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Shambler has 2 hard-coded bonuses:
+ It always shuffles your party. You can game this by shuffling yourself first, so that it unshuffles you. Enable your party's move-and-act (esp. move-and-attack) skills. Generally, a party with no move-and-attack skills is weak vs. Shambler, and you'd choose not to risk it with that party.
+ It always reduces your torch to 0. You fight in the dark, for bonus monster crits. You can boost torch during the fight, but you probably should just kill it sooner instead of goofing off.
+ It hides in positions #c-#d, like any boss. Activate your back-row attack skills.
Shambler's spores are the real threat. Every time they hit you, they buff themselves, no cap (?). That means their self-buffs are (gasp) exponential
You can kill the spores to reset their buff state. The Shambler will promptly summon new ones, but that sidetracks its attack for 1 round, and the new ones are unbuffed. Or you can ignore them for 2-3 rounds and focus all damage on the Shambler first. It's not hard to kill Shambler in round 3-4. Then you probably have ~80 stress each by the time you kill the last 2 spores. By itself, that's not a problem.
- You can save Shambler's Altar to the end of the dungeon (as the last thing you do).
Then there's no fight left to heal your stress, so return to hamlet and use town heals.
- Or you can fight Shambler ASAP, and then use the rest of the (L5 long :) dungeon's fights to heal your stress to 0.
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Shambler usually gives you top-end loot, like Ancestor's trinkets, Puzzling Trapezohedrons (3.5k each), or tapestries (4k? each). I always fight it for the loot. Heck, I fight every Shambler on principle, namely: The baddest monster in the dark is ME. No mere hallway fight is scarier than a prepared human player's brain.
I guess technically the other two are also best in class, except their class is really bad outside of weird edge cases.
Screwing the order of your party is not a catch-all answer to shuffle. The real answer is to NOT have immobile plebs, or to NOT activate the altar if you aren't confident your current team can handle that aspect, like farting around with a LEP who's at risk of being absolutely useless in 50% of positions, with their move-res not being a help.
Shambler is probably the best boss fight for a Highwayman. He can deshuffle with Riposte (which activates per AoE for free Shambler damage) and has the speed and damage potential to one-shot clappers whenever he's upfront via PBS (if a clapper is up-front too), or stack Bleeds on the Shambler or Clappers so that their stacking PROT isn't as relevant whenever you're not advancing to reposition or refresh Riposte.
Shamblers are worth dunking early on (if you can) for a shot at the ancestrals, but it is wise to track your trinkets so that you don't go killing them when they have no worthwhile rewards left to give you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWwjQuIHggQ
-only summon it in Apprentice (green) level dungeons because the fight can ♥♥♥♥ up the entire team and I don't want to risk a) harder fight and b) losing characters I am invested in.
-never summon Shambler when I have Arbalest/Leper (shuffles will inevitably ♥♥♥♥ them up) or am running an Antiquarian (useless in fights - I know about her dodge builds but they require specific set ups and I don't ♥♥♥♥ with RNG in this game)
-only fight the Shambler 5 times in total to get all 5 ancestral trinkets it can drop (map, bottle, candle, idol, scroll), I skip it even if I see it even with mobile teams in green dungeons once I got everything cause it's not worth the hassle/chance of losing/gold for stress recovery.
-obviously only fight Shambler when you know you can sustain a loss, don't summon it before actual mission is finished, prefferably when I still have 1 firewood for camp left for buffs.
Following these rules helps me tremendously regarding Shambler ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I skip 2/3 Shambler altars I find because the odds are not in my favour, and even though that sometimes makes me miss out on one or two of its trinkets it also guarantees a good end to the mission.
They are far from useless in fights. Also, it's funny you say that when I've just posted a video killing a Shambler with three of them, even though the fact they really shouldn't be doing that is part of the humour.
There are various heroes in the roster who I'd happily replace with an Antiquarian vs a Shambler.
in DD you don't actually want to fight enemies. You just want the mission done and get as many curios on the way as possible. Scouting always prevents you from being surprised and it allow you to pick the most optimal path.
Your base chance is 25%
Light above 75 = +15%
So adding the Ancestor's Map with gives 25% your total is: 25+15+25=65%
Add Evidence of Corruption and it is: 65+25=90%
A scouting camp skill is also something worth using.
It is well worth fighting the Shambler for the Map, Candle and the Scroll. The rest is meh.
I was making a general statement about the Antiquarian having the weakest DPS out of all classes including Vestal (and the latter at least has a stun). That doesn't mean that she is impossible to use in a fight - I've read about people clearing all 4 end dungeons with Antiquarians only.
But I feel like you are absolutely gimping yourself in any fight with an Antiquarian in your team even if she is "useful" from any position even if you're running meme dodge builds. I think DD is all about burst damage and either preventing the enemy from attacking or outright killing them on the first turn, and Antiquarian can't do either.
