Update 1.2 - New Classes Ridiculously Unbalanced

So I saw that the update came out and immediately set about unlocking the new characters. I was rather fascinated by their silhouettes, and then by the ideas once unlocked, but... I have to say I'm disappointed. Why? Not because they aren't cool, and certainly not because I think the ideas behind them are bad. It's just that compared to the other classes, these feel like zero effort was put into balancing them. One seems ridiculously overpowered, while the other is underpowered. For the sake of spoilers, I won't put anything specific outside of these tags.

Obtain 30 items in one playthrough

This unlocks the Loader, a dude in a bulky and thick-armed load-lifter exoskeleton. Who is, I have to say, an awesome idea but is overwhelmingly terrible. For those of you who haven't seen him:

1. Knuckleboom: "Batter nearby enemies for 120%. Every third hit deals 240% and knocks up enemies." What this doesn't tell you is how slow he punches, and that the punches don't seem to stun or interrupt enemies. So you just get butchered if you try to actually use this ability, even if just to fight back a bit when cornered by sudden spawns.
2. Debris Shield: "Shield yourself for 100% of your health for 3 seconds while also increasing your move speed." Yep, even after testing in game, I'm still not sure what exactly this ability does. The mechanic description is a little vague. It definitely increases your longevity some... but this guy is supposed to be a close-quarters fighter, according to the description. This ability helps, but he still gets butchered.
3. Hydraulic Gauntlet: "Fire your gauntlet forward. If it an enemy or wall you pull yourself towards them, stunning and hurting enemies for 210%." This could be one of the coolest abilities in the game. In and of itself, I guess I have no complaints about this one. But the synergies that the ability seems to be designed around are... lacking. And looked at without those, it's just a terrible ability that stuns one enemy, but yanks you into reach of all the others so you can get (you guessed it) butchered. One of the limiting factors of this ability, I think, is the fact that you can only fire it straight left or right and the projectile IS affected by gravity. That gives it limited range and means that if there are enemies between you and your target destination, you might accidentally pull yourself into a deadly situation.
4. M440 Conduit: "Place a lightning rod. After placing two, lightning surges between them, dealing 80% damage per second for 9 seconds." This is an awesome idea, and the need for tactical use is cool. The thing is, it seems built to synergize with the mobility the Hydraulic Gauntlet is supposed to give you, but the Gauntlet has issues and doesn't actually fill this role all that well. You can sneak around one or two enemies no problem... but that's hardly worth it, since the damage is pathetic on that scale: I generally play with Glass on, but even then this ability was unable to kill anything but the weakest enemies (Lemurians and the smaller Wisps)... although I guess I'm not sure if that was a glitch or not. Overall, this ability is just terrible for the "ultimate" ability of the Loader. You can't very well set it up on the large scales that would put out enough damage to be worth it without getting butchered, limiting it to small-scale use that it just doesn't do enough damage for.

Incidentally, I think the achievement to unlock him is buggy, too. I had like... ~70 items before it gave me the achievement and the character unlock? Kind of annoying.
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Obtain Meat Nugget, Bustling Fungus, Sprouting Egg, Bitter Root, and Foreign Fruit in one run.

This unlocks the Chef, who is a robot that does... well, exactly what it sounds like. It's an interesting idea and brings some comedy to the game. But he is honestly and easily the most overpowered class in the game. Which is particularly strange since the achievement to get him isn't even hard--especially with the Artifact of Command. 4 Whites and an Orange? Took me like 5 minutes.

1. Dice: "Throw cleaver towards customers for 100% damage. Boomerangs back." A moderately paced attack with decent range, damage, and it boomerangs back to you. You can trap enemies without the ability to jump behind a small rise, lob cleavers over it and catch them on the rebound. The cleavers also pierce innately, meaning you can butcher enemies by the dozen. When boosted with his ultimate, he throws out a ring of 9 cleavers that still pierce. Admittedly, this isn't very useful in most situations--but I killed the Magma Worm in less than a second with it. Extremely early in the game, with only three syringes, a clover, and an amethyst. In another situation to show my brother how overpowered just his basic attack was, I let around 50 wisps spawn with Kin and butchered them all in around two seconds without taking any damage. They weren't even all stacked up, either, but spread across several platforms. It didn't even take all of those two seconds for my brother to decide he shared my opinion of this guy.
   
