I'm finding it harder and harder to justify bringing a jester

[WickedRequiem]

Crusader seems to provide stress relief (about 75% comparable from any location) with a bigger damage / heal.

I guess the group bleed attack might become more useful at the higher difficulty

[Purple]

He fits into a bleed party and the endless mode, works well for stress heals since he has the best, but I still find him to be replaceable in most comps for another support/damage class. He's nice, but you don't need to bring them.

[Skinny Pete]

I mainly use him in endless and in the standard "Courtyard party" of VES-JES-FLA-HEL.

Also some bosses, including the Shrieker.

Outside of there, you don't often need a super potent targeted stress healer.

Houndmaster can do what he can do in most circumstances, and can guard and has a self-heal. And a stun if you're up front.

[PalmTree]

Crusader can stress heal, but I find that the Jester's gets the job done a lot faster as it's already a larger heal and he's got multiple trinkets that increase it.

I do find him a bit less useful than other classes, because his low damage is a bit bad and too reliant on bleed sometimes. I tend to run either Slice Off/Harvest/Battle Ballad/Inspiring Tune or Slice Off/Dirk Stab/Inspiring Tune/Finale. I used to hate him, but I ended up finding a niche use for him in bleed teams once I realized how high the bleed is on Slice Off. With those 2 movesets, I've found he fits pretty well into either bleed teams or dancing teams, but the rank 3/4 restriction on Inspiring Tune and Battle Ballad make it so he almost always has to start in rank 3. He's a bit tricky to use, but if you can find a team comp you like for him he can be pretty powerful.

[No One]

Jesters let you basically ignore stress damage. Remember, rather than 75% as good it's 66% as good, and that's before trinkets. If you put the ancestor's scroll plus the CC trinket on a crusader, it will reach the jester's default value...
Plus the crusader is slow. The jester can reliably get a tune off on the last stalling turn, while the crusader will often let the enemy hit you one last time and then has to finish it off himself.

That said, you can graduate from needing a stress heal at all in regular dungeons.

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by No One:

That said, you can graduate from needing a stress heal at all in regular dungeons.

People underestimate the level you can indirectly stress heal with camp buffs and trinkets that increase crit chance or just increase the chance of killing things fast, which minimizes incoming stress.

[Butt Goblin]

Battle Ballad, basically. Its ACC bonus allows you to ignore ACC trinkets on most heroes and the SPD can sometimes prevent damage or stress.

Additionally, Slice Off has higher range/ACC than Smite and, when paired with a stun, deals damage that is comparable to Crusader. Bleed characters in general are pretty dependent on having someone stun their targets for them, as that allows them to deal unusually high damage before enemies get an action. Of course, that's not a huge advantage when compared to a dancer Crusader who has better range than Jester.

Some parties might also be unable to handle a dancer Crusader or even a frontline Crusader, so the usual rank 3 bleedbot may be preferable.

I personally agree that the difference in stress healing power isn't enough to make a difference in their stress healing abilities, outside of the Farmstead and to some extent the Courtyard of course. Usually, either neither will be enough (since neither can keep pace with stress damage without some kind of prevention) or both do the job (since you're reducing incoming stress damage to the point where both heals will result in a net negative stress intake).

[No One]

Battle ballad is terrible 95% of the time. It's actually more effective to hit bleed-immune skeletons with slice off.

[PalmTree]

Originally posted by No One:

Battle ballad is terrible 95% of the time.

Using it gives a massive +4 Speed to the whole party, not to mention +10 Acc and Crit. It's insanely helpful if you can pop it at the start of a fight, because it'll buff your team for the majority of the battle. It gives characters like the Leper the accuracy they need, and the speed buff makes it so even the Crusader outspeed some enemies. And when is more Crits ever a bad thing? There's never a situation where it can't be helpful, even if it is sometimes better to open with a bleed.

Originally posted by No One:

It's actually more effective to hit bleed-immune skeletons with slice off.

Why would you ever do this? The damage output from that would sub-par at best, because the bleed makes up a significant portion of Slice Off's overall damage. If anything, you should be hitting the Skeletons with Dirk Stab and using Slice Off on the Cultists.

[maseoo]

I use the jester a lot, I went with him against the Countess and he did well with Slice off and Dirk stab, and Battle ballad was also very helpful as mentioned. I had him stabbing and bleeding against the countess and with bleeds and crits he was pretty strong against her. He also fits well in mobile teams and although he is squishy he somewhat makes up for it with high dodge.
Harvest does only 4 bleed damage but against two targets so its not too shabby.

