Vestal Guide: Darkest Dungeon

[@marekdroppan7389]

One KZbinr said that vestals are really good so i took to my heart and now i have full harem of vestals in my roster.

[@HiDdeNSQuiDZGaming]

Well they are good but a whole roster may be excessive, BUT if it works it works!

[@marekdroppan7389]

@@HiDdeNSQuiDZGaming its not full roster but i have atleast 9 of them and i almost never go on quest without atleast one vestal. BTW in early game my roster was mostly made up of vestals and i didn't even relise until mid game.

[@celebrim1]

While the Vestals are the most efficient healers in the game, they are probably the least efficient harem in the game. Just saying.

[@celebrim1]

The Vestal is the best healer in the game, with secondary roles of stunning and damage dealing. The combination is hard to beat, as she can help control the foes in the early rounds and then helps you recover in the late rounds. And if things go really wrong, she probably the only character in the game that can help a party recover. As such, she feels almost obligatory in any party line up. I run position 3 vestal at least twice as often as the next most common character, and tend to have 3-4 in the roster. She can just allow you to run what you want without worrying about heals. The only other character in the game that can work as a primary healer alone is the occultist, and the drop off is pretty large. If you don't run a vestal, then you start having to worry about including multiple healers in the party or including a lineup of self-healers. But if you are running a line up of multiple secondary healers (crusader, arbalest, plague doctor) or strong self-healers (houndmaster, leper, abomination), then you are probably running 4 skills in the party around healing, which is an opportunity cost compared to just running two skills for healing and a vestal AND you still probably have less overall healing ability on top of that. Which means the biggest problem with the Vestal is that I get kind of bored with her, as there is usually almost no reason to mix it up beyond the rare line up where she is moved to position 4 to allow a character that excels in position 3 only. It's hard to think of a time you wouldn't run a Vestal except maybe in a mark heavy line up (houndmaster, bounty hunter, and one of arbalest, graverobber, or highwayman) where having your primary healer as the occultist would allow your healer to spend early rounds marking... and even that just feels like creativity for the sake of it.

[@HumanTurnip]

Good video! Quick correction on the ‘mortality’ debuff == affliction. It actually heals 50% if party members have death’s door debuffs. This way it can actually massively benefit characters that have barely made their way through the last battle. Almost always use vestal as support healer w/ stun utility but it is so much fun to dedicate at least one vestal to be a no-fucks-given warrior nun!

[@HiDdeNSQuiDZGaming]

Thank you for that!

[@HiDdeNSQuiDZGaming]

As usual, a few extra things: The cove gameplay has no sound due to technical issues when I recorded :(, so you are not going to crazy nor do I want to continue that trend in the future. Second, I say the word equivilate, which is not a real word. Other than that, I believe everything is else is good! Finally, I know some of you have used a melee vestal, but let me know what you think of it and if you take it outside of the Ruins dungeon.

[@krzysztofgrudzien9313]

I tried this melee vestal in the Cove, was doing almost as good as in the Ruins (yet notably more struggling). Party composition (left ro right): Plague Doctor - Grave Robber - Vestal - Shieldbreaker (exactly the one I told you before, angry ladies). Also I tried another combo employing melee vestal in the Weald: Occultist - Houndmaster - Vestal - Bounty Hunter. This one is really, really effective, here we have multiple stuns, 3 mark-placers and 2 mark-beneficients, also 2 very good healers and very decent melee+ranged damage dealers. I just give my bounty hunter Crime Lords' Molars and Vvulf's trinket, make enemy giant bleeding, stunned and marked then watch some mind blowing crits. This team also have a set of great camping skills (scouting, stress-management, ACC increase, anti-ambush) and perfect traps-disarming characters. Its cool for regular runs as well as boss fights. To be fair, there is no actual tank here, heroes have low to medium HP, on the other hand HM can use his guard ability if needed. I think I might try this one out in the Endless Harvest mode since HM has also in-combat stress-decreasing skill. What do you think?

[@HiDdeNSQuiDZGaming]

@@krzysztofgrudzien9313 First off, I am glad you are having success with the melee vestal. Second, regarding the endless harvest, it depends on how far you want to go. I think that party would be great at getting to the sleeper and killing it, but recovering from that may be too difficult of a hardship. The stress reduction on the houndmaster is nice, but it may not be reliable enough to decrease the single target stress damage down. A couple of missed cry havocs, could result in excessive use, thus no extra damage is going out.

