this video crashed EIGHT TIMES during render REEEEEE

1:10 "shields take less damage from shock damage" Me a Borderlands player: "wait that's illegal"

Me chilling with 12 Shaped Glass’: “What’s health”

One benefit of shields that only shows up in multiplayer: item specialization. If one person is using transcendence, they don't care at all about healing items (other than for printing or, as i just learned, N'kuhana's), so they can pass on all healing items, which in turn increases the survivability of the rest of the party.

Every time a Rex player buys a shield item an angel cries.

Just don’t get hit lmao

I will say transcendence is nice when you're doing the monsoon skin unlock challenges, where your natural regen does piss all and its hard to get a leaching crit build in the limited time you should be completing the challenge in.

I'd love to see you talk about -drugs- Spinel Tonic.

I remember thinking that I could do the huntress challenge with transcendence because I figured if I only have 1 real health point and the rest is shields I can take all the damage I want. Then I realized my error and just stacked teddies and Broaches to get it instead

with visions make sure you go over the engineer and stacking it with turrets late game

"Strides of Heresy lets you fly around and be invincible sure but nothing dies, nothing takes damage" *laughs in Disposable Missile Launcher, Little Disciple and N'kuhana's Opinion*

I found Transcendence pretty good on Huntress early game, like when you get it on an early Lunar Pod. Huntress has pretty bad HP and Regen, and she relies only on her mobility to survive, and Transcendence helps with a lot of her regen problems. Ever since, I've been picking up the item on her, and it works surprisingly well.

EXTREME NOTE FOR MUL-T: If you get a "Silence between thunder" (the Overcharge elite rare item) while playing as Mul-T, you can swap between equipment to regen 50% of your health as shields by swapping to Silence and then turn those shields into health swapping from Silence. You can repeat this process to gain stupid healing whenever you need it.

Added benefit of transcendence: freedom from having to buy healing items ever again, letting you focus on buying damage items while having VERY fast regen if you take a lil breather every once in a while. Also iirc barrier can protect you from taking damage while waiting to regen. Beetle gang forever!

I just had a great shield only run and one thing that's entirely neglected here is that things like tougher times, topaz brooch, and aegis both still work fully for transcendence.

when you talk about hp, does this also include red hp (infusion)? PS love your vids been watching since this game came out.

The fun bit of having shield is having like 5 stealth kits + a Clover with Transcendence Bv Makes me a true gamer.

"Nothing even died" *laughs in tesla coil and 50 ukes*

This video made me realize the potential of transcendence and I was like woah Then I saw the glitch past the door at the end and I was like 🤯

I love your vids Woolie! Keep up the good work! These vids have really been helping me out since I’m a big dumbo brain and get too bored reading stuff. They keep me engaged and are hella entertaining 👌🥰 just started playing on Monsoon and have been hooked ever since.

Boy keeps telling me I can dislike his video if I didn’t agree. Either that’s some reverse psychology shit or he’s a cool dude. Spoiler: it’s both

Hey Woolie, great video! Can't wait for the next one... I wanna see that Engineer&Visions of Heresy run just pop off!!!

Shields are good if you play at long range such as “permaflight artificer”, HP good otherwise

I think the decision to take shields really depends on how much healing you have. If you are spending most of your run struggling to find healing items, it may be worth it to take transcendence or shield gens. Edit: another benefit of taking Transcendence is that is allows you to forgo healing items entirely for more damage/mobility. For instance, in a green item multishop with an ATG and a Harvester Scythe, you are able to take the ATG every time.

