Is The Jester Any Good?

[Crimson Emperor]

I want to use him properly for the insane crit chance.

[Reyggor]

I like him for the Bleed potential and team buffing, his raw damage isn't high enough for the CRT's to be great unless you're looking at having him start off in Rank 1 as his default position to use Finale on the 3rd Rank to blitz off one enemy on round 1

Getting a CRT on his Bleed attacks though can be really nice; up to 25 points of Bleed (over 5 turns) plus the raw damage too gets really noticeable against big enemies, you can set up lethal DoT and then turtle up.

Battle Ballard is also arguably the best team buff in the game, +ACC and +SPD is a really nice addition to the team if use tound 1, the turns after that your team gets to act first and with increased or 100% hit chance, it really cuts down the relevance of RNG, oh and you get up to +4 CRT to the team because why not?

[Eyre]

There are a few ways to play Jester.

Bleed Build - either stay in the 3rd or 2nd position (depending on other skills) and support the team with bleed attacks. Equip bleed trinkets to increase bleed chance. Doesn't work so well in ruins where the skeletons are bleed resistant.

Finale Build - oneshot build. Start Jester in 1st position, equip damage, crit, and/or accuracy trinkets. When a battle starts use finale. This moves Jester to the back where he can use support skills until his finale debuff wears off. Then he can solo back to the front and finale again!

[Lujo]

Yes.

Start him off in rank one with finale and stab something right away, than buff everybody with the song (quite good), remove stress (if you have a chance) or just stab your way forward. Have herbs to remove the finale debuff if necessary.

The buff and stress heal don't need any items, and dirk stab an finale profit from the same things. You want speed to do finale asap, you want att to make sure it doesn't miss, and you possibly want more crit.

Make sure your party is fine with having a mobile member (not that complicated), and remember to use the "default party" button which appears next to the map to reset the default positions between fights.

[Ham]

Finaly build is fun, he does big damage once or twice a fight, you get a damage debuff for using finaly so you want to keep him at the back a few rounds buffing after you use it.

you can also start him in back rank and begin with solo, it adds a large acc debuff which can save you getting hit, then finale second round.

[DJTron]

i personally use mine as dedicated stress healers, unless i don't have another position 2 damage dealer, in which case i use him with the bleeds and dirk stab for damage

[Gustuv Wynd]

I like to use the Jester with a Hellion and a Man-at-Arms.

Start with the Jester in position three, the Man-at-Arms in two, and the Hellion in the front.
If the Jester goes first...which is typically the case...I will use solo to jump him in the front and debuff the enemy party's accuracy and then the Man-at-Arms will use his party buff for dodge which synergizes well. The Hellion can just attack from the second position.

Then I can either have the Jester use finale or the hellion can use Strike through and the Man-at-Arms can use their stun attack(forget the name) and the party is back to their starting positions. Depends on if I care more about the damage from finale or the stun from the Man-at-Arms(and who goes first...but that is typically the Jester again). While the debuff and buffs are active i will have the Jester either using that weak two target bleed attack or else healing stress while the two fighters are hacking and bashing away. Rinse and repeat if the fight last long enough for the buffs and debuffs to wear off.

So yeah...the Jester is pretty much one of my favorite classes...heh, tied with Hellion and Man-at-Arms. With the Jester's stress healing I can run this group for long periods too.

The forth member is a healer of some kind...usually a Vestal since they work well in the forth position and I will try to get trinkets to buff their move resistance since if they get moved the strategy falls apart...if the others get moved they have abilities that will get things working again quickly if the move is even disruptive at all.

[WhiteCrow]

Originally posted by vagrantstorm:

I like to use the Jester with a Hellion and a Man-at-Arms.

Start with the Jester in position three, the Man-at-Arms in two, and the Hellion in the front.
If the Jester goes first...which is typically the case...I will use solo to jump him in the front and debuff the enemy accuracy and then the Man-at-Arms will use his party buff for dodge which synergizes well. The Hellion can just attack from the second position.

Then I can either have the Jester use finale or the hellion can use Strike through and the Man-at-Arms can use their stun attack(forget the name) and the party is back to their starting positions. Depends on if I care more about the damage from finale or the stun from the Man-at-Arms. While the debuff and buffs are active i will have the Jester either using that weak two target bleed attack or else healing stress.

So yeah...the Jester is pretty much one of my favorite classes...heh, tied with Hellion and Man-at-Arms. With the Jester's stress healing I can run this group for long periods too.

The forth member is a healer of some kind...usually a Vestal since they work well in the forth position and I will try to get trinkets to buff their move resistance since if they get moved the strategy falls apart...if the others get moved they have abilities that will get things working again quickly if the move is even disruptive at all.

Wow, that is a pretty solid strategy. Before I took a break, I didn't mess with Jester too much, as abilities that initiate party movement made me nervous. I think I'm going to give it a go this time around.

