Is there any reason to not take tonic + gesture on basically every character?

[Dionysus 🐭]

I mean, sure, some characters benefit less, for it, but every character will benefit from it quite significantly, and most will benefit much more heavily from it. It really seems like the best basic (as in, pretty easy to get) combo in the game. The obvious downside downside is the affliction, but with 4 gestures (or something like 3 + a fuel cell) it's literally never an issue. The second obvious downside is that you can't have another equipment item (unless you're mult), but is there any equipment that is actually as good as tonic? For every preon shot to kill 5 - 10 enemies, you could have already killed 50 with tonic. Maybe the woodsprite item, or the healing fruit with gesture, but again, tonic makes most of those redundant. The only reason you probably shouldn't take tonic is if you're going to fight Mithrix, yet, if you fight him once you're kind of done with him. If you just want to continue looping, going as far as you can, again, not a consideration.

So, to any pros out there, can you tell me any reason to not take tonic and gesture? Excluding just, wanting something different?

[Sovietball]

Originally posted by Dionysus:

I mean, sure, some characters benefit less, for it, but every character will benefit from it quite significantly, and most will benefit much more heavily from it. It really seems like the best basic (as in, pretty easy to get) combo in the game. The obvious downside downside is the affliction, but with 4 gestures (or something like 3 + a fuel cell) it's literally never an issue. The second obvious downside is that you can't have another equipment item (unless you're mult), but is there any equipment that is actually as good as tonic? For every preon shot to kill 5 - 10 enemies, you could have already killed 50 with tonic. Maybe the woodsprite item, or the healing fruit with gesture, but again, tonic makes most of those redundant. The only reason you probably shouldn't take tonic is if you're going to fight Mithrix, yet, if you fight him once you're kind of done with him. If you just want to continue looping, going as far as you can, again, not a consideration.

So, to any pros out there, can you tell me any reason to not take tonic and gesture? Excluding just, wanting something different?

gesture and capacitor might be better.
gesture and that debuff cleansing bag on some builds is better too, (loader + kjaro = infinite kjaro)
engineer it sucks on as it doesn't apply to your turrets, though it buffs you

[omni]

cus its boring as ♥♥♥♥? sure if u see them in shop take them but this is why running edited lunars is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boring. makes getting a god run so easy cus of these items

[Sirzucc101]

yeah cause its boring af

[<color=#CD3210>Lunatic]

Not always, more like 20% of the time if i dont have an equipment i plan on using or i didn't get lucky (0.001%) and find one of the rare elite element infusion equipments, then chances are i'm either going tincture or tonic.

Typically i use tonic on commando, bandit, artificer or acrid the most often.

I have many other builds that rely on other kinds of equipment for the other survivors and tonic would be a waste on them.

Tonic is a good item, but not the best, depending on the situation.

Although my favorite survivor to use tonic on would be heretic and that's mainly because it's got the greatest damage potential for an opinion build, because of max health.

[[T]aKer]

The affliction really cripples your character and unless you have 1 Gesture + 2 Gesture / Fuel cells or more (1+2 gives you 1 second of downtime; more makes it permanent), the affliction stack can be enough to kill you.

So unless you have a 57 Leaf clover to mitigate the afflictions, or you have at least 2 Fuel Cell, (or you play with the Artifact of Command to get everything you need), getting the Tonic auto-activated with Gesture of the Drowned is a slow way to die. Better to activate manually until you meet those requirements.

Other than that, (as said above) Engineer's turrets don't benefit from it so it's less useful; Artificer also doesn't get full benefit from the Tonic. Her basic attack recharges one ammo at the time, so you're limited by the reload time. and the Charged Nano-Bomb has a particular strategy when paired with Kjaro / Runald's Band where you don't fully charge the Bomb in order to trigger the Bands off the explosion and not the tendrils. Having more attack speed makes this strat a bit harder and if the attack speed is too high, impossible.

