The Flagellant returns inDarkest Dungeon 2with a decrepit body too insane to die. His playstyle has somewhat shifted from his bleed-focused role in the first game. All his damage over time abilities have shifted to blight, but now he functions better as the most consistent support character in the game.
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Since most support abilities for restoring stress and health have the requirements of being ailing at a certain threshold before their use is allowed, the Flagellant can use his almost anytime with the cost being his own health. He has a rhythm to his moves, damaging himself until he falls to a point he can fix himself. He also doesn’t suffer meltdowns as other heroes do.
Suffer is an alright support move. You target an ally and transfer all their damage over time tokens to the Flagellant. Without its upgrade, it doesn’t really address the problem, but if you have an ally that is dying from DoT (damage over time), it can be handy. With its upgrade, Suffer removes the DoT at the end of the Flagellant’s turn.
Compared to his other moves, Suffer doesn’t deliver as much payoff, especially since other characters can remove DoT faster. Your mastery points are better saved for other skills. Bring some restorative herbcombat itemsand you won’t even need it.
Punish is the flagellant’s starting attack. It does average damage, but has a chance to inflict three blight damage per turn as well. Punish does offer flexible positioning for the Flagellant, since he can use it as far back as rank three and still attack.
He can make use of marks with it as well, piercing enemy blight resistance to deal damage over time. As a cost for using the move, the Flagellant takes a tenth of his health in damage. It’s a decent skill, and good to keep on any build.
Fester is one of the few moves the Flagellant can do without hurting himself. Usable from anywhere in your ranks, the Flagellant targets an enemy’s corpse and destroys it, causing blight to the adjacent enemies.
Corpses are annoying to deal with in Darkest Dungeon 2. They can keep enemies safe behind them and delay your stronger moves, so having a corpse cleaner on your team is just as important as dealing with the enemies in the first place. Fester manages to be an offensive move at the same time.
8Acid Rain
Acid Rain is one of the few ways the Flagellant has to attack the enemy rear line. It does a decent job of it, attacking two targets at once with light damage, and inflicting both with blight. The Flagellant takes damage to use it, but it’s worth it to hit multiple targets.
Acid Rain is best used in concert with other allies that can hit the back line like the plague doctor and the occultist. By itself, the Flagellant doesn’t have the output to eliminate enemies fast enough.
7Lash’s Gift
Lash’s gift is one of the Flagellant’s best moves; it lets him self-sustain and boost your other heroes. Once he drops below 50 per cent health, Lash’s Gift becomes available. Using it immediately heals the Flagellant 25% of his total health and boosts an ally with guard and might.
When upgraded, Lash’s Gift increases the heal and can clear daze and stun off the chosen ally. It does increase your ally’s stress by one, but the rewards are well worth it.
Endure is a simple stress relief skill you may use without any requirements needing to be met. It works more like a stress transfer, removing two stress, or three if you upgrade the move, and gives the Flagellant two stress in turn. Moving stress onto the flagellant is a viable tactic for keeping your team together.
When other characters suffer meltdowns, they fall to low health and damage relationships. The flagellant does similarly, but he becomes toxic instead, making his health 30%, lowering or healing as needed. In this state, he inflicts blight on those who attack him, and his abilities reset their cooldown. The rest of the team will hate him, but he can Endure it.
5More! MORE!
This move is great for when you want someone to tank a few hits for your team. Using More! MORE! gives the Flagellant pain tokens every time he’s hit for a turn, and taunts the enemy twice. After gaining pain tokens, the Flagellant will heal based on however many pain tokens he acquired the turn before.
Upgrading the move increases how much each token restores. You need to be decent on health before using the skill, as taunting into death would be a bad combination.
Necrosis is a good move for a blight focused team. While standing in the second or third rank, the Flagellant can target the entire enemy team with a decent melee attack. However, enemies only take damage if they have been blighted. For every enemy the flagellant damages, he restores 5% of his own hp.
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This skill is overspecialized. If you don’t have an entire team blighting the enemy it’s a waste, given the damage is middling. The AoE is the draw, and if you are making a blight team, this move will boost your damage team wide.
Undying is another healing skill for the Flagellant. This one works by damaging himself to apply a regeneration buff on an ally. Regeneration is a very rare status, and it’s great for healing, and countering damage over time.
Like his other support abilities, it has no low-health requirement to apply to your team. It normally restores three hit points at the start of the target’s turn, but that rises to five with the mastery upgrade. With a one turn cooldown, you can end fights healthier than when you started.
Sepsis is the Flagellant’s best recovery ability. Once you unlock it, it should always be equipped. While it lacks the rank flexibility of other skills, up front where he wants to be anyway.
Attacking with sepsis not only deals direct damage and blights the target, it also gives a hefty heal: a third of your health normally, half when upgraded. It has a limit of three per battle, and a two turn cooldown. Even with those restraints, it’s strong.
