The Pied Piper - Discussion Thread

[gaunt jolt]

You wanna complain and not learn, that's not my problem.

I've never had an issue with level 1 piper

I have many hours on him, he was my main for a long time.

I know what I'm talking about.

But sure, only trust people who agree with you, if you want. Bye.

[storm river]

I learn but telling me what to do isn't teaching it's oppressing, considering you're also the same player that said you wanna remove the abandon button I don't know if your opinions are valid...

[gaunt jolt]

I'm not telling you what to do.

You complained

A large one.

[storm river]

I did not complained

[gaunt jolt]

I was refuting your complaint.

[storm river]

I laid down the feeling of my experience playing Piper

[gaunt jolt]

^^^ Complaint.

Yeah, and I laid down how to beat those feelings by improving and learning.

[storm river]

Did u?

[gaunt jolt]

Your choice to not listen or read.

[gaunt jolt]

Lol, remove the abandon button was one of three suggestions. I knew it wouldn't be highly voted, it was just a scrape idea I had and figured I could throw it. If it ended up getting massive votes, I'd have been surprised. You don't need to be rude to anything I say just because I threw a suggestion to the wall to see if it sticks.

You're blocked now. I wanted to refute your childish complaints by giving you the information needed to succeed. You ignored it and picked a fight with me because of some random ahh suggestion I didn't really care about. You are putting too much consideration into this and are now refusing to learn. I don't need to talk to you. Keep crying to the Aether.

[storm river]

Cuz I don't think any of what u said actually works in an actual game as everything you've already said are things that I've already tried.
Chorus is good ofc but only mentioning Low Notes as synergy with Chorus and not as literally Piper's best talent??
As well as again, Freezing Trap is absurdly broken.
Horde rarely impacts the game, (tried it already) as well as Stimulant*** Vibes only being good if u already have decent special uptime (which, at lvl 2 u don't) and Sforzando (while being an amazing talent) does NOTHING to improve your clear speeds early on.

[storm river]

"refusing to learn",
Stating what worked for you as facts isn't proving or teaching anything

As said before, by many people, Freezing Trap is Piper's best starter talent, by a lot.

You're trying to argue that just using rats properly will allow u to take on whatever u want as if rats are magically smart and target exactly what u want in a swarm of ghouls.

Besides, let's do quick math.
A ghoul has 60 health a rat does 5 damage 3 times, even if u had 24 rats they'd be able to kill a MAXIMUM of 6 ghouls. That's if none of them target the elite ghoul or the damage boost scarecrow thing or any other enemy that might be in the camp.

And reminder that u can also just have 20 without horde and that'd still kill 5...

And again, completely ignoring Piper's Dash build with Spinning Solo is for sure a choice u did make

And also again, only naming Low Notes as a synergy with Chorus is pathetic especially when Low Notes is probably Piper's best talent (imo, ik that's very debatable)

[storm river]

Also one of 3 suggestions which all got majorly downvoted... (Actually 2 of 3 but still stands)

[storm river]

and to sum it all up,
every 1.67 seconds when I have low notes as opposed to

1 second without

so if u know so much and u played it yesterday maybe u actually just

don't.

anyways I fear I've said enough.

[gaunt jolt]

lol why you keep typing after I told you I blocked u lol, hillarious. Shame I get notifactions from your blocked posts though.

[storm river]

lol why you respond if u so blocked me?
I'm simply correcting your spewed out misinformation

[storm river]

I made a table of dps with chorus low notes and upgrades (these are technically lvl 1 stats which is impossible cuz 2 talents but damage scales linearly as far as I can tell so the difference between values should remain the same)

As we can see, even tho Low Notes makes Chorus shoot slower, upgrading Chorus' attack speed is still far superior,

I don't think this is shocking, but I wanted to see how much better it is (or if it is even actually better)

And this is what we got

Hope someone finds this useful ❤️

Also Ofc DPS will always be higher than this because Low Notes can splash and Special causes enemies to take more damage

But this is the base unaltered damage

(and ofc nighttime can pierce)

[gaunt jolt]

-# Don't mind my sudden shift in attitude actually reading your post or anything.
-# I definitely wasn't in a bad mental state or anything last night. 😔
I am sorry.

How did you do the math? Chrous should trigger with all of the other attack mods too, like Sniper and... I'm pretty sure there's one more.
I'd love to see the math applied to Chorus + X, and Chorus + Y, and so on, to get a sense of the difference per augmented bonus.

For example, with Sniper, even though it's less of a benefit, would it be better to upgrade Chorus still? (I'm almost certain that's a yes, since if it's better to upgrade Chorus vs Low Notes, I don't see why this would change) But I also like math... .-.

[storm river]

Chorus DOES trigger with all other attack mods

Besides attack speed

So basically Chorus is basically always better to upgrade than Low Notes

However u can see for example that if u have Epic Chorus and Common Low Notes upgrading Low Notes is not only more money efficient it's also actually more damage efficient (considering no sniper, or other things)

I think it's also important to note that upgrading chorus is more stagger

Because it shoots more

Upgrading Low Notes does not increase stagger as far as I'm aware.

Basically, ppl kept telling me to upgrade chorus first and I wasn't sure of it

so I mathed

[gaunt jolt]

🤔 This math is only concerning the placement of special, right?

Would it be better to upgrade Low Notes because Special still has a cooldown, but our auto attack does not?
Or is that not as worth it even though Chorus, essentally, has a cooldown?

