how flagellant works?

[Karambo]

hi everyone.
just got my first flagellant and wanted to make a blood damage party:
Vestal-Jester-flagellant-hellion
while i was looking at flagellants abilities i realized that one camping skill gives him stress, another one is only useable if his health is below 40%.
thats the reason why i was asking myself whats the strategy with the flagellant works

thx in advance

PS: any tips for that team (trinkets/abilities) are welcome

[Norton 360 for Gamers]

Whip the ♥♥♥♥ out of enemies and heal your allies and yourself. Pretty straightforward.

That said, his burst heals can only be used when he has has less than 40% of his hp plus he gets buffs when he's low so there's some incentive to keep him injured. Also, every time he drops to death's door the rest of the party gets healed and he gets even more buffs.

As for why he has a camp skill that adds stress and nothing else, the Flagellant has a unique affliction called Rapturous which buffs his damage and speed and reduces his dodge. However, he is prone to acting out on his own in this state, attacking random enemies or even himself and his allies so I'd advise against making him Rapturous on purpose.

[Panfilo]

The way he works is he uses bleed attacks for his offense, and gets stronger when he hits certain health thresholds (40% and deaths door I believe).

He has two powerful abilities that require him to be below 40% to work:
Redeem will heal him and an ally for a % of their max health. This is really unique among heals and it often means the Flagellant can go from say 35% hp to nearly full health, and take a hero on death's door and bring them up to nearly half health. If both him and an ally are on death's door, it means you can pull two heroes off death's door in a single action which can potentially save either from dying. The only downsides are that you can only use it a few times per battle, and each time you use it you get a penalty on healing for a while (so its not good to use it two consecutive turns.).

Exsanguinate is an offensive attack, giving you a high damage attack+bleed to the target, and healing a % of the Flagellant's max HP back. This can mean he can kill an enemy and give himself a chunk of health back. It will stack with the bonuses he already gets for being at low health. The main risk, though is that if it misses I don't think the heal will trigger which can be really bad if you were on death's door at the time.

The Flagellant doesn't get virtuous or afflicted. He only gets one state at 100 stress, Rapturous. Rapturous boosts his speed and damage but lowers his dodge, and causes him to act out randomly (sometimes using a random ability on enemies or hitting allies or himself on his turn). This is supposed to be sort of a compromise between a virtue and affliction, but the random effects make it hard to use to your advantage, and its less risky to just avoid being in this state.

While he can get quite a few damage bonuses, his actual base damage is pretty low so even if you try to min-max and have a rapturous flagellant slug an enemy with Exsanguinate the damage is often not that spectacular, most of his damage will be from the bleed effects more than anything I feel. Since his abilities trigger at % thresholds and his big heals are % based I like giving him extra HP. He has higher deathblow resist than any other hero and can take trinkets that get it up to the cap which is 87% I believe but trust me from experience there are so many times I had that much deathblow resist and still died on the first death's door check. So you don't want to rely on it. On the bright side, when the Flagellant hits death's door he pops an AoE heal to allies which is nice, and if he does die you get a bigger AoE heal on survivors and all the enemies get stunned which is great in close boss fights where you're almost there.

[No One]

Red Hook wanted a hero who benefitted from having high stress or low health, but it didn't work. Most of the time he plays just like any other hero, except fast and extremely damaging.

However, it does mean he resists getting merked. Most afflictions are really bad, while the FLG's is merely a little bad. He doesn't get DD debuffs when he hits 0 HP. Instead he heals the rest of your team. It's handy at times, but not something you should plan on. Never, ever use his +stress camping ability. It works Red Hooks' fever dreams, not in reality.

Because he has low max health it's a good idea to keep one of his 40% health threshold skills on his bar. They're for healing him up so the enemies don't have a chance of one-two punching him. The actual damage/healing done by the skill is distinctly secondary except for a couple bosses.

I see the FLG's selling point as being fast as heck and carrying both healing and soothing. Healing ticks before dots, so he can save someone who is bleeding out. (Though suffer does that better, really.) He's got a lot of utility and is just kind of awesome all around as long as you remember to ignore the intended design.

[RopeDrink]

Basically what No One said.

