Character Analysis, Tier List and Party Compositions Guide (Color of Madness Update)

Overview

This guide will explain the damage output abilities of the characters, their synergies, it’ll delve into the overall strategies of the game, a tier-list will be presented and lots of party compositions are proposed.

0. The DPS Analysis of Party Members

Before we discuss the compositions, let’s understand the logic behind the choices. We’ll look at the damage output of the various chars and make some serious conclusions out of this.

Now comes the most boring part of this guide – I’ll be explaining the rules of such calculations. Obviously, there’s too many intricacies in the game to allow for easy calculations so we’ll have to set some ground rules.

When calculating DPS (more like DPT – damage per turn, but let’s simply use the common term) I’ve taken into account three factors – average damage, critical rate and the accuracy. Damage is pretty obvious – since the game is pretty easy during pre-champion fights I took into account only the tier-5 weapons’ damage.

Critical is also simple – it’s 1% of bonus damage multiplier per 1% of critical. We’re mostly disregarding the critical healing here – right now, the basic critical chances of different classes are not that far away from each other and so it’s more about trinkets, quirks and party composition. Besides, while frequent criticals do somewhat help they’re hardly being panacea. You should never rely on them alone to be your anti-stress.

To simplify and standardize things a bit, I went with such accuracy values:
95 accuracy – 70% hit chance
105 accuracy -80% hit chance
115 accuracy – 90% hit chance.

This will go lower versus the dodgier monsters, of course, but there isn’t a lot of them and generally your accuracy doesn’t fall below the 60-70% threshold. Which is actually really important – you see, it’s only below that 60% accuracy threshold where the real damage dealing difference begins.
I mean, going from 40% to 50% accuracy increases your DPS by 25%.
50% to 60% is 20% increase.
60% to 70% is 16%.
70% to 80% is 14%.
And 80% to 90% is 12,5%.
So as long as you’re not falling too low on your average chance (which you won’t), combat-to-combat accuracy variation has no significant impact.

One side note here – by this same reason if you go dodge, you go all out. For example, those 5 extra evasion on the Jester (compared to many other classes) may look pathetic but If you lower your enemy’s hit chance from 40 to 35 that’s 14% of extra survivability already. 14% definitely sounds better than 5%.

So, once you take trinkets & quirks into account, 70-90 accuracy zone is where you spend the entirety of the game. That means that Leper, for example, is not the blind cripple that he’s painted to be – yes, you’ll get rows of unlucky misses with him periodically but statistically he hits much more than he misses.

I’m calculating these stats without considering for trinkets, though – mostly because you can kit out your squad in the various ways and there isn’t much common ground between fully defensive setups (double dodge items, anti-stress, anti-DOT, even the occasional scouting setup) and offensive ones. Another thing is that most class trinkets are not that good and your DPS setup will frequently be centered around “neutral” items like Focus Rings, Surgical Gloves or Legendary Bracers. Which means that even though different classes have the access to some different trinkets it’s not enough to cause any significant discrepancies (with some very rare exceptions).

Another thing is that, theoretically, there is a big difference between pure damage bonuses and accuracy bonuses. Pure damage is arithmetical, meaning that the more you have, the less efficient it becomes. I.e., going from 100% to 120% is 20% DPS increase, but going from 200 to 220 is only 10% DPS increase.

Whereas accuracy (and critical) is a multiplier so, when your basic damage is high (as it’s the case with, say, bounty hunter in the marky squad), it is more profitable to go for critical. In that bounty hunter example your Collect Bounty will do 225% of basic attack damage to a marked Human. Giving him a Wounding Helmet will add another 25%, raising this to 250%. Giving him Surgical Gloves will first provide a 5% accuracy multiplier, raising his average to-hit chance from 80% to 85%. That’s an 1.0625 multiplier so now the effective damage is 239.0625%. And then you get 1.1 multiplier from the critical so the effective damage is 262.96%. Which is almost 13% more than what is given by very rare class trinket. Rarity is not always quality.

Generally, though, the bonuses of the game are given out in humble amounts so there’s just no distance for those to really shine – it’s only around the 200% where it gets noticeable while mostly you wander around the 150% of overall damage mark. So this is more of a mark squad intricacy. And even here while you will be getting some bonuses for your smart choices they won’t be too big – in aforementioned example it’s only 5% of actual DPS difference. Which is nice but in no way that’s a gamebreaker.

When it comes to DoTs don’t forget that even though they ignore Protection, they still need to penetrate the according resistance. It varies from monster to monster but on the average the chance to succeed is 75%. That’s in a vulnerable place – i.e., ruins vs blight, weald vs bleed. The resistant place is 50% instead – that’s a huge loss and, well, that’s why it is resistant. You just don’t go there with such party compositions, too much damage is lost.

To put things into action – you need to have at least 17 DPS on the character to consider them to be a comfortable attacker. Mind you, comfortable – not good. The higher than that the better, ofc. And it goes up to twice as high.

Enough with the maths, let’s start in no particular order:

0.1 – Occultist DPS

Sacrifical Stab – 9.375 / 12.65 vs eldritch – even versus priority targets, this is really, really low. Even in the supposedly Eldritch super-slaying Eldritch Killing Incense + Eldritch Slayer’s Ring setup it’s only 17.44 damage which is below what many decent damage dealers will do without any trinkets involved. In CoM meta Occultist’s attack potential is rather non-existent. You will be using this thing here and there to snipe some stragglers – the extra reach surely helps here. But damage is not the reason you’re taking the Occultist for.

Abyssal Artillery –6.16×2 / 7.705×2 vs eldritch = 12.32 / 15.41 – this used to be Occultist’s best attack and, well, it still is. Only now it deals subpar damage. And, given how quickly the enemies position 3 and 4 melts right now you don’t even get to use it all that often. Yuck.

Weakening Curse – 2.4 – yes, I’ll be calculating for skills like these too. These numbers may look pathetic but look at them this way – they’re 1/7th of a decent attack. So every seven times you’re using this skill you get a “freebie” attack. And, considering how strong the other effects of this skill are, it’s a good bonus. 20% of damage reduction means a lot. Say, Fungal Clawer has 39 HP and 50% protection. So, to kill it, you actually need to do 78 damage. Applying one stack of this debuff brings down that number to 55.7 damage. It’s like dealing 22.3 damage in one go – groovy! Well, actually, less than that – this skill need to hit (90%) and Debuff needs to break through resistance (80%). Taking that into account, this skill does 16.05 of “damage” this way. But that’s still great! And that’s even without counting for the damage removed – it’s trickier but, to put it simply, it’s like denying a monster half his action. If he lives through all 3 rounds of debuff. Needless to say, this is Occultist’s strongest offensive skill and the main thing you’ll be spamming with him. Outside of healing.

Vulnerability Hex – 1.08 – here it’s mostly about the mark. It doubles the damage output of marky squads (duh) which is why it’s good. The dodge penalty theoretically provides a further 28% modifier to the clumsy party members but Accuracy trinkets are way too good right now so that will rarely be a factor. Because of that, this is hardly the best mark.

Hands From the abyss – 5.31 – let’s explain why the stuns are bad right now. Damage-wise, it deals only 31% of your average action. So the stunning part needs to cover for that. In best cases this skill will have 85% to hit and 80% to stun. Meaning that only in 68% of actions the monster will get stunned. So it’s like 31% of action + 68% of action – 0.99 action in total. You can say that this is an even trade but even an even trade is bad! Don’t forget that the rules of combat are assymetrical for you and the monsters. You need to kill them all while taking as little damage as possible. They need to kill at least one of your team members. Even damaging you severely will cause you to retreat thus “winning” the dungeon for them. No way in hell you’re trading with them evenly. And that’s all what the stuns are now. And we’re not even considering the negative economy influence of this thing – torches are not endless, you know.

Daemon’s Pull – 5.1 – this thing is not very efficient unless we’re taking the corpses into account. Pulling the dangerous backliners might sound useful but we’re wasting too much damage here – in good party compositions it’s much easier to simply snipe them. Like, literally – Vulnerability Hex into Arbalest’s Sniper Shot will kill the majority of them. Corpses, on the other hand, put this thing into the 19.6 DPS zone (at the very least – there are much tougher corpses out there) and that’s turbo-potent. So it’s a great tool for some reach-less parties (Lepers, Abominations, PBS Highwaymen) and useless junk for everyone else.

Conclusion: Occultist has been severely nerfed and neutered. He was already a bit of meme character because his skill is by its nature unreliable and you can easily get wiped on a series of 1-s and 0-s. All with bleed, of course. But it was compensated by providing the best single-target healing potential on the average. And he had lots of damage & utility. Now he’s only second in single-target healing (Flagellant is better) and his utility got trimmed down to Weakening Curse. Wwhich you may not even want if your party is DoT based or if you’re having better sources of it. So he’s only good in the places where the Flagellant doesn’t fit. Sad but true.

0.2 – Grave Robber DPS

Pick to the Face – 8.87 / 14.7 vs 40% armor- believe me, I love these girls but they’ve been a weak character and they remain a weak character. They’re supposed to be glass cannons but their DPS is pathetic for such a role. Even against the heavy armor.

Lunge – 16.66 / 22.17 vs blighted – and even her key skill is not as efficient as it looks. In its basic shape it’s below average and don’t forget that you have to jump through some hoops to use it reliable. One way is to bring three GRs into the fight so they Lunge after each other thus returning your squad into initial position at the end of the turn. What ruins this idyll is the fact that speed is random in this game – at the start of each turn a virtual 1d8 die gets thrown and then your speed gets added to that. The final number is your actual speed. Thus even a 10 Speed GR may go before the 15 Speed one. Meaning that you’ll be forced to use lots of subpar skils on that turn, thus harming your DPS. The other way towards repetitive Lunging is Shadow Fade skill – it’ll add at least 19.04 Lunge Damage. 22.6 versus Blighted. That is truly efficient but it’s also slow – you need to account for the fact that, most likely, it’ll give your target an extra turn of life and thus an extra attack. Which you’ll then have to negate somehow – when hyping that skill, everyone seems to forget this part. It can be good against ultra-tough monsters which you won’t bring down fast anyways (Crabs, Swinetaurs, etc.) but it’s rather bad in smaller encounters. It’s not a universal go-to skill. It’s also bad in multiples – stealth is actually bad for your team. It means attacks get focused on a smaller number of party members and you wan’t them to be spread out as evenly as possible – AoE healing in this game is much more potent that single-target ones. Returning to Lunge – for this skill to be good you also have to use it versus blighted. That’s the only way it deals decent damage. But you also want that Blight to be a really light one – after all, if you’re swiftly killing a monster who has 14 Blight damage hanging you’re essentially losing that damage. You’re trading for DPS here instead of getting extra. And there’s only one slight blight skill in the game. Which makes these kinds of parties very narrow – you’ve been a good kid and have bought Shieldbreaker DLC, haven’t you?

Flashing Daggers – 6.63×2=13.26 – by the standards of double hitting skills, that’s pathetically low. It’s not even good for the sake of resistance removal – both Flagellant and Highwayman’s skills will provide the same effect while giving you much, much more DPS in the process.

Thrown Dagger – 10.12/ +3.34 vs Blight / + 4.04 vs Mark, gives around 1.5 extra dmg to two future actions from accuracy – another bad one. The basic damage is low, the mark damage is low (compared to the proper mark skills), the blight damage is so-so. Extra future damage may seem to make it worth it but keep in mind that Grave Robber’s accuracy is very high so, in most cases, that accuracy bonus will not be efficient – you’ll be at the accuracy cap already. I guess this skill has some reach so it’s good to keep as a “sidearm” to finish some low hp foes where DPS doesn’t already matter. But it certainly doesn’t define anything in her playstyle – it’ll never pay off for the necessary setup.

Poison Dart – 4.66 + 2.7×4 = 15.46 – and her poison skill is the weakest DoT of the game. Compared to the rest of DoTs, its DPS is just awful. Resistance removal part is also subpar – it’s only reasonable in full blight squads. And those can be cool. The issue is competition – Dart can be done from positions 2-3-4. In 4 you need to have a Plague Doctor. No sense in going for such a squad without PD. In 3 you’d rather have a second PD – they’re that good. And in 2 you’d rather have an Abomination – his Beast’s BIle provides the same resistance-devouring while dealing much more damage. And his speed is pretty much the same. And he’s tankier (which means a lot for that strategy). She’s way behind her analogues.

Conclusion – GR makes sense only in a very narrow shieldbreaker combo. Everywhere else her damage output is mediocre (at best) and there are just better performers than she is. Yes, sometimes you roll high on those criticals and the GR squad seems like unstoppable power. But othertimes you’re rolling average and it struggles. And don’t even start talking about low rolls… Now, mind you, I’m not saying she’s awful – tri-GR lunge parties produce adequate damage so they can be used for the grinding. Mostly in Cove – the monsters there are squshy and some lucky Lunging will bring many encounters to the end. But non-blighted Lunge won’t work well against the bosses. And even a boosted one is not the best you can do. Instead of being buffed, she was pretty much nerfed, lol.

0.3 – Crusader DPS

Smite – 12.99 / 17.5 vs unholy – while he’s generally maligned as the damage dealer, Crusader can do ok. In the Ruins only. That used to be a huge flaw (Ruins is the first and the easiest location – you’re not supposed to experience issues there) but now there’s a reason for you to be somewhat grinding in the Ruins. It seems to have the biggest amount of Quirk-giving curios amongst all the locations. And good Quirks are hard to come by – you want to be using all possible chances to get into them. So if you need to pass a week efficiently you tend to go to the ruins. Even so, you don’t perceive this guy as a pure damage dealer – he’s more of a combative healer/tank.

Zealous Accusation – 7.51×2=15.02 – Crusader’s skill slots are very crowded so here the numbers help us a lot. In the Ruins, the Smite is much more efficient so we take it over Zealous. Outside the Ruins, it’s vice versa. It’s as simple as this. The problem is, though, that there are almost no reasons to be taking this guy outside of the ruins…

Stunning Blow – 6.9 and 68% to stun – well, by the measures of current stuns this one is kinda efficient. You’re getting something like an 0.08 of action as a profit here. Which is still a trade up, I suppose. Depending on your playstyle, you can consider either this or Bulwark to take your fourth skill slot.

Holy Lance – 13.85 / 18.7 vs Undead – right now the stupidest thing about Crusaders is that, despite all their looks, they’re not a frontline characters. Holy Lance is their most efficient skill – it’s not even about the damage advantage, it’s about the depth advantage. Enemy positions 3 and 4 are usually priority targets that need to be taken ASAP. So, despite their tanky look, 2-3 positioned pair of Crusaders makes much more sense than 1-2 ones. There they’ll just scissor through your foes, returning each other into position. And once all the targets are gone they’ll be healing whatever the damage you’ve sustained. You can even push them as far as 3-4 but that makes less sense – in 2-3 they’ll be more frequently targeted by your foes.