[storm river]

and math told me "u stupid, ofc chorus is a better upgrade"

[gaunt jolt]

I've always upgraded Chorus first because it's more fun to see the shots fly faster 😛

[storm river]

yea this is only considering the actual special part, if I bring in special uptime and main attack usage low notes will be more worth

however if u r running chorus low notes I'm gonna be assuming that's your main damage source

[gaunt jolt]

Yeah, that'd defnitely be the main damage source.

Finding special augments in Epic items scales exponentially for Piper

-# Again, by the way, I am seriously apologetic for the attitude I displayed last night.
-# I felt like I was helping out and providing tips, and I was attacked for it, so I started defending myself by any means.
-# However, reading it over, that wasn't the case and a lot of what I said didn't have evidence. It was simply from memory.
-# I look foolish and arrogant and I don't want to be perceived that way
-# I really am sorry.

[storm river]

Yea Piper's special is honestly absurd sometimes

[storm river]

It's really fine I don't hold grudges, that's for children

[gaunt jolt]

Thanks. I appreciate learning and figuring out when I do or say something incorrect, last night was a blunder.

I never actually noticed the timer on Chorus being augmented by Low Notes. I blindly saw Chorus and just thought it wasn't modified by the other talent.
So I want to thank you for correcting me on that.
It's good to be aware of even though Chorus is still just strong. 😛

[storm river]

It was very obvious to me that Low Notes impacts Chorus when max lvl Chorus was 0.92s

I was like

"there's no way that's the normal time when common Chorus is 1s"

and well,

it isn't

[gaunt jolt]

lol, i stopped reading it because i played with it in early access. i just "knew what it did" and never cared to check 🤦

[deep cairn]

This is another unfair thing with this character (Chorus should increase the frequency of note casting from attack speed, but it does not work like that). I am very upset with the piper(

[hybrid forum]

Any tips for piper, feels underwhelming in both solo and coop

difficulty 3 (iirc its nightmare)

he takes too long to come online i feel

[storm river]

where u feel like you're struggling?

[hybrid forum]

no damage early, no real get out of jail free card
Attacks slow you down

[storm river]

oh

then no

I don't have any tips for u that's just piper

virtuoso helps with both early damage and attack slow problems but

it is just piper like that

u can try to abuse enemies' behaviours to your advantage

like exploding pigs

then placing special on nearby pigs

and shoving enemies into the explosion

with defense

it helps with damage but it's very specific

I also recommend to never do ghouls solo during the day

or even grouped

same goes for spiders

and I wouldn't recommend doing trees at night cuz Piper kinda stuggles at killing the little spiders

[hybrid forum]

the enemy types one is new. thanks for the hint.
Piper is easier to play in solo than coop i feel, but could be because i have not run him alot in coop yet.

I could shotgun an enemy with power in day time and they only take like 20% hp damage

[storm river]

I highly disagree

Piper's Special build in coop is incredible

by ch3 you're basically giving your entire team >50% damage boost with some heals if u pick certain talents/magical objects

[hybrid forum]

yeah i know late game he is strong but i struggle early

[storm river]

Early game is all about choosing your fights

the most important thing about Piper (imo) is getting to lvl 2 asap

in solo this is harder than co-op because if u face off a bunch of ghouls immediately

u can't really fight them

at least not without dying

I'd say that a 90% of piper's runs are ended when u reach the 1st camp

@gaunt jolt believes differently, I mainly reset for a good start but he says that he doesn't struggle early so he's probably a better person to ask imo

also if you're wondering what I qualify as a "good start"

1. at least 1 starting talent rare or above (pick the highest)
2. quick vision tower (doesn't have to be revealed from the start it's just that at least a green one is amazing + it can't be ghouls imo)
3. good shop (epic dup, rare dup, sand of enlightenment, common dup etc.. good shop is the easiest part)

2/3 of these and I actually try

ofc ppl better than me can do runs with everything going wrong it's just I prefer to restart early cuz it's less time-consuming

[gaunt jolt]

The real question is if you're struggling at level 1, or struggling to get to level 5?

Struggling at level 1, Red Rose has stated some relevant things:

• Choose your fights wisely
• Abuse enemies to your advantage
• Get to level 2 ASAP

If you're struggling to get to level 5 before first boss, well don't freak out. Piper's Ultimate is not his biggest power spike. Yes, it is a power spike and it's great to have, but getting some specific talents by level 2 is more important.

Starting Talent:

• I personally prefer Horde, I think it's very strong and lets you spam rats. If you don't take Horde, you want to stockpile rats. Horde also has the benefit of not requiring an early shard investment (it's something you'll want to upgrade late Chapter 2)
• MANY PEOPLE prefer Freezing Trap and if you're struggling, then just take Freezing Trap. It's incredibly easy to use, significantly buffs your damage, helps maintain your survivability thanks to the chill. You can't go wrong.
• You can take Virtuoso if you want, I used to take this all the time because I'm addicted to attack speed from other games; however, you may not feel the power buff early game.
• Don't take Sound Barrier in Solo. It's not like it'll hurt you, but it won't help you do damage. You NEED damage asap.

Combos you want to look for:

• Chorus + Low Notes. It doesn't really matter which one you take first, both will be very useful at level 2; try to find the other at level 3 or 4. Your autos do much more damage, and a bit of splash, with Chorus providing free DPS when dropping your special.
• Invasive Blast + Exploding Rats. I think this one goes under a lot of folk's radar; Exploding Rats does a ton of sweet damage, and Invasive Blast upscales your rat generation significantly. If you take Horde, you can spam your rats (frequently sending in 6 to 12 rats per fight) and Explosive just nukes enemies.
• Oh and Spinning Solo is just good so snag that if you see it.

