Risk of Rain Vanilla HAN-D
As for its moves...
HURTHAN-D punches forward, hitting all enemies in a sizable radius in front of it for 180% base damage and knocking them back some. No cooldown.
DRONE
DRONEEach time HAN-D kills an enemy, a DRONE is spawned and begins circling HAN-D. HAN-D can carry up to 10 such DRONES. If HAN-D has any such DRONES, this input causes a DRONE to peel off in search of the nearest target, wherever it might be, hit it for 190% base damage, and then fly back and heal HAN-D. This uses up the DRONE. No cooldown for firing off DRONES.
OVERCLOCK
OVERCLOCKIncreases attack speed by 30% and provides +30% Stun chance for a period of time. When HAN-D lands hits with HURT or FORCED_REASSEMBLY, this slightly increases the duration of OVERCLOCK, allowing for 3 HURTs to benefit from OVERCLOCK at base attack speed. Additionally, activating OVERCLOCK provides an extremely brief boost to movement speed. 7 second cooldown.
FORCED_REASSEMBLY
FORCED_REASSEMBLYHAN-D winds up and after a delay strikes a large area, particularly in front of it, for 500% base damage, knocking enemies up into the air if possible. 5 second cooldown.
And since I yet again got two Ancient Scepters, an Ancient Scepter changes FORCED_REASSEMBLY into...
UNETHICAL_REASSEMBLY
And since I yet again got two Ancient Scepters, an Ancient Scepter changes FORCED_REASSEMBLY into...
UNETHICAL_REASSEMBLYAs per FORCED_REASSEMBLY, but always Stuns affected enemies and also shocks them.
I'm not sure how much damage the shock does. Oddly, the in-game description for UNETHAL_REASSEMBLY claims it only does 400% base damage -I've gone with the wiki sticking with 500% in this case, because I didn't notice a damage loss happening, and I have difficulty imagining an Ancient Scepter move would be set up to provide a downgrade deliberately.
HAN-D is frustrating to play and frustratingly designed. It has four moves, but one of them is fueled by kills and cannot even be used initially -and your DRONES are all lost when teleporting, so you always start a level with none of them- while OVERCLOCK is just a minor, temporary stat boost. An important one at base -HAN-D can't lock up enemies continuously at its base attack rate, but can with OVERCLOCK active- but still a minor boost that becomes much less important if you manage to get a few Soldier's Syringes such that your base attack rate already achieves the lock-down effect. And the stun effect is actually counterproductive most of the time, since it means enemies don't walk right back into your fist! Worse, FORCED_REASSEMBLY has extremely similar utility to HURT (Hit a bunch of enemies in front of you), and often isn't even clearly better -its wind-up is huge, enough so that you could fit nearly 3 HURTs in to one FORCED_REASSEMBLY, and 3 HURTs out-does a single FORCED-REASSEMBLY handily. And knocking enemies up in the air can risk letting them up onto your platform, if you are hanging up on a ledge just above them -which is frustrating, since FORCED-REASSEMBLY's huge strike zone should theoretically make it good for letting you hit shorter enemies from on top of platforms, but actually trying to take advantage of that can make your situation worse.
If a run gets far enough, HAN-D ends up working out okay. It's very good at fighting mid-high-end enemies that can flinch in the face of knockback and even be Stunned, such as Imp Overlords and Scavengers -the latter being particularly notable, since Scavengers are normally one of the bigger threats around- and with careful timing or a bit of support can kill Magma Worms fairly quickly too due to its two main attacks having large splash damage. And since its main attacks both splash, the game throwing swarms of enemies at it tends to just lead to HAN-D getting everything done faster, especially since more enemies means more DRONES means HAN-D's health just refuses to go down.
But prior to that point, HAN-D is slow, unwieldy, and doesn't even have good damage. Its base attack stat is actually slightly higher than normal (13 instead of the usual 12), but it doesn't gain more per level than other classes so the one point rapidly gets drowned out (You'll usually be Level 5+ by the time you've gotten through the first area, which means for a 'normal' class you've jumped from 12 to 24 attack, while HAN-D is... at 25, hooray?), and 180% damage on its basic attack is highly misleading and not even as good as it sounds. HAN-D's base attack rate is once per second; the Bandit's is, if you're button-mashing, more than three times that. With an attack that does 150% base damage per shot. And the Bandit actually gains 33% more base attack per level than most other classes. Blast is far superior to HURT at dishing out damage against individuals or even small numbers of enemies -HURT only starts pulling ahead when you're hitting larger numbers of enemies at once.
Even against larger numbers of enemies, though, HAN-D isn't that great. The Miner's Crush is a 'mere' 140% damage, but it fires nearly twice as often as HURT at level 1 -and the Miner gains 2.5% to their attack speed per level. HAN-D has no equivalent edge. At Level 21, the Miner will be attacking about three times as fast. So in actuality, if you want a melee class that kills mobs quickly, the Miner effortlessly outperforms HAN-D and is nowhere near as awkward to get through the early game.
All HAN-D really has going for it is that its attacks have a surprising amount of reach and, since they aren't ranged attacks, can actually go through walls. No other melee class can quite match HAN-D in that regard... but Risk of Rain isn't a game where you routinely try to exploit enemies by attacking through walls.
I like the idea of HAN-D. Playing a robot janitor that relies primarily on its fists is a sensible and cool idea.
But it's by far the worst melee class in the game, and melee classes already tend to be a bit underpowered just by virtue of being melee.
The odd thing is that even though two classes were added in the last major patch and one of them was CHEF's poorly-balanced self, HAN-D isn't the other one. No, as we'll be getting to next time, that's the Loader, and the Loader is actually essentially fine aside one bit of silliness.
I'm not sure how much damage the shock does. Oddly, the in-game description for UNETHAL_REASSEMBLY claims it only does 400% base damage -I've gone with the wiki sticking with 500% in this case, because I didn't notice a damage loss happening, and I have difficulty imagining an Ancient Scepter move would be set up to provide a downgrade deliberately.
HAN-D is frustrating to play and frustratingly designed. It has four moves, but one of them is fueled by kills and cannot even be used initially -and your DRONES are all lost when teleporting, so you always start a level with none of them- while OVERCLOCK is just a minor, temporary stat boost. An important one at base -HAN-D can't lock up enemies continuously at its base attack rate, but can with OVERCLOCK active- but still a minor boost that becomes much less important if you manage to get a few Soldier's Syringes such that your base attack rate already achieves the lock-down effect. And the stun effect is actually counterproductive most of the time, since it means enemies don't walk right back into your fist! Worse, FORCED_REASSEMBLY has extremely similar utility to HURT (Hit a bunch of enemies in front of you), and often isn't even clearly better -its wind-up is huge, enough so that you could fit nearly 3 HURTs in to one FORCED_REASSEMBLY, and 3 HURTs out-does a single FORCED-REASSEMBLY handily. And knocking enemies up in the air can risk letting them up onto your platform, if you are hanging up on a ledge just above them -which is frustrating, since FORCED-REASSEMBLY's huge strike zone should theoretically make it good for letting you hit shorter enemies from on top of platforms, but actually trying to take advantage of that can make your situation worse.
If a run gets far enough, HAN-D ends up working out okay. It's very good at fighting mid-high-end enemies that can flinch in the face of knockback and even be Stunned, such as Imp Overlords and Scavengers -the latter being particularly notable, since Scavengers are normally one of the bigger threats around- and with careful timing or a bit of support can kill Magma Worms fairly quickly too due to its two main attacks having large splash damage. And since its main attacks both splash, the game throwing swarms of enemies at it tends to just lead to HAN-D getting everything done faster, especially since more enemies means more DRONES means HAN-D's health just refuses to go down.
But prior to that point, HAN-D is slow, unwieldy, and doesn't even have good damage. Its base attack stat is actually slightly higher than normal (13 instead of the usual 12), but it doesn't gain more per level than other classes so the one point rapidly gets drowned out (You'll usually be Level 5+ by the time you've gotten through the first area, which means for a 'normal' class you've jumped from 12 to 24 attack, while HAN-D is... at 25, hooray?), and 180% damage on its basic attack is highly misleading and not even as good as it sounds. HAN-D's base attack rate is once per second; the Bandit's is, if you're button-mashing, more than three times that. With an attack that does 150% base damage per shot. And the Bandit actually gains 33% more base attack per level than most other classes. Blast is far superior to HURT at dishing out damage against individuals or even small numbers of enemies -HURT only starts pulling ahead when you're hitting larger numbers of enemies at once.
Even against larger numbers of enemies, though, HAN-D isn't that great. The Miner's Crush is a 'mere' 140% damage, but it fires nearly twice as often as HURT at level 1 -and the Miner gains 2.5% to their attack speed per level. HAN-D has no equivalent edge. At Level 21, the Miner will be attacking about three times as fast. So in actuality, if you want a melee class that kills mobs quickly, the Miner effortlessly outperforms HAN-D and is nowhere near as awkward to get through the early game.
All HAN-D really has going for it is that its attacks have a surprising amount of reach and, since they aren't ranged attacks, can actually go through walls. No other melee class can quite match HAN-D in that regard... but Risk of Rain isn't a game where you routinely try to exploit enemies by attacking through walls.
I like the idea of HAN-D. Playing a robot janitor that relies primarily on its fists is a sensible and cool idea.
But it's by far the worst melee class in the game, and melee classes already tend to be a bit underpowered just by virtue of being melee.
The odd thing is that even though two classes were added in the last major patch and one of them was CHEF's poorly-balanced self, HAN-D isn't the other one. No, as we'll be getting to next time, that's the Loader, and the Loader is actually essentially fine aside one bit of silliness.
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