Some character advice

[Stübi Senpai]

So I've been trying different party combos to get a feel for each character, and there are some that I struggle to make work. This might just be a lack of ability unlocks, but I'm generally curious what some other people say. This isn't meant to be a balance complaint, I'm assuming I just lack experience or a tip.

1. Is the Grave Robber. I'm more net-neutral on her, I don't think she is particularly weak, but she def. doesn't feel strong either. Unlocking the ability that lets you eat corpses at least added a decent way to keep her healthy, but I generally feel her damage seems unimpressive, and she doesn't really have great utility to compensate for it.

2. Occultist. This might honestly mostly be wyrd-reconstruction feeling awful, which in turn just might be bad luck. But considering he tends to compete with the Plague Doctor, who comes with fantastic utility in addition to being able to deal decent damage, he seems subpar in comparison.

3. Vestal. While she feels great once you get fervour up, it distinctly feels like she just takes too much time and is inefficient AP to usefulness-wise. I rarely have anything decent to do with her turn 1 except fire a very unimpressive judgement, and once she gets the charged judgement off, she will sit around being sort of "meh" for the next two turns until you can do it again. The debuff cleanse is nice, but strikes me as situational.


Any input on those three is welcome. If you want to share some favorite party setups, I'll happily take those too.

[The Face]

On the occultist, is as a mage that can possibly emergency heal. He is better as big damage and pulling. If you want to bring as healer as well, pairing with runaway at least means a failed heal and bleed can be cauterized. Cauterize actually comes up often, since bleeds happen all the time. But yeah damage first on spooky man. Abyssal and pull are great, and burning stars is INSANE, even if it needs the power up move at the start of fights sometimes.

I found GR is best on a moving team. Pirouette is actually pretty awesome and she can do work from stealth after shadow fade. Dead of night mastered also makes her basically self sufficient while removing corpses.

Vestal I find is great using at least the damage consecration on your hard hitter. Defence is ok if you have time. The heal over time can add up and she can have a big emergency heal since she should have power by the time someone is hurting. Ideally.

Then again I play confessor "bonk" vestal, with her in rank 2 sometimes and aspirant occultist in rank 2 for fun. So I may be crazy

[Blockhead]

1) The big thing about GR is that she's able to bypass Defence, and even Guard (and Dodge when upgraded) with things like Thrown Dagger. Thrown Dagger also has one of the largest base Crit% of any attack in the game (up to 80% on a Combo Target!). She also has the only ability that insta-kills a boss on Death's Door via Glint in the Dark. Like the Jester, she's also a very mobile Hero - able to move up and down the ranks with ease (which is useful if you're going up against enemies that shuffle)

2) I find Occultist to be a lot better with the Warlock path, which has a 33% chance to auto-generate a Power token each round. Power tokens are the key to unlocking the Occultists true potential. You can try to generate these through Combo tokens and killing blows, but I honestly like getting them for free. Once he has the Power tokens, his moves become super charged - dealing massive amounts of damage, critting, etc. His attacks like Abyssal Artillery and Daemon's Pull also generate Combo tokens, so it's really nice to pull a back-rank enemy, damage them, and also Combo mark them for one of the front-liners to finish off. Wyrd Reconstruction, especially with healing trinkets, *can* be one of the most powerful heals in the game; but it's unreliable of course.

3) Yeah I have nothing redeeming to say about the Vestal.

[Huge Beard Guy]

Originally posted by Stübi Senpai:

1. Is the Grave Robber.

2. Occultist.

3. Vestal.

Any input on those three is welcome.

This is how I typically play these characters:

Originally posted by Stübi Senpai:

Vestal

I tend to use her as a support character 1st and damage character 2nd. If I want her in the back (pos 3 or 4) the skills I equip are Judgement, Divine Grace, Consecration of Fortitude, Consecration of Light and Divine Comfort.

The idea is simple, put her in a fast team so she's ideally last. Start with Divine Comfort to mitigate incoming damage. Round 2 is using Consecration of Fortitude or Consecration of Light. Round 3 is attack with a fully charged Judgement dealing damage and applying debuffs. Repeat this order until round 6 and replace the Judgement with a big fully charged Divine Grace (if needed, if not Judgement time again).