[Gustuv Wynd]

Originally posted by WhiteCrow:

Wow, that is a pretty solid strategy. Before I took a break, I didn't mess with Jester too much, as abilities that initiate party movement made me nervous. I think I'm going to give it a go this time around.

Just got the game the other day, but this strategy jumped out at me right away. Works pretty well even on enemies that don't bleed. Still looking for other class combos that fit together well...haven't really found one that works as well as this one though.

[WhiteCrow]

Originally posted by vagrantstorm:

Originally posted by WhiteCrow:

Wow, that is a pretty solid strategy. Before I took a break, I didn't mess with Jester too much, as abilities that initiate party movement made me nervous. I think I'm going to give it a go this time around.

Just got the game the other day, but this strategy jumped out at me right away. Works pretty well even on enemies that don't bleed. Still looking for other class combos that fit together well...haven't really found one that works as well as this one though.

There's some pretty good ones with Highwayman and Man-At-Arms I used to use, but I can't remember the specifics unfortunately. It utilized movement like this Jester one, but if you're curious for more I'm sure there's some great guides out there specifically for class combos.

[Gustuv Wynd]

Originally posted by WhiteCrow:

Originally posted by vagrantstorm:

Just got the game the other day, but this strategy jumped out at me right away. Works pretty well even on enemies that don't bleed. Still looking for other class combos that fit together well...haven't really found one that works as well as this one though.

There's some pretty good ones with Highwayman and Man-At-Arms I used to use, but I can't remember the specifics unfortunately. It utilized movement like this Jester one, but if you're curious for more I'm sure there's some great guides out there specifically for class combos.

I prefer to figure things out on my own rather than use guides...though I will like to glean tricks off the forums from other players. The only thing I've looked up so far in this game is what items to use on the curios since the game is rather unforgiving on trial and error tactics. However, I probably only have about 12 hours of game time under my belt...so I am still learning.

I've found a few other combos, though they mostly just deal with damage. Getting classes that can mark enemies and have attacks that capitalize on having marked enemies is pretty good too. There seems to be a lot of synergy built around bleed chance as well...though I am not sure why you'd want to do this. Bleeding damage isn't very significant and probably half the enemies are immune to bleeding anyway since undead seam to pop up everywhere. Even if they aren't immune...bleed resistance seems to be rather high as even with debuffs enemies seem to resist it a lot.

I haven't found a combo that combines damage, healing, buffs, and movement as well as this one involving the Jester, though. Some might excel in one area, but then will lack greatly in another. Heh, though a group of nothing but hound masters might still be more powerful and more survivable than this, but not as fun.

[pi73r]

He's okay to use but not really worth it if you want to go with most effective builds. In general in most locations it's always best to go just for biggest one hit dmg characters.

[Panfilo]

Also the Graverobber's fan of knives decreases bleed resistance and targets the same two positions that harvest targets, so fan of knives+harvest and you have a decent chunk of damage+bleeding.

More enemies are vulnerable to bleeding than you think, including some bosses. His camp skills are really solid for raw stress healing as well for the time spent using them.

[LaserGuy]

Jester generally is fairly bad at low levels, and gets marginally better as you rank up his skills. Solo and Battle Ballad are mostly worthless below rank 4-5. The bleed skills are okay once you get a few ranks in them and can deal some decent damage. Finale is fine, but it means that you basically have to play the rest of the battle with only three characters, so if it doesn't kill the target, then you're at a big disadvantage.

[Jesterofgames7712]

Originally posted by pi73r:

He's okay to use but not really worth it if you want to go with most effective builds. In general in most locations it's always best to go just for biggest one hit dmg characters.

Well the down side to that is most big hitter's can't hit the 3rd and 4rth row

the hellion and Abomination can
that's about it

not to mention there are bosses where DOT effect's are better then straight up damage dealing

such as the morphing flesh where the DOT effect hit's the Same health bar

not to mention the hag who has low bleed and blight resistance and most big hitter's can't hit her but you can cause a ton of DOT time her

actually in general most enemies are weak to bleed so the jester and hound master can do evil thing's to people

[Gustuv Wynd]

Originally posted by JellySlayer:

Jester generally is fairly bad at low levels, and gets marginally better as you rank up his skills. Solo and Battle Ballad are mostly worthless below rank 4-5. The bleed skills are okay once you get a few ranks in them and can deal some decent damage. Finale is fine, but it means that you basically have to play the rest of the battle with only three characters, so if it doesn't kill the target, then you're at a big disadvantage.

Yeah, the damage debuff from finale is pretty high...though the base damage of the Jester isn't that high anyway. So -40%, or whatever the debuff amount is, won't actually be that bad since -40% of 6 damage is still going to be 3-4 damage. Heh, though of course the critical is going to only be 9. The Jester is mainly around for stress healing...the solo/finale thing is just something for him to do when stress healing isn't a priority that makes more of difference than his other weak attacks...and solo is a nice debuff. I will often use just that and then get the Jester moved back again with the abilities of other characters like I mentioned above.