Inspiring Cry – Crusader’s chief healing skill. Keep in mind that they’re more of a stress healers. They’re not that good after the nerf so it’s mostly a secondary option. Which is made much worse by the fact that Crusaders are the slowest class of the game. It’s a bit difficult to explain but Speed is highly necessary to avoid stalling penalties. Your basic plan is to stack some DoTs on your last enemy, have a greedy full round of healing and then watch him die from those DoTs so the combat ends without you being punished. Crusader’s speed means he almost never goes before the enemy, thus being useless for this tactic. Which is quite crucial, BTW.

Bulwark of Faith – the idea of bulwark is that you have a Hard-Skinned crusader. That one quirk is a must. Some kind of protection trinket is also necessary. The easiest one to get is Heavy Boots. Then this skill will raise your protection from 30% to 60%. In terms of Effective hit points, that’s boosting them by 133%. Yes, that much. So you’re spending an action to negate every second attack that’s aimed at you – more than that, actually. That’s a very nice trade, isn’t it? Keep in mind that it only makes sense in the very slow combats – i.e., against enemies that are hard to kill. Faster fights just won’t last long enough to be efficient. Also keep in mind that this does nothing against DoTs, Stress and shuffles. Against squads that are rife with these things Bulwark will bring more harm than help.

Conclusion: Crusader is the weakest class of the CoM meta. Yeah, he’s utter crap. His only good argument is reach damage vs unholy. His position 1-2 damage sucks. His healing is subpar and, as I’ve explained, it’s negatively impacted by his low speed. You need good speed on your healers. And this class always relied on stalling tactics to be useful. The fact that they’re now heavily penalized affects Crusader the most of all classes. And even as the rare healer who has both stress & hit points healing he’s not that great – Flagellant will do better. His niche is too narrow to allow for his frequent usage.

0.4 – Jester DPS

Dirk Stab –9.36 dmg + 4.77 finale damage – don’t let your Jesters toy with their dirks or they’ll all go blind. This skill is as awful as this joke is. Sure, it’s the only skill that Jester can use in position number 1. Repeatedly, that is. But it’s awfulness should be a clear indicator that you never want to have your Jester in that position. Movement is also rather worthless here – the only reason to go forward is to set up for Finale. But even though Solo does no damage itself, it’ll actually give you more eventual damage with that skill. Just ponder this fact a little. And in all non-finale cases you don’t want your Jester to be moving forward (he’s very finicky in terms of positioning) so this skill begins to harm you.

Harvest – (4.76 + 2.55×3)x2=24.82 overall damage + 4.77 finale – now that’s what I call DPS! Sure, bleeding is not as fast as your plain attacks but it completely ignores armor and leaves no corpses (which can be counted as further DPS increase; that’s situational, though). DoTs are also soul-crushing versus majority of bosses – they tend to have multiple actions and so they take DoT damage twice or thrice as fast. So this damage stops being slow. People who complain about this skill have probably never tested it – Jester is a freaking powerhouse in any slow, grindy squad. You can even consider two Jesters. BTW, I don’t think that Bloody Dice (or other bleed boosters) are worth it – they result in 21% DPS increase and that’s nice, but taking another Dodge trinket will provide 25% of extra survivability (28% if your Jester is Evasive; 33% if he sports the Ancestor’s Coat + Camouflage Cloak combo). In grindy squad, defense probably matters much more.

Slice Off – 7.35 + 3.37×3 = 17.46 overall damage + 4.77 finale – not as good as its stepbrother but pretty potent nevertheless. That’s why you wish to make DoT squads to be uber-defensive – negating enemy actions efficiently means focusing them down is a lesser priority and so you can use the more potent AoE skills.

Solo – 11.94 + 2.7-4.05 finale damage – ok, here it gets a bit trickier. The first part of the bonus here comes from attack percentage, it’s rather static. The second part comes from critical boost. And that one scales with the potence of your finale – the more skills you use, the better this bonus becomes. Well, the difference is not that huge but it still needs to be taken into account. Still, even in the lowest charged condition Solo gives a whopping 0.5 higher damage to your Finale. And the skill effect itself can be useful. It’s mostly a Weald skill, though. In all other places, mark doesn’t really guarantee you being hit. It’s quite silly to spend an entire action for this only for all the enemy strikes to flow past Jester tank and into all other party members. Yeah, Jester Tank. In weald, however, it’ll attract lots of attention and that’s exactly what makes the tank build (Evasive & Luminous; +Dodge trinkets) work. It’s a much stronger usage than just Finale positioning – after all, even in the highest charged up for it still doesn’t pay for a turn spent.

Inspiring Tune – 4.77 + 2.7-4.05 Finale Damage – it’s a weird action. On one hand it’s the best single-focused stress regeneration with some potential damage attached. On the other hand, don’t forget that monsters tend to be throwing a ton of stress at you. The average stresser hit or just a crit side-effect will throw in something about 20. So, under honest terms, it’s more of a trading your turn for half of their turn. And stalling is punished right now. So the only way to profit from this is to focus the enemy team super fast so you’re having, like, 4 your party members vs 1-2 of theirs. And then, for a short while, even uneven trades are affordable. But under such conditions you generally won’t need finale bonus – the battle will be over before you’re able to use it. I’m not saying this skill is bad – well, it is but it’s worth the sacrifice, that stress won’t heal itself. But it doesn’t make for a great finale combo.

Battle Ballad – 4.77 + 2.7-4.05 Finale Damage – this is more like it. Couple of ballads, Solo then Finale – sounds prudent. First ballad used adds something like 4 damage per strike for 9 actions. Future ones are not as efficient, though (because of accuracy being capped and diminishing returns on crit chance). Still, it’s only 5 strikes for it to pay off. Keep in mind that you have to build your squad around it – if you’re alrady geared out to hit your foes with 90% accuracy then it’ll add only 1.7 damage per hit. That’s much worse! So it works best with clumsier party members who don’t equip accuracy-giving trinkets.

Finale – 15.93 + per action bonuses – this thing is rather overhyped. While it excels at producing the meme-worthy amounts of damage, the practicality of this skill deserves to be questioned. First, it generates greatly delayed damage that is applied at the end of the combat. Because you’re always taking down the scariest enemies first (your party should have such a capacity), this makes this skill a chumpkiller in most cases. Second, it is somewhat questionable in bleeding parties. And Jester used to be a great part of them. Those generate big overkill damage that trails slowly. So using Finale to kill a monster who’d bleed out in one turn anyways… Well, that’s not that much of a profit. Third, don’t forget that you’re using relatively sub-par skills to reach these high numbers. Lots of them. So it’s more of an investment paying off than this skill being broken. I’m not saying Finale is bad – it’s merely honest and far, far from being broken.

Conclusion: there’s been much rejoicing for the buffs of the Jester and all those were in vain. Most of his skills actually stayed the same and, in reality, he only got worse due to slow, methodical strategies being disfavored by the current meta. It’s all about bursting the enemies stat right now, most kinds of setups and drawn out approaches are wasteful. He is a part of the meta-solving Harvest squad but I dunno, I’ve tested Houndmaster in his place and managed to get insane characters back to norm with the same degree of success. Only houndmaster also gives you access to rather game breaking Target Whistle. That’s the chief problem of this class, btw – Houndmaster and Flagellant outclass him severely, doing all the same stuff better. And in the pure buffing role Man-at-Arms also poses a severe competition, especially if resting is taken into account. But that one is more even – MaA provides better buffs but he lacks stress healing. So yes, you can use the 2-Jester that Harvests the enemy positions 2-4 and then Finale’s the first one. You can use the 4-Jester with Ballad > Solo > Finale repertoire. But that’s all very honest and not exactly game-breaking. And you don’t want to be honest with this game.

0.5 – Arbalest DPS

Sniper Shot – 11.34 / 25.5 vs mark; +4.2 on crit bonus – quite a difference, isn’t it? Arbalests are incredibly strong but, at the same time, highly specialized. Without the mark they have no damage at all. With the mark their damage is insane but don’t forget that placing a mark takes a whole action. What they hate the most are thin, frail monsters. Like those 25-27 HP stressers. Even if you mark them they tend to die from one shot after that. Meaning that you’ve spent 2 actions to destroy those 25-27 HP – that’s rather wasteful. On the other hand, they absolutely love fatsies. Corrupted giant, for example, has 144 HP. Meaning that, once you mark him, 6 Sniper Shots will be required to finish him off. Now that results in decent DPS! So these babes are all about Warrens (which has the fattest foes around) and Boss killing. And they’re very weak in the Cove where the majority of the danerous foes are just too slim for the solid mark play. Keep in mind that Arbalest is one of the heroes with on-crit effect that’s actually very useful. In case you don’t know, it’s +33% damage vs marked – her crit rate is insane so it’s very easy to activate and that means that bosses will die even faster.

Suppressing Fire – 1.98×2=3.96 damage & up to 1.2 monster actions being negated – I’m afraid this thing was overnerfed. The enemy backrow is always squishy and so it’s not that hard to focus down – in reality, that’s what any decent party will do rather quickly. So, while the expected reward here is supposedly high, the monsters just won’t live long enough for it to happen. I mean, debuff lasts 3 rounds so if they live so long then they’ll miss, they’ll lose some crits and so it’s gonna be worth it. Only no, they’re not gonna live that long. And even against the bosses this thing is questionable – given how prodigous the Arbalest’s damage is in such encounters, it seems easier to simply kill them fast.

Bolas – 5.52×2=11.04 – this skill sucks bolas. Pathetic damage for a double shot , atrocious knockback chance (around 30% if not boosted by something) and there’s no strategical value in moving those monsters. I mean, generally, you want to move frontliners so the enemy backrow comes closer and you can focus them. But Arbalest already has great ranged damage potential, she can just snipe them herself! This stuff has no redeeming potential at all.

Blindfire – 7.6 – lolz. I know, I know, that’s supposed to be her “if she’s shuffled to the front she can still do something” option. But she has a great movement back (2 tiles) so in most cases you’d rather move than waste your time on this. That’s a totally dead skill.

Rallying Flare – 6.03 stress regenerated – outside of destealthing and stun removal, this skill is subpar. Very, very much so. But it’s still a nice addition – even though stalling has been nerfed, sometimes you can drag the combat out for an extra turn without invoking any wrath. And getting some extra stress restored is better than getting nothing. Given that Arbalest right now doesn’t have much to fill her skill slots, there’s no reason to avoid getting some profit from this.

Battlefield Bandage – they’ve been nerfed severely in this patch. You see, previously this effect served as an additional multiplier. So, for example, Vestal’s own trinket would raise her group heal potency to 6. And then it could get additional 76% from this skill double-stacked, thus restoring 10.5 life points in total. Now it’s no longer a multiplier – all such bonuses stack arithmetically. And by no means they can exceed 200% of overall healing done. So where you could’ve healed those 10.5, now you’d do only 8. This is very unpleasant for the double arbalest groups as they’re losing lots of healing this way. This also makes arbalest’s healing trinkets to be much less useful as they no longer boost her skills into a decent value. On the other hand, if you’ll grind up the Mill you’ll be drowning in food. Warrens are also quite rich in that resources. And this skill double-stacked allows you to squeeze the maximum value out of munch-healing.

Conclusion: there’s not much to be said after all this. She’s a good character, but really narrow. She can’t grind anywhere but in the Warrens and she’s all about bringing big, fatty targets down.

0.6 – Musketeer DPS

Musketeer is the exact clone of Arbalest so just use the above section. Keep in mind that previously most marky squads wanted to have double arbalest as their positions 3 and 4. Now, however, the optimal way to play is Arbalest + Musketeer. That is due to the fact that Arbalest’s Courtyard set is one of the strongest sets in the game. However, it is unique so you can’t supply both arbalests with it. But a Musketeer has a mirror copy of it so, in reality, you sorta can if you use them both. Double Hard Skinned Arbalest + Musketeer make for a deliciously sturdy backrow.

0.7 – Houndmaster DPS

Crit Effect: +0.96 and +1.44×4 damage from Hound’s Rush & Harry. It’s not that noticeable on Rush but it is highly important for Harry. It’s good to build up the crit on him in any ways – even if Rush doesn’t profit from his on-crit +20% Bleed Chance that much (that’s what provides the damage here), it still profits a lot from the critical bonus due to its very nature of an anti-mark skill.

Hound’s Rush – 9.36 basic + 9.36 vs marked + 3.27 vs beast + 1.2×3 bleed= 12.96 to 25.5 damage – Houndmaster is one dirty little bastard. Well, I guess it’s more like one dirty bastard and one little bastard combo. Even in the weakest form, his damage is much better than it seems to be. Just go to the Warrens and you’re already a fine damage dealer. And whenever there’s a need to apply the Mark he becomes truly game-shattering. And he can reach anywhere from almost everywhere, meaning that he’s one of the most flexible fighters in the game. Honestly, this skill is so universally good that not much tactics may be applied to it – crushing everything mercilessly is not a tactic, right?

Hound’s Rush, Dog Treat edition – 15.79 + 10.53 vs marked + 3.68 vs beast + 1.35×3 bleed = 19.84-34.05 damage – and in a pinch he can just get supreme. Dog treats last for 4 whole rounds and that’s more than enough to smack the living crap out of any boss. Even if they’re bleed immune non-beast, that’s still 26.32 damage per strike. So nerfed this guy was, lol.

Target’s Whistle – this one is also stupidly good. Just so you understand, Houndmaster was tier-S and tier-S he remains. Whistle is so crazy that it can easily be worth it even if there are no other mark characters. Champion’s Swinetaur HP is 92 but his effective HP (the actual amount of damage you have to deal to kill him) are 153 thanks to his stupendous Protection. A whistle will cut it into much more agreeable 102. Yes, even without the mark synergy, Whistle will give you 50% of extra damage versus the Swine. And non-treated Rush in this case would have something around 36 DPS. Also, it has incredible accuracy and an in-built 170% Debuff chance, meaning it will almost never miss and it will almost always land, thus having the most wondrous efficiency.

Hound’s Harry – (2.14 + 2.16×3)x4=34.48 – hound’s harry is restored to its former glory and once again you’ll be shredding entire enemy squads to bits with it. Yeah, sure, its damage falls of as the enemies die and and a spread-out, non-focused damage. But the overall damage output is so crazy that why would you care about such trivialties? Whereas Rush is his boss-fighting skill, this is one of the best grinding tools in the game. It allows you to sweep through Warrens and especially Weald swiftly and effortlessly.

Cry Havoc – 17.76 stress restored on the average – oh, and he also has best stress-healing of the game because why not. Sure, it’s somewhat unreliable but, in the long run, it works absolutely fine.

Guard Dog – negates roughly one enemy action if you have Dodge loadout – his only weak skill. It just lasts too short to be worth it. Another thing is that he’s not a support, he’s a great damage dealer. So, by equipping those Dodge-boosting trinkets, you’re losing lots of damage and all for the sake of what? So you can trade with the foes evenly? I guess you can still justify this stuff on Stygian but it’s mostly about crisis management – it can be the thing that saves your teammate from the otherwise inevitable death. But it’s not something to use frequently and it’s not something to build around.