2. Sear: "Cook customers for 260% damage until golden brown, knocking them away." It's a little area-of-effect flamethrower that pops out of an oven on his chest (after he dings comically). The range is comparable to Acrid's Neurotoxin, but it seems to hit more area vertically. In and of itself, I don't think this ability is too bad (although it's cooldown is probably on the low side). But when you boost it with his Ultimate, the damage goes up to 420%, the fireball turns blue and bigger. Combine that with the synergy with his next and third ability, and this ability is just insane.
3. Glaze: "Ride a wave of oil, slowing customers. Searing glazed customers deals +78% damage and stuns." The wave is comparable to the Huntress' Blink or the Mercenary's Blinding Assault. It's a short-range dash that applies the described debuff to any enemy you pass through. When you boost this ability with his Ultimate, though, the distance is roughly 2.5-3.0 times as far. So you can boost use this, then boost sear to do some massive damage... or boost this to affect more people and fire off a normal (and still respectable) sear for more area damage, yes? The thing is, with the new Amethyst use time (resets your cooldowns and has, itself, a cooldown of only 8 seconds) it is extremely easy to boost BOTH abilities for truly massive and large-area damage. You don't even need the amethyst if you get the Ancient Scepter, because it upgrades your Ultimate to boost the next TWO abilities you trigger.
4. Second Helping: "Prepare a master meal, boosting the next ability cast." It only has a cool-down of eight seconds, boosts your abilities to rather impressive degrees, and can be upgraded with the Ancient Scepter and/or paired with the new Amethyst in order to spam extremely over-powered abilities. The source of all the Chef's ridiculosity.

ALL THIS AND HE'S NOT EVEN SQUISHY!
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Yes? No? Maybe so?

 

So I have run around 10 runs with both the Loader and with the Chef. I wanted to weigh in my opinion on some of my observations.

Initially speaking, the Chef is definitely very strong. If you simply look at the math, he is second only to the Sniper in damage, and definitely far easier to use. His basic attack hits twice, meaning he has 200% damage at an attack speed similar to the commando. That combined with his boosts makes him damage output very impressive. In a easy or normal game, he is very powerful and tends to dominate easily. However, I consistently found that in Monsoon where the enemies are far less forgiving he falls behind in some areas.

First of all, his "dash" ability. Unlike Huntress and Mercenary (even if he is a bit broken atm by this patch), the chef's dash ability gives him no way to mitigate damage. The only thing you can rely on is trying to be faster than the things that hit you. I'd say that works consistently in your favor in easy and normal, but in Monsoon where elites are far more common dashing through a large group of enemies to debuff them is incredibly risky. Then you have to combine that with the fact that all of his abilities have very little range. Now, I have to admit I have the same problem with the combination of his ultimate and his basic attack, and have a new record on my game for fasting boss kill being 0.2 seconds. With ancient scepter I double-tapped a magma worm on level 3 for an instant-kill. This character isn't exactly "balanced", but I personally don't think he is too much stronger than Huntress, if at all.

As for the Loader. I am not sure where the confusion on Debris shield is, it seems rather straight forward to me. It gives him a short speed boost when activated, and is a shield that has strength equivalent to his HP. So that means even though you are invincible, it isn't guaranteed for the whole 3 seconds. However this plus infusion and some bitter roots will make it alot easier to stay invinc for the full duration even late into the game. That being said, it has an incredibly short cool down and can be easily spammed. I found a strategy even on my first run of grappling into close combat, popping my shield, hitting for one or two combos, then running out. Rinse and repeat for a hard fight.

His ulty is lack-luster on damage, and is only "slightly" better with ancient scepter. It does a short stun, which is undeniably useful, but the damage increase isn't really that amazing.

