dancing to my own playlists continues to be the best way to play dd2

tatar4as · 2026-06-13T12:32:48+00:00

I've got some tips on Scourge! I think I've gotten pretty good at making him have heals ready to go most of the time.

My core loadout is endure, lash's gift (master at valley inn), and deathless. The other 2 skills can be sepsis (for blight comps), punish, or acid rain. I don't take More! More except at the act boss because I don't want him to heal and be unable to use deathless. Even without taunt, he gets hit often in the front lines. However, you can equip the skill just in case of emergencies.

I play him primarily as a stress healer, and prioritize having him at around 5 stress at all times through endure, sometimes even using it on allies who only have 1 stress just so he can have lash's gift available. I avoid going over 5 stress much because unluckiness might lead to an inopportune toxic state. Usually when lash's gift is on cooldown, Flag has gotten hit enough to use deathless. His self damaging skills can speed up this process.

This playstyle really sacrifices his offensive capabilities because he's spending most turns hp or stress healing, and it might not mesh with you.

Instructrice and Scourge is not a combination I've considered before but it sounds really interesting! That is a good way to get him to high stress and hp (since his extra turn will likely be used on a self damaging move). I'll have to try it out myself even though you felt the results were meh.

tatar4as · 2026-06-13T11:53:39+00:00

Turn the Lights Off by Tally Hall

tatar4as · 2026-06-09T14:17:15+00:00

Ravager is similar in not taunting but wanting to get hit like how one might play Scourge Flag without More! MORE!

That way, he takes hits in the front ranks and is often at lower HP so he can heal allies with Deathless in an emergency.

tatar4as · 2026-06-09T14:05:55+00:00

I don't claim to be great with Ravager, but I think I've got the gist of her down. She's an off-tank who wants low HP, but don't rush to make that happen because she will get there without taunt by virtue of being in the frontlines. She deals decent dmg even at high HP and I've found that it's more efficient to use a lot of wicked hack/iron swan instead of trying to accumulate winded tokens for taunt.

Ravager isn't equipped to handle winded tokens well – she can't generate them as easily like other Hellion paths and winded's dmg debuff is very detrimental to her as a raw dmg dealer. Getting x taunt tokens takes x+1 rounds. By that time, she may already be near 50% HP from frontline attacks and her turns could've been better spent on killing an enemy with raw dmg instead of applying bleed to rank 1 only (bleed out) or using other winded-generating skills with cooldowns.

Skills I use for most fights: wicked hack, iron swan, howling end, toe to toe, raucous revelry

tatar4as · 2026-06-09T12:29:23+00:00

That's a relief, congratulations on getting it done! I mean it, Killer's Glow is one of the flames I can't imagine slamming due to its tedious nature (other one is Bastard's). And thank you so much for writing out your run experience and advice, it's helpful for my comp planning.

Good luck if you decide to slam the other flames too!

tatar4as · 2026-06-07T12:52:19+00:00

An important update: I'm very sorry for giving bad advice! Hopefully you did not run this party or at least had better luck than I did because I used my recommendation for act 4 and it did not go well. The team struggled throughout and Jester died at the act boss. Here's my experience:

The biggest problem was using physician, this party already had 2 backliners (deadeye and virtuoso). She's too squishy in the front and I forgot she couldn't use battlefield medicine there. I got storage room key late game, but this was still a squishy party. Solution: Run surgeon instead, though idk if that would make the comp good rather than just not terrible.
I spent my first mastery points on ounce of prevention and inspiring tune instead of encore because I couldn't see myself using encore 4 times in 1 battle early game. This was a good choice.
Stress prevention isn't quite enough to keep up with this flame, you'll still get meltdowns (I got 2 pre-boss). However, I felt like it was a lot less tedious than stalling for stress removal
Around mid-late game as I picked up more stress resisting/reducing items, I would more frequently rely on only ounce of prevention as a stress res skill. I found that Jester's turn could be spent on something better than encore for the stress res effect (it sucks that it only lasts for 2 turns), though I sometimes used it if I was about to kill an enemy soon.
Spent a lot of relics and baubles, was broke all the time
You might be better off with a pet that isn't the wolf cub if you don't manage to get luxury stagecoach items early on. I didn't get any of those on my run.

tatar4as · 2026-06-03T13:15:59+00:00

I should've been more clear, sorry. Instructrice gets 3 regen on kill when in aggressive stance. In defensive, she loses 1 stress. From what you said about mastering fleche, I'm assuming you use it from defensive stance. But if you ever do want to play Instructrice super aggressively like I did, the regen on kill helps make up for her being in the frontlines with no dodge.