When it comes to choosing your battles

• FIND HOGS during the day. Using your full kit will guarantee knock down a hog and the vulnerable (+ freezing trap) can benefit off the Hog's Explosion
• Green Wishing Well early for the 50 shards to find Damage helps scale your rats and auto attacks pretty well for the early game.
  • You really should try to take this if you started with Horde or Virtuoso; but if you started with Freezing, you could skip this.
• The main power spikes you can get from Green Chest are Horn of Plenty's consumables (Damage, Crit Chance) and Eternal Rose. You can opt into taking Ogre Bloods but that'll take some time and consistency to scale up. Additionally, the classic LepCoin + Golden Egg always wins games.

During the day, avoid Spawning Ghouls, as Red Rose has stated. They're Piper's worst nightmare for daytime.
During the night, you CAN fight them, so consider the timing of day night switch to double back to a green item at level 2 or 3 if you have gotten some strong talents or stats.

During the night and at a low level (or if I didn't find good damage), I also try to avoid cultists. They have massive health bars and can't be staggered - they can be briefly stunned but that's it. During the day, cultists are usually okay because you have the damage to kill the healers and your autos can hit-stun the dagger cultists so they don't insta-bop you.

Piper is always strong versus Trees, day or night. If you see a bunch of trees, have fun.

Once your level 2 or 3 and have one of the combos listed above (or some sweet items / stats) then depending on time of day, try to take a book. I like doing Yellow Book at Daytime on hopes of finding hogs.

and now you got me all hyped for piper that I have to just yeet him into a nightmare run 😛

[deep cairn]

The guys above gave good advice. I just recently completed the Piper challenge for 7 negative modifiers, studied the character's weak points.

Here are my key tactics (they are for challenges, but focused on maximum efficiency at the moment):

1. Piper has only two key, consistently strong builds: Power and Auto-attack. In both cases, cursed items are one of the key aspects. Black Lotus for auto attack healing and Balor's Eye for Power (Nightmare Thorn is possible with multiple claws).
2. The starting talent is almost always Virtuoso, because we need acceleration, and the ice trap is too slow (but ok for COOP). Ideally, catch it from the start at least rare. The rat talent is also good at the start, if it comes at least at an epic level, but you need to know how to use it (if you don't know how, then go to the virtuoso)
3. Level 2 is super important for us and Low Notes is our hope (for any build), i.e. the first priority.
   As temporary/alternative solutions, we can take Quintuplets, Sniper or Music of Spheres.
   The chorus is also good for the basic difficulty (especially if the rarity is not basic)
4. In the Auto-attack build: Low Notes should be pumped to the legendary level first. In power build rarity is not so important like items
5. For survival, it is better to have at least 50-70 armor and 1-2 fairies (by Act 3). I recommend getting armor from a yellow or red book in the first act. If there are no problems with survivability on your difficulty, then go all in on damage
   Also, in the battle against bosses, the second dash charge is extremely useful if your survivability and positioning suffer, but not to the detriment of the build

6. You need to choose the fights and time of day correctly. Trees and pigs are easier to kill during the day. Ghoul and summoner camps at night. Blood ritual is best done at night. Grimoires should be left for last (red on the last night). Green grimoire is one of the most useless in terms of time spent/effect (unless you need rerolls).
7. In the first acts, normal damage works better than critical. In the later acts, it's the other way around. That's why in Act 1 I go for normal damage, and from Act 2 I start collecting crits.
8. If you clear the map normally, then always take sacrificial altars. 10 damage in Act 1 is super important

[storm river]

Ik we're talking about tips for piper however

I just beat nightmare with Piper for the first time

Idk y I took ring of dispel honestly kinda throw but it didn't cost me

[storm river]

I think Sound Barrier is underrated tbh
But the lack of damage is real so it's preferable in Co-op (also Defense Heal Talent kinda outclasses it imo)

[storm river]

I wanna add, going for crit chance from grimoires/consumables instead of crit damage when u r running spinning solo dash build is throw.
You're gonna have over 100 crit chance guaranteed with spinning solo and eternal roses so going for 4% crit chance (which gets transformed into 4% crit damage) is just worse than 13% crit damage

[deep cairn]

Everyone has their own experience, but since the most difficult fights in the game do not allow it to be activated regularly, I hate it. Not only that, for it to work, you need to go preferably to a defensive build, since in all the others you do not want to be near enemies. His defensive build, due to the long initial activation and the conditions for extending iframes (you need to do nothing, otherwise the iframes disappear at the moment of any button press after activation), is not the most stable and strong.
In addition, the Piper is weak at the beginning and the starting talent is the only way to speed up. Sound Barrier is the only one that does not give acceleration

[storm river]

I agree with most things said I just think it allows Piper to be a really strong tank-support esp in co-op

The main drawback is damage which Piper already struggles with

[deep cairn]

Overall, yes, it's good to keep in mind. The player just needs to learn how to handle the spinning solo during the day, as the animation features change. Although I don't really like this talent

[storm river]

It can be really fun imo!
I don't think it's the strongest

Chorus and Low Notes are definitely top2 imo

I wanna know actually

Is Acoustic Pulses considered good?

Cuz I don't think it's that good but I always end up rerolling cuz it and I feel like it might just be a waste of stars of fate

[deep cairn]

Depends on the difficulty. On a regular nightmare it's normal ~4-5 out of 10. With modifiers ~2 out of 10

[storm river]

Yea thought so...

