So...I really need help with the Countess

[gongher]

Possible spoilers for the boss fight obviously

While she wasn't the first boss to cause a party wipe for me because I have a tendency to head blind into things, she's definitely the first boss fight from which I have learned little and still have no idea how to beat her, even after seeing her patterns and all of her forms and everything while sacrificing my entire party haha. I've read guides, but I also hear that those guides are old, and the countess got harder than before. My first party was Hel-Cru-HWM-Ves and I dunno, this party is good at repositioning and bleeding and the highwayman can riposte and everything but I still got my poor ass kicked. She's fairly resistant to pretty much everything save for bleed (which is also reasonably high considering she's a bloodsucker) and she can cure bleed, and she's got high prot. She destroyed my party with both health and stress and she acts so many times in a row so I haven't been able to care about it properly. I've brought some aegis scales but never got to block the love letter properly because it explodes ever so randomly. Not that I have many to begin with so...yeah. In conclusion, I still have no idea how to win.

TL;DR Any recommendation for the Countess boss fight? Any guides, comp, trinkets etc are welcome because I've never struggled this much before lmao

[No One]

A) Bleed her anyway.

If love letter is going to death-door you, then don't attack. HEL and CRU could heal, HWM would have to move. Wait until VES lands her heal, then attack. Bring herbs to deal with the debuffs.

Don't worry about stress. Kill her fast enough that it doesn't matter. You're not using head trinkets are you?

It would help to describe what killed you in more detail. I personally find the baron much more dangerous. The baron can happily choose to nuke someone three times in a row, whereas the countess' nuke can't be repeated, is controllable, and always comes with warning. Not to mention the baron can choose to triple-nuke someone and then deny healing.

First time I killed the countess I didn't understand how love letter worked. PD-JES-ABM-OCC, same party I use for almost everything. Only the ABM cares about being shuffled. If I recall correctly the ABM went crazy and dropped out of beast form, but it's fine since he still has 45% chance to stun on the countess, plus she debuffs her own stun resistance at one point. You can do that with CRU too, though with much lower accuracy.

Second time, bleed for days. VES-JES-FLG-HEL.
E.g. HEL had bleed out, her lunge, if it bleeds, and adrenaline.

It's possible you merely got unlucky or had a bad day. But also, why didn't you run away once someone died?

P.S. Wicked hack hits the countess for around 10 before +damage. If it bleeds is expected to do 12.5. +20% damage brings hack to 12, and +20% bleed brings bleeds to 15. Try it at home: do the calculation for mark of the outcast.

Is riposte really that good? Is she guaranteed to use at least one AOE every round?

[gongher]

Thanks for the detailed help mate. As for not retreating, I somehow happened to lose them all in two turns lol. (haha AOE attack death's door bleeding out and retreat fail intensifies) And no, I didn't use head trinkets but I used the ancestor ones, should I refrain from those too? I really wanted to end the fight quickly but with her high amount of health and protection it didn't go too well. Oh well. So much for running into the boss fight blindly. Not that I am now confident knowing more about the fight but your help is really appreciated.

Oh and is the flagellant ok for this fight? He's not the strongest against shuffles (well...he can move to the front real quick but yeah) but with my vestal constantly forced into the front rows (and I just can't trust the occultist for these kinds of fights) it'd be nice to have a backup healer plus he has that sweet sweet bleed.

[No One]

I use ancestor trinkets all the time.

FLG is great. Though I'd mainly use him for pushing the VES out of pos1 rather than trying to heal with him, but a redeem here and there is super nice though. Just give him some +bleed and his damage is suitably bonkers.

[gongher]

Thanks a million

[gongher]

So I did go with VES-JES-FLG-HEL comp and man it worked like a charm. Although I got somehow lucky with not being shuffled at all save for jester who doesn't care about it and the love letter given to vestal who was too busy healing anyway. In fact it was so easy, somehow easier than the crocodilian fight thereafter. Thanks again!

[Snobby Hobo]

Good to hear you beat her. I used three Flagellants and a Plague doctor (three FLG is very odd and really only works in the CC from my experience). The composition isn't very prone to being shuffled at all and FLG deals good damage if bleed applies. Since he also applies a bleed debuff with an admittedly low chance against the countess he synergizes with more Flagellants. Plague doctor for bleed/blight cure and stun when she's flushed (even though stun isn't great in this fight).

You basically rely on bleeding her and having 1 FLG apply his heal over time to cheese death's door. The fight was a slog but she was never in a position to threaten a party wipe. Few death doors and 2/3 hits survived at it, but that's completely reasonable considering they're FLGs.

I've also seen people cheese her with 4x Graverobber or MAA dodge comps, which were by far the most convincing victories I've seen.

[gongher]

Wait you can put more than one flagellant in a team? Sure sounds interesting but I don't think I'd be able to pull it out properly, not when I'm struggling with a single flg lol I still have no idea how to play him.
And yeah I saw that GR MAA dodge thing too. Too bad I'm too much of a coward to go into a fight without a healer.

[Snobby Hobo]

Originally posted by gongher:

Wait you can put more than one flagellant in a team? Sure sounds interesting but I don't think I'd be able to pull it out properly, not when I'm struggling with a single flg lol I still have no idea how to play him.
And yeah I saw that GR MAA dodge thing too. Too bad I'm too much of a coward to go into a fight without a healer.

That's a good point. This was the first time I beat the game when the DLC first came out. I think I might've used a mod for it.

[No One]

The correct way to play FLG is normally. Hit things until they die. He does lots of damage (except in the ruins) and is fast as hell.
With VES-JES-FLG-HEL the loudout is punish-sorrow-endure-(redeem/exsanguinate). Once most things are dead he helps the JES control stress.