He's loosely following in the footsteps of CRU and HM as being an all-round generalist (ie. healer, stress-healer and damage dealer), except he lacks a stun compared to the others, not to mention being somewhat limited in projection outside of an AoE DoT, and sports exclusive (greedy) camping skills that don't help anyone else.

He makes up for this by having the absolute best bleeds in the entire game as a generally speedy hero who can heal/s-heal in a pinch, which mostly off-sets the fact that his Punish isn't amazing (seeing as he's fast enough to roll out those DoTs before most enemies). There was a time when he could practically solo dungeons & bosses, as well as hit R3 with Punish - all of which was inevitably nerfed via reduced range and per-battle + stacking heal-nerf affixes to his threshold skills, but still strong despite all that.

Seeing as said bleeds aren't improved via his critical-state buffs (as well as all the above-mentioned points from others), it is never worth trying to build a constantly-injured, death-defying, or rapturous Flagellant. He has more deathblow resist than everyone else, yet there is nothing stopping him from dying on the first death-door check even if you stack +DBR trinkets, hence you are infinitely better off keeping him just as healthy as everyone else.

The comp you refer to (VES-JES-FLA-HEL) is a solid bleed-comp which I typically use to solo all non-introduction CC missions from start to finish in one sitting. It has one of the best damage dealers in the game, the best sustain-duo in the game, and the best bleeder in the game serving as a backup healer/shealer.

EDIT: Skill-wise, I'd recommend something like:

VES: Judge-Dazzle-Heal-Heal -- typical go-to for VES in most situations. If she aint stunning or sniping, she's obviously healing.

JES: Dirk-Slice-Finale-Stress -- Finale is mostly in-case of shuffles to the front, or a pocket nuke on demand, but can be swapped out. Sometimes I like to have both bleeds, especially later in the game when stealthers are a thing.

FLA: Punish-Rain-Redeem-Endure -- you already have a dedicated healer, but if you feel it may not be enough, you can swap Rain or Redeem for Reclaim (the HoT), especially if you're playing a heal-centric FLA in other comps.

HEL: Hack-Yawp-If It Bleeds-Iron Swan -- some might argue for Bleed Out, but it's more restrictive and only in/against R1. 'If It Bleeds' ensures that HEL can hit R3 and can also attack from further ranks if pushed back for any reason. For the most part, she will be Swanning R4, adding extra bleeds to R2/R3 (to compliment Slice+Rain), or Yawping/Hacking the front ranks when you want to start/stop stalling.

[No One]

In particular, I will argue for bleed out. The animation looks cool and it might just be the most damaging attack in the game. If you're already sporting if it bleeds, then you can still reach row 2.

[RopeDrink]

HEL is one of those heroes who have the luxury of pretty much all her buttons being very usable, so can't argue if people want to shuffle her skills about.

My main issue with Bleed Out is R1 vs R1 only. For the most part (despite being an obnoxiously sustainable group), you will typically be doing that via R1/R2 targets, so slapping R1 with Bleed Out becomes questionable unless you just want to time a DoT-death to laugh at the Reinforcement mechanic (as if we needed any more reasons to do that). Much prefer focusing her on R4 + R3 with optional stun for stalling. FLA bleeds and a Hack finisher is more than enough to wrap things up without needing more R1 hitting skills. There will also be occasions where someone is pulled back/forward so the HEL loses Swan+Bleed Out, which is never fun.

Not saying it's bad choice or anything, but alas, you don't always want to be stunning with HEL (leaving it to VES) and don't exactly have the bestest R4 projection overall (despite Swan). Neither Rain nor Judgement are the bestest finishers in the event something actually survives Swan (or it whiffs). They'll do the job for the most part (especially vs a bleed-capable target), but JES can't help much, and a whiff or minimal rolls are meh. Meanwhile, there's more than enough to poop all over R3 if that is preferable, and If It Bleeds is usable even from R3, so you really don't have to worry overmuch unless she's in R4 and/or she's in R3 but only R1 is alive.

I just find the above selection to be the easiest catch-all that can flex on/from multiple ranks without having to resort to Breakthrough mobility, though I would consider changing it outside of that CC comp.

[TSense]

flagellant
- high bleed damage
- has two skills that work after taking a lot of damage and heal him right back up
- suffers no deathdoor debuff, his states actually go up and not down
- if he hits zero HP, he heals the team
- if he dies, he stuns the enemy group
- always has the same reaction when hitting 100 stress, increasing his stats while going crazy

= he is the guy who easily bonces right back up after going down, and the more they throw at him the stronger he gets.

