Stormquake's Character Tier List V 1.0.2

Yeah, when you reach 4 rows of items anyone is gonna perform well. I just find that out of the characters that get uber powerful when godmoded, she is not quite as good as some of the others (and yes, bandit does make your finger sore). My weakest 200minute+ Miner Monsoon run could 1shot elite colossus (which at that point had around 200k+ hp) with a single use of his 4th skill, and could kill overloading magma worms (similar health) in one jump out of the ground. Similar stories for Merc, HAN-D, Commando and Engineer. There are two ways to take major advantage of proc items, either proc them with really powerful attacks, or proc them much more frequently with fast attacks. Unfortunately huntress doesn't compare to Commando in the attack speed department, and her percentages are nothing spectacular. Her big thing is being able to move while attacking, which tapers off in usefulness when you annihilate packs in milliseconds.

Speaking of which, whats with the lack of Commando love? In every topic talking about their favorite classes pretty much nobody mentions the starter. He is a really good class...

 

If you question the huntress's prowess in the endgame, you're doing it wrong. Glaive chaining is the best ranged dps that i've seen in the game. The basic strat is wicked ring + crit, alien head for extra efficiency (on top of the other ton of damage items you'll have by this point). This allows you to simply hold down the glaive button and demolish any number of enemies in seconds.

@v Totally disagree with you on that post. Huntress, in my experience, has the highest damage per second assuming one (more to the point, multiple) of every item. I will continue to believe this unless you can provide empirical proof to the contrary, in which case I may be forced to record godmode footage of every character in the game in order to prove/disprove these assertions.

i may come off abrupt here, but i'm not attempting to be mean or troll-y, just trying to settle some facts vs opinions.

 

However Wicked Ring + Crit + Alien Head (+ damage items) makes any character destroy hard. Even in that scenario I would put huntress down near the bottom (I actually feel like with good cooldown items that bandit would be the worst godmode out of the classes). Every character will be godly in godmode (hence why it's called godmode), she just takes more items to reach that point. Which I guess is fine because she has the easiest time early on compared to pretty much every other class.

On a side note, with the Wicked ring + Alien Head + Crit combo, engineer would probably be the scariest. All those mines... *shudder*

Unfortunately although I have godmoded engineer before, It was never with the cooldown items, I would like to try that sometime.

 

It's not that nobody loves the Commando, but rather that the people who do are coincidentally silent about it.

I know a buddy of mine practically refuses to play anyone else, even after having unlocked most of the other characters. He just feels safest with Commando.

 

(I'm so sorry)

 

I used to play him exclusively in the alpha demo (not that there was much choice). I enjoy his moveset, and always have, but I get mowed down around the temple/UES, and every time it's because I can't run away fast enough to reposition myself for a safe shot. I want to love him, but I just can't

 

I just find the Commando to be really boring cause his Z is crap so most of the time I just wind up running away till I can use x or v cause they're actually worth my time.

On the HAN-D FORCED-RECONSTRUCTION topic I honestly don't think it needs to add to his drone pool at all. I believe a very simple and very good buff would be to actually buff OVERCLOCK so that if you're overclocked and using F-R it will always stun. This would allow HAN-D to do his main job, crowd control, with much more effectiveness and allow for excellent burst damage with relative safety and allow him to get his drones naturally. If he really needs a drone pool buff it shouldn't come from killing things as most of the time, if you're playing him well, you'll have 9 drones anyhow so the boost will be wasted in those cases. I honestly think he should just generate 1 every 5-10 seconds he spends in combat. He definitely shouldn't keep them between stages.

 

Honestly I talked with a friend (... I think Stormquake) about ways to buff Han-D's capability at the final boss and really the simplest solution we could come up with was that the final boss battle should be changed so that, periodically, Providence summons a group of smaller monsters to help him fight.

Really, Han-D's only issue is that he can't have drones unless he kills something (so final boss is a mess for him). Other than that he handles the game nicely.

 

I thought that maybe having a 10-15 second passive cooldown to regen drones (like engineer with mines) ontop of the kill thing would be a good buff. Not enough to overpower him mid-battle, but enough for his 2nd skill to never be completely useless.

It might be a bit overpowered though, idk. Would need to try it first.

 

Enforer seems to be in a good spot, list-wise. Could use a few small buffs, mostly making Protect and Serve and Shield bash more consistent.

What if Crowd control (V) pushed the Enforcer back a bit if used in mid air? I realize that grenade launchers don't really have the most recoil IRL, but it'd be interesting as it would give him some more mobility, as well as the ability to get himself right snug up against a wall.

 

Oddly HAN-D's big problem is the early to mid game area. What could be done is to have him spawn drones at a rate of say, 1 every 15 seconds and up it by 5 seconds every time the difficulty goes up. Once he's into late game and there's swarms of crap for him to eat he's able to manage his own drones so the fact that when it gets to hard he's only spawning one every 30 seconds is still okay, just an added nudge, and once he's in impossible it's up to 45 and at HAHAHAHA it's 1 a minute so it's easy to keep track of and enhances the "RUN THROUGH GAME FAST" aspect. Also I believe he should start each stage with 1 drone. That's just a kindness honestly.