Blackjack – 3.68 and 81% enemy action missed – another even action trade. But this one is somewhat better because it’s not tied to one particular trinket setup. So if you have a frontline Houndmaster (which is not even that stupid) he can use this as an option.

Conclusion: this guy is still tier-S so he works pretty much everywhere. I guess there’s a reason not to be taking him to ruins (they’re bleed immune) but that’s that. Everywhere else he’s excellent and he’s the bane for many other characters – you’ll be asking yourself “but is this better than Houndmaster”? And the numbers will prove that no, it’s not.

0.8 – Abomination DPS

Manacles – 6.19 and 0.63 enemy action missed – nerfed into oblivion. Abomination has no skill slot worries so you will be occasionally using this one but that’s gonna happen only when there are no better options available. And it’ll hardly be good.

Beast’s Bile – (1.56 + 3.375×3)x2=23.37 – his best human-shaped skill. Now, by the standards of AoE DoTs, it’s hardly the most devastating skill ever. The silver lining here is the debuff – it’ll make all future Blight skills 33% more efficient. It has to land, of course, so with that taken into account that’s more of a 22.27% boost. This means that instead of wasting lots of trinket space on stuff like Blight Amulet etc you can just bring an Abom with you. So he’s very important in the Blight-focused squads, that’s where this skill shines. It’s mostly Ruins-oriented strategy, however – the Cove is too fast for the blight to work out. And Warrens & Weald are way too blight-resistant.

Rake – 8.81×2=17.62 dmg + up to 1.76×4 future damage; + up to 1.4×4 future damage on crit – after the nerf, this becomes pretty much useless. It can be considered when fighting some minor, squishy stuff (like maggots or spiders) and when you just need to finish something that’s almost dead but in all other cases it’s nothing but Rage now. Spread out damage is weak because it’s spread out – if you kill two enemies at the same time then they get to live for twise as long and you’re just suffering more incoming attacks than you’d otherwise would. It’s simple logic and that’s how it plays out. AoE attacks need to be efficient to compensate for that. Otherwise they’re just worthless trash. Rake wasn’t OP before and now it’s just useless. And with it the Abomination itself.

Rage –18.2 DPS; +2.9×2 future damage on Crit – well, now that’s your mainstay damage dealing skill. The damage is meh but at least it has quite a decent reach. Abominations generate enough stress on their own, they don’t need any helpers. So those cheeky stressers from enemy’s backrow need to get quickly flushed down via this skill. Otherwise it’s just unwinnable. So first you rage at them, then you rage at the rest of the world. Now that it’s nerfed into the dumpster tier, abomination has lots to rage about.

Slam – 12.23 damage and up to 14.7% extra damage from future attacks – it’s mostly positioning skill. It has some merit versus the dodgy foes but, unlike with protection, there aren’t that many evasive foes which require a lot of strikes to get killed. So that damage multiplier will almost never be applied. It’s a nice sidearm skill to have for free but it’s nothing you’ll be using too often.

Conclusion: His skills are generally used in such a manner that he’s either never or always transformed. So there’s a clean distinction between abstinence abom and beastly abom. Abstinence build was nerfed greatly in this patch – it relied on stalling too much and that’s highly punished. It’s still a decent option against certain bosses but it’s nothing you’ll be using too often. Thankfully, it’s not highly reliant on any particular quirks so you can switch one and the same abom between these two functions. Beastly abom was also nerfed into ground – his biggest damage dealing skill was Rake and now it’s 25% weaker. Considering that its damage wasn’t amazing in the first place, it’s a mortal strike. Why would you suffer all the risk and all the pain from beastly abomination when the reward is not there?

0.9 – Plague Doctor’s DPS

Noxious Blast – 2.07 + 4.72×3 blight=16.23 damage; grows into 19.17 after you build Athenaeum – well, I guess town development is a priority with this class. That’s a savage damage increase. And sure, sure, it’s not the fastest damage around but don’t forget that it penetrates through protection. That will mean a world of difference when fighting those Crabs & Octopuses in the Cove, for example. And you can boost your damage even further by scoring a crit – TBH, with something like a Poisoned Herb + Ancestor’s Musket Ball loadout her blighting chance will become so good that she’ll be able to gas some piggies in the Warrens. She’s that kind of a crazy ♥♥♥♥♥.

Plague Grenade – ((0.99 + 4.05×3 blight)x2)=26.28 damage; Athenaeum boosts this into 31.14 – double the damage, double the fun. In case you haven’t understood it yet, she’s terrifying engine of destruction. A slow, calm yet absolutely abyssal machine which shows neither compassion nor mercy. And the only thing that is more horrifying than one PD is a pair of PDs (more like PHDs in genocide) with one stunning and the other blighting and then both blighting rapidly. That’s absolutely enough to evaporate any enemy backrow without suffering any risk. Sure, once the enemy’s rearguard is done they’ll switch to their basic, honest damage. But at that point the combat is almost won anyways so who cares. One caveat that this duo-PD interaction is not exactly optional – it’s the only way to use this skill. Otherwise, the backrow will cause too much damage to you while you’re waiting for them to die from the blight.

Disorienting Blast – 0.72 enemy action lost – not even worth discussing.

Blinding Gas – 0.72×2=1.44 actions lost for the enemy – one of the two stun skills in the game that’s actually worth using. Because the payoff is actually good here. Is it worth boosting with trinkets, though – Witch’s Vial will raise the efficiency to 1.71 actions, that’s 18% efficiency increase. Probably not as you’ll be mostly using this skill once and then you’ll be switching to poisonous stuff only. This also doesn’t work in 3-enemy encounters or whenever a size-2 enemy occupies the back of enemy party. So you’d rather focus your trinkets on either DPS or protection.

Incision – 9.2+1.8×3 bleed=14.6; With Bloody Herb it’s 12.42+2.7×3= 20.52 – I know that we’re doing this review without taking the trinkets into account but Herb is too efficient to ignore. No other trinket provides as much of a damage boost to the related skill. It’s like two trinkets being packed into one. I mean, the hellion is a bloody pro and PD is an amateur, right? ButIf It Bleeds with two trinkets will do as much damage as Incision with only a Herb. So who’s considered to be damage dealer and who is the support here? Ofc, even with the Herb, this skill is nothing insane – it’s only honest. But that allows her to go into Weald & Warrens easily – she’s wanted there as there’s too many blights and diseases going around. So 3-position PD can be a solution. I think it’s mostly about Weald – in Warrens, turbo-boosting your Blight works as well. But there’s lots of protection around there so, if you compare Incision to Noxious, the latter is a winner. DoTs are better against protection. In Weald it’s all on the contrary – protection is somewhat less prolific so you’d rather have burstier damage. And you’re never blighting Virago. Keep in mind you that you’ll probably want to raise a separate bleeding-oriented PD – she’ll want somewhat different quirk set to boost her melee potential.

Emboldening Vapors – 6+ damage per action on any decent damage dealer – it’s all about the length of the combat. This needs about 3 actions to pay off so in any faster combats it’s useless. In longer combats, on the other hand, especially during Endless Harvest, it becomes the most devastating action in the game. And she can do two of them. Which explains why PD is a part of the best harvesting composition. Well, that’s in addition to her being the only character who can cure other’s diseases on rest – that one also matters a lot.

Conclusion: decent enough damage, easy blight/bleed removal that saves tons of health, easy disease removal that means you’re spending less time in the Sanitarium. Works well on the grind, good vs bosses. Due to these reasons she can fit pretty much everywhere. She is made somewhat weaker in this patch, however. First, Vestal’s healing got so stupidly broken that you no longer care as much about DoT removal – you can just powerheal through them. Second, PD is a slow-ish character and they’re not as welcome in the game as she was. Stalling punishment impacts her abilities. So she is serviceable but somewhat out of the meta.

0.10 – Highwayman DPS

Wicked Slice – 13.91 damage / 20.33 under the tracking shot – Highwayman is a strong but limited damage dealer. This means that he’s capable of dishing out some serious numbers but Wicked Slice is not the way to do this. Sure, this skill looks good under the tracking shot but that’s two actions being used, you know. Even on a distance this skill doesn’t pay off for the tracking – five slices and tracking produce 16.9 DPs and that’s only average. On its own, this skill is on the support level of aggressiveness and, unlike the supports, Highwayman has no tactical value.

Pistol Shot –10.54 / 15.81 vs mark – Duelist’s advance deals more damage, has almost as much reach and throws in a riposte as a pleasant “bonus”. As long as you’re not wearing a Gunslinger’s Buckle (there’s not much reason to do this in the current meta) even a shooty Highwayman will profit much, much more from that than from this. Yeah, this can attack the 4-position. But what’s the point if you tickle them instead of attacking? And this skill obviously doesn’t pay off for the mark so don’t even consider that synergy.

Point Blank Shot – 20.4 / 26.5 under the tracking – now we’re talking! PBS is the only reason why ranged (in name mostly) Highwaymen are viable. And in pairs, mostly – it takes two to tango. Just don’t forget to outfit them in such a way that first will be really fast (give him the Bloodied Handkerchief or any other +SPD trinket) and second will be somewhat slow (Legendary Bracer is a good choice). This way, there’s a huge speed discrepancy between them and they almost always go in the correct order; you may even solidify this by giving the frontliner some +Speed quirks, Luminous being the best. This way they’re using nothing but PBS, dealing excellent damage on a constant basis. Add someone to the team who is capable of devouring corpses (which are the bane of such bandits) and you’re set for life. Keep in mind that this is mostly a grinding squad. Even with the tracking boost, the damage is not that cool against the bosses. It’s decent enough for the grinding, however, so that just makes for a nice, fast-playing economical team.

Grapeshot – 4.68×3= 14.04 / 17.55 under tracking – umm, no. Compared to any decent AoE skil, this one is just pathetic. Not even the new debuff will make it worth it – in the very best case it’ll add 1 damage for every future hit on the average and that’s still not enough. PBS highwaymen will occasionally use this skill to clean out the corpses or to finish someone who’s on 1 HP but that’s the extent of this skill.

Tracking shot – 2.54 damage + 4-6 damage per skill – tracking shot is all about prolonged combats as it takes 3 to 4 rounds to pay off. In short skirmishes it’s just easier to kill your opponents quickly and be done with it. Once the combat drags down (by the variety of reasons) then it shows its true worth. Surprisingly, despite being a shot, it’s much better for the melee build. PBS-men want to do nothing but fire their cannon. Only in combats that’ll last more than 4 rounds (and those are a rarity for PBS-men) this’ll have any merits. Ripo-men, on the other hand, have really strong turns with Duelist’s Advance but after that all their available actions are somewhat average. They also do more attacks so the Tracking Shot pays off faster. And they are slower in terms of tempo so the combat lasts longer and, well, you get the point. In any case, this is an excellent skill, it’s just that it’s not an auto-use always – you need to know when to push this button.

Duelist’s Advance –10.2 + 8.9 for each riposte attack / 14.1 + 12.85 for each riposte under tracking – similarly to PBS, Advance is the one and only thing that makes the melee-man to be worth it. On the average, he’ll be stricken two times while riposte lasts so that’s 27.8 damage for one action (without trinkets and tracking shot being accounted for). Sure, you can’t use this two turns in a row, but even the Advance-Open Vein chaining generates roughly 24 damage per turn. Add in the Antiquarian (who is highwayman’s secret lover, I suppose) and your squad will become really durable without losing any damage output. This engine is also as flexible as it is potent because Advance can be used from the majority of positions and even melee Highwayman can use PBShot to reposition himself from the first spot. Ripo-man will use mostly generic trinkets so he’ll be able to shoot well enough. The only challenge here is that your riposte Highwayman will stay in constant motion so your squad will have to adapt to it. That limits the build diversity somewhat, but hardly critically so.

Open Vein – 11.09 + 2.7×3 bleed=19.19 / 14.4 + 2.7×3 bleed under tracking = 22.5 – by itself the skill is ok (the damage is good but slow, ofc, as all dots are). It really begins to shine in the mass-bleed party as the debuff boosts everyone’s bleeding capacity. You can get the same effect from flagellant’s attacks but maybe it’s even fine to combine them both for the maximum reliability.

Conclusion: while Riposte highwaymen have more numerical output than PBS ones, don’t forget that they’re much slower so the enemies will have more actions to counteract this. Both builds are fine, though. As I’ve said, “Ranged” ones are excellent for fast, careless grinding (when you just want another chance to get a quirk or just need to pass a week to see some new recruits) and melee one is all about heavy duty economy (early in the game when you need to exploit your antiquarian a lot – there’s no better enabler for her) and for the boss killing. To a certain degree, this class has been boosted tremendously by new Vestal buff – they are quite frail and so the supreme regeneration from her allows them to hold under fire much better than before.

0.11 – Hellion DPS

Wicked Hack & Iron Swan –13.5 / 19.8 under adrenaline; +4.45 vs bleeding under crit effect – Hellion was overhyped and now she’s just nerfed. She was good because of her incredible stunning capability. Her damage was never that good. Now her stun is nerfed into ground but her damage is still nothing to write home about. Well, at the very least the Iron Swan can be used to kill that pesky 4-position enemy stresser fast. But Hack is more like a hackjob and you never wish to be using it.

If It Bleeds –10.97 + 2.7×3 bleed=19.07; +2.78 vs bleeding under crit effect – this skill is also hardly impressive when you compare it with other DoT skills but at least it is better than her plain melee stuff. This character is all about fighting the stuff that actually bleeds – hellions strongly rely on DoT to do their damage so Ruins & Cove are not exactly welcoming for them. This skill is more of a sidearm one, though, and is used only when no good targets for Bleed Out are available or when you need to burst down the enemy 3-position swiftly.

Breakthrough – 6.43×3 / 5.79×3 / 5.15×3 = 19.29 / 17.37 / 15.45 damage, depending on exhaustion; 25.05 / 23.16 / 21.21 under Adrenaline – it’s not that awful and you can keep it in your slot against shuffling / pushing enemies as it’s definitely better than just walking forward. But, compared to proper AoE skills, this one is still pretty weak. Don’t forget that it’s not about dealing good numbers of damage – it’s also about countering the enemies gameplan efficiently. And spread damage is the worst at this as it doesn’t really answer anything. So it has to be really, really insane (like Houndmaster’s Harry) to be worth it. Honest amounts of AoE damage are just bad – enemies live extra turns because of them and you’re suffering more damage due to this.