This fits with his lore. He doesn't care about dying at all. His endurance is insane. He doesn't grow weak and tried, he keeps hyping until his head explodes. Healing himself and others, getting stronger and stronger (maybe hitting his teammates too).

[RopeDrink]

As an aside, I don't think Punish gets the credit it deserves. It is obviously not comparable to other (raw) damage abilities for the most part, but you absolutely can get it to hit for relatively decent numbers on top of the already obnoxious bleed if you're willing to consider melee-quirks and/or specific trinkets (not forgetting that it hits harder by default when injured).

I'll have to check my old 300-kills achi-video where I used a very questionable FLA trinket-combo for a laugh in endless. It's still my go-to endless comp (which just swaps HEL for HWM). I recall plenty of low-roll 7 non-crits when healthy, but it certainly had its moments and typically hit a few points short of a damage-centric HWM in a lot of cases (without any DMG-related quirks or proper trinkets).

Also, another classic case of FLA eating a first-hit deathblow. Again, don't play FLA like a 'low HP = phat buffs' hero unless you want to fill graves -- and for the love of the ancestor, don't be one of those people who stack +DBR thinking you'll become immortal unless you reeeallly want to fill a full-grave quota in a hurry.

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

[Karambo]

for my team mentioned in the question i would choose following trinkets:
- vestal: double +heal
- jester: bloody dice and ? (maybe two +blood chance)
- flaggelant: increase hp and blood chance, not sure
- hellion: no idea

if anyone can help, just write. thx

[No One]

Jester doesn't need more than +30% bleed. Add something else, depending on what you're using him for. More straight damage, more accuracy if you find he misses too much for your taste, or more stress healing.
Note that due to the FLG in row 2, you almost never want to use dirk stab.

Probably the best thing for FLG is +bleed and +scout. He has +10 acc naturally and doesn't really need anything except +bleed. Though I often give him a little anyway.

Best hellion set is clearly DLC + DLC. Shard + CC. Thirsting + outcast. Adds +4 speed, +15 acc, +bleed.
Otherwise I do the same thing as with the MAA. Ancestor's candle + ancestor's ring. Accuracy, speed, damage. A focus ring is fine but it's nice if you can preserve her high dodge.

[Gilmoy]

Flagellant can be a melee rogue. (Rogue = good DPS, no thief skils, too flimsy to tank)
Or he can be a back-rank healer. Also, he can eat stress.

In the front rank, he can project AoE to the back rows, or melee-bleed the front rows.
That's decent firepower.

He can heal from anywhere. His heal is unique: it's a heal-over-time (HoT).
You swiftly learn a unique mode of gameplay, which is the proactive heal, where he drops a HoT on an undamaged friend, in anticipation of taking damage later. HoT also lasts after combat ends, just like DoTs do, so your friends can finish healing as you walk corridors.

He can eat stress. That means he heals a friend for big -stress, and takes smaller +stress onto himself. At high skill levels plus stress trinkets, the net gain is comparable to a Jester. He does get stuck with the stress, so you either camp it away with his -50, or have a secondary stress-healer nibble at him.

He can self-heal to bounce himself. When he's beaten below 40% HP, he can heal friend + self. It's a stronger heal than Vestal, but it's conditional and limited per combat. Still, it does mean he suffices as sole healer, and you usually don't have to worry about him.

There are gimmicks around having him stay below 40%, or even reaching Death's Door or Rapturous, but we all recommend that you avoid the heck out of them.

You don't actually have enough buttons to do all of these at once, so you must choose.
Briefly: front-row melee/project, or back-row heal-only. Eat-stress or not. N.B. back-row and eat-stress is a workable combo. Remember that you can pause after any combat, or in any corridor, and adjust his position and his 4 skills, so you can switch his role back and forth, based on whatever your party needs next. Obvious gimmick: start him as front melee, move him back later.

FLG is actually quite flexible, and great fun. Part of that is the novelty of a HoT, and the games you can play with it.

