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Of all the party members you can take along with you on your journey to the mountain in Darkest Dungeon 2, the Plague Doctor is one of the most valuable - especially for newer players. She can heal, inflict some powerful status effects, and is a fantastic backliner.

RELATED: Things You Should Know Before Starting Darkest Dungeon 2

The early game is the roughest part of Darkest Dungeon 2 as you won't have many resources and the majority of your party's skills will remain un-upgraded, but once you get the ball rolling the Plague Doctor can easily be one of the greatest assets you have.

Updated on May 20, 2023 by Matt Arnold: With the full release of Darkest Dungeon 2, the Plague Doctor is still an essential member of many teams. We've updated this guide to give more insight into her abilities, as well as the Paths that she can take to further customize her build!

Plague Doctor Skills

Darkest Dungeon 2 Plague Doctor Mastery Trainer
The Mastery Trainer screen for the Plague Doctor in Darkest Dungeon 2

The Plague Doctor's abilities largely revolve around healing her allies and inflicting status effects on the enemies. She's great with Blight, but can also inflict Bleed, Blindness, and Burn. The table below details all the Plague Doctor's abilities.

Some of these abilities are unlocked by visiting Shrines of Reflection.

  • Emboldening Vapors is gained on the first visit.
  • Plague Grenade is gained on the second visit and after beating the battle therein.
  • Indiscriminate Science is gained on the third visit.
  • Cause of Death is gained on the fourth visit and beating the battle therein.
  • Disorienting Blast and Magnesium Rain are gained on the fifth visit.

Which skills you use will largely depend on your party makeup but there are some standouts. Noxious Blast and Plague Grenade are two of the Plague Doctor's most potent abilities and enable her to stack quite a lot of Blight amongst the enemy party. She can also support allies who use Bleed and Burn with her own status-inflicting abilities.

If your party uses a lot of Burn, Blight, or Bleed it would be a great idea to get Cause of Death - you can reach frighteningly huge damage numbers with enough stacks of these status effects.

Ounce of Prevention is a really fantastic ability, especially when upgraded at the Mastery Trainer. Having more resistance against nasty ailments is brilliant, but the Stress healing aspect of the move cannot be ignored as Stress is probably the main cause of failure in Darkest Dungeon 2.

Battlefield Medicine is a must-have for pretty much any party setup. It's not entirely necessary to upgrade it for the higher healing, but it's fantastic for relieving the pressure of DoT effects and getting rid of Death's Door.

Skill

Hero Rank

Enemy Rank

Effect

Mastery Upgrade

Noxious Blast

2, 3, or 4

1 or 2

  • Ranged attack for 2-3 damage.
  • Five percent crit chance.
  • Inflicts four Blight on the target.
  • Combo bonus: Ignores up to 30 Blight Resistance.

  • Deals an additional point of damage.
  • Inflicts two additional Blight.

Blinding Gas

3 or 4

3 and 4

  • Non-damaging Ranged attack.
  • Inflicts Blind on both targets.
  • Twenty-five percent chance of placing a Combo token on each target.
    • Combo token placement is determined separately for both targets.

  • One-turn cooldown.

  • Also inflicts Daze on both targets.
  • Increases chance of placing a Combo token to thirty-three percent.

Incision

1, 2, or 3

1 or 2

  • Melee attack for 3-6 damage.
  • Ten percent crit chance.
  • Inflicts three Bleed on the target.
  • Combo bonus: Ignores up to 30 Bleed Resistance.

  • Deals one additional point of damage.
  • Increases crit chance to fifteen percent.
  • Inflicts one additional Bleed.

Battlefield Medicine

3 or 4

N/A

  • Can only target Heroes who have less than half of their HP remaining.
  • Heals the target for twenty percent of their maximum HP.
  • Removes Burn, Bleed, and Blight from the target.
  • Can be used three times per battle.

  • Heals an additional five percent of the target's maximum HP.
  • Removes Burn, Bleed, and Blight from the Plague Doctor, even if she isn't the target.

Ounce Of Prevention

3 or 4

N/A

  • For the next three turns, all Heroes have an additional 15 Resistance to Bleed, Burn, Blight, and Disease.
  • Three-turn cooldown.

  • Increases Burn, Bleed, and Blight Resistance bonus to 25.
  • Increases Disease Resistance bonus to 30.
  • Reduces the cooldown to two turns.

Plague Grenade

3 or 3

3 and 4

  • Ranged attack for 2-3 damage.
  • Five percent crit chance.
  • Inflicts two Blight on both targets.

  • Inflicts two additional Blight on each target.

Emboldening Vapors

Any

N/A

  • Grants a single Hero a Strength token.
  • One-turn cooldown.

  • The targeted Hero gains a Speed token as well.
  • Removes the cooldown.

Disorienting Blast

2, 3, or 4

2, 3, or 4

  • Moves the target to a random position.
  • Inflicts Daze on the target.
  • Twenty-five percent chance of inflicting Weakness on the target.

  • Combo bonus: Inflicts Stun on the target.

Indiscriminate Science

2, 3, or 4

N/A

  • Can only target Heroes who have less than half of their HP remaining.
  • Heals the target for ten percent of their maximum HP.
  • Removes all positive tokens from the target, and heals them for an additional ten percent for each token removed this way.
  • One-turn cooldown.

  • Also removes all negative tokens from the target, and heals them for an additional five percent for each token removed this way.

Cause Of Death

1, 2, or 3

1, 2, or 3

  • Removes all Bleed, Blight, and Burn from the target.
  • Immediately deals three quarters of the damage that the target would have taken in total from all removed stacks.
  • Two-turn cooldown.