[Dionysus 🐭]

Originally posted by Sovietball:

Originally posted by Dionysus:

I mean, sure, some characters benefit less, for it, but every character will benefit from it quite significantly, and most will benefit much more heavily from it. It really seems like the best basic (as in, pretty easy to get) combo in the game. The obvious downside downside is the affliction, but with 4 gestures (or something like 3 + a fuel cell) it's literally never an issue. The second obvious downside is that you can't have another equipment item (unless you're mult), but is there any equipment that is actually as good as tonic? For every preon shot to kill 5 - 10 enemies, you could have already killed 50 with tonic. Maybe the woodsprite item, or the healing fruit with gesture, but again, tonic makes most of those redundant. The only reason you probably shouldn't take tonic is if you're going to fight Mithrix, yet, if you fight him once you're kind of done with him. If you just want to continue looping, going as far as you can, again, not a consideration.

So, to any pros out there, can you tell me any reason to not take tonic and gesture? Excluding just, wanting something different?

gesture and capacitor might be better.
gesture and that debuff cleansing bag on some builds is better too, (loader + kjaro = infinite kjaro)
engineer it sucks on as it doesn't apply to your turrets, though it buffs you

Hmm. Can that proc? And yes engi is one of the characters where tonic is not amazing. Does any item apply to engi turret?

Originally posted by Sirzucc101:

yeah cause its boring af

Agree. But still.... Good.

Originally posted by Lunatic Heretic:

Not always, more like 20% of the time if i dont have an equipment i plan on using or i didn't get lucky (0.001%) and find one of the rare elite element infusion equipments, then chances are i'm either going tincture or tonic.

Typically i use tonic on commando, bandit, artificer or acrid the most often.

I have many other builds that rely on other kinds of equipment for the other survivors and tonic would be a waste on them.

Tonic is a good item, but not the best, depending on the situation.

Although my favorite survivor to use tonic on would be heretic and that's mainly because it's got the greatest damage potential for an opinion build, because of max health.

What other builds do you use for other characters? I mean I could see how something like crit chance item plus a lot of gestures would be good. But as good as tonic?

And doesn't tonic make the negative health regen for heretic worse?

[Pmk]

Another reason to not use it is Mithrix : when it takes your items and your current tonic effect runs out, you get all the afflictions that would have proc during your run at once, makin dying to him pretty easy.
Even then, if you are a survivor that can't hit from afar, trying to kill Mithrix might end up in you dying if you have particular items.

Despite this, it is still very strong, but you also have to be a bit lucky if you didn't cheat an absurd amount of lunar coins: you have to find one or more gestures and/or fuel cells, which is not always possible.

Finally, it's effects are not that strong if you are in a very long run: a malachite or the strongest enemies, like scavangers, will still easily kill you.

[Dionysus 🐭]

Originally posted by Pmk:

Another reason to not use it is Mithrix : when it takes your items and your current tonic effect runs out, you get all the afflictions that would have proc during your run at once, makin dying to him pretty easy.
Even then, if you are a survivor that can't hit from afar, trying to kill Mithrix might end up in you dying if you have particular items.

Despite this, it is still very strong, but you also have to be a bit lucky if you didn't cheat an absurd amount of lunar coins: you have to find one or more gestures and/or fuel cells, which is not always possible.

Finally, it's effects are not that strong if you are in a very long run: a malachite or the strongest enemies, like scavangers, will still easily kill you.

Yeah I discussed Mithrix in my original post, but I mean all you need is a survivor or loadout that is still effective even with quite a few stacks. Like Artificer or something. And besides, you could always wait until you have four gestures to limit how many afflictions you get, assuming four afflictions is enough to totally bypass the effect ending and not something like it ends for 0.1 seconds and comes back on immediately.

And yeah, it's effects are really strong which is my point. But of course it's not a straight up carry, it just basically enhances any survivor, and lets you get to 60 minutes easier. After 60 minutes, assuming you got decent items, the tonic would likely not make much of a difference for how much longer you go, since at that point it's heavily dependent on your items, procs, kill chains, etc.

[Leviathan]

Well, kinda, but no.

First issue is with afflictions.
Tonic+Gesture is not good because of forced afflictions. Tonic+Gesturex4 is amazing but it's a lottery to get (8-10 lunar coins+as many as you need to keep rerolling the shop... that's A TON). You can first get the gestures/fuel cells and once you have them getting the tonic, but getting the tonic early looks to me like a final effort to save a run that´s going south.

