Today, I will be showing you how to play Rex in Risk of Rain 2 with my patented RoR2 Rex guide. Rex has gone from one of the worst survivors in Risk of Rain 2 to one of the best in a very short time, so it is about time you learned how to play this techno-flower.
And to everyone who gets confused, Rex is the plant, not the dinosaur. I know, it still confuses me a bit, but Acrid is the dinosaur looking survivor while Rex is the plant-robot-alien-thing. If you are looking for an Acrid guide, check the best Acrid survivor guide out there ;).
But wait, there’s more. If you haven’t actually unlocked Rex you need to check out my ror2 character unlock guide. It covers all of the survivors all the way up to Acrid (the latest survivor).
Moving on, let’s talk about how to play Rex.
Table of Contents
How Does Rex Play?
Rex isn’t much different than most of the survivors in Risk of Rain 2, I mean, all they do is point and shoot (or punch in Loader’s case). However, Rex has one thing every other character lacks, the ability to heal himself and debuff enemies.
You see, with many of Rex’s abilities he can heal when he hits an enemy. I’ll save this for the next section when we go over his abilities in full, but basically, Rex’s primary attack will heal him for the damage it deals and reduce the armor of enemies hit. Pretty simple.
For those who don’t know, healing is pretty important in Risk of Rain 2. In Monsoon difficulty, you basically have no regen, so any way of getting health is worth its weight in gold. Not to mention, weakens (basically armor reduction), increases damage for everyone in the game, so Rex is actually an extremely powerful support survivor in Risk of Rain 2. Although, he can’t really help his team other than the debuff.
The trade-off to this is that his other abilities cost his health to use. This makes Rex one of those survivors that constantly requires resource management to be played to his full capacity. If you get below 90% health you will no longer be protected by one-shot protection, which is the main reason Rex wasn’t a top tier survivor in previous patches. Now, he can control his health a bit better (more on this later) but you still need to be careful about how much damage you are dealing to yourself compared to how much you are healing.
All of this being said, Rex has the highest early game DPS of every survivor in Risk of Rain 2. His weakens and the fact he can pump out mucho damage with super spammable abilities make him the de-facto champ of the early game in ror2. Wanna find out why? Keep reading bucko.
Rex Ability Guide
Rex has several abilities in his kit and has several loadout options available. This will be an overview of most of them but I already have the best loadout for Rex so if you would rather just get the setup without the explanation go there.
Rex’s Passive: Natural Toxins
Natural Toxins is a passive on-hit effect that applies to some of his abilities. To be honest, it is weird to call it a passive considering that it only works on some abilities, but whatever.
I have a full guide on weakens here. It covers how this affects enemies in Risk of Rain 2 and why it is super good from a damage standpoint.
Natural Toxins reduces armor by 30 and damage/move speed by 40%. Free Shattering Justice anyone?
Rex Primary: Directive Inject
Directive Inject is Rex’s primary attack and is his main form of health regeneration and the primary way for him to deliver his weakens attack. The ability fires three projectiles for 80% damage each with a .5 proc coefficient. So technically, if you hit an enemy with all three, you will have a 150% chance of proccing (not exactly but I’m not a stat guy okay?).
The projectiles don’t fire immediately and have been buffed in previous patches to fire quicker but it sill takes a while to reach an enemy so you could easily miss depending on how far you are away from said enemy.
Rex Secondary: Seed Barrage & Directive Drill
Rex has two secondary abilities to choose from, Seed Barrage and Directive: Drill, each with their own pros and cons.
Seed Barrage is good for burst damage. As you can see by the image above, it has borderline zero cooldown, meaning you can spam it freely. Although, you do have to be careful as it does take 15% of your health every time you cast it which means you only get a few casts before you are on the brink of death.
Directive: Drill has a much higher cooldown at six seconds. That being said, it lasts much longer than Seed Barrage and doesn’t cost any health, so for those who prefer sustained damage and would rather not juggle their health.
Seed Barrage is superior in most situations so I recommend staying with it.
Rex’s Utility: Disperse & Bramble Volley
If this guide was made pre-Hidden Realms I would have probably skipped this section or just labeled it irrelevant. Rex’s main utility skill is incredibly bad, to the point of hilarity. Disperse is literally a burp that propels Rex in the opposite direction of where he is facing, and by propel I mean it scoots him a lil bit.
On the other-hand, Bramble Volley does everything Disperse does but with extra damage and a heal. Sure, it costs 20% of your health, but it does more damage than most of Rex’s other abilities and heals you for the damage it does do, which makes up for the initial health cost anyway.
Always go for Bramble Volley. If you don’t you can’t call yourself a plant-boy main.
Rex’s Special: Tangling Growth
Finally, we come to Rex’s special ability, Tangling Growth. This is a large AOE ability that costs a significant portion of your health, 25%, but also roots and life steals enemies hit by the attack.
The best part of this ability is that it will pull enemies towards the center and hold them there, allowing Rex to easily land his other abilities like Seed Barrage, and burst down any enemy trapped within Tangling Growth’s AOE.
Tangling Growth actually shoots a projectile too, so you can shoot it at enemies flying in the air or at enemies farther away, which is great when dealing with lesser wisp groups that annoy the crap out of you.
Rex’s Rotation Guide
The ideal rotation for Rex is as follows:
- Shoot your Tangling Growth at enemies
- Use Bramble Volley to inflict weakens on as many enemies as possible quickly
- Spam your Seed Barrage on the Tangling Growth AOE
- Use your primary to continually inflict weakens as well as healing up when you get low
It is always best to poke with your primary attack as Rex and wait til you can group up enemies with your Tangling Growth before using your Seed Barrage. This is because it costs a lot of your health (a precious resource) and can be missed pretty easily even if you are a seasoned Rex player. Be patient and round them up before letting loose the full combo.
Pro-tip: Seed Barrage resets the attack CD for your primary attack as Rex. Using Seed Barrage in-between primary attacks causes you to attack much quicker.
Best & Worst Items for Rex
Traditionally, I only have best items for survivors, but Rex is a very specific case of certain items ruining the game for him, so I am making an exception here and adding items you must always avoid on Rex.
Obviously, there are more items that are good on Rex, just take this as a mini-guide on Rex’s itemization.
Best Items
- Primordial Cube: Sets up Tangling Growth
- Ukulele: Primary attack has higher than average proc chance
- Shattering Justice: Even more minus armor, plus Rex’s primary hits three times quickly (Shattering Justice needs five to reduce armor)
- Razorwire: You can proc it yourself
- Rejuvenation Rack: Doubles healing
- N’kuhana’s Opinion: Deals damage based on healing
Worst Items
- Brittle Crown: You lose all your money when you do damage to yourself
- Transcendence: You gain shields instead of health. REX CAN’T HEAL SHIELDS BUT CAN STILL DO DAMAGE TO HIMSELF
- Wake of Vultures: Same as Transcendence but less risky
For the Survivors of the Void DLC, there are some good items you will want to try out. Here are some of them:
- Polylute – great for everyone
- Safer Spaces
- Voidsent flame
- Benthic bloom – because flower
- Singularity Band
- Weeping Fungus
Here are some items that you should avoid on Rex from the DLC:
- Plasma Shrimp – turns ATGs into this, but only works if you have shield active (aka never for Rex)
- Lost Seer’s Lenses – turns your crit glasses into this
- Stone Flux Pauldron
End
And that’s it for our Risk of Rain 2 Rex guide. Hopefully, this will help you master the little plant buddy. Good luck in your next run!
