Tired of seeing Garlic doubters

[GiveMeCake]

Garlic is great. Everyone has their garlic phase in this game, so don't be embarrassed about it.

[Angrypillow]

It's fantastic in the beginning stages but isn't useful at all in the later ones. The time between ticks is too long and the damage scaling for higher levels is terrible.

[dustin1280]

Garlic is amazingt in the first 10 minutes or so but falls off hard mid-late game and becomes the worst possible weapon...

[kraki]

If all you've got is birds and lightning, garlic can save your life from bat/ghost swarms if you've got a couple levels in it. You can't beat the big bads at the end if you don't make it past 9 minutes.

[Vimpster]

On the forest level I find it remains good throughout. Even if the damage from it is inconsequential the increased knockback it causes allows you to push your way through enemies when you get over run in the late game. At least an unevolved one. It doesn't feel like the evolved version causes the same kind of knockback.

On the library level, I maybe wrong, but it seems like some of the late game creatures have better resistance to knockback.

This is obviously anecdotal. I have no hard numbers regarding how effective it is in what circumstances. But I did just complete the forest level using a high level, but unevolved, garlic, and the knockback that was happening to any creatures damaged by my weapons after having been impacted by the garlic definitely allowed me to push a path through monsters that the damage of my other weapons alone was not causing.

[kraki]

Absolutely agree on the unevolved garlic. I was very unimpressed with the evolution and yes it appears to have no knockback in addition to a slower pulse.

The wizard and I think one of the witch bosses that are immune or mostly immune to knockback so yeah you have to watch out for them eating your face if you're not paying attention (personally guilty of this at like 26-28 minutes several times)

[zz_tophat]

I really wish it scaled in to late game better, at the moment it feels like taking it early is a waste later. Maybe add the ability to discard weapons?

[Spawnling]

I think Garlic is quite hard to use correctly.
You want it evolved and stack it's damage for late game, so you need a build that's weak enough to let you bumb into enemies and keep you at half HP, whip sounds tempting but the heal from it's evolution makes stacking soul eater even harder and if you get something like king bible and axe evolutions you can't stack damage and get overwhelmed in the library (that's without gold upgrades).
After paying attention to this fact and aiming to stack soul eater's damage it was quite good, but I think this also makes it hard to use correctly.

[Kurama Kitsune]

It is good because it lets you kill stuff and level up fast early on by just barreling into things. Which lets you get your other stuff sooner. At the end game, its damage isn't much but its evolved version does add some extra self-healing. Also, it remains useful against those fast swarms of bats or ghosts which can otherwise shove stronger enemies into you if you don't have a high end Santa Water or something.

[Chesty Monroe]

Garlic is a better choice for Exdash than Bible, because his -speed penalty makes Bible unworkable imo.

[Maktlan]

Who ever doubted garlic? Garlic is juice af

[kraki]

Mainly it's because garlic is outclassed after about 10:15 when you get your first evolution.

[thefollowingcharacters]

The point of garlic is to be one of the strongest early game items that lets you rack of up levels quickly. It transitions in late game more to the knock back assistance to help you survive. Its absolutely fantastic for what it does. If it only did damage, sure, but the knockback assistance of top of the damage helps you get to the point of being powerful enough to get a real item going, then if you didn't have it.

[FAST&BULBOUS]

Originally posted by Spawnling:

I think Garlic is quite hard to use correctly.
You want it evolved and stack it's damage for late game

Completely wrong. Garlic's damage is only useful for the early game, it's not really necessary because late game weapons can do well enough in the early game but it is a pretty nice convenience and can help with quicker XP gain.

After like 10 or so minutes (maybe longer on Library) it's damage is entirely irrelevant and trying to force it to do damage is not productive. The only thing it does at this stage and beyond is provide the knockback bonus (which is a pretty nice benefit don't get me wrong).

As such you should never evolve garlic because the only thing the evolution gives, damage and regen, is useless and the one thing garlic does do well, knockback, is not aided by the evolution. In fact evolving it actively hurts your build, being forced to take the HP regen support skill is a huge downside. You should never take it if there are still other support skills available that would benefit your damage dealing weapons, and there always is a better choice.

[kraki]

I am not saying it has no use - it can be a defensive life saver. The question was why are some folks down on it. The answer is low DPS after the early stages and as long as the rng doesn't outfox you, la borra will probably carry you safely to the end.

[Tall Dark and Gruesome]

in my experience garlic was great training wheels for learning the game, the aoe trash clearing of early waves and passive healing has its place.
Current version just gets out scaled by enemy health at about 20 minutes even with full damage buffs. dev might want to give the evolved version a tweak or something, but it serves a role in the game as it is.