Second issue is that tonic 100% uptime is just that. It´s great but once you have 100% uptime extra fuel cells or gestures will do nothing for you. If you eventually get a cauldron/printer with fuel cells and you have the capacitor instead of the tonic, you can literally one-shot anything by looking at it from the other side of the map (or one-shot a lot of smaller things by briefly looking at them all). If you have a soulbound catalyst you literally keep looking at things and they just die, while it doesn't do anything for tonic.

So... tonic is mostly a tool to save a run that's not going well or that you know it's not going to go well (for example if it's your first attempt at a particular level of Eclipse), or to use when you have the correct equipment-related items but lack the equiment. But if you already have a good run you don't need it.

[Ninja Zyborg]

tonic + gesture is always good except for when you'd rather have a different equipment. Then it's not.

[Dionysus 🐭]

Originally posted by Leviathan:

Well, kinda, but no.

First issue is with afflictions.
Tonic+Gesture is not good because of forced afflictions. Tonic+Gesturex4 is amazing but it's a lottery to get. You can first get the gestures/fuel cells and once you have them getting the tonic, but getting the tonic early looks to me like a final effort to save a run that´s going south.

Second issue is that tonic 100% uptime is just that. It´s great but once you have 100% uptime extra fuel cells or gestures will do nothing for you. If you eventually get a cauldron/printer with fuel cells and you have the capacitor instead of the tonic, you can literally one-shot anything by looking at it from the other side of the map (or one-shot a lot of smaller things by briefly looking at them all).

So... tonic is mostly a tool to save a run that's not going well or that you know it's not going to go well (for example if it's your first attempt at a particular level of Eclipse), but if you already have a good run you don't need it.

Yes, well, I do agree that it's a tool to be used, but maybe not for saving a dead run. I think it's more used as a crutch to get into the end game. At end game it generally won't carry you any further since at that point it's more about what items you have. The only thing that might be better is something like Gorag's Opus, which actually increases attack speed and movement speed more than Tonic, but obviously doesn't have the other good effects, although also doesn't have as bad of a downside. And with a decent build or a character that depends on it, Ocular HUD could also be very good. However, neither one lasts long enough to get 100% uptime on without a lot of gestures and other items that increase equipment cooldown, so it's not a constant buff like Tonic.

But yeah, basically I agree, Tonic has its uses, but perhaps is a bit boring since it's pretty meta unless you want to beat Mithrix.

[Pmk]

Originally posted by Dionysus:

you could always wait until you have four gestures to limit how many afflictions you get,

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding you, but it doesn't matter if you have four gestures/ fuel cells: once Mithrix takes your items, when you run out of the current tonic effect, you get the afflictions that should have been given to you all at once; this is because the chance for an affliction is rolled when the tonic is activated, not when its effect runs out.

[TheDongsmasher]

Originally posted by Pmk:

Originally posted by Dionysus:

you could always wait until you have four gestures to limit how many afflictions you get,

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding you, but it doesn't matter if you have four gestures/ fuel cells: once Mithrix takes your items, when you run out of the current tonic effect, you get the afflictions that should have been given to you all at once; this is because the chance for an affliction is rolled when the tonic is activated, not when its effect runs out.

You can still take one last sip though. When the boss takes your fuel cells, it doesn't reset the cooldown, so it's still less than the duration. The afflictions only work when you're not under the influence, so it doesn't matter. You get 20 more seconds of sweet, sweet inebriation before the afflictions do anything. And if you're not able do phase 4 in under 20 sec, frankly I don't know how you would've gotten that far.

[Dionysus 🐭]

Originally posted by Pmk:

Originally posted by Dionysus:

you could always wait until you have four gestures to limit how many afflictions you get,

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding you, but it doesn't matter if you have four gestures/ fuel cells: once Mithrix takes your items, when you run out of the current tonic effect, you get the afflictions that should have been given to you all at once; this is because the chance for an affliction is rolled when the tonic is activated, not when its effect runs out.

Oh, I didn't know they are queued up like that.

[Ninja Zyborg]

Originally posted by Dionysus:

Originally posted by Pmk:

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding you, but it doesn't matter if you have four gestures/ fuel cells: once Mithrix takes your items, when you run out of the current tonic effect, you get the afflictions that should have been given to you all at once; this is because the chance for an affliction is rolled when the tonic is activated, not when its effect runs out.

Oh, I didn't know they are queued up like that.

yeah its really funny mithrix item phase when you get like 8 afflictions