Darkest Dungeon 2 offers players twelve heroes to choose from for their party. While you don’t unlock all of them right away, one hero you do have access to right from the beginning is the Plague Doctor.
The Plague Doctor primarily is a support hero who also has a few damage-over-time attacks in her arsenal. She has some of the most useful skills in the game, making her one of if not the best hero in Darkest Dungeon 2. And as such, most players would want her in their party and so below is the best build for her.
Path
One could argue that the Alchemist is a better choice, and while it has its advantages, the Surgeon is more useful because of the healing boost. The Alchemist is better suited for a more offensive build, but the Plague Doctor, in our opinion, is better as a healer.
The Surgeon path offers +25% max health, +50% melee damage, and +33% healing. The trade off unfortunately is a 33% decrease in blight chance. All paths have their drawbacks, but the advantages outweigh the disadvantages in this case. Moreover, a 50% increase in melee damage ensures that Plague Doctor will still be useful when it comes to offense.
Skills
There are a total of eleven skills for the Plague Doctor in Darkest Dungeon 2. However, only five of them are viable for this build. They are Incision, Noxious Blast, Battlefield Medicine, Magnesium Rain, and Indiscriminate Science.
Incision
Remember the 50% melee damage boost we mentioned earlier? This is where it’s going to be useful. Incision is a melee attack where the Plague Doctor slashes opponents in the front ranks with her knife. This skill also applies a bleed damage-over-time effect to the enemies.
You won’t be able to use this skill if she’s placed in rank 4, so be sure to place her in rank 3 as she will need to be in the back lines to perform the other skills.
Noxious Blast
Noxious Blast is a simple, but useful ranged attack that applies a poison and blight damage-over-time effect to the enemies.
Battlefield Medicine
This skill is essential to have in your arsenal. It restores HP and cures any damage-over-time effects on your heroes. To be able to use this skill the Plague Doctor will have to be in the back lines (3 or 4) and the hero you are going to use this on must have less than 50% HP or must be inflicted with a bleed, blight, or burn damage-over-time effect.
The one drawback of this skill is that it can be used only three times per encounter so be sure to use it wisely.
Also Read: Darkest Dungeon 2: Tips and tricks for beginners
Magnesium Rain
This is a very powerful attack that has an area-of-effect and applied a burn damage-over-time to all opponents regardless of their position in the team. It also has a cooldown of 1 turn.
To get this ability, you will have to visit a Shrine of Reflection while traveling and have the Plague Doctor reflect on her past.
Indiscriminate Science
This skill is similar to Battlefield Medicine, in that it requires the hero to be healed to have less than 50% health. The difference is, however, for every positive token the hero has 10% of their HP will get restored. (1 token = 10% HP restored. 2 tokens = 20% HP restored and so on).
However, in true Darkest Dungeon fashion, this too has a drawback. The token(s), will unfortunately go away when the ability is used, so think twice before using this skill.
Combat items and Trinkets
When it comes to combat items, having Medicinal Herbs are vital as they also remove status effects like Battlefield Medicine allowing you to use the latter for more important situations.
As for Trinkets, equip Annotated Textbook and Indelible Protectorate. Annotated Textbook offers a near 10% increase in Crit chance for melee attacks, but more importantly, it offers 50% extra healing when you have Medicinal Herbs equipped, which is another reason for you to have them. Just make sure to have at least one Medical Herb at all times for the healing boost to remain.
Indelible Protectorate on the other hand offers a very useful 20% boost to all healing given.