I've been playing with this class for about a week alongside a bunch of modded classes to check them out and compare their balance to the base heroes. Apostate has been... an interesting character for sure. Runs with the Apostate are absolutely volatile. They either go completely in your favor, or you get absolutely destroyed. Usually I noticed it was more the latter than the former. I'd say that this class is not at all a replacement for a healer, which is rather unfortunate since they feel like they WANT to be, but can't quite manage it, however the class certainly has some fascinating options and can pair well (Or terribly) with some other modded classes.

So let's get started with the big comparison, Apostate vs. Vestal. Honestly? It's not a good comparison. The Vestal brings consistent AoE healing, useful single-target healing, stuns, De-stealth capability, and some minor damage options. The Apostate on the other hand brings some huge damage buffs, ramping AoE damage, some minor stress healing, debuffs, and the ever-difficult to balance ability to give an ally an extra turn. If I were to compare the Apostate to a class it'd be more of a Jester and Houndmaster mixed together. They have powerful buffs, and AoE stress healing while also being capable of some solid damage and some situational (If potent) CC. But the class just feels like it's held back in many ways, mainly because it feels like it's trying to be two things at once. There's some changes I'd like to see to some of the skills which I think could really bring the class more in line with either serving as a proper healer replacement, or a unique team-buffing damage dealer.

-Condemn: This skill is mostly fine, a solid pull, debuffs speed and damage taken, overall solid for yanking those pesky backlines into the front and deleting them.

-Last Rites: A very minor AoE Stress Heal that gets amped when allies are at low HP. While this is certainly handy, especially since he WANTS his entire party to be at low HP, the stress heal is VERY small without the buffs to low HP allies, while also not really helping those allies get to that point, or stay safer when they ARE at that point. It'd be nice to see an added buff to this, it could even be something fairly minor but useful and thematic. A Death Blow Resist buff would be nice to have since he wants his party to be at such low HP all the time. Also if your intention is NOT for this class to REPLACE a healer slot, then you might consider adding something like a debuff to prevent healing if above 50% HP, which would help allied healers keep from pushing their team out of the damage buff range.

-Apocryphal texts: This ability is mostly fine, and is the bread and butter of the class, being a free action that thwacks his allies upside the head for some damage and gives them all a HUGE and luckily non-stacking damage and crit buff. This allows him to consistently damage his allies above 50% HP to get them lower to make use of their buffs. This is a must-take ability if you want to use the Apostate and is fine as is, although perhaps changing the flat 3HP damage into a % based damage to allies would be more useful.

-Borrowed Time: So here is the primary problem keeping the Apostate from serving as a full healer replacement. This skill right here? Is the ONLY way to keep your allies safe when they are at low HP, and if you're playing the Apostate properly they will ALWAYS be at low HP. This ability grants 1 block, curse Blight/Bleed, and gives a high dodge buff at Death's Door. However it comes with an absolutely MERCILESS 1 round cooldown timer. If you have multiple people at Death's Door (Something that happens quite a lot with the Apostate around) you will have to choose ONE person, then hope the other one doesn't die in the intervening extra turn, THEN you can protect him. And the other guy on death's door? Hope he didn't get hit twice! Or hit by something that caused Bleed and Blight. Simply put this ability isn't CONSISTENT enough to keep your allies alive. This CANNOT replace a healer. In the same case as before a Vestal can AoE heal to get an entire TEAM off of Death's Door. While I understand the power of granting 1 Block to anyone you want, whenever you want, I feel like this ability is TOO weak to allow the Apostate to replace a healer. Obviously if the goal is NOT to replace a healer, that's fine, but in that case this class really isn't an alternative to the Vestal. If you want to have the Apostate be a replacement for a healer this ability needs to be changed. Personally I'd suggest something like making it ONLY give blocks when on Death's Door, but making it an AoE ability. This limits the blocks so they can ONLY be used in an emergency of keeping people on Death's Door safe. It also gives a unique AoE status clearing ability to the Apostate which no other class except for the Druid modded class has, and then turn the Dodge buff into a non-stacking dodge buff for allies below 25% HP. This means you can't just spam the dodge buff to become nearly unhittable, and that making use of the dodge buff requires you be even LOWER on HP than usual with the Apostate, helping to add durability and survivability to your team, but making it a risk vs. reward trade off. Which seems to be the main intent of the Apostate. Again, all of this is primarily IF you want them to replace a healer. If not than it would be fine to generally leave this ability as is.

-Tenebrosity: This is a powerful ramping AoE damage ability that also helps to get your team down into that 50% HP range. Like Condem this ability is mostly fine though similar to my note in Apocryphal texts it might be nice to swap this from a flat 3HP to a % damage to allies.

