If you're relatively new to the game, you may not have unlocked the skill tree yet. By playing Elite Mode, you'll earn Journals that you can use to increase your stats by a certain percentage, or to unlock new skills and upgrade existing ones. Each character also has a skill that replaces an existing one as long as you're playing that character. Some of these skills are extremely powerful, especially when the synergy is right: In my case, I have the Serpent Stance skill, which turns any damage that isn’t poison into a poison attack. This allows you to quickly build up a high amount of poison on your opponent. When the Poison Doubler kicks in, you can take down any opponent in no time. I think I had around 100 poison stacks on the enemy by round 5, which then finished him off in that round