[deep cairn]

His problem is classic - you need a lot of conditions for the talent to be effective. With Ice Trap he plays much better (the 5 points out of 10 I indicated). If you take another starting talent, it's worse (I wouldn't take him with another)

[hybrid forum]

do different objectives have "set" enemies or is it like e.g. yellow book hog is 60% chance and others make up to 40%?

[storm river]

I don't quite understand what you're asking

[hybrid forum]

how does the enemy type map to the objective type basically ( + any other possible variables )

[storm river]

Well, green objectives will have fewer and weaker enemies, yellow will have more and stronger enemies, reds usually have only a couple enemies but they're all of the strongest kind, like summoners, spiders, starfish or eels

It's more complicated but that's it put simply

[gaunt jolt]

Great Question. From what I recall, all books work like so:

• Choose between two groups (can duplicate)
• One group is the "primary" group, the other is the "complementary"

Non-book POIs have a set arena with a single specific group.

The groups are limited based on chapter and tier. Using the terminology Chapter.Tier such that 1.G means Chapter 1 Green point of interest.

1.G primary groups include Hogs, Spirits, and Ghouls.
1.G complementary groups include same as above and Cultists.

1.Y primary groups include Hogs, Spirits, Ghouls, Cultists, and Trees; Notably, the first three groups are more likely to be corrupted and have more of the higher class unit (Hookers, Banshees, Spitters).
1.Y complementary groups include the same as above, and Spiders.

1.R primary groups include Trees, Spiders, Summoners, Starfishes, and Eels. Again, Trees have a higher chance to be "stronger"
1.R complementary groups include Trees and Cultists.

Starfish and Eel are actually part of the same group - it's random which one shows up. You'll never find a POI that has Starfish and Eels.

Summoners are part of the Cultist group - they are the "higher class unit" of that group; however, Summoners are able to show up without other cultists.

[storm river]

(Cultists are the healers and stabbing ladies)

[hybrid forum]

thank you so much, this is what im looking for since the discussion is about avoiding specific enemies.

Some questions:
Basically non book POI don't have complementary groups?
when you said

1.G primary groups include Hogs, Spirits, and Ghouls.
Are they evenly split in terms of probability?

[storm river]

If u wanna avoid specific enemies u should learn what their POIs look like

Specific POIs will only have certain enemies

I don't remember their names but a vital one to avoid is the place with a TON of ghouls

Often found near spawn and basically impossible to take on during the day on Piper

[hybrid forum]

the ghouls are the 4 legged things that might spawn the tanky green dude right

[storm river]

Yes

[hybrid forum]

ik the 2 story building is garunteed ghouls

just off experience

[storm river]

Yea

There are more POIs like that

Specifically with Pigs and Ghost Ladies (idk what they're officially called)

And Trees,

[hybrid forum]

ghost lady is the one that shoot the spinny orb?

or the elite version where they scream

[storm river]

Also wood quest will ALWAYS show u trees POIs so taking Wood quest at the start of the day is VERY GOOD (especially) on Piper

[storm river]

Yes

[storm river]

Straw quest does NOT work like this fyi

I basically never recommend doing wood quest at night btw

[hybrid forum]

its another bag of worms when playing coop i guess

Do trees get stronger at night? i am aware enemies have different "behaviours" but im not sure of trees

[gaunt jolt]

Some POIs are predefined arenas - they do not have complementary groups:

• Ghoul Scaffolding (this is the DANGER one that RedRose talks about)
• Hogs Castle
• Hogs Ruin
• Spirits crossroad (south-facing)
• Spirits crossroad (east-facing)
• Ghoul River (south-facing)
• Tree Pit (always enter from the west!)
• Tree Rise
• Tree Stealable (where the POI is very close to the southeast and can easily be stolen)
• Cultist+Monstrosity Y-Shape (Monstrosity being Starfish or Eels)

Other POIs could be mixed - they would have one primary group, and could have one or two complementary groups. No matter what, they cannot go past a certain number of units though.

• Wishing Well
• Books
• "High Ground" (entrance is south side and east side)
• Straw Quest Locations
• I think I'm forgetting one or two... 😛

[hybrid forum]

oh topic of enemies i think the 2 legged alpha werewolf that spins the thing is harder than crabs
imo this is one of the hardest enemies

[gaunt jolt]

No, trees do not get stronger, they simply summon spiders on death.

[storm river]

Upon death Trees drop 1 of 2 kinds of spiders (might be random, idk) one of the spiders bite u the other shoots poison at u from afar

Each tree drops 3 besides elites (the big big trees) which I think drop 6

Also Piper does more damage in the day

[hybrid forum]

i am aware but its riskier to shotgun power

[storm river]

Entering tree pit from the left is the best advice for this game legit

[gaunt jolt]

Pay attention to enemy attacks - once I see an enemy drop an attack action, I can safely run up to them, power their face, and disengage.

[storm river]

With proper timing and positioning that shouldn't be a factor imo

[hybrid forum]

yeah i do this but sometime hard due to sheer number of enemies

sometime they stagger their attacks

maybe because of distance or whatever

[storm river]

U can also use defense and freezing trap to stagger/chill to make power safer

[gaunt jolt]

If there's too many enemies, disengage the fight. This is IMO one of Piper's most crucial strategies.