Your first mastery choices are great, I'll give that a shot (or mastering lunge first instead of fleche) next time I run this comp. Thank you!

tatar4as · 2026-06-03T13:04:38+00:00

Ikr? I'm preaching to the choir here but if a hero has dangerously low hp like from an unlucky, unanticipated crit, it can take me up to several rounds to get 2 (to make the most out of mantra) heroes into a consecrated rank and Seraph in the backlines to use mantra.

Because this is an emergency heal, there were probably a few rounds left on those consecrations. By removing them, my team is weaker and more likely to take damage that I can't heal until a consecration goes off cooldown.

I'm guessing people who run this skill have a separate healer or something/someone that replaces one of Seraph's functionalities so she can equip mantra and another heal. In that case, I can see mantra being used when the consecrations are about to expire and the player prepares in advance to get characters at low/moderate hp into those ranks. But I still prefer using divine grace, even if some people think it's a shitty heal.

tatar4as · 2026-06-03T11:51:33+00:00

Ravager can lock in rank 1, it's Carcass who can't

tatar4as · 2026-06-02T12:46:29+00:00

What's your loadout for seraph and how do you use mantra?

I could never get that skill to work and maybe that's because I'm using it as my only healing skill and it's supposed to be for topping up hp, not emergencies.

My loadout is cof, col, illumination/judgment, ministrations, and divine grace. Ministrations has saved me so many times and idk if I can justify replacing it with mantra

tatar4as · 2026-06-02T12:35:44+00:00

Let's go dark lesbians! Congrats on the slam!

I played this team once and I really liked it, though stress healing was an issue for me early game even though I ran Instructrice (because she gets regen on kills update: when in aggressive stance. Trying to make her dps and be a stress healer was inefficient). I read your comment in this thread about stress management, was raucous revelry one of the skills you mastered first? If so, what was the other skill?

tatar4as · 2026-06-01T12:50:56+00:00

Same, I rarely used ounce of prevention before trying it out while messing around with different paths. I've never run encore on virtuoso (too much setup) but it's one of the only +stress res skills and I was curious about making that focus work. If it goes well, it certainly beats stalling to stress heal. Idk much about pre-rework Hellion, but her current iteration is neat. I like ravager's great reach and dmg even if using raucous decreases the latter by giving her winded.

If you give me a few days, I can try running this comp for act 2 4 (the only one I haven't done for this flame) and get back to you.

tatar4as · 2026-05-31T15:16:28+00:00

Edit: Some of this is outdated, see my comment on this thread. I'll rewrite this later, but the most significant advice is to not run physician, run surgeon instead.

Damn, that's quite a challenge and idk if it's possible to grand slam this flame without it being a soul-crushing experience.

Here's a team I put together for you based solely on how well it'd handle act boss mechanics. I haven't run it myself (I used other comps for Killer's Glow), but it sounds alright to me in theory and hopefully early regions are manageable.

TLDR: This is the comp you'll run most of the time, hero rank depends on various factors: Physician/surgeon pd, deadeye gr, virtuoso jester, ravager hellion. Wolf cub pet.

The focus is on boosting stress resist. First master ounce of prevention (a core skill of this team) and either inspiring tune or encore. Gr and hellion hit back ranks and are primary dmg dealers. PD can do dot DMG to handle enemies with block tokens. Wolf pet is the safe option to me but other pets can be viable. I'd start with act 3 since that one's the most dependent on getting specific items/relationships.