I still think this whole "Shields aren't that good" and "OSP abuse" situation is just the symptom of a bigger issue: you don't have enough health whatsoever to deal with enemies innevitably hitting you past the 2nd loop. At that point your level ups are too slow, you don't have enough health, and you get chunked for like half your health and you die. If they removed OSP but increased overall health gains (or increased the rate at which you level up so that you don't just soft cap at level 20ish), the issues would go away I'm pretty sure. Also another fix would be to make Infusions great again. Either make it a red item that needs more kills to increase your health, thus making it slower to get to absurd health amounts but eventually you get there if you can survive, or keep it green but just buff them to like, 300 more health per stack or something. And before you think that it'd make the game too easy, or make it static (as there would be no real increase in danger) keep in mind that when you start off, enemies do about 10% of your health with an attack, more for elites and more dangerous enemies. However, later on in the run not only are there MORE elites, but just MORE enemies in general. Later on in the run enemies may deal about 15% of your total health, sure, but there's about 20 times more enemies on the screen than when you started off. This at least would make it a bit more similar to how health was in RoR 1 due to Infusions (unless you just played for 40 minutes and capped health entirely), where you seeing your health dropping wasn't an immediate "Oh shit I'm dead because I'm not abusing OSP", but instead a "Oh shit I'm getting swarmed better GTFO".

If you use a shield generator, it raises your overall max potential health for the aegis. Which makes going for a run that allows you to have over 30k over shield is possible if using a ton of shield gens and a single aegis

Yet another vid that answers some of my questions and helps me get better thanks

Finally, been waiting for this video.

You can cheese the challenge for huntress with topaz brooches, which give barrier not shield or health, you just have to make sure u have lots of kills and barrier at ALL times.

I've been loving these discussion and investigation videos lately

Honestly, the best runs I've had were with one instance of Shaped Glass, followed by six or seven Topaz Brooches. Killing a whole group of smaller enemies with the double damage helps to even out the halved health you'd get and make taking on the larger enemies a bit easier, at least with the Huntress.

"With strides all you're getting is invulnerability, the ability to reposition and a heal." Yeah, such meager positives. My moba brain is dying.

Me who has never heard of risk of rain: Can’t wait to put this info to good use

I like using transcendence on loader and huntress because of their mobility to hide for the 7 seconds to full heal. I've also gotten around 4000hp with MUL-T with a couple stacks of transcendence, shield gens and transfusions. It's not the most optimal but it can really help in a monsoon run when you haven't been getting healing items at all.

When you take damage with shields and barrier, do shields still recharge at the same rate? I like to take transendence on loader, but I'm bad at keeping time and dont trust myself editing the text files of the game to test it out.

great info in the video, good to at least know now that shields + transcendence isn't as nutty as you'd think it to be.

just started to play ror2 on ps4 been really enjoying your videos

The yellow shielding provided by the ageis shield (I think I got it right) and topaz brooch caps out when the shielding is the same value as your max HP, but the blue shields count as part of your max HP for the yellow shields.

Shields would be pretty good if they could regen while only barrier was taking damage. Might be a little TOO good though.

Hot take: shields should offer some amount of damage resistance (20%?) while they’re active. I think this would make shield generators slightly more attractive by compensating for their breaking of one shot protection and make transcendence more viable as a lunar item

How does Aegis work with transcendence? If healing still occurs, do you gain armor assuming you have full shields? Is the amount you gain relative to 1hp (so 0 armor for aegis 1-4 and 1 for aegis 5) or is it relative to your shields? Can you gain armor even without full shields?

I think they're both good for certain situations but I personally like health because while it regens slower on it's own, I can usually be gaining a bunch mid combat so I don't have to worry about it too much.

I would like to see strides of heresy as you next lunar item video. The reason being is the fact you can still fire your equipment while immune to damage. Even as the engineer having strides of heresy late game and mid game is useful, even as the commando, huntress, or even the artificer. The only classes I havent had it on is rex, loader and acrid.

can you do a video covering cleansing pools i can never find one when i need it or when im going for the challenge.

if i have an aegis randomly on Rex then is it worth picking up transcendence if i come across it?

I might just be a lunatic, but I do love transcedence a whole lot on arti :D I prefer that much more than hp, leeching and what not :D

If you have shaped glass equipped or multiple shaped glass equipped does that stop your one tap protection? Like the shield generators

"Who am i to tell you how to live your risk of rain 2 life anyway?" you are the guy i came to for the answer to the title of the video, my dude.

