is occulist good?

[enriquesaou]

im new to the game and havent tried him yet, but doesnt seem apealing to me...

[aardvarkpepper]

Originally posted by CloudSeeker:

He sucks, deal with it. There is tons of better options, if I had more room I have no problems throwing in everything from HM, MAA and PD in there. Preventing damage or dealing extremely high damage on a high damage target is better then trying to out heal the damage that comes in. Why MAA is almost a requirement on high levels. You do not need a massive amount of heals on a single target, you need a decent amount in the correct place. No matter what, the Vestal will outheal him regardless.

oh, u think occultist is for healing

Originally posted by CloudSeeker:

Is he good? No. At that start sure, but in champion dungeons he isn't worth it since you need a reliable healer that doesn't heal just 4 HP at a time. He doesn't really pack a punch in his attacks so he isn't really good for damage. His stun looks nice but unless you go no light runs then he cause problems. As a backrow attacker I pick a Plauge Doctor every day as they can cure blight and bleed as well as cause a lot of blight or stun in the backrow. His heal is unreliable even if it does average out on around 14 HP or something, a Vestal can do that every time and not every 4th time or something. When your character is dying you do not have time to have your healer failing to heal so you need to use your offensive character to do it.

If you look at his kit he is pretty decent alone, but as a team I never find a use for him. I only use him with the Abomination as everyone that is religious will not work with him which removes the Vestal.

1) say u need somethin
2) say occultist ain't it

but wat if u didn't need that somethin
wat if u could use somethin else

could such a thing be possible

[enriquesaou]

So would you say arbalest+occulist is a good combo?

[Chezz]

Yes they are best pals. Occ mark + Arb shoot, Arb can cover for 0 heals or buff someone else healing for Occ to be more reliable. If you buff their SPD, Sniper Shot + Flying Spaghetti takes care of someone in the back before they act more often than not.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Vestal stronger than occultist?

[enriquesaou]

Originally posted by Captain KatKit:

Vestal stronger than occultist?

As darwin said, the ones that survive are not the strongest but the best adapted.

[RopeDrink]

On top of that, the damage debuff can neuter a single enemy's damage indefinitely, which stuns cannot do.

This mentality... So, you've reduced an enemy to hitting for 1 damage. That's nice, except crits still inflict full stress damage, which is why stuns > debuffs. It's not always about how hard an enemy can hit. Stress is typically far more important than health, with health mostly being a primary concern at low/no health situations. I'd only incorporate that debuff strategy on specific boss fights such as the Prophet.

Same can be said for marking. Yes, you can mark and then have someone else shoot - that's great. Other combos will just hit + hit (with less dice rolls). There's very few trash-fights where mark is actually a gain, so again, more for specific mobs or bosses/prolonged battles.

People mentioning that off-healers cover the Occultist healing flaw are not curing the debate-issue, they are enforcing it. A Vestal staves a way all of those concerns single-handedly just by being present. The drawback is she doesn't hit nearly as hard nor has as reliable a stun, yet that doesn't mean she won't be sniping R1-2-3-4 constantly and/or providing some stuns when healing isn't required. Vestal is the better healer, just not better at anything else the Occultist can do, which is why I always have and always will consider him an off-healing damage dealer, not a main-healer.

Yes, he can fulfil that function, but 0 heal bleeds are still a thing. DD is a game about reducing the chances of things to go wrong. The Occultist can fill this with great stuns, decent damage and an overall strong and versatile kit - but when healing is discussed as the focal point, Vestal beats him all day. It's not about 'relying' on her, it is having the tools to respond to situations where things just don't go your way -- and we all know that even the most stringent planning can still result in some dire situations where you really do not want to rely on something unreliable to prevent a death (or multiple).

[No One]

In theory you could debuff a thing while it's building up stun resistance so when it comes out it's fully neutered. Seems like it would be a fun strat.

In reality anything that's stunned that long should be dead already.

[Butt Goblin]

Originally posted by RopeDrink:

This mentality... So, you've reduced an enemy to hitting for 1 damage. That's nice, except crits still inflict full stress damage, which is why stuns > debuffs. It's not always about how hard an enemy can hit. Stress is typically far more important than health, with health mostly being a primary concern at low/no health situations. I'd only incorporate that debuff strategy on specific boss fights such as the Prophet.

I don't disagree. However, eventually an enemy is going to become too resistant to stuns to become stunned at all, and even after a single stun an enemy will usually have enough stun resistance to make the stun unreliable. The debuff is extremely reliable as long as you have a debuff chance trinket.

It's not like it hurts the Occultist to have his damage debuff as he has one of the best stuns in the game on top of his debuffs and plenty of good trinkets for debuff chance (including two that also buff stun chance). He can use the debuff when stunning becomes impossible or when the rest of the party is busy taking down backliners and are ignoring a tanky, stun-resistant, high-damage frontliner.

Stress is more important than health, yes, but it is only significantly more important than health if you have a Vestal and thus have most health concerns taken care of. Occultist is typically better at preventing stress than Vestal (through superior stuns or mark synergy) and thus results in a net reduction in stress.

Same can be said for marking. Yes, you can mark and then have someone else shoot - that's great. Other combos will just hit + hit (with less dice rolls). There's very few trash-fights where mark is actually a gain, so again, more for specific mobs or bosses/prolonged battles.

It's essentially the same number of rolls; the only difference is that the Occultist has to go first, which isn't usually a problem as he's very fast anyway. If not he still has plenty of options for inflicting or reducing damage.

