Anyone else feel Joey is unfinished?

[Thomas the Gank Engine]

I've almost got every character to level 20 and I can't help but feel Joey is incomplete. Every other character either felt fine right away, or had a moment where they clicked and their playstyle made sense.

But Joey feels like he's lacking some mechanic or passive ability that would make his playstyle work. He has passives related to his health being low, but has no health recovery or damage mitigation. His whirlwind is good for aoe and locking groups of weak enemies in place, but so is his basic attack, so what purpose does it serve other than being more dangerous to use? His rage mechanic relies on touching enemies, but his deceptive squishiness means you don't want to be doing that except when using whirlwind on weak enemies, which can just as easily be dealt with by his basic attack, so when is his rage mechanic actually useful?

So far his only good qualities seem to be causing damage with his evade, and his smite with its divine upgrade, which aren't exactly amazing. My main strategy for him was just grinding him up to 20 for the family bonuses then ditching him.

It feels like his whirlwind need something like life steal, or at least increased dodge chance while its being used, to actually make it worth using over his safer primary attacks or smiting and kiting.

[Bazelgeuse]

He does seem.. odd. i like him and have done bosses with him. but his initial first swing takes a tad too long to initiate. his swirl only seems good with HP regen mod, the smash is OK but could be a little better. all round he seems ok. but hey we have all sorts of class types. might as well make the "really hard to work" one be him.

Honestly before i got kevins stealth ability i thought he was the weakest turd of them all. once he got sneak slash i felt so much stronger, become top 3 favs. i dont see the smash or whirlwind becoming as good as that which is a little sad.

Also joey rage is VERY disappointing, it should have been more...

[Thomas the Gank Engine]

Originally posted by Bazelgeuse:

Also joey rage is VERY disappointing, it should have been more...

I think that's the part that confuses me the most, its pretty weak even when being used optimally, which is basically against groups of trash enemies you wont need it for.

If it wasn't for the family buffs to rage that he provides, I don't think I'd have played him more than a couple of times, which is a shame as I usually love heavy classes. His design just doesn't make any sense to me, especially compared to the other characters. I've managed to make him work, but it often comes down to getting lucky with items/health globe drops, or just being OP due to workshop upgrades.

The only promising thing is one of his final skills, the one that stuns enemies that hit him in melee. He tends to get hit anyway so it might make a notable difference but it still wont fix how meh his other abilities seem to be.

[Roger Bacon]

This characters seems like absolute ass, i don't understand it at all.

[Railgun]

He's strangly strong with basic spam when you stay in a corner on challenge room, others have trouble to do it in last area with all those ♥♥♥♥♥♥ hordes. He interrupt all ennemies except very few and elites but with right items you can just afk spam inside ennemies, he'll kill everyting with counter hit when hitted. And with right runes he's invincible and generate many hp and potion

[Just a dog]

I feel like the ranged characters are unfinished, they are absolute ♥♥♥♥ to play. Especially the little fire ♥♥♥♥♥ who has a 10 minute cast time on her low damage basic attack, even longer than joeys, but it only hits a single enemy for almost no damage.

[Taear]

Joey also barely takes part in any cutscenes, he's just kinda there.

I don't ever use rage (I'm a 'what if I need it later' person who just forgets) but he definitely feels like a last minute addition

[SpeekerHead]

I wish he had more role in the story, sure, but I don't quite think Joey is unfinished as far as his fighting style is concerned. I think he just needs more polish. He's the guy I play if I wanna power through mobs of enemies instead of dodging and evading them. I tend to swing early at mobs of enemies so that they get hit before they get to me. Some enemies like the creatures that put purple magic circles on the ground need to be rushed and I use his evade for that, treating it as a faster but weaker attack instead of actually evading with it. I aggro enemies until I know I can hit a lot of them in one swing and profit.

By extension, I find that he benefits greatly from the chance to automatically dodge. Anything that helps you stay safe without stopping your attack is great for him.

As far as boss fights are concerned, his high single hit damage and strong Smite attack means that you can make good on small openings as long as you land an attack or two. His guardian rage will keep chipping at the boss health in between your swings whenever you do find the opportunity to flurry. His high HP pool means that when you get to the point where you are near death and your HP starts auto-regenerating, you'll still have enough that you won't always get one shot. Just make sure to back off after each hit and allow your hp to regenerate. If I happen to get that divine grace that increases my damage when I'm low on health, I usually take hits and deliberately activate that bonus. With enough bonuses to critical strikes, Joey can outright destroy bosses.

I will, however, agree that Whirlwind kinda sucks. That probably just needs some tweaking but I barely use it in its current state.

