Boss Thoughts

[Long Dangler]

Liking the game a lot for the most part. The 3d makes damage a lot easier to avoid if you're good. However this doesn't seem to apply to the bosses for some reason. They're mostly fine but they all seem to have basically unavoidable damage. Imp and blight pot thing aren't too bad since they don't do much damage but Vagrant and the Colossus can really tear you up for free. The Colossus laser and Vagrant AoE pulse do insane damage and the only way to avoid it is to run behind cover. If you have low move speed and aren't near a wall you just insta die later on or you just get mobbed because you have to stand still.

On a side not, tried a bit of mercenary, was my second most played after commando in RoR1, and honestly don't think his OG moveset fits the 3d that well. Dealing with flying enemies is pretty awful without a ranged attack. Maybe they should change his spin to a shuriken or something?

[InstableMonster]

The vagrant aoe is the only real painful attack I found, if you dont have the dps it will most of the time kill you unless you have your health topped.

[Pia'sharn]

I've watched the colossus laser do some pretty silly things, like bounce between me and a buddy, or track you perfectly if you teleport behind it. While we didn't die to any of that, I feel like it could stand to behave a bit more reasonably.

The vagrant's AoE I found you can just try to bail out of the area as fast as possible. Not always possible, but I've been able to avoid it doing that about 50% of the time.

[RNG_Wizard]

Regarding the bosses, if you get the Colossus or Vagrant, be sure to stay near cover. Most if not all boss teleporters have some cover nearby, even if it's just a rock you can break LoS with, but that's all you need to survive (Maybe we can use the teleporter itself for cover? Haven't tested this yet). If your class doesn't have ranged damage (Merc) save you invincibility for avoiding the damage, or use your dashes to get to cover when the bosses use their big scary attacks. Both of these attacks have very lengthy charge up periods. They're telegraphed far in advance taking several seconds to charge; react appropriately. As soon as I started finding cover as soon as the Vagrant spawned, it stopped being difficult; it forces you to look at the space you have to work with differently, which I think is pretty good.

As for Merc, it seems like his dashes are great at taking out ranged enemies with a bit of finesse. Wisps are perfect for pinballing with his repeatable dash, while elites or greater wisps can go down with Eviscerate plus some other attacks along the way to keep you afloat. Combine that with his right click having a very short cooldown that acts as a jump while you're midair, and weaving attacks together seems very important for fighting airborne enemies with him. He's not amazing at taking out ranged enemies, but I feel like his kit was very specifically designed for massive AoE damage, which he does very well right out of the box.

I will say though, it does seem like airborne enemies are difficult for a handful of classes. Huntress struggles swapping targets (Although only when they're too far apart or too tanky for her glaive), Artificer's lack of hitscan or fast travelling projectiles makes her a nightmare, and Merc requires dashes just to reach the things. It seems like you're always going to want a commando around, or some items to make ranged enemies less annoying if you're playing solo. I've found that getting a couple stacks of Gasoline or Wisps in a bottle work wonders.

[Long Dangler]

Originally posted by RNG_Wizard:

Regarding the bosses, if you get the Colossus or Vagrant, be sure to stay near cover. Most if not all boss teleporters have some cover nearby, even if it's just a rock you can break LoS with, but that's all you need to survive (Maybe we can use the teleporter itself for cover? Haven't tested this yet). If your class doesn't have ranged damage (Merc) save you invincibility for avoiding the damage, or use your dashes to get to cover when the bosses use their big scary attacks. Both of these attacks have very lengthy charge up periods. They're telegraphed far in advance taking several seconds to charge; react appropriately. As soon as I started finding cover as soon as the Vagrant spawned, it stopped being difficult; it forces you to look at the space you have to work with differently, which I think is pretty good.

As for Merc, it seems like his dashes are great at taking out ranged enemies with a bit of finesse. Wisps are perfect for pinballing with his repeatable dash, while elites or greater wisps can go down with Eviscerate plus some other attacks along the way to keep you afloat. Combine that with his right click having a very short cooldown that acts as a jump while you're midair, and weaving attacks together seems very important for fighting airborne enemies with him. He's not amazing at taking out ranged enemies, but I feel like his kit was very specifically designed for massive AoE damage, which he does very well right out of the box.

I will say though, it does seem like airborne enemies are difficult for a handful of classes. Huntress struggles swapping targets (Although only when they're too far apart or too tanky for her glaive), Artificer's lack of hitscan or fast travelling projectiles makes her a nightmare, and Merc requires dashes just to reach the things. It seems like you're always going to want a commando around, or some items to make ranged enemies less annoying if you're playing solo. I've found that getting a couple stacks of Gasoline or Wisps in a bottle work wonders.

Yeah I mean I get that cover works but if you haven't gotten too lucky with items and struggle with controlling a crowd, standing behind cover will just get you mobbed and you die very quickly. Had a 70 minute huntress run where I got pretty unlucky but just enough to keep going even though teleporters started taking 10 minutes or so of kiting. Ended up getting killed partially by 2 colossi lasers and then by the 3-4 greater wisps behind the cover I had to take. This was after I had barely managed to take down 2 overloading greater wisps and 2 normal plus a magma worm the level before. Mobility is key, same as it was in 1, and kiting properly is what really set the skill ceiling when you didn't get carried by items. I think that mostly applies to this game except for literally just these two enemies because they restrict that and it's just kinda odd to me, like how Cremator would often just straight up end your run if you didn't have good items and it spawned in RoR1 depending on your character. Not that it ruins the game for me or anything but I think it's the one thing that stands out when playing. Perhaps it's not as bad in multiplayer, I've only played solo so far.

Hunteress, to me, seems one of the best for flying enemies, but if you don't have decent damage then you pretty much need at least one backup magazine, otherwise it's pretty rough. I think maybe they should tweak her aim so that it lends slightly more weight to what you're directly aiming at rather than what is closest.

What bothers me about Merc and flying enemies is that you have to waste and invincibilty move to kill them a lot of the time. If you don't kill lesser wisps quickly then they will start to bleed you out as it is impossible to dodge their projectile without enough movespeed so you pretty much have to R as their range to start charging is slightly out of your double jump mb2 range. Jellyfish will just explode on you so your have to dash or R. They have a short CD so it's not too bad and these are enemies that you should be focusing on killing first anyway (which is good game design) but again it suffers later on in the run where it's important you get hit by as few things as possible because of damage scaling and enemy spawn rate and merc has to waste valuable CDs on minor enemies. I feel like he's on the cusp of being a high risk high reward character with a good skill ceiling but he falls a little short on the reward. Your first ability (mb1 in this game) is a lot more important than it was in RoR1 because you can move while doing in rather than having it interrupted. Before, melee classes made up for having a useless ability 1 by having godly kits besides it but that trade isn't worth it in 2. They did buff his mb1 but it takes too long to get to the third hit on base attack speed so you end up trading with enemies like imps. It's for similar reasons that I think an unchanged sniper would go from being bottom tier to godlike in this game. Probably bandit too though he wasn't bad before. I'm excited to see if they bring back any other survivors.