What are the best team compositions for Color of Madness?

[『HORIZON』]

Occultist doesn't seem so good as his heals are not so relatable, Shieldbreaker seems good since she is versitaile and can pierce trough protection, but what other heroes in what team combinations are good for the Color of Madness?

[4D]

I've been having great success with 2 Antiquarian, 2 Man-at-Arms. Keeping the dodge for all characters above 100, it makes you untouchable most of the time - keyword most. Enemies will always have a very slim chance to hit you, but the damage/stress that comes from that is negated as you keep playing. It's been surprisingly fun to boot. Keep the riposte up and whittle away at the fiends.

The only downside is, it's slow. Extremely slow. If you're willing to keep coming back to the same run mutiple times, it might be worth a try. It's fairly reliable despite the fickle nature of even the smallest chance of being hit, unless you have bad luck and a hero gets an affliction.

[WolfLord1995]

Originally posted by Casual Collector:

I've been having great success with 2 Antiquarian, 2 Man-at-Arms. Keeping the dodge for all characters above 100, it makes you untouchable most of the time - keyword most. Enemies will always have a very slim chance to hit you, but the damage/stress that comes from that is negated as you keep playing. It's been surprisingly fun to boot. Keep the riposte up and whittle away at the fiends.

The only downside is, it's slow. Extremely slow. If you're willing to keep coming back to the same run mutiple times, it might be worth a try. It's fairly reliable despite the fickle nature of even the smallest chance of being hit, unless you have bad luck and a hero gets an affliction.

Well ♥♥♥♥! I got rid of my only antiquarian due to her being a worthless hero. Seems I'm out of luck there. All well, just have to dismiss/kill some heros then.

[Magni]

Vestal (stun + heals), Jester (stress heals, battle ballad and bleeds), Leper (Chop, Hew, Withstand/Solemnity and Revenge) and one more frontliner (Highwayman or Shielbreaker work well here).

Leper with +acc and +crit buffs/trinkets and revenge active is basically just a freakin' woodchipper in the Farmstead's endurance battles. Crits for days and stupid high damage.

[RopeDrink]

Won't comment on 'best', will just say this is what I used before my retirement from CoM - Went in for a 'quick run' and ended up on 440 without taking anything too seriously. I can tell I'd have gotten a lot further outside of a few bad decisions on my part, but I was already a bit tired of it by 300 kills. I have everything I need from the place and don't see much need to go beyond 440 or whatever.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1444791640

FilthyRobot at the moment is on 16th dive with VES/JES/PD/LEP. The Ant/MAA strat was used ages ago to bust well over 1k kills.

The question is - how far do you want to go? If you genuinely want to go for eternity then something like my choice won't suit, but if you're, say, hoping for 300 achievement and a big pocket of shards without eternal grind, then there are various choices.

[Wandering Flare]

Personally I used Ves-Jes-Lep-HWM. Leper would Revenge himself (aside from cases when I needed to make sure an enemy on the first two positions dies) on the first turn and HWM would PBS, then either cycle Advance-PBS or shoot/slice depending on where the main threat is. CC trinkets for both, 33% Scroll+Head for Ves, Dirge+CC cup for Jes.

Got to 1k kills with that comp after tons of failed runs due to either terrible luck or bad items usage (Reserve bandages for the worst cases, i.e. when Uca spams Pinch on one of the heroes (it will mostly be Leper) up to 40/3rd).

[Skinny Pete]

I've found VES-JES-HWM-LEP pretty good, too, although I usually set up Riposte on the first round as well as revenge, spam Battle Buff (or Stress Relief or Dirk Stab to move up for a Finale) and alternate between AoE and ST heals and Judgment/Stun with Vestal.

I like Ancestor's Pen/Surgical Gloves or other ACC/DMG/CRIT pluses on Leper.

VES-JES-FLA-LEP is also pretty good, although Flagellant isn't as mobile, suffers when kicked back to third rank by Jester, and is tbh pretty weak against the Sleeper's first phase (Fracture) and the fairly common skellies. A few rounds of Jester's buffs brings his actual damage up to respectable levels, though.

My only objection to HWM is it tends to force you to use Vestal as a nearly pure healbot because aside from Leper's self heal, the other two characters are helpless in that regard.

Note: IMO Flagellant's non-emergency heal and stress skills are underrated especially if he's going to spend any significant amount of time in the third rank. Reclaim in particular can be excellent for coping with DD situations on other characters.

[BaDKaRMa]

My dream team: https://i.imgur.com/o8ZuZ9J.jpg (Vestal / HWM / HWM / Crusader)

Quirk Info: One HWM had (-20% stress at 75 torch, and +2 spd) rest of the team's quirks were only marginally helpful.

Camping Traits: HWM both should have Clean Guns. Choose your favorite 4 point or fewer trait for Crusader.

Trinket Info:

HWM: +ranged dmg +ranged crit and +acc +speed
Vestal: +acc -stress / +25 heal -15% hp (don't use the +heal, -stun/-dmg trinket)
Crusader: +Healing / +healing + stress heal

Tactic: HWM starts with highest speed, typically is first every turn. Each uses tracking shot first for stat boosts. Crusader priority is stress healing, then healing. He should almost never be attacking. Vestal uses party and single heals as needed. If in doubt, and there's still some stress on anyone in the part, use team-heal for a crit chance to remove some stress.

2nd turn: HWM use Grapeshot almost exclusively to stack the crit-chance debuff. The crit damage will act as a stress heal for the entire party, as well as the kills. This frees up the Crusader to stress heal the one with highest stress.

Boss Attacking: Healers healing. HWM use tracking shots, each use at least one grapeshot to stack crit debuff and use your next turn (or two) to Duelist Advance both HWM to the front. Alternate using Point Blank Shot whenever possible, or grapeshot when not possible.

I had the Crusader and Vestal afflicted and managed to stress heal them back to sanity. The Death's Doors were from the Shambler fight for 3 of them. Sleeper was the one that afflicted both and D.Door'd the other.

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by BaDKaRMa:

2nd turn: HWM use Grapeshot almost exclusively to stack the crit-chance debuff. The crit damage will act as a stress heal for the entire party, as well as the kills. This frees up the Crusader to stress heal the one with highest stress.

I don't use it exclusively or even nearly exclusively, but it's nice there's finally a use for this skill, which is pointless in non-CoM content.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1477280515

Triple critting and killing trash mobs is fun. Nuking three dumb spiders/maggots/skellies is fun.