Having an enemy in the wrong rank in Darkest Dungeon 2 can be the difference between life and death. This applies to your own party as well, especially if you don’t have the Jester with you. But that doesn’t mean all you have to do is dump the fellow in the back and be done with it.
Jesters excel at being mobile, meaning moving around from the front to back. If you have a mobile party then it’s definitely a good idea to have one to make sure the other team gets the pain and suffering they deserve. We’ll go through the best and most effective builds in this guide and keep the morale going!
Best Jester Builds
Jesters can help set up your allies with the right rank to do certain skills. They can also provide buffs as well, making him a nifty utility hero. His best path by far is Virtuoso due to his passive stress resist. We’ll also cover builds for a Soloist bleed path if you enjoy having a more fragile Jester in your party. Intermezzo will be set to the side as it does nothing much but deal damage-over-time at an excruciatingly painful rate.
Virtuoso
A great path if you want to get rid of trash mobs fast while still being able to help your team deal with stress. Here you use your two movement combo generators which would be Razor’s Wit and Fade to Black.
Here are the skills that pair up nicely with this build:
- Encore – An eternally useful skill to have. Grant the skill to a teammate for an extra action at the cost of becoming Weak or Dazed.
- Inspiring Tune – The best single target stress heal in the game. This skill tends to stay on most builds for the stress relief bonus you get.
- Harvest – A decent skill to use against trash mobs, but you can trade this off with Slice Off when you’re up against bosses.
Remember, as a Virtuoso you’re movement skills are essential to your team’s success. You can also spam Fade to Black and Razor’s Wit when you’re rolling with a Leper to make the most out of your Combo Tokens.
Soloist Build
The Soloist Build is The Jester’s bleed path. You can go two ways with this build, either favor a pure bleed build or a finale build which deals more damage. While this build is active you’ll mostly be staying in Rank 3 with both Harvest and Slice Off.
Here’s what you can use to offset the fact that you have even less health to work with:
- Encore – You still would want to help buff your teammates while the enemy is busy bleeding. This skill won’t be going anywhere no matter the build you’re making.
- Inspiring Tune – Goes hand in hand with Encore to keep your wit in the heat of battle.
- Battle Ballad – Buffs a single hero unit with 50% Strength on the next attack and moves you 1 Rank forward.
The risk is a bit more costly with this build, if everything goes right then you can output a lot of damage. If not, well then you still have your teammates to cover you. And those are the builds you can have for the Jester. Make sure that you have a Plague Doctor nearby to keep you alive in these trying times.
ALSO READ: Darkest Dungeon 2: Best Highwayman Builds | 1.0 Update
