So, I just beat my first proper* Voidling run, and I'm curious why you say they're a horrible boss. I personally found them much less obnoxious than Mithrix or the False Son. Granted, bear in mind that my experience with Voidling is still limited, so it's possible I just got a lucky run, but still... [spoiler]When I say "proper" I mean, I've reached the Voidling before, but this was the first time I reached it at an appropriate stage of the game. I usually tackle the Void early for that sweet free red, which locks me out of the Deep Void unless I make the run go super long. As a result, I've only ever encountered Voidling right at the beginning, where I wound up dying to the first platforming segment due to a lack of mobility, and way deep into the run, where I'm so beefy Voidling just died instantly. This run was at about 1.5 loops in. My goal was actually to head to Voidling on Stage 5, but I didn't find any Newt Altars until about stage 8.[/spoiler] Being a ranged boss instead of a melee boss made things feel a lot more balanced. Characters who are best at a range can properly fight at a range, and while I was worried that this might leave melee characters in the dust, I had actually rolled Acrid (I had rando survivor on), and he was doing just fine. So, its homing shotgun blast is a little annoying, but it felt much more manageable than dealing with Mithrix or the False Son's hammer/club strikes, and the triple sniper blast was a great move, punishing you for getting too complacent if you're dealing with the shotgun easily, but not feeling as cheap as the False Son's crazy laser. And speaking of lasers, the Voidling's big laser twirly move feels like it fills the same niche as Mithrix's pizza cutter; a clearly telegraphed, super strong move that gives you a major opening on the boss if you know what you're doing. The one move that I will say does seem pretty obnoxious could be the black hole thing. I had a lot of mobility this run so it didn't affect me much, but, well, considering I said a potential lack of mobility was a complaint against Mithrix, it wouldn't be fair if I didn't mention it here too. :p I also like that it makes you think more strategically about when you tackle the Void. In a regular run, you want to go in asap, because it lets you tackle the early stages with a really great batch of items including several greens and a red. But in a Voidling run, the Void is your ticket to the boss fight, so you need to wait to tackle it until you're truly ready. I also like how--while there's still some RNG involved--getting to the Voidling is so much more reliable than reaching the False Son. With the False Son, you gotta rely on getting those Halcyon Shrines, or a lucky dreaming portal, but getting to the Voidling is as easy as just finding a single Newt Altar. Still not the best boss in the world or anything, but I liked it!

Well I'm not gonna say you're objectively wrong, but Voidling is hated by most of the community for a few reasons. The first is lack of attack variety. He has technically 4 but realistically 3 attacks and none of them are super engaging, boiling down to either run in a straight line, run in a circle, and jump. Mithrix has the same amount of attacks in phase one alone as Voidling does in general. The second is the fact that he kinda just sits there and doesn't engage in a physical way with the player. He doesn't react to player's movements or adapt to player's positions like Mithrix does. The third is boredom. Mithrix has 4 unique phases that are all distinct gameplay-wise. Voidling has 3 bullet sponge healthbars, with the biggest change simply being that on the last one you can't cross map him and you have to into at least mid range. Compare that to Mithrix where each phase forces you to adapt and change based on his upgraded movesets, and Voidling just falls flat. Lastly is potential. Voidling has a really cool arena and visual design, and could have been made so interesting (like imagine different phases where messes with our minds or summons some sort of meteor shower or creatures from the Void), but he was just a bullet sponge with 4 attacks.

[quote]Disclaimer: This list is based purely off of how much I enjoy playing as the Survivor in question. Higher ranked Survivors or not necessarily better or worse than lower ranked Survivors, and many factors are taken into consideration beyond gameplay, such as aesthetics. I also mostly play solo, which does play a factor in things.[/quote] Loader isn't at the bottom because she's the worst, she's at the bottom [i]because[/i] she's the best. She's absolutely no fun to play, because she just wipes everything out as soon as it pops on screen. Like, did you even look at the stats I gave her? And S for damage & mobility, and A+ for crowd control? Those are very clearly the highest on the list. Of couse I know how strong she is. :p While I wouldn't be surprised if Chef is objectively the worst--I had zero fun going for their Mastery skin--I think you're being a little too hard on REX. REX can dish out damage a lot faster than many of the other Survivors can. And while, yes, this does come at the drawback of costing health, REX's ability to regen health with only a couple attack speed buffs easily negates this. Not counting Chef, I would probably rank Captain as the "objective worst". Pitiful damage output, loses half his abilities in hidden stages, RB can only be used once per stage. Blech. The only reason he might stand a chance at not hitting this spot is his little nanobot thing, but it's not nearly enough to make up for the rest of his lackluster kit imo.

That's my bad, I didn't read the disclaimer. Captain is actually really good for a number of reasons. His microbots make him extremely durable along with his drones too, his shotgun makes him a proc monster, he has some really good beacon options, and he's got some of the best band procs in the game being Diablo and Orbital Strike.

I don’t know, his shotgun doesn’t feel like it procs nearly as much as full auto characters. Commando, REX, MUL-T, Railgunner, and of course, Engineer all feel like they do way more proc effects. Diablo Strike sucks. Like, staight up. It takes way too long to actually trigger, so whatever you wanted to hit will be long gone by the time it goes off. It could [i]maybe[/i] be good as a way to clear crowds on higher waves, but by the time you get there you shouldn’t need it. Orbital Strike is his only move I’d consider particularly good, but it’s only one move, and it gets disabled in hidden realms anyway. His beacons are good, but only being able to use them once per stage kinda ruins them so meh. The defense from microbots I can agree is pretty swell, but as mentioned in the op, it’s not enough to save an otherwise lackluster character.

Well if you look at the numbers, his shotgun has 8 pellets that each have a .75 proc coefficient, which is really really good. That's better than Rex and Engineer most of the time. I disagree about Diablo strike. It's an ability that is heavily based off of knowing how to train enemies and lead them into it. It takes 20 seconds to hit, so you can always look at your cooldown timer to know when it will hit, and it may be the best ability to trigger bands in the game. I have a clip where I have an Afterburner and I hit Mithrix with 3 successive Diablos in phase one and deal half of his health. Also Shock Beacon is amazing for teleporter events and Hack Beacon is really useful for speeding through stages.

But are these numbers taking into consideration fire rate and range? Like, sure, on any individual hit, a shot from Captain's shotgun might have a better chance of triggering a proc than one of REX's bursts, but REX's bursts come out more frequently, and can hit at a greater range--not to mention REX being able to spam his LT, which I'm sure has some higher procs too. And Engineer, of course, has 3 separate entities all gunning for procs at once--even more than that if you find any Lysat Cells. I don't have the numbers, but I can say that Captain's shotgun consistently feels pretty awful when trying to trigger procs. He has to be too close, and he fires too slow. The first issue can be avoided by charging his shot, of course, but that results in an [i]even slower[/i] attack speed. Eh, I mean sure, training enemies into the Diablo Strike is a thing, but I'd still say it totally sucks. Bands are good with basically any ability that can trigger them, basically no situation is going to need that kind of uber hit, and walking around in a big circle so enemies remain in range is ugggh. I can't see a single scenario where I'd ever choose it over his little mortars. Same reason I'd take a sawblade or lightning bolt over the big honking cannon any day. Abilities that take that long are just blech. The stun field for teleporters is okay, but it's not "you only get to use this once the entire stage leaving your RB useless for the rest of the stage" levels of good. I'd rather just, y'know, actually have an RB I can use? Admittedly, I don't have a terrible amount of experience with the hacking beacon, so maybe that one could redeem it? Tbh, outside of the legendary chest on Stage 4, and on Stage 1 where enemies are pretty scarce, I rarely find myself particularly short on cash. Most of the time, I don't even look at the costs of chests, I just run up and open them instantly because I pretty much always have the funds.

All that's fair, but I think I know the reason for our difference of opinion. Do you play Eclipse?

I've played a little bit, but not extensively. While I [i]can[/i] play on Monsoon when I need to--such as getting the Mastery skins--I very much prefer playing on Rainstorm. Since Eclipse can only be played in Monsoon, it doesn't interest me terribly much. Plus, while I think RoR2 is a mostly amazing game, I think it kinda drops the ball when it comes to its final bosses. Mithrix and The False Son are both kind of a pain to fight. With The False Son, you can at least loop a few times to get strong enough to beat him, but if you do that for Mithrix he'll just wind up literally unkillable in phase 3. Which isn't a hyperbole, by the by, I've had a run where he literally just regens health faster than I can deal damage. (admittedly, I haven't fought Voidling more than once or twice, so I can't comment if they're as bad. After I get all the Prime Meridian skins I'm gunning for that Voidling monster log next, though, so we'll see!) Not to mention I really hate the new Commencement. I used to really love it back before they updated it, but ever since they updated it you're usually met with a series of insta-killing machine gun Chimeras as soon as you load in. Blech. And of course, since you can't finish an Eclipse run in A Moment Fractured--which is my go-to for Monsoon--that's just another reason for me to not play it. Maybe if I find the Voidling less obnoxious than the other two (and assuming you can finish by killing the Voidling) I may play it more once I get all the Meridian skins, but ehh... I doesn't particularly interest me. My favorite way to play is on Rainstorm with the rando Survivor thing on, so that's usually what I'm doing when I'm not going for a particular acheivo. Edit: The implication of the question, of course, is that you're judging the characters based on how they perform in Eclipse, but I don't think that's completely fair. Judging the characters based on how they perform in Eclipse is like judging the characters how they perform using Artifacts. If we have to judge the characters under a specific set of circumstances, I would argue the best judge would actually be Rainstorm, no Artifacts, as that's arguably the way the game is meant to be played. Really, though, a character's viability should be judged on how they function in a variety of situations. Like, REX is probably the objective worst in Eclipse, but while that's a ding against him, Eclipse is only one mode. Outside of Eclipse, he has huge healing potential, and a pretty high damage output, and I wouldn't say it's particularly fair to discount that when Eclipse is only a single facet of the game. It kind of makes me think of FFCC. Dungeons in FFCC are broken in tiers, with the highest being Tier 7. You might think, the way to discover which class is best would be to see which class performs best in the Tier 7 Dungeons, so you might look at Rainy Ruins, arguably the game's hardest dungeon, and come to the conclusion that Clavats are the best class, but this isn't quite true. Rather, Clavats just have a specific set of abilities that best suit the specific set of challenges the dungeon provides, and if you were to look at the other Tier 7 dungeon, you'd find Yukes to be the best. In both cases Lilties are the worst, but look elsewhere in the game, and you'll find Lilties have a huge damage output that other classes have a hard time matching. (sorry, long reply!)

No problem with a long reply, but I will have to rebut any claims about Mithrix being a bad boss. I can't speak for False Son and Voidling is just terrible, but Mithrix is exceptional. First of all, his boss theme is en pointe. The song You're Gonna need a Bigger Ukulele is perfect and it's segmented to his 4 phases in a manner that I really like. On top of that, his phase design is superb. His first phase acquaints you with the boss itself. Unlike most other bosses in the game, Mithrix aggressively chases and is both hard hitting and fast. Speed and height are basically required to outmaneuver him, and the fight is treated like a dance. Know the steps, and know Mithrix's possible moves, and you'll be okay, but falter and you put yourself at risk (he said the thing). The second phase throws in ads and acquaints with the entire family of lunar chimera, making you play smart and utilize the newly raised pillars and environment to dodge attacks and stay safe. The third phase throws the first two together for the ultimate challenge of speed and reflexes, adding in the pizza attack as a skill check for players and both an opportunity to get both a ton of damage on the stationary boss, but also an easy trap to die or lose watches from. The fourth phase is why the boss excels though. It takes the core philosophy of the game, growing stronger through items, and applies them to the boss, taking away the build and potentially crutch you've been relying on to blow through the game. It is essentially the devs telling you that if you can't beat Mithrix without your items, then they shouldn't be yours in the first place. It tests your innate knowledge of your survivor, equipment, and the arena in a nail-biting conclusion. So I do disagree about Mithrix being bad. On another note, while I personally feel like Eclipse is the definitive experience, much of the game was balanced around Monsoon/Rainstorm so I understand why you would rank things from that perspective, and in those modes other survivors are much stronger like Rex. Play the game how you want to play; its variety is its beauty. I'm glad you love it too though.

Well, as far as the music is concerned, of course it's great. Literally all the music in RoR2 is great. :p My problem with phase 1 is that it explicitly favors Survivors with high mobility. Any Survivor who thrives at long range, or any Survivor who's just not quite fast enough gets wrecked pretty quickly. There are several Survivors who just straight up don't have mobility abilities after all. This can, of course, always be reconciled via items, but whether or not you get those items is, of course, totally random. Phase 2 used to be good, back when Commencement was just a short gauntlet with only one or two baddies. The new Commencement has you fighting a bunch of Chimeras already though, so being told "now go fight more Chimeras" isn't great. I do like how phase 3 ties them both together, I'll give you that. It doesn't really have any additional problems that I didn't already mention for phase 1. Phase 4 is a complicated one. Just to be clear, though, I like it in concept. I like having to be forced to rely on just your basic abilities; back when I had buddies to play RoR2 with, I used to tell them all the time that if there was a game mode with no items, it'd probably be my most played mode. However, I don't like it because: A. It actively disincentivizes longer runs. If you want to loop a couple times, you're pretty much automatically locked out of Mithrix, because he'll probably be borderline unkillable. B. Some items are just terribly op. You pick up a Tesla Coil? Welp, too bad, you don't get to fight Mithrix this round. And most importantly, C. The new Commencement [i]does[/i] incentivize longer runs. If you run into Commencement on the first loop, it's not unlikely you'll get a murdery flying Chimera who you just won't be strong enough to kill. The solution is theoretically, to loop. You loop, get stronger, so that when you reach Commencement you'll be beefy enough to take down the flying Chimeras before they give you 300 stacks of burn, or regenerate their shields, or all that nonsense. Oh, but hold up, problem A was that Mithrix disincentivizes longer runs. They're at odds here. Back before they changed the way Commencement works, it was kind of a fun choice between going to fight Mithrix, or looping and dealing with all the super beefy enemies that appear after you loop, like Malachites, and Celestines (Twisted* didn't exist yet), or just bigger enemies going Elite. But now, spawning mechanics on Commencement act like they do as if you were entering the fifth stage anyway. Malachites and Celestines can spawn, and of course, you get the big honking flying Chimeras who will just insta kill you if you look at them funny. So, admittedly, 90% of my problem with Mithrix does lie with Commencement, but seeing as how you have to deal with Commencement to reach him, I'd say that's fair. Mithrix is definitely better than the False Son, though, for what that's worth. There are these totems in the False Son fight that give you 50% barrier, and I guess the devs thought that was a good enough excuse to let him just insta-kill everyone. Thankfully, he [i]doesn't[/i] steal items, though, so looping a few times to get beefy enough to beat him is perfectly viable. :p Correction: Play the game however you want, as long as you aren't using Artifact of Command. If you're using Artifact of Command, I very much do not want to talk to you about the game. :p I wouldn't mind a weakened version of it, though. Something like, an Artifact that turns all items into Void Potentials, so you always get a choice of 3 items to choose. But just choosing whatever you want whenever you want. Ew. [spoiler]*I just want to mention really quick how much I HATE Twisted Elites. Like, a Malachite or Celestine showing up is scary, but a Twisted showing up at the wrong time can just be an insta-kill that you can't do anything about, and even when they're not, they force you to play in such an annoying way. Like, a Twisted Elite shows up, and you're forced to just run away until you get lucky and can see them in the middle of the crowd, and then you have to snipe them from far away, because if you're ever up close you'll probably obliterate everything around you at that stage of the game, which will get you insta-killed. If there was a way to choose which enemies/Elites/etc to show up, I'd leave almost all of them on, but you can bet your Oddly-Shaped Opals I'd be turning off Twisted![/spoiler]

See where you're coming from on pretty much all of that, though I do like the decision making that phase 4 encourages with your build. I will warn you that a lot of the player base just plays command and loops, which honestly if that's how they find the game most fun, that's how they should play it, so if you want to criticize command you should lower your voice to a whisper. I do dislike that command still allows you to get achievements though. Just seems cheap.

I guess my problem with Mithrix mostly boils down to two things: 1. He's a boss that doesn't properly take into account the various different playstyles of the different Survivors. Like, he's a perfectly fine boss with some characters, but an absolutely abysmal boss for others. Any given character is always going to be better or worse at certain challenges than others, of course, but with the other bosses it always feels like there's a pretty reliable counter. Not so much with Mithrix. 2. He was a boss that was designed for a different level that no longer exists. The new Commencement just doesn't mesh with Mithrix's design. We already get plenty of time with the Chimeras, so his Chimera ambush doesn't really feel like anything special, and the elite swarm at the beginning of the level encourages making yourself as beefy as possible, while Mithrix himself encourages you to try and limit how powerful you get. If they fixed the new Commencement, I probably wouldn't have nearly as much problem with Mithrix. Haha, my pro gamerzz opinions clashing with the casual audience is nothing new. I don't personally understand why you would ever play with Artifact of Command on, but then again, I'm also the person who explicitly doesn't use dual wielding with MUL-T because it feels too strong. I'm just not particularly big on crazy power fantasies, I suppose.

I'll actually refute you on those two points: 1.) Mithrix was intentionally designed so that different survivors would have to prioritize different items when preparing to fight him. Captain has to prioritize mobility, Rex damage, Railgunner defense, etc. You can't just go in and win; you have to have a plan and know what you're doing. 2.) Mithrix wasn't designed around his map, and I think forcing you to fight the Chimera and not run from them is the purpose of the second phase, not an introduction. You can't really say you have an elitist mentality until you gatekeep being an elitist behind doing eclipse, which I will now do. You can't really be an elitist until you've done eclipse.