How are you guys using the occultist?

[Cake for Mumm-Ra]

Reading through some of the posts on this forum I see that he's a favorite. A comment I see a lot is that he replaces the Vestal when you get more comfortable with the game. What? They're totally different classes (though I recognize his heal spell is pretty good). I like the Vestal, personally, and I get a lot more done with her than I ever have with an Occultist. I've usually got one or two in my roster and I bring them a long to help heal, but they always seem to dissapoint me.

So what skills are you guys using? Which dungeons is he best in (cuz it seems like he's built strictly for the cove)? Which classes does he synergize well with?

thx

[Weird_Butt62]

For me the occultist's healing is secondary to his debuff abilities. His vulnerability hex marks the target, making him a good combo with the bounty hunter or the arbalist.

And his weakening curse makes him a real good thing to have against bosses, he was key to my attack on the Swine God. Its also good for taking the edge of nasty double size enemies: ghouls, bone generals, swinetaurs and its a near neccesity against the corrupt giant and the treecranch smackdown.

I mostly use his attacks to soften up enemies and have my DPS chars take them out. Although his Eldritch Pull is good for getting stress dealers out of the back row and up front.

[algothi]

Daemons Pull is a great way to bring those Crossbow or Courtier Skeletons up to a non-threating spot, and allows you to eat them up with your front liners.

Weakening Curse will turn those big nasties that deal out hurt and take several turns to kill into big-not-so-nasties. Think of it as guarranteed preventitative healing.

Vulnerability Curse is great in a team with one or more Mark Abusers (BH, Arb), and the Occultists speed really helps in getting that mark up for them to use on round one. I tend to not use this one much anymore.

Sacrifical Stab and Abyssal Artillery can really lay the hurt down on Eldritch, and Stab has high crit range which also tends to releive a fair amount of stress.

My Typical loadout is Sacrificial Stab, Wyrd Reconstructions, Weakening Curse and Daemons Pull. I use Cursed Insence for my trinket, plus whatever else helps with the current run. As for camp skills, I favor the +5 speed and +20% damage for one ally.

[Lu]

His attacks are mediocre against anything that isn't Eldritch (and even then there are better options). As for his Curse and Hex, using those feels like a wasted turn to me.

The biggest problem for me though is he's such a terrible healer compared to the Vestal, who's super OP now that she has really good trinkets to buff healing and also has the possibility to get big crits even on the AoE heal. Before that, the classes were fairly balanced.

[Cake for Mumm-Ra]

These are super helpful comments.

Marma, you may be like me and have trouble seeing the benifit of the debuffs. I don't use them often either, but it seems like this is where the Occultist shines.

Now that I think of it, I fought a Hag last night and it was the easiest boss I've faced yet. I did have an Occultist in the back rank and used a hex to start off the fight. (I was a little uh.. under the influence so I guess I'd forgotten about that until now)

[Giga]

He's not meant to be used as a main healer, more as utility. In some cases, you can (helps if you have the Very Rare Cleansing Crystal, as it lowers the move's bleed chance), but make sure RNG is on your side. I have 2 parties that run an Occultist.

First one is Vestal, Occultist, Houndmaster, and Bountyhunter. Moveset I run with him is Weakening Curse, Vulnerability Hex, Wyrd Reconstruction, and Daemon's Pull. Trinkets I use are Move Amulet and Cursed Incense (Of course, Move Amulet is sort of redundant with Cursed Incense after the Cove patch, but it still works or you can use another trinket instead). First round I either, mark an enemy with Vulnerability Hex and let my two front liners decimate the newly marked target, or would Weakening Curse a "Big Dude/Swine King/Prophet" to soften their upcoming attacks. If needed (such as an Acolyte), I will use Daemon's Pull to bring them forward and give them no chance to attack (as their stress attack SUCKS). If a teamember gets down to around 25% hp, I will go for a gamble and use Wyrd Reconstruction. It has usually worked, but there were some close-calls. I go to the Weald and Warrens with this team.

Second team is a Cove themed group: Plauge Doctor, Occultist, Hellion, and Man-at-Arms. Moves are Sacrificial Stab, Abyssal Artillery, Wyrd Reconstruction, and Daemon's Pull (You can replace Daemon's Pull with Weakening Curse because both moves are equally useful especially since most common enemies in the Cove hit hard). Trinkets I run are Cleansing Crystal and Eldrich Killing Incense (if not in the Cove, I use enemy specific rings or Sacrifical Cauldron). He's generally a hard hitter now, so you can either Sacrificial Stab a frontliner for a crit, in lower levels, possibly a kill or use Abyssal Artillery to do strong damage to the backliners. Daemon's Pull has the same reasoning (even more so since a Call of the Deep and Barnicle Barrieer on a Grouper is downright terrifying). It's a general weakness in my team that I am running only 1 huge healer who can fail, but I can sometimes cheese heals if the enemies' backline is gone. Just simply Barbaric Yalp, heal with heal with WR and use battle field medicine. It also helps that my MaA will mostly use Retribution and Defender on the Hellion so I will have only one person to worry about healing. Again, mainly use them for Cove, but they are great in the other areas too.

