How to deal with stress and afflictions.

[Spooky]

I just lost a whole team against the necromancer boss because my vestal became afflicted, and the rest of my team followed from there. It was a good run too until that point, my party was well healed and i had a jester in my team to try and manage stress, and i used anti-stress abilities during camping, and even that did not seem to be enough.

Consistently i've lost whole teams to stress and afflictions, and once they reach the point where they start having heart attacks it feels pointless to try and even save them. Is there any way to deal with this?

[Dr. Uncredible]

Absolutely.
One day you won´t even need a stress healer in every team.

The secret is to know which enemies cause stress, and have a plan to eliminate or prevent them from using their attacks asap.

[Justice]

I would strongly recomend to use Crussader for ruins. Not only this where he is best at, but also because he can stress heal too with inspiring cry (which also heal for tiny amount)

Jester not really good for ruins, where enemies are immune to bleed and only thing jester can do there is buff and stress heal.


Make a team where at least 2 heroes (not counting vestal, since she will be healing and stuning for most part) could reach position 3-4.

Before reaching boss, always kill stress dealers 1st to come to boss with lowest stress


If you see your team most likealy to lose or don't want to lose some of your heroes = RETREAT! try figh boss another time. There is no need to bash your head against a wall and get party wipe. Not to mention you would lose trinkets on fallen heroes

[Brosef Iosif]

There's such thing as too much heal!
Basically, especially in the Ruins as Justice pointed out, having a Jester and a Vestal is almost detrimental because you're going to be out of damage as those classes aren't able to put anything relevant downrange, you're therefore limited to only two heroes at best capable of doing damage which is pretty short.
Crusader is indeed one of the best class in the game because he can do pretty much everything, managed well he can hit any range, heal, stress heal, stun, take the damage and deal it.
Generally, good stunners (Plague Doctor, Houndmaster for instance) can efficiently replace healers because in the end, an enemy stunned is an enemy not damaging you, therefore less need for heals.

One of the first thing should be to always have torch at more than 75 (brightest), that means more dodge, hence less heal, no stress maluses, and most importantly more surprised enemies which is very interesting to negate the needs of heal by nuking the stress dealers from the get go. Going with very low light is perfectly doable but it's mostly to get loot and it's significantly more taxing and dangerous.
You can use food to heal, you can pair that with the arbalest heal right at the end of battle to heal a bit more.
You can make builds which max crits because crits stress heal and can even stress heal for others!
About the stress and afflictions, it should be obvious but don't take people who are phobic to their bad place, don't interact with curious randomly if you don't know what they do, don't be short of shovels and food (pretty much always take as much food as possible and you won't need healers) as obstacles and undealt food checks can be brutal stress wise. Don't take a hero with more than 20-25 stress to a quest. Use the stress facilities in the hamlet for heroes you care about (with good traits and such).

[Justice]

Originally posted by Brosef Iosif:

There's such thing as too much heal!
Basically, especially in the Ruins as Justice pointed out, having a Jester and a Vestal is almost detrimental because you're going to be out of damage as those classes aren't able to put anything relevant downrange, you're therefore limited to only two heroes at best capable of doing damage which is pretty short.

I didn't meant to say Vestal is detrimental. What I meant is that Vestal isn't really an offensive class. Almost all of her attacks have pretty big negative Dmg downside except her mace bash thus not counting her as damage dealer against enemies. But Vestal in general is essential hero for ANY team.

[PalmTree]

The best way to fight afflictions is to stop them from happening in the first place.

Kill stress-inducing enemies as fast as you can to minimize the amount of stress they cause. Ideally, you'll be one-shotting them as often as you can.

Camping is by far the best way to reduce stress. Everyone has the "encourage" skill, which is already a decent stress heal, and several hero-exclusive camping skills like the Jester's "Turn Back Time" and the Highwayman and Grave Robber's Gallows Humor skills are excellent for reducing stress. If you get dangerously close to an affliction, I heavily recommend camping to bring their stress down. It's the safest way to stress heal, and easily the most potent in the game.

[SKull]

1: Kill stress mobs first. The best way to do that is to have abilities trained that can reach the two back rows.
2: Use stress healing. Jesters are the best at that, but flagellants and crusaders can also help. Lepers and abominations can keep themselves stress free as well.
3: Wear stress reduction trinkets.
4: Lock Steady if any of your characters gets it. It reduces stress by a bit and is very helpful.
5: Avoid doing the opposite of the first four points. Remove stress increasing quirks etc.