[Coctostin]

Battle ballad on champion level will make your team streamroll the whole dungeon. Also, he has cool looking skins: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1526317226

[RopeDrink]

Jester will always be the best SHealer in the game so long as his potency is higher and it provides that -Stress buff. Not only does he cure more stress but ensures that any followup stress on that target will be reduced for its duration - and it stacks I believe.

Crusader's is just about comparable when his heal-portion crits, otherwise it's about 60% less and provides no buffs at all. Its benefit is the fact you can SHeal + heal a bit of actual health back as well, making it a decent DDoor answer if you've decided not to take his actual healing ability as well.

As people have said, though, there's only some circumstances where having the higher amount + anti-stress buff would get it done whilst the Crusaders can't. In generic play, you can get away with a Crusader any day of the week - he's certainly one of my favourites for it due to being a lancing/stunner as well, which can have more impact than Jesters bleeds in some circumstances (burst damage/control). In endless, however, a Jester can spend far less time SHealing than a Crusader to get people to managable levels if things are going poorly, and his bleeds are much more welcome there. Taking bleed comps like Jes/Fla ensures you'll have next to no stress worries and their bleeds will remove corpses and bypass all non-bleed resistant prot enemies without the need for things like SB Piercing damage.

It's the age old case of just taking whichever suits your comp more - need more burst and/or don't need as much stress-healing and/or would like something tankier? Crusader. Taking bleed comp and/or just need more burst shealing and/or some additional stress protection (or battle ballad)? Jester.

[No One]

Well, I tried to warn them. If you want your life more difficult than it needs to be, that's your call, I suppose.

[Skinny Pete]

There's one non-endless circumstance where I always use Battle Ballad and it's for Shrieker killing. I have my front three bleed guys with ACC/Bleed trinkets (HWM/FLA/HEL/HM in whatever combination) and JES in the back with Eldritch/Beast Slayer rings (by the time he hits if he ever does he will have his ACC).

This is usually a Shrieker A Team with Eldritch and/or Beast Slayer quirks already.

JES just drops Battle Ballad twice, Solos to the front, and (in theory) does Finale on the last round.

Meanwhile, everyone else just lays bleeds on the Shrieker.

I haven't yet actually been able to use Finale and often the fight has ended in round 2 before I even get to Solo to the front.

(Important note, this is dangerous because of lack of healing so I buff up with Holy Water immediately and also pack Aegis Scales.)

[Veritas]

jester's finale nerf was overboard. His bleed build was never that great so now he's just a stress healer with okay damage from dirk stab and some utility buffs for certain fights.

[RopeDrink]

I use it more now than I did back when it was infinite-uses-per-battle. Reminds me of this video - which doesn't prove much but at least shows why a dam-stacking one-shot button like this is per-battle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK7gBaID2-k

The new debuff portion is to dissuade just starting fights with it like the old days, and the PBattle is to stop spamming. Still usable vs standard trash (to a degree) but always nice to have vs delayed boss-fights. It's gone from being a barely used "try to blow-up R3 on first round" to "try to blow up a boss entirely". Even the video of my mediocre endless run with a Jester shows him critting 40-50 after a few rounds to nail boss coffins closed, and that's with him just slapping out a few bleeds or ballads worth of Finale buffs before using it.

His bleed build was never that great so now he's just a stress healer with okay damage from dirk stab and some utility buffs for certain fights.

Barely anyone had a good bleed build > that all changed with CC and the Flagellant. Before that, nobody was even taking bleed skills, except HM's who had no choice. Compared to most others, his aren't too bad - he also has extremely cheap trinkets for bleeding and bleed-res, making him better for it in the early-game. Late-game his AoE version will bypass stealth and can spread the same damage (-1) to two enemies.

Dirk Stab is obviously a bit more impactful but there can be times when you really, really don't want to move forward doing it. Only reason I keep DS is for on-demand mobility or to move forward in preparation for Finale. Otherwise it's sheals and slice-off. Ballad is something I'll only ever take for endless.

Despite the fundamentals not changing too much over the course of the game, Jester is still better now than he ever was before... But that's not saying a whole lot seeing as his goal-post wasn't really moved. I'd go as far as say he's one of the more fairly-balanced heroes in the game right now.