  • Places a Combo token on the target.
  • Deals the full amount of damage that the target would have taken from the removed stacks.

Magnesium Rain

3 or 4

All

  • Inflicts 2 Burn on all enemies.
  • Clears all corpses on the enemies' side of the field.

  • Inflicts an additional Burn on each enemy.

Plague Doctor Shrine Battles

Darkest Dungeon 2 Plague Doctor Professor Shrine Fight
The Shrine of Reflection fight against the Professor for Plague Doctor in Darkest Dungeon 2

The Plague Doctor has two Shrine of Reflection battles that she must face alone to unlock some skills.

Second Shrine Visit: Head Of The Class

This battle sets the Plague Doctor up against a Professor. She will have two moves available, Review Notes and Heated Rebuttal. Only use Review Notes to begin with, waiting until the Professor uses Conclusion. This is when you should use Heated Rebuttal. After this, wait for the Professor to use Conclusion again.

If you use Heated Rebuttal before the Professor uses Conclusion you will take Stress damage and end up losing the fight.

Once you successfully use Heated Rebuttal twice, you should win.

Fourth Shrine Visit: Failing Grade

This battle is also against the Plague Doctor's Professor, only this time as a reanimated corpse. This battle proceeds in a rather standardized way - use Stitch to try and save the Professor from his Bleed damage and then put him out of his misery with Stab once the option comes up.

RELATED: Darkest Dungeon 2: Hellion Class Guide

Best Builds For Each Plague Doctor Path

The Plague Doctor using Noxious Blast in Darkest Dungeon 2

The Plague Doctor is pretty versatile for a support Hero, but her Paths allow her to specialize in particular areas of expertise.

Path

Effects

Recommended Skills

Recommended Trinkets

Wanderer

  • Gain an additional Candle at the end of the run.

  • Noxious Blast
  • Incision
  • Battlefield Medicine
  • Blinding Gas
  • Magnesium Rain

  • Protectorate (any tier)
  • Dark Impulse (Healing)
  • Locked Jaw
  • Kitchen Knives
  • Poison Ring

Surgeon

  • Increases the Plague Doctor's maximum HP by twenty-five percent.
  • Incision deals fifty percent more damage.
  • Battlefield Medicine and Indiscriminate Science each restore twenty-five percent more HP.
  • The Plague Doctor is thirty-three percent less likely to inflict Blight.

  • Incision
  • Battlefield Medicine
  • Indiscriminate Science
  • Ounce Of Prevention
  • Blinding Gas

  • Protectorate (any tier)
  • Dark Impulse (Healing)
  • Spoken Sharply
  • Annotated Textbook
  • Clasp Knife
  • Leather Strop

Alchemist

  • Reduces the Plague Doctor's maximum HP by twenty percent.
  • The Plague Doctor ignores up to 33 Blight Resistance.
  • Noxious Blast and Plague Grenade each increase their crit rate by ten percent.
  • Increases the Plague Doctor's Bleed, Blight, and Burn Resistance by 20 each.
  • Increases the Plague Doctor's Debuff Resistance by 33.
  • Increases the Plague Doctor's Stun Resistance by 50.

  • Noxious Blast
  • Plague Grenade
  • Battlefield Medicine
  • Cause Of Death
  • Magnesium Rain

  • Skeleton's Sight
  • Curing Cuppa
  • Dark Impulse (Healing)
  • Locked Jaw
  • Kitchen Knives
  • Corrupting Cleaver

Physician

  • Disorienting Blast ignores up to 20 Stun Resistance and inflicts Weakness, in addition to its other effects.
  • Ounce Of Prevention increases the Stress Resistance of all Heroes by 15, in addition to its other effects.
  • Emboldening Vapors grants an extra Strength token.
  • Noxious Blast and Plague Grenade inflict two fewer stacks of Blight.
  • Incision inflicts two fewer stacks of Bleed.

  • Battlefield Medicine
  • Indiscriminate Science
  • Ounce Of Prevention
  • Emboldening Vapors
  • Disorienting Blast

  • Protectorate (any tier)
  • Gilded Mind (any tier)
  • Storage Room Key
  • Early Experiment
  • Unwavering Standard
  • Inspiring Insignia

Wanderer

As with the other classes, the Wanderer is the default Path and can be built with an all-purpose configuration that plays to the Plague Doctor's strengths - buffs, healing, and damage over time. Magnesium Rain is primarily for inflicting Burn and clearing corpses, but it's also a great way of removing Dodge from the enemy team in Creature Dens and other fights where they all spawn with Dodge tokens.

Surgeon

The Surgeon is best placed in Rank 3, where she can use Incision freely without putting herself into too much danger. However, her extra HP lets her move up to Rank 2 if you lose a party member and need to keep your back line as far from the monsters as possible.

The Surgeon deals her damage over time via Bleed rather than Blight, but sports some of the best healing in the game. This is probably the most straightforward of the Plage Doctor's Paths; heal when you need it, stab when you don't.

Alchemist

If you prefer to use the Plague Doctor's Blight powers to their fullest extent, either on their own or in tandem with the Grave Robber and Flagellant, the Alchemist is the best Path to choose. She can still provide healing when needed, but that becomes her secondary role.

The best plan is to stack as much Blight on a single enemy as possible, with the aim of killing them and removing them from the equation. Following up with Magnesium Rain can clear the body, while still inflicting limited damage over time through Burn.

Physician

The Physician trades in her damage-over-time capacity for enhanced buffs and debuffs. She'll spend most of her time giving extra Strength tokens to your primary damage-dealer through Emboldening Vapors, while using Disorienting Blast to limit the impact of powerful enemies.

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