I like to use a jester and a flagellant together. The flagellant can steal stress from others and the jester can spam stress relief on the flagellant to remove it. Since the flagellant will get the stress resist when you do this he can eat any amount of stress easily and quickly.

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by SKull:

1: Kill stress mobs first. The best way to do that is to have abilities trained that can reach the two back rows.
2: Use stress healing. Jesters are the best at that, but flagellants and crusaders can also help. Lepers and abominations can keep themselves stress free as well.

I prefer Houndmaster because while he can't do single target heals during combat, he's excellent during combat, can do huge burst damage (without the ridiculous level of setup Jester's Finale takes), and if you use him in camp, can even do solid single target healing.

He's also sturdy while Jester is flimsy, has a self-heal, a guard, and marking skills.

[Brosef Iosif]

Originally posted by Justice:

I didn't meant to say Vestal is detrimental. What I meant is that Vestal isn't really an offensive class. Almost all of her attacks have pretty big negative Dmg downside except her mace bash thus not counting her as damage dealer against enemies. But Vestal in general is essential hero for ANY team.

Well I'm going to say it then! Vestal can be a burden in many teams comp!
Reason being mostly that, if you want her two healing skills, you need to get her back in the last rows, so she can only use the very mediocre judgement (mediocre damage wise, it's not a bad skill in itself) meaning the only stuff she can do is heal or deal meager damage. But heal obviously is only useful if you take any sort of damage, therefore by taking her, you're already masochistically expecting and embracing pain (needless emphasis for the sake of roleplaying)! She can't deal enough damage, thus can't kill enemies fast enough, thus you take damage, thus you need her heal. It can be a real trap, then you pat yourself on the shoulder thinking "gee I'm glad I took a vestal". Sure, she also has a stun, but considering that most of her best trinkets reduce stun chance, it's really not reliable enough (which is ironic consider she is the safest, most reliable healer). For hard bosses and some hard fixed dungeons, she can be very useful, I'm glad I brought her in DD2 for instance, but other than that, she can actually be detrimental to the actual running of a comp. Most of the time, having a couple of weak heals is enough, ARB alone is pretty much enough with her food synergy and great healing camp skills (if you're down to that).

Thinking Vestal is essential is a complete trap and it leads you wide open when they get afflicted, need a week of rest, gets bad quirks that means it's even more dangerous to bring you in specific regions, etc. Basically thinking you can't work without her makes you ultimately less versatile in your understanding of fighting and the game in general. The developers themselves wanted the heal to not be beneficial, you're expected to take too much damage to be able to heal (they kinda fail but well, don't they all?).

I still love her but frankly I'm starting to wonder if her Profane scroll build isn't the better one since at least she can also deal a modicum of proper damage.

[Justice]

Originally posted by Brosef Iosif:

Originally posted by Justice:

I didn't meant to say Vestal is detrimental. What I meant is that Vestal isn't really an offensive class. Almost all of her attacks have pretty big negative Dmg downside except her mace bash thus not counting her as damage dealer against enemies. But Vestal in general is essential hero for ANY team.

Well I'm going to say it then! Vestal can be a burden in many teams comp!
Reason being mostly that, if you want her two healing skills, you need to get her back in the last rows, so she can only use the very mediocre judgement (mediocre damage wise, it's not a bad skill in itself) meaning the only stuff she can do is heal or deal meager damage. But heal obviously is only useful if you take any sort of damage, therefore by taking her, you're already masochistically expecting and embracing pain (needless emphasis for the sake of roleplaying)! She can't deal enough damage, thus can't kill enemies fast enough, thus you take damage, thus you need her heal. It can be a real trap, then you pat yourself on the shoulder thinking "gee I'm glad I took a vestal". Sure, she also has a stun, but considering that most of her best trinkets reduce stun chance, it's really not reliable enough (which is ironic consider she is the safest, most reliable healer). For hard bosses and some hard fixed dungeons, she can be very useful, I'm glad I brought her in DD2 for instance, but other than that, she can actually be detrimental to the actual running of a comp. Most of the time, having a couple of weak heals is enough, ARB alone is pretty much enough with her food synergy and great healing camp skills (if you're down to that).

Thinking Vestal is essential is a complete trap and it leads you wide open when they get afflicted, need a week of rest, gets bad quirks that means it's even more dangerous to bring you in specific regions, etc. Basically thinking you can't work without her makes you ultimately less versatile in your understanding of fighting and the game in general. The developers themselves wanted the heal to not be beneficial, you're expected to take too much damage to be able to heal (they kinda fail but well, don't they all?).