If I want to use her as a front line it's basically the same idea but replace Judgement with Mace Bash and put her in a team with someone who can move in-front of her to allow for her Divine Grace heal and back again so she can attack with Mace Bash.

If you're not using a Highwayman with the Highway Robbery skill, I strongly suggest replacing either Consecration of Fortitude or Consecration of Light for Illumination. It can help a lot against certain bosses/mini bosses.

Originally posted by Stübi Senpai:

Occultist

Almost the same as the Vestal in relation to role and position. If you're going for a team support role, I tend to go with the Warlock path and stick him in position 3 or 4 (the back). I then select the following skills: Weakening Curse, Wyrd Construction, Daemon's Pull, Vulnerability Hex and The Burning Stars.

Typically I like to start with a bang, I use Daemon's Pull on whoever I deem the biggest pain and follow it up with a combo attack with a DPS character (like the Leper). If they live, someone else follows up and kills the biggest pain in the first round.

The rest of the selected moves are simply selected due to how versatile they make the Occultist as a support character. Weakening Curse, Daemon's Pull and Vulnerability Hex allow him to assist other characters to get the kills quickly.

Wyrd Construction is used when you're in desperate need of a heal.

Use The Burning Stars on the strongest enemy however, this is usually a boss fight only move due to how quickly I kill things plus how dependant on RNG (33% chance each round) that the Occultist gains Unchecked Power allowing him to use it.

Originally posted by Stübi Senpai:

Grave Robber

I prefer to use her Nightsworn path. The skills I tend to use are: Pick to the Face, Absinthe or Dead of Night, Lunge, Pirouette and Shadow Fade.

Generally I find having and maintaining positive relationships help a lot with the Grave Robber along with using items and add ons that increase her Crit chances. In other words every little extra makes her go a longer distance with ease.

In a fight I use Lunge then round 2 Pirouette (or the other way round) until everything is dead.

I only bring Pick to the Face and Dead of Night depending on the team she is with. For example if I have an Occultist with Daemon's Pull (which clears corpses) I'll use Absinthe for an emergency heal/buff instead of Dead of Night.

If I bring someone who destroys armour such as a Leper with the skill Break, I won't bring Pick to the Face and I'll replace it with whatever I fancy at that time.

[tiamats4esgares]

The DD2 community is very anti-vestal, so you're not going to hear anything positive about her unfortunately. :-\

If you don't like her that's on you, the "slow and steady" playstyle isn't for everybody.

[Pixel Peeper]

I haven't done a run without the Grave Robber yet. She rarely performs super well (though she definitely did when I got the Silent Treatment trinket on a run where she was a Shadowsworn), but most importantly, she never performs badly. She's hitting from anywhere to anywhere, doesn't care about getting shuffled (in some configurations, she might actually love it) and with two self-heals (one of which adds Stealth and the other adds three Dodges, three Dodge+ when upgraded!), she rarely needs other characters to save her. She's just a beacon of reliability in a game about minimizing the likeliness of bad outcomes.

Speaking of reliability, Wyrd Reconstruction is garbage. If you need to heal, you need to heal, and despite this skill's huge range of healing values, it heals for 0 half the time, and in addition to wasting the Occultist's turn, it can even do more harm than good due to the bleed. It's bad enough on its own, but again, in a game about minimizing the likeliness of bad outcomes, it's awful. Just pretend it doesn't exist. Otherwise, the Occultist is pretty solid. Unlike the Plague Doctor he doesn't rely on RES piercing or DoTs to do damage, and his pull ability is fantastic. He's not particularly good or bad, but he'll do the job.

The Vestal is OK in the back ranks, Judgement is a decent enough skill that gets a nice buff from her tokens once every couple rounds, and she can heal and remove DoTs if need be; boring but functional. Where I've had great times with her is in the 1st or 2nd Rank. There she can spam Hand of Light to waste Block/Dodge tokens from any of the first three enemy Ranks at very little cost, and buff both Block and Strength on herself, and very importantly add Strength on a random adjacent character every time (dealing extra damage indirectly). Then on the 3rd turn... Mace Bash that ignores Dodge, ignores Block, deals double damage, and deals another +50% damage on top due to the Strength token she generated on herself the turn before. But honestly, just Hand of Light is great; it removes up to 2 tokens from an enemy, and adds 3 tokens to the party. I love it.