I highly recommend never fighting more than 5 enemies during day time. (EDIT: In the early game! Once you get past the first few levels, you're much stronger, trust your own instincts)

But how do I take the POI!?
I suggest trying to fight the edge of the POI and only engage a few of the enemies.

It's a common mistake for people to completely ignore the outside enemies, and then leash them into the POI, creating a horrible situation.

[storm river]

Good advice

[storm river]

I def don't do that...

Never...

(always)

[hybrid forum]

yeah that happened a few times in coop.
How do you deal with that? if you did aggro outside enemies?
Like kill them right outside poi and then go in?

[storm river]

That's one way

[hybrid forum]

i don't know how far to run to trigger a leash, sometimes the far end of POI doesn't even work

[storm river]

On certain POIs u can go all the way to the other side of the POI can make them leash

[gaunt jolt]

Literally just a few hours ago I was running some piper games and had very good starts and solid builds... Just for me to completely surround myself with enemies on all sides and die to a hooker hog cuz I had to waste defense early.

[hybrid forum]

and if you run even further you risk aggroing the outside enemies on the other end anyway

[gaunt jolt]

So I can speak from a game I just did actually!

[hybrid forum]

the first thing that came to mind was the toy story hooker toy but with a hog body

[storm river]

Some enemies are better aggroing than others!

I'd much rather aggro a pig than a spider

[hybrid forum]

on god i wish they made the alpha werewolf less prevalent

[storm river]

I recommend taking them on at night / with sniper

If you're not confident

Cuz long range power spamming at night is just so much better than at day

[hybrid forum]

i hate them on every character i play, atm im maining melu

Im going to try to get scarlet to work next in diff 3

Im asking about pied piper because i thought he would be great in coop + i was curious mainly

[storm river]

I don't know much about melusine I can't help there,

[hybrid forum]

his insane range means that you risk aggroing outside enemies if you give up space

[storm river]

Yea

On Piper I generally either snipe him at night or spam special/rats depending on build

[gaunt jolt]

How do you deal with that? if you did aggro outside enemies?
Like kill them right outside poi and then go in?

I walked up to a Spirits east crossroad and it was Vision tower so I knew I wanted it, but it was daytime and spirits are a mixed bag.

So I approached around the back and entered from the north, where I noticed two Spear Hogs and a baby ghoul just chillin.

I attacked the Spear Hogs, and walked onto the bridge of the Crossroads, spawning three spirits. When spirits spawn during the day, they already start their attacks, so the animation is overlaped by the spawn. Be careful, don't take damage! I used it to bait the spirits to the bridge.

So now on the bridge are two Dashing Spirits, a slowly approaching Orbital Spirit, and the two Spear Hogs.

I walked off the bridge itself and fought all five of them, using the Spear Hogs:

• I could break them and shotgun power daytime for easy damage
• Vulnerable Special to get the kill quicker and buff the explosion damage
• Use the explosion to help clear the spirits.

I did it well enough that I was able to "steal" the Vision Tower without clearing the other spirits since they didn't detect me in time.

[storm river]

Like when I won here, what I did against them was go in throw 2 specials (which explode at the end if duration + chorus) and then run away lmao

[hybrid forum]

i thought dashing spirit and orbital spirit is the same?
Its just their attack string.
Like im pretty sure the orbital spirit can dash at you

i would need video to understand the stealing part

[gaunt jolt]

I have a video

Let me cut it and upload it to youtube

[storm river]

One of them is holding a lantern

[gaunt jolt]

Dashing Spirits are a different type of enemy than the Orbital spirits. they are two separate units

Orbital Spirits have a lantern.

[hybrid forum]

man wtf

the normal white lady looks as though she has a lantern too

[storm river]

The lantern is really bright and the fact that one pic is at night and the other is at day isn't helping

They both glow green a bit but lantern white lady glows a LOT more cuz well,,, lantern

Ull learn to just look at their hands

[hybrid forum]

hmm

they should add root to this game just because of this guy

[gaunt jolt]

Yeah, my friends and I don't like these damn names.

"White Lady"!?

It's Dasher, Orbital, and Banshee 😛

[storm river]

Lol

[hybrid forum]

i call melee cultist "Crazy person" in my native language

[gaunt jolt]

His name is "Whirly Boi" in my group 😛

[hybrid forum]

i just call him Wolf [Big Guy] (in my native language)

oh ya i call lantern cultist "healer"

[storm river]

I call him "f-ck up" 🫠

[gaunt jolt]

Yeah, Healer and Dagger Cultist

[storm river]

If u want I can upload a vid of my nm run

I have it recorded and it did win,,,

Quite convincingly

[hybrid forum]

i can't really translate the comedy but the [Big Guy] is an adjective referring to fat and strong persons
can be muscly or fat, but the general idea of big and strong

[storm river]

Altho I made some drastic missplays especially ring of dispel

[hybrid forum]

nah, talents and all will be different.
Just need @gaunt jolt video of stealing

[storm river]

Idk what I was thinking getting it 💀

[storm river]

General outlook on how to deal with early game will be similar

[gaunt jolt]

Youtube things 😛 May take a min or two to upload it.

[hybrid forum]

and then usually for melee cultist and chief gnoll, the callouts would be me shouting

CRAZY PERSON CRAZY PERSON

[gaunt jolt]

If you are struggling vs these enemies specifically, then you should always take Freezing Trap.

The Chill slow is VERY GOOD versus Dagger Cultists and Whirly Bois.