[@krzysztofgrudzien9313]

@@HiDdeNSQuiDZGaming I understand your concerns. My strategy with party like this is always to target the strongest stress-dealer first, problem might arise when there are multiple stress dealers.... In case of Sleeper I hope to mark and finish him with crits by BH and HM in 4 or less rounds. Speaking of it: both parties I mentioned above are high on crit chance which has impact on stress management too!

[@liambrady993]

I usually combo Junia's head with a book of sanity or snake oil to offset the stress gain. Or for a full healer Vestal Junia's Head with Scared Scroll

[@HiDdeNSQuiDZGaming]

That is her strongest potential and it's just hard to out pace those level of heals!

[@celebrim1]

Junia's Head and Book of Sanity (or Aria Box if you can get it) is amazing. Massive healing and no downside.

[@nfoquest5738]

I always build a battle vestal but rarely use her as such. Although ive gotten really good results from her in rank 2 with the right trinkets.

[@skyisclear8461]

Very useful as ever. I did once run two Vestals and two Crusaders in one party in the Ruins and it went well. But really I think the Vestal's second position powers only just about give you the option of putting her there, an option you shouldn't be tempted into taking. Her position 3 and 4 abilities are so much better and there are so many characters with much better position 2 abilities.

[@HiDdeNSQuiDZGaming]

I completely agree with the statement. The vestal feels like an average second position hero, but it is viable if you prefer 3rd and 4th row damage dealers.

[@celebrim1]

I really think Hand of Light and possibly Illumination need to be buffed just to allow more variety of play. I mean, obviously, the Vestal is in some sense already probably the strongest class in the game (or at least, the most necessary). But occasionally I'd like to run her position 2 to free up position 3 & 4, and right now there is just not enough reason to do so. If Hand of Light had say 10 more accuracy, -40% damage rather than -50%, and did say 50% bonus damage versus undead, then it might be enough to make a position 2 Vestal viable. I think it's telling that you could buff the skill that much, and it still probably wouldn't lure you to move to position 1-2 very often because of the 3 very good skills you'd be losing access to. Likewise, it really feels like illumination needs something as well. There isn't a really decent de-stealth-er in the game, because to make running a de-stealth-er viable it really needs to do something for you even when it isn't removing stealth. So either Illumination needs to be just massively better as a de-stealth-er like doing AOE to ranks 3-4, or else it needs to be massively buffed in situations where no opponent is stealth-ed like perhaps doing 50% damage or marking the target.

[@michaelcoffey1991]

Nice :) great to see this guide finally get done as I knew this was the best healer was good to learn and absorb all this stuff up :)

[@eggoman1377]

Man I just love this content. Thanks for helping me with so much

[@HiDdeNSQuiDZGaming]

You are welcome!

[@arvetis]

"Mortality" has another T in it.

[@SilentDragonite149]

Don't worry, I think I read that wrong my first time reading it, too. It's supposed to read "Mortality debuffs." which refers to the "Death's Door Recovery" status.

[@HiDdeNSQuiDZGaming]

Yeah. Morality and Mortality too close... thank you for watching!

[@SilentDragonite149]

@@HiDdeNSQuiDZGaming No problem. October got me in the mood to look into this again.

[@emelyathesimpleton125]

Great video, man, really informative. Is there a way to know beforehand if you character is religious or not? I know the occultist and Hellion are non-religious, probably not the abomination either, but who else??

[@HiDdeNSQuiDZGaming]

I believe the crusader, flagellant, Leper and vestal are the only religious people.

[@emelyathesimpleton125]

@@HiDdeNSQuiDZGaming Okay, thanks man. I thought Plague doctors, grave robbers and highwaymen were religious too. Glad I found out otherwise!

[@butterwantschoclate9364]

What is that weird hero named Ballard at the bottom of your roster?

[@HiDdeNSQuiDZGaming]

Once you complete one level of the darkest dungeon, things start getting weird in terms of visuals. Heroes will get weird images over them until you hover over them or select them. It is story flavor not a class, but thank you for asking!

[@butterwantschoclate9364]

HiDdeN SQuiDZ Gaming I had seen the images before, but I didn’t know they could just stay there.

[@SilentDragonite149]

@@butterwantschoclate9364 It's supposed to symbolize that...you've seen some stuff.

[@butterwantschoclate9364]

Hiryu the Dragonite yeah this comment was several months ago and I have beaten the dd many times. It’s such a good game

[@arvetis]

There's no X in "especially"

[@HiDdeNSQuiDZGaming]

Thank you.

[@arvetis]

@@HiDdeNSQuiDZGaming I apologize for being a dick on the Internet.

[@HiDdeNSQuiDZGaming]

You do you.

[@arvetis]

stop saying "individual" like a cop