Great Party Compositions, Combos, etc

[Cymoric]

I've gone back several pages of threads and am surprised not to see any threads to discuss party make-up that people like using.

I'd like to hear the sort of parties people enjoy in what positions (or rotating positions).

Any favorite classes? multiple same class combinations? or classes you find to be good for specific tasks?

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Basic party - Plague Doctor, Occultist, Highwayman, Crusader

I find PD to be vastly superior from the back line to Gravedigger, with the ability to pretty much blight kill the enemy back line in 2 rounds. Can also blight the front line if they are tough enemies. Can heal and cure blight or bleed if I have large stacks of these worth getting rid of, and can either take backline stun skill or Emboldening Vapors other damage dealing heroes to get through a front line or waste my turn.

Occultist feels like the "best" healer, as he can do around double the heal of Vestal, who just can't seem to keep up with heavy dmg to the party. Occ can also hit both of the enemy backline or pull (though I rarely take this skill) or stun (don't tend to take this either). His hexes can take bosses or large, tough creatures to -70% dmg or worse or lock down enemies with high dodge. In dire situations if Occ fails to get someone off death's door the Crusader can usually back him up later in the round with a sure heal. Or PD can save them with a small heal and bleed/blight remove.

Highwayman - great for repositioning if pushed by enemy team, great dmg from front row vs front row, can advance while striking at enemy back line or fire at enemy row 3. And he's got great crit or bleed options depending on what you're facing.

I often trade out Highwayman for another hero depending what's available in town though.

Crusader - solid front line tank that can heal another member nearly as well as Vestal after like 1? guild upgrade (4-4 vs vestal somewhere around 4-6?). Has a very useful Stun and can stack Stun chance trinkets to stun even stun resistant enemies. Can also hit hard from the front line or hit 2 targets. And can reposition and do heavy damage with lance. Fulfills a lot of roles including secondary healer and stunner.

Murdertank party - Plague Doctor, Occultist, Crusader, Leper

Leper seems to work well in this composition as PD can emboldening vapors him, making him stack huge dmg faster or making him even stronger when taking the time to also buff himself. Occ and Crusader can buy time with heals and stuns to keep the party alive while Leper and PD create a horrifying death machine.

Leper can both tank and hit hard vs bosses, though this may not be as efficient at killing quickly as classes with reach like Hellion. He also has the ability to reduce stress while adding huge protection buffs to himself. I don't tend to take his heal in this composition as he's already got two healers behind him and I'm using 2 skill slots for attack skills and 2 for self buffs.

Mark party - Arbalest, Occultist, Houndmaster, Bounty Hunter
or Occultist, Houndmaster, Bounty Hunter, ????????

Played around a few times with a Mark party. Seems to work pretty well but feels slow due to the need to first mark then attack and many enemies may resist Hound Master bleed. Most enemies take only 2 or at most 3 solid attacks to kill so spending a hero's turn to Mark them seems no faster than using 2 attacks instead of 1 mark and 1 attack.

However, I'm sure this would probably take down bosses pretty efficiently, as Occultist can drop boss dmg and dodge chance, Hound Master can give them negative protection, and the whole party can do lots of bonus damage to marked targets. At the same time Occultist and Arbalest can heal and Hound Master can destress the party.

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Classes I like...

Crusader - can hit hard, hit both frontline targets, stun, heal, and move forward while attacking if caught out of position. The only problem I have is deciding which of these 5 good skills to drop. Fulfills a host of important roles nearly any other party composition that needs shoring up.

Hellion - a front line hero that can hit any place in the enemy line and can clear her own blight and bleed while self-buffing. She is surprisingly useful, despite many of her skills debuffing her. Has a stun as well.

Hound Master - can hit anywhere in the enemy line or bleed all of the enemy at once. Can mark AND lower protection on a strong target! Has a great party destress skill that can often drop 30+ total stress in a single turn.

Occultist - fantastic heals, debuffs, can mark, can hit both backline, can pull...synnergizes well with the also very strong PD heal/anti-bleed. Bad heal roll usually negated by good use of secondary healer like PD or Crusader.

PD - just a beast with multiple great synnergies with other classes. kills enemy backline quickly and efficiently. Downside - often kills with blight so doesn't get the destress for killing an enemy. But killing via blight can save you turns to do other things while the enemy waits for their turn to die before acting...things like heal your party or remove bleed/blight or focus a different target or self-buff, etc.

Can also cure diseases at camp for "free" and has insane Blight resistance allowing him to chance Curio interactions that Blight heroes without suffering blight.

Highwayman - very mobile, solid damage, can hit most enemy positions. Downside, no stun, can overkill enemies in the back line that are already blighted or bled wasting more damage than is necessary, not an amazing frontline tank in theory.