I agree that his grappling hook arms could be more interesting, but I also think that this is going to be a skill based character that will be underplayed and overloved like the Miner. However, I might be bias, because I am in love with the Loader and the Miner is my old primary character. Loader definitely isn't easy to play, but when you get good at him it is easy to see that he is rewarding.

Overall; yes. They probably need re-balancing. However there are M U C H bigger issues in this update that probably need be addressed first.

 

Some things you might want to mention:

Chef's dash actually has a set speed. If you have enough goat hooves or other speed items (Red Whip), the dash will actually SLOW him down, making it worse to use if you need to escape.
His basic attack can hit more than just twice depending on the size of the enemy and positioning of your character and the enemy. I have hit bigger enemies 3 or 4 times with a single knife, bosses up to 6 times or more if they chase you with the knife boomeranging with them.
I will agree he is, overall, overpowered. Personally, I don't use Sear or Glaze much, and Second Helping is only useful once in a while for me.

Loader, I find him difficult to use. A little more practice with him and I may be able to give a better and more accurate judgement.
His 4th is rather worthless in my opinion, not even worth remembering the name of the skill, I don't even like using it.
His basic combo is painfully slow unless you get at least 2 or 3 syringes, which helps (but more is better, of course (remember it caps at 8 )). The real problem was stated above, no stun whatsoever, allowing you to get rekt.
The shield, however, CAN be useful, but early on it is rather crappy. More health easily makes this great, and combine it with a couple alien heads or wicked rings (don't forget the crit chance) and you could have infinite shielding.
The grappling hook looked so much more amazing in the gif on the main blog. Sadly, it is not as useful as one would hope. I think maybe some sort of stun burst (doesn't even have to do damage, just a small, short stun) would help it greatly.
Overall, I think he is good, but I'm not good with him (yet, or may never be). In ways he is overpowered, in other ways he is underpowered.

That's what I think, my opinions on the characters.

 

Ok. new information. The loader's 4th ability is the biggest AoE in the game. It isn't worthless when you consider the overall damage you can do with it. It isn't a straight line. it is a bounding box. If you put one pole in the bottom right of an area, and the other in the top left of the area, it makes an invisible rectangle with those as the opposing corners. It eletrocutes EVERYTHING inside that area. Using it in a straight line IS useless.

Also, despite what I said earlier and what the game says, it looks like his invul skill is always 3 seconds of invul. I got hit by a blighted golem on monsoon and the 3 seconds of invul didn't go away, even though that would have 1-shot killed me without it.

The grappling hook is amazingly useful for the guerrila-like style i've taken to fighting with him. After playing him for another 10 matches and keeping an open mind, I'm quickly finding that he is my favorite character. I feel like he is definitely going to be misunderstood, and I hope to one day get good enough to write a guide about him. The most important thing to take away is the concept of the bounding-box of his ult. Makes it worth it. So, very worth it. I am going to be testing in my next few runs if his ult also procs a lot of the stuff like missiles and crits. if it does, Loader may be stronger than chef. Stronger than them all! He could beat up a Nokia phone.

As for the "no stun whatsoever" I feel like you guys might be doing something different than me... I am consistently doing knock up/back on the third hit. So much so that the third hit stops golems from clapping. If you pop the 3 second invul and do 2 combos (without atk speed. More than 2 with), you get plenty of dmg in. Considering it lasts 3 seconds and has a 5 second cool down, you are only vulnerable for 2 seconds. You gotta stay on your feet.

Also it helps to think of the bounding box of lightning as your boxing ring, and you're a boxer. As soon as your put down your "right" it does one big burst of dmg (looks around 200%), thats when you gotta turn around, grapple in, and beat em up!

Grappling hook also doesn't obey gravity. The reason people get caught up is because it pulls you STRAIGHT at the y level you were at. So if you weren't high enough to reach the top of a ledge, it won't pull you upwards at all. This only applies to inanimate objects. Hit the head of a magma worm JUST as he comes out, and you are going for a ride!!!

