The man with the big blade returns. The Leper reprises his role inDarkest Dungeon 2as the muscle for your team. With his great sword in hand, he has the potential to deal the highest damage of all your heroes. The class does have some quite major drawbacks, though, and his suite of skills must be used with care if you’re to overcome them.
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Much like in the first game, the Leper can do a lot of direct damage to your enemies, but he needs a team to support him. He can generally only target frontline foes, and his tremendous single-hit damage potential is sorely limited by the questionable accuracy of his biggest attacks. As mentioned, though, he has ways to buff himself as well as heavy-hitting attacks.Things will change depending on the hero path selected, but here’s the general lowdown on the Leper’s skills.
Purge is a decent move for corpse-clearing. The Leper has to be in the front rank to use it and it targets the front most enemy. It deals minor damage and forces the enemy all the way to the back rank, unless they resist the movement chance.
The most important aspect of this move is that it clears all corpses, and will do so even if you miss. Upgrading it increases the damage while applying a mark to the hit target. It’s not really worth upgrading because there is a decent chance you are either targeting a corpse to clear it, or the enemy that you just marked is pushed out of range. Sending a melee target to the back can be invaluable, but overall Purge is situational.
10Intimidate
Intimidate is one of the Leper’s tanking skills. He picks a target on the enemy side, dealing minor damage to and weakening them. This skill also grants the Leper two Taunt tokens. It applies two Weaken tokens to one enemy, which is potentially powerful, but the rest of the enemy team are still going to attack the Leper at full strength.
All upgrading does is let the move ignore and remove Stealth. The skill is more often used for the purpose of weakening a target, not damage mitigation. The Leper has other tools with which to apply Taunt to himself, and they’re rather more useful.
Ruin is a self-destructive buff, empowering the Leper with greater damage whenever he takes damage. It lasts three rounds, and he gets 20% more damage per hit. The upgraded version applies Bleed to himself to ensure the effect goes off. It’s limited to two uses per combat and has a three turn cooldown.
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This is a great move to use before or just after you use one of the Leper’s Taunt skills. With that in mind, it’s not worth upgrading just so you can put an inconvenient bleed on your own hero.In certain scenarios, it can be incredibly strong, but it’s difficult to use regularly and reliably.
8Reflection
Reflection is a simple cleansing move, and the Leper needs it if he doesn’t have the proper support. Once used, the Leper heals one Stress and clears all Blindness tokens he may have accrued. It also clears any Marks he has placed on him. Mastering the skill adds an extra Debuff Resistance to the move, helping prevent future Blindness and any other negative tokens the enemy would apply.
The Stress mitigation is minor, and you’ll typically only need this move if you’re unable to mark targets for the Leper to strike, which is not an uncommon case turn by turn.
7Solemnity
Self-sufficiency is a rare and wonderful thing. Solemnity grants the Leper the ability to heal both his body and his Stress in one move. The move has a few limits in its use; it’s only usable twice a battle for one. The Leper must also be below one-third of his max health in order to use it. Even so, it’s a great recovery skill, asstress usually compounds with low health.
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Upgrading the skill increases the health recovered and the stress dealt. Though there are some harsh restrictions on the move, its effect is very potent, and means there is less pressure on the supporters on your team.
6Withstand
Withstand is the Leper’s main damage mitigation skill. Immediately on use, it grants two tokens of Block and two tokens of Taunt. As well as his damage-dealing capacity, the Leper has the HP to serve as the primary tank on a team, and Withstand is the perfect skill to support him in this role. The enduring benefit is a buff bestowing one more Block token at the start of the Leper’s turn, for the next three turns.
Withstand also increases the Leper’s resistance to damage over time. Upgrading the move increases his resistances, and makes those initial Block tokens stronger. Overall, it’s a strong move, and probably an essential choice for any defensive Leper build.
Revenge is a high risk, high reward skill you may use if you want your damage to be even higher. Its initial use sees the Leper gain two tokens of Vulnerability, increasing the damage he will take from the next two attacks. In exchange, he gains one Might token at the start of his next three turns. Upgrading reduces the Vulnerability tokens and removes any weakness the Leper has. It also has a chance to grant criticals.
Since the Leper can grant himself Block, it can be worth it to use Revenge, though he can only do it twice a fight. Revenge has a very strong effect, but it’s vital to note that it must be used strategically. Careless use can prove fatal.
Bash is the Leper’s most reliable marking tool in his entire arsenal. While standing in his preferred frontline ranks, the Leper can attack and mark either of the front two enemies with this skill. Bash doesn’t risk blinding the Leper, but it immobilizes him instead, which is actually good for him as the Leper wants to stay in the front lines. He also strikes his target for small damage, but can inflict daze; a decent status that forces the target to move last on the turn order. If you need an enemy’s turn delayed, it’s a solid choice.
However, if its passive effects aren’t needed or don’t activate, it wasn’t a very efficient turn for the Leper, who wants to deal as much damage as possible whenever he can.
Break is a useful tool to have on your team. Little is more frustrating than setting up a big attack only for your enemy to block it. All the damage goes to waste. That’s why Break is a recommended skill to have in many Leper loadouts. Break’s power is still quite potent, especially when upgraded. Most importantly, Break completely ignores Block tokens and strips enemies of all such tokens they may have remaining, opening them up for the rest of the team and future blows from the Leper themselves.
If pesky Block tokens often scupper your game plans, keep this one equipped.
Chop is the Leper’s most important, yet most frustrating, skill. He starts the game with this skill unlocked, and it’s his main method for dealing damage. No other attack in the game has the damage variation potential that Chop has, and this plays into its shortcomings.
Chop is generally too swingy to be consistent, but Crit tokens make it work a lot better. After using Chop, to compound the issues, the Leper has a high chance to Blind himself. Upgrading Chop increases the maximum damage, and lowers the blindness chance. To help with inaccuracy, the Leper ignores Blindness when attacking marked targets. Marking, then, is all but a must when the Leper is onthe team (think carefully about compositions).