Bleed Out – 16.63 / 13.3 / 9,98 depending on exhaustion + 3×3 Bleed = 25.63/22.3/18.98 total; +5.43 dmg vs bleeding under crit effect – Bleed Out already was her best skill and now it gets only better. It’s literally the only reason to run hellion right now. Excellent damage potential that stays strong even under heavy exhaustion and a really big crit modifier, meaning she’ll be getting her on-crit effect often. That’s how you actually build Hellions right now – Surgical Gloves, Ancestor’s Pen and Precise Striker will give her 44.5% critical chance. Meaning that almost every other hit will be critical. Meaning that her on crit ability will be triggered often and, as you can see, that’s a lot of bonus damage. Also, one thing that I’m not taking into account (for simplicity’s sake) are crit effects on DoT – their duration gets extended by 2 rounds. Against basic foes it’s pointless to count it in as they simply won’t live that long. Against the bosses, however, it’s a different story. So properly built Hellion will easily maintain 30 or so DPS against many bosses. Which is exactly where she shines right now. She also really loves corpse removing characters – after all, it’s much more fun to be whacking at moving bodies than at the unmoving ones.

Barbaric Yawp – 2×0.81 enemy actions missed = 1.62 – it was the best stun in the game and it remains this way. Yes, you can’t really chain it for 2-3 turns anymore and stalling is easily punished right now but it’ll still have its uses – most combats are all about focusing the enemy backrow swiftly so, in the meantime, it’s quite helpful to disable their frontlines. Just so they don’t hinder you much. To a certain degree, this rebalance patch makes this skill even more unique as there are just no alternatives – no other decent stuns out there. Limited uses are also hardly an issue – the combat won’t last long enough for you to burn through all 3. Except for the Harvest but you don’t want to take bleeders there – they’re bad against the Farmstead mobs. What’s best is that this skill is quite good in its natural shape and it’s rather pointless to be boosting it with any trinkets – just leave it in natural shape while packing criticals, lots and lots of them.

Adrenaline Rush – +5-6 damage for 2 actions – damage-wise, it’s really weak. So it’s all about healing. And it’s less even about the amount of health restored and much more about bleed/blight removal. It also can be used to bring her out of Death’s Door and it’s always nice to have a second chance. No matter the build, never leave home without this.

Conclusion: right now only one kind of Hellion is 1-Hellion with Bleed out, Yawp, Adrenaline Rush and either Iron Swan or If it Bleeds, depending on which position is more difficult to focus down for you. She’s a rather strong fighter but, at the same time, she’s quite niche. She only truly shines after the rest and in the very long battles and even there she’ll fizzle in certain scenarios. Against the prophet or hag or cannon, for example. But when she’s good she’s real good.

0.12 – Leper DPS

Chop – 15.69 / 29.0 under revenge – in its basic shape this skill is rather bland and lacking. But once you turn on new Revenge, something magical happens and from the worst Damage Dealer in the game Leper turns into the best one. Yeah, you’ve heard me right – currently he’s a tier-S character. Well, I suppose he as earned it after 3 years of sheer suckage.

Hew – 7.23×2 x2 =14.46 / 13.53 x2 = 27.06 under Revenge – a-a-and it was instantly nerfed so now it makes sense only in a very narrow amount of specialized patterns. The stupidest thing about this is that Chop was better anyways – you’re starting Leper fights in slow tempo so it makes sense to be regaining it ASAP by focusing single enemies fast. Hew, while fun, wasn’t providing enough advantage to be oppressive. And in the Endless Harvest the proper setup was actually Chop-Revenge-Withstand-Solemnity. Withstand is very important there if only for the protections it does provide. So silly.

Revenge – yeah, why? All in all, these bonuses provide you 85% extra damage. So yes, it takes an entire turn to apply them. But they’re almost paying off with the first turn and afterwards it’s all gravy. Even in the fast combats that’s more than good enough and in prolonged encounters that just gets unreasonable. And mind you, the penalties are quite affordable. Dodge penalty literally means nothing – Leper’s 20 dodge is already so low that any kind of monster will have 90% chance to hit him. You’re literally losing nothing here and, if possible, you’d love to get a Risktaker quirk locked on this boy. It’s like having another positive quirk only it doesn’t take any space. You also don’t care about Slayer Ring and Focus Ring penalties due to the same reasons. The extra damage taken part is a bit trickier but healing is so OP right now that it doesn’t even matter. More than that, you can easily wear Berserker Mask on him (10% crit and 3 SPD is too much to ignore) while still using Revenge. – even that won’t be an issue. Worst case scenario you just add Withstand to your repertoire – that’s what you do in the Harvest, actually. So it’s all upside and almost none of the downside.

Intimidate – 3.72, 22% of damage being prevented from 2 actions – nah, that’s pointless. Why would you be debuffing foes when you can just kill them? There’s no reason to play slowly with Leper right now – chop them into bits, just do it!

Purge – 10.29 damage and 1.2×3 damage for further attacks / 17.7 damage and 1.7×3 damage for further attacks – corpses are less of an issue for the new leper. You’re critting half of the time and crits leave nothing after them so corpses not as likely to bar your way towards the squishiest foes. And even if they do it’s nothing that can’t be dealt by one use of Hew. Besides, if there’ll be corpses against Leper squad they’ll be at first position – exactly where this skill is hitting. So it’s not like this stuff is more efficient than Hew in cleaning dead bodies – far from it. So, given how cluttered Leper’s skill slots are, you definitely have no space for this deadweight.

Conclusion – I doubt anyone was expecting it but Leper is OP. Leper is tier-S. Quadleper is still a joke, ofc, but one or two of these guys plus some restorative support will turn any dungeon run into child’s play.

0.13 – Bounty Hunter DPS

Collect Bounty – 11.66 + 4.08 vs human + 10.4 vs marked = 22.06 vs marked, 26.14 vs marked human; on crit effect adds 3.84 dmg for two further Collects – as you can see, without any modifiers, he’s absolutely pathetic. Even against humans he’s still far below the norm. It’s only once the marks start flowing that the situation changes drastically. So, despite his generalist reputation, he’s for the heavy mark squads first and foremost. And even there his only strong side is that no one else has good mark-based skills that can be applied from position 1. On position 2 he pretty much loses to Houndmaster – their damage output is equal but ‘master has far better reach and cookies. That’s a serious advantage. On position 3 he loses to arbalest – yeah, despite her basic damage being lower she has far better skill bonuses and so her damage output will be higher. And her reach is still better. As well as her tactical options. TBH, BH is in a very weak shape right now and this exclusivity is the only reason he sees play.

Mark for Death – while it doesn’t look that much worse than the Houndmaster’s whistle, in reality it’s 56% weaker. Less protection removed and, unlike the whistle, it doesn’t pierce through your average monster’s debuff resistance. Which sums into this tremendous difference. Needless to say in your mark squads you wish to have some Quickdraw or better even On Guard Houndmaster and you almost never wish to be using this as it does pretty much the same job, only much worse. That’s another exaple how the Houndmaster just outperforms him. Better damage, better reach, better stun, better mark, better evasion… Ok, let’s not continue this or BH will cry like a five year old girl.

Come Hither – 2.32 – yeah, no. The damage part here is truly pathetic and is pretty much negligible. Most other skills will give you much, much more than this. Another thing is that the enemy backrow is usually very squishy and you don’t really want to be marking them – generally speaking, mark squads have excellent reach so they’ll take care of those stress givers anyways. And while the idea of movement is rather nice, too many foes (especially the ones which you would really love to move) have ridiculously stupid resistance to it. So even with some trinkets this will be hardly reliable.

Uppercut – 3.83 + 0.68 action skipped – another unfavorable action trade and so it’s really, really bad. Well, Bounty has so many bad skills that you’ll probably sport this – it gives you a chance to push your victim forward (frontliners are generally more susceptible to movement so pushing is easier than pulling) and thus make it available for your Arbalests. But that’s generally done once the combat is almost over and it’s not a game breaking maneuver.

Finish Him – 111.4 + 6.85 versus stunned – let’s use subpar skills so we can use more subpar skills! Even under the previous patch this was rather bad as it relied too much on the RNG – to profit from this your bounty should’ve had his turn after the stunner (can’t finish what hasn’t begun) but before the stunned monster (once they have their turn, stunned condition falls of). Given how random the Speed is in this game, even a dedicated party struggled with performing this strategy. Now that the stuns are trash-tier you have no reasons to jump through these hoops. Once again, you have lots of skill slots and maybe you will be keeping this skills. But it’s all about the ability to reach for position-3 and nothing but that.

Caltrops – 0.6 + 2.55×3 = 8.25 damage and up to 1.5-2 bonus action worth of damage for your crew – this skill could’ve been great if Bosses were not so debuff resistant. It’s not even about landing this Debuff – that’s quite doable. It’s mostly about most bosses having multiple actions per turn and thus molting those debuffs of at quite unreasonable speed. So instead of getting 2 extra actions (that’s enough to pay off for this skill’s innate weakness) you’re barely getting one and that leaves you in the red. There are some exceptions (Shambler, for example) but they’re quite rare and the usage of this skill there is quite obvious.

Conclusion: the only undisputable position for the BH is rank-1 in the mark party. There, no one can really replace him. Everywhere else, as I’ve said, he’s just subpar. He’s also extremely useless in the non-mark party as his non-Collect skills are mostly useless.

0.14 – Man at Arms DPS

Crush – 10.12 – I certainly don’t have a crush on this one. Lord, this thing is pathetic. Without any redeeming bonuses apart from maybe its reach? Yeah, the reach is nice. While that’s supposed to be MaA’s bread n’ butter attack you’d better never use it and most skillsets for him won’t ever include this. Yuck.

Rampart – 4.3 damage and 0.68 of enemy actions lost – ugh, another one of these. Well, at least one has the advantage of moving you forward (so it can be used while you’re shuffled – probably better than just moving) and it can also push your enemies back even if the chance is iffy. But you won’t always have a spare skill slot for this thing so it’s still quite a questionable choice.

Bellow – bellow is strictly worse than command. Yes, it may reduce the enemy’s speed but if you need that you’re bringing a wrong character to the fight – Jester’s Battle Ballad provides the same effect only it’s 100% reliable. Bellow, on the other hand, can miss and it can also fail to penetrate the enemy’s resistance. And it’s critical bonus is highly optional. So yeah, you never wish to be using this.

Retribution – Retribution – 2.46 + 6.77 damage per riposte – with the average 2 ripostes per usage, that’s 16 damage per action. Subpar, right? However, this is a combo skill and it’s the weaker part of the combo. The stronger part of the combo is Defender (which should be applied first). This will add 2x extra ripostes and will negate 4×0.43 of enemy actions (at least when it comes to their physical damage). So, in total, you trade two your actions for almost two enemy ones while also dealing 29.54 damage in the process. And it gets even better if your MaA is Hard Skinned. Extra protection trinkets are probably overkill, though – you’d rather have Cleansing Crystal (as those DoTs pierce through his armor and he’ll be catching a lot of them) and/or some anti-stress items. In other words, that’s like doing two 13 damage stun actions – that’s another reason for you to ignore Rampart. Sure, it may vary depending on the pattern of enemy strikes. Sometimes it’ll be stronger, sometimes it’ll be weaker. But on the average it’ll be freaking good. That’s a nice kind of average.

Command – +3-4-5 damage for up to 11 next actions – now that’s just grotesque and that’s without counting the potential guard bonus. One thing needs to be clarified here – any further Commands will not be as efficient. First, your chance to hit will never go beyond 90% so the accuracy will become redundant. Second, critical has a bit of diminishing returns – going from 60% to 70% of critical is not as efficient as going from 10% to 20% (it’s 6.25% gain vs 9% gain). But even the third Command in a row will probably give you something like 2 damage per action and that’s still all right. However, chaining 2 Command with Defender will be more efficient – 2 turns of +50% damage on your chief damage dealer will be quite savage. Right now, this is the MaA’s most efficient skill. It also makes the famous 4-MaA perfectly viable – Guardian’s Shield is a great trinket so why not?

Bolster – this one is a bit trickier to assess because the more you have of it, the better Dodge gets. In an unfocused party it’s almost insignificant. But once you have +25 Dodge trinkets across the board (and that board would better feature lots of natural 30 Dodge fighters with some Evasive & Luminous quirks), 10 Dodge will ramp your overall number from 60 to 70, thus reducing the enemy chance to hit from 50% to 40%. That means that every 4 actions they’ll be losing an action – quite a solid investment. And that’s not even counting the stress resistance (which is great). And the bigger your dodging gets (either via other MaA’s or Antiquarian’s Invigorating Vapours), the crazier it’ll get. Now mind you, monsters have a minimal chance to hit so you’re never becoming immortal. But they will be missing you so much that their damage output will become insignificant. Dodgemen will humiliate many a boss. And now let’s remember that his camping skill Tactics may add another 10 Dodge on the top of it…

Conclusion: in this patch MaA becomes a powerhouse. Defender > Retribution is a classical build. Lots of enemy action negation and some decent damage to boot. But that’s an honest one. Spamming Command with the occasional Defend is much dirtier when it comes to damage dealing potential. And mass-Bolster squads may function as well – the trick here is to have 2-3 Man-at-Arms at the same time so both your Dodge and Stress resistance are dialed up to 11.

0.15 – Vestal DPS

Mace Bash – 9.1 / 12.3 vs unholy – unsurprisingly, the Vestal is not a damage dealer. Even vs the undead, it’s only two thirds of an average action and against everyone else it’s even worse. I guess maces are in fashion right now, that’s the only reason for her to be carrying one.

Hand of Light – 4.57 damage + 1.6 vs unholy; second usage is 8 damage vs unholy; it can add 5.21 damage to 2 future mace bashes – no matter how much do you buff her with this, Vestal is not a damage dealer. She was nerfed harsh in this direction. Yes, it brings mace bash to sorta acceptable level of 17.51 damage vs unholy but that comes at the cost of one 6 damage action so the overall dps of these three action is still 13.7. Absolutely not worth it.

Judgement – 7.18 dmg – it’s only a third of bad action. Even if you take healing into account, it’ll maybe become two thirds of it. Ugh.

Dazzling Light – 2.54 and 0.68 action skipped – you know, I used to hate this one but after the new patch I’m beginning to like it. But it’s less about this being good – it’s just that everything else that Vestal has became so weak that this seems to be the best of the worst. All her other non-healing stuff is even less efficient than this one. On most of her turns she’ll be using her healing anyways but I guess sometimes this can prove to be useful.

Illumination – 2.23 damage + 15% of extra damage for up to 11 actions – this one sounds better than it actually plays. Dodge monsters are rare and currently plenty of top-tier trinkets are drowning you in +accuracy. Focus Rings being the biggest offenders here. So it’s extremely rarely that you need this dodge debuff. And de-stealthing alone also isn’t that hot.

Conclusion: in this patch Vestal becomes nothing but a healbot. And, mind you, given how crazily her regenerative potential was increased, she’s a totally crazy, superb and unjust healbot. One round of Divine Comfort can easily negate 2-3 enemy actions. Comfort is also rather flexible in its use so, depending on your party’s needs, your Vestal can migrate from 4 to 2 position. Just don’t expect anything else that she does to be useful. She’s, like, a textbook definition of healbot.

