Botanist

Explore the Botanist class in Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth. Learn about its healing and debuffing skills, recommended races, and effective strategies for party support.

The Botanist is Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth's dedicated healer, utilizing a variety of Herb and Smoke skills to support the party and debilitate enemies. Recommended races include Brouni and Celestrian, and they can equip Staff, Bow, Scythe, or Clothes.

Key Skills:

• Herb Skills: Healing Herb and Sweeping Herb restore HP, Refreshing Herb cures ailments, and Revival Herb brings back fallen allies. Herb Mastery passively boosts healing power by 30%.
• Passive Skills: Antibodies increase recovery rate from ailments and binds by 50%.
• Field Skill: Herb Foraging restores HP and TP when gathering resources.
• Smoke Skills: Toxic Smoke and Dark Smoke inflict Poison and Blind respectively, while also lowering enemy resistance to these ailments. Smokeblight reduces elemental DEF, with a greater effect if the target is already suffering from a Smoke debuff.

Role and Strategy:

Botanists excel as pure healers and are well-suited for solo healing roles. They should generally be placed in the back row. Smoke skills can be useful for teams that rely on debuffs or need additional damage mitigation. Smokeblight synergizes well with Warlocks, elemental attacks, and Elemental Prayer buffs. Toxic Smoke offers a less potent but still viable alternative to Necromancer's Poison Bomb for dealing with specific enemy formations.

Skill Point Allocation:

A common approach is to invest one point into all Herb and Smoke skills initially. Prioritize learning the Racial skill _Animal Care_. If the Botanist is the sole healer, focus remaining points on Herb skills. If another party member provides healing, consider specializing in Smoke skills. Poison and Blind ailments are particularly useful in the early game. Brouni race is generally better suited for a pure healing build due to lower LUC stats, while Celestrian or Earthlain may be better for a Smoke-focused build.

Additional Notes:

• Enemies can only have three debuffs active simultaneously; be mindful of overwriting beneficial debuffs with Smoke skills, especially when planning to use Smokeblight.
• For a Brouni Botanist, a pure healer build is often recommended.
• Celestrian or Earthlain races can be effective for Smoke-based Botanists, with Celestrians potentially maintaining strong healing capabilities with fewer SP invested in healing skills.
• Even for a Smoke-focused Botanist, learning Revival Herb (1) and Healing Herb (1) can significantly ease the early game.