How Good is the Jester?

Darkest Dungeon class guides are here! Filthy discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the various DD classes both in general and with the Crimson Court DLC.
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[@rensong5437]

Ahh yes, my favorite class. Can't wait to see filthy tear him apart.

[@haruo20101]

That's exactly what I thought after the Leper video

[@slkjvlkfsvnlsdfhgdght5447]

why is it your favorite? I thought it was bad right off the bat

[@pg-erk3938]

Stress healing + battle ballad works well with leper

[@elim9054]

Small brain: Jester's good because he's the most efficient and fastest stress healer Large brain: Jester's good because he turns all of your damage dealers into semi-consistent stress healers without sacrificing their damage

[@Napstablooky]

@@Consumer0001 Having 1 jester on your team basically negates stress for the most part, generally enemies will focus target a single person on your team and the jester can spam Inspiring Tune so that even if he's in a stress war with the enemy group, slowly over time they'll be doing less and less stress to the target to where the jester can win against multiple targets, while your team gets to fight/buff for free.

[@walkytalky6372]

@@Consumer0001 it's also a joke in the fact that jester boosts crit chance on the team and YOUR crits heal stress

[@slkjvlkfsvnlsdfhgdght5447]

how does it turn your damage dealers into stress healers?

[@Holloweggshell]

@@slkjvlkfsvnlsdfhgdght5447 Battle ballad buffs crit, critting reduces stress

[@slkjvlkfsvnlsdfhgdght5447]

@@Holloweggshell yeah, I figured that out shortly after asking

[@Rubenzism]

He will be laughing still... at the end.

[@MikJ132]

That quote gives me chills every time.

[@Rubenzism]

One man laughing loudly and happily while everyone around him goes mad. The world goes to ruins, what a delight. But when you look into his eyes, you see no fool. No, you see a cold and clever gaze. You see a man, who knows of the vast and empty universe. Knows of the terrible things in it. He offers you his hand. He smirks. It's time to introduce ourself to THEM, don't you think?

[@4rreste409]

I can't hear him

[@Beansahol]

in the end* reeeee

[@funnyjuk]

Can't wait for Filthy's "How Good is the RNG?"

[@meris8486]

I actually didn't know you could remove afflictions by reducing stress to zero then again that's pretty hard to do in my experience

[@meris8486]

k

[@SuperGiga64]

conan263 Or just 1, you can stall the frontline for multiple turns to do it. Take damage if you need to.

[@everinghall8622]

Not if you have a 4 crusader comp.

[@bonogiamboni4830]

The crusader's zealous vigil removes 25 stress from him in normal situations or 40 if he is stressed, and the jester's turn back time another 30 normally or 45 if he's afflicted, so 100-45-40 is only 15 stress remaining which can be removed with the jester's every rose has its thorns, so if the crusader started out at exactly 100 and not more and, most importantly, you get lucky and he doesn't deny treatment, then yeah it's feasible. If you don't have a jester or the afflicted isn't a crusader though it's way harder, maybe impossible.

[@gregorywhatley9659]

You could see the smile on his face when he said "instrumental part - no pun intended"

[@spectator3272]

For the experienced, 0:39

[@TheOnlyFeanor]

You're a good man

[@hughthehandjackman1236]

Thanks for that again

[@imeshaththanayake3143]

Spec tator s

[@GoneZombie]

Something something overconfidence etc.

[@WillYum97]

I see so many people forgetting what Filthy has been mentioning in every video, right at the beginning: he's EXPLICITLY said that these character guide videos are applied to the highest difficulty level which is NO LIGHT Bloodmoon (NG+) difficulty. Sure your fun dodge party of Jesters and Grave Robbers might work in Radiant or whatever but they simply won't in NG+ difficultly. Don't even get me started on Lepers. And I get it, Filthys taking this from a statistical perspective not necessarily a 'fun' one but that doesn't mean you can't do your own thing, he's just explaining why certain things aren't effective in Min-Max game play. He's a bloody psychology major, it's in his nature lol

[@bumptiousbuffoon7824]

I think he has a masters degree in it

[@ettorevolterrani2989]

A high dodge strategy can work in Ng+ (stygian or whatever it's called) difficulty without any problems so long you keep the lights on. Is turning off the torch that kills it. Classes are balanced, red hook wasn't thinking about creating a class that is crap, and the classes are balaced so long u play with lights on. Playing all the time lights off is not what you are "supposed" to be doing, if monsters don't get the huge accuracy buff no light provides, high dodje will make big impact, even on stygian difficulty. Playing with lights off all the time breakes the ballance of hp/dodje the creators intended to be there. Unfortunatly playing on the "Hardest" setting almost kills off completely the dodje machanic making some classes weaker then others. Point is, dodje characters are good even in NG+ if u use light, not just in radiant as u claim

[@goldenson4566]

It’s the fact that he’s thinking about the HARDEST possibility instead of playing normal hard/blood moon/Stygian. Even though most people don’t play lightless OR Stygian/blood moon/hard on their first run (where they’d need to know this information) he’s trying to give insight on the hardest version even though the game plays totally different on those modes.