I still love her but frankly I'm starting to wonder if her Profane scroll build isn't the better one since at least she can also deal a modicum of proper damage.

Wasting time doing tiny heals by several heroes instead of just one big or AoE heal for all nullify the whole point of having more offensive team. Such team is very vurnuable against AoE attacks, crits and DoTs. Which makes far more lethal and more likealy to get you affiction and stress than just one dedicated Vestal healer.

You can get away of it at Apprentice and Veteran dungeon at some extend, but at champion level dungeons recovery is essential. You need get your team at good shape at end of each battle and not having 3-4 peoples with less than half a health or worse at 10% or less, just to be finished off in the next room

Rellying to simply outdamage your enemy in RNG bassed game is an overconfidence.
And you know what they say about Overconfidence?



(There is alternativies for healing trinkets for Vestal that doesn't have stun penalties: (+15%) Chirurgeon's Charm, (+25%) Tome of holy healing, (+30%) Junias head, (+25%) Ancestor's Scroll)

[leon2356]

One strat I use is a high crit, high speed, high dodge team. Since crits heal stress. It is a huge gamble but so fun if you get the right heros and trinkets.

[Brosef Iosif]

Originally posted by Justice:

Wasting time doing tiny heals by several heroes instead of just one big or AoE heal for all nullify the whole point of having more offensive team. Such team is very vurnuable against AoE attacks, crits and DoTs. Which makes far more lethal and more likealy to get you affiction and stress than just one dedicated Vestal healer.

You can get away of it at Apprentice and Veteran dungeon at some extend, but at champion level dungeons recovery is essential. You need get your team at good shape at end of each battle and not having 3-4 peoples with less than half a health or worse at 10% or less, just to be finished off in the next room

Rellying to simply outdamage your enemy in RNG bassed game is an overconfidence.

Coming back to this. I would certainly agree that AoE recovery are one of the Vestal main advantage, however I don't think that against DoTs she is that efficient. PD is the obvious answer. Vestal will bruteheal her way to success but against DoTs (but mass DoTs) she isn't particularly better than PD; she is definitely worse against Arterial Pinch, but well...
I would agree that relying on outdamaging the enemy in this sort of game can be dangerous, but when you have overall high speed, heavy damage, enhanced chances to surprise the enemies, good stuns, this isn't just memey overconfidence. Only going brute damage with stuff like Lepers or Crusaders isn't soso safe, but it's not like there's only slow offense.

Now I wanted to come back to this "You need massive heals at the end of each fight in Champion", so what I did was exposed myself to this and check back what I did with my champion party comps in my first radiant playthrough (which I overstretched quite a bit). Turns out in my 32 Champion Dungeons, I indeed used Vestal 20 times, after her comes HWM (16), CRU/HEL (13), HM/ARB (11)... So I definitely include the safe VES most of the time ('twas my first run after all). Still, more than 1/3 of the runs are done with the minor healers, not even OCC but mostly ARB, CRU and PD (8), sometimes only a single one of the three.

https://i.postimg.cc/GcSF4t0p/20200207134504-1.jpg (BH-HM-HWM-ARB, long)

https://i.postimg.cc/9XcQVPxw/20200207133722-1.jpg (HWM-GR-PD-MAA)

I definitely think it's perfectly doable to go for medium and long runs without VES. Is it safer with her? Yeah sure, but I can still remember that long run I posted where I didn't even had to bother camping a second time and I only had ARB to heal (HM wasn't using his heal iirc). My main issue remains that VES kinda needs both her heals and isn't very useful outside of them, you have medium stuns and some clutch damage. This compared to ARB, PD, CRU or even OCC who are much much more varied in their kit. She is by far the best healer and for some runs, she is gold because you need a strong safety net, but her kit is weighted towards her heals a bit too much in my opinion. No it's perfectly fair to say that maybe I don't use her to her best, but it's not like I need it all the time anyway.

[TSense]

Have you considerd bringing your people home to rest as soon as they hit 70 stress?

The whole gameplay (and story) is about knowing when to stop and go back

[RopeDrink]

Jester not really good for ruin

Nonsense. It is entirely possible to enter the Ruins for certain missions and never meet a single undead enemy, on top of the fact that both of its optional bosses are just as weak to bleeds as they are blights.

Regardless of the Jester's leniency towards bleeds, he always was and always will be the No.1 stress-healer, just like Vestal is the No.1 healer despite the state of her kit. The only genuine argument is one Pete put forward - fear of his atrocious health-pool and tendency to get slapped to danger-zone in a hit when unlucky, but that tends to apply everywhere.

