What's your best team for the Cove?

[Fast Johnny]

So, I'm slogging through the dungeons and am finding that the Cove seems to present a bit of a tough go. Any advice for an all star team that specializes in taking out ugly half human fish?

[Weird_Butt62]

My usual party consists of Occultist, Grave Robber, Hellion, Man At Arms. The MaA is good for stuns, the Hellion can attack the front three (with it bleeds equipped), the GR can blight any position, and the Occultist good for heals, debuffs and back rwo damage.

But on occasions I'll sub the GR for a Plague Doctor (she has better blight and her heal cures bleed) or the Arbalest. But no matter what you do the Cove is a hard dungeon. The fish warriors do OP damage, the shaman is a pain in the rear, the zombie dude can really mess things up and dont' get me started on Mr Crabs.

[Panfilo]

Plague Doctor, Occultist, Abomination, and Hellion. PD stuns n blights, Occultist abyssal artillery, Abomination stuns, blights or goes beastmode as needed, Hellion Iron Swans, hacks, stuns. Lots of stun, lots of attacks fishmen are vulnerable against. Very useful against high PROT targets since you can pile a lot of blight on them.

[DelightfullyMAD]

Originally posted by jerjare:

Plague Doctor, Occultist, Abomination, and Hellion. PD stuns n blights, Occultist abyssal artillery, Abomination stuns, blights or goes beastmode as needed, Hellion Iron Swans, hacks, stuns. Lots of stun, lots of attacks fishmen are vulnerable against. Very useful against high PROT targets since you can pile a lot of blight on them.

I run a similar crew, though I tend to swap out the Hellion for the Crusader simply because I prefer his far greater flexibility (mainly as a secondary healer/stress manager).

Another group I favor is, in order from row 4 to row 1: Occultist, Crusader, Man-at-Arms, Jester. The Jester's main gimmick in this set up is to come in using the Quickdraw charm and some other damage buffing trinket in order to hopefully strike down one of the enemies right off the bat with a crit. With the righ collection of quirks and trinkets, he is usually rocking a 30-40% crit chance on the first round. 9 times out of 10 he goes first and uses finale, which then suffles him to the back and places all the other characters in their ideal spots, at which point he spends the rest of the fight buffing the party and dealing with stress.

My Occultist uses abyssal artillery to hopefully take out the back lines, and weakening curse to deal with the heavy hitters, healing as neccessary.

My Crusader plays leapfrog with the MaA, also striking the back row with holy lance, while the MaA stuns. The Crusader also serves as a supporting healer for the Occultist and a support stress manager for the jester, making him the lynchpin of the party. This set up works quite well for me.

[willsama974]

PD-A-A-A
PD-GR-H-A

[Hound Archon]

Vestal - Plague Doctor (with Battlefield Medicine to heal Arterial Pinch) and plenty of plague bombs - Grave Robber (for dodge tanking, even more blight and throwing knives at the shamans in the back) - Master at Arms (for Bolster).

Take trinkets with +DODGE, buff +DODGE at camp and spam Bolster (which also adds +DODGE), and the groupers won't be able to land those devastating crits of theirs.

Battles will take a while to finish, though, so be mindful of the Shambler and the Collector.

[EldritchJesus]

I like PD-Occultist-Occultist-MAA

[Justice]

Vestal with big heal increasing trinkets: Tome of holy healing, Ancestor's Scroll, Junia's Head

Houndmaster or Bounty hunter marks. They reduce enemy protection and set heroes with benefit of mark damage

Fishmen have low stun resistance (the humanoid looking ones at least), take advantage of this


Ethereal Crucifix This unique trinket is very good for this area!
+25%dmg against eldrich
+30% Bleed resistance,
-20%max hp

It's better use this trinket on tanky damage dealing character or use trinket with Hp boosting trinket to counter hp downside
The bleed resistance is basically guranteed you will never get bleed. Counters Giant Crab Arterial pinch completely

[Smuckem]

I tend to take inspiration from "Temperance Union": PD-ABOM-ABOM-CRU gives you the massive Blight you need to take down the hi-PROT enemies, all kinds of Stun to take advantage of (I consider Cove to be the most Stun-vulnerable region), CRU is there to slap down Thralls & Ghasts, there's enough healing spread throughout the party that you don't have to rely on a main healer to save you, enough Stress healing to get you by unless everyone is packing +Stress trinkets or Quirks, PD's support helps you stave off all of the Bleed and stray Disease found from foes. It's also a slower-paced team, so it forces you to play carefully, which is essential for this game. Make sure everyone is equipped with Stun trinkets to accentuate what will neuter everyone other than the Ghast.