[@vBurnedWins]

CoolMintz it’s certainly a helpful guide

[@jd2792]

@@ettorevolterrani2989 it dosen't matter the point was to have a guide with the worst possible scenario meaning no lights

[@mattrocde]

I don't even play this game, but I find these videos so entertaining and informative either way.

[@toprak3479]

Go play.

[@gabrote42]

Now finale is VERY different. Check wiki

[@mertdurgun6056]

Jester before the nerf was really good.He is still my favorite class though becasue of its style.

[@arbikiuszelemelek3347]

I have problems Running him in my party as it usually is static and Jester would put people out of position.

[@RopeDrink]

Then why in gods name are you plopping high-mobility characters into a static comp in the first place? Use a static alternative (for Jester that would be a HMaster), or dump those filthy Lepers and get more mobility.

[@toprak3479]

Jester... strong? mmm...maybe. Fun? OH YES

[@paulomachado7328]

Arbikiusz Elemelek Then don't run a static party with him...

[@StinkyPoopyMcFartFace]

@@RopeDrink 3 years late but best stress heal is quad leper heal + stress heal

[@crocketlawnchair259]

This guy is definitely my favorite character in both personality and design. Sad Clown characters are always appealing to me.

[@infernalone666]

harvest is also good against the flesh, and it can sometimes help you get through to enemies that are guarded or hit the ones guarding them. also, the high priority targets are only dangerous so long as they remain in ranks 3 and 4. get even one of them to the front, and they can only use a weak attack that's supposed to move them back - unless the corpses are gone. also, with color of madness, harvest and slice off boost finale

[@tenfivesmiths7802]

Battle Ballad is brutal, it stacks

[@CybernatonEvolution]

Nice series. I would like to see another series for new plebs who are just playing the game on radiant/light or whatever. Another idea would be to explain how each character fares in multiple stages of the game or difficulties; I know FilthyRobot briefly addressed it, but I would like to see more emphasis or a low-mid level guide for NG on medium difficulty. And yeah I learned the hard way that Jester can get erased fast once you run into mobs with high accuracy or if you run out of torches.

[@TheNoodleGod9001]

@19:26 I'm pretty sure the turn back time is entirely designed -to- cure afflictions, a lot like the crusader's vigil

[@FanOWater]

Great point on the fight cycle. I had not thought about slowing down to heal while in battle and then finish off the front ranks. Thanks

[@IRrebel3]

Only part that is difficult is how you have to keep 3 alive and stunning them to negate dps will kill em eventually (very few classes can stun without damage) I personally tend to stay in combat for 100+ rounds due to killing over and over untill rng bless with 3 weak enemies and heal hp + stress to full before finishing them off...

[@deltawarrior2323]

jester is my second fav character (first is highwayman,big suprise) i love his design ,his choice of weapons ,his lines ,his attacks ,he might not be the best character for damage, offensive gameplay etc ,but god does he look cool!

[@louislam369]

Have to thank you almost two years later. This video really helps a lot.

[@tacocatVV]

I dont tend to agree with your focus on recovering by abusing frontline stuns but i completely see your point with them, having watched all your class vids so far and playing with that strat myself before. Abusing frontline isn't CRUCIAL even during Stygian: a good example of this is the PD-OCC-ABO-HEL team being absolutely unstoppable on Cove, being able to do multiple long champions in a row before the PD slowly gets stressed on a quest basis until needing recovery due to the nature of her attacks. (low stress heals due to nades having low crit, kills arent attributed to her on DOTs so she gets no kill-stress heal) They don't need abusing any "recovery" segment of the fight, albeit they still need to focus on backline first, with huge focus on stunning to eliminate treats as you iron swan and eldritch spaghetti things on the back. Solo has incredible meme power by the way. There's a reason they capped it to 2 uses per fight; As long as you weren't playing on no-light you could play with holding -54ACC on everyone then complimenting to that with dodge or more debuffs, but even then it was just a fun very action-heavy strat that could still get your jester memed on once in a while.