Outside of bosses you can get away with not using redeem or exsanguinate. He usually won't get low enough to use them anyway before the VES heals him up. Even if he does get crit twice in a row he just heals everyone and then the VES solves the problem.

[ZarahNeander]

Last time I killed her was with lep-fla-ves-maa. The key to make this work is 3x heavy boots. Doesnt make shuffle imposible, but highly unlikely. Crit-buffed leper (maa spams command) melts her in like 4 rounds

[gongher]

Originally posted by No One:

The correct way to play FLG is normally. Hit things until they die. He does lots of damage (except in the ruins) and is fast as hell.
With VES-JES-FLG-HEL the loudout is punish-sorrow-endure-(redeem/exsanguinate). Once most things are dead he helps the JES control stress.

Outside of bosses you can get away with not using redeem or exsanguinate. He usually won't get low enough to use them anyway before the VES heals him up. Even if he does get crit twice in a row he just heals everyone and then the VES solves the problem.

Yeah I always end up using him offensively because he won't even get hit hard enough to use his heals. Oh so you don't use reclaim? It's not much but stopping someone from bleeding out can be really nice methinks.

Originally posted by ZarahNeander:

Last time I killed her was with lep-fla-ves-maa. The key to make this work is 3x heavy boots. Doesnt make shuffle imposible, but highly unlikely. Crit-buffed leper (maa spams command) melts her in like 4 rounds

Wow bringing a leper to this fight sounds like a challenge itself. A hero weak against shuffle and incredibly low bleed resistance? Ouch. Didn't know shuffle could be denied with move resistance, but come to think of it it only makes sense lol, I thought it had something to do with debuff. Isn't it hard to hit through all of her heavy prot though? But then again it's leper we're talking about...

[No One]

I only use reclaim if I'm being deliberately gimmicky; HM-PD-CRU-FLG. And for preference I'll use the flesh's heart so he can't bleed himself at all.

In theory I could run like punish-sorrow-reclaim-exsanguinate and deliberately bleed myself to trigger exsanguinate, but then I don't have endure, and raw damage ultimately just isn't that valuable. Also deliberately bleeding myself has killed two FLGs so far, and I'd prefer not to get to three.

Thinking about it I could maybe try exsanguinate-sorrow-reclaim-endure/redeem? Damage to the front is particularly non-valuable and having to use a combo to access it might be okay.

[Snobby Hobo]

Originally posted by No One:

The correct way to play FLG is normally. Hit things until they die. He does lots of damage (except in the ruins) and is fast as hell.
With VES-JES-FLG-HEL the loudout is punish-sorrow-endure-(redeem/exsanguinate). Once most things are dead he helps the JES control stress.

Outside of bosses you can get away with not using redeem or exsanguinate. He usually won't get low enough to use them anyway before the VES heals him up. Even if he does get crit twice in a row he just heals everyone and then the VES solves the problem.

He deals a lot of damage against non priority targets, because the vast majority of what he deals is through bleed. I 100% agree with the sentiment though, a lot of people on eg Reddit seem to think he needs to be played at the brink of dying at all times, but honestly it's just a gimmick if you aim for consistency.

[Skinny Pete]

I use the regular VES-JES-FLA-HEL team, but I also know where all the wine crates are and can generally get through the fairly hairy dungeon in reasonably good shape in one go. If I had to quit somewhere before meeting the Countess, I might take a shuffle-resistant team. JES and HEL have some anti-shuffle but it's only by moving forward, which has the negative effect of moving FLA out of place. So you might want to consider Reclaim so you have a choice other than wasting a turn moving forward. The only backward moving skill in the team is Jester's Finale, which can only be used once and you probably want to save for, well, an actual finisher.

You might want to substitute SB for JES, for having at least one backward-moving while attacking character, or GR, although she is rather flimsy for a fight this gruesome. Possibly you could sub out SB for HEL, but I really dislike losing Bleed Out, one of the best DOTs to lay on this monstrosity. With a crit it keeps doing damage for 5 rounds, even if HEL is disabled by a Parasite Egg from attacking (remember a Parasite Egg only gestates or hatches on an attack so HEL could then self-buff). So the main substitution in the generic VES-JES-FLA-HEL team is JES. You probably aren't going to be spending much if any time doing stress heals as it is a vicious damage race.

Another option is VES plus any three heroes who have attacks that move them forward, like CRU, or HWM, or SB, and this doesn't inconvenience any other character, since VES actually wants to be moved back. Note that Riposte isn't very useful, so consider it mostly a counter to shuffling.

Also note that unlike most bosses, stun can actually be useful, but only sometimes. Countess has multiple phases and in the weakest, Flushed, has only one attack per round. In this form, a stun can actually be useful. In Bloodlust, she has a wicked four actions and access to her worst damage causing attacks, and a stun is nearly useless, but DOTs become phenomenally useful.

I'll just note, though, that teams that are specially tailored for Countess are pretty terrible in the rest of the incredibly lengthy dungeon, so my general strategy is just use the generic A team of VES/JES/FLA/HEL and leave fancy team design for if you had to abandon late in the dungeon and are very close to the end.

[No One]

FLG deals 7.7 damage to the back row. Not amazing but equal to e.g. a VES.

Only he does it to two targets instead of one. And if something dodges or whatever and manages to live a second turn, it's 11.7 per target, basically identical to a houndmaster. Pair him with a PD and it's absolutely brutal, delivering 40 damage by the start of turn 2, with little chance of retaliation. P.S. DoT damage has way less variance than regular damage. ARB minimum damage is 7, and so is sorrow's. Equal reliability.

I like to run PD-OCC-HM-FLG, which will simply remove the back rows before they can attack, often clearing both in one turn.