Classes I don't like so much...

Grave Robber - dmg to backline is weaker than PD. Lunge takes her forward 2 spots putting her somewhere in the frontline, and her back skill only moves her 1 back while doing no dmg. She is so low damage that skills like Pick to the Face or Daggers feel subpar, while toxin trickery only works on herself and doesn't heal to save her from Death's Door. Seemingly able to stack a lot of Dodge, this doesn't seem to actually have huge effect in fights, instead delaying the fight and allowing the enemy to act more.

Her role can be done better imho with a PD or Highwayman.

Jester - has a variety of skills that all seem to require he move to a new position. I generally fight using Harvest or Slice-off, then if I've taken Finale, I need to move to the front with Solo, which does no dmg, and often is a wasted anti-party debuff with most of th enemy already dead. Then Finale for high dmg and you are debuffed for the rest of the fight meaning you probably just want to Battle Balad or Inspiring Tune. Problem is he doesn't do a lot of damage fast with Harvest/Slice, wastes another turn with Solo, and then debuffs himself dramatically with Finale, making his damage output rather slow and subpar. He also hits the middle of the enemy group instead of the front or back, making him often hit half the targets you wanted him to hit. His bleed dmg is rather low compared to PD blight dmg (and against blight resistant enemies PD has huge bonus trinkets that still allow him to blight).

His roles seem to be done better by other heroes. Hound Master does more destress and can bleed while doing things Jester can't. PD does more dot dmg. Highwayman does more damage more flexibly in more positions while also having bleed options. Hellion can hit anywhere and bleeds while tanking and self-buffing and bleed/blight clearing instead of self-debuffing.

Could be a decent class if you carefully planned your position rotations and had no pulls or or surprised party shuffles...but meh...

Vestal - has several heal skills, but her best attributes are the ability to get multiple heroes off of death's door at once and a low damage stun. Unfortunately, since she doesn't heal a single target much better than Crusader and generally worse than Occultist she will allow your party to reach death's door more often. Seems like she could be solid vs a boss with anti-DD and Hand of Light, but she just don't do much of anything else.

Master-at-Arms - not saying this is a bad hero, I just haven't found him all that fun or amazing to use. He's got Rampart for stun and the Defender/Retribution combo, but his buffs/debuffs otherwise (3 of his skills) seem rather unimpressive.

His Very Rare shield gives a great protection bonus, but requires you to be in the back row. You can't use Crush, Rampart, Bellow or Retribution from the back row, so you have to either spend a turn moving forward to do damage in combat or via Retribution or have another party member move to the back row. Either way, back line seems to be an odd place for a tank to sit just to be only capable of shielding one member and minor buffs. Off the top of my head I think only Jester and Grave Robber can move to the back row with skills? And they are both subpar classes imho. Jester has to spend 1 turn doing no dmg to get to the front row then a second doing Finale to the back, while Robber has to spend at least 2 turns moving back and doing 0 dmg Stuns.

[Ninth Hour]

Man-At-Arms is great- not as a damage dealer but as a buffer. Keep in mind that both Command and Bolster affect ALL party members, making these skills more powerful than their descriptions may suggest. If you already have high dodge, via trinkets or quirks, just one or two castings of Bolster make it very hard for the enemies to land hits. You end up taking less stress, as everyone dodges a lot of attacks from the back row (from Bone Courtiers, Hags, etc) . Also, you end up attacking enemies more often than they can attack you, due to your heightened speed (at highest level, each cast of Bolster adds 9 Dodge and 5 speed- to EVERYONE, including the MAA himself). And these bonuses stack.

In addition, MAA's camping skills are simply stellar. He can add 10 Acc, 20% damage, and 3% crit chance to himself and another party member via Instruction and Weapons Practice. He can also buff his own dodge by 12 and every other character's dodge by 10. AND all of these skills are cheap enough that you can use them ALL in one camping session if you are so inclined. It is not unusual for many characters to reach 70+ Dodge if you use the camping buff + dodge trinkets + Bolster a few times in combat. You pretty much dodge every other blow.

Rampart is just a nice bonus to have, especially with the appropriate shield. Being able to stun anything, dodge anything, and improve the survivability of everyone else is not to be underestimated.

I almost never use the basic Crush attack unless I have a good chance of killing the target in one hit. I also don't use Retribution- after it was nerfed, it became only situationally useful at best.

Because of the big boons they grant to survivability, the MAA sees a place in most of my parties , I deploy the following most often in the Weald and Warrens:

Arbalist-Occultist (for debuff skills and marking ability primarily)-MAA- Bounty Hunter

Jester (for stress heal and battle ballad)-Occultist-MAA-Bounty Hunter or Hellion

Houndmaster (especially in Warrens)- Occultist-MAA-Bounty Hunter or Hellion or Leper

Houndmaster-Occultist-Crusader (I have one who has Weald and Warrens tactician)- MAA. In this case, the MAA and Crusader rotate positions with Rampart and Holy Lance- e.g once the Crusader has used Holy Lance, the MAA uses Rampart to push Crusader back to position 2 to "reload" the latter's Holy Lance, so that he can attack the back line again as needed.


