Best ruins party

[Cerbrosyn]

?

[RopeDrink]

Does the shieldbreaker get obsolete with time?

I just think he isn't that good.

He is a she, and she is one of (if not the) best assassins in the game in terms of basic ability-set. No, she does not become obsolete. In fact, she becomes even more relevant if you also have the CoM and the CC expansions.

People tend to dislike her because her DLC comes with some caveats, namely the night-time ambush - a mechanic that people 'in the know' can plan for just like they would any other boss. Completing them early provides you top-quality and very usable trinkets much earlier than you would normally get for others without plain and simple RNG-loot-luck. They are also set encounters with no randomness, making planning easier.

Completing those encounters also provides you with consumables to block damage, usable by anyone. These can be great as a backup option for any encounters you are not 100% comfortable with, or to cheese certain bosses. If you complete them all, you then get to have the snakes appear as common encounters, allowing more variation for veterans and more consumables for everyone.

There is no downside to the Shield Breaker other than personal preferences regarding the above factors, and it seems the community is divided on that preference. Personally, I always ensure to level two or three of them in my Hamlets during any serious save. They're exceptional at their job.

People being people, some will dislike her regardless, but the fact remains that she's competing for the top-tier when compared to other heroes that fit the same function.

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EDIT:

She is also one of the most suitable assassins for the Ruins, though that isn't saying you should always take assassins there (seeing as they require more care/consideration than a meatsack like Crusader does).

-She has very potent blights, which the Undead are typically weak to.
-She has Pierce to bypass the protection of several enemies you would encounter across all difficulties.
-She can attack Rank 4 from practically anywhere - and this is good for everything, everywhere, including the Ruins - especially against enemies like the Bone Herald, but mostly for blowing up R3/R4 outright with high-burst, which she provides at great speed.
-While not as useful as flat-out projection or pierce, you can also bypass Guard on the few encounters that it crops up as well if you wish.
-Also decent anti-stealther, though the value of this is also lower compared to everything else.

In short, she has everything you need to get things dead in a hurry. Projection, Damage, DoTs, Shuffle-potential. Her only real weaknesses are she lacks stun, but this is made up for with the above. She's relatively squishy, but still better off than heroes like Jester and Grave Robber. She also doesn't fit well into immobile comps seeing as she'll be dancing around the ranks quite frequently.

The alternatives people provided are nice and all, but it's clear that a lot of said people rely a little too heavily on slow, beefy heroes or defensive playstyles, hence a lot won't advocate for the likes of a squishy super-assassin who just happens to crush the Ruins.

[itssirtou]

Shieldbreaker is amazing. She's been a key part of my Endless squad with HWM VestaJesta.

Anti guard/stealth. Best armor piercing, the ability to SPREAD IT TO HER TEAM VIA CAMP, dots, and the ability to hit every rank as a frontliner. She has one of the only 2 abilities in the game that can hit the entire enemy team for actual damage, she also has great single target damage (vs blightable targets), and the ability to re-position from anywhere. She even has freaking mark synergy! Plus an amazing CoM trinket and a solid trinket set all around. The ability to control her speed with trinkets can be pretty important.

The only downsides are her early camps* (which turns into a boon once conquered), and needing a dance partner for slot 1-2**.

*

Her night terrors can be handled easily by unlocking Pep Talk (or a superior alternative) on all of her teammates before each mission. In total the Horror will do 66 stress. at the cost of half your camp.

Or a simple Jester with Rose/Pep and Inspiring Tune can get her to -60% stress when he is level ONE, all by himself. Tack on a Book of Sanity and she's capped. Even just spamming ITune at Champion level gets her to 60% all on its own, so Rose almost gets her to the cap in addition to helping the rest of the team. (Stress reduction caps at 80% just like PROT).

Also they are scripted to only appear in certain dungeon levels (1-3 apprentice, 4-5 Veteran, 6-7 Champion). So if you level her with short missions up to veteran you can skip them entirely.

If anything I wish they happened every camp. I had like 4 runs where I sent her with a Jester that didn't progress her night terrors at all... 50% chance my ass


**

Leper/Crusader/Flagellant work the exact same in slots 1-2, so they work fine. MAA can mess with her with Rampart, but he's so slow it usually won't be a concern. Houndmaster is awkward since he will occasionally be forced to Blackjack/Harry when you want to Rush. Can't run a Slot 2 Abom without transforming him every fight. Ironically if you have the stress control thats a fairly solid team, SB/Abom/Jester/Healer.