[storm river]

Honestly I feel like the answer to a lot of things in ch2/3 is just "kill them fast enough" or "spam armor and vit to tank their hits"

[hybrid forum]

dagger cultist is fine, only chief gnoll is a PITA on every character

and most time they just throw two at you

https://tenor.com/view/monkey-sad-gif-4835826683835238847

[gaunt jolt]

Yeah, I used to struggle big time vs them. Just like Hooker Hogs, you need to have good damage or patience. Knowing Chief's range is important and takes practice.

[storm river]

Yea that's true, it's why I believe u should be able to kill them without fully engaging

[hybrid forum]

i can step out of range, but the thing is like i mentioned, it will aggro near.
And dash doesn't cd quickly enough to kite around

[gaunt jolt]

Yeah, when I say "range" I also mean how far they "slide" when they attack.

You gotta just book it outta there when they're swinging 😛

[hybrid forum]

yeah i can do that

im just saying when i do that

theres a high chance i aggro nearby enemies

[gaunt jolt]

Ah

[storm river]

The enemies aren't there to make your life simple

If u know you'll need to run away

Maybe clear out enemies before entering the poi

[gaunt jolt]

Have you tried dashing through them, right before they starting going in for the swing?

[storm river]

DOES THAT WORK???

They swing 360 no???

[gaunt jolt]

Yeah you can dash through them - this will put you behind them and they will swing away from you.

No they do not have 360 turning radius

[hybrid forum]

not worth the risk most of the time, since they could be in the middle of other enemies
Also if you do this, you must expend a movement skill right after your dash end or the second swing hits

[storm river]

They're like dagger cultists?

But,, aoe

Oh that makes a lot of sense actually

[gaunt jolt]

Yup, you have to be smart about positioning, defensive tools, etc. You're right.

[storm river]

Also that means on Melusine u can tp thru them btw

[gaunt jolt]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxL6x6IXAvg

[hybrid forum]

but i didnt know its not 360, tho that doesn't change much.
I am aware you can dash iframe through it.

Regardless thanks for the hint

[storm river]

Dash does not inherently have iframes

Attacks are just slow

[gaunt jolt]

It's worth practicing the spacing to not go too far away that you draw outside aggro. I've suffered from that when I was learning Piper.

[hybrid forum]

oh the spawns don't proc if you come in from the east side?

[hybrid forum]

Shit i forgot, but then, this would make waht thuggz said a learning point for me

i thought dash have iframe but just very small

[gaunt jolt]

Yeah, Spirits have a small detection radius during day time (when they're invisible) - you gotta be generally close range before they wake up and see you.

This lets you do sneaky things like I did in the video.

If you take Sprint on Wukong (+10/12/14/16% move speed, and dash can be held for 3 seconds)
You don't need stealth or i-frames, just the move speed, and you can "steal" some POIs where a spirit normally would be blocking it.

Becasue they took so long to wake up, after you had to get pretty close to them.

[hybrid forum]

nah wukong is really bad on coop for me

its not even about the parry

the damage just isn't there

[gaunt jolt]

I think Wukong taught me the most about the game. I learned a lot from practicing and playing him. And now he's one of my strongest champs.

[hybrid forum]

in solo hes quite a beast

[gaunt jolt]

You're missing out on that Kamehameha~ 😄

[hybrid forum]

is that his second ult?

[gaunt jolt]

No, it's a standard talent unlocked at Progression Level 9

[hybrid forum]

oh im not that high level on wukong

im only 6

[gaunt jolt]

After power, your next attack can be charged to deal a % of Power damage.

His alternate ult is TONS OF FUN though - that's where he transforms into a random hero with all of their standard talents at epic quality.

You just go ham and it's so fun.

[storm river]

I love wukong so much

[hybrid forum]

can i ask somehting quick, is wukong weak in coop or just me?

[storm river]

wukong has some benefits in group, I do think he's better solo imo

[gaunt jolt]

Wukong is awesome no matter what 😛

[hybrid forum]

i don't know why but it feels like his damage doesn't scale in coop

[storm river]

this isn't a wukong discussion place but, when u finish a poi go to heal stance then when u start a new poi swap to damage so u can get the initial strength boost

[hybrid forum]

don't kill me but even beowulf feels more reliable than wukong in coop
(i have not played cam and did not "get" alladin, but from what i can tell beowulf is the worst of all the "reliable" heroes if that makes sense)

[gaunt jolt]

Beo is much more reliable than Wukong.

Wukong is more of a main character than Beo. But Wukong can also bring his own tricks to the table.

[hybrid forum]

beo doesn't feel fun to play but at least he can get stuff done imo, in coop.

i never understood why devs gave him backloaded damage even non talented

the talented one i can understand

[storm river]

Aladdin and Wukong are the only melee I'll play cuz their melees don't feel heavy

[hybrid forum]

cut twice, dodge.
cut twice again, 1hp left, finish with the 900 damage finisher
^ first 6 minutes of beowulf

[storm river]

Anyways let's stay on topic cuz if this is going generally we should move discussion to #ravenswatch

[gaunt jolt]

Fun casual pubs darkness run. So close to 1 mil 😄

[storm river]

So... By talking to @leaden terrace I realised

Chorus Low Notes unupgraded is genuinely just worse than just... Chorus alone

So like

Don't leave your chorus low notes unupgraded guys

@gaunt jolt @radiant ibex

[leaden terrace]

You pinged the wrong ANDY

[storm river]

Oopsie 🫠

[leaden terrace]

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[storm river]

:3

Sowwy

[leaden terrace]

Not accepted we are executing you

[deep cairn]