[Bafbegagglestick]

For me I found him the easiest to use of all.
As soon as I unlocked him I tried him on the hardest available level and he breezed through it, levelling merrily along the way.
I couldn't believe how strong he was.

[Darkness]

I find him strong, but he just feels boring. The attacks are way too slow, you usually take hits trying to land them, but it actually combos well with him since he does extra damage.

The dash's skill damage is too low, the whirlwind skill is too underwhelming as well, the rage is boring as hell.

It's a character I'd rather not play, compared to all others. He doesn't "suck", he's just boring to play for me.

[Wikingus Prime]

After 20 his whirlwind gets faster, but still not reliable enough to abort his normal, boring playstyle: standing in one spot, and swinging, untill everything around him is dead. But yeah, I leveled him to 20, and left him alone, since his "barbarian" toolkit is far too slow in moving through the dungeon, compared to other classes.

[Hentaika]

Whirlwind damage needs heavy buff so it feels like a 'skill'.

They tried too hard not to make him OP spin to win and it resulted in him being a very weak character... they only need to make whirlwind damage approx 2-2.5x of what it currently is and he will be pretty balanced. His ctrl would suddenly be useful to increase whirlwind damage even further and his playstyle will change from only spamming basic attack to actually mixing the basics and whirlwind.

Other than that - he is actually one of the fastest stage clearers, you can intentionally keep him at 'red' HP to essentialy 1-2 hit kill most stuff, since his red HP will usually survive a strike or even two-three weaker strikes.. and run when you are hit once until your health recovers back to limit.

What he lacks is boss killing capability and this is where whirlwind + ctrl would help him if they dealt reasonable burst dmg... as it is - his only chance vs bosses is either being super careful or lucking out into damage artifacts and just running while spamming them.

[deteego]

I have to agree that Joey compared to the rest of the characters is really lacking. His damage is generally subpar, and even with his skills to increase his damage as he takes some he has no real damage mitigation or regeneration.

Its ironic that even though he has a large HP pool, he is in fact one of the squishier characters in the game solely because he has no real way to mitigate the damage.

To top it all off, he probably has the worst single target damage in the game (John/Mark might be equal in this regard but they are tanky as hell). Due to his playstyle he is also weaker against ranged enemy/charge mobs (quite clear in Act 3), his only ranged skill is smite with its late game upgrade and due to his slow attacks he has mobility issues.

From a design perspective he seems to be a "berserker" type of character which deals more damage as he takes damage when in the thick of combat, if they want to keep this kind of design than he would probably need a combination of the following things.

1. More health
2. Make his damage scale a lot higher when he is on lower health (i.e. buff vengeance/iron will)
3. Remake his rage ability, its by far the worst in the game and it also has quality of life issues (tiny trash mobs are not Joey's pain points as he can deal with them fine with smite/basic attack/whirlwind)
4. Whirlwind needs a damage buff, maybe by 30% at all levels.
5. Smite might also need a buff, I would actually give it a lower CD since his playstyle is kind of boring and such a buff would probably make Joey "funner" to play.

Some of the comments say that he can be good with the correct runes/circumstances (i.e. spamming basic attack in the corner of the room) but you can say the same about any of the other characters (heck if we want to go down this road, Kevin late game can kill bosses in under 2 seconds with his rage ability + invuln rune, so can Linda with multishot + rage). The difference is that all other characters are stronger both in ideal circumstances and in non ideal circumstances.

[dustin1280]

I have a level 20 Joey and he can basically face tank everything w/o worrying about dying. His normal attack spam will take care of ALL melee encounters and his dash will allow him to deal with ranged just fine.

Elites and Red mobs will die to him just face tanking them with attack spam.

Honestly if I am playing Joey I feel like it's impossible for him to die because he just wrecks everything has has so much HP that a single pot heals him for an insane amount.

[deteego]

Originally posted by dustin1280:

I have a level 20 Joey and he can basically face tank everything w/o worrying about dying. His normal attack spam will take care of ALL melee encounters and his dash will allow him to deal with ranged just fine.

Elites and Red mobs will die to him just face tanking them with attack spam.

Honestly if I am playing Joey I feel like it's impossible for him to die because he just wrecks everything has has so much HP that a single pot heals him for an insane amount.

At level 20 any other character is even more absurd. The fact that he has so much HP is kinda irrelevant since he also takes more damage than any other character.

[Blowfeld]

So, why should I use anything on Joey besides his basic attack and the damaging dodge?

Whirlwind only tickles and I need to be in the midst of enemies. It is like a weak aura.
His smash feels underwhelming, just a little more range than his basic strike.
His rage ability is weak and underwhelming.

Basically, like people above said, you either shove with basic attacks from an ankle or do basic/dodge combos, as the rest just is useless.

Hope he gets a rework or rebalance of his skill set.