-Incite: An extra turn. On anyone you like. Trade your Apostate's turn for anyone else to get another. This is inherently powerful everytime it shows up in a class, and can lead to some absurd shenanigans at times. This does however come with the hefty price of Healing being ENTIRELY PREVENTED as well as a +Damage Taken debuff. However it also adds an accuracy and crit buff if below that magical 50% mark you want to be at. This ability will always be a mess to balance because extra turns can be crazy in some comps, and useless in others. As it stands I'd say this ability could probably use some added debuffs, especially if this class is meant to be played without a healer, where that big healing prevented debuff won't really matter much. Also the fact that Apocryphal texts has its buffs applied, most likely, to whoever you're hitting with this? The damage you can output can be absolutely obscene. Having a Damage Done debuff would probably work well, the Snake Charmer class did an excellent job of at least trying to balance out the ability to give someone extra turns by reducing their Damage done, Healing done, and Stress healing done, so something similar might be in order for this.

-Desecrate: This ability is situational, but pretty awesome thematically, as you make corpses EXPLODE upon your enemies, stunning and blighting them. The only changes I'd like to see for this would be to see its Blight number and Stun chance increased per-corpse, so you can blow up multiple corpses for an increased effect.

Overall this class is really interesting, and I had a lot of fun playing it, even if most of the parties that went out with one never returned a bit more often than I'd like. I think this class can fit a really interesting role either as a solid replacement for a healer, or as a powerful team-buffer for players more willing to take risks on low HP. It was awesome playing the class and thanks for making such a fun character to mess around with.

Oh and uh, as an amusing note, never bring this class alongside the modded Divinity class. The party-wide damage of the Apostate will ALWAYS tick on her since she has 0 out of 0 HP, which is technically above half HP... because dividing by zero messes with everything. So it uh... ends poorly.

Hi Zylo! Wow, thank you for the very detailed response.

You are right that the Apostate is not a *replacement* for a healer - she doesn't fill that role, as she does not provide any recovery. If you try to use her as such you'll probably run into problems. Instead, she is best when paired with a healer, or in a quad-DPS party where you don't bring a healer at all (quad DPS teams can work in most dungeon types! But you must approach combat in a very different way to normal).

The stress heal values on Last Rites have been carefully calibrated to match the power of vanilla stress heal skills - it is comparable to the Houndmaster's Cry Havok in a healthy party, and better if you have just one hero at <50%HP (and much better if you have 2+). Try running her with a stress heal trinket and you may get better results? She can stress heal from rank 2, which is unusual and may allow for more variety in your party compositions.

The self-damage that Apostate does to the party *does* scale up with level -- it's 2/2/3/3/4 HP harm for skill ranks 1-5. It is sadly not possible to do %-based HP damage in combat skills.

Borrowed Time used to not have a cooldown, and it was too strong. This was especially evident when you had 2+ of them in a team - you could quickly get to the stage where the entire party had block. Regardless of the "intent" of the character, the cooldown is necessary for balance.

For Incite you are abolutely right that is a strong ability, but I did not want to detract from the power of the extra action like Snake Charmer does. Instead, I balance this with the strong debuffs. The fact that the -healing received% debuff has no effect in healer-less parties desired - I am trying to encourage players into trying different party styles from their usual. Some have commented that the debuffs are actually too scary, others think the skill is too strong... which means I think it is probably about right?

Finally, I'm really glad that you've had a lot of fun playing the class! :) Thank you for the big write-up.

Originally posted by TheHolyChicken:

Hi Zylo! Wow, thank you for the very detailed response.

You are right that the Apostate is not a *replacement* for a healer - she doesn't fill that role, as she does not provide any recovery. If you try to use her as such you'll probably run into problems. Instead, she is best when paired with a healer, or in a quad-DPS party where you don't bring a healer at all (quad DPS teams can work in most dungeon types! But you must approach combat in a very different way to normal).

The stress heal values on Last Rites have been carefully calibrated to match the power of vanilla stress heal skills - it is comparable to the Houndmaster's Cry Havok in a healthy party, and better if you have just one hero at <50%HP (and much better if you have 2+). Try running her with a stress heal trinket and you may get better results? She can stress heal from rank 2, which is unusual and may allow for more variety in your party compositions.

The self-damage that Apostate does to the party *does* scale up with level -- it's 2/2/3/3/4 HP harm for skill ranks 1-5. It is sadly not possible to do %-based HP damage in combat skills.

Borrowed Time used to not have a cooldown, and it was too strong. This was especially evident when you had 2+ of them in a team - you could quickly get to the stage where the entire party had block. Regardless of the "intent" of the character, the cooldown is necessary for balance.