I use shield generators with the command artifact with topaz borches or aiegs and leach, because you can get way more max hp with sheilds, then even more barrier with broch or aiegs

Strides + Nukahana's opinion(I forget how to spell it) works well because you are healing while still dealing out damage. If you pair this with atg's then you have nukahana's attacking as well as atg's all while being invincible and healing.

okay but may I contribute one word? malachite.

Does shield gen 8% include health boosts from infusion or gnurl? I remember your6 saying 2 gens ruins osp but curious if you can maintain osp and have 2 or more shield gens by boosting green hp

I find that lots of health and then something that generates barrier like a topaz broach or an aegis (if I have a strong source of healing) are best because you basically double your effective health pool for minimal upkeep effort.

Can you do a video on the spinel tonic, I think it is a very interesting item as far as equipment goes and I’d like to hear your thoughts on it. Do you think the spinel tonic is good? Are there certain circumstances where you would avoid or take it? And as far as equipment go are there any others that are much more useful than the tonic for what it provides?

I'm curious to his opinion on Transcendence now that the Plasma Shrimp exists. I personally think it's viable for Engineer, with the right item combinations like Broaches, Aegis, and Tougher Times.

Great explanations!

For those who do want to cheese the huntress challenge and just got disappointed that shield doesn't do it, barrier doesn't count so just have 1 barrier item, and make sure to constantly keep it up.

Love the vids.

I'm new to this game, i don't now half what you are talking. but i just love listen to you.

Yo woolie, love your guides on Ror2. What's a good trick to get a consistent run going with artificer as I'm always stuck on the first stage on monsoon due to wisps ganking on me. I'm on ps4 so the update for the doggo hasn't come yet. Do I farm 1 to 2 items or just go to stage 4 asap.

You've given me an idea transcendance and 3x strides of heresy hehe

what happens if you have the artifact that makes fall damage lethal? does taking that 1 damage of hp kill you since it removes your only hp buy bypasses the shield?

hey mate any chance you can make a seperate playlist with all your risk of rain 2 videos in them

Hey man, just a quick question if you know. Do shields block/ reduce fire and bleed damage as well? I noticed my health goes down a lot slower, and the debuff is removed much quicker with shields. Also, do shields reduce damage against all overloading enemies? if so could you get the stats by letting Beatle boy hit you a few times plx? if the above is true wouldn't that mean that shields are really good on high agility/ movement heroes who don't get hit at all/ very often? I only really die to status effects anyway.

the way shields vs hp works generally in my runs is that once a transendence drops, one of us(usually me) will never pick up healing items again for future hp ups or psg drops. I usually have this going with playing Loader, as she can more often than not just gtfo from any dangerous situation when needed

So what's the difference between Green health and read health other than the infusion giving you more health through kills is there are other advantages to having red health?

Is it better to go for clover or purity on Artificier? I mean purity gives skill cd but clover gives higher proc chance.

Wait, the plasma shrimp would it be very beneficial for you to have shield only since the shrimp does damage as long as you have shield? And the glass would it effect your shield hp if you have beetle already?

Okay so... if I have Transcendence and I'm looking to buff those shield numbers as much as possible, I should skip out on the Shield Generators and go for things like Infusion and Bison Steak instead? Do their benefits get buffed by Transcendence's conversion?

I was waiting for you to comment about how Infusion functions with Transcendence, because I don’t know. Does the bonus health count as 1.5 shield each?

I'd love some analysis on Effigy. Is there ANY way to make it useful?

hey woolie, how do you test items like in the distant roost clips? are you spawning them in somehow?

woolie is my favorite math youtuber

I think that Transcendence reducing the cooldown by say 25% per stack on the recharge delay or the Shield geny's reducing the recharge rate by 5-10 seconds per stack (and give 8% of total Health Shields and increases included) would be all you need. The only thing with that would be that you would have to limit it to a 1 sec cooldown at max. Either that or they need to make it's recharge delay shortened by kill/damage to enemies with the time removed increasing per stack. With either of these methods i feel it would work out, i just want to know what other people say.