So yes, even though Antiquarians would not be affected by shuffles the way Arbalests, Lepers etc. would be I'd still never pop the Shambler shrine with one in my team. After all that's how the Antiquarian is balanced, she gives you bonus gold in return for being weaker in a fight.
To clarify, your exact term was: "Antiquarian (useless in fights)" - which has no bearing on her DPS at all and implies exactly what it says, which I simply pointed out is not true (despite her 'weaker combatant' design) -- and I say that as someone who absolutely loathes Dodge comps and would never use her as a buff-stacker.
Again, I find it amusing that you'd never engage a Shambler with one in your party, yet I used three and just spammed Festering Vapor all day. Not exactly a clean or safe Shambler kill - done more for comedy - and that isn't saying I'd ever willingly choose an Antiquarian knowing there'd be Shamblers ahead, just that she's not as terrible as a lot of people tend to imply.
Scouting is a nice stat, but it's far from the most important thing in the game by a country mile.
Though yes DD is way more fun if you're kind of bad at it and can't do that yet.
Scouting is highly underappreciated, but you have to be a bit barmy to call it the best stat in such a combat-heavy game. It is is a great perk to have if you can squeeze some in at no cost to combat efficiency -- but that is pretty much never.
It'd be a (somewhat) different story if the enemy (surprising the player) got to act first - like we can when we surprise the opponent - but alas, it's just a shuffle and nothing else, in a game where you can forge tonnes of teams that really won't care about it regardless. Traps are a nuisance at worst and you can't scout hunger tiles.
Meanwhile, the stats that contribute to "loot pinata'ism" translate to all content, and help to streamline consistency or outright guarantees in a risk-manager -- compared to the RNG chance of scouting in randomly generated layouts, most of which involves missions that may involve unavoidable combat (or outright require it).
That doesn't mention how practically all DLC content has no real place for it due to maps being entirely static, unless you're crazy enough to take scouting trinkets purely to try and recruit prisoners in the Court.
Though that means if you have enough money, the map is somewhat iffy.
Surprises would be worse if they weren't so rare. If you're playing in the dark scouting is a high priority.
It depends on how you see it. Do you want to fight 3 extra groups of enemies and take all the stress, damage, diseases and risks for no loot drops and no rewards. Or do you want to avoid them entirely so you can end the mission almost like you never sent out the party in the first place but with more gold and loot?
If you see enemy groups avoided as a automatic win as you win the mission without fighting, scouting can defeat several enemies at the same time without any costs to the party.
Really? I think you are missing something then. As I said before. If you can avoid a fight it is often much more worth it then actual fighting. Enemies rarely give loot. Unless you got a Antiquarian with you it is better to avoid combat as a whole as enemies are not "loot pinatas". It is rarely going to be worth what you get. If you treat the game as if you have to bash your head against every enemy to get by you are doing yourself a disservice as you make it harder for yourself then it actually is. I also want to point out Scouting is the only way to find Secret Rooms. If you have a key that room alone is worth 10500 gold. Well worth more then any enemy pinata as it carry no risk.
You say you that you can rarely fit in Scouting over combat efficiency. I don't believe that. Here is my favorite Cove team.
Vest -> PD -> HM -> BH
Vest is for healing, stun and support damage
PD is for blight damage, stun and remove heavy bleeding
HM is for marking high PROT enemies to remove that defense, stun and damage
BH is damage as it is well worth using one when you mark the Uca Major. That he can hit Position 3 or pull in Position 4 is great when needed.
Lets fit some scouting on this team.
- Base chance: 25%+15% because we play above 75% light as we want combat efficiency
- Give the PD the Blasphemous Vial and the Ancestor's Map.
- Your Base chance is now 25%+25%+15% = 65%
- If you go on a medium or long mission you can just go a few rooms, take some stress damage and then put down a camp and heal that stress damage.
- Use Hound's Watch to remove night attacks, +Monster Surprised and -Party Surprised (if scouting doesn't work)
- If you use Release the Hound you get 95% Scouting chance, and if you use Scout Ahead you have 90%.
- You now either have 4 or 5 points left for something else. You can use Bless + This Is How We Do It, Planned Takedown to remove that Uca Major even faster or whatever else you like.
- Or you can skip all these steps and just put the Map and Evidence of Corruption on the HM and make him a support that gives you a base scouting chance of 90% which frees up 3-4 camping points.
You don't lose any combat efficiency here. You deal a lot of damage with the PD and the combo with HM and BH works very well. Since Humans exist in all dungeons the BH will run into enemies that he gets +35% damage to even without mark. You are also heavy on stuns so to prevent damage or stress attackers is very possible. And then again. You don't lose combat efficiency by avoiding enemies. You gain combat efficiency because you do not want to fight every fight to finish the mission. If you can loot a whole mission and finish it while only fighting 3 fights, that is way better then fighting 7 fights for no additional gain.