[@steeltrap3800]

Interesting to hear your comments about why the nerf is significant and how having to build to finale does not make sense within the way the game's battles go. I wonder if the devs are doing what they did with the introduction of corpses, namely trying to alter the way battles work so there's no one relatively easy (in terms of method), markedly superior way of fighting. They stated the corpses were to stop simply speccing to murder the first 1-2 positions thereby bringing forward the 3-4 position enemies as they'd not intended the skills/characters/battles to be reduced to that. If the devs still pop into your stream, be very interested to know if you've had a chance to discuss these things with them. Same goes for your commentary on trinkets where clearly some just make no sense v others (I've been watching your initial CC series, and enjoying it). Cheers

[@M0torsagmannen]

my interpretation of the nerf leads to this as well. they meant for finale to be a finishing move, but instead it was used primarily as a opener to quick kill 1 target then slowly creep forward. and the jester nerf heavily suggest you build up finale damage over time to unleash it once, which is probably in line with the devs original intent

[@CidGuerreiro1234]

I think this change would be ok if his bleeding attacks would also increase Finale's damage. Then Finale would be useful for bosses and other strong enemies with high PROT.

[@danisuperedition]

I feel like the devs have transformed finale into a very....lacking move, Yes. it does stupid damage once you get it up high, but what is the point? sure, you can dirk stab your way forward and then finale....or you could just get another High damage class to kill a target in a couple of turns.... Finale is a skill that doesnt have much pay off other than high damage right now (And it takes long to get there, and by that point, you'll have what, two front row enemies with half health remaining?) its a finisher, with little payoff. and too much windup.

[@anhquan07071994]

1 simple way to solve it is to reward a stress relief or item reward (but I prefer stress for immersion) when the Finale ends the battle. It could serve his role as a stress healer and easier to implement the skill without people misusing it.

[@forgiveness7959]

I take Battle Ballad over finale so I can cast it on my vestal to give her turn order priority as well as a large increased chance to crit heal.

[@Althemor]

I feel like DD could use some abilities other than the Abomination's transform that can be used freely, e.g. the Battle Balad. Give it one use per battle and it could work. The cost of the ability would then be having it on the bar at all.

[@DankstaTV]

Does the judgment on Battle Ballad not take into account the fact that it buffs your entire party? One cast of it up front means three rounds of going first, not missing, and critting a bunch, for everyone.

[@vincentxu2151]

Great series! Very inspiring, looking forward to your more episodes on other classes.

[@cako666]

Imagine a fight where a crusader is fighting a fish guy, and the jester is just shredding the fuck off that lute to avoid it crusader from going mad

[@cholohd32]

Hehe, just came back to the game ater years & ran into my first Siren Boss. The shuffeling of chars begun & i was thinking i was doomed because char kept being moved out of position thus couldnt use certain skills etc. But then i realised that the whole "finale" 3 steps forward & 3 steps back really came in handy, especially as when you move 1 char then at least 1 other also gets send back into a effective spot.

[@jayteegamble]

I have to disagree that 2 Dirk stabs are as good as Solo + Finale. You've got two 100% damage attacks at 95ACC vs one 200% damage attack at 150ACC AND a -14ACC debuff that hits every enemy.

[@ilovecody7514]

EXACTLY

[@bonogiamboni4830]

Also 1 the finale has a good chance to crit and 2, aesthetics.

[@kentknightofcaelin4537]

And the dirk stabs move the jester to a position he won't be comfortable in.

[@anafu-sankanashi8933]

I recently finished my first darkest dungeon campaign with a crit Finale from a jester I had kept alive from the start. God bless you Neot, you nyphomaniacal deviant.

[@juanalfaro1855]

My only critique is of the stats analysis. He calls anything below average really bad but I think if its within one standard deviation it's perfectly normal. In that sense, a lot of the characters he looks at are criticized for having average stats while their strong points are a bit glossed over

[@ZeRedSpy]

I agree with Filthy about the Finale changes, it is kind of awful now. The patented jester strategy of yore used to be that you would open up the fight with Finale and then either stab or sing depending on the party's needs. This worked nicely because you could reliably explode the person in rank 3 at the start of the fight (and you would almost always land it because of the Jester's speed). Now, it seems bad.

[@sushicowboy7998]

Will you do a video reviewing the best trinkets available to each of the classes?

[@HeadGotShanked]

Instead of spamming inspiring tune, I spam battle ballad. This is a more proactive approach to stress healing, by stacking crit buffs you not only heal stress but kill faster, making the "recovery" stage of fights unnecessary in many cases. Why just react to stress with stress healing? Prevent stress and and heal what little you get with the best group buff skill in the game!

[@FilthyRobot]

+Head Got Shanked! That's so much less effective . Critical heals are for 4 stress with a chance for multiple characters to be relieved. You're spending crucial early rounds with a character who can do third rank dmg consistently to buff critical chance in the later round. You're doing less overall stress healing, slower damage in the crucial rounds, are unable to choose who gets the stress heal, and are reducing your available recovery rounds because.... crits. You're of course welcome to do what you like but that is decidedly less optimal.