But this is for one target, but the point in both cases (day and night) is to add damage to the area, which increases DPS if there are several targets nearby, since each hit is taken into account. Also, Low Notes have always been a more important part of the build

[storm river]

not necessarily true but Low Notes is usually important enough to justify picking it regardless of this

the point is that I created this chart to make sure you don't accidentally nerf yourself by lowering your damage output

maybe before a boss or something

maximising damage is also just generally a good habit,,,

[deep cairn]

Well then, in fact, it is worth considering that you attack not only with the chorus and add damage from the hand to the DPS (including in parallel with the chorus), so in total Low Notes cannot weaken you in any way

[gaunt jolt]

That's my main consideration towards Low Notes + Chorus too. Is that Low Notes rarely actually has a downside

[storm river]

Just let me nerd with my math and u guys come to the conclusions ok 🫠😭

[gaunt jolt]

lol

Then again, if I have either of them, I'm beelining it to Sandman to upgrade them both anyway.

They won't be common for long 😉

[storm river]

does anyone know why Piper's trait only sometimes slows him down?

like sometimes I use it and I absolutely perish because I got slowed, other times there literally isn't a slow...

[full charm]

when you use attack or power, you are slowed, this slow is longer if you use trait just after attack or power.
if you run at full speed, trait will not slow you

[storm river]

ok so

that's.. annoying

[full charm]

I agree, this is not a big deal, but it's annoying

btw if you attack once and spam trait for nothing, you can be slowed forever spining your flute

[wet nimbus]

Attack & Attack Speed build on Pied Piper isn't bad, it felt really good to me, it is kinda slow it spikes rather late but I felt so strong when things started to work as intended

I still feel he's somewhat weak compared to other heroes, he does have different builds to have fun with, but lots of stuff are a bit too hard to make them work, I fear

His first ultimate is somewhat underwhelming, and it's so hard to control in some scenarios, at level 10 tho he can spam his star shower with a 14 sec cooldown, that feels very nice

But it feels like he spikes really late with most of his builds, literally at Avalon you start have fun, at least to me

[deep cairn]

I love a pure Attack build without Chorus. It's fun. But overall, you're right in that Piper is weaker than some heroes in certain areas, but this is mostly evident in challenges. He's still a well-balanced hero, though his ultimates and defenses (in the base version) aren't the best

His slow acceleration is due to the need to level up his talents. Many other heroes are capable of performing at nominal rarity

[wet nimbus]

Yea that's what I thought too, he's very reliant on the leveling of his talents

[fading badger]

The patch notes for piper state

Rats: Fixed several issues where some damage modifiers and status were not correctly applied for Piper's rats
Does anyone have some more info on what was changed/fixed specifically?

[storm river]

Nop

[jolly yacht]

tbh the thing I love about piper is that he has soooo many builds.

• He has your basic attack style build, all glass cannon unless you negate that with armor and vitality stuff.
• power build, which is kind of difficult to really get in early game for me, even more of a glass cannon build.
• dash build, funny note mines that tear down enemies while you spin around them.
• special bomb builds, which synergize with attack and defense abilities and deal crazy damage.
• defense build, synergizes with rats and special, personally one of my favs just due to the insane tankiness.
• and of course rat build. rats. lots of them. just getting the defense rats ability makes it go insane.
  Then you can just kind of mix the synergies and he's still insanely powerful, as long as you're mixing the right ones, keeping up with dps, burst/aoe, having healing, and longevity

[storm river]

I think rat build is still better with freezing trap

especially in multiplayer

the problem is that building into rats is usually also building into special - because stimulant and sforzando+invasive

and if you're already building your epics into special

and your rare is eggs...

(only rare that boosts rat damage)

then why not just also pick chorus+low notes 😅

and well

I did that-

and Chorus Low Notes just did more damage than Rats even tho the build was fully Rats besides those 2 talents-

[fringe pollen]

does baylor eye on special charges not boost chorus damage? sounds kinda bs

[storm river]

No

[tall valley]

chorus fires attack notes, so it scales with attack damage

you can use aces of spades to buff it's damage and even benefit from black lotus lifesteal cuz of that

[wet nimbus]

Did the devs ever consider/said something about Pied Piper special not being a medium range spell?

It kinda feels like counterintuitive and doesn't sinergyze well with his kit

Like even being able to place the special close to him rather than in the center I feel would make him feel better

Even having a talent that let's him do that, maybe would be nice

[slow mountain]

noob question: why are the pipers notes/shots sometimes blue and more focused and sometimes yellow and spread out?

[grim phoenix]

During the day they are yellow, do more damage, but can't penetrate through enemies.

During the night they are purple-ish. deal less damage, but can penetrate through enemies

The pattern of the power also changes, from a wide burst, to a more focused on at night.

Free tip: wait for nightfall when dealing with the ghoul tower objective.

[somber bough]

I saw OnionTree videos with Piper and they seem to only use special or rats talents (especially explosive rats). Do you think it's a preference or is there a tech there ?
Also anyone knows how rats IA works ? They often go on the "wrong" target when using a controller ?

[deep cairn]

It's just a matter of preference, but objectively the strongest Piper build is the Attack through Special conversion.
The build through rats is normal, but nothing outstanding.