[RopeDrink]

I often use him as a main-healer at times (even though there are obviously better options). The downside of the HoT is the potential self-bleed. You can nullify it with additional res or use it as a self-damage so that his threshold skills open up more frequently (particularly his self+target duo heal), but considering his small healthpool, getting slapped to critical health whilst self-bleeding is not fun despite his above-average DBR.

There's no shortage of clips of a FLA eating first-turn death blows with or without DBR trinkets, so you may as well forget that it's a thing. Like most hard lessons in DD, you'd be foolish to bank on RNG when you can bank on consistency.

For any team with a dedicated healer, I typically leave the HoT at the door and take Punish/Rain/Double-Heal/Stress-Heal. You can still take the HoT so that the other healer can cover him if things go awry, but it's overkill in most scenarios and/or you'll end up having to normalize multiple people more often, even though that isn't a problem for a Vestal.

Exanguinate can hit very hard and apply the strongest bleed in the game for a massive self-heal, but really, if you're going to heal yourself, may as well heal someone else in the process if they also need it. Keeps the group in fighting shape, which means more overall damage than just healing one person and worrying about someone else (even if Exanguinate can kill a target).

Again, CRU and HM (with FLA hanging in the shadows) form the trinity of generalists. If you ever need a filler, they are good choices - the downside being he doesn't have a stun compared to the others.

[Skinny Pete]

Going back through my records, for my entire history playing this game, Flagellants are the characters with the most deaths. This isn't because they're bad, it's because they're so good I always have them, and they always suck up a lot of abuse.

Do you know what character I have the least deaths with? Leper. I have literally never had a Leper die (except in DD4 where I deliberately killed one). These ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ things are as indestructible as a cockroach.

"But you always say Leper is the worst hero in the game!" Why would I say that? Because the worth of a hero isn't just that he always survives, it's what happens to the REST OF THE TEAM.

And Flagellant is a monster because no matter what else he does, the REST OF THE TEAM survives. There is a game theory and a moral lesson here, both left as an exercise to the reader.

[No One]

I got a leper killed trying to fight a shambler.

[RopeDrink]

And Flagellant is a monster because no matter what else he does, the REST OF THE TEAM survives. There is a game theory and a moral lesson here, both left as an exercise to the reader.

This can basically be summed up with a lot of the strength (re. value) of heroes boiling down to how much they compliment the team. After all, it's about covering risks, so heroes who cover more gaps are generally better. In terms of heroes who are ONLY there to do damage, those who are flexible can take a slot (or a few) without impeding the group (because you will ALWAYS need to kill things), but you'll eventually need to help cover each other in some way. Whether it's stuns, or healing, or shealing, or mobility, or projection, or whatever -- basically, almost everything the Leper lacks.

Putting any hero in a 1v1 vacuum will never work in a 4vX. Crusader can heal/sheal from any position, can serve as a stunner, can at least project in some way, can work anywhere in some capacity with good damage as a near equal meat-sack with a lot of similarities to the Leper, yet people keep flocking to the Leper - some even thinking he's one of the best heroes in the game. I guess it's a positive that the meta isn't strict enough to stop people succeeding when using the bottom of the barrel, but it can lead some to generating misconceptions of actual hero worth.

That's one of the many traps about the Leper. Yes, being a nigh indestructible and self-sustained meatsack is a positive - but when it's entirely greedy (and on someone who is overbearingly strict with positioning and range - with absolutely no mobility at all), he helps teams infinitely less than alternatives would, so everyone else invariably suffers while he outlives the problem of him just being there. There are quite a few moments and situations where he shines - including decent camping skills - but not enough when you look at the whole game/roster.

By comparison, FLA has at least some functionality from everywhere to some degree, does similar attacks (in a bleed-centric sense), including a projected version, along with decent self-sustain and also group support skills (at the expense of raw tankiness and entirely greedy camping). CRU has a lot of similarities with the LEP (HP, SPD, baseline damage, bread-and-butter range except for Lance, a prot skill, decent camping skills, a fellow holy character, yadda yadda), but sports a 'can do everything' kit that is infinitely more useful across the board, functions anywhere and also not immobile, yet people will still flock to the Leper.

I'm probably one of his biggest detractors when it comes to discussing hero worth, but it's not like I hate him. In fact, I use more Lepers than I do PD's, BH's, MAA's, OCC's, HEL's, and many other heroes - some of which are the best in their field... some even the best in the whole game.