For Incite you are abolutely right that is a strong ability, but I did not want to detract from the power of the extra action like Snake Charmer does. Instead, I balance this with the strong debuffs. The fact that the -healing received% debuff has no effect in healer-less parties desired - I am trying to encourage players into trying different party styles from their usual. Some have commented that the debuffs are actually too scary, others think the skill is too strong... which means I think it is probably about right?

Finally, I'm really glad that you've had a lot of fun playing the class! :) Thank you for the big write-up.

In darkest dungeon 2, Jester has a skilled called Encore which awards an extra action to an ally but makes him suffer a dazzled effect. Dazzle reduces character initiative/speed by 50% for 1 round.

Incite is just worse version of Encore. What the skill encourages is to mirror/clone character skills in a single turn. In vanilla version of the game, every character can be used multiple times in a single party, therefore there no reason to really utilise this skill because its drawbacks are worse than just bring two of same character in which you would press incite on. Flagillent is only character who has limit of 1 use per party but irony behind Flagilent is this skill completely neuters his entire gimmick which is taking hits and then bouncing back his health.

In DD2, skill makes some sense because in that game, fights have 5 turn limit meaning a character only has 5 total actions and some of them might be a little slow where they need 2 turns to fulfill their role and it helps accelerate their combat in exchange of slowing Jester's combat actions. The game also completely disallows mirror characters so mirror skills is actually asset.

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Borrow time, the ability to apply an Aegis to another hero is equal to increase their protection value to 100% for one attack. gameplay-wise, it functions a lot like dodge and accuracy in the sense that dodge and -accuracy are reverse healing mechanisms.

That is to say that if you were to take 15 damage, but you instead dodge it, its like healed 15 health because you didn't take damage. Dodging attacks can also in many cases be considered reverse stunning as if an enemy were to miss, its as if they skipped your turn and you gain action economy on one character over opposition.

Overall, its cooldown completely kills her ability to be reverse healer. Its particular strong in dodge stacking combinations.

If goal of this skill was to make players sit on deathdoor, than this skill does not do a good job at incentivize the player to occur risk. If anything it does opposite and make player play safe and preserve health instead.
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-Last rites:

This is more consistent stress heal in comparison to cry havoc from houndmaster but it has lower potencial output. The main purpose of stress heals to mitigate transformation-type characters that induce stress on team and these skills help mitigate their costs. you can go on playing bloodmoon and beat entire dd1 game and never really end up using stress heals at all. The skill is obviously meant to be paired with Abomination but Abomination every time he transforms heals so the actual bonus stress increases never come into play in most circumstances. It requires 2 turns to mitigate AoE stress which is about same amount of turns that cry havoc needs to do same.

Most players don't even know how to play abomination and refuse to touch him for reasons in regards to low reward for essential high risk, so this skill shows up on niche playstyle that 99% of users objectively ignore in first place.

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- Desecrate

A win-more move. in four words, that is the summary of it. If your manage to kill an enemy by turn 1, than this move helps you win harder. If you don't, than this skill doesn't do anything. Its blight damage is quite good, but its stun chance is very absymal. It is inherently suppose have synergy with incite where turn 1, you incite to kill an enemy and on turn 2, you use this move on corpse. Due to lack of stun chance and corresponding drawbacks of incite, it forces player to choose offense vs defense. It is a lot like plague doctor blinding gas turn 1 vs plague bile dilemma. Unless the player is forced to kill-rush enemy(like in DD2) than the player will always choose safer option which is Incite->Borrow time. Overall, I think its neat skill but underwhelming ultimately.

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Now that we talked about support Apostate, let's talk about damage Apostate.

Condemn is her first offensive skill. Functionally, its daemon pull with bounty hunter caldrops effect. It increases incoming damage output so essencially, its indirectly a ramp up skill much like Abomination's Rake & Vestal's hand of light. It ramps up through debuffs and that is where its problem show up. First of all, ramp up skills in hallways are not very effective because fights are too fast, they're roughly 3 major turns and rest are stalling turns, so overall, people will say that DD1 average combat for hallways is around 6 turns and that is only if you force it to be 6 turns. Its large damage penalty makes a poor damage skill at the start and going by damage increases, you need to be facing 100 of healthpoints to hit breakpoints where this skill would save 1 extra attack for example. Towards normal enemies, its poor-man generalized mark that does not have justifyable damage output.

This ability also scales really poorly with difficulty in regards bosses because bosses gain a significant increase of debuff resistance and I would highlight this character's bigger problem where she is very lackluster unit at bosses, so where this damage amplify is suppose to shine, it does not shine and I am almost baited into using debuff chance enhancer like debuff stone/debuff amulet on a very mediocre damage skill. Pull effect often end not being too impactful because character like Hellion, highwayman, shieldbreaker, etc. already have reach do not need pull, so niche leper/crusader skill. some resist move greatly while others its more useful.