[@HeadGotShanked]

I would like to preface this by saying I love your channel. I discovered your "How Good is the..." serious recently and have been devouring it. I have incorporated tons of advice from this series into my own play style. We differ in a few places on the jester, though. (Though you helped me make up my mind on the changes to finale, so we aren't even all that far apart). I'm not here to hawk my channel, but there I have documented my success using this method. It's less effective as a stress heal, but how much stress healing do you need in a normal combat? I don't see what's optimal about having one character spend all his time mopping up damage or buffing stress resist when the jester is capable of taking a much more proactive role in combat. If you happen to take a large amount of stress, then sometimes I take your approach, but looking at the jester as merely a stress healer is a waste. Respectfully, it always makes me laugh when people argue that high crit doesn't work as stress control because you can't control who gets the stress heal, but they actually call the houndmaster a stress healer. You clearly haven't tried what I suggest. When you do, you will be surprised how effective having everybody's crit stacked high is at keeping stress levels very low. Last night I got halfway through a level 5 quest with everybody between 0 and 10 stress. I had to run away and abandon the quest when the shambler put a dot on my jester, but... still... stress was low.

[@ZeRedSpy]

Don't forget that high light players get more dodge than Darkness runs due to the effects of Radiant Light (7.5 on Bloodmoon). This helps somewhat with dodge, but I do agree that enemy accuracy is a huge problem when considering that Dodge is inconsistent.

[@MistyDW41]

Would love to see an update on these videos. Curious if the dodge mechanic has gotten better.

[@adamarcher3240]

I too would like him to do another video series on this. I think that'd be awesome.

[@kentknightofcaelin4537]

I don't think filthy plays DD anymore

[@MrHollywood1717]

WOW. I just realized youre abbreviating damage over time. ive watched hundreds of your play through videos and thought you were saying dot because its a little green/red dot hahahaaha

[@paulomachado7328]

MrHollywood1717 Took you a while 😛

[@Fluxje]

DD must be your first RPG encounter ever?

[@CacciTunez]

@@Fluxje That's what I thought up until reading this comment lol, I've played plenty of rpgs, mostly things like final fantasy- just never heard most of those abbreviated terms

[@CrowsRevenge1]

@@CacciTunez dot Is a very standard term in RPG and MMO style of games.

[@RagdollRalph]

I would love a video about which of the modded/added characters are the best in a balancing, gameplay sense :)

[@karolkwiecjasz9356]

I think the finale is a good plan B in case you get scrabled and the jester ends up in front. Expecially if you have a team with a good defence class, like Man-at-Arms who you want to cover your DPS or healer, depending on enemy ability to hit diffrent ranks. Harvest can be good if you're running a mainly effect team. Having area abilities with bleed or poision are pretty effective if evryone stacks area dmg. I sometimes have a knight, jester and plague doctor AoE the enemy ranks and ussually the 2 in the middle go down first turn. It's serviceable if you're having high stats.

[@pg-erk3938]

Would love to see an updated jester version

[@selingermann5599]

Buddy, thanks for the great advice!I used to be a huge fan of the 'solo' attack but oh how wrong I was! You opened my eyes, I love you XD

[@anphoneron]

FlippyRobot SkippyRobot - 0:39

[@tommyaki]

Thanks for excellent informative videos 👍

[@AdeptusForge]

My entire problem with dodge is that you consider it only in a vacuum. Even with those enemies with 135 accuracy, you can get up to and even exceed 116 dodge with dedicated dodge team comps while still dealing dependable damage, making enemies' chances of hitting you basically nothing. It basically turns even extremely difficult content into a cakewalk, as a dodged attack is more effective than a stun in the longer term and in the short term. A dodged attack does not mean you are dealing reduced damage due to using a stun skill, meaning you get more effectiveness out of your actions in the short term. In addition, dodged attacks do not cause the stun-resistance debuff, which affects all enemies(not even gonna bring up enemies which are resistant or outright immune to stun), and can occur multiple times in a row without fail or consequence. The only reason I believe that you do not like dodge is that it is not entirely consistent unless you have the proper setup. Stun is very easy to build a team around, as is damage, as is speed, Dodge is very strange to build a composition around due to how few dodge skills buff to high enough amounts for it to see good use. However, I find that is as reliable(approximate 90% chance to miss on all enemies in the game, including un-stunnable enemies), if not much more reliable, than using a stun build since stun builds not only rely on 2 rolls(often less than 90% chance to hit on most enemies, and even lower than that chance to stun), but also reduce action economy through their mere use. TL;DR - Dodge is not the best build out there, but it BY FAR deserves more credit than you grant it.