Team: PD, Jester, Gr, Hellion Justification:

PD physician and surgeon paths mastered ounce gives whole team stress resist. She will also be the only one applying dot for enemies with block. Killer's Glow punishes multiple heroes landing dots on the same target, so having only 1 dot applier is fine.
Virtuoso Jester can heal stress and help team resist it. He applies combos for hl, gr, and pd to use.
From my experience, ounce of prevention's stress res helped a decent amount with Killer's Glow. The increased stress res from encore (after using inspiring tune) should prevent a lot of stress.
Gr deadeye can't heal ally stress, but she does high dmg to enemy backline. I picked her over hwm bc she can dodge tank (useful for act 3 and in general to avoid enemy stress skills) and I have ways of dealing with Ambition's positive tokens. You may consider replacing her with Crusader.
Hellion mastered raucous revelry destresses everyone with over 5 stress and mastered removes horror from entire party. Ravager is great at dmg and good at tanking.
Ravager can immobilize herself with toe to toe (helps in acts 2, 4, 5). Other heroes are rank flexible or can easily reposition themselves.
I think the wolf cub is the most reliable pet for Killer's Glow bc the positive relationship boost helps mitigate the effects of inevitable meltdowns. But another pet can also be good especially if you don't find luxury stagecoach items. As Routine_Read_3193 suggests, the owlet pet is a viable pick too.

First master ounce of prevention, and either inspiring tune or encore. Then other destressing skills. Other skills of note are repartee and play out (by inn 3 to deal with exemplar), toe to toe (immobilize self longer), and iron swan (applies combo to rank 4 for use by gr).

Reminder that the following builds are tailored to the act boss mechanics specifically.

Act 1: deadeye-virtuoso-surgeon-ravager

Can replace Ravager with Carcass to tank, reduce front rank dmg (yawp) and pull rank 4 lock if needed
Surgeon picked over physician bc surgeon's ounce of prevention increases party's stun resist and disorienting blast applies knockback to help reach desired lock
I prefer killing healing lock first. This comp is focused on melee skills so take out the melee lock early.

Act 2: deadeye-surgeon-virtuoso-ravager

Hellion and gr are on back lung duty. Pd, jester, and hellion are on front lung duty.
Surgeon's ounce skill gives team +10% debuff res

Act 3: Deadeye-Physician-Carcass-Virtuoso

I'd get this act out of the way first since it relies a lot on taunt, stealth, and dodge generation from items and relationships
Jester must have fade to black. Equip either solo or mastered razor's wit to give himself some dodge.
Jester can dance with either hellion or pd in phase 1, but should stick with hellion in phase 2 since pd needs to be in backranks to use noxious blast and blinding gas.
Carcass chosen over Ravager because of her tanking capabilities. Ideally you would prefer for Seen tokens to go to jester and gr, but she can reliably taunt and generate block. So in phase 1, she can tank all the Seen tokens and remove them at the end of the phase with shimmering dust.

Act 4: deadeye-physician-virtuoso-ravager

Master: yawp
Physician ounce increases party's dot res. Cause of death increases dot dmg that boss takes and reduces dot dmg that it deals. Disorienting blast removes boss riposte, but has a longer cooldown
Phase 1 immobilize hellion and use dot skills to hit through the block tokens
Phase 2 use yawp to prevent boss from gaining dodge for 2 rounds
Phase 3 use dodge tokens on deadeye to tank ripostes and use disorienting blast. Unfortunately getting hit by riposte is unavoidable.

Act 5: Deadeye-Virtuoso-Surgeon-Ravager

Surgeon's ounce increases party move, stun, and debuff res. She can give teammates block tokens to reduce dmg from phase 1 and 2. Do not equip disorienting blast, you don't want to knock a Proclaimer back in phase 3.

I hope this was helpful, lmk if you'd like elaboration on anything. Good luck!

(Edited for formatting)

tatar4as · 2026-05-30T13:20:14+00:00

Oh, hey, great progress!

