Bandit is Broken.

[TheVoluntaryist]

I can beat every other class, maximum mastery. Great ease. I've been playing this game for Several Years now.. and I've never beaten Bandit.
It's just hours of staring at an enemy, waiting for the dude to fire, seeing that I'm going to be overrun anyway.
It kinda doesn't matter which of four ways I'm facing when I'm completely overrun.
Maybe a shot that has a random chance to do a random thing will go down a random lane and random an enemy a night longer. But I've never reached 20.
If you have tips, I'm listening.
I figured, the shop is king. Maximize for luck. No dice. Doesn't matter. Gets me a little further. But there are no strategic choices to make in the face of absolute overrun
staring at a line of enemies
waiting for my guy to do something ....
I tried prioritizing for reload speed. Same problem. Skills B-Line. Same problem.
Different balances. Same problem.
It's obviously possible. People have done it. What am I not doing other than getting lucky?

[B]

It's funny you mention this, I've been playing and I came to the discussion forum just to see if anyone else had complained about Bandit, or if I was just missing something/skill issue. And this is the first thread.

Bandit feels completely unplayable to me, relies heavily on basic attacks but can't significantly scale attack speed?? Brutal player experience.

EDIT: At unlock level 11 (hard to get when you're losing every run!) you get a core talent that causes coin flip to launch in three directions and reduces the cooldown. Seems absolutely mandatory to have a decent shot.

[Pyroblap]

Bandit's very strong, but its core Shop feature is a bit of a trap, as you're discovering. You need income for the shop to be good, but the talents that grant you income and buff the shop give you no killing power... and you need things to die if you want them to give you gold.

Luck only benefits you when you kill things... So don't chase it on early nights where there aren't a lot of enemies to begin with.

Put as many early points as you can into crit, reload, and any talents that make you shoot extra/special bullets. Contrary to what Barry says, Reload talents will also boost Attack Speed once your reload time is lower than your attack rate.

Do not spend your first talent package on boosting the shop unless you had an absolutely godly start.

[B]

Originally posted by Pyroblap:

Contrary to what Barry says, Reload talents will also boost Attack Speed once your reload time is lower than your attack rate.

After taking many reload speed talents, you start getting +3% attack speed per. That's just terrible output on a character that desperately needs it.

[Pyroblap]

I agree, it's definitely more investment. But before editing your post, you did assert that Attack Speed could not be boosted, which wasn't correct. Also keep in mind the value of each % of attack speed is multiplied by the average number of projectiles each attack produces which is much higher on Bandit.

I'm not arguing that Bandit is easy to succeed with. Unlucky talent tree generation screws it way harder than the other characters AND it's more likely to give you an 'unlucky' tree with all the 'do nothing' talents it has.

[B]

Originally posted by Pyroblap:

I agree, it's definitely more investment. But before editing your post, you did assert that Attack Speed could not be boosted, which wasn't correct. Also keep in mind the value of each % of attack speed is multiplied by the average number of projectiles each attack produces which is much higher on Bandit.

I'm not arguing that Bandit is easy to succeed with. Unlucky talent tree generation screws it way harder than the other characters AND it's more likely to give you an 'unlucky' tree with all the 'do nothing' talents it has.

Yeah I edited my post to be more specific, Bandit can boost his attack speed by 3% per point but only after already taking reload speed a bunch of times. In other words, he has no way to boost attack speed in the early nights (the most important ones). Even ignoring that pedantic comment, you said that Bandit is 'very strong' but everything else you've said about him seems to point to the opposite?

Originally posted by Pyroblap:

Also keep in mind the value of each % of attack speed is multiplied by the average number of projectiles each attack produces which is much higher on Bandit..

Having 5 projectiles in your attack doesn't mean you have 5x the attack speed value, that's just patently false. You need to shoot, in the desired lane, often. It doesn't matter if you're firing 2 projectiles or 50 projectiles if you cannot shoot fast enough. Compounded by Bandit's abilities being, from my experience, quite weak and not suited to quick lane clearing for the most part.

[Pyroblap]

Look, man. You said something wrong and I corrected you. Never said you were dumb or a bad person, but you -were- wrong.

While a 3% boost is in fact 5x better if you fire 5x as many bullets (acknowledging that Bandit starts off firing 2), I agree that raw numbers don't mean everything when the circumstances of the game come into play. That's fair.

I do still think it's a very strong character, but it's also fair if your assessment of 'strong' values consistency over putting very large numbers on the screen when you do get a good run.

