Moar Perk Trees! (Madeline, Mary, Rosita)

Hello there! So I decided to start showcasing multiple perk trees at once to get them out of the way faster, because there are a bunch of them. I'll also try to get the deep dives into each a bit shorter than I originally wanted, otherwise these posts will look like books lol. Coincidentally, all 3 of the trees I will be showing today are defense focused. Let's get down to it!

Lady Madeline

Starting with Madeline's tree (one of my favorites), the playstyle focuses on magical damage and tanking through health regeneration. In general, there are very few instances of instant healing in the remake, most effects (spell or item) buff your Health Regen instead, which will slowly restore a percentage of your health every turn until the effect times out. Madeline is no different here; in fact, she is the queen of this. Verdant Communion is unlocked early and offers a good 5% Health Regen for 4 turns, which is further improved to 8% later down the tree. But the real great part about Health Regen with Madeline isn't actually the Health Regen itself, but the various bonuses she offers passively while you're under any Health Regen effect. Her "Serenity" perk is integral to the playstyle, which offers a flat +25 Apathy (aka damage reduction) while you are under any Health Regen effect (spell or item). This is further reinforced with her devotion perk "Favored Guest", which offers you a flat extra action per turn, and a further bonus one if you are under a Health Regen effect. The perk "Milady's Recipe Book" also unlocks the recipe for Madeline's Ambrosia, which is one of the best healing items in the game, and its healing is of course done through Health Regen as well, so it synergizes with everything else too.

Madeline's weapon of choice is the Bow, which is a low damage weapon, but gives you access to good burst damage potential if you have good stamina management (the tree includes several perks to help with that). Namely, "Rapid Reload" turns Bow attacks to half-actions for a short while, so you can attack twice per action; and if you already have several actions per turn (through your high Feral Instinct stat or the "Favored Guest" perk), you can potentially spit arrows like a machine gun, assuming you have enough stamina. However, Madeline's focus is on magical damage and the Blasphemy stat, not physical Bow attacks! The perk "Arcane Archery" takes care of that by turning all Bow attacks and skills to deal magical damage, scaling off Blasphemy instead of Cruelty. In general, contrary to more straight-forward trees, good damage output requires a bit more setup with Madeline's Aspect of Nature; but makes up for it in fantastic survivability.

Queen Mary

Moving on to Mary, tankiness comes from the classic high armor way. Mary's way of governance is through disciplined and regimented plans coming to fruition through strict accordance with the protocol. Mary dislikes unpredictability and will attempt to control the battlefield by being prepared for anything and everything. You may call her inflexible, and she'll have one word as a response: Counter. Mary is the Counter tree, Counter being the automatic counterattack you make upon receiving damage. The Aspect of Authority wants you to become a proper tank, enclosed in heavy armor and buffing your Apathy to likely the highest of any other tree, giving you the ability to absorb any blow while simultaneously counterattacking each and every one of them. I should also note here that adopting Mary's Abyssal Affinity also buffs your resistances further, for everything except Llavanya's Dawn magic. "Brace" (the new "Guard") also receives heavy buffs here, offering a further chance to Counter, as well as restoring Stamina when getting hit. Her devotion perk "Extended Lockdown" increases Brace duration by 1 turn, helping with the action economy, as you'll likely be slower than more offense-focused trees (Authority dislikes Feral Instincts of all types). Your incredibly high Apathy is also well complemented by the "Entropic Burst" spell, which is costly Abyssal magic, but translates your Apathy to direct damage and allows you to nuke an enemy simply by trying to get your defense as high as possible.

Mary's preferred weapon is the reliable Mace. Blunt weapons are generally less damaging than bladed and the same applies to the Mace, but as with the real historical purpose of the Mace, it can easily penetrate armor. Early on in the tree, you get access to "Punish" which cheaply allows you to completely ignore enemy Apathy with your Mace and turn very tough enemies to business as usual. The Aspect of Authority also has a thematic focus on Defiance, taking after Mary's refusal to bow. High Defiance already makes you hard to keep in a Grapple, but here you get an immediate and reliable way to break out of any Grapple even if you do get caught. The utility perk "Because I Said So" also offers "Supremacy", a physical skill that scales off Defiance instead of Cruelty and counts as a free action (with cooldown). To sum up, Mary offers low but dependable damage output in armor-piercing and counter attacks, while simultaneously offering one of the highest defense stats in the game.

Mommy Rosita

Finally, Rosita and the Aspect of Nurture is meant to be a tank in the way of massive healthpools. Multiple perks in the tree expand your Max Health more than any other playstyle, at the cost of both your Dodge capabilities and Apathy. This will turn you into a sitting duck, forced to absorb all incoming hits in their fullest form, without any damage mitigation to soften the blow. Your healthpool will be able to take massive amounts of punishment though, and will directly buff you the more injured you are. "Imbuement of Vigor" is a core spell in the playstyle which buffs your Max Health by 50% (and debuffs Apathy by a flat 15), which can be massive if you have a sufficiently high Max Health stat. It's one of those spells you will want to keep enabled at all times, especially after unlocking the upgrade down the line that also adds a Health Regen effect to the mix. "Grounded" offers +10% Critical Chance when you are below half Health, "False Lullaby" halves enemy Cruelty and Apathy and is a fantastic control tool but can only be cast when you are below half Health, and "Starving For Her" passively (up to) doubles your Blasphemy the lower your Health is, which is important since most of your damage output will likely be coming from spells. These, along with "Maternal Ire" which translates your missing Health points directly to damage, promote a playstyle of purposefully staying below half Health, but also having a high enough Max Health to still feel safe there.

The weapon of the hour here is the Scythe, to go along with Rosita's autumn harvest theme. The Scythe is an utility weapon more than anything, and your main damage output is expected to be spells instead. However, some nice perks for it makes it the ideal tool for farming mobs; it can hit all enemies at once, and each hit increases post-battle treasure chance (stacking). This aligns with Rosita's theme of abudance and you know... real farming. The Scythe also offers optional Health draining utility for the boss fights. Rosita also offers one of the few instant healing spells in the game with "Kiss the Wound", which has limited uses per battle but you can increase them with a devotion perk. The tree also offers a way to fully dispel yourself of all negative effects, including setup states meant to exist to allow Dominas do their big moves on you. Mommy's recipe book is also filled with excellent consumables that you can learn to craft, as expected of her. In general, the Aspect of Nurture rewards strategic play of keeping your Health percentage at the ideal bracket, while controlling the enemy with severe debuffs and effortlessly negating their setups or DOTs. It is meant to feel overbearing and frustrating for them; encapsulating the essence of Rosita herself.

Thank you for the read! This was still a fairly lengthy post and it's very late currently, so excuse me if I accidentally wrote gibberish somewhere without noticing lol. Deka is sleepy. Goodnight:)