I've found exactly one use for Stone Flux, and it's super niche - in late simulacrum runs, or after many loops, eventually you'll pick up so many movement items that your speed becomes uncontrollable. Especially on ion surge Arti, where upwards mobility directly scales with MS. SFP becomes an emergency brake that can get you back under control quickly. Is scraping items better? Oh absolutely. But hey, technically a use.
if you're playing with artifacts like command and sacrifice its ok, since if you stack speed for FUNNY and then it becomes wayyy too fast you get free double health
I found use for it by playing loader, getting a few purities, backup mags and soldiers syringes, and just punching and grappling my way around instead of any sprinting 😅
I know I'm late to the party on this one, but Topaz Brooche actually synergizes with Aegis. The more brooches you have, the slower your barrier decays.
I always saw Stoneflux Pauldron as a solution to those loop runs where you have 105 goat hoofs and 87 energy drinks and are too fast to know whats going on, it’s also a big funny using it it with transcendence if you crave being an entire unit
It'd be cool to see this same format for the strongest skills in the game. love the lighthearted, but still informative take you have with these vids! Good shit grandpa
@@Ryo41600 I could also see void fiend special and corrupted primary, acrid epidemic, both MUL-T specials, loader punch and hook, huntress blink, captain primary all somewhere
Everyone mentions Stone Flux Pauldron for lategame but theres an unmentioned secret that either doesn't exist anymore or is really funny. Stone Flux seems to reduce your friction as well, once I had 18 (dont ask how) and I was able to ice skate using Railgunners primary. Fun times...
Once I was playing multiplayer with a friend, and she was playing double saw mul-t. She then picked up every single eulogy zero, transcendence, and SFP she could using her legitimately earned 30 billion lunars and rerolled newt’s shop after every stage. She managed to get over 30 SFPs and couldn’t move at all, and I had died. That teleporter lasted for nearly 50 minutes because her only mode of transportation was just enemy knockback, but she couldn’t reach and attack any enemies at all which left it up to RNG. She then immediately died to a perfected chimera and I was on commencement 50 minutes worth of items behind (we lost)
Just used it on a dual wield nail gun mul-t with the equipment that gives you wings (i think larva is in the name?) I could fly across any stage in less than 10 seconds, only problem was getting down to the ground lmao.
@@fedweezy4976 that equipment is the milky chrysalis. It's really fast which is pretty good, but you do have to be aware of how long it's active. 15 seconds after you activate it, you can't use spacebar to air-dash and you are forced into a gliding state until you touch the ground. You can use chrysalis a second time while airborne if you have additional charges of it which will allow you to air-dash again, or you can just try to stay close to the ground before it ends. It's probably top 5 in terms of best equipment items in the game imo.
It's because friction is tied to your movement speed. The more movement speed, the more friction. So when you have effectively zero movement that's what happens.
I’d say the only use case for Void Bands is in multiplayer if one person is running loader, railgunner, or artificer and as such is snagging every band.
Void bands by themselves aren't bad because the stunlock can be useful, but the fact they replace the much more powerful runald's and kjaro's completely kills it in most cases. I will pick them up on stage 5 if I find one and don't already have bands, or sometimes if I only have 1 and no other way to slow mithrix down to use certain characters' attacks or equipment. This case is a bit more nuanced and there's other factors, but it depends on the run. You could even gamble on a band cauldron, shipping request form, or lockbox on commencement if you wanted, and it could pay off way more lol. I'm fairly comfortable with his ranking of it, but it just goes to show how nuanced this game can be and that any item can still be useful at times, even if it's generally a massive detriment. Builds that revolve around bad items can often be some of the most interesting ones.
I play REX, so the most valuable part of Void Band is that it puts everyone in one place so I can root them all at once and then dunk them with a couple right-clicks once I've got the free healing going
Its really interesting how the dynamic of a lot of items change if playing in multiplayer! Its fun getting the items on to the character that can use it best. I just wish the base game had a function to give items to your friends! "Hey dude come all the way over here to the OTHER SIDE OF THE MAP, I found that crowbar you wanted!"
i like how one of the most recognizably, commonly agreed on worst items in ror2 before survivors of the void instantly became somewhat beloved and found out to be genuinely useful in a ton of situations, its the one and only, corpsebloom
I think it's because Opinion CAN be used to carry, but you HAVE to find a fungus printer appear mid game or later when you have 10+ white items. Eventually each heal from fungus will heal over 100% hp per tick, and have a huge area, so you place your turrets down overlapping, as well as yourself if you're safe to sit still. So then every tick from each of the 3 fungus circles gives 10+ green orbs (one for every 10% of your HP when you are getting heals over 100% of your hp). So every tick of healing sends out 30+ orbs from each turret and yourself. Having an additional utility charge to have constant uptime of bubble shield truly gives an afk run.
I love learning how bad some items truly are in this game. "The healing flower only activates once per teleporter event" hitting as hard as when I learned "Oh yeah cautious slug just gives a flat +3 health regen per stack it does not scale."
I'd argue that void band has it's uses in certain builds. it's a large AOE that pulls everything together so that you can hit them with another AOE. if you have stuff like will-o-wisp or Sawmerang, you could probably benefit from it about as much as you'd benefit from fire and ice bands, and while it's true that it scales slower, you get 2x the amount of them because they corrupt both bands, so it's scaling isn't the worst. I still agree it's not great because you can just use the blackhole equipment, it opens up some combos that you couldn't do before due to blackhole taking the equipment slot, like the afermentioned Sawmerang, or perhaps forgive me please.
I get that he has the disrespect for healing cuz of his eclipse addiction, but N’Kuhana’s + Stoneflux Pauldron is probably one of my favorite combos in the game, you get a rejuve rack and some consistent healing like Wungus and you have a recipe for death on all directions. It plays quite slow but you can get some movement ups that can counteract the slowness and you don’t even really need to dodge since everything dies on spawning. It’s not good in eclipse, but you can loop in Monsoon for some huge fun and become an unkillable beast that constantly shoots skulls dealing damage based on your 20-40k health. Bonus is that this build combos well with Aegis and some of the other looked down on items in this video like bison steak. With 3 Pauldrons you get +200 hp per bison steak. It also scales well with stuff like PSG and infusion which are both generally rated lowly.
i would also say that aegis is at least really nice on super long, looped runs where you have way more healing than topaz brooch can give you, especially against mythrix, and it also is amazing to stack whereas some other good reds aren’t really useful to stack like behemoth, head stompers, alien head, etc. Aegis is often useless but it allows for a LOT of otherwise unobtainable builds
Im a engineer player, aegis is one of the best reds in the game to me. It makes it so I can stand still next to my bungus turrets and eat crayons more effectively. (Same with N'kuhanas :) )
This. I don't bother with it on the other survivors, but actively seek N'kuhanas with Engineer. Add some Aegis + Rejuvenation Rack + Sentient Meat Hook or Spare Drone Parts and you're esentially golden for the rest of the run, unless some anti-healing elites appear or you decide to fight the DLC boss and your turrents can't reach him outside of his insta kill ability.
I actually really like the harpoon, especially with characters like railgunners, you one shot and get a small burst of speed to escape until your railgun recharges
One run I found first item: Aegis. Second item: Desk plant with engi. It was really fun. I also got a second aegis shortly after and even one of those things that doubles healing like 5 items later. I still agree its one of the worst items but can be fun sometimes-.
I honestly think the Aegis is not that bad, it just need so much setup (so much more than the laser scope in my opinion) for it to just be usable that it's not worth investing into it
I think a list for eclipse 8 and 1 for monsoon would be a good idea because eclipse is nothing like the rest of the game in terms of how well some items perform
@@shaunhayes3072 Just the head stompers would be much, much higher exclusively because of the negation of fall damage, pretty big deal to go around the map in my opinion
@@Ryo41600 Headstompers is already one of the best items in Monsoon. It doesn't really move up in Eclipse because there isn't anywhere to move up to. The only better item is Drone Parts.
I dunno, Planula, aegis, and a bunch of repulsor plates do mesh nicely on REX, leeching seeds on power mode MUL-T with twin nailguns, and n'kuhana's with medikits and some periodic intentional damage.
singularity band actually works insanely well with rail gunner since when enemies are pulled closer it makes lining them up a cakewalk meaning you can land insane damage with the piercing attacks
it's even worse on railgunner because the normal bands are so strong, this in no way makes up for doubling the cooldown, it's not hard to hit your shots anyway. only use case i can think of is if you are going for mithrix and don't have a band at all on say, stage 5.
Planula has many synergies in general that work throughout the game. Razorwire + Hellfire Tincture + Planula allows every survivor to become a ball of death. A few stacks of razorwire allows you to hit enemies from quite a ways away, and it even has solid proc and on-hit scaling, meaning bleeds and proc chains are excellent on them. This isn't the hardest synergy to get online either. Planula is also disproportionally good on survivors with armor. Eg, powermode Mul-T can facetank the vast majority of the game with a planula and all of his armor. This also works very well with Acrid and Loader or while using the rose bucklers. The gravity bands are survivor dependent. On Rex, I really like it for pulling enemies together before I use my ulty on the enemies. It's very solid. It can do a lot of work on commando as well. It's awful on a lot of other survivors, however. One really powerful use of Lepton's daisy is with Corpsebloom. It doubles the heal but it also disperses it out over 5 seconds, making it a powerful regen aura versus an instantaneous heal. It can also store the healing until you take damage again. Imo, it's very powerful in the early game. I like this with Strides of Heresy for making survivors infinitely more survivable. Stone Flux Pauldron is extremely powerful with the correct survivor. If you get a ton of mobility, it can be useful for slowing your character down. Obviously, that's an edge case. I've used it to great effect with the Loader, Acrid, and Mul-T power mode with a transcendence. It's multiplicative with that and the spinel tonic. You can easily facetank enemies even at level 99 malachites with that combo.
I found SFP useful for Rex's challenge where you have to heal however much in one go. I used command to stack up medkits and stacked SFPs at the bazaar. It was pretty painful though, and I had to get a vase to provide some movement.
Sometimes I choose to pick a Singularity Band, but I only do that when I’m playing with a friend and decide to feed him every green band that we encounter. A worse band is still better than no bands, and it has a good synergy with The Captain’s probes.
Mul-T's buzzsaw has such a fast hit rate and can be used while sprinting with buckler, so the leeching seed can actually mitigate a bunch of damage. Very narrow, but effective if you want to play RIP AND TEAR Mul-T.
I think the case where Singularity Band’s Proc Coefficient stands out is with AOE items like Sticky Bomb, Sentient Meat Hook, Ukulele, Brilliant Behemoth, Voidsent Flame and Wisp, and Gas. The fact it can group a ton of enemies up and then activate those items can allow for greatly increased damage to all of them the more enemies there are. If it procs even 2 sticky bombs, that’s more damage to everything sucked in than Kjaro’s band deals, and sticky bombs are a white item! The 20 second cooldown still hurts, but it has a place with the right build.
not to mention the fact that (at least early on, not sure if they changed it or not), if you have emergency shower, you can actually reset cooldown of voidband, which let's it trigger off of the previos voidbands explosion! With enough equipment cooldown, gesture and multiple bands to keep multiplying the damage, that can scale out of controle real fast. Heck if i recall correctly, one of the fastest kills against the voidboss early on was done that way.
I agree with most of the list, if I had to replace one though idk which one it would be, but I'd replace one spot on the list for wake of vultures. WoV is honestly worse than just getting red scrap because especially in base eclipse, if you were to kill an overloading elite. It actually hurts you because it'll put your health back at half hp when the effect runs out. Besides that, the list is great. Love the videos
I appreciate the breakdown on why leeching seed is bad. I have somehow never read the description to realize that it worked like that. Everyone knows how health leech works, and it's not a straight +1 hp per hit! Good work me, undermining all my own runs!
Void Fields gave me an appreciation for Planula since the DLC. Suddenly turned the level from "oh god, where the heck is the next point" to basically before the DLC. Awesome for Artifact of Sacrifice runs and loops, at least for Monsoon and lower.
What if Aegis also had a bonus to slow barrier decay, I bet that would make it a much better option. Something like: "Healing past full grants you a temporary barrier for 100% (+100% per stack) of the amount you healed. Barrier lasts 100% longer."
Stoneflux is so that when you're looping and have way too much movesoeed you can slow back down. It also doesn't do that well because increaseing your HP can do weird things to the one hit protection and healing back out of it.
Counterpoint for aeiges Transcendence makes all of your max health shield, making all (except psg) useless, unless you have aegis. It makes every healing item and drone useful (except medkits and leach seed)
don't most of those things heal you for a percentage of your health? when your health is 1, most percentage healing is pretty underwhelming and won't provide much barrier
I had this run a few years back where I managed to find not one but TWO aegis by stage 2 which provided me precisely zero utility lmao still haunts me that I could’ve had some kind of god run had it been any other red items
I had an amazing run once that relied on 3 items that are on this list… I was playing railgunner and picked up an aegis pretty early in a run and then was able to get a stack of 10+ weeping fungus along with N’kuhanas and stone flux. Characters like Rex and railgunner can move just as far with their movement abilities when they are slow, so I was still able to survive pretty easily, and it was basically impossible to die when my health was almost always at about 5k. Also how is squid polyp not in this list lmao
I love doing silly healing builds with harvesters aegis wungus and N’Kuhanas, that is the only reason I like these two reds and they really do work… literally just here.
In defense of Stone flux: if you have 20 hooves, you probably should take one bc that wax quail will launch you into oblivion. As an aside, Newly Hatched Zoea is clearly the worst item. It just deletes all your yellows for some suicide bombers who will kill YOU.
Singularity band is basically just a band for people who still don't haven't unlocked it because they have no friends and also don't play any of the characters where you can unlock it with one player
I still think N'kuhana is a bit overlooked, it just requires a proper setup. Just recently I had a crazy run where I formed Heretic rather early, and since her bas HP and HP gain is huge, I combined N'kuhana with several Wungi, Corpsebloom and got lucky with two Rejuvenation Racks. Oh, and some Plasma Shrimp and shield generators for some more proc coefficient and increasing my combined max hp, which N'kuhana depends on. After collecting several crit glasses all enemies started dying just because I kept running around. I was hitting for AT LEAST 2.5k per skull. At some point it became difficult to kill enemies with my normal skills because N'kuhana kept triggering from leftover healing that Corpsebloom stored.
I like hunters harpoon on captain with wax quail. Unless you have a ton of attack speed there is a significant amount of down time between each shot and the harpoon quail let’s you boost around the teleporter after each kill.
only use case i've found for void band is as an alternative to primordial cube, which is great utility against single targets or small groups of enemies, such as on the mithrix fight (although other immobilizers like tentabauble or freezing outclass it on mithrix fight). this is at almost no downside if your build's main source of damage is tri-tip, gasoline (benefits greatly from the cc to make a gasoline bomb near boss) etc. in general, though, the item won't be of much help, especially when compared to the regular version of it, and there are other items that can do its job without making that sacrifice.
once had a pretty fun tank mul-t run with stone flux. just double rebarring for shits and giggles, found myself with enough health, armor and healing that enemies just flat out could not kill me. genuinely impossible to die if i put so much as half a braincell towards shooting things and moving in straight lines. that was just on rainstorm though
as good as normal bands are, void-bands are decent with mercenary. it helps pull in all flying enemies in an area and makes them incredibly easy to kill all at once.
I pick up void bands when I see the,. 1, there’s no guarantee I’ll see regular bands in the run, so it’s overall better on average to pick it up if I don’t have regular bands already. One vand is better than zero bands. 2, between the big AoE and the proc coefficient I’m not losing *that* much damage even if I do find a band or two, and I still have enemies clustered together to AoE down with other attacks/items. 3, none of my favorite survivors have any strong band proc moves, but they all have some solid AoE, so the band proc that’s losing a chunk of its damage wasn’t a strong proc in the first place.
so the planula when paired with the regenerating scrap for some racks of rejuvenation can make you entirely immortal thanks to one tap protection, I know it's not very likely to happen but the potential is there
Funnily enough, my first ever win was Engineer with Stoneflux Pauldron and the Bungus+Nukahana on stationary turrets synergy. When I picked up the Pauldron and realised what it does I was legit thinking of scrapping the run, but fortunately that stage had a Goathoof printer. Needed to sacrifice all of my damage items just to move 😭 idk how I won that
Ive found lepton daisy to actually be okay during void fields, especially in multiplayer. A friend and I both got 2 from a teleporter boss and it kinda saved us.
Stone flux counterpoint: it resets your movement speed back to acceptable levels when they get out of hand during long runs. Rather than avoid the extra movement speed items, you get to double your health for free
He meant practically no dmg, like compared; as it repeats the damage that proc'd it at 1x but doesn't amplify it like the normal bands as he goes on to explain at 3x and 2.5x. Did get me tripping initially too but once he put up the 1x I realised I don't actually know more about the game than he does xD
@@M4TTM4N10 that all may be true, but he can't call the item bad. Both aren't bad. Sure, runalds and kjaros might be better, but that doesn't mean the void version is dog shit. I feel like it helps with certain melee characters and situations. Definitely not garbage
@@xxcosmicxx0748 I agree it has it's uses, especially in mp where one person can take regular and one takes void, works well, done it a fair bit myself. In singleplayer bands are usually the highest source of damage in a run or is at least a very good reliable dmg source, giving that up for a bit of cc on a 20s cd kind of is 'dog shit'. Not that I was saying that anyway, just trying to clarify the miscommunication between the video and you. His experience I believe is primarily eclipse singleplayer, and he participates in eclipse 8 races often where speed is key and dmg improves run speed. This probably skews his views of these items further and as he himself said at the end of the video the list, like any, is flawed, but I think he may have evaluated this one pretty well. There isn't a single white item I would consider leaving on the ground, whereas there have been many times (95% of sp runs) that I (and I'm sure he and most other high level runners) have left void band on the ground if it couldn't be re-rolled in hopes of plasma shrimp, voidsent flame, safer spaces, weeping fungus, needtick, etc. Hopes this helps and enjoy the rest of your risk of rain learning as I am :)
@@M4TTM4N10 well, I guess you're right. Its just the times I used it it wasn't bad, but for his situations I guess it makes sense. And I have 350 hours in the game, and have all achievements so I definitely know how to succeed in the game. But I get your point
@@xxcosmicxx0748It really does mean it's dog shit cause picking one up means you can't get the green version. If it was a separate item it wouldn't be bad. But since picking it up removes what is literally some of the best damage in the entire game is what makes it so bad
I would like to defend the Planula. If you have the artifact of command on, you can get a tricorn to kill the stage one boss and then pick the planula as your item, which stops you from getting Swiss cheesed by the minigun guys in the early stages. Which is very helpful for new players.
10:28 This item F*CKED my best run as a modded character called “Ravager” (Big man with big sword with walljumps), and I didnt know it would do that until i picked it up !
I have found use for stone flux. If you're playing a survivor with mobility, and you're like 2 loops in, you can pick it up with shape glass to double damage for half mobility. Assuming at this point you have more than plenty of movement, it eases the pain of glass
Put Stone Flux on Mul-T with Power mode and double Nailgun. Now just stay in power mode forever and use the knockback from the nailguns to fly around. Get literally as much stone flux and attack speed as you can and you become unkillable and have BETTER horizontal and especially vertical mobility than everyone else in the lobby. Stone Flux does not deserve the number one slot for *the worst item in the game*. Even in the case where you accidentally pick one up, you can still combat it by getting more speed items and you can potentially turn it into an Irradiant Pearl, or at least some very useful yellow scrap. You might still be thinking that the item is bad because it's a one trick pony, but it does actually have some other builds that can potentially make it effective! Many items deal more damage based on your max hp, like N'kuhana's opinion, Hellfire tincture, and even Fuel Array which can be "safely" used offensively with Engineer's turrets. You can also use the item to offset the HP down Shaped Glass gives you, sacrificing speed and your one shot protection for double damage instead of your health which may be preferable in situations where you already have an excess of speed items. I think there is a huge problem with saying that any lunar item is bad, because they are all extremely good but in specific circumstance. You wouldn't say Shaped Glass is bad because it's not very good on Commando with no speed items, would you? Or you wouldn't say that Gesture of the Drowned is automatically a bad item because you had a run where you could only afford one Gesture and you were running Preon. Saying that Stone Flux is the worst item IN THE ENTIRE GAME is overly harsh, and undermines the extremely potent ability it does have whenever taken in the right circumstance.
i mean that is why he says at the end that any item can be good in different situations, that doesnt stop stone flux pauldron from being terrible the majority of the time
@@frog2098 But the difference is Stone Flux is a lunar item, it doesn't actively drop from things like chests. (unless you have Eulogy zero) If you get a bad red item, that's a *waste* of a red item, but you don't really waste anything by getting Stone Flux from a lunar pod. Stone Flux existing in the game is not *actively bad* for you unlike other items that are stated in this video which is why I think it's silly for the item to hold the number 1 slot.
Strongly disagree. It's just trading the best stat in the game for a mediocre stat. Is it useless? No. Is it the worst? Yes. Even your "similar examples" don't work. Shaped glass is great on anyone, because it's multiplicative damage. Gesture is fine with Preon because is cuts the massive cooldown and it's a fantastic wave clear.
I absolutely despise N'kuhana's Opinion, not only because its pretty bad, but because everytime I have gotten the item, I am destined to die during Mithrix's final phase by getting 1 shot by this fucking item.
the first time i was ever going to win risk of rain 2 i had amazing items, so many infact that i beat the Xi Construct in under 15 seconds and since i was clueless i took a lunar item but it was the stoneflux pauldron and because of my lack of knowledge i had no idea what the effects were and i also had no idea that there was an escape sequence after beating Mithrix so when i beat him for the first time ever you can probably guess how i felt when i saw that timer appear and start going down meaning that one singular item costed me the entire winning run
Stoneflux pauldron is good in the lategame when you have enough speed to ignore it for the most part and can use the double health to prevent death or nullify it with 2x damage with a shaped glass without much consequence. But that's just me.
Ohh thanks for clearing it up! Dude im a new player and i got the brooch and the aegis in seperate runs and i was LITERALLY saying "this just feels like the brooch but worse, but its a red item so it must be better right? Maybe im just using it wrong." Thanks for proving i WASNT using it wrogn