Note that I'm not saying this is optimal - merely that the whole 'no bleeds in ruins' angle doesn't mean as much as people think.

But Vestal in general is essential hero for ANY team.

It has already been explained that she is far from essential in a separate thread. The only time I will absolutely always consider a Vestal above all else is when dealing with optional bosses or DLC. Some won't even take one to optional bosses as they typically always have abuseable cheese-strats (like Swine).

If you have a Vestal anyway, you will almost always be rocking Heal 1, Heal 2, Judgement and Dazzling. Off-stunning or off-sniping is handy enough, but inferior to other options. This is only detrimental if you are also rocking a relatively weak three-man as well. Unfortunately, her heals are so ridiculous that it almost removes the concern over her offensive abilities (unless pushing for a super-speed comp).

Wasting time doing tiny heals by several heroes instead of just one big or AoE heal for all nullify the whole point of having more offensive team.

Only if that 'more offensive team' takes damage which would be better suited to a Vestal's heals. Considering her SPD is average at best and her damage is below-average, she does not help you achieve this, so just taking one generally leads to the need to heal more. A super-fast composition capable of killing or controlling the enemy as soon as possible need less healing and stress-healing, shock-horror.

It's why I will often head on fun-runs with silly comps like Quad-GR's when I want to power-level them all at the same time. There's very few enemies that will beat her speed, not many that can survive her Lunge (especially if it crits). That is a terrible example of what I'm saying -- obviously you would be better off with a different speed-clear comp for the sake of a few safety nets.

[RoboSauce]

I'm going to pile onto the "kill the enemy back lines first" heap, my favorite fights are the ones where I surprise the baddies and kill the backliners before they get a shot off.

A lot of players hate DoTs, but for bosses I love to stack them, necro is a good one to do this on. Another strategy for some bosses is to simply hammer on them while ignoring everything else- emphasis on "some" :P

[RopeDrink]

A lot of players hate DoTs

Eh? There have been no real complaints about DoTs since they were buffed with the release of CC years ago. They were awful before that but are in a very good place now. I'm the type of person who focuses almost exclusively on DoT comps (specifically bleed) when I want to take the game seriously. DoTs are often tied to some of the absolute strongest heroes in the game. Sure, others would opt for burst comps as it's generally quicker/snappier, but I wouldn't say people magically hate DoTs.

DoTs produce no corpses, are a decent answer to PROT without needing Piercing damage, can often be better for stalling // preventing reinforcement checks, and there are moments where having an enemy ready to bleed out (but still on the board) may result in other enemies wasting a turn (such as Cove Shieldbearers using Protect on a target that will die to DoTs as soon as that shielded enemy's turn arrives). Just a nice little bonus. They are also a fantastic way of getting bosses to kill themselves due to most of them having more than one turn-per-round (ie. more ticks-per-round). Whenever I'm planning a boss-kill, every single one of them often involves a bleed comp (except maybe Pounder, even if all its trash can be bled).

A lot of my most used comps involve stacking bleeders to high-heavens, and because a lot of them have great functionality outside of those bleeds (such as PD, FLA, HEL, JES, HM, HMW etc), the fact that the Ruins contains some bleed-resistant enemies really doesn't matter a whole lot.

One of those have the most useful stun in the game (PD) with some solid melee trinkets to fluff up her Incision potential. She can even do this from R3 without losing Blinding Gas. Another (HEL) is often regarded as one of the best damage dealers in the game (who just happens to have the alternate version of PD's awesome double-stun, not to mention great projection and damage potential). Another (HM) is a former top-tier hero who is still stupidly versatile and rocking one of the best ST stuns in the game who can also stress-heal // provide great projected burst alongside fantastic stress-recovery camping. One (JES) is the best stress-healer in the game with obscene buffs, camping skills, and a shuffle to compliment something like (HWM), arguably the strongest 'assassin' archetype this game has to offer (who happens to have Riposte - one of the best buttons in the game for low-effort value). One (FLA) is an off-healer and off-stress-healer rolled into one with the absolute BEST bleeds in the game.

You also have BH who is a fantastic stunner, but I'm not one for Caltrops. Above also focuses exclusively on Bleed, not Blight, for the sake of discussing why I don't give two damns about bleed in the Ruins. You can make some exceptionally potent Bleed Comps that do not lose too much effectiveness just because Joe Soap is bleed resistant. On top of that, Undead in general are the lowest population of enemies in the game, and not all Undead are even resistant to bleed.