[SilverLight]

Originally posted by Barry:

Bandit can boost his attack speed by 3% per point but only after already taking reload speed a bunch of times. In other words, he has no way to boost attack speed in the early nights (the most important ones).

You genuinely shouldn't need increased attack speed in the early nights, unless you're firing constantly like you would on Archer. Get a feel for your attack range, remember to time using your abilities, and outside of really unfortunate spawn timing, nothing should be able to touch you. Almost every time, nothing can actually hurt me for the first 5 nights, and barely anything gets through in the first 10.

I'll absolutely grant that Bandit runs swing very hard between getting overwhelmed or becoming the angel of death. But just upgrading the reload speed is good enough in the first half of the game, and by the time you actually need attack speed to go up, you should be able to afford a shopping spree for spare speed talents.

[Pyroblap]

If you just want a winning recipe for M25 to be done with it, restart until your first purple talent is Extra Barrel or the lightning shot. For your first talent package, go Kitchen Sink or the 'More Crits' one, though you can avoid the 'crit chance when you enter the store' talents from the latter. The triple coin is great, avoid spending gold so that its damage scales up until you can rely on your bullets.

[B]

Originally posted by SilverLight:

You genuinely shouldn't need increased attack speed in the early nights, unless you're firing constantly like you would on Archer. Get a feel for your attack range, remember to time using your abilities, and outside of really unfortunate spawn timing, nothing should be able to touch you. Almost every time, nothing can actually hurt me for the first 5 nights, and barely anything gets through in the first 10.

I'll absolutely grant that Bandit runs swing very hard between getting overwhelmed or becoming the angel of death. But just upgrading the reload speed is good enough in the first half of the game, and by the time you actually need attack speed to go up, you should be able to afford a shopping spree for spare speed talents.

The reason that picking up attack speed early is good imo isn't because I think the early waves are dangerous, it's because it scales well into the mid and end game. Most of the other characters can scale reasonably far into a run by picking up common talents. It feels to me like Bandit either gets extremely lucky or just loses.

Originally posted by Pyroblap:

Look, man. You said something wrong and I corrected you. Never said you were dumb or a bad person, but you -were- wrong.

I know, I said broadly that Bandit didn't boost attack speed, and you pointed out that after investing a dozen levels or whatever he can start getting 3% per point. This is the third time you've made this point.

[TehManticore]

It certainly is an advanced and challenging class. I find most of the abilities pretty bleh and avoidable.

What class level is your Bandit?
Do you get the same results even when reducing Mastery Level to 0?

- Extra Barrel (purple) talent is great if you can find it, otherwise the shock bullet one is good (as said above)
- Hole in One (purple) from the Crit Talent pack allows bullets to pierce on a crit, which is great
- Vanishing Powder is my preferred starting ability and panic button, especially with the core talent that makes you shoot an extra bullet after using an ability
- The rare (blue) talent that adds bomb bullets is helpful for making your damage go a little bit further
- The Luck bonus talent pack offers a Dice Roll ability that throws dice down random lanes, with the number of dice equal to 1 + 10% luck. This is a convenient panic button, too, at high luck levels, or just spam it when you're earning enough gold and have the talent that reduces cooldown on coin pickup.
- Don't forget to complete Challenges to get different Legendary (yellow) talents
- Some people have said before to turn off auto-fire when learning this class. You can turn it back on later when you get a good sense of the rhythm, damage, and range of each shot. The Shift key also pauses auto-fire until you release it.
- I'm not sure any common talent is really more important than any other until you get a talent pack and an Epic (purple) talent or two, so a general spread is fine. Until then I tend to prioritise Luck, Reload Speed and Range if I have to choose.

[Imp0815]

Meh, this class seems too annoying and RNG-reliant to be fun. I just tried it and died my first time on wave 3. Since getting hit is a detriment to progression due to the EXP multiplier, I think any class designed around getting hit is a failure. This leaves Mage and Ranger as the preferable classes, as they don’t waste tree slots on recovery mechanics that actively sabotage you when you build around them.

Bandit doesn’t directly work with this issue, but with only three shots and a hefty reload time, it’s practically unavoidable to take damage. I know that with enough persistence against the RNG wall, I might eventually win, but this just feels frustrating compared to the fun classes like Ranger or Mage. It’s artificial difficulty, not a meaningful choice or balanced experience.