 

As I see it, tiers lists are a good way to understand the cost/benefit of a character in terms on how much time and effort you put into mastering them and how effective they will become. The Huntress and Acrid are high tier because it takes less practice to be able to win with them for most new players, while the Sniper and Han-D are low tier because they are more difficult to master. Top tier characters aren't actually objectively better than lower tier characters, but lower tier characters either have a lower effectiveness cap or else are harder to master in a way that doesn't justify the extra power.

The enforcer's lack of range or the sniper's inability to easily engage groups are both examples of a lower effectiveness cap, meaning that even when played perfectly you will have a more challenging time dealing with those problems even though it can be done. The learning curve of the miner is an example of how a more effective character can be limited by how tricky it may be to perform optimally in every situation.

Just be glad that this tier list doesn't calculate actual DPS number and compare them, since it doesn't really make much sense compared to more flexible statements about how the characters play. Stormquake isn't saying "look, these ones are better because I have math!"

 

With enough goat hooves, you can use attack drones and just dodge attacks the entire time, since you can reliably dodge them so that not even the drones take much/any damage. I know not everyone likes using drones, but they really work well in this one particular case. You might also want 9999 hp to help the drones survive if you are lacking goat hooves, and the battle will take quite a while whenever the defense buff goes up. It becomes more of an endurance test than a damage race. It's still pretty lame, even if there is a solution to the problem.

 

We aren't talking about the purchasable drones. We are talking about his 2nd skill drones.

 

I know. I'm saying that for the final battle, you pretty much need to use attack drones with arms race and goat hooves. Trying to fight with your own attacks is awfully hard without having ridiculous numbers of healing items. You can get in or out in time to dodge easily, and even then the delay on your regular attack leaves you so vulnerable. Any character can win this way, but Han-D is the only one who really needs it to win outside of farming healing items until you can't die.

 

His Z is the best Z in the game for use with missles, ukelleles, permafrost, thallium, knives,heaven cracker, leach seed, harvesters, etc. His high RoF allows him to activate such abilities more often, and when paired with soldiers and predatories to he can shoot out an insane quantity of missles/lightning,etc.

 

So, how bout dat 1.02? (I love what you did here Storm btw, it's a great reference guide to characters for me)
Does the revamped Enforcer deserve tier 3 this time with his enhanced mobility and defensive capabilities?
(On the other hand, from what I gathered I suppose the sniper has't really fixed any of the problems that keep him at the bottom)

 

I'M BEK

Will be playing RoR again to figure out where Enforcer and Sniper will end up with their respective changes.
Enforcer might move up, Sniper probably won't, just fair warnings.

 

If I understand correctly, FMJ can proc items - so Commando would definitely have the highest damage potential in a 0-cooldowns scenario, at least on groups (and Z giving you two proc chances would probably make him win single-target DPS too).

 

Have to disagree heavily on those. Enforcer may be significantly more effective and easier to play, but he's still completely helpless against elite monsters' red missiles, and forced to remove shield and run for your dear life from them when you are already busy back-pedalling and crowd controlling an angry mob that are right in your face will also get you killed very easily, until something is done about his complete vulnerability against missiles, he will remain bottom tier IMHO.

As for sniper, I've been playing the class religiously ever since the buff and I would place him firmly above commando and miner, here's the response to all previous complaints regarding the class made in the opening post.

>"Very slow attack speed"
The attack speed itself may be horrible, but the damage justifies it greatly IMHO, besides, once you are used to the shoot>jump+reload>repeat pattern, the attack speed won't seem bad at all, nevermind the potential damage increase from perfect reloads.

>"Has to be immobile for max damage"
You don't need max damage to deal with mobs, the charge time a Military Training buys you is more than enough to destroy a crowd. Against most boss encounters, you can easily find a safe camping spot to deal that fat damage you crave for.

>"Little to no mob control"
Miliary Training+Steady Aim is all you need for CC, and frankly, those two together makes him one of the better kiters in the game.

>"Extremely item reliant"
I don't see how this is ever the case, especially compared to the likes of Merc and Commando, and from my experience, he is one of the least item reliant classes available. Aside from the universally useful items such as hoofs, jetpacks and health-improving items (none of which are more useful on Sniper than others IMHO, his default movespeed doesn't rank below average if I'm not mistaken), there's actually not much else that even benefit Sniper... maybe aside from anything that improves or benefits crit, and getting a good Use item can be quite critical too, not that he's particularly starved for choice between Mirror, Timestop, Lantern, Decoy and Invincibility.

>"Lengthy cooldowns and charging times overshadow damage potential"
Spotter's cooldown is mostly irrelevant, Military Training's cooldown is just 2 secs more than Commando's Dive but it covers a bigger distance AND much faster if I'm not mistaken, Steady Aim may have quite the cooldown but it becomes less of an issue once you have the jump+reload manoeuvre nailed down, which lets you to simply take 2-3 normal Snipe shots whilst kiting before being able to C and X again, and the damage from 2/3 charge + AOE easily outshines most other AoE skills available to other classes.

It is a difficult class to master, especially in terms of being able to perfect reload on the fly (which doesn't take much to get used to, though admittedly can be difficult to manage in later stages as game begins slowing down and screwing with your timing), but in terms of survivability, kiting and raw damage potential, he is definitely right up there. In the end of the day, it's all a matter of mastering jump+reload, which one may argue as a potential reason for him to be low on tier, but the low item reliant nature of the class balances out that minor issue.