergize with this. If you are using Swamper Engager as an Urtuk (an excellent choice), you can load up CON-based mutations like Mind of a Genius, Mind of a Cleric, Improvizer, Action Man, and Sudden Strike. Karwla Speed is obviously a great Urtuk mutation as well given how Engager basically drinks Stamina.

Swamper Engager is fairly straightforward to play. Hit and kill who need to kill, and preferentially strike bleeding targets to take advantage of your sustain. Place a priority on securing kills (with any unit) to secure Murdering Sense and then hit people multiple times next turn. Zeroing in on ranged units is always an option, but be careful that you don’t let your frontline get overwhelmed, or that you don’t yourself get surrounded and killed. Remember that backstabs automatically crit.

Swamper Engager matches well against many factions (eg Scavengers, Forsaken, Beasts, Werebeasts, etc.) The issues for Swamper Engager are Vampires and Necroreavers, which are immune to bleeds. Fortunately, Swampers in general match up well against both these enemies. Against Necroreavers in particular, Engager should be used to farm focus and feed it to your carries, focusing on attacking a “Strong vs.” Target. As implied earlier, Swamper Engager should be used as part of a start, because that lets him exploit his earlygame power (and you get an extra mutator slot out of it on Desolation). By the time you pick him up after storming a Swamper fort, you’ve already gone past much of the earlygame, so his use will be more limited.

Swamper Engager receives Throat Cutter on Epic and Hastening Criticals and Murdering Sense on Desolation. His trait setup is sparse on the lower difficulties, and better options exist for players at Epic and below. Swamper Engager excels on Desolation, both due to his extra traits and the need to push through a quite difficult earlygame.