That said, I can immediately tell that the reload concept is a neat idea, but it doesn’t work well in practice. I also don’t understand why the Bandit needs to fire both revolvers simultaneously and only has three rounds in each gun.

Make it five rounds and add an active reload mechanic—where pressing at the right moment instantly reloads the guns—to make it a fun and engaging experience. Getting punished by bad timing on auto-fire is just frustrating.

In addition, I would rather see classes with life recovery have their combo penalty removed. It’s just a dead mechanic because you never want to get hit if you want to gain many level-ups and enjoy the skill tree. It’s a core mechanic, and skilling into life regeneration or life steal feels like a noob trap.
To balance them out, I would suggest starting them with a higher combo requirement.

[BadLuckBenny]

I came to the discussions for exactly this reason. The rest of the roster is fun to build and play but as soon as I got to Bandit it was like pulling teeth. How Bandit got put into the game like this is wild, at least for me his kit feels awful to play. In his current state he should be more like a bonus hard-core character at the end of the list.

[TheVoluntaryist]

Originally posted by TehManticore:

It certainly is an advanced and challenging class. I find most of the abilities pretty bleh and avoidable.

What class level is your Bandit?
Do you get the same results even when reducing Mastery Level to 0?

- Extra Barrel (purple) talent is great if you can find it, otherwise the shock bullet one is good (as said above)
- Hole in One (purple) from the Crit Talent pack allows bullets to pierce on a crit, which is great
- Vanishing Powder is my preferred starting ability and panic button, especially with the core talent that makes you shoot an extra bullet after using an ability
- The rare (blue) talent that adds bomb bullets is helpful for making your damage go a little bit further
- The Luck bonus talent pack offers a Dice Roll ability that throws dice down random lanes, with the number of dice equal to 1 + 10% luck. This is a convenient panic button, too, at high luck levels, or just spam it when you're earning enough gold and have the talent that reduces cooldown on coin pickup.
- Don't forget to complete Challenges to get different Legendary (yellow) talents
- Some people have said before to turn off auto-fire when learning this class. You can turn it back on later when you get a good sense of the rhythm, damage, and range of each shot. The Shift key also pauses auto-fire until you release it.
- I'm not sure any common talent is really more important than any other until you get a talent pack and an Epic (purple) talent or two, so a general spread is fine. Until then I tend to prioritise Luck, Reload Speed and Range if I have to choose.

---
I've gotten as close as 23/25
but it ain't Horse Shoes or Hand Grenades, so..

[TheVoluntaryist]

Originally posted by Imp0815:

Meh, this class seems too annoying and RNG-reliant to be fun. I just tried it and died my first time on wave 3. Since getting hit is a detriment to progression due to the EXP multiplier, I think any class designed around getting hit is a failure. This leaves Mage and Ranger as the preferable classes, as they don’t waste tree slots on recovery mechanics that actively sabotage you when you build around them.

Bandit doesn’t directly work with this issue, but with only three shots and a hefty reload time, it’s practically unavoidable to take damage. I know that with enough persistence against the RNG wall, I might eventually win, but this just feels frustrating compared to the fun classes like Ranger or Mage. It’s artificial difficulty, not a meaningful choice or balanced experience.

That said, I can immediately tell that the reload concept is a neat idea, but it doesn’t work well in practice. I also don’t understand why the Bandit needs to fire both revolvers simultaneously and only has three rounds in each gun.

Make it five rounds and add an active reload mechanic—where pressing at the right moment instantly reloads the guns—to make it a fun and engaging experience. Getting punished by bad timing on auto-fire is just frustrating.

In addition, I would rather see classes with life recovery have their combo penalty removed. It’s just a dead mechanic because you never want to get hit if you want to gain many level-ups and enjoy the skill tree. It’s a core mechanic, and skilling into life regeneration or life steal feels like a noob trap.
To balance them out, I would suggest starting them with a higher combo requirement.

---
I like this reload mechanic idea! It balances against other skills just by being another skill trigger option you have to choose from, so I think it'd be fair too. Like Gunblade critting..

[B]

Originally posted by BadLuckBenny:

I came to the discussions for exactly this reason. The rest of the roster is fun to build and play but as soon as I got to Bandit it was like pulling teeth. How Bandit got put into the game like this is wild, at least for me his kit feels awful to play. In his current state he should be more like a bonus hard-core character at the end of the list.

Exactly my experience. And then I read people talking about how the character after Bandit is even worse, some say *significantly* worse which is hard to believe until you read that the next character's talents are temporary. Destroyed on use.