[@elim9054]

Battle Ballad is an amazing buff for helping damage-dealers take down high-priority targets imho. It lets you move faster and crit more which are both great, but more importantly it makes everyone more accurate, which makes RNG less of a factor when you're trying to hit the enemies that matter. For the "race then heal" kind of fights I basically spam it until I'm ready to kill the last high-priority enemy, solo -> finale, then stress heal while keeping the remaining enemies under control.

[@dremorakynval1269]

0:39 to skip the disclaimer

[@herman1francis]

he's a bleeder, he's a stress reliever.

[@baonkang5990]

That's sounds like song lyrics

[@herman1francis]

@@baonkang5990 indeed it is a reference to a song. Can you guess which song?

[@torvus249]

@@herman1francis The Joker, Steve Miller

[@aaronlent7970]

Hey FilthyRobot, love your channel, and I'm thrilled to see a challenge run on the current patch. One question, do you think a no stress healing run is possible if in addition it was a dark run? I've always assumed it was not, but you've upheaved my suppositions before, so I'd like to know what you think. I'd also like to invite the rest of the community to share their options on this question. Good Hunting m8!

[@WillYum97]

Aaron Lent I don't think a no stress no light run will work unless you're really lucky with certain things. You'll run out of gold and in turn weeks before getting to the final DDs

[@ArvelDreth]

Just mark your tank so people won't be attacking the jester as much to begin with. The Man-At-Arms is great for this.

[@dondonnysson4973]

Nice video Kripp!

[@SuperXicor]

don't skip the kripp :)

[@lolmanmagee2785]

I feel like solo - finale would be good if your jester is stress healing the whole fight or buffing the whole fight while in pos 3 due to the movement being better than dirk stab

[@PhuongNguyen-od6jq]

Not a class I would use often but his looks and banjo are awesome

[@gerudoman]

i'm probably missing something obvious, as I'm new to this game, but how does Mr. Robot arrive at the numbers for resistances in the table? some multiplication with their prot skill perhaps? since ive noticed the resistances on the character panel are different than the spreadsheet i've been confused.

[@Nemilime]

420gerudo man69 The resistance numbers in his spreadsheet is when the character is max lvl.

[@SuicideDeathCommando]

Awesome guide, commenting for the algorithm

[@jodyrappin]

I would say battle ballad is worth using when in the light. Accuracy buffs are great, mostly in champion dungeons.

[@joed2871]

Just gonna say, battle ballad totally gets used in boss battles

[@elim9054]

Yeah Battle Ballad is actually amazing. Buffs to almost every stat that you care about for DPS? On the whole party? AND you can stack it and use it as many times as you want in a fight?! Move is busted.

[@ihave2cows]

You know what this game needs? Enemies in position 1-2 that have a grievous wounds effect (a debuff that reduces the effects of healing)

[@arta1924]

The giant enemy crab and a few others applie a % healing reduction debuff so it's effectively there.

[@PromisedTriggeringExcalibait]

The turn back time works as you said btw.

[@ash_dies_alone1940]

Dirk stab used to be an alternative to get to rank 1 for the finale than solo with it's forward 3 but since it has forward 1 now it's not

[@triplecastsleep1924]

I wouldn't shit on solo too bad. To use Finale you need to be in the very first position. Solo takes you there, slaps an acc debuff on all the enemies (which is nice), give you a BIG speed boost and buffs the damage of finale. The speed boost means you can get out of the front rank much faster - likely before anyone else because even if you have just your base speed of 9, solo gives you 16 and you can throw on a good speed boost trinket to push that even higher - which means your low HP jester isn't sitting in the most dangerous position. I probably would take something over solo, like slice off or harvest, but if you want to run a finale Jester then solo suddenly becomes really good. A great place to do this would be pretty much any boss fight or miniboss fight. Also, Solo's animation is badass.

[@Allesseher97]

could one play around the whole going before your healer thing by having your healer go last in a round, after all the enemys acted, so that you can heal the character that would otherwise potentially have to take a death's door check?

[@llBrChsllxZic0xPx]

Biter Wires I play like that.I put legendary trinket on my vestal that gives +30% healing and -3speed. It's been working well for me. Also go with a helion so you can still stun the frontline

[@MortyrSC2]

Yup. Giving negative SPD trinkets to your healer and even keeping red quirks like Slowdraw is an old strategy.

[@Anawsomename1]

im doing the opposite, i stack a ton of speed on my vestal, quick reflexes, the fits and so on. its really strong in the recovery part of the fight, she often gets additional actions over the enemys.

[@pouncebaratheon4178]

Do those Finale buffs last the standard 3 turns or can you just keep building them to a stupidly powerful attack? Just wondering if it's possible in theory to recreate the meet your maker skip with a jester (+PDs) instead of a leper.