0.16 – Antiquarian DPS

Nervous Stab – 6.27 – funny thing about the Antiquarian is that while she’s not supposed to be a fighter she’s actually a helluva mean one. Just not with this skill – even the class set doesn’t make it to be worth it.

Festering Vapours – 1.97+2.7×3 blight = 10.07 and 21% of extra power to all future blights in the team – we’ve already discussed these ones so it’s rather simple. The skill’s own damage is miserable but it’s all about having a ton of other blighters to gain some real profits out of amplification. Compared to Beasts’ Bile you lose quite a bit of damage but that’s compensated by Antiquarian positioning and targeting being much more flexible. And, of course, you shouldn’t discount the extra gold she will bring you and the overall sturdiness that Protect Me or Invigorating Vapors will add to the party. You just highlight the necessary foes with Festering and then you reduce the incoming damage for the rest of the combat. This way she’s pulling her weight without much complaining. So much for being a non-combatant.

Flashpowder – 20-60% damage reduction from the next three enemy actions – with this skill it’s all simple. Useless in the non-Dodge parties, can be helpful in the Dodge ones. It’s just that without much of this attribute across your party the effect of this skill is hardly noticeable – it’s only where you’re cutting their accuracy below 50% that it begins to feel strong. Even then, it’s more for the combat closure – against your average party of monsters you’d rather begin it all with Invigorating Vapors. Once the final one or two enemies remain, then you can use this stuff. This one is probably better against the solitary bosses, though. But it depends on the specific encounter.

Invigorating Vapours – 15.5% to 32% damage reduction from up to 12 next attacks – works in a similar way to MaA Bolster. It can easily work with MaA bolster, of course. This will provide up to 30 lingering Dodge and that’s a very respectable amount.

Protect me – up to 40% damage reduction for four enemy actions – that’s mostly for the Highwayman combo. It’s a rather simple one – his riposte already does tons of damage per turn so how can we improve it? Oh, by attracting even more attention to him. This is the fastest way to use the antiquarian and thus it’s probably the best one. I mean, you’re using her for economical reasons first and foremost and you generally want your grind to be fast, not slow. Chief secret here is to have your Highwayman to be faster than Antiquarian – if he constantly goes before her it reduces the longevity of the protection by quite a lot. It’s a bit difficult to explain in theory but in practice you’ll quickly understand why it’s this way.

Conclusion: I’ll repeat, Antiquarian is a mean fighter. Good in riposte squads with highwayman. Good in full blight squads. Good in heavy evasion squads. All while bringing an extra coin or two to your coffers. She’s a respectable lady.

0.17 – Flagellant DPS

Punish – 8.35 + 4.05×3 bleed = 20.5 damage; +1.24 from low health; +22% efficiency for all further bleeding skills on target – who could’ve guessed that this guy is a melee maniac. It’s not obvious at all. So we have a real solid bleeding skill here. Not as bursty as Bleed Out but with a deeper reach and, if you’re party is Bleed-focused, it’s a nice amount of bonus damage for the entire crew. Just like with the Highwayman’s Open Vein only this does a bit more damage. Quite dirty for a support character, don’t you agree? However, that’s the beauty of this class – he’s much less of a pure support and much more of a universal damage dealer / support hybrid.

Rain of Sorrows – (2.66+3.37×3 bleed)x2= 25.53; +0.61×2 from low health; +22% for all further bleeding skills on target – his AoE is also rather considerable. It’s not even all that different from punish, just different targets and AoE spread. Couple of these will lash the life out of any backrow.

Exsanguinate – 7.68 + 5.73×3 bleed =24.87 damage; +1.58 from low health – surprisingly enough this skill is not that much better than basic punish. Well, it has somewhat lower accuracy and critical, and don’t forget that your bleed skills are not 100% reliable and that takes quite a lot of punch out of them. On the other hand, this will often be applied a round or two of punishment and that’ll bring the bleeding damage of this to 6.88 mark and the overall damage to 28.33. Which is somewhat better but still not game-breaking. Well, what is game-breaking here is the self-heal – this skill is much more about self-regen than it is about dealing damage. It just brings you out of Death’s Door reliably and, even through all the bonuses, you don’t wanna be staying there. You can’t bring your death resistance higher than 87% and that’s still dying in 7-8 hits – it’ll come much faster than you’d expect it to be. It’s a bit secondary to Redeem but hey, now that Redeem is limited in its uses you can’t be too picky.

Reclaim – the important thing to know here is that highest tier reclaim has 159% bleed potency. Which means that as long as you have 159% or more Bleed resistance you’re never harming yourself with this one. And no, you don’t want to be harming yourself. Theoretically it’s supposed to bring yourself closer to that sweet Exsanguinate/Redeem enabled zone. Practically it creates lots of scenarios where you stand at death’s door with DoT hanging on you. And even the 87% Death Blow resistance won’t save you from all of them. His level 6 bleed resistance is 125%, meaning he needs 35% more. So you need either Clotter quirk and one of the lesser trinkets or a Flesh’s Heart to fix this problem entirely with its mighty +50% bleed resist. You may also use Resurrection’s Collar but that’s a bit more problematic as this will also harm your offensive capacities. Use it only when Flagellant is your party’s sole healer.

Endure – with a proper quirk set you can shape your Flagellant into a decent stress healer. Steady + Photomania will provide you with 30% Stress resistance. Add one 20% and you’re already at 50%. Meaning that this skill will heal 14 while giving only 3 back – a net positive of 11. And, during camping, Lash’s Solace will burn all that stress away rather easily. Frontline stress healing is quite a rarity so, if you see a promising Flagellant available, perhaps you will want to consider this.

Conclusion: right now there are lots of complaints about this guy being nerfed. Well, he was, of course, that’s a fact. But he was nerfed from tier-S into tier-A and he’s still really, really good. His damage and solid and, in bleeding teams, it increases the overall DPS of you party. So his numbers are actually significantly bigger than this. When properly set up, Reclaim is the third best healing ability of the game. And, even though it’s slow, it’s the second strongest single target heal right now. And Redeem is both strongest heal and single target heal of the game. So what are the problems, lol? His healing/tanking alone is well enough that you can even bring him into Ruins/Cove, simply for the healing and stress regen purposes. Crusaders (Flagellant is everything that they are not) dream of being nerfed as “hard” as the Flagellant, yeah.

0.18 – Shieldbreaker

Pierce – 12.3 damage (20.6 vs 40% protection) – like the majority of Shieldbreaker’s stuff, this skill is highly specialized. Outside of armored foes, it’s worth only for the forward movement – this class is heavily position oriented and, if you’re shuffled, it’s better to return back by attack moving than by simply moving. Depends on the amount of movement needed, however. This thing also has the deepest reach possible so it can be used to finish that pesky backrow, that’s also true. And it shines against anything with high protection, though it’s not as useful as it looks because Shieldbreaker specializes in potent DoTs and those will also melt through any armor while doing much more damage in the process. Still, it’s her best sidearm skill. And it absolutely trivializes certain specialized fights where blight doesn’t work, this also should not be forgotten.

Puncture – 6.36 – I get the notion but her Impale works so much better against the Guard-using parties that you’ll never want to spend your turn on this. Besides, those parties are very, very rare and so thing is very marginal. Not to mention that, however bad stuns are, they’re still a better way to break Guarding than this – much more efficient action-wise.

Adder’s Kiss – 13.8 + 3.18×3 blight damage = 23.34 – Shieldbreaker’s playstyle is somewhat of a Highwayman/Hellion hybrid. The damage output is similar to Bleed Out (once we account for its deterioration) and you need to have a pair of differently speeded Shieldbreakers revolving so they can give your enemies kiss after kiss. Lovely ladies. And the damage output is absolutely worth it – it’s one of the most fearsome single-targeted skills in the game and, outside of the need for revolving, no strings are attached here. It’s great in both grind and boss fighting.

Impale – (5 + 1.25×3 blight) x 4= 39 – and here is the best grinding skill of the game. However weak AoE damage is, there’s just too much of it here to be safely ignored. Once you take into account trinkets and quirks, double Impale alone will be enough to sweep through the majority of enemy parties. Only fattie elites will remain and those will be swiftly smooched into oblivion. It’s just damage galore over and over again.

Expose – 8.08 + ~2 damage for up to 11 attacks – this skill would’ve been usable if it was moving you forward. Or, at the very least, if it’d allow you to stand on the place. As it is, the movement makes it compete with the previous skills and even though they’re DoT based, they’re still faster than this one. This one just takes too much time to pay off – most monsters won’t even live through 11 attacks so it’s pretty much a boss fighting specialty. Or it can be used to bring out stealthers, duh. But that’s also not that cool – most of those are pretty squishy and double Impale will simply kill them through stealth. No intricacies needed.

Captivate – 9.63 + 3×3 Blight + 5.77 vs marked = 18.63 / 24.4 vs marked – despite the numbers here looking to be on the Arbalest’s level, this has minimal mark squad synergy. You see, those specialize on killing victims ASAP and so most of their foes simply won’t live long enough for the poison to take action. I guess the sole exceptions here are the bosses – this skill, in combination with the mark party, might be reasonable against small number of them. But mostly you’ll be using this unmarked, just as a way to put some additional pressure on the enemy position 3.

Conclusion: right now, she’s probably the best grinding character in the game. Double Shieldbreakers will sweep through Ruins and Cove at a ridiculous pace. Cove especially. They are a bit narrow as their other skills are somewhat gimmicky and situational, but it’s all compensated by the power of these two. I guess they really wanted to sell more of the DLC.

0.19 – Character Tier List

Ok, let’s do something that’s absolutely pointless but maybe is really fun!

Tier-S:

1. Leper – hail to the king, baby! Best single target damage output in the game, acceptable AoE damage, best self-healing skills. Since his damage is non-DoT based, he’s absolutely universal. Good camping stuff. If he wishes to, he can also ramp his protection rather high – that’s very useful in the Endless Harvest where he goes with both Revenge and Withstand. I guess he’s still somewhat vulnerable to the shuffle and pushes but that’s nothing that mobile teammates can’t solve.

2. Houndmaster – ridiculous AoE damage, good single targeted damage, best Stress heal in the game, best mark in the game that works even for the non-marky squads. Decent self-heal and potential to protect teammates from occasional Death’s Door. Works in any position and has excellent reach. The only reasons he’s not 1 is that his bleed-affinity makes him a bit less universal and that he lacks any OP camping skills.

3. Man-at-Arms – right now he’s probably the best support in the game. Command allows you to go light on the Accuracy trinkets, boosts your critical through the roof, giving you frequent stress healing and on-crit effect proc, and will boost your primary damage dealer even further. Bolster is just an excellent trading action – even without the especial focus it’ll pay for itself easily. And in truly focused parties it becomes utterly humiliating for your foes. Retribution remains an adequate source of damage and protection is as good as it was. His camping skills are probably the best in the game. And he’s pretty universal so he goes anywhere and everywhere in terms of both position and location.

Tier-A:

4. Vestal – despite her healing being truly overwhelming, she lacks the versatility that is needed to become tier-S. Yes, you can’t stop explaining how stupefying her regenerative abilities are and that’s why she’s here. She’s the easiest way of making your squad sturdy. But that’s that – she’s nothing but a healbot and, because she doesn’t deal with the stress, multiples of her won’t make your party anywhere near immortal. Heck, a double of her will probably do more harm than good – unfortunately, you can’t heal your enemies to their deaths. Even if you name her Obamacare, that still won’t work.

5. FLAgellant – if he wasn’t so bloody bleed-centric, I’d actually rate him above Vestal. His healing is somewhat weaker (though this depends on how heavily focused he is – this isn’t something you can control, though) but he has stress management and he has some mean damage dealing skills. Because of his wide range of abilities he fits rather well in greedy squads which just don’t have too much dedicated space for a plethora of healers and which don’t want to dilute their aggressiveness by adding a full-time healbot.

6. Shieldbreaker – when she works, she feels like she’s tier-S. But all her good stuff is incredibly blight-centric and this means she’s a no go for Warrens, Weald & Crimson Court. And, unlike the Plague Doctor, she has no really good way of making herself universal – she has Venomous Vial but she really doesn’t have any space for it. I guess she also has Adder’s Embrace but that’s a camping skill so it won’t last forever. She’s also mostly a grinding character and her boss-killing options are somewhat more limited (but where she excels she does so in quite a humiliating fashion). She is the fastest way to grind through the Ruins, Cove and Farmstead, though, so that alone is worth this respected position.

7. Highwayman – Riposte-version excels at damage dealing, especially in prolonged fights. Couple of Highwaymen will shred any boss to ribbons, especially those cheeky enough to use AoE attacks. Main reason is that it scales nicely for the multi-action bosses (those are generally the most annoying ones) – the more they act, the more damage they receive in return. Riposte also enables Antiquarian splendidly, allowing for quick and profitable grind. Unfortunately, DD is grind-centric so you have to alleviate this problem somehow. His camping skills are superb. And that’s pretty much that – rest of his skills are a bit too honest. PBS-men, for example, are more of a tier-B thing. And we’re talking about lower-B here. Still, Riposte allows him to stay as high as he is.

8. Hellion – she’s utterly narrow-focused but she still has the best freaking stun in the game (which means a lot now that the decent stuns have gone almost extinct) and her Bleed Out damage cannot be scoffed at. If she can cleave her path through the enemy frontlines she will gladly do so. Another positive change for her is that now her exhaustion mechanic now longer touches her Dodge potential. So she’s a much better tank because of this and it just enables some potential combos with Man-at-Arms of Antiquarian. MaA is her best friend right now, I suppose, as she absolutely enjoys any and all bonuses to the critical chance and he brings him aplenty. And her camping skills are quite delicious. Unlike in the previous meta, she doesn’t work in multiples. Mid or feed.

9. Plague Doctor – probably would’ve been higher if the meta was kinder towards slower playstyles. She still has enough value. Blinding Gas works well with both Hound’s Harry and Impale – those tend to kill their victims a bit slowly so preventing most of retaliation fire is a sound plan. Her blight damage is decent and, most importantly, reliable. Battlefield Medicine offers lots of value in squads where Vestal is absent. And Emboldening Vapors are key in the Endless Harvest and can be decent in certain bossfights. She’s also almost irreplaceable in Endless Harvest as otherwise you can easily get wrecked by getting some bad disease RNG. And while she doesn’t really excel anywhere but in stunning, that alone is enough to keep her attractive.

Tier-B:

10. Antiquarian – such a non-combat character this is, lol. Well, it’s simple. Despite the nerf, Protect Me/Riposte combo still performs well. You just need to time it right and then it lasts for 5-6 actions – more than enough to kill the majority of mean foes. Her Invigorating Vapours now lasts 1 round longer, thus becoming 50% more efficient. Throwing +30 Dodge on your entire team is no small feat – even without any other Dodge boosters that’ll give you roughly 60% extra survivability. And obviously you pair it with lots of other Dodge sources. That’s also the final repetitive party Dodge booster in the game so now she has this unique trait. Couple her with one or two MaA and you’ll see just how efficient that will become. And she accelerates the grind which is exactly what you need in this game. She’s much better fighter than she’s supposed to be.