 

The thing is, the damage output for his 4th isn't worth having to run to opposite corners just to cover a good area for damage. If it procs things, like you say you are testing, then it may be but I won't use it.
By no stun, I mean preventing enemies from attacking. For whatever reason, even knocking them into the air does not stop a crab from hugging you, a golem from clapping, or a lemurian from nibbling on your backside.
Haven't used the grapple enough to really say it's worth it or not, but I don't much care for it.

 

Like the Miner or Mercenary, this class is definitely not for everyone. I am making a thread dedicated to gathering information on the Loader, however. I am fascinated by him. One thing I already tested is that you can increase its damage and crit with items, however most healing/missile/etc procs don't go off. Also the bounding box has no range. As for damage...it does 720% total damage if you can make the bounding box large enough to encapture entire groups. If you consider that the ult is damaging every single enemy within that box without fail, that means 720% damage spread across an unlimited number of enemies (since it has no max size) would put it as the highest damaging move in the game. I've managed to do this without endangering myself whatsoever while I was low on health or found a cliff with an overabundance of enemies. Combined with the Will'o'wisp or similar on-death items you could easily ignite chain reactions of death with it.

The grapple is a 1 second stun with a 3 second cooldown that goes off instantly in melee range. Only problem with it is that it only stuns 1 target. I'd suggest using it as a get-away and aiming it at walls more than enemies.

I keep dying, but I want to test the wicked ring + crit on ult to see if it refreshes cooldowns. If it does, the ulty has some amazing potential.

 

It's fun, when i read that one was overpowered and the other underpowered, i thought the other way around.
The AoE of the Loader is actually pretty cool (then again, i'm a huge fan of the acrid), and the attack time is way better than the HAN-D.
I found the Chef actually more difficult to use, but i guess that's personal, I only played that one game with it, but against the jellyfish i got rekt with the Chef (then again, what class competes against them?)

I wouldn't know if they were balanced or not, but i find those classes way cooler than the miner for example which is unplayable for me (way useless than the Loader), or even the commando (the AoE again is pretty useful in some situation...!).

My 2 cents.

 

I am not completely sure about this but does Dice trigger on hit effects? Because I don't think so, which would make his scaling similar to Acrid if anything. Just, you know, with a basic attack that is better against groups but no real fourth skill. He seems to be awesome against groups of small fry but kinda helpless against beefy enemies that he can't nuke. Doing a Honor+Kin with him is even more luck of the draw then usual.

Hadn't a chance to play Loader yet. Can his fourth skill crit?

Ninja edit:

Holy shit, the buffed Dice (cleavers everywhere) plus Dynamite Plunger (drop tnt whenever hitting enemies and explode them all with the item) can deal with any group pretty quickly, if you can survive diving in there. Makes me wish you could use the reset item at the same time and have something like 30 cleavers out at once, all hitting every enemy they go through on both ways... Gotta try some other on-damage items later.

 

Loader seems to be overpowered, though not quite as much as Chef. While he doesn't put out quite as much raw damage, his CC is excellent with attack speed as he can stunlock entire crowds of enemies. His survivability, meanwhile, is amazing, especially if you grab a wicked ring.

Say what you will about not balancing around Command, but none of the prior characters had egregious combos (save for perhaps Wicked Ring Mercenary's infinispin). Getting a couple syringes turns Loader stupid, and all Chef needs is an Amethyst and a Sceptor to dish out almost 5000% damage every 8 seconds, notwithstanding his constant dps, in a puncturing AoE.

 

By the way, is it just me or does the powered Dice do way more damage then the sear combo? The combo deals up to ~500% damage, hitting all cleavers both way is possible when standing within a big group or a boss which makes it ~1800% damage. The area that deals full damage is much smaller, though.

 

I've revised my opinion of the Loader. Apparently my trigger is sticky on the controller. He doesn't attack as slowly as I previously thought, and I think it was just a glitch with Glass before. His AOE is actually quite respectable. My opinion on the Gauntlet stands, but that's a relatively minor issue.

On the other hand, the Chef is still absurdly overpowered. No denying that.

