Jester/Strategy

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Overview

The two most common builds for the Jester are the back-rank support build and the front-rank DODGE tank build.

As a back-rank support, Battle Ballad is an extremely strong buff, providing a Focus Ring's worth of stats to the entire party, and Inspiring Tune is powerful enough, even at lower levels, to manage the party's stress. His other skills are flexible depending on the party's needs.

The front-rank DODGE tank build is also extremely strong: Solo is the largest DODGE buff in the game and, combined with self-Mark Mark and the Jester's high base DODGE, can mitigate a great deal of incoming damage. In particular, the Solo-DODGE Jester is highly regarded in the challenge run community and is arguably the most important hero for a no-healing run. The typical DODGE build opens with Solo, then Dirk Stab for a turn or two, then Finale to move the Jester to the back ranks where he can heal stress with Inspiring Tune.

Alternative builds include a mid-rank Bleed Bleed build.

In terms of stats, the Jester has extremely high SPD and DODGE, but relatively low HP and damage. A trinket to increase his HP or PROT (e.g. Sun Cloak) is recommended to help survive large bursts of damage on higher difficulties.

The Jester has high mobility/rank flexibility, with skills that can reposition himself in both directions if necessary. He also functions well in dance parties with Dirk Stab. Because of the speed differential, he pairs well with slower dancers like the Crusader or Man-at-Arms.

One combination commonly used by beginner players is a Jester plus a Vestal, referred to as "Jestal". While Jestal is very strong at healing a party's health and stress, it has low offensive power. Thus it is discouraged to use Jestal after the early game, because killing enemies is a much more effective way to (proactively) prevent stress and damage.

Combat Skills

Dirk Stab

While unimpressive in raw damage, Dirk Stab more than makes up for this in utility, as it provides several other useful effects. Firstly, it can be used from any position to hit almost any enemy, a rarity among melee moves. This provides the move with a lot of flexibility - the Jester will nearly always be able to hit the foe he wants to hit with his dagger, no matter where they happen to be standing in their respective parties.

Secondly, Dirk Stab can bypass enemy Guard Guard. This is one of only two player skills that can do this, the other being the Shieldbreaker's Puncture. This allows the Jester to ignore big, bulky defenders such as the Bone Defender or the Pelagic Guardian, dealing damage to the squishy enemies they guard instead (who are oftentimes a much greater threat to your party). It should be noted that unlike Puncture, Dirk Stab cannot remove Guard, only bypass it. If a more permanent method of removing an enemy's Guard needs to be used, a different strategy will need to be used, such as Stunning the Guarding foe.

Thirdly, Dirk Stab moves the Jester one spot forward in the party. This has many use cases - for one, a Jester lurking in the back of the party can use it to move forward to get in position for a Finale. Additionally, this move enables the Jester to easily reposition should he find himself Surprised or Shuffled. If an ally who prefers to remain in the back ranks suddenly finds themself moved forward, the Jester will often be able to move in front of them with Dirk Stab and help them get back to an optimal position. This movement also allows the Jester to function well in dance-based parties. He can move back and forth easily alongside other Heroes with movement-based skills, such as a Highwayman with Duelist's Advance or a Man-at-Arms with Rampart. Be wary, though - Dirk Stab can also result in the Jester discourteously moving in front of your frontline fighters if used without care, ruining the formation of your party. Make sure all of your heroes still have usable moves even after the Jester moves forward from his Dirk Stab.

Harvest

Harvest deals chip damage against the enemy party's middle two ranks and deals a good amount of Bleed to them. While the overall damage output of this move is quite good, using it in most hallway battles is sometimes suboptimal. This is because a) the damage takes a significant amount of time to actually take effect, and more importantly b) it spreads the damage across multiple enemies. In Darkest Dungeon, parties should generally be focused on targeting down one enemy at a time rather than attacking multiple foes at once. Thus, other moves should be considered before using including Harvest in the Jester's moveset.

As with other multi-hitting moves, Harvest does occupy a useful niche in being able to kill a weakened enemy at low HP while also gaining value by chipping away at another enemy.

Finale

A highly accurate attack that deals a large amount of damage to a single enemy. However, it can only be used once per battle, and inflicts severe self-debuffs when used. There are two major common uses of Finale:

  • Killing bosses. Because the skill receives buffs the from all the Jester's other skills, it can be used late in a boss battle to deliver a killing blow.
  • Repositioning. This is a central part of the DODGE tank build. After the most dangerous enemies have been eliminated, the Jester can use Finale to return to the back ranks and become a stress healer.

Finale was much more powerful in earlier versions of Darkest Dungeon, leading to a number of builds that involved using it on turn 1 or 2 to eliminate an enemy. However, the skill has received a number of nerfs since then, and it is no longer recommended to do this.

Solo

The single largest DODGE buff in the game and the core of the Solo DODGE build. Both the skill and build are extremely powerful and reliable, and crucial for certain extreme challenge runs like no healing blood moon.[1] Major strengths include:

  • The buff duration lasts 4 rounds, 1 round longer than usual.
  • Unlike many other DODGE builds, Solo doesn't require many trinkets or levels to be effective. Just two early game dodge trinkets (Camouflage Cloak plus another), can reach the DODGE cap (95%) against most enemies. This is due to the Jester's high base DODGE plus the bonus from the skill itself.
  • The self-Mark Mark becomes very reliable for attracting enemy attacks on higher difficulties.[2]
  • Like other DODGE-based strategies, Solo can trivialise certain boss encounters like the Drowned Crew. This also synergises well with using Finale to end a boss fight.