I don't fully understand the rats' AI, as they don't live long enough for in-depth testing, but they can be switched and roughly directed towards the hero's view

[gaunt jolt]

Rats AI from simply observational data:

1. When using TRAIT, rats will move to edge of Piper base attack range in the direction you're facing. Note: Doesn't scale with Sniper talent - I don't think anything else "increases" range.
2. Then they will determine proximity and hunt their nearest enemy. They have a smaller range. You can calculate this range by how far away they are from you when they are passive. If you walk forward, watch where the first rat stops. That's the rat's "aggro detection" range.
3. They do collide with themselves, so it's possible that some rats get pushed past their destination, and can hunt enemies outside of combat.
4. All rats attack exactly 3 times, once per ~0.75 seconds.
5. They deal ~20% of player damage.
6. After the third attack, the rat dies.
7. If the enemy dies before the rat's 3 attacks resolve, it will try to find an enemy within its personal range. If it cannot, it idles and will attack an enemy that walks into its range.
8. If it idles for too long, it will leave combat. When this happens, it will return to the passive state - no longer hunts enemies, follows piper, and resets its attack counter. This is important to manage for rat uptime.
9. Passive Rats do not enter combat unless you instruct them to with TRAIT.

Missing Information

I've seen rats run to targets aggroing me even though they weren't in the rats range, so it's possible theres another "hunt" check to seek out anyone aggroing Piper. I haven't done enough obersvations on this.

Why they go to the wrong target

1. You need to make sure your target is at maximum distance from you so they're basically "on" the rat spot.
2. You need to be facing your target physically - if you're running away while calling rats, there's inconsistency in what actually can happen.

[scarlet vapor]

Got lucky with the items

[frigid thorn]

Hi

[solid cobalt]

i hope they buffed piper's starting quest now that merlin's light nova is just a smaller and better version of it

[slow lodge]

is there a such thing as a pied piper power build or is power build not viable?

[slow lodge]

oh whats the hit focused one?!

how does the sniper talent work with the shotgun variation?

problem with sniper is daytime though, no?

[slow lodge]

in day time i feel like its not helpful

[tribal thicket]

It's very strong

Spinning solo, quintuplets, extra measure with things like sniper (even if you're shotgunning during the day the attack range buff and night time benefits are still very strong) and sforzando (this will group up the enemies and also proc extra measure for your next power)

This set up will wipe everything. Just a few eternal roses will give you 100% crit on your powers. Just be careful about taking extra measure before you take spinning solo. Without the spinning solo mobility extra measure will lock you in place for a lengthy animation and it can get you killed quite easily

[slow lodge]

whats the prefered starting talent? horde?

[tribal thicket]

Freezing trap

Always freezing trap

[slow lodge]

oh okay, horde is only for rat build

[tribal thicket]

I mean I guess you can take virtuoso if you want but I think freezing trap is too strong

Especially if you're gonna be running sforzando later

[wet iris]

How did I only end up with 300k damage again? This is so frustrating

[slow lodge]

how useful is the rat build

[cloud ruin]

hows rat build?

i feel its very stroong, just tried it for the first time haha

couldnt win but still was a good run

does rat damage scale with ur damage?

i usually do this

[queen fjord]

I just beat Twilight with Pied Piper on the Hourglass patch. Is he notably stronger than before? That was fun!

[modern harbor]

Hey everyone I am trying to get the hidden outfit of the pied piper but I have a hard time
I was looking online and it was written that my rat have to deal more then 100k damage or I need to get rat related skill
the things on my last game I had all rat related skill and my rat made more then 300k damage
can anyone help get that secret outfit

[amber musk]

I don't know where you're reading that you need rat damage. the wiki has a pretty clear explanation: you need 7 mouse chapters by the end of the game. You get 1 mousechapter whenever you get any rat related talent to legendary rank and at the end of every act, you get mousechapters for all legendary rat talents.

Example: you take the horde starting talent and bring it to legendary. That gets you one mousechapter. You don't take any other rat talents in act 1 so you only get one mousechapter at the end of act 1 bringing you to 2 mousechapters. If you get another rat talent to legendary in act 2, you will have 5 mousechapters by the end of act 2

[queen fjord]

What the heck is a mouse chapter?

[grim phoenix]

A hidden counter, don't worry about it. Just get as many rat talents to legendary as early as possible and you'll get the skin no problemo

[modern harbor]

Ok thanks 🤣

[ionic orbit]

I really like the new joker item 🙂

[latent wyvern]

no jack card, not min maxing joker value 🤧

[jolly yacht]

unreasonably tanky pied piper

[calm coral]

Defense is one of the favorite builds

[rocky bone]

Is there a trick to getting my rats to all attack the same target? I'll have 20/20 rats, first boss gets stunned, i run over drop special and hit the trait button. Half dozen or so rats attack boss, the rest run over and stare at the wall.

[copper sphinx]

I tend to get real melee to the target I want them to focus, and spam the trait button...mainly to avoid them attacking other things, I dunno if sometimes they don't attack at all though didn't pay attention lol. Maybe it was new rats generated by defense trait or something?

But ya sometimes I do feel like I need to spam my trait button not even sure why do I do it xD

[rocky bone]

Thanks. Spamming trait seems to help. They def still love running away and attacking mobs that aren't even in combat though.

[willow bobcat]

iirc TRAIT will mark a point in front of you, and all rats will go there, then attack the nearest enemies.
The position is fixed. I think the point is placed at the maximum range of your ATTACK, without sniper.

[summer narwhal]

This has to have been said before, but I think literally all of Piper's issues with his rats not naturally synergizing with his note build (or the rest of his kit) would be solved if he had a base kit feature where landing X number of notes spawned a rat. Would do wonders for his early game, too