 

Honestly I don't even care if they are balanced. This isn't a competitive game, its purely about having fun. Doesn't matter if one class is more powerful than the other as long as you and whoever you're playing with are having fun.

 

it's really difficult to enjoy enforcer when you know the 11 other classes are lightyears better than him

 

Do the 30 items have to be unique? Because I had several runs with over 30 items now and Loader still isn't unlocked...

 

Yes, they need to be unique items. If you are just going for completion, get a couple of friends and activate the artifacts that affect chests (sacrifice and command) and designate 1 player to collect all chests. Kin can help as well if you just want to farm on the first level.

 

My friend has no problem enjoying and occasionally playing Enforcer. I myself don't like to play Enforcer because its not very mobile and I'm not terribly great at the game so I usually die quickly. I finally unlocked Loader and played it for a while and its pretty fun to play, I agree a bit underpowered, the invulnerability ability would be more useful if it increased your attack speed. And the hydraulic gauntlet and conduits would be much better if the gauntlet:

* Ignored enemies so you can quickly grapple and fly past a group of enemies and deploy the second conduit quickly
* Flew in the direction you are aiming towards so you could shoot it up or diagonally at ceilings to let you swing around bionic commando style

Its still fun to play though and I'll probably play it some more later.

 

Loader underpowered? Really?

I played 2 games with him: in the 1st i reached 4th lvl, in the 2nd i won. I just had a good number of HP-releated and melee-releated items... Sometimes i was going to die, but overall talking i KICKED ASSES.
I used this pattern in order to defeat large groups of enemies: Electric Tower, Shield + Grappling Hook (only if there was a wall or a distant, isolated enemy) in order to avoid the mass, second Electric Tower, Shield, 1-2-3 combos in the group, quit using the Grappling Hook, Shield, Another bunch of combos, nigga run until i had Electric Tower reloaded (around 1-2 seconds left).

Ok, Grappling Hook isn't a fundamental ability and could be thought better. But it helped me in a good number of situations.
Also, if you are on an elevated platform near a wall, you can use the Hook in order to place the Electric Tower on the wall, greatly increasing his attack range.

Maybe he isn't one of the most powerful characters in this game (...Ok, definitively not), but he absolutely isn't underpowered. Actually, the worst melee character is Mercenary, IMHO, even if he's quite fun to use.
Anyway, Loader is one of my favourite characters.


I haven't tried CHEF, but i admit that it looks quite OP. I'll try him.
Esthetically talking, he's spectatular.

 

The problem with CHEF isn't that he's squishy, it's that he has no real dodge. I played a game without artifacts up to Providence... and got three-shot in his first phase because I couldn't dodge after getting hit the first time (Red Whip). After having two infusions for half the game. Just goes to show dodging is as important as health. Granted my run wasn't going well from the healing and speed perspective but still. Still my favorite of the two new classes, and one of the best overall.

I immediately disliked the loader the moment I tried him. I cannot deal with how slow he is. Granted, the grapple is neat, and his problems are alleviated with a red whip, but needing to get one means you probably won't. Also, I grappled into the underside of a mushroom platform in Damp Caverns and got stuck in the corner long enough for a few lemurians to bite me to death. I don't know if there's a way to disengage, but that is clearly not a fun way to die. I ended up just clearing the first level and using a wall and a Tesla tower to just farm for the grapple distance achievement, because there's no way I'm getting it through normal play.

 

Lightyears? I dont think really think thats accurate.
Enforcer is the most Guerrilla out of everyone. You hit and run. A lot.
I will say he is a bit finicky though, most of the classes are deff better than him, but Id still rather play Enforcer over Bandit

 

I've never understood the sentiment that the Enforcer is the worst of the classes. It is one of my best, both performance-wise and fun-wise. A short-range, movement-controlling, war-by-attrition class has a certain feel to it that isn't echoed by any of the other classes, which often (and with exception) zip around floods of enemies, taking little potshots and then scurrying along hoping for another opening (which I still can find fun). The great thing about the variety of classes in this game is that many classes benefit from different combinations of items, so the depth of playstyle is compounded.