[brigkline]

I've taken to using him in the 2nd slot of the party, utilizing his stun primarily. It comes down to speed mostly, the camping ability that grants +5 speed, combined with his base speed of eight means that you can land stuns before the enemy acts with more reliability. The damage on his stun can be misleading as it has a high crit rating with a (relatively) high damage modifier.

Cruaders in this role lose a trinket slot for a Paralyzer's Crest as well as the second for a feather crystal (unless you are ok with acting after enemy turns). Vestals take a hit to their healing, which kind of diminishes their role as a healer. Bounty hunters with flashbang do zero damage, and shuffle their targets, which in my exp is more harm than good.

Occultist just seems to be the most reliable stunner, but he is squishy, so I tend to run him in Vestal-Plague-Occultist-Crusader parties, ussually in the ruins. might try a rank 3 man at arms once I get one to leveled op tho.

[lirust]

I like using two occultists at once. This way, you can combat the unreliable healing, stack AoEs on the back rows, and weaken the heck out of anything. It is also nice that his crits help keep party stress down.

[Lu]

Originally posted by Cake for Žižek:

Marma, you may be like me and have trouble seeing the benifit of the debuffs. I don't use them often either, but it seems like this is where the Occultist shines.

The problem I have with debuffs is damage is king in this game.

Why have an Occultist debuff an enemy when a different class can kill them in one hit and thus neutralize the threat entirely?

If you're not doing damage, then stunning is preferable to a debuff in most situations as it can prevent certain enemies from even having a turn before the fight is over.

Even in boss fights, I would rather have pure damage and bleeds from my front three heroes and reliable heals from a Vestal in the back than waste time weakening the bosses attacks.

[Red Bat]

It's not the heal, it's the fact that healing becomes less useful anyway in harder quests. He's got a nice albeit unreliable burst heal for tricky situations, and the rest of his kit is pretty solid. On the other hand, relying on Vestal for healing leaves you with a character who otherwise had somewhat bad damage and needs to constantly cast multiple heals in order to outpace the damage of even just 2 enemies, sometimes even a single enemy. Vestals still good, just not as good as she is in earlier quests.

[ZiN]

Works best, with mark abusers: Arbalist BH and Houndmaster.

Vestal is indeed a better healer[imgur.com], because the occultist's heal is rng based, thus unreliable. You will get pitiful heals, but complete heals[imgur.com] as well. Nevertheless i use Wyrd Recounstruction fairly often.

Weakening Curse curse is super in a few (boss type) fights, otherwise useless.

Vulnerability Hex is very good if you have any mark user in the team, otherwise useless.

Pull and Stab are decent, nothing special, other than good crit on stab and good damage on eldritch. His Abyssal abilities are also decent, but situational.

Overall the Occultist a solid high-mid tier hero.

[h0b0king]

The Occultist is both faster and more versitile then the Vestal, with a faster team of heroes, capable of downing an enemy or two before they have attack or a good understanding of how not to get heroes especially injured the Occultist's heal is more than sufficent. Where he's best is debuffing and pulling. The Occultist's damage debuff can make Swinetaurs and such utterly harmless. His pull attack is pretty useful as well, and makes fights with bandits in particular much much easier.

[Reedo]

I only like the Okkultist since i stopped seeing him as replacement of the vestal. As a third-row damage-dealer and de-buffer, with abyssal artillery, sacrificial stab, Pull and the damage debuff, I find him to be most useful, especially in the weald, due to that massive bonus vs. eldritch :)

[Generic_Soda]

Arbalest, Occultist, Houndmaster, Bounty Hunter

Occultist marks targets, pulls backrow targets, and heals. The Bounty Hunter and Arbalest kill the marked targets, and the Houndmaster marks more targets, bleeds if necessary, and cleans up in general. The Arbalest's bandages can help the Occultist's heal as well.

[nuther]

The Occultist has used his attack debuff on the Swine and my party has taken virtually no damage after 4 rounds. I even hit Wilbur a couple times just for laughs. A total shut down.

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/393295805974037661/E30760B571D72BB936834204A26CA8DA7866AB88/

[Undetritus]

I use him as a healer with wyrd reconstruction and as a debuffer/back row crusher. I only run him as Debuff/Wyrd/Pull/artillery though, I just don't like him in spot 2 because there are so many better choices. Back in hound and corpse the demonic pot thing and the cleansing crystal made for a really good position 3 build where he would never bleed on heal and wouldn't roll zeros as far as I recall... I haven't got that trinket combo since then, so I haven't been able to test with the new, less lucky heals.

Lately I've been using Eldritch killing incense + Eldritch slayers ring, and with weapons maxed for his tier he can reliably one hit pelagic shamans and spear fishers, and his crits are outrageous and probably better with sacrificial stab, as it has the highest natural crit rate in the game. I always put him in position 3, and he's pretty good as Arbalest/Occultist/Houndmaster/Bounty Hunter, for maximum mark bonuses. He'll fit anywhere that needs back row cover and damage lowering with Curse though.

Honestly Curse+Wyrd are what makes him so useful. It's hard to ♥♥♥♥ up.