Graverobber becomes... complicated without speed control if you use Lunge. You NEED GR to have a Quickdraw Charm. And if you try to cycle Shadow Fade/Lunge you will easily end up screwing up your party formation.

Her and the Hellion have a complicated relationship, the best I've found is a round 1 speed buff from QD Charm to Implale or Adders Kiss, then the Hellion can usually Swan twice before SB moves back to the front thanks to the speed decrease.

Highwayman is the BEST dance partner because you can cycle PB Shot and Adder and you can lead with Grapeshot>Impale. You just need Speed control. For normal games QDCharm on the HWM is sufficient, for my Endless I run his CoM trinket and the A. Candle and he has Luminous. She runs her Curboilli and CoM trinket. Theres a 1/16 chance she moves before he does.

[Drain]

Originally posted by Brunosplays:

Originally posted by Kayneth:

[Vestal, Plague Doctor, Shieldbreaker, Crusader] seems to work best for me so far, since it provides a good mix of Anti-Unholy, Blight and Stun attacks.

The only problem is, you need to buy the shieldbreaker

You also had to buy the game, so that point is kind of moot.

Shieldbreaker is great but also a liability until you get rid of all her snake ambushes.
Plague Doctor is fantastic in ruins/cove, but her reliance on blight makes her quite bad in other areas.
Abomination/Grave Robber are good too.
Leper is versatile and can fill a fighter slot in any area. One of his better uses might be to protecting the Antiquarian. Since he's so good at taking hits and buffing himself, he makes for a fantastic guard.

[itssirtou]

Originally posted by Drain:

Shieldbreaker is great but also a liability until you get rid of all her snake ambushes.

Free scales for the prepared

Originally posted by Drain:

Plague Doctor is fantastic in ruins/cove, but her reliance on blight makes her quite bad in other areas.

Her trinkets are built to counter that weakness. Unlike Bleed, no one is fully immune to Blight, which is why it's so good that CC enemies have blight resistance just to spite it.

She can get +80% chance with her Herb and Hags Ladle. Just one of those gives her 75% chance to blight Fungals and most Swine.

One of the most blight resistant enemies is the Large Corpse Eater, and both gives an 75% chance at max level. 55% with just Blasphemous and Herb. Not bad for an enemy that's supposed to be immune.

Originally posted by Drain:

Leper is versatile and can fill a fighter slot in any area. One of his better uses might be to protecting the Antiquarian. Since he's so good at taking hits and buffing himself, he makes for a fantastic guard.

His weakness is enemies with Protection, which mostly just hits his Champion runs. He kind of struggles in the Cove, between Ucas and Guardians, and in the Weald because theres almost always 2 scratchers.

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by RopeDrink:

-While not as useful as flat-out projection or pierce, you can also bypass Guard on the few encounters that it crops up as well if you wish.
-Also decent anti-stealther, though the value of this is also lower compared to everything else.

I often don't have these abilities on, but there's one time they're vastly important, and that's in the snake dream encounters. Until the very last encounter, every encounter includes Pliskins, which have a stealth mechanic, and which when stealthed have an absurd chance to crit. Also, all but one of the encounters before the last also have Rattlers, which have a guard ability.

In many of these, the Rattler guards a stealthed Pliskin which then obliterates your front ranks even though it's weak as hell with a low HP pool.

So before EVERY camp, turn on the anti-stealth and anti-guard abilities and nuke those pesky Pliskins out of the way. Without those the fights are pretty easy.

Many of the people who complain about these encounters don't do this at all and then wonder why they get wrecked.

The other reason you get wrecked is massive stress. So while SB's own battle buffs (including the Armor Piercing one) are important, de-stressing SB before a snake dream is even more important.

It's not a complete catastrophe if you get an affliction, though, because winning these encounters gives you a -33% Stress buff for the rest of the quest. I've never won one of these and had even an afflicted SB go on to a heart attack with a massive destress buff like that.

[Fubous]

crusader x4

[RopeDrink]

Deus Vult crew is a meme. It is not the best ruins party (which is the question).

[Panda]

OP - 2 shield breakers + plague doctor + plague doctor
Almost OP - 3 crusaders + vestal
The most OP who doesn't care about location - 4 grave robbers.

[Skinny Pete]

Answer for all meme team questions is 4 Lepers.