If you’re a new player thinking of investing any sort of upgrades, Badges, Orbs, or time into Incisus—wait! You’re going to want to read this guide first before you realize that you wasted valuable energy on one of the worst characters in Warhammer 40K: Tacticus. Now, Incisus does have some use in two areas of the game, but beyond that, he’s a pretty bad choice. Let’s take a closer look at this neglected healer and figure out why he’s in such a bad spot.
How to Unlock Incisus
Incisus will be unlocked for you early on, so there’s no real need to try and get him. That said, if you, for some reason, need more Incisus shards (you don’t), you can get them through Requisition Scrolls or by farming them in Indomitus Battle 27.
He’s a Common character, so you should have a decent chance of pulling him if you use 10 Reqs at a time. He’s actually such a common pull that people love to complain about him on the Tacticus discord and subreddit. You’ll get 40 shards at a time, which should be more than enough to upgrade him to where you need him for Indomitus Elite.
Incisus’s Active and Passive Abilities
Incisus’s Active
Incisus’s active ability is Combat Restoratives, an AoE heal that affects all adjacent friendly units. It heals for X amount, but if the adjacent character is Imperial, it will heal for Y instead. At max rank, this is 3888 for friendly units and 6480 for Imperial units, basically enough to fully heal your entire team at the click of a button.
Unfortunately, that requires spending hundreds of thousands of coins and tons of Legendary Imperial Badges, so it’s not worth getting his ability that high in the first place. There are better abilities to spend Badges on in Tacticus, like Bellator’s active, Isabella’s passive, or Yarrick’s active.
Incisus’s Passive
The only redeeming quality of Incisus is his passive, Narthcium. If an adjacent friendly non-mechanical unit dies, it has a 90% chance of being brought back to life at X health. This does not work if the character is overkilled.
While this does sound great, and it can be useful in the early levels, it really isn’t much when you get to the late game, especially when there are so many better characters to field compared to Incisus.
Incisus Stats and Attacks
Moving on to Incisus’s stats and attacks, we find that he’s actually quite tanky and even has just about the same amount of health as one of the best characters in the game—Marneus Calgar. At max rank, Incisus has 7465 health, 1690 armor, and deals 3483 damage. This still doesn’t make him as good of a tank as Calgar since he is missing Calgar’s Mk X Gravis trait that essentially doubles his armor. Regardless, it is slightly surprising to see stats like that on a character that is widely considered to be the worst in Tacticus.
Incisus only attack is a single-hit piercing melee attack that can be a force to be reckoned with since it has an 80% pierce ratio. 80% is no joke, especially when most characters have pierce ratios below 40%. If you level him up, Incisus can hit decent enough, but it still doesn’t make up for his bad abilities.
Incisus only has one trait: Healer. This just allows him to heal allies on his turn for his damage stat instead of attacking or using an ability. He also has a movement of three, giving him average mobility in Tacticus.
For equipment, Incisus can wield a Crit Item, Defensive Item, and Crit Booster. For Crit Items, you’re better off giving him a Bolt Pistol to increase his chance of criting, as his pierce ratio and damage are already high enough. Like other Ultramarine characters, he can wield either the Mk X Pauldrons or Plated Greaves for his Defensive Item. The Pauldrons are best for most scenarios, while the Greaves are better when facing off against multiple low-damage enemies, as the extra armor will come in handy.
How to Use Incisus
Because of his passive, Incisus is best kept next to characters on the frontline so that they can be immediately revived should they go down; just remember that it’s a 90% chance. He can easily help you power through Indomitus until you get other characters like Isabella, Yarrick, or Calgar.
He should be kept out of harm’s way so that he can heal your units after they take damage, but don’t be afraid to attack with him, as his damage output is surprisingly decent for what it’s worth. With his movement of three hexes, you can easily reposition him as needed and move him towards the back or front line, whoever needs healing and a potential revive the most.
Incisus can help turn a two-medal mission into a three-medal one because the game only cares about how many characters are alive at the end of the level, not how many characters die during it. If you’re having trouble with a level, you can turtle, keeping your units around Incisus so that he may heal and revive them as needed.
Is Incisus bad in Tacticus?
Yes. Incisus is bad. That said, if he is all you have, you have to work with what you got. He’s easily outclassed by Isabella, and you can often do without him on certain missions, but Incisus can help you power through tougher levels early on without having to upgrade your team too much.
The main thing is that once you unlock other characters and are able to replace him with someone like Yarrick or Isabella (or really whoever else), Incisus takes a back seat, and you should avoid putting any sort of resources into him whatsoever.
Incisus is not required for either the Indomitus or Indomitus Elite Campaigns, meaning that once you have a better roster, you can essentially forget about him. Any additional upgrades are almost certainly wasted on Incisus unless Snowprint decides to buff him. It’s not unheard of for Snowprint to buff or nerf characters, so it’s a very real possibility that they will take another look at Incisus in the future.
Typically, when Snowprint changes a character drastically, they will give players a Reset Stone, but if Incisus is buffed, that is unlikely to happen. The Reset Stone is intended to allow players to reclaim resources spent on a character that is now not as good as before. Either way, Incisus is in desperate need of a buff.
When the game was first released, Incisus was the only real healer for Imperials, but as soon as Isabella was introduced, he immediately got outclassed and out-healed. Now, if you have Isabella, there’s no reason to even look at Incisus, let alone spend precious Orbs and Badges on him.