[@TheStigma]

Turn back time can be pretty good for what I call "therapy runs". ie. low difficulty missions (but usually with one camping opportunity) mostly designed around destressing people and curing them of diseases and the like. Even a character at 100 stress can go to 0 pretty quick if you use turn back time for -45, then one or two more general destressers, and then simply destress normally with the jester. Can be back to normal in notime. This isn't necessarily so applicable if you have week-limit though as otherwise you probably ought to be more selective about taking missions that will move you towards important milestones ect.

[@eduard60]

You can't miss skill with 90 to hit. (5:23) I'm pretty sure they didn't change that

[@MrCh0o]

While deep inside I usually would agree with your point on why the dodge sucks, one of the main reasons I still couldn't make myself give up on it simply because dodge doesn't just deny the damage, but also any effects. The exact accuracy high lvl enemies have kinda changes perspective, and going all-in on the dodge with aoe and powerful single-target dodge would either still fail or just be worse than stunning-killing.

[@furroy]

i love these in depth guides on the char classes. could you do one on all the reasons you would use the different types of provisions?

[@WeedSmoker69]

did they ever buff dodge?

[@ThePkerhide]

One of your rules seems to be that everything you say is applicable to the lower difficulties since you're doing it in the hardest way possible. However, if you don't play on the hardest difficulty, monsters are less accurate and even less accurate if you play with the light on. Doesn't this make dodge more useful?

[@gerudoman]

ThePkerhide it does. however this still does not make dodge a reliable stat, or something worth building around (besides dodge tanking). unlucky things like crit strings can still happen, and such unlucky events seem to be the most common way to lose heroes. filthy's style of play (postponing the end of fights with dodge *tanking* or stunning to heal and stress heal) still seems much safer/more effective on easier difficulties than banking on an unreliable stat on a low hp hero. i like the jester, but the recent nerf has made him even more of a liability for me.

[@SuperJobo]

In general it probably would, yeah! But there are still some enemies who I guess have ridiculously high hit chance. The crocodile thing in the courtyard, for example. I play on normal difficulty. Had the jester equipped with +15 dodge camouflage cloak too for 50 dodge. He got hit by every single attack from the croc anyhow, even after I used the MaA dodge/speed buff a couple times to experiment.

[@ThePkerhide]

RyoKyo Good point!

[@mdtexeira]

It's just a matter of risk to reward. If you're happy to spend the money on village stress heals and send out perhaps less than optimal parties since some of your people are in the tavern/cloister, then you can discount quite a bit of this. If you want to have access to as many of your best tools for each situation, then caution is generally preferable. As it stands, both the risks and rewards are unreal, since this is a game. If you imagine that it was actually you in a dungeon like this, and I bet you'd want to go the cautious route.

[@OnlyZunkin]

Yes, dodge is much better with the lights on and at lower difficulty. What makes dodge good is it completely avoids the damage and stress and thus you need not heal it. What makes dodge bad is characters with high dodge tend to have low hp and dodge does not scale well with difficulty. In other words as your ramp up the difficulty and turn off the lights dodge does not keep pace with the enemy increase in accuracy which is very bad for a character with low HP. I still like dodge, but as a secondary defensive stat rather than the primary one. It's fun to run the Hound Master or Grave Robber where you can stack dodge with abilities and tank with it for heals, but I always put a big HP boosting trinket on characters with low HP and high dodge, usually the overture box since it boosts both HP and dodge with a single slot. Often that 15% boost to hp is enough to stay off of deaths door after a massive unlucky crit.

[@dylanmika2227]

You gotta make a new version of this with the Jester buff after CoM

[@schmendrake]

don't you dare don't you dare talk about my man like that

[@Garycarlyle]

finale should prob only need one buff and do bonus damage to damaged enemies. then it would make more sense.

[@Eliphas_]

A true Harlequin. Favourite of Cegoracht

[@ciupanezubogdanel]

You also want the harvest ability for the Flesh boss

[@felicianofrontado3134]

WOW... Filthy uses the exact same arrangement I do for Jester, for once we coincide xD !

[@julianeccleshall8397]

it looks like the intension of the nerf is: encourage player to use more of his attacking skill during the battle and stress heal skills when camp. but base on your fighting style, this is a little bit unfavour to you. but in my opinion it is ok, hound master need a similar nerf ...

[@akosvadas7283]

I'm a little bit confused about one of the jester's items, the Bright Tambourine. It says "+20% Stress Healed". Does it only effect the stressheal that the jester recievs? If I remember correctly this item used to improve the jester's stress healing skills on others aswell, but now it doesn't seems so. :\

[@FilthyRobot]

Should be the raw numbers that his stress heal ability does, unsure about the camping, I THINK yes.

