I find it weird how polarized Botan is

[Wormgobbler]

I've seen both extremes, people saying how strong she is and others how weak she is.

TBH, she is not simple to play but once you get it she is extremely strong. She's wholly focused on dodging, kiting and killing from a distance. You NEED to dodge and keep a distance. Once you understand that it's a breeze. I personnaly had the most fun while playing her.

[Metal Izanagi]

Yeah, you gotta use her dodge roll and keep track of how many shots you have left. Emptying the mag and having to stand there like a dork reloading is worst case scenario for her.

Once you learn to do those two things she's unstoppable. I don't like saying "skill issue" but last night was the first time I had played the game and I solo cleared the story with her in about 2.5 hours.

Feels like people are trying Botan, not getting that she's not a melee character, and deciding she's weak and needs to be buffed instead of trying to learn how she plays.

[Wormgobbler]

Yeah, same. Cleared the whole game with her and I had a lot of fun.

I think the same thing happened with that other post about her grenade going through enemies and not exploding on contact. Of course that is an issue if you throw the grenade while in melee - but you shouldn't do that in the first place. Roll away, maintain a distance and THEN you throw the greanade. You want it to go through enemies, that way you can hit 2-3 of them at once.

I don't want to say "get gud" because that's kind of cringe, but this is really a "get gud" scenario.

[Kai]

Botan works very well as a ranged crowd control since her grenades and shots works well while your 'AI' followers fight the mobs.

[Shin-ou]

You don't even need to dodge. Just high speed and a school uniform. She barely ever gets damaged and can use her charge shot to kill enemies while they are off screen. I find myself rarely using her regular shots. For boss battles tho she needs to rely heavily on damage items since all of her moves other than the regular shot can't really be use during those

[| JDAM | 3A9]

I've deduced that Botan is pretty skill-based - she's the best character, but takes time to learn. Alternatively you could get a friend to play Nene alongside your Botan and become unstoppable because now someone else is taking hits for you.

[Kai]

Yeah you definitely need high speed for Botan to survive against Lui, I took her down half health alone when all the followers died, my gear was too balanced out in stats and isn't defined to the playstyle, thus didn't succeed.

High speed, and gear that focuses on your dodging.
There is even a item that you can equip that lets you damage from rolling around.
But generally longer dodges and longer invincibility time is what you need for Botan as you build up speed, your roll animations actually go faster too.

[Mokona]

Its not really weird, you got the people who play her and see she is crap saying she is crap. Then you got the crazy fans who refuse to allow their god be talked about in a bad way saying she is the best. Story as old as time.

[Shin-ou]

Originally posted by Mokona:

Its not really weird, you got the people who play her and see she is crap saying she is crap. Then you got the crazy fans who refuse to allow their god be talked about in a bad way saying she is the best. Story as old as time.

Don't think that's the full story. I talked well about Botan despite never having watched their content. Think it really is because she plays very different from the usual, requiring long range sniping and the speed to gain enough distance which is not only the antiphysis to how you play normal beat'em ups but also unlike how every other character in the game is played

[AnonTwo]

I found the dodge to be a bit rigid, which is probably why i didn't find it very strong (I think only Laplus's feels like you can just dodge w/e)

Once you get to Lui if you don't have any teammates and 1 of her adds spawn, I found she was constantly getting body blocked by the add while her ranged attack wound up too fast to both attack her and the add at the same time. Also Lui will usually try to stand outside of Botan's attack range.

Aside from Lui Botan did find up until then though. The main issue with the balance atm I think is the adds are meant to draw fire away, but unless you're on Nene you're soloing anyone after Lui since the adds will be killed by enemies anyway.

Based on other comments, I feel like they may want to make the dodge a bit less reliant on speed? Just cause there's other characters who aren't going to need it to function.

[Metal Izanagi]

Originally posted by Mokona:

Its not really weird, you got the people who play her and see she is crap saying she is crap. Then you got the crazy fans who refuse to allow their god be talked about in a bad way saying she is the best. Story as old as time.

??

I mean, I solo'd the game with Botan and I haven't watched any of her streams. I picked her for my first playthrough of the game because she has a gun.