Jack is too weak.

[Ice_Tea_Zero]

Please for f**k sake remove the 50% more damage from enemies debuff. This character is complete garbage. Armor 20 and still take 30 damage from normal enemies. If the character was at least a glasscannon, but he can't even deal proper damage either. As soon there is a elite enemy I can't even deal any damage. Worst character in the game by far. Jack has only debuffs and no special abilities, it's just a unnecessary boring character.

[Bumc]

Currently Jack follows a very simple flowchart

Did you get +mob density items offered?
Yes -> you're playing Loud
No -> you're playing a nothing-potato.

+50% damage honestly doesn't feel too bad because you don't get swarmed from all directions.

[Ice_Tea_Zero]

Originally posted by Bumc:

Currently Jack follows a very simple flowchart

Did you get +mob density items offered?
Yes -> you're playing Loud
No -> you're playing a nothing-potato.

+50% damage honestly doesn't feel too bad because you don't get swarmed from all directions.

50% damage is literally the biggest ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ever! Idk what the devs were thinking if they gave him this debuff. It completly ruin this character. Jack is just garbage, this character has no special abilities except for being a sore loser. Worst character by far.

[Azoth658]

I would like to humbly disagree. What makes Jack interesting is due to the enemy reduction you can use weapons that normally would be sub par. Adding enemies is actually one of the worst things you can do as even 5% can be overwhelming in later levels.

Jack is all about scaling damage as quickly as you can. For example the laser gun is a fantastic weapon on jack because for a standard character this weapon over kills and the damage is wasted. For jack this gives you a very easy early game and the damage from range is amplified by a min of 400% and as it hits very hard it scales really well with % damage.

By far and away the most difficult wave is probably 9 and the change in one of the latest updates now only gives jack elites so the very challenging horde waves have been removed.

Other tips are the lure item that brings in special enemies is 8% damage buff for dealing with one charger (if you don't increase enemies)

Also not sure how far you got with them but without any extra enemies if you kill everything in the waves you will actually earn more materials than a standard character.

[dontnormally]

I go hard on lasers and i can't even get 10% off of the first elite. I really don't understand the equation for this.

[dontnormally]

Welp nevermind - I truly went all-in on lasers (no other weapons), got really lucky with early XP and harvesting scaling, then pumped ranged damage, damage, attack speed with a bit of armour and eventually a lot of speed. that worked

[Jaasrg]

Originally posted by Azoth658:

I would like to humbly disagree. What makes Jack interesting is due to the enemy reduction you can use weapons that normally would be sub par. Adding enemies is actually one of the worst things you can do as even 5% can be overwhelming in later levels.

Jack is all about scaling damage as quickly as you can. For example the laser gun is a fantastic weapon on jack because for a standard character this weapon over kills and the damage is wasted. For jack this gives you a very easy early game and the damage from range is amplified by a min of 400% and as it hits very hard it scales really well with % damage.

By far and away the most difficult wave is probably 9 and the change in one of the latest updates now only gives jack elites so the very challenging horde waves have been removed.

Other tips are the lure item that brings in special enemies is 8% damage buff for dealing with one charger (if you don't increase enemies)

Also not sure how far you got with them but without any extra enemies if you kill everything in the waves you will actually earn more materials than a standard character.

Laser quickly overkills on Jack too, the big boys, elites&bosses being an exception.

Attack speed is still king and something you really do want even on Jack since when you inevitably blow your 6 laser load on target that would have died to one shot, you don't want to wait the decade it takes for lasers to refire, especially on elite/boss waves.

[Vengyr]

Originally posted by Bumc:

Currently Jack follows a very simple flowchart

Did you get +mob density items offered?
Yes -> you're playing Loud
No -> you're playing a nothing-potato.

+50% damage honestly doesn't feel too bad because you don't get swarmed from all directions.

Yeah, pretty much. It's very rng heavy, if you get 1-2 mob density items early, you just snowball like crazy.

Tried laser cannon/obliterator build, went well on second try. You still need tons of attack speed.

[Andre]

He is pretty strong. He can use lasers that are too slow for many classes and they scale like crazy. Killing bosses isn't hard at all.

[SillieBillie~]

Having way less enemies to swarm makes the low fire rate weapons so good. Hell I was impressed I did well with Revolvers since the 2.4 secs reload time felt like nothing when dealing with a small amount.
That and being able to fart away elites makes things like the Laser Gun, Sniper Gun and Obliterator so powerful.

[Deathraven13]

0,1% achievements for completing a run, and I beat it first try in D5.

Honestly Jack is pretty ok. As everyone suggested lasers work well here.

[HeraldOfOpera]

Originally posted by Deathraven13:

0,1% achievements for completing a run, and I beat it first try in D5.

Honestly Jack is pretty ok. As everyone suggested lasers work well here.

To be fair, that's pretty much universal for achievements this recent. Especially since it doesn't count runs done in Beta before the achievements were added to Steam proper.

[Deathraven13]

Originally posted by HeraldOfOpera:

Originally posted by Deathraven13:

0,1% achievements for completing a run, and I beat it first try in D5.

Honestly Jack is pretty ok. As everyone suggested lasers work well here.

To be fair, that's pretty much universal for achievements this recent. Especially since it doesn't count runs done in Beta before the achievements were added to Steam proper.

Yes I know, Leech got the same % too, it was to say that despite the low % it can still be done so Jack isn't as weak as OP believe especialy if I won on my first try.

The new items and the changes on a lot of things does affect the way some will play so OP may have some trouble not because of the character but because of the patch that changed a few things.

[Enjoyluck]

Jack is the weakest potato right now. The benefit does noting.

[Clearness]

Like others have said, laser gun seems to be the most viable starting weapon for him (and honestly, a core weapon). Aside from laser guns, obliterator and sniper rifle are good choices but you really could just stick with laser guns the whole way.

Starting out, you can't go for any non-offensive items. I personally gave up on trying harvesting and defensive items for he first dozen waves as they nerfed my damage way too much. For about the first 12 waves (up to the first elite) I prioritized items like this:

Weapon Upgrades > Ranged Damage > Damage > Attack Speed > Crit Chance

Getting a little bit of attack speed and speed early is important but after that, you have to pump everything into increasing your damage output. The elites/bosses have more health, yes, but the way the math works out with how laser guns scale with ranged damage, the bonus against elites/bosses, crit chance, and flat damage upgrades, there is a lot of multiplication going on that ultimately makes him one of the best boss/elite killers.

After the first elite, I continued to grab upgrades to boost damage but for defensive upgrades I went for speed and hp. Dodge and Armor really aren't that great because the enemies do so much damage. I was very lucky and got the damage nullification upgrade which is really cost efficient as you can only take like 2-3 hits max with this character. With luck and prioritizing damage so much, each elite and the bosses only lasted a few seconds before they died.

[Anann]

Just beaten danger 5 with Jack. It was not that bad, maybe I was too lucky. In this run I grabbed high DMG guns to kill enemies.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2933467492