In a typical battle the Jester will use Solo on round 1, followed by Dirk Stab once or twice, then Finale to move to the back ranks, where he can heal the party's stress.

The Solo DODGE build compares favourably to the Houndmaster's Guard Dog: the Houndmaster needs to Guard Dog every round whilst the Jester only Solos once and then can attack. This makes it much more action efficient (though it goes without saying that the Houndmaster provides other utility as well).

Slice Off

The single-target version of Harvest, Slice Off sacrifices raw damage output for more focused damage output against a single foe. While the amount of direct damage dealt is unimpressive, the Bleed it inflicts is very impressive, reaching up to 5 pts/rd at max level. This makes it the best Bleed skill in the game, besides the Hellion's Bleed Out and the Flagellant's various skills. This makes the skill useful for making progress against enemies with high PROT, or against drawn-out boss fights where the Jester can stack up a lot of Bleed over multiple turns.

Battle Ballad

An extremely powerful (arguably overpowered) buff and the core of the back-rank support build. The Jester's high base SPD means that he can consistently use Battle Balled early on the first round to solve the entire party's ACC issues. For the cost of a single skill, every hero in the party can replace an ACC trinket with another one with more utility or damage.

Inspiring Tune

The best single-target Stress heal in the game, Inspiring Tune also reduces future stress that the target Hero will take. This skill is one of the simplest and most effective ways to reduce Stress, especially in the early game. Stalling at the end of fights can greatly increase the skill's effectiveness.

Camping Skills

Turn Back Time

This skill heals twice as much stress as the generic "Encourage" skill while only costing 1.5x as much. This makes it a more cost-efficient option, and should almost always be used if reducing the Stress of a single ally is required. It also comes with an additional -15 Stress to afflicted party members, but one should be wary of trying to take advantage of this. An afflicted ally may refuse the assistance of the camping skill, wasting the respite points for no benefit. Only use this skill if the Hero in question is close to suffering from a heart attack and there is no other option.

Every Rose Has Its Thorn

Provides the benefit of "Encourage" and "Pep Talk" to all of the Jester's companions, at only a fraction of the cost it would take to individually use all of those camping skills. This skill is a highly useful stress-healing maneuver for general situations - use it any time the party begins to grow anxious in order to assuage their worries.

Note that the benefits of this skill do not affect the Jester himself. If he is the one who is accumulating too much Stress, a different skill will need to be used.

Tiger's Eye,

This skill provides a large accuracy and critical hit buff to a single ally. Consider using this skill on the party member doing the highest amount of damage - heroes such as the Leper, Highwayman, and Grave Robber will become far more lethal if you do so.

Mockery

Trinkets

  • Bloody Dice - A useful Common-tier trinket, significantly increasing the Jester's Bleed chance at the cost of decreasing his Bleed resist. This makes Harvest and Slice Off much more reliable at bleeding the enemy. Since Jester has high DODGE, he is (relatively) unlikely to get hit and bleed from enemy attacks in the first place, making the downside manageable.
  • Lucky Dice - Provides a small increase to accuracy and dodge. Slightly better than most general trinkets of the Common rarity, particularly since it has no drawback. Use this freely during early game until stronger Trinkets become available.
  • Critical Dice - Provides +7% CRIT at no drawback. Jesters who want to attack love to equip this trinket, as there are no general trinkets that provide such a great boost to the critical hit rate without incurring significant penalties elsewhere. When combined with the Jester's already-high CRIT chance, this trinket will increase his damage output increases greatly.
  • Bright Tambourine - A useful trinket that support-based Jesters greatly enjoy. +20% Stress Skills greatly increases the effectiveness of Inspiring Tune, in addition to strengthening the Jester's many camping skills. The Jester himself takes less Stress at high levels and more at lower levels - since adventures should generally be done in the brightest circumstances possible, this means that the Jester will be able to enjoy all the benefits and none of the drawbacks of this trinket without significant change required to one's light management.
  • Dark Tambourine - Besides increasing the Jester's Death Blow resist, this trinket also massively decreases his Stress and increases his Virtue chance. However, the latter two benefits only occur while the light level is at 26 or below. In general, it is not worth decreasing the light level solely to take advantage of these buffs. However, in dungeons where you know the light level will be low (such as low-light treasure runs, or while fighting the Shambler), this trinket can be helpful in offsetting the increased difficulty.

DODGE Build

The two strongest and relatively easy to acquire early-game DODGE trinkets are the Camouflage Cloak and Sun Cloak. Note that both of these depend on high torch, however, so when hunting Shamblers it is necessary to switch to other trinkets like the Shimmering Cloak, Feather Crystal, or Overture Box.

Later in the game, there are many strong DODGE trinkets.


(TODO: Add more general trinkets, DLC trinkets, etc.)

References

  1. ↑ https://www.reddit.com/r/darkestdungeon/comments/1et6cm0/comment/lib2sei/
  2. ↑ https://www.reddit.com/r/darkestdungeon/comments/q4j0gc/some_selfmark_love/
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