11. Arbalest / Musketeer – you know, healing modifier nerf brings her down hard. Previously, she could’ve combo-ed it with lots of other abilities to create rounds of truly powerful healing. Now that’s just no longer the case and, what’s worse, vestal and flagellant provide those huge bouts of restoration with no such strings attached. And while her damage is decent, it’s on the level of many other such abilities. Once you account for the need to apply mark first, that is. And despite mark having great damage potential, don’t forget that it’s not exactly good on the grind – many monsters are actually quite inefficient to kill in this way. Her other problem (despite being efficient character – Tier-B is still efficient) is that Houndmaster outshines her at pretty much everything she does. Even his single target damage is better and he has none of that “can’t target first row” stupidity. She’s very good at killing certain bosses but it’s pretty much it. And it’s bad to be so narrow.

0.19 – Character Tier List, continued

12. Jester – another sufferer of “same as Houndmaster but worse”. Only in his case, Flagellant may also be mentioned. Or Man-at-Arms if we’re talking about buffbot potential. Yes, Jester does provide a bit different approach and somewhat divergent potential. He’s still an OK damage dealer and stress healer. But he’s gimmicky as hell with his ties to Finale and otherwise doesn’t provide anything truly unique to the squad. And I have a final argument against Finale as well – Jester is too fast to use it. Yeah, however stupid it sounds, there is a rationale behind this. On the grind, you need to be replenishing your health and stress actively. There’s no other way around this. You never want to retreat and, ideally, you wish to finish your quest without any stress so you can quest once again. Otherwise, building up decent characters takes too much time. But now that stalling is punished, you want to overheal in such fashion: be rather speedy so you go before all the foes, on the final round use up to 3 actions for healing and finish your foe with the final one. But Jester is the fastest hero of the game. He won’t be going last. And so in many combats where Finale is supposedly the good finisher you’re facing a choice – do you Finale or do you heal? And of course you heal! I’ve no idea how that looks like in words. I know that in my testing this issue was a bit too frequent. Jester has some adequate skills but they’re only adequate.

13. Occultist – yes, even though it has lost its bestest single-targeted heal flair, Wyrd Reconstruction is strong. Weakening curse is strong as well. But these two are now the full extent of his abilities. And none of this are changing the rules of the combat in any significant way. There are lots of healing alternatives and there are lots of ways to bypass the Protection. I guess Occultist’s flexibility has to be praised – yes, he’s able to work from almost any position, he’s quite shuffle resistant and so he’s the square peg that’ll fill the square hole of certain parties. But too many times he’ll be outshone by the other characters. His main nemesis is the Flagellant – right now Occultist is mostly picked for the second position and Flagellant just features better survivability here.

Tier-C:

14. Grave Robber – look, like everyone else, I like them a lot. But the numbers don’t lie – their damage is hardly amazing. Considering all the setup difficulties, Lunge is too fair. Even versus blighted it’s fair because it’s not like you can constantly use it. Besides, that’s just a counterlogical synergy – Lunge’s purpose is to focus particular foes ASAP. Blight’s purpose is to drain your foes slowly. In the majority of party combinations blight-boosting your Lunge means that you’re losing some of that blight damage. Given that the overall productivity is not that high, that’s a worrying fact. Shadow Fade, while sporting some nice numerics, is also not that amazing. Once again, it’s counter-productive – GR’s strongest side is her ability to focus many enemies fast. Fade, on the other hand, provides slow damage. Meaning that its victim will most likely take an additional action and so it’s not gonna be that efficient. Another thing is that it makes harder to use 2+ Grave Robbers – if they all fade that’ll mean that enemies won’t have that many attack targets and so remaining party members will get super-focused. I suppose that can be used as an advantage with some rare character classes (like riposters or Flagellant) but in many parties this will make it all much less manageable. It sucks to spends lots of effort for such an average gains.

15. Bounty Hunter – the only reason he’s not getting last placed is due to there being no alternative to him in the marky squads. Even so, they’re not that hot anymore so it’s not enough to drag him out higher than this. And even there I’m thinking if replacing him with someone better is not a good choice. It won’t break the consistency that much and, well, exactly what does this guy offer for the team? Average damage and nothing but that – all his other skills were either useless or were nerfed into being useless. I suppose that just running a Man-at-Arms in this position and casting Commands will work as well, if not better. So maybe he should be getting that highly coveted position 17 – this question is pretty much the only questionable thing about this tier list.

16. Crusader – this guy just sucks. No decent damage, no decent skills, no nothing. I guess he can tank in the Weald but even that suffers because of his speed – high speed is essential to both healer and tank. He always goes last, thus failing to enable his Bulwark swiftly and cutting down your profits from semi-stalling tactics. He has nothing truly unique so, well, what’s the point?

17. Abomination – Rake was the only straw this class had and now they’ve taken it away. What remains is either lots of stress being paid for absolutely average attacks with no excellent trinkets or camping skills to boost them. Or a non-transform Abom which was also severely nerfed and is quite out of the meta. Unless he gets some positive changes there’s very few reasons to be ever using this guy.

0.0 On The Merits of Eugenics and Hatred

Let’s hope Steam won’t ban me for this one, lol. Jokes and trolling aside, let’s talk about the grand strategy of the game. Understand that your initial party will be rather bad, period. And not because you’re bad/unaccustomed to the game– it’s just the natural course of the things.

First, your initial recruit pool is really small so you won’t take whom you want – you’ll grab whom you can. Second, you’ll have no money to spare on their upkeep so they’ll end up with lots of solidified bad quirks and, what’s most unpleasant, you’ll often miss opportunities to reinforce the positive ones. Quirks are of colossal importance – they are the butterfly’s flap that may cause a hurricane or two. But they’re hardly equal in quality and, since bad ones outhweigh the good immensely in number, getting what you want isn’t easy. And if you can’t afford to solidify your quality quirks there’s always a chance they’ll get rewritten by something else – good luck getting them back after that.

So don’t get too emotionally attached to your starting crew. They are very expendable and their sole purpose is to get you through the early game, grinding as much heirlooms as possible in the process. Once that task is done you’ll want to rotate them out for a crew of genetically engineered super-soldiers. Note that even with the fully upgraded carriage, good recruits still remain a rare find so you want to fully upgrade your carriage ASAP, simply to have the best chances of getting the great ones. And, once you have the money, you want to immediately reinforce their good quirks and get rid of their starting bad ones. Get the crew of 4 such heroes in the good composition and you’ll instantly feel the difference. That’s the “eugenics” part. But what defines “racial hatred”?

The nature of the best quirks, of course. As I’ve said, quirks are not balanced and their quality differs greatly. Quite obviously so – compare Last Gasp (+1 Speed if HP is under 50%) to Early Riser (+2 Speed if Torch is above 75) to Quick Reflexes (+2 Speed) to Luminous (+2 Speed AND +5 Evasion). You know which one you want, right? And if Quick Reflexes can still be considerable as an addition to Luminous (as +4 Speed can do things that +2 can not), Last Gasp is just yuck. But we won’t focus on the weak quirks – there’s too much of them to describe. The full explanation lies in the strongest ones:

Mankind / Unholy / Beast Hater / Eldritch Hater: +15% DMG and +15% Stress Resist vs Humans/Unholy/Beasts/Eldritch.

Man/Unholy/Beast/Eldritch Slayer: +10 Accuracy and +6% Critical versus the same.

When compared to your average quirks, these are worth 2-2.5 times as much. Say, Slugger (+10% melee damage) and Photomania (+20% Stress Resistance when the Torch is above 75). And Slugger (or its ranged counterpart, Unerring) can be annoying for characters who use both melee & shooting attacks (Grave Robber, for example). And Photomania will fail you when you’re ambushed at night. Or when you’re fighting shamblers.

For the Slayer alternatives – it’s Natural Swing (+5 Accuracy) and Precision Striker/Eagle Eye (+5% critical for melee/ranged). So the gains are either less or inflexible.

One can argue that the Hatred/Slayer quirks are also hardly reliable – after all, they work against 1 creature type out of 4. But don’t forget – you choose where your squad’s mission happens. And each area has some dominant creature type – Unholy for Ruins, Beast/Human for Warrens (plenty of monsters who are both), Human/Eldritch for Weald (same as in Warrens) and Eldritch for Cove. The actual concentration differs a bit. Say, the Cove is almost entirely Eldritch, whereas the Ruins have roughly 70/30 split between Undeads & else, but it’s still significant enough to justify these. Go to the right place and they will work.

And that’s our grand strategy – normally,starting DD players will have one or two universal parties. But that’s not enough – to finish the game, you’ll need 4 full squads (at the very least). And, since the final dungeons have quite a different set of demands than your average ones, you’ll probably want 5 grinding parties (1 for each area) and 4 finalizing parties (1 for each stage of the Darkest Dungeon itself).

It should be also noted that, quite predictably, Darkest Dungeon is filled with the Eldritch-type so, in the late game, that racial becomes especially prized. If you don’t want to grind for it as much, just try to grab it at every opportunity.

In terms of power, next type of quirks is the area ones. Note that the final area, the Darkest Dungeon, doesn’t count as any of these, so they are for your money/equipment grinding squads, not for your game ending ones. They’re still extremely good:

Ruins/Warrens/Weald/Cove Tactician: +15% Damage dealt in Ruins/Warrens/Weald.

Ruins/Warrens/Weald/Cove Adventurer: +20% Stress Resistance in Ruins/Warrens/Weald.

There’s also Explorer & Scrounger chains but they’re horrible, avoid them – scouting is nice, but there are cheaper ways of getting it.

So Tactician is worth 1.5x Slugger/Unerring. Adventurer is equal to Photomania but is more reliable. You would’t mind to have both, though. Stress damage is a huge factor and, to be honest, there can’t be enough resist to it. So, if you’re lucky, Ruins Adventurer, Photomania, Unholy Hater – that’s already 55% stress resistance when fighting the skeleton armies. Add in the Book of Sanity and it’s pumped to 75%. Which is close to the 80% maximum. Big Pharma becoming obsolete in 1-2-3…

And that’s not all. Some classes also provide anti-racial bonuses. Crusader’s Smite and Holy Lance have +35% vs Unholy. Ditto for Vestal’s Hand of Light. Occultist’s Abyssal Artillery and Sacrificial Stab will eventually have 35% vs Eldritch. Houndmaster’s Hound’s Rush does 35% extra against the Beast. And Bounty Hunter’s Collect Bounty does up to 35% versus Human.

So the synergies are obvious. Keep in mind that most of those are still not salvaging the weak classes and out of them all (it just so happens that most of the classes that have these dwell on the bottom of food chain) only Houndmasters truly profit from this stuff.

Now, I’m not saying that Houndmasters etc. are mandatory when assembling your regional crew – the game allows more flexibility than that, of course. But that’s a very comfortable route to take.

If you wish to annihilate your foes, you need to adapt to the battlefield. But let’s not forget about lighting – that’s also a very important factor. You always build your crew around either Sun (76+ Torch) or Moon (25 or below Torch) effects. Most builds do fine either way but evasion always goes for the Sun – monsters receive huge accuracy bonuses from the dark that make it much more difficult to profit from evasion.

Also, whereas Sun parties are universal, Moon’s are more about early-to-mid game. Darkess’ main advantage is that you find insane amount of loot in it. But, with the incredible increase in stress taken, your party will go insane too. And, since eventually you’ll gain all the money/trinkets/heirlooms you’ll need, ridiculous amounts of extra loot will become worthless. So will adventuring in the dark.

There is little reason to go through Champion dungeons in the dark. Meaning that while Early Riser (+2 Speed), Photomania (+20% Stress Resist) and Warrior of Light (+10% damage) will last through the entire game, Night Owl (+2 Speed) and Lurker (+10% damage) will get obsolete. So they’re good on those expendable crew members, but not on your actual game-winning commando squads.

Another dark side of the Moon is that you’re getting surprised often. So party members with low mobility and positioning issues (Lepers, for example) will hate all the gloom.

0.0 Continued

Finally, let’s also mention some non-area specific quirks that have eugenic value anyways – see, those precise 3-quirk combos are nice but the chance of getting these in reasonable time is low so you will probably have to compromise. Finding 4x team members with Unholy Hater is insane, but finding 2 with Hater, 1 with Slayer and 1 with Quick Reflexes is much more reasonable. Also, whereas area quirks are universally good, some of these are more nuanced:

Evasive, Luminous, Daredevil : Dodge becomes really strong once you bring your foes’ accuracy below 50%. Champion-tier foes accuracy goes up to 122%, btw, so you want at least 72 Dodge to get there reliably. And the farther you push, the more return you get on every additional point of Dodge. So these quirks are great for evasion-specializing parties and characters (Men-at-Arms & Jesters, for example) but are forgettable for everyone else.

Hard Skinned: despite looking similar to Evasive, this one is somewhat worse. Evasion is incredibly universal – once the attack misses, all of its effects miss, not only the damage. So stress, stuns, bleeds, blights, diseases – evasion covers it all. Whereas, even if you have high protection, you’re still vulnerable to that stuff. And, just like evasion, protection isn’t that great unless you have at least 25% of it (50% is where the real fun begins but 40 is maximum for the majority of the classes; note that the higher it gets, the crazier it becomes). So, unless you build around it, this one is a pass. Therefore, it’s mostly for the Leper and Man-at-Arms – they have top-notch self-protection buffs with great amounts of protection gained. Hard Skinned puts those over the top. Shieldbreakers may get some synergy through their on-crit effect. Crusaders also have similar self-buff and Arbalests/Musketeers may wish for this because it greatly improves their class set.

Quick Reflexes, Early Riser, Luminous: going first is great but you need at least a dozen of speed to do that frequently. Only characters with really high starting speed can easily achieve that. So, if you want to center your party around alpha striking, these become quite good. Speed is also important if you wish to exploit the full potential of your healers. Otherwise, it’s rather skippable.

On Guard, Quckdraw: same logic as above but these are even more extreme. They’re about characters who have to go first to set the flow of the battle. Best examples are Hellion and Plague Doctor – there’s a big difference between them applying their stuns before or after the enemies move on the first turn.

Unyielding: with your basic 67% deathblow resistance you have 33% chance to die whenever an enemy hits you. With this quirk that gets reduced to the 23% – in terms of length, that’s half of extra durability. Add some deathblow preventing item (say, Martyr’s Seal with its 12% bonus) and it takes 8 attacks to reliably kill you (up from the basic 3; also, deathblow resistance is capped at 87% so further additions are futile). On the average, of course – luck is always a factor. Keep in mind that getting down intentionally (so you can abuse the Seal’s bonuses) is not a sane strategy – you get hit a lot in this game so, believe me, your character will die surprisingly fast. This quirk is more about the toughest boss fights – where, no matter how well you prepare, you will get dragged to the Death’s Door. And, as you can see, Unyielding raises your chances colossally. So it’s a great endgame choice.