If I don't use the MAA, I like:

Arbalist- Occultist- Houndmaster- Bounty Hunter (Occultist marks targets, everyone else brings the damage. Houndmaster marks if target has high PROT. Arbalist is backup healer).

Occultist-Hellion-Hellion or Leper-Hellion (with Iron Swan to hit position 4. All Hellions have "If it Bleeds" to hit positions 2 and 3)

Vestal-Hellion-Hellion or Leper-Hellion
Vestal-Occultist-Hellion or Leper-Hellion
Occultist-Highwayman-Hellion-Hellion
Vestal-Highwayman-Hellion-Hellion

I may put Jester in 4th position if anyone needs stress healing. He is so effective that I do not have to do stress healing in town anymore. If I'm determined to have a stress-free run, I might deploy:

Jes-Occ-Crus-Crus. Both Crusaders have Battle Heal, Holy Lance (for back-row smiting), and Inspiring Cry.

In the Ruins, the following are almost always my go-to parties:

Vestal- Plague Doctor-Crusader-Crusader
Vestal-PD-Crus-MAA
PD-Occ-Crus-Crus
PD-Occ-Crus-MAA

[abcismasta]

Personal favorite is Arbalist-Occultist-Hellion-MAA. It doesn't heal as well as a pair of vestals, but the raw damage plus the damage debuff from occultist is fantastic.

Edit: Of course the Hellion can be replaced by a bounty hunter for marked damage, but eh, the hellion doesn't need marked damage

[brain]

Vestal - Plague Doctor - Crusader - Crusader

Hands down the best group setup I've come across over 70 hours of playtime and all the bosses killed and all classes leveled to six.

Contrary to your experience the Vestal is enough to keep the whole group at full health. Maybe you're missing her +Heal trinkets? With those trinkets her single target heal keeps up with the Occultist's heal. You need to take the variance and the occasional Bleed damage into account when comparing the two. The heals plus her ability to reliably stun make her a very strong 3/4 position.

The Plague Doctor you're already a fan of, so no need to sway you there.

Two Crusaders are just sick. You can chain their Holy Lance attack, which deals very good damage and hits the back row. They can stun, they can heal, they keep your whole team at zero stress and they hit hard while also being tanky as ♥♥♥♥. To me they're the perfect mix of damage, resilience and support for the front row. The skill load outs I use is Smite + Holy Lance + Inspiring Cry for both of them and one gets the stun while the other gets the heal.

Using this party you'll also never need to use any sort of stress relief or disease treatment buildings nor do you need to rotate groups. From level zero to six in one sitting.

AND you get a party name: the Inquisition :D

[smilink]

I almost always use the Heathens: Jester - Occultist - Grave Robber - Hellion.

Hellion is tanky enough to be in rank 1, I use Iron Swan, Wicked Hack, If It Bleeds, and Barbaric Yawp. I don't often use the stun, and start with Iron Swan or If It Bleeds, to make short work of the back rows. I equip 1 tank trinket and 1 damage trinket.

Grave Robber in second rank is the other damage dealer, not the best however. I use her because there is no better character for what I need. She is the best "trap disarmer", have good crits, very mobile, and can focus the back rows better than the Highwayman. Her skills are: Pick to the Face, Lunge, Shadow Fade, Thrown Dagger. I use Thrown Daggers by default, focusing out the back rows as fast as possible. The other 3 skills are for special situations (only 1 enemy remaining, team shuffled, etc.).

Occultist is mainly for his heal. Its enough for me in not too unfortunate cases, to keep the team at +80% HP. The other skills are Daemon's Pull, Weakening Curse, and Sacrifical Stab.

Jester is for the huge stress heal. When not stress-healing, or the enemy is fierce enough, I use the partybuff. If needed, there's the Dirk Stab, or Heroic End.

Although I like adaptivity, I use this party in 99% of time. I simply don't need to be more versatile - I go on dark runs, get more loot than I can carry, no losses. Most of the time heroes have less stress than at the beginning of the mission.

My tactics are to focus the most troublesome foes, and finish them before they can do much harm (this team is pretty quick, so the enemy often starts with 1-2 already dead). I use almost no aoe skills. I favor tactical advantage over "raw power". After the enemy is "crippled", I lenghten the battle to heal up.
Since this team is pretty balanced overall, I can manage every situation.

Oh and all of them have a black-red outfit.