[@nemo9540]

A hell of a lot of thought and work has gone into this game, when I bought it I never realised how deep and complex this game was gonna be. A lot of thought and planning have to be done before going in to a dungeon, a hell of a lot more than any other rpg I've ever played in the past.

[@cagdas_demir_albayrak]

Recently i finished the second courtyard boss with a bleed oriented party with jester in one go... Stress heal is still viable but stalling rules making things very difficult...

[@nfoquest5738]

I like to start jester on rank one, and use finale as an opener, then stress heal for the rest of the battle

[@bonogiamboni4830]

Not much of a finale then, is it?

[@MegaGameCore]

Jester, Vastal, ?, Crusader. How to destroy Ruins. (0 Stress, Nice Heals, Crusader reks)

[@NanoT_T]

The Jester and Grave Robber are my favorite classes. Jester buffing the team and healing stress and that one time huge damage with finale. Such a fun class.

[@EDGE94]

Sometimes I wonder, what the devs were thinking, when they completely ignore their designed concept of race&recovery by buffing stuff that doesnt help on this and nerfing stuff that greatly helped... Seems to me the balancing guys just never have played a round and just base decisions on pure stats.

[@Ohtrin]

And how many turns do this buffs on finale keep around? (1 Battle or 3 turns? I really think it at least should have the same treatment as the highwayman buff skill)

[@Mystibump]

The finale damage buff lasts 7 rounds on every ability that buffs it, so it is REALLY designed to be used late, late, LATE into the fight.

[@nasounicornis5834]

I actually love jester, wish he was better after the nerfs

[@user-rr8si7lx7p]

This is why I still play build 16707 because after build 17000 the game changed too much

[@Otori6386]

Would the jester be viable for the final boss in the attempt to nuke past the insta deaths and kill in one shot. The +final damage lasts 7 rounds so with 2 solo and 5 other that's +200% on final damage (250 including the skills +50%) add on 100% from 3 plague doctor Emboldening Vapours (does this stack or only last 1 turn?) thats 10 base damage *3.5*2 = 70 damage, crit for 105. add on postive quirks and skills (and more Emboldening Vapours if thats possible) and thats easy one shot range no?

[@mac19999x]

Can you somehow mark when the disclaimer ends and the knowledge begins? Its not a huge inconvenience but every single time i find myself skipping it

[@ChillerKarnickel]

The only time I see myself using the Jester ist never.

[@firefie2]

advise for all who like bloodmoon dont try a DoT team for everything itll go south harder then the civil war

[@Mushroom-Stew]

It is 45 stress heal for turn back time

[@Garl_Vinland]

Would Filthy literally quit the game when the devs inevitably nerf his one trick strategy of delaying a fight for heals?

[@Maurice040684]

No, I don't think so... but he might quit, when all classes got nerfed so hard, that the Leper becomes good. ;D

[@cachotognax3600]

The problem is that the trick tactic is kinda necessary, if they remove it they should buff something else to compensate, and maybe the new meta could be more interesting.

[@Garl_Vinland]

I mean, I know the developers, and they REALLY hate exploits. and the way Filthy describes his strategY, it really does seem like it wasn't intended to be in the game. Maybe they'll make it so you can only stress heal once per battle, or stunning becomes impossible once 50% of the enemies have been killed.

[@Nathrezim0]

How can you say you know the devs when the things you say they could do are completely against everything they said they want to do with the game? They said on every Q&A that they want there to be times when the player just gets completely destroyed by RNG, but they also don't want to just take away stuff from players in a fight just to create artificial difficulty. Stress healing once per battle... How can you even assume that that's in ANY way something they would do. The stunning thing is also just... unthinkable and completely irrational. They're trying to make a game where the player is always, atleast in theory, the underdog at the start of any fight, but can work through that and feel accomplished when winning the fight. Those changes would completely go against that and ruin the game

[@frogdoin]

Garl Vinland In opinion, that just breaks the game. I've been playing the game since the beginning and I can tell you Flithy's strategy is pretty much the same as it was back then. Kill the back and recover at the end.

[@klausx6265]

Mate, with the 20 point difference in enemy accuracy between full light and full dark, making dodge work at full dark is a lost cause, I agree, but that's because you chose to play with an artificial restriction, not because the dodge/hp trade-off is bad game design. Dodge-stacking is a viable strategy, but that includes keeping the light at 76+.

[@FilthyRobot]

It's almost as if I address this at the start of each of these videos....

[@TheProfessi0nal115]

I'm fairly inexperienced, but one thing I like is to have a primary healer(Vestal) and a secondary healer like a Plague Doctor or a Crusader or something similar. I want my Vestal to be as slow as possible, since that means she can either heal if I need to or she can stun something for the next round. I don't focus on her being a damage dealer, so it's not a big deal if she is super weak in DPS.

