So, I've been trying out the Brawler class the most and I wanted to share some of my notes on its various weapons and builds so far. I imagine this is all fairly common knowledge to the developer, Dingasu, but I figured it might be useful to get a player's impressions of the game.

I've made extensive use of Aura's stat resets and then beat up the resident punching bag, EVIL TED, to test out the damage. The numbers aren't exact since the damage is somewhat random by a few points or so, but it doesn't seem too significant for purposes of comparison. I also tried to maximize the main stat as much as I could with the equipment I could find based around each weapon.

Firstly, the Pincher Punchers, the only Brawler weapon that scales with Defense and Intelligence:

At first glance, Intelligence seems to scale slightly better per point than Defense for damage. However, high Defense also has the added benefit of giving you much better survivability. As of 1.01, the stat has been buffed to the point where you can almost be invincible to most mobs' physical attacks and allows you to stand in front of them while you punch them to death! You would otherwise have to kite enemies around, or chug health potions, because mob damage is relatively high in this game.

Intelligence, as far as I know, only increases damage output. However, the Brawler only has one skill out of four that scales with Intelligence, and that is Takedown.

It's a situational skill that pulls the player to the target and snares them in place. It seems to be more useful for its utility in a party rather than for its damage. The problem is that it has a high cooldown relative to other Brawler skills with much better DPS, Double Strike and Flurry Strikes, and it also forces you to be in melee range which makes it awkward to kite enemies as it doesn't prevent the target from attacking you. The cooldown reduction from the Pincher Punchers helps a little bit (reducing it from 3 seconds to 2.4 seconds), but not enough to matter.

So, that's why I tried out a hybrid version. But in short, it just feels like you have the worst of both worlds: mediocre survivability and mediocre damage. From what I can tell, spreading out your stats isn't optimal currently.

In my opinion, pure Defense is the best option for Pincer Punchers, despite it having Intelligence scaling. It effectively turns the Brawler into an off-tank/bruiser role where you can mindlessly hold down the attack button in front of the Crab King boss, for example, which is fun in its own way!

As a side-note, the Pincer Punchers will also slow and (as of 1.01?) debuff the Attack of the enemy for as long as you're punching them. To be honest, it's hard to measure the usefulness of this effect. No enemy in the game currently seems to be able move faster than a player naturally anyways, so it doesn't seem all that relevant. Some mobs have a speed buff ability, but the Pincer Punchers don't seem to be all that effective in those circumstances either. The Attack debuff seems almost imperceptible as well, at most it reduces damage by 10 points or so. Though, I haven't done extensive testing, so I wouldn't know how significant it is.

Next, I'll compare the Attack-scaling gauntlets:

In terms of auto-attack, you have to consider the varying attack speeds for each weapon. The Studded Gloves are tied with the Pincher Punchers for the fastest, the Soul Stealers are just behind, and the Quadra Dusters are the slowest. So, even though the Quadra Dusters does the most damage in its first hit, it quickly falls off in DPS. However, they have the unique advantage of an AOE attack which makes avoiding enemy damage much easier.

Double Strike can be spammed freely along with auto-attacking, so you may as well be holding both buttons down the whole time and effectively boost DPS for very little cost.

Flurry Strikes is incredibly potent and deals very high burst damage (e.g. a whopping 3600+ raw damage in just over 2 seconds with Studded Gloves). Despite its very low cooldown though, it's actually dangerous to spam it because you'll drain all of your HP away. Soul Stealers, however, somewhat compensates for the HP loss with lifesteal but not completely, so you still need to use Flurry Strikes in moderation!

Blade Stop is mainly useful for its stun, which is very helpful for a variety of situations. The damage is not its primary function, but I compared the damage anyway for posterity. Something to note is that its cooldown is also reduced by Pincher Punchers, so it's still relevant even when it's not on an Attack build.

To summarize, investing into pure Attack (predictably) turns the Brawler into a DPS role that vomits out damage. Studded Gloves do the most damage overall, although since you're limited by Flurry Strikes' HP cost, Soul Stealers are the better option for sustained damage even though it does the least damage in one burst. Quadra Dusters' damage is in the middle when you consider skills and is situationally useful for when you can take advantage of the auto-attack's extra AOE range. Generally, you won't be nearly as durable as a pure Defense build though, so you need to either kite your enemies or punch them so hard that they can't even retaliate in the first place!

In conclusion:

Unless I'm missing the point, there's just no reason to invest in Intelligence at all, which is strange as Radia the shopkeeper in the starting area implies how its an alternative stat for this class (she says something along the lines of how "smart Brawlers can turn the tide in battle"). A pure Attack build will always outdamage an Intelligence build with its Attack-scaling skills, and neither does it add any other advantage like a pure Defense build. The only Intelligence-scaling skill for Brawler is Takedown, but its main draw is in its utility rather than its damage, so you can use the skill with any build regardless.

On the other hand, Attack builds have weapon variety and does its job well so far. You have to essentially play tag with the mobs in this game to avoid damage (i.e. hit them in melee range, quickly get out of range, hit them again just as they are moving to a new tile, rinse and repeat), but it seems like it's a common tactic with any melee class. Defense builds are strange, because it doesn't really utilize any of the Brawler's specific skills, but it's still weirdly effective if you hate playing tag and prefer just holding down a single button.

In regards to hybrid builds, they just don't seem worth it. Although I've considered an Attack/Defense hybrid as well, I assume that it's also underwhelming because you're essentially halving the effectiveness of each stat and you're stuck with a weaker weapon (there's no Attack/Defense-scaling Brawler weapon, at least not yet). Maybe in the future with more equipment variety and higher levels with possibly soft/hard caps on stats is where hybrid builds will shine more.

Anyways, that's the extent of what I understand about the class. I'm sure there's stuff I'm overlooking and plenty of unfinished content since I assume the game is still early in its infancy. But, I hope my inane ramblings is somehow helpful!

oh this absolutely rocks, thank you so much for taking your time documenting this!!

i might just swap out the intelligence scaling from the pincer punchers with attack instead and change takedown to scale with attack. i still believe in hybrid builds as long as it doesn't feel like more than half of your skills are useless, which was the problem with only takedown scaling with something other than attack.. with this sort of change people will have the option to still do crazy stuff with flurry strikes while being able to take just a few more hits if they wanted to

as time goes on and more skills and other tools get added i'm hoping that sketchbook will open up with more unique builds that feel like they work properly even if it's something like a meme build, because i just think it's silly and fun