HOW TO PIPER ? [OUTDATED]

You just bought Ravenswatch and you have no idea who to play ? You piss off everyone playing music all day long and call it "art" ? You think Plum Flute is the best Isaac item because you're fond of summoning things ? You're the only one who's currently speedrunning Hotline Miami with Richter, because gunz ?
So Piper is your very character !

Disclaimer : I’m far from being a good roguelike and moba player, and I haven’t reached the max difficulty level . I’m just giving some advice for newbies to enjoy a character a like !

MOVE POOL

Piper is clearly a range character. His main attack is little damage high fire rate shots, which reduces Piper’s speed. The RT is a shotgun at midrange, to deal more damage during a couple of time. On Y, Piper casts an armour-breaking zone, lasting for few times, and on B a defensive bang that repels and stun enemies around him.

The passive ability of Piper is a rat summoning. Rats gather around Piper, creating a pool following him, and on LB, they attack the closest target available. This ability has theoretically no cooldown, but you won’t spam it during combat.

The first ultimate of Piper, Unchained Melody, is a huge buffed up version of the attack. The damage is increased a lot, targeting the closest enemy, but you lose total control of the character : you just basically can’t afk during the ultimate…
The second ultimate is a massive rat summoning, close to the passive ability, but more powerful. It's really great to deal with huge blobs, but I found it quite lame on sigle big monsters. But I think this is pretty me...

USUAL COMBOS

Piper playstyle is pretty simple : you deal max range damage and you dodge aggressive melee enemies. There is only one important thing to care about, it’s the Y and B casting. Either you play it with violence, and you run through the enemies to spawn the zone and trigger your defence, or you cast it during you flee.

Do not forget that your character is so much squishy, and one slice of the big piggy elite means death if you didn’t master your defences.

Three different builds are possibles :

- The defensive build : you boost up your defences as ♥♥♥♥, and you count on it to tank enemies’ shots. But in other hand you will kill slower

- The skaven build : you boost up yours rats (spawn timing, damage, etc…)

- The trapper build : you boost up your Y, and you net enemies in the zone to deal your damage.

Personally, the trapper build seems to be the more efficient, but lot of people deal with a very strong defensive build. Remember this is not exclusive : you can mix them up to have your own playstyle.

UPGRADES

Here are the more useful powers for Piper. For all upgrade and magical objects, refer to the Compendium + by Shotgun Crusader :

God Tier :
- Unchained Melody
- ¬Grand Finale : Y zone explodes

Very Good :
- Freezing Trap : enemies are chilled and more vulnerable in the Y zone.
- Acoustic Pulse : Y zone deals damage
- Sniper : more damage on attack after halfway and more range
- Quintuplets : more projectiles on RT, but each one is less efficient

Useful :
- Explosive rats : additional damage for rats
- Horde : more rats
- Giant rats : rats weaken and deal more damage
- Virtuoso : more speed during attack and attack speed
- Sound Barrier (quest : it at least 2 enemies with B 20 times) : 20 shiel + defence buff on B

CONCLUSION

Piper is a simple character to play. He can easily blow things up with huge range damage and very useful buffs. But beware : one hit, and you’ll be in serious trouble… If it’s your very first time on the game, it may seem to you hard to handle, and tricky. However, few runs later, you will bust everything around !

Skavens are the best-mightiest creatures in the world, yes-yes !

[Fadar Le Pieux]

Jruby
Actually pretty strong, you're right !

[Jruby]

You uh...forgot the shotgun build.

- Extra Measure - After hitting an enemy with DEFENSE, next POWER within 3 seconds lasts longer (+[2-4] waves of notes)
- Quintuplets - POWER plays 5 notes each wave (instead of 3) but each note deals (-[20%-5%] damage)

Then you just throw in basically whatever you want. My favorites
- Explosive Blast - DEFENSE deals x damage
- Giant Rats - Rats' attacks WEAKEN enemies and deal +20% damage
- Freezing Trap - Enemies within SPECIAL effect are CHILLED and take +10% damage

Your main goal is just to get Extra Measure and Quintuplets to Legendary, and shorten cooldowns/grab damage for POWER and DEFENSE whenever possible. DEFENSE + POWER becomes a stupid powerful combo that can burst down almost everything the game has to throw at you in one volley.