[@tomtom34b]

Damn, i have my finger close to trigger to launch the game, because it is sooooo good, or at least promising, but i want to listen to your guides as well, because they are SOOOOOOO useful... Awesome content!

[@moldycarrot9267]

Isn't it a bit wierd how they put three stresshealers in the game and one of them is like.. 5 times better than the other two? I mean, you can compare Vestal and Cultist heals with oneanother, but nothing beats Jester stress heals.

[@elim9054]

His stress healing alone should make him god tier. He's pretty much the only character who can reliably heal an affliction on another party member. That's nuts.

[@toprak3479]

Finale was better when its name made no sense a.k.a when you could put Jester in position 1 and start with Finale, turning the fight into a 4v3 from the getgo.

[@anorexicshrooms]

I've stated this before but I still think that the crusader is the better stress healer. First off the jester has to be in position 3/4 to have any stress healing and since you need a vestal/occultist this means you cannot run a plague doctor who is one of the best classes in the game. Secondly the jester is prone to dying, super low hp, with no defensive skills means that one crit can easily spell doom for your jester. The crusader is incredibly hardy and can tank multiple crits if you itemize him well. Thirdly the jester is completely one dimensional. With the finale nerf, it's hardly worth using meaning all he can do is stress heal. His average damage is 10 with the finale modifier it becomes 15 on average, the crusader has an average damage of 14.5. So why would you use a class that is less durable, is more limiting and is less versatile? The only thing the jester has going for it is that he stress heals for 5 more and reduces future stress by 20% now this is very substantial don't get me wrong but what you get instead on the crusader is a stun, multiple heals including a stress heal that can crit and keep people off deaths door. better damage, higher durability and occupying a less valuable party slot.

[@alfarabi73]

I tend to agree with you; but this is no resounding endorsement of the Crusader on my part. I don't like either of them; it's just that I find the Crusader more usable than the Jester. Of course, the KZbinr has stated his comments are applicable primarily to the hardest difficulty settings; so in that context, perhaps the greater Stress heal from the Jester is necessary.

[@RopeDrink]

Bleed meta. Mobility. Far superior stress healing. Mega stress-clear camping for desperation moments, like wiping the slate clean after random Shambler or any crit-tastic shuffle madness.

[@toprak3479]

Vestal can keep group healing in position 2. You could go PD - Vestal - X - Jester theoretically.

[@randomguy8461]

Occultist actually supes viable in 2nd slot

[@TheWonkster]

90 is such a fucking stupid number either way. 10% is a massive chance to miss on your side, no matter what you do you have a 1 in 10 chance of doing NOTHING with your turn. On the other hand, 10% chance to be hit sounds okay, but it makes no sense that you have to do so much work building dodge and then end up getting hit anyway because red hook decided that it was okay for you to ALWAYS have a chance of being deleted by an errant crit that shouldn't have hit you in the first place

[@Jakub-ev5so]

That's not how it works at all. The attack's accuracy gets substracted by the target's dodge, and gets a hidden +5ACC, so if you attack a 10 dodge target with a 105 accuracy move that's a guaranteed hit, but if they have 11 dodge that's 105 - 11 = 94, 94 + 5 = 99, one percent chance to miss.

[@Elementalos]

I'm not gonna lie the way they gutted Finale really made me lose a lot of the faith I had in red hook. Combined with some of the other changes and some of the general design principles it just leaves me wondering.

[@TwiCaCaX]

how was it before?

[@Procrastinater]

wait, finale +50% is that +50% damage mod or overall +50% damage? because the latter would mean a 75% increase, making it 125% not 100%. basically, is say the base damage was 10, then finale was 15. Now say you used Two stress heals and dirk stabbed Three times. You have a 100% damage mod on Your finale. sf that bonus added to the finale bonus, making it a 150% bonus instead of a 50% bonus, or is it a double damage bonus ontop of the existing 50% bonus? in the former that would make the base damage 10 finale damage 15 do 10 aditional damage for a damage of 25. if the latter is true then you double the finale damage and get 30. which one is it?

[@bumptiousbuffoon7824]

It's damage modifier

[@adibkhan285]

100 + 50 = 150. It's just a damage modifier, so it just stacks on top.

[@KoboldCommando]

Another issue with the Solo-Finale combo vs. just stabbing twice is that you're lumping all your damage onto one attack. Even with the accuracy buff, the game has a very low ultimate accuracy cap, and there's a 10% chance that all that damage goes right down the toilet. With two attacks, even if they don't manage to quite reach the accuracy cap chances are you'll deal at least half the damage, which is a whole lot better than none.