Slugger and Unerring: mostly for the Grave Robbers and Highwaymen correspondingly. For these classes, every tiny bit of damage does count. And while the Tactician/Haters give more, you’ll be happy even with these ones. The dream, of course, is something like a Slugger/Eldritch Hater/Cove Tactician GR – 40% bonus damage in total.

Fairweather Fighter: good in the fast teams. Provides you with a decent alpha-strike and, well, with the power of current healing it’s not all that difficult to keep your fighters constantly up. Keep in mind that all such bonuses work best for the characters who rely on attacks that don’t contain negative modifiers or, even better, contain some positive ones (Lunge, Bleed Out, Point Blank Shot).

Precise Striker and Eagle Eye: after the recent buffs, criticals became good for everyone so any kind of a damage dealer will want to have a corresponding one.

Hippocratic: a very obvious must-have for any healer. Shouldn’t need explanation, really.

Photomania, Steady: if you can’t afford dedicated stress healers in certain squads or if you have to go greedy and wear some stress-giving trinkets these may be the way to alleviate the pain. Keep in mind that the higher the stress resistance goes, the crazier it gets – just like with the Protection.

There are also some negative quirks that are worth keeping (!) – keep in mind that quirk removing curios remove stuff at random so, if you wish to keep these, stop using those:

Risktaker: if your character has low innate Dodge and your party does nothing to boost that attribute then this turns into pretty much a freebie Slugger/ Unerring. For example, this thing is a dream for the Leper.

Slow Reflexes, Slowdraw, Off Guard, Nocturnal – many squads rely on a very specific turn order. So, as an option to secure it further, you may wish to be keeping one of these. For example, in Highwayman-Antiquarian duo He-man has to go first. But they have the same basic speed. So, in addition to boosting his speed, you can also get one of these on the Antiquarian.

Btw, whenever you encounter a curio that may give you a positive perk, you totally want to use that – despite the chance of causing some bad effects, the extra attempt of digging out a top-notch perk is worth it.

1. The Kings in Beige

4-Houndmaster, 3-Vestal, 2-Leper, 1-Leper.

A rather simple concept – lepers take a turn to enable their must have Revenge and in the process of that they’re taking some damage. So we just pair them with two best healers in the game and, of course, we also don’t neglect their Solemnity. Then we just Chop and Hew everything into dust. Supports don’t even have to be doing much here – just spam those Cry Havoc & Divine Comfort.

Trinkets: Lepers certainly want Berserk Mask – don’t worry, your healing is so high that even coupled with Revenge they won’t be a problem. Then they want any kind of either damage or critical boosting item. Vestal wants healing-boosting trinkets and Houndmaster equips into Critical and Accuracy.

Destination: this squad is highly universal, you can adapt it for everything and anything.

Variations:

4-Man-at-Arms, 3-Vestal, 2-Leper, 1-Leper: the idea of this version is for everyone to have some kind of Stress resistance boosters. Quirks or items, doesn’t matter. Then MaA applies Bolster and, suddenly, Stress is a non-issue as everyone has 50%+ resistance to it. And health is not a problem as you already have a Vestal. Then you just spam Commands & do great amounts of damage.

4-Houndmaster, 3-Plague Doctor, 2-Vestal, 1-Leper: the Endless Harvest team. The positioning is a bit strange but only such a setup allows to use all the best skill combinations – Vestal is still a great healer, plague doctor can both stun and perform Incisions/Plague Grenades, Houndmaster damages and stress heals.

4-Houndmaster, 3-Vestal, 2-Leper, 1-Hellion: if you absolutely hate repetition, you may try this one out. Hellion will cover Leper’s Revenge with her Barbaric YAWP and then, as she’ll be getting weaker, he’ll stand stronger and stronger.

4-Vestal, 3-Jester, 2-Leper, 1-Leper.: if you like Jesters, you can also go with them. They can stress heal, apply bleeds or the Battle Ballad. No room for Finale under such skill setup, though, but it’s probably not needed – Lepers will do enough damage. To say the least.

2. Dirty Harry

4-Houndmaster, 3-Houndmaster, 3-Houndmaster,1-Flagellant.

Well, turns out that spamming tier-S character is the surest way to tier-S compositions. Unfortunately, this fact still doesn’t make quadleper viable. But puppy spam works because they’re just too flexible not to be spammed. You have so much stuff packed in this squad that it’s not even funny – great health regeneration, best stress regeneration, AoE damage, focus damage. Outside of bleeding-resistant places, this squad just knows no equal and will meet barely any opposition. And even Cove will be doable with some +Bleed trinkets – they’re just too vulnerable to the massed Harry’s there.

In terms of skills distribution it’s easy:
3&4 – Hound’s Rush, Hound’s Harry, Cry Havoc, Lick Wounds.
2 – Hound’s Rush, Hound’s Harry, Target Whistle, Lick Wounds.

You want 2 to be much faster than 3&4 so he can mark for them easily.

Trinkets: Harry has a decent bleed chance and they’ll get even more Bleed chance after criticals so it’s best to gear out for them. Focus Ring, Ancestor’s Musket Ball, Houndmaster’s Set, Fuseman’s Matchstick, Sniper’s Ring, Solar Bracer, etc. Flag is very flexible on his trinkets – he’ll mostly be healing here so guarantee that first and get some Death Blow resist.

Destination: Warrens, Weald, Crimson Court.

Variants:

4-Houndmaster, 3-Houndmaster, 2-Flagellant, 1-Hellion: less AoE but more emphasis on the enemy’s front. Also gives you a juicy stun.

4-Arbalest, 3-Houndmaster, 3-Houndmaster,1-Flagellant: less damage dealt but much greater healing potential.

4-Man-at-Arms, 3-Houndmaster, 3-Houndmaster,1-Flagellant: some dodging potential and Crits. So much crits…

3. Mememen

4-Man-at-Arms, 3-Man-at-Arms, 2-Man-at-Arms, 1-Flagellant.

To be honest, that’s probably the most potent squad in the game. It’s almost absolutely RNG immune as there are just too many ways to save & protect your characters – you have a ton of Dodge, you’re almost Stress-immune, you have 3 Defender actions available and Flagellant is a great healer. The only downside is that this squad kills its enemies slowly – the fights are around 50% longer with it. So it is real time intensive. I strongly suggest using Cheat Engine to accelerate the animations speed to at least 5x with this one. Otherwise, it has no flaws.

The fight will start with all MaA spamming Bolster. 4-Man will then will spam Command and nothing but command. 3-Man will chain Retribution and Command. 2-man will chain Retribution and Defender into 3-Man. Flagellant will be the party’s main damage dealer through his DoTs – this is a rather slow squad so they’ll have all the time necessary to prove their value. In case of needs, he’ll aplly Reclaim and Endure – the latter one becomes almost free. And, well, slowly but steadily your relentless criticals (this squad can easily have 80-90% critical chance) will bring enemy down.

Trinkets: everything that’s Dodge-oriented. I strongly suggest massed Feather Crystal as you want to apply your Bolster before your foes have any turns.

Destination: everywhere but Ruins – Flagellant just doesn’t do any damage there.

Variants:

4-Man-at-Arms, 3-Man-at-Arms, 2-Man-at-Arms, 1-Crusader: here’s the version for the Ruins. Crusader is meh but he’s the only one who fits the bill there – has both stress healing, health healing and some damage dealing potential. Well, given the tiny amount of damage you receive, his healing will be enough.

4-Antiquarian, 3-Man-at-Arms, 2-Man-at-Arms, 1-Flagellant: greedier version. You have less damage but more Dodge through Invigorating Vapours spam and more money, ofc.

4. Chaingun

4-Man-at-Arms, 3-Vestal, 2-Shieldbreaker, 1-Shieldbreaker.

Just an Impale & Adder’s Kiss Engine – paired Shieldbreakers will generate those indefinetely, setting each other back into position. And, well, it doesn’t take much of those to wipe out most parties. Vestal will do what Vestal does best – healbotting. And MaA will first Bolster and then Command. That gives you more survivability and, most importantly, that’s your plan of stress management. Pretty much the fastest grinding squad in the game.

Trinkets: MaA will give them enough Accuracy & Crit so you go for Dodgy stuff. Frontline Shieldbreaker will want a Feather Crystal and probably some SPD quirks. She needs to go first!

Destination: Ruins & Cove. Especially Cove. It also won’t break any Farmstead records but it’s good for some quck crystal & memory farming.

Variants:

4-Antiquarian, 3-Vestal, 2-Shieldbreaker, 1-Shieldbreaker: greedy farming variant. We’re losing some damage & longevity but it’s probably worth it?

4-Jester, 3-Vestal, 2-Shieldbreaker, 1-Shieldbreaker: non-Dodge focused variant. Jester will Battle Ballad and, when needed, will apply Inspiring Tune. Trinkets will be mostly Crit oriented – Focus Ring, etc.

4-Man-at-Arms, 3-Occultist, 2-Shieldbreaker, 1-Shieldbreaker: trades healing power for better damage dealing potential. Kills faster but is a bit riskier.

4-Plague Doctor, 3-Vestal, 2-Shieldbreaker, 1-Shieldbreaker: uses Blinding Gas as a way of stress prevention. After all, most stressers reside on position 3 & 4 so if they don’t get their first turn you’re not suffering all too much. And it’s very unlikely that they’ll survive quad-Impale to see their second turn…

4-Houndmaster, 3-Vestal, 2-Shieldbreaker, 1-Shieldbreaker: Endless Harvest version. While it won’t break the game’s records, it farms kills really, really fast. I was able to do 200 in an hour and, actually, I should’ve even went past the Sleeper. Just get to him, kill him, get your memory, repeat until you have the mill.

5. You’re The Glue

4-Houndmaster, 3-Vestal, 2-Highwayman, 1-Antiquarian.

Your basic Riposte squad. Backrow shouldn’t need much explanation – that’s just your best support duo and they’re able to carry pretty much anything. And frontline is all about putting as many strikes onto the Highwayman as possible – that’s why we have a 1-Antiquarian, just so she collects more attacks in this way. She’ll spam Protect Me and, if situation allows, some Flashpowder. Highwayman will chain Duelist’s Advance and then Point Blank Shot to get back into position. If the combat promises to be really long then after first Advance you’ll do a Tracking Shot. And Antiquarian will just move to put him back into position 2. Then you’ll just laugh maniacally as you’ll watch those stupid monsters die from their own actions. You’ll laugh maniacally, right?

Trinkets: some Scouting stuff on Antiquarian – she mostly hides behind Highwayman so she can afford it. Healing on Vestal, crit on Houndmaster. And a ton (a TON!) of accuracy on Highwayman – Ripostes are very inaccurate so you need to be boosting them.

Destination: any. But probably is most efficient in the Weald as monsters there are quite prone to attacking marked targets.

Variants:

4-Houndmaster, 3-Vestal, 2-Highwayman, 1-Highwayman: boss-killing version. Nothing but sheer brutality. Against certain bosses you can even go full ♥♥♥♥♥♥:

4-Vestal, 3-Highwayman, 2-Highwayman, 1-Highwayman: just kill them faster before you go insane. I call this build “Highway to Hell”. Don’t forget that the first Highwayman needs to be the slowest one.

4-Man-at-Arms, 3-Vestal, 2-Highwayman, 1-Antiquarian: here, the Highwayman will need good Stress resistance. Something like 20% from quirks and 20% from items. Then he’ll easily survive all stress attacks being focused at him and under Command he’ll do so much criticals that he won’t really care.

4-Vestal, 3-Highwayman, 2-Crusader, 1-Antiquarian: Ruins version. Crusader uses his Holy Lance to chain with Highwayman’s Advance while killing those pesky skeletons fast.

6. Cheerbleeder

4-Houndmaster, 3-Jester, 2-Flagellant, 1-Hellion.

This squad is about bleeding the living hell out of your enemies. Hellion opens up with Barbaric YAWP and then everyone else unleashes the flood. By the time the frontliners are getting their second turn they’re probably already dead. And if they’re not – well, no one prohibits you from using another YAWP. And, in case you need to stall the things out, you’re having plenty of heal and excellent, excellent stress regen. With proper trinkets, you can probably go pitch black with this squad.

Trinkets: Hellion probably wants one stunning item. The stun into DoT is just too good of a combo. Flagellant is mostly about healing so get some bleed resistance on him – you can’t have that happen to you. For Jester & Houndmaster it’s all about critical boosters.

Destination: Warrens, Weald, Crimson Court. If it bleeds…

Variants:

4-Houndmaster, 3-Plague Doctor, 2-Flagellant, 1-Hellion: PD+Hellion combo allow you go for a total KO on turn 1, thus giving you even more time to focus those squishies down. Rain of Whips and Hound’s Harry have amazing long term damage potential so it’s all about giving them this time to shine. PD also provides anti-disease capacities which will be invaluable in medium & long Warrens runs.

4-Houndmaster, 3-Highwayman, 2-Flagellant, 1-Hellion: He-man adds even more resistance negation thus increasing the rest potential of the entire party.

7. Death Corps

4-Plague Doctor, 3-Plague Doctor, 2-Crusader, 1-Flagellant.

It’s quite a classical thing at this point – one PD stuns the enemy backrow, another one poisons it. Then they both poison it and poof – it’s all gone. With the Blasphemous Vial being available to this class, this plan works out rather reliably. In the meanwhile, your frontline mostly tanks and heals. Flagellant looks a bit silly here as it’s mostly a Ruins party but not much can be done about this – you just need two healers (with some potential for stress heals – on mishap, those Blasphemous Vials scar the living hell out of your PDs) and he’s the most flexible frontline one. He must be in stress healing mode, btw.

Trinkets: Have I mentioned Blasphemous Vial? The other one depends on the quirks – if PDs are speedy enough (they love their On Guard & Quickdraw) then you can safely go for stress prevention. Otherwise, you need to pack some speed in – any reasonable kind will do. You just can’t afford to endure a turn of those backliners.

Destination: Ruins.

Variants:

4-Plague Doctor, 3-Plague Doctor, 2-Crusader, 1-Crusader: the old school variant. It has less healing but more DPS so if you think that’s what you’re lacking, you know the way to go.

4-Plague Doctor, 3-Plague Doctor, 2-Vestal, 1-Flagellant: if you have lots of stress-resistance quirks and trinkets you can go for this nigh-unkillable variant.

4-Plague Doctor, 3-Abomination, 2-Flagellant, 1-Shieldbreaker: this version is more burst-oriented. The second turn of Shieldbreaker is not that beautiful but you can still use Pierce and Serpent Sway to a modicum of success.

8. Loaded Weapon

4-Arbalest, 3-Musketeer, 2-Houndmaster, 1-Bounty Hunter.

