Good set up for Hellion and Jester?

[Azyle]

I'm trying out these heroes but not sure how to use them.

I know the jester has great stress heal and can buff. For now I keep them in position 3 and give them the stress song, buff song and 2 bleed abilities.

As far as the hellion goes.. it seems a lot of people like her but... she loses damage on a lot of abilities so I have no clue where to start with them.

[QuartzBeam]

You can just not spam her self-debuffing skills. Or you can spam them and use Medicinal herbs to remove the debuffs on her next round. Her stun is godly either way and is definitely worth the reduced damage imo.

[Snowball]

for jester i noramly use finale drik stab slice off and the stress heal.for the hellion i recomend iron swan the yawp,wicked hack and adrenine rush and on bosses which out the stun for bleed out(unless the boss isnt in the first rank like the hag)

[LaserGuy]

For Hellion, my standard kit is Wicked Hack/Iron Swan/If It Bleeds/YAWP. This allows you to strike every position in the enemy party as long as she's in the front. The only skill that debuffs her is YAWP, but the effect is powerful enough that it's fine (it's also a great skill if you want to stall, where you generally don't care about the debuffs).

Jester I usually do a bleed build of Dirk Stab/Harvest/Slice Off/Inspiring Tune in 3rd rank.

[timmy]

For the Jester I almost always use stress heal, BB, Solo, and Finale. A lot of other people seem to like the bleed skills better, but I prefer keeping a nuke in the back just in case I need it.

I pretty much never use the Hellion's skills that debuff her unless I'm using her as a dedicated stunner. If you use her normal attack, Iron Swan, and her normal bleed attack, she can hit every enemy from the front row (something no other class can do). Pair that with an Arbalest in the back, and no enemy rank is safe from being focus fired.

[Uncle Al]

I really like Jesters but I do feel they got hit too hard with the last round of revisions, making mucking around with solo and finale pretty much not worth it in my book. I tend to stick them in slot 3 with both bleed skills, inspiring tune and dirk stab or battle ballad (depending mostly on whether you have accuracy issues in your composition, which you shouldn't in novice dungeons).

They're still excellent support for an abomination, because you really want targetted stress healing for one (and the houndmaster splatters his stress heal all over the place) and crusaders and flagellents won't team with abominations.

Hellions are all round super stars - they can hit all enemy ranks from rank 1, have a truly outstanding stun and the debuffs are actually a lot less scary than you think. First, because of the way damage calculations work it usually only amounts to a couple of points, and you can always remove the debuff with herbs just before you attack in really crucial fights. They are a bit fragile for a rank 1 fighter, but with a bit of support that's a non issue.

The main issue with hellions past novice dungeons (where your bleed and stun land fine without trinkets) is deciding what you're going to use her for in any particular run and not being tempted to try and have her do everything sub optimally. She's incredibly flexible and the trick is looking at what you need her for, be it stun, bleed or raw damage.

[Butt Goblin]

Hellion pairs well with pretty much anyone. Make sure she has Yawp and one of her backline hitting attacks (Iron Swan), as well as Adrenaline Rush if your healing is poor and you've levelled up the skill a bit. Just have her hit things in the back when you're not at risk of losing people to crits, and stun things if the front ranks will deal too much damage for you to safely handle. Even with debuffs, she still hits about as hard as the rest of the cast since her base damage is pretty high; the sheer amount of damage and RNG you can prevent with the stun is insane, so don't be afraid to spam it. She's extremely easy to use well and can fit in pretty much any party except alongside several dancers.

Jester is weird and I'm not too convinced he's useful in his best scenarios; he requires a fairly specific party to do his best. Don't bother with Finale, since it's essentially a one-use Collect Bounty that requires far more time to set up. Use both his bleeds and both his songs instead and keep him in rank 3. He has good damage for a support class, but it's locked up in a DoT so you'll need plenty of stunning if you want his damage to mean anything (stuns will prevent enemies from attacking while they bleed out). He also does very well with crit-heavy classes like Arbalest and Occultist, since his Ballad proved +4% crit per use; it also provides accuracy, meaning you can swap any accuracy trinkets you're using (which you'll need in more dangerous dungeons) for other things... including more crit. His HP is a liability so Man at Arms is a good choice since he can both stun for Jester's bleeds and protect him from losing 3/4ths of his HP to a single crit. In general, though, he's great with stuns and great with high-crit classes, so try to pair him with both whenever you can. If you can't get those in your party, just bring a Houndmaster instead.

[Father Damien]

I use to like using Jester along with Crusader, When the Jester jumps forward with Finale this pushes Crusader back, this combination works well with the crusaders Holy Lance in the ruins, i never use to use Holy Lance before. This was the only combination that worked for me. As for the Helion, i keep her right at the front, Iron Swan is abosultly amazing for taking out the pesky stress dealers ;)

[Mazile]

I use heli as r1 when i go in with abom, plague doctor and occ
Love to blight enemies to the death and heli doing precise strikes
Jester have good synergy with tomb raider so they can obliterate enemy's r2 and r3

[No One]

You can spam the self-debuffs and not worry about it. Bleed out, for example, will do more damage than wicked hack on anything short of a bone general or a boss. The only time it particularly matters is trying to wreck the rear with iron swan. I often want my first two turns to have swan and yawp in them. Doing swan first is best.

Battle Ballad is always worse than any available alternatives. Even hitting a skeleton with slice off will do you better than ballad more often than ballad will beat slice off. I built a whole party around it and managed to about get it to break even with just hitting stuff.

[Butt Goblin]

Originally posted by No One:

Battle Ballad is always worse than any available alternatives. Even hitting a skeleton with slice off will do you better than ballad more often than ballad will beat slice off. I built a whole party around it and managed to about get it to break even with just hitting stuff.

What party were you using with Battle Ballad? I expect something like Arb-Jes-Occ-Hel would work quite well since everyone has pretty good crit chances. Arbalest can hit about 44% crit chance with the right trinkets with two Ballad stacks against marked targets, that's going to translate into a lot of stress healing and damage without actually needing to spend turns on half-decent bleeds or dedicated stress heals. You can boost that by another 10% with camping buffs And then you have Hellion and Occultist who will benefit from Ballad's crit and accuracy as well; Occultist can hit 35% with just Ballad and Ancestor's pen and Hellion hits 27% with her camping skill. On top of that, the constant ballad stacking will force everyone to act before the enemy party, which translates to more damage mitigation to keep Occultist and Jester's health in check, along with two good stunners to keep both of them healthy (with Occultist having a 30% crit chance on his stun). Jester even has room for a health trinket, so you only have to worry about Occultist's health. Most of these classes have decent base damage as well.

Crit chance becomes exponentially more useful per additive percentage point, so stacking it on high-crit characters should result in extremely frequent crits even if it's not necessarily reliable. With three of the highest crit characters in the game along with Hellion's decent crit you should be able to compensate for Jester's mediocre damage. The party is decently sustainable even if crits never occur, with good base damage on two characters and acceptable damage on Occultist, excellent accuracy from Ballad, and decent stunning potential from Yawp and the amazing Occultist stun.

I haven't tried it yet, so if you used something similar you'd save me the hassle of getting my lazy Seeker jester up to champ level.