Wondering how to play Acrid in Risk of Rain 2? Look no further, because today I am going to be showing you my Risk of Rain 2 survivor guide for Acrid. If you haven’t unlocked Acrid yet, check out my guide on how to unlock Acrid. It’s short and to the point.
If you want to see where Acrid ranks in terms of the other survivors in Risk of Rain 2, I recommend you check out my RoR2 survivor tier list.
Without further ado, let’s go.
Table of Contents
How does Acrid Play?
Before we get into the mechanics behind Acrid, I would like to discuss how he should be played at the Macro level.
First off, Acrid is considered a melee/ranged hybrid which means that he can either get up in enemies’ faces or slowly whittle them down from afar. In my personal experience, it is always going to be the latter. As a melee survivor, Acrid really doesn’t have anything going for him like Loader or Mercenary. Both of those have lots of mobility and some survivability. Spoiler alert, Acrid doesn’t.
This means that getting into melee range is a huge gamble. You either kill the enemy quickly or get smacked right back, and nearly all enemies in Risk of Rain 2 smack harder. Don’t even get me started on Imps.
So with that all being said, you should only ever go into melee range when you are finishing off enemies with your melee attack. Much like Loader, you should use your other abilities (and poison) to do 90% of your damage while your melee is used as a last resort.
Anyway, let’s get into Acrid’s abilities.
Acrid’s Abilities
This is just going to be a quick overview of Acrid’s abilities and how they work.
Acrid’s Passive: Poison
Acrid’s passive is his most important skill by far. Much like how Rex can weaken enemies, Acrid can poison them. This poison does 1% of their max health per second for 10 seconds, or in other words, does 10% of the enemies’ max health as damage.
Basically, if you keep poison on an enemy for 100 seconds, even a boss, you will take them to 1 health (because it is non-lethal). This makes Acrid super good at reliably killing bosses, it is hard to fall behind when you can kill any boss in 100 seconds.
Sadly, however, this cannot proc. So no crits or anything of that manner.
Acrid’s Primary: Vicious Wounds
So as far as Acrid’s abilities go, they are all pretty straightforward. His primary is just a swipe attack that does 200% for the first two hits and 400% damage on the third swipe.
Truthfully, this is pretty bad. It does only slightly more damage than the Mercenaries primary and doesn’t have the wide arc that his ability does. Plus, if you read the above section, you shouldn’t even be using this all too much. If ever given the opportunity, switch to the Visions of Heresy.
Acrid’s Secondary: Neurotoxin
Acrid’s secondary is arguably more important than his primary. Actually, never mind, it is 100%, without a doubt more important.
Neurotoxin deals 240% damage with a proc coefficient of 1 and also poisons enemies. Poison, of course, does 10% of an enemies’ max health over 10 seconds, although, it is non-lethal.
Spam this ability as much as possible. Not only does it apply poison, but it is also Acrid’s only way to do damage to flying enemies and has a mere 2-second cooldown so you really have no excuse to not use it.
Acrid’s Utility: Caustic/Frenzied Leap
Acrid has a choice between two utility skills (if you have unlocked it). Caustic leap is the default and it does 320% damage while also stunning and poisoning all enemies hit. Frenzied leap, on the other hand, does more damage and has CD reduction for every enemy hit, but doesn’t poison.
I think you should do whatever you feel comfortable with, but I prefer the Caustic Leap. Do note, however, that Caustic Leap’s poison is also non-lethal.
Acrid’s Special: Epidemic
Acrid’s final ability is called Epidemic. This ability spreads poison to up to 20 other targets around the enemy you hit with Epidemic, making it extremely useful for dealing with large groups of enemies that have stacked up.
This ability has a proc coefficient of 1 so getting a Ukulele makes clearing huge clumps of enemies nearly trivial. Also, feel free to spam it since the CD is super low for how powerful the ability is.
Note: The poison is non-lethal, but the initial hit from Epidemic can kill.
Acrid’s Rotation
The ideal rotation for Acrid is as follows:
- Epidemic (to spread poison to all near enemies)
- Neurotoxin (to hit any enemies Epidemic missed)
- Vicious Wounds/Neurotoxin/Leap (to finish off enemies)
Not exactly that difficult, but that truly is how to do it. When facing boss enemies, you will likely have to apply poison several times. Don’t forget to continually poison them every 10 seconds to maximize efficiency.
Best Items for Acrid
Much like other survivors, Acrid thrives with AOE items and DOTs. Mainly because his poison can’t kill by itself, so having something continually ticking for lethal damage is good. If you’re looking for a good acrid build, here are some items to look out for.
Here are some good items:
- Ceremonial Daggers
- Gasoline
- Will-o’-the-wisp
- Ukulele
- Tri-Tip Dagger
- Focus Crystal (kinda)
- Backup Magazine
- Old Guillotine
- Rose Buckler
I have a complete Risk of Rain 2 item tier list for those interested. That will cover all of the best items, period, so for anyone wondering why I didn’t add very obvious items to the Acrid item list, that’s why.
With the Survivors of the Void DLC, acrid does really well with items like plasma shrimp, polylute, and weeping fungus. Make sure to throw those into the build if you see them.
Quick Acrid Tips
Some of you might not know that there is a bug that allows Acrid to do way more damage than he is supposed to. If you cancel your primary attack with sprint, it will cancel the animation, so you can immediately do it again. This does way more damage than if you would do all three swipes; that being said, the devs said they would remove it in the future, so get it while it is hot.
You can sprint while casting all of Acrid’s abilities, making Rose Buckler extremely strong on him (and just being a nice QOL change).
End
That’s it for this Risk of Rain 2 Acrid guide! If you want to look at some of our other guides, we have a pretty good one on the Engineer.
Have fun playing Dino Boi!