Your basic marking squad. Ideal for certain boss-killing, not so good for much else. Well, boss killing has to be done so it’s all right. Girls will be mostly sniping and providing healing support (on the road to the boss; during the boss fight they can prevent the death’s door but this is a bit of an all-in squad – you kill them faster than they kill you), Houndmasters will be applying their mark and striking and, well, BH doesn’t have much flexibility. He can help you to stall out a little here and there but that just became much less reliable and it’s not like he has any kickass trinkets to boost that.

Trinkets: mostly critical and accuracy boosters – this squad is all about killing fast so everything else makes no sense. Pure damage is also not as good as crits just work better. Houndmaster wants something speed-related, btw, as his mark is the best so you really want for him to go first to apply it.

Destination: whenever a potent boss arises. Otherwise, Warrens has the biggest amount of mark-worthy foes.

Variant:

4-Arbalest, 3-Musketeer, 2-Houndmaster, 1-Man-at-Arms: I’m somewhat disappointed in the current incarnation of BH and MaA adds almost as much damage as he does through his Command. He also provides some incredible camping skills to the party, making the act of boss killing to go even easier.

4-Arbalest, 3-Musketeer, 2-Houndmaster, 1-Flagellant: everything gets better with Flagellant, I suppose. It’s mostly a grind squad – you gotta level this squad somehow, after all.

4-Arbalest, 3-Musketeer, 2-Houndmaster, 1-Hellion: Hellion comfortably stuns the enemy frontline while you’re making a mess of their backrow or, in case of need, she can also reach there with either Iron Swan or If it Bleeds. While her current healing potential is weak, it is somewhat boosted by Battle Bandage amplification. And even though Bleed Out is not a perfect synergy with marking, it’s still lots of damage in one skill.

9. Last Laugh

4-Jester, 3-Houndmaster, 2-Grave Robber, 1-Flagellant.

That’s not the strongest squad around but it’s rather fun to play. The idea is that you start the combat by Solo, pushing Jester towards the frontline. Then you follow up with Lunge – now GR is in the position to do so. After that Jester is pushed to position 2 so he can use some Harvest & Slice Off. GR charges her Shadow Fade. Then, on what’s generally the last turn of the combat, Jester unleashes his Finale and GR follows with turbo-Lunge. If needed. Sounds awesome, right? And the rest of the crew are either doing DoT damage, softening enemies up, or they’re just healbotting.

Trinkets: GR & Jester love criticals in this buiild as they’d love to boost their mega-strikes. Master is also about the same and Flagellant is in a supportive composition.

Destination: Weald, Warrens, Crimson Court.

Variant:

4-Jester, 3-Jester, 2-Grave Robber, 1-Vestal: what’s better than one Finale? This version is a bit slower so we ad a better healbot to compensate for this – Vestal can’t heal on the front, obviously, but she won’t be staying there for long. It’s not the best party in the game power-wise but it is probably one of the best fun-wise if only because it features lots of choice & options.

4-Jester, 3-Jester, 2-Jester, 1-Vestal: this is the pitch black edition of this squad. I call it “Virtuoso”. The idea is that Dark Crown is one of the best darkness artifacts. And Dark Tambourine is, essentially, a copy of it. So you have 50% stress resist and 50% virtue chance. This allows you to leave some stress-flinging enemies alive deliberately and just collect stress until jesters get to 100. If they’re virtuous – good. If not – this squad will easily restore their sanity and, well, one more time with passion then. Until your entire team is virtuous and, well, life will get real easy after that.

10. Salty Wounds

4-Grave Robber, 3-Grave Robber, 2-Flagellant, 1-Shieldbreaker.

Shieldbreaker loops Impale and Serpent Sway. The latter one is highly important – once GRs will use their Shadow Fade both her and Flagellant will be in the center of enemy attention, taking lots and lots of attacks. And they’ll have to spend a turn like this until GRs will Lunge through the foes. And, as they’re all be blighted, those will be some high-quality Lunges. Flagellant will also be taking lots of damage but, well, he’s the flag, he’s used to it. GRs are mostly about damage dealing – well, as if they’re able to be about anything else. For this strategy Shieldbreaker will need to have either Quickdraw or On Guard – on first turn she wants to act before the robbers but afterwards she wants to go after them.

Trinkets: Camouflage Cloak + Feather Crystal is probably the way to go for your Shieldbreaker, just so he has some speed and durability. Flag also needs to be clad in a defensive build. Mb focus on his max HP – he’s pretty much the only character where they matter. Flesh’s Heart & Martyr’s Seal are pretty cool for him. GRs are all about Sickening Satchel & Legendary Bracer combo. They do love their pure damage and, most importantly, they need to be somewhat slower so they go after Shieldbreakers blights them all. Keep this in mind when solidifying your quirks.

Destination: Ruins, Cove.

11. Leapfrog

4-Grave Robber, 3-Grave Robber, 2-Grave Robber, 1-Crusader.

An undying classic. Well, atm it’s in the process of dying out as it’s not as strong as the other versions but, well, it’s still fun to experience. The logic is simple – all the Grave Robbers are trinketed and quirked in a way where they have a nice speed ladder. So the fourth one is, say, 14 speed, the third is 12 and the second is 9. This way, they almost always go in the orderly fashion and if they’re doing nothing but Lunge (which they do) they find themselves in position to perform yet another Lunge carousel. Crusader is chosen as the healer due to his Non-Euclidean Hilt potential – in combination with Blight Amulet or, better even, Hag’s Ladle he can “mark” enemies reliably. Outside of that, he’s just a healbot.

Trinkets: they’ve been already described, I think. I guess Miller’s Pipe can also be considered – all freebie sources of blighting are good with GRs.

Destination: Ruins & Cove.

Variants:

4-Grave Robber, 3-Grave Robber, 2-Grave Robber, 1-Flagellant: no blight synergy but it’s cheaper to assemble and has much better heal.

4-Grave Robber, 3-Grave Robber, 2-Grave Robber, 1-Grave Robber: yeah. Here, the order might be a bit different as you’d wish for 1-2 to go first so you can set up for Shadow Fade volley, leaving your foes to be unable to strike you. Then you wipe half their squad out, then you rinse and repeat. The biggest issue here is the lack of healing so you’re only going to Warrens with this one – it has the biggest amount of food available and that’s your main healing source. Having a mill helps, of course, but if you’re having it you probably already won the game already. I think you need one Recovery Charm or its analogue in this one – just so you can shuffle it around, thus getting the most out of your food. You can even try out the dodge trinkets and Fasting Seals. It’s a bad squad but it’s fun.

12. Shady Business

4-Highwayman, 3-Flagellant, 2-Grave Robber, 1-Grave Robber.

This squad is based around GRs applying their Shadow Fade at the start of the combat so all attacks would go to Highwayman (who uses Duelist’s Advance) and Flagellant (who damages or heals He-man preventively). With most other classes such amount of focus fire would be a pretty horrible deal but here it’ll just cause tons of riposte and easy enabling of Flagellant’s top notch skills. So Shadow Fade‘s main] weakness is turned into strength. Outside of that, this squad plays pretty simple – just don’t forget that 2-GR needs to be faster so party order stays coherent. And He-man needs a Point Blank Shot to switch himself back into position.

Trinkets: He-man needs lots of accuracy as Ripostes have low innate one. GRs want lots of criticals – Fade will provide all the raw damage they need. Flagellant is in his standard setup. One of GRs may consider Miller’s Pipe for the sake of further Lunge boosting.

Destination: universal.

Variants:

4-Vestal, 3-Man-at-Arms, 2-Grave Robber, 1-Grave Robber: this MaA is an oldschool MaA, doing nothing but Defend and Retribution. Vestal just healbots. GRs do their business. MaA will probably want lots of stress reduction as that will be a major threat to him and, in certain fights, you’ll even start them from Bolster due to this reason.

4-Crusader, 3-Crusader, 2-Grave Robber, 1-Grave Robber: here Bulwark of Faith is used for damage mitigation. The rest of the battle Crusaders will be mostly applying their heals but, if you can afford the Non-Eucleadean Hilt, you can try to perform a Zealous Accusation or two.

13. Sunraker

4-Houndmaster, 3-Houndmaster, 2-Abomination, 1-Abomination

Your classical abomination party. After Rake‘s nerf I would suggest it only if you really, really love beastly aboms. Mind you, it’s not that bad – it’s performing adequate. But it’s more about H-masters being tier-S than abominations being real good. It plays rather simple – you transform, Rage out the enemy backrow and then you Rage out everything else. Houndmasters use their mark and Hound’s Rush for the same purpose – it’s a highly target focusing party. Then, once only weakest enemies remain, you can use lots of stress heaing via Cry Havoc and Absolution.

Trinkets: criticals! Both H-masters and abominations profit greatly from them so try to rack that number up. Alternatively, you have decent enough regeneration so you can try profit from that one too by going for lots of Dodge.

Destination: universal but works a bit better in Warrens, Weald and Crimson court.

14. Temperance Union

4-Plague Doctor, 3-Abomination, 2-Abomination, 1-Crusader.

This is a slow, tanky and grindy party where abominations almost never transform, hence the name. Crusader starts with Bulwark of Faith then slowly heals everyone while they’re just bombarding enemy with DoTs. Plague Doctor probably starts from the Blinding Gas, though – denying the first turn to half the enemy squad is too efficient to ignore it. This squad also has a great stalling potential – the healing here is decent enough to break through most penalties and reinforcements so you can just restore yourself to the fullest whenever you please it. It’s a slow squad, however, so it’s not for the fast grinding.

Trinkets: abominations probably go defensive – there isn’t much stuff that can actually increase their damage potential in the humane form. It’s pointless to boost damage and crit and their Blight comes with an in-built increase. So I guess you just ramp Dodge on them. Crusader really likes Heavy Boots here, ideally with the Hard Skinned so he has steady 60% Protection. Plague Doctor probably will want to avoid Blasphemous Vial – it doesn’t mesh well with the squad’s low speed and regenerative strategy. Go for the Witch’s Vial and some stress-reducing item.

Destination: Ruins and Cove.

15. Backstreet Boys

4-Crusader, 3-Crusader, 2-Leper, 1-Leper.

Right now the backside crusaders are the best crusaders. Hence this squad. It’s slow as hell but it’s incredibly tanky and comes in with lots of healing in-built. So you focus their backrow with the crusaders and then lepers take care of everything else. You can easily stall here as regeneration potential is good, especially when it comes to the stress. It’s a nice and simple early game grinding squad.

Trinkets: since this squad’s speed is slow I’d recommend to go for protective items. Dodge for Crusaders (their basic one is not that low so that’s not as ridiculous as it sounds) and protection/stress reduction for the Lepers. You can also go for the Virtue chance strategy here – give everyone some Protection items and Virtue boosters (Hero’s RIng, Holy Orders, crusaders can have both). Then you can eat up the stress and, if you’re getting affliction instead of Virtue, it’s easy to have a prolongated regeneration fight with this squad which will restore the afflicted hero to the norm, giving him another chance of virtue.

Destination: Ruins.

16. Flashing Girl

4-Houndmaster, 3-Abomination, 2-Crusader, 1-Antiquarian.

This squad is built around the Dodge-tank Antiquarian. Right now, she’s probably the strongest tank in the game (lol). It’s all thanks to her freshly added Smoking Skull trinket – coupled with the Camouflage Cloak it’ll add +50 Dodge to her already considerable 30 maximum. Given that your average monster has 110% accuracy at best (and many have less than that), they’re left with 30% to hit. Which can be further negated by quirks like Luminous and by her usage of Flashpower – hence the name of the build. Even after the Skull’s penalty she’ll still have 70% chance to hit with it and it’s definitely not that bad. Standing on position-1 she’ll absorb a ton of damage. And the rest of the party is built for the endurance run – lots of good, slow damage and regeneration.

Trinkets: Antiquarian is obvious. Just don’t forget to by 1 Shard Dust to fuel the Skull. Abom goes for the Dodge build – all abstinence aboms do. Crusader probably wants to have a heal boosting trinket and a stunning trinket – Signed Conscription and Paralyzer’s Crest are top-notch choices here. Alternatively, you can clad him in Dodge so Antiquarian’s flashing is more effective. Houndmaster is a bit flexible – he can go for the Dodge, he can go for the crit. Not both, though, as Dodge is a bit of all-in.

Destination: Ruins & Cove.

Variants:

4-Arbalest, 3-Abomination, 2-Crusader, 1-Antiquarian: you lose stress healing but you’re boosting Crusader’s health healing and, most importantly, you get to stack Flashpower with Suppressing Fire, thus taking a lot of zest out of your enemy.

4-Man-at-Arms, 3-Abomination, 2-Flagellant, 1-Antiquarian: another way to make your entire squad tankier is to add Bolster into the mix. Flagellant replaces crusader as otherwise the damage output will be too low. This is more of a Cove build, btw.

4-Antiquarian, 3-Abomination, 2-Flagellant, 1-Antiquarian: an even greedier version of the previous build. Loadsamoney! And the second Antiquarian will be spamming +10 Evasion non-stop, thus boosting the efficiency of all other party members.

4-Crusader, 3-Crusader, 2-Abomination, 1-Antiquarian: here we incorporate some crusading scissors into the mix. Once the enemy backrow is dead, crusaders will be repairing all the damage you’ve suffered while Antiquarian and Abom will be dragging the combat out (against 2-size enemies, mostly).

17. The Rookie

4-Any, 3-Man-at-Arms, 2-Man-at-Arms, 1-Flagellant:

This is a special purpose team that focuses on raising your newbies quickly. Bringing a party up from level 0 takes a lot of time so often it’s easier to charge your rookie straight through a medium champion dungeon – stuff like “gather 3′ or “use 3” can be finished surprisingly fast and, with Ancestor’s Portrait and a DD Veteran in your team, it will propel your rookie straight into level 4. It’s also the only way to level up newbies when you don’t have enough space for a full new team – for example, you were already full and managed to lose a hero. It’s also good for experimentation – that’s how I get my lab rats online.

The tactics are pretty simple – Flagellant acts like a flagellant does, one of MaA Bolsters, another first applies Defender to the rookie then does the same. Generally speaking, it’s better for the 2-MaA to defend – lesser chances that they’ll be hit simultaneously. Then MaA apply additional Commands and Retributions. Rookie acts depending on his class. But, since his skills are abysmal, he mostly does nothing.

Trinkets: Dodge for your actual party members, Ancestor’s Portrait and Martyr’s Seal for the rookie. Just in case.

Destination: any. Just take those easier quests.

Variants:

4-Man-at-Arms,3-Man-at-Arms, 2-Leper, 1-Flagellant: Lepers are the only kind of character who have zero actions on the backrow and, so they don’t get insane, you’ll need to raise them that way. Well, they have both Solemnity and Withstand so it’s more or less fine.

Outro: A Bit of Shameless Self-Promotion

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