Every great squad needs its healer, and the Ronin will do just that. Ghost of Tsushima: Legends is the multiplayer expansion to an already-impressive single-player game. You will be prompted to choose between four different classes: Samurai, Archer, Assassin, and Ronin. Each class comes with its own special abilities and passive traits that will aid the team in the heat of battle. The most important member of that team is The Ronin.  

The Ronin’s ultimate ability, Breath of Izanami, will automatically heal any downed Ghost from anywhere on the map. What makes this ability even better is that it will also heal all of your allies upon popping it. This buff can be equipped via The Ronin’s perk list.

The Ronin must always have Breath of Izanami ready to go. This will require fast resolve building and extra resolve slots. Each Ghost has three resolve slots by default. However, it costs all three to unleash their ultimate abilities. The most effective way to spam Breath of Izanami is to build your Ronin with five resolve slots. Here’s how:

You can easily go up +1 by selecting the Resolve Increase perk at rank 9. While the other options will help in buffing Ghost weapon damage and overall healing, the Ronin will be far more helpful to the team if they can continuously heal and revive their allies.

Secondly, you can re-roll perks on your charm until you get Increase Maximum Resolve by 1. Now you have five resolve slots. Once all five are filled, you will only need to fill one to launch Breath of Izanami a second time. So, let’s talk about increasing resolve gains.

The easiest way to build quick resolve is to have Melee Resolve Gain as a perk on your Katana. More specifically, the Ronin will have much more success with the Water Katana (better against shielded enemies) for the rapid heavy attacks. The Ronin can also build quick resolve by spamming bombs into crowds of Mongols. Ideally, you are playing with a group of Ghosts that aren’t going down too often. This will allow you to build all five resolve slots back up without launching Breath of Izanami and only saving the two extra resolve slots in case of emergency. This trick comes in handy, particularly while trying to complete the Nightmare Survival mission, which can be as hard if not harder than Lethal mode in the single-player campaign. 

Finally, there is some strategy to using Breath of Izanami properly. Do not use it to prevent a Ghost from going down. If you see that your allies are low on health, let them go down. The Revive/Heal will be more beneficial to the team. There are handfuls of Oni enemies that can easily one-shot a Ghost, and you’d hate to waste your ultimate for that Ghost to go down anyway. It’s also wise to let multiple Ghosts fall if you notice their health meters are getting low. Breath of Izanami will heal all downed Ghosts. Don’t stick to this rule strictly, especially if Mongols are swarming the entire team. 

As far as techniques are concerned, the Ronin should always be running Healing Incense. Yes, a spirit dog is useful, but you are more helpful to your team if you can heal them between rounds in Survival and engagements in Story mode. As mentioned above, you will also need to be running Increased Resolve. For a third perk, Ronin Unleashed is the most helpful, as it will allow Soothing Incense to be used more often. 

Ghost of Tsushima will most likely go down as one of the best games of 2020. Its engine, combat, and story has set the bar for future open-world RPGs to come. There are a handful of great games players can explore once they’ve completed Ghost, but the multiplayer ought to keep them around for a while longer.