If Darkest Dungeon was so good why is there no Darkest Dungeon 2? Oh wait, there is. Now all of the familiar faces you once knew and lost are back and ready to make an attempt to turn the tide against endless hordes of unspeakable evil, in 3D!
One of the would-be heroes you’d want on your team of course is the Plague Doctor, your primary healer. Unless you’re a masochist and enjoy the company of the Occultist. There’s multiple builds you can put together for the doctor that has various strengths and weaknesses, check out the guide to find out more!
Best Plague Doctor Builds
The Plague Doctor has three paths to choose from. Surgeon is the melee based path and Alchemist is what you’d want for a more ranged approach. Physician is the doctor’s third path and what a defensive player would normally choose. But we’re going to focus on the first two for the builds we’re going through today.
Surgeon Build
The most common loadout with this build would always include Incision along with Battlefield Medicine and Indiscriminate Science. Magnesium Rain is also an auto equip thanks to Clear Corpse.
Here are the other skills you would want to take along with you for this build:
- Plague Grenade – A situational skill to make use of. This helps with dealing direct damage to the backline. Works perfectly once damage-over-time goes through.
- Emboldening Vapours – An alternative to the Plague Grenade. Boosts an allies attack.
- Blinding Gas – The least used skill but still shines in very specific situations especially if you actually blind your opponent. Most of the time it’s considered unremarkable as it does zero damage.
- Cause of Death – Very effective against Act Two bosses since most of them have zero death flow resistance. Great if you’re a damage-over-time focused team, not much for standard fights.
Have these skills on you along with The Runaway, Jester, or Grave Robber in the backline and The Highwayman and The Hellion in the front to put down enemies fast. Surgeon is great for all acts and works very well against the Harvest Child. The backrow positioning of The Librarian and bleed resist of the Dreaming General however, leaves much more to be desired.
Alchemist Build
This build makes you one of the most fragile heroes in the game due to the -20% Max HP debuff.That’s countered however by your 10% critical chance to Blight-causing skills and the added resistance bonuses to all status effects. It’s considered to be the best damage-over-time dealer in the game. It also has incredible range, letting you dump heavy single target blight damage on Ranks 1 or 2 or a massive AOE Blight on the backline.
The loadout is slightly similar to Surgeon. Battlefield Medicine and Indiscriminate Science won’t be going anywhere since you still need these for your team. Here are the other skills you can bring with you for the build:
- Plague Grenade – Now mandatory since you’ll be focused on dealing damage-over-time.
- Noxious Blast – What you’ll be using to replace Incision and deal frontline damage.
- Cause of Death – Best used for bosses due to damage-over-time, can be swapped again with Magnesium Rain.
Those are the best builds you can have when you’re rolling as the Plague Doctor in Darkest Dungeon 2. Have someone like the Grave Robber to further support you and you just might have a chance at fighting back!
ALSO READ: Darkest Dungeon 2: Best Man-At-Arms Builds | 1.0 Update
