Artificer mains rejoice, for she who floats is getting reworked a little in the next Risk of Rain 2 update. Called Scorched Acres, the new update will introduce a new survivor, a new boss to fight, a new area to explore, and all sorts of other changes you can read about here. During IGN Live earlier today, developers Hopoo also talked about some changes that were coming for the Artificer in the next update.
The Artificer will be getting a new passive in order to buff her a little. By holding space, you will be able to hover in place, and it has no cooldown, the devs described it as “kind of unlimited.” They did also mention that you will slowly float downwards, so it was slightly confusing as to how the passive will appear in the game. They hope this will allow the Artificer to position better in fights, and it can also be used to avoid fall damage. The aim is to change the Artificer from a Survivor who fights from the ground to one who can fight in the air, raining down destruction on her enemies.
Speaking of enemies, they have also reworked some of the math behind how she dishes out damage, and she will do more damage with large single target attacks, but a little weaker with abilities that put out constant damage. This pretty much means her M2 ability; the charged up nano-bomb, should end up doing more damage than it does at the moment. This is, to me, the most satisfying ability in her kit, so making it the focus of her damage sounds like a good deal to me.
The Artificer is in an interesting spot where a lot of the time she feels like she has the most destructive potential of all the characters, but also feels like she is far more at the mercy of Item drops that the others. While you can be pretty confident in the other Survivors, except perhaps Mercenary, Artificer feels like a real case of “feast or famine.” Very good items will lead to very good runs, but anything less than that will lead to a hard time.
I really look forward to seeing how she will play once the Scorched Acres update hits. There is no release for the update yet, but we will keep you informed of any new information that Hopoo makes available.