So for primary damage button, not ideal.
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Tenebrosity: A far more obvious ramp skill. Due to same problems as Condemn, its not ideal hallway skill. way too slow. stun aspect rarely ever applies. Cleaving 3 enemies is quite strong in certain bosses such as brigand or necromancer. The skill's negatives of decreasing torchlight and reduces everyone health to 50% is essencially playing a challenge run. By the fact that everyone is playing half life, it means that in relationship to enemies skills, they're 50% more effective meaning that your effectively 1 hit from deathblow check on most characters and even more so if your incline to be playing torchless which doubles this penalty.

I really feel like darkest dungeon 2 developer were very inspired by your character design and ironically, they based this skill's gameplay and completely integrated it as base game itself. In order to actually mitigate the riskes of playing half health, In darkest dungeon 2, they made everyone deathblow resistance significantly higher, like 80+% and it could go as high as 95% in which it was reduced to 90% and they also gave players self-wagon healing because they effectively nerfed all healing skills to oblivion and this character also nukes healing skills to oblivon. DD1 doesn't have this so its just not practical skill to utilize.

Going back to borrow time, Since skill lower your health and encourages you to ramp up, your telling players to handicap themselves than giving them a skill in which you would use to mitigate drawbacks on ramping skill that in order to be effective requires itself to be pressed consectively.

On higher difficulty like bloodmoon and sty, your heavily encouraged to not play on side of death and heavily encouraged to flawlessly clear every fight with minimal risk. so a skill like this just isn't encouraged. It is funny playstyle on lower difficulty like radiant where losing heroes is not detriment.

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Apocryphal texts -

This skill is equal of a free bonus to attempt mitigate drawbacks of playing half health similar to how torchless ramps up damage & stress in increatible numbers but than gives the player meager 4% critical hit bonus for their troubles. Technically it gives extra loot but due to investory contrainsts it ends up not being amazing.

overall, consistent damage bonus is good, but deathblow resistance increase isn't enough for risk it incurs and I explained at the top to what extend developers of darkest dungeon 2 had to put in the game for 50% health mode with zero healing to be viable playstyle with nominal risks.

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So if your asking, how good is this character? Awful. Its not irredeemable. It can be salvaged and it can be very good class that isn't just a challenge run class.

Here are my suggestions and reasoning:
-Increase damage of condemn to 35-40%. Most ranged damage skills such as Abysal Artillery, Pistol shot, Thrown dagger are around 10%-33% damage decrease. they're not 50% or 60%.
-Increase debuff chance on condemn to remove trinket tax and make the skill more consistently debuff so that skill properly ramp up,
-Rework Tenebrosity to have high base damage like max stack but reduce damage on every consecutive use as debuff. Allows end fights quickly which minimize turns that enemy spend attacking you to potential put you in deathdoor check. You can basically kill enemy than stall with borrow time. I'd recommend something like 150% damage, 110%, 80%. Health penalties might as well even go past 50% and edge to lower 25% marker.
-Remove 50% condition for healing stress and increase values by 1-2, but limit skills usage to 2-3 to prevent stalling. Personally, Lamia mod does not have limit to stress healing so I do not think it would be bad for it to be 8-10 stress heal with 3 usages but this is up for debate whether having strong stress heals is balanced or not.
-Remove cooldown on borrow time, Changed condition to require an ally to at 25%. Grants 10 dodge, 10 accuracy, 5% damage and 10% stress reducation if on deathdoor. Streams line the ability to work Incite.
-Reworked Incite to instantly put an ally to deathdoor, grants an extra action and grants 1 aegis block, has 1 turn cooldown
-Increase deathblow resistance buff on Apocryphal text to just cap every character at 87% deathblow.

I'd probably add tickets that drastically alter playstyle of skills. I am not familiar with code, but if it is possible change skills dynamically, you can make very interesting trinkets.

For example I'd put tricket that decreases damage Teneprocity completely(Like -80% damage penalty), but increases stun chance to reasonable amounts(like 100%) and makes Desecrate a strong stun skill.

I'd have tricket that makes borrow time able to applied at higher healths like 80% for supportive builds. I am not sure what penalty would be, maybe large amount of speed reduction, max health or stress increase.

For those that really want to play on lifes edge, Maybe a trinket that makes incite deal 1 damage(removes aegis effect from it) in exchange for critical hit bonus.

The whole crimson set having potential crash issues with summon is not professional approach to making the mod feel like vanilla character. This character is not really based off idea of necromancer and I generally dislike set design because it is lazy design to remove player choice and to just give player either really powerful items or really useless items that no one uses.

Hi, you saidmultiple times along the description that the class has "custom animations" BUT in ALL of the images, gifs and videos is using vestals animations... what is really going on?