Woolie out here saying you've gotta text file edit to be rich in lunar coins while I'm sittin' on my fat lunar stacks from doing obliteration runs on loader/mercenary. Great video though, maybe one day shields will be more viable.

Everything in this video is clear and makes sense to me, but there is something that you forgot that I think is really important. If you use transcendence and shield generators, then you increase how much barrier you can have. If you get an Aegis, especially if you are an engineer with a lot of mushrooms, this can be absolutely nuts and carry your run. I know you haven't found an effective playstyle that you enjoy for engineer so I think it's totally reasonable for this to have escaped you, or for you to have not known about it in general. That aside, great video as always Woolie!

How would you change shields to make it more appealing option?

Strides is to solve the problem of low health and bad positioning, the problem of threat is not a factor for its use. It's essentially a panic button for when "manning up" is about to kill you.

Wait I know I’m late to this video but what if you used aegis with shields wouldn’t you always be overhealing if you had one hp?

What would be your thoughts on the idea of healing items dropping the recharge delay? Nothing amazing, and logarithmically reduced like everything else, but then they come back sooner, making the shields have a 'healing' effect

how can you show how much damage an item does or how high the proc percentage is

Hey woolie! Since you’re probably still in the comments, I have a couple ideas for videos you could do :) just suggestions but you’re always my first pick for ROR2 Topics! Maybe go over the categorized chests and talk about the chances of getting a good item based on their pools, or how good each one is on each character, and then rank them! I have more but I’ll put them into words and share them under your vids in the future

I want to know if that lightning damage negation applies to Overloading Elites!

I actually got a question. So shaped glass has a theoretical cap due to how number rounding works. If you get to the point where you have basically 1 hp due to shaped glass then get a Transcendence, would you then be able to get more shaped glass to re lower you and then re make the one shot protection for that 1 hp? Or does stacking so many shaped glass to the point you have only 1 hp cause one shot protection to become invalid as youd need at least 2 hp for it?

What do you think about stacking multiple Transcendences?

Hey woolie how come aegis doesn't build up a shield from healing with transcendence? I thought it just negated it but if the skulls still fire what's the reason for no barrier?

noticed while watching that it;s been like 5 years since i listened to a going quantum podcast

so ur saying if i have infusion or steak i can get more total HP with transcendence than without it?

Can you do rex challenge with transcendence? And what happens if you pick up a blood altar?

If I get a few stealth kits I usually start taking shields, pretty easy to survive waiting for regen while invis.

The part I don't get is saying to avoid shields. If I open a chest and it drops a shield how is it bad for me to pick it up?

If you have a transcendence and and an aegis does it make it so you get barrier at any point you heal ?

I’d love to know how the item pickup tooltips actually have all the details in this video. I’ve been wanting that to be how it works.

love listening to this dude talk like this

you didnt talk about stacking old war stealth kits, or stacking barrier with shields tho (aegis, brooch)

may i point out that you *can* still get the effects of healing while using transcendence IF you have aegis, at which point it becomes, in my opinion, strictly better (although needing a red item to make this decision)

I ran a multiplayer run as acrid and, being new, I was not fully competent at the game , plus we had a text file editor on the 4-man team. So what we needed up doing was stacking shields and strides in me, let me run around poisoning things, striding when I took to much damage, and basically let my teammates carry me.

There is a nutty transcence acrid build I like going with two or 3 strides of hearsay so you fully regen in the tone and youre always doing damage because of poison, even in shift. Although tbf, I did get a god run with this and could stand still doing nothing and still best the tp boss

Transcendence + Aegis even if your shield is damaged, it still give barrier when you get healing

how do you make the items show all of the information on pick up