Marks are useless against trash when considering anyone but the Occultist. Since Occultist has rather low single-target damage on his own, you virtually always benefit from having him mark if there's another mark user in the party; the other heroes don't get nearly as much benefit as their base damage is much higher than Occultist. Hitting with two damage dealers is favorable when considering marking with Arb/HM/BH but irrelevant when slot potentially being used to mark is your feeble healer.

People mentioning that off-healers cover the Occultist healing flaw are not curing the debate-issue, they are enforcing it. A Vestal staves a way all of those concerns single-handedly just by being present. The drawback is she doesn't hit nearly as hard nor has as reliable a stun, yet that doesn't mean she won't be sniping R1-2-3-4 constantly and/or providing some stuns when healing isn't required. Vestal is the better healer, just not better at anything else the Occultist can do, which is why I always have and always will consider him an off-healing damage dealer, not a main-healer.

Yes, he can fulfil that function, but 0 heal bleeds are still a thing. DD is a game about reducing the chances of things to go wrong. The Occultist can fill this with great stuns, decent damage and an overall strong and versatile kit - but when healing is discussed as the focal point, Vestal beats him all day. It's not about 'relying' on her, it is having the tools to respond to situations where things just don't go your way -- and we all know that even the most stringent planning can still result in some dire situations where you really do not want to rely on something unreliable to prevent a death (or multiple).

Nobody is going to disagree that Vestal is the better healer (i.e. best class for restoring HP). I'm arguing that Occultist is a better healer class (i.e. the class best suited for preventing party death through healing and other non-healing means).

Vestal is obviously better at restoring health by a wide margin. However, she's unreliable in an entirely different sense: enemy damage output is extremely random, since each enemy damage dealer can miss for zero damage, hit for a varying amount of damage, or crit for an extreme amount of damage. Vestal is good at handling a decent range of damage but is cannot effectively handle improbable amounts of crits or a lot of focused damage on a single character; in order to survive this, the Vestal needs to rely on other party members to prevent damage so that either the extreme crits never occur or the incoming damage for a few turns becomes low enough that the Vestal can effectively heal back from it.

Occultist doesn't suffer nearly as much from this particular problem as he is one of the best classes in the game for preventing damage; as a consequence, he is more likely to be incapable of handling incoming damage at any point.

I say Occultist is better because Occultist and off-healers are generally decent at healing and don't suffer much from having healing skills, even if they don't individually compare to Vestal. Occultist parties are very good at preventing enough damage to compensate for Occultist's unreliable healing and can compensate for his healing via off-healers in the event that RNG heals go badly; each character is always going to be useful for something. Vestal, on the other hand, suffers a fair amount from being the best healer; her only other utility (in the back ranks) is a mediocre sniping skill (if given ACC) and a stun that's nearly unusable without dedicating both trinket slots to it. Thus she ends up being mediocre if nobody needs healing.

(As an aside, 0 heal bleeds are extremely rare at champion level. 0 heals are quite common, but every hero except for Antiquarians, Plague Doctors, and Lepers have enough base bleed resist to guarantee that the bleed will never proc unless the hero has their bleed resist debuffed.)

[LaserGuy]

Something to keep in mind when considering Occultist vs Vestal related to the above: Very few enemies have particularly dangerous AoE attacks where the Vestal's best heal really shines. It's much more likely that you're going to need a big single target heal (or need to prevent single-target DMG), than you are going to need to worry about AoE spam.

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by RopeDrink:

On top of that, the damage debuff can neuter a single enemy's damage indefinitely, which stuns cannot do.

This mentality... So, you've reduced an enemy to hitting for 1 damage. That's nice, except crits still inflict full stress damage, which is why stuns > debuffs. It's not always about how hard an enemy can hit. Stress is typically far more important than health, with health mostly being a primary concern at low/no health situations. I'd only incorporate that debuff strategy on specific boss fights such as the Prophet.

People shouldn't really be blamed for falling into this mentality since it is literally built into the game that it tricks you into it. The game starts you out with that Vestal/PD/HWM/Crusader combo that is actually very well suited to the early Ruins missions.

So it's really, really easy to fall into thinking this is the optimal party, when it obviously isn't.

Originally posted by LaserGuy:

Something to keep in mind when considering Occultist vs Vestal related to the above: Very few enemies have particularly dangerous AoE attacks where the Vestal's best heal really shines.

Well, there's Treebranch Smackdown. Aaaaaand. . .well practically nothing else really.

[Davy Jones]

Originally posted by enriquesaou:

im currently using arbalest - highwayman - man at arms - crusader, is that good?

Unless you know what you're doing, ALWAYS bring at least one core healer (Vestal/Occultist).

IMO, a healer, 2 damage dealers, and 1 support (either buffer, or tank) is good.
Im not a professional whatsoever, but that is my opinion. You can always learn what works best for you.

[Davy Jones]

Originally posted by enriquesaou:

So would you say arbalest+occulist is a good combo?

To answer the original question in the post: Occultists are good at almost everything.
Using vulnerable hex (marking) with heroes who benefit from it is great (like Bounty Hunter or Arbalest)
He has a great heal (not 100% reliable, but a life saver) that he can use in any position.
His general hate towards Eldritch (extra DMG vs them) is a nice thing to have when going in the weald or cove.
Finally, if you think youre okay using him in 2nd position, he can stun a target, which is not bad for a healer/debuffer.
In the end, know what works best with you, and build around that.