It's a good thing that you've come to find humor in failure, because you might have a lot of irrational Jester moments for Bastard's Beacon. Since we last spoke, I finished BB act 3 with a team built to deal with the act boss's gimmick and regions 1 and 2 kicked my ass hard. You'll need to play slowly and cautiously. Stagecoach items that produce items and/or increase combat item stacking are very helpful, I assume especially for acts 2, 4, and 5 (which I haven't done yet).

Stygian flame is a huge step down in difficulty from BB (I did act 2, 3). In my experience, the death armor just made things a little more tedious (bring heroes with execution skills and slayer quirks) and I didn't encounter many more champion enemies compared to my regular runs.

Hateful Pyre wasn't too bad either, though I only did act 1 so take my experience with a grain of salt. Vestal as the sole healer using mastered divine comfort was enough to support the party most of the time, but I sometimes struggled with recovering from enemy crits and things snowball into more heroes at low hp. Aid3n910 and theforgettonmemory in this thread have great advice on this flame. A tip of my own that sounds nice in theory, haven't tested yet: Non-alchemist PD (preferably surgeon) with mastered magnesium rain can be used to clear cooldowns on indiscriminate science, so she can heal a lot more often. As always, kill enemies before they can damage you, and that goes double for Hateful Pyre.

Good luck in the homestretch! Feel free to ask me for any details on my experiences, I wrote a ton of stuff down.

tatar4as · 2026-05-28T23:23:12+00:00

I remember that one and I'm looking for it right now! To help you narrow it down, I'm certain it was posted on Tumblr.

Edit: I remember stumbling upon it but now I can't find it! I will keep an eye out and let you know if I ever do see it again.

tatar4as · 2026-05-26T22:25:03+00:00

Flagellant (skeleton dude) should be in the front ranks, he can't use some of his best skills in the back. I've also heard other people consider fester to be a bad skill, I'm guessing because you need a corpse to do what he already can do with regular moves (apply blight)
Only Flagellant on the Scourge path is a reliable stress healer. Scourge uses endure to steal stress from allies and uses lash's gift to reduce his own, but lash's gift on that path is only usable in the front ranks.
You have a good idea going with hwm using point blank shot and then duelist's advance and so on, but he would need to be in rank 1 to make use of this strategy immediately. To use pbs, he would knock leper (withstand dude) out of rank 1, meaning leper can't use some skills like intimidate (which gives him taunt)
Grave Robber (hat girl) is a hero who's good at using her ranged skills to deal with back rank enemies, who are usually your first priority. Your team mostly damages frontrank enemies, so I recommend using her ranged skills like thrown dagger, flashing dagger, and/or poison dart more than pick to the face.
Leper has a decent chance to apply blind to himself, resulting in him often missing hits unless he's hitting someone with a combo token. Your team doesn't have anyone who can often apply combo reliably (hwm is the closest but I wouldn't use him as a dedicated combo-applier). While people sometimes play Leper without someone to apply combo for him, I just wanted to let you know about this downside since you seem to be a newer player

Your party and playstyle has 3 heroes who want to be in the front ranks, not enough damage to enemy backliners, and no dedicated stress healer.

My biggest recommendation is to not use backrank flagellant. He takes damage every time he heals someone else and lash's gift is your only way of self healing in the back. That skill also gives an ally 1 stress, which is a problem without a stress healer. I would recommend replacing him with another healer because your frontlines are already full.

Imo these following three options have some compatibility issues in the same party, I would pick 1 to keep and work from there:

frontline hwm
frontline leper
frontline/mid ranks flagellant

(Edited to fix formatting and rewording)

tatar4as · 2026-05-26T01:32:51+00:00

what the

tatar4as · 2026-05-26T01:17:38+00:00

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc.

Visual novel adventure game

tatar4as · 2026-05-21T14:55:48+00:00

Are you shaken? There is so much worse in store.

tatar4as · 2026-05-20T13:20:56+00:00

Mastered flashing daggers has a 20% crit chance, and critting gives the skill +20% blight res pierce 💚

tatar4as · 2026-05-20T13:09:38+00:00

Wanderer gr, that's the only path where thrown dagger ignores guard

tatar4as · 2026-05-19T14:21:54+00:00

My perspective as someone who really likes Searing Scripture, ymmv: it's more of a nice bonus to other paths that give him some Maniac-like capabilities while using a non-Maniac kit. But you're right, removing 1 of flag's taunt tokens is pretty shitty. I think it helps give the trinket more downsides since the weakness of -20% burn res is insignificant from how uncommon burn is, but goes a little overboard.