[Skinny Pete]

I like OCC/PD/♥♥♥/SB. The team is practically made of blight, it can lay the smackdown on the back two rows. It's one of the few places OCC's normally useless ceiling spaghetti is actually pretty good, especially with one (or preferably more) buffs against Eldritch thrown on to the buff it already has. Combine it with PD's Plague Grenade, and use ♥♥♥'s Stun to get one of the blighted stunned for a round so it dies without doing anything. SB can hit anything and pierce armor on those miserable crabs, and hit the Ghast in the back row.

Everyone will usually be dying, and if the Ghast gets up front, the team is usually fast enough to finish him before his signature move while everyone else dies of DOTs.

Or ♥♥♥ can even lay his blight on something (a usually pretty weak skill), as when PD's blight and his double up, they're actually pretty brutal. OCC can probably handle the pretty limited incoming damage, and PD can handle bleeds/blights. PD/♥♥♥ can take care of themselves pretty well, leaving SB the only character really in need of healing support.

You can really bring any solid team, though. Even a bleed team or a pure damage team or if, for whatever reason you want to, a marking team, although it's kind of pointless here.

[No One]

HM-OCC-♥♥♥-MAA.
Trinkets: damage - heal/acc - stunbot - damage/speed
Don't forget bandages and herbs. Use whistle on the crabs. Throw rampart when it seems good even though you don't have any +stun, it's fine. If someone does take a ton of damage you can throw defender while you wait for the OCC to roll higher than 2, though if you play well that won't be necessary.

I also like PD-OCC-HM-FLG or swap FLG for SBR. I call it backline cleave since everyone can AOE row 3+4. Blinding gas works well with DOTs.

[Team Orchid]

AQ-PD-♥♥♥-CRU, AQ comes with Candle of Life and Master's Essence to get fortifying vapors up to 6HP a pop, PD comes with her medicine for those 3 points of healing, and the CRU runs both healing skills. With everyone able to run healing and three people running blight it's very easy to stay full or nearly full on HP and stress as you melt all the feesh. Also cash.

[Iron Ben]

Heavy blight teams for the Cove/Ruins.

Heavy bleed teams for the Warrens/Weld/Crimson Court.

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by Dixon Sider:

Originally posted by Iron Ben:

Heavy blight teams for the Cove/Ruins.

Heavy bleed teams for the Warrens/Weld/Crimson Court.



:cozyhitman2:

Weald can be either element. I find marking is at it's best in weald

True, because of giants. Still not good enough to use as a main strategy, though.

[Kaerius]

OCC-PD-♥♥♥-HE. (I don't have Shield Breaker DLC) has been my go-to. Hellion is probably the weakest in the team, but YAWP+Blinding Gas is full enemy team stun.

[Skinny Pete]

I honestly actually use Leper in Cove in front sometimes. I usually base my A team for a dungeon type on the Champion monster classes since they're the most dangerous, and generally, this rules out Leper because of his inability to hit the back row.

However, Cove is unique in having a Champion level monster (Squiffy Ghast) that actually politely comes up to the front row for his beating before doing his main attack, generally at the end of round 1, usually before Leper's turn.

Leper just kills him for his trouble.

Leper is also one of the few heroes who cause such a ridiculous amount of damage that the PROT on those dumb crabs barely matters. And he's one of the few heroes with enough AP to just ignore the bleed until PD gets around to patching him up.

I usually use SB because just bypassing PROT is easier than overpowering it with raw damage, and just being able to hit the back is better than waiting for something to come up front, but it's the only dungeon where the champ monster is completely vulnerable to LEP.

(For comparison, in the Weald he's useless against Virago and the Giant can shuffle him to uselessness, in Ruins, while he's okay against the giant skelly, he's useless against Bone Bearer, and in Warrens, while again, he's okay against the giant pig, even his tanky HP pool is completely worthless against Skiver and he's the one character who DOESN'T get hit by the Cripple Them attack, so he's almost an anti-tank.)