Have you been wondering how you play Loader in Risk of Rain 2? Well, here is the defacto guide for playing the punch happy, one-shoting boss survivor, in Risk of Rain 2. If you haven’t unlocked Loader yet, make sure to check out my guide on unlocking Loader.
If you want to see where Loader ranks in terms of the other survivors in Risk of Rain 2, I recommend you check out my RoR2 survivor tier list.
With that out of the way, let’s get into my Loader guide for Risk of Rain 2.
Table of Contents
How does Loader Play?
Loader is a burst damage survivor in Risk of Rain 2. What this means is she essentially deals all of her damage in a very short amount of time and then waits for her cooldowns before doing that burst again. She is also a melee survivor, although, distance matters very little to Loader because of her insane mobility.
To elaborate, Loader’s abilities are as follows:
- Passive: The Loader is immune to fall damage. Striking enemies with the Loader’s gauntlets grant a temporary barrier.
- Primary: Punch enemies for 320% damage.
- Secondary: A grappling hook that pulls you towards the target.
- Utility: A charged punch attack that will send you flying at an enemy doing 2100% damage that increases with speed.
- Special: A floating pylon that zaps enemies in an AOE for 100% damage.
These are just generic descriptions of the abilities because the Loader has several loadouts available and I already have a post on the best loadouts for every survivor.
But using this brief description of Loader’s abilities gives us a glimpse into how she plays. Firstly, you can notice that the utility punch skill does a whopping 2100% damage AND it can increase with speed. This means that you can use your grappling hook to speed you up while charging your punch for an insane amount of burst DPS, which again, is how Loader should be played.
You can sometimes use your primary attack to punch down enemies that are close to death, but just like Acrid, you should be focusing on using your other abilities.
Speaking of which, let’s get into Loader’s abilities in more depth.
Loader’s Abilities
First up, we got Loader’s passive, Scrap Barrier.
Scrap Barrier
Scrap Barrier is one of the few passives in the game and provides Loader with barrier every time she hits an enemy with her gauntlets. You might be thinking this only means when she uses her Primary (aka her punches) but you would be mistaken, as Loader actually gets barrier when using her utility skill as well.
Another extremely useful thing this passive does is make Loader immune to fall damage. With how much she grapples around, