[Full Guide] How To use The Striker

[RealPanda]

First, I gotta say I've been putting this off lately (my bad!) because I am busy with other real life stuff, such as college-related stuff, but also because I've been doing some extra tests on the striker since its mechanics are pretty confusing from what I've seen, especially when you combine it with power-ups. Still, today I'll try to explain it in a way so that you guys can digest the information quickly and easily. Hopefully. And without further ado, let's get into it!

What is the striker weapon? How does it work?

The striker is a weapon that involves the character holding two large balls. One ball is held while the other is on the character's back, ready to be used after using the first ball. The balls can be thrown in either the left or right direction where you are currently attacking using the mouse's right button, a.k.a. your heavy attack. Throwing either one or both balls will damage the enemies who are unlucky to get hit, making them get base damage, not focus damage. This attack can work for solo or grouped enemies that are side by side. After throwing the ball at them, a circle will appear on the ground after throwing the ball. This indicates where the balls will land for you to catch them or hit them with your punch attack to send them back to your enemy to get them hit again. Also, note that your enemies can attack these balls if they are lying on the ground but cannot damage you. However, they can damage their own team if the balls are heading toward them, which I find hilarious. With the basics done, let's move to the mechanics of the ball.

 

Mechanics of the Striker 
Let's return to where we were throwing the ball at the enemy. Remember how I said you could punch the balls back at the enemy? If you do, the attack will become a focused hit and do focus damage now, but only if you time your punch attack within the proper distance during the ball being midair, just like how I show here. 

 

You can also do this while holding the left or right direction of where your character will hit the ball. You can do it by doing dodge + punch + whichever way you go. Here is another video to show you.

 

I recommend practicing these moves since you'll always use them; with enough practice, you'll know when to hit the ball back at your enemy and when not to.

You might have noticed that your character grabs air when you try to do a heavy attack without any balls left. Well, there's another move you can do. After throwing your balls at your enemy and while the balls are still airborne, you want to make another heavy attack at the right time when they're about to land. With this, you can do focus damage if you time it right as you continue the attack and not restart it unless you don't launch them. Another video here to show what I mean.

You can do this while dodging, too, but I'd suggest doing it with one ball instead of two since it'll be very hard, and even then, if you time it correctly, your character will stop in place. One last thing to talk about is the punch, a.k.a. your light attack; with each light attack, the damage goes up until your 3rd attack, where your character headbutts an enemy, which knocks down the enemy. Even If you're unsuccessful in hitting them with the 1st and 2nd light attacks, the third light attack will always knock down the enemy. With that out of the way, we can now talk about the striker's skills.

The Striker's skills

1. Lobbed Recall - when equipped, this skill allows the player to make the balls come closer to them but will bounce them up in the air and back to the ground as they do. They can do this as often as they want, either killing enemies or trying to get the balls back.

2. Horizontal Recall - when equipped, this skill allows the player to make the balls come to them closer. Still, instead of launching upwards in the sky, they will launch themselves toward where the player is. The player can do this as many times for either killing or getting the balls back. There is an exploit where if you have this skill and perfect dodge shield power-up, you can get a full shield using this method. However, it should be patched soon after I post this. Either that, or I'm wrong.

3. Striker Lunge - when equipped, this skill allows the player to basically be superman and zoom across the map as the character charges to the nearest ball on the ground. When the player gets to the ball, they hit it as well. The player can't ignore damage, so use you at your own risk

 

Do keep in mind these skills are temporary and may be removed in the early access, but imo I think these skills are helpful and hope to see them stay in the game. With the skills out of the way let's move on with combos.

Combos

You can do combos with the striker in many ways, which is one of the reasons I love using this weapon. Still, it's situational, and it'll be up to you to use what you know and how to execute your own combos, as there's no direct way to do combos. I'll show a video of how I typically do my combos. (I actually managed to impress myself with this one).

With the combos done, we can now move the pros/cons of using the striker weapon. I will later talk about what I usually build for gems, power-ups, playstyle, etc.

Pros

1. Well balanced weapon - feedback of what I think about the striker in another post.

2. 2 in 1 combo - the striker offers a fun experience for many people like myself. The fact that you can spike the ball back multiple times adds a lot of fun as you can do it repeatedly, making many players set up combos and choose their preferred playstyle along with it, whether being aggressive with their plays or more tactical. That being said, the striker's functions also offer a lot of different playstyles that allow players to express themselves in the game. Overall, it's a fun and engaging weapon in the playtest without it being too overpowered or underwhelming, along with great useful skills people can use. Klei has really outdone itself with this one.

Cons

1. You have to master the weapon - like I said before while the striker does offer a considerable amount of power you first have to learn how to use as well use your past experiences from playing with it before and being able to understand its mechanics. Based on my experience with this process it took me a while to learn but it's 100% worth learning the weapon as its pretty damn good for what it offers for the return of the effort you do.

2. Tend to be hit a lot of times if not careful - with great power comes with great positioning, even if you are dominating everyone that shouldn't mean you should let your guard down or be overconfident, I've had this happen a couple of time with myself where I thought I could beat anyone only to get beaten up and my health being almost below halfway. Learn from me and don't like it happen to yourself too.

Equipment/Items

I am currently using the Bulbug Helm, as it is pretty hard to kill enemies with a shield in the Blisterbane Bog, alongside that I pair it up with the Floracrane coat to deal critical damage with my focus attack since the striker mainly consists of focus damage. I use Mother's Treek cronk for the weapon since it offers 16% more focus damage, while the Bandiball doesn't. For the gems, I am using 2 Maxed Damage Bonus gems. For food, I use cased sausage for survivability since you might get hit often by all the enemies chasing you to death.

Power-ups

Last but not least the power-ups, the power-ups I go with mainly are: momentum/post-kill zoomies, sanguine power/salted wounds, thrill seeker/wind up, attack dice/snowball effect a.k.a. on a roll, concentrated cure/bloodthirsty, heavy infantry/resolute/static shock. Yes I know it'll be a hell of a chance to these certain type of power-ups, I mainly wanted to point out I go for criticals, damage, and speed, with a bit of healing.

Important notes.

I would avoid going with the strength of conviction as it doesn't do well with the striker and inflicts damage even if you hit the ball with your light attack; same with We'll get em next time, as it proved of no value whatsoever when I tried using it, your critical will always go back to 0%. One last thing with static shock, when you hit the ball at the enemies, it won't put the shock effect on them when you're using a light attack to hit the ball and not using your heavy attack to throw it at them as that's what activates the shock effect.

That's it for my guide on using the strikers, what to go for, and what to build on. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to ask, and I'll do my best to answer to the best of my knowledge! May this help you well.

Edited June 30 by RealPanda
Forgot to include striker lunge skill video clip

[henrayjem88]

thanks for your info. I read the whole you write and it's informative for me as a new player

 

[Midboy]

Should be able to have all skills at once , maybe add cooldown of couple seconds per skill but , yeah. Multiple skills equiped.