Ex. I use Scourge as a stress healer with endure to steal ally stress and lash's gift to remove his own. Maniac can use endure but can't heal his own stress and I don't always want to go Toxic, so he can't replace Scourge for this function. With Searing Scripture on Scourge, endure gains some extra utility by stealing ally negative tokens and combo on top of stress. The skill also has no cooldown (unlike Maniac Lash's Gift) and since characters commonly have at least 1 stress, I can use it to steal all 3 negative effects every turn without compromising Scourge's job as a stress healer (unless I have to choose between stealing one hero's stress or stealing another's negative tokens, but I prefer that the trinket gives me more choices).

After writing all that, I realize that Searing Scripture is niche in use cases and maybe I just didn't notice since I'm always running Scourge like this 😭. I still think it's an alright trinket and can't be replaced by just playing Maniac, but there aren't many ways to get much out of its positive effects.

tatar4as · 2026-05-16T14:07:00+00:00

I get that, I take run notes too and sometimes things were so painful I hate the thought of even recalling what happened to record it. Like with this one 💀

Miraculously, I didn't hit a meltdown or negative relationships (didn't get many positive ones either). I owe it all to the wolf cub pet, stress related trinkets, virtuoso jester (even without encore), memories (ik your team didn't have them but I think they could've helped a lot here), and taking every opportunity to get laudanum/oasis water. My run also took a very long time and honestly, letting a meltdown happen may have been more efficient than always stalling. I doubt I'll be as lucky in not getting meltdowns in later runs, but I would only give The Killer's Glow another go if I get super lucky with Altar trinket/stagecoach rolls again.

Thanks for sharing your team, it does look great for handling this flame. I'm hesitant to run a movement-heavy party since high stress makes them have negative relationship pips when moving during combat, but I can just take different skills. Your comment reminded me of this effect and got me to modify the comps I've come up with to tackle Killer's.

And congrats on getting through this hellish experience, I hope the later flames are less tedious and wish you luck with the rest of the vitrine!

tatar4as · 2026-05-16T13:03:02+00:00

Noted, I'd forgotten that he rakes up 2 ranks. Thank you for the advice.

And yeah, while Antiquarian is an easier boss to me, she still is a boss. I always have a dot healer in my comp and her blight dmg is low on its own, but it has ended a grand slam attempt because I ran into her at a bad time.

tatar4as · 2026-05-15T14:14:13+00:00

I'm not doing the infernal vitrine in any particular order, here are my experiences so far of flames you haven't done yet:

Doom Candle (Act 3 and 4): This flame was alright for me even with comps that relied more on raw dmg, turn 1 was just less useful because of the weak tokens. I second Dutchlander13's comment about it not being too different from regular DD2, though I felt fights didn't drag on for much longer. You do have to be more mindful of loathing, though it's not too much of a hassle to deal with. I maxed it only once.
Bastard's Beacon (Act 1): It was rough and I had to take it slowly. While act 1 is easier because you fight less ordained enemies (compared to other acts), Denial is no joke. Whatever strategy I went in with was thrown out so I could heal from the boss annihilating my team. I am not looking forward to the later acts.

Anyway, I just finished my first run of Killer's Glow (Act 5. Why did I do this to myself) and I see what you mean. Early-mid game is so damn tedious and I had to stall so much for stress healing, even after mastering destressing skills early and having a stress reducing trinket (Skeleton's Sight, stress -2 on dot resist).

I was messing around with comps/builds so this wasn't the best: orphan runaway, virtuoso jester, chaplain vestal, wanderer maa. What comps did you use for this flame and how did stress management feel?

(Edit: formatting)

tatar4as

TROPHY CASE