Risk of Rain Vanilla Loader

The Loader is unlocked by, in a single playthrough, collecting 30 different items. Not 30 items total: if you have 30 items where two of them are Mysterious Vials, you're one short. On the flipside, switching around Use items can reach the requirement even if you never had 30 different items on you at once.

His four moves are...

Knuckleboom

Knuckleboom is a three-part melee attack where the Loader hits with one fist for 120% base damage, then the other fist, then both fists for 240% base damage while also knocking enemies upward. (Note that you must manually push buttons per punch) All three hits involve the Loader advancing forward a noticeable amount. No cooldown.

Debris Shield

For 3 seconds, the Loader is invulnerable to harm. Activating Debris Shield also provides an extremely short-lived but significant boost to movement speed. 5 second cooldown.

Hydraulic Gauntlet

Launches a projectile about three-quarters of the screen out. If it hits an enemy, a chunk of terrain, or a lightning rod, the Loader is rapidly dragged toward the impact point. Hitting an enemy stuns it and does 210% base damage to it. 3 second cooldown.

M440 Conduit

Places a lightning rod at your current location, or on the ground below you if in the air. One lightning rod does nothing except act as a Hydraulic Gauntlet target. Once a second lightning rod is placed, electricity arcs between the two lightning rods for 9 seconds, dealing 80% base damage each second to every enemy in the area. There's a 2 second cooldown after placing the first lightning rod, while the second lightning rod to be placed leads to a 10 second cooldown that only starts after the lightning rods vanish.

Yes, that means Conduit can only be properly uses once every 21 seconds. Oof. That's the longest cooldown of any move short of the Engineer's Turrets, and he can stockpile those!

Conduit's actual lightning radius is also a lot larger than you'd expect from the visuals if placed at diagonals -each lightning rod defines the corner of a box. Think like how drag-selection works in an RTS; clicking at one spot and dragging straight up, down, left, or right results in a line. Dragging diagonally results in a vastly larger box. Conduit is like that. Try to place the lightning rods at a diagonal from each other if you can.

Hydraulic Gauntlet is fantastic for enhancing the Loader's travel speed, and can even be used to climb up ledges if you arrange to hook them as you're falling below; the resulting pull upward will cause you to jolt up after you've hit your destination. I didn't end up showing off Hydraulic Gauntlet's utility much in this video primarily because I got a Red Whip fairly early on and so using moves would be slowing me down, but it's quite nice.

The Loader is a nifty melee class with a bit of a hit-and-run vibe to him. Knuckleboom is most effective if you can arrange things so that the third hit ends up with no enemies in reach of you post-impact -there's enough ending lag at the end of it you won't be able to escape enemies- and Debris Shield makes you totally invulnerable but once it runs out you're slow and not that durable, so ideally you arrange to have it end when you're not amid enemies. Either that or you get enough cooldown-reduction effects you can just maintain Debris Shield indefinitely -this won't usually happen in regular play if you're not looping, but it can, and it's obviously ridiculous. (And my only particular complaint with the Loader's design, as it happens)

The Loader is probably the best-designed of the melee classes. He's odd -usually the fourth move is a pretty major move for a class, where M440 Conduit is just sort of a minor bonus- but it's a good oddness. Unlike other true melee classes, the Loader doesn't want to get stuck in the thick of things -but neither is being in the thick of things automatically a bad thing. He's encouraged to move about, preventing combat from getting too repetitive, and unlike the Miner the game is successful in this regard.

This can be a bit surprising, because he tends to seem underwhelming initially. The Loader is unique for being the only class whose base attack is worse than the default value of 12 -he only has 10- meaning his 120% on basic punches actually hits exactly as hard as another class's 100% would, at level 1. Debris Shield's in-game description makes it sound like an HP shield; like if you have 100 HP, using Debris Shield provides a shield that lasts for 3 seconds or through up to 100 damage, not the complete invulnerability it actually gives. Hydraulic Gauntlet tends to seem a bit useless once you're actually among enemies -it's actually still useful for inflicting stun, but it's easy to overlook this use- and the lightning rod really is pretty light damage delivered sufficiently far apart its average damage is truly terrible.

However, the Loader has a monstrous base attack rate of 3 a second, with only classes like the Bandit and Commando competing with him, and the Loader's damage is splash. The Bandit handily beats the Loader when it comes to killing single targets with your basic attack, but add in even one other enemy and suddenly the Loader is outputting impressive overall damage. And like the Commando and Bandit, the Loader combines quite nicely with on-hit chance effects as a result.

It can take a bit to get used to the Loader -his hit-and-run playstyle isn't stupendously obvious from looking at his moves, he really seems more like a stand and fight character- but he's quite satisfying to play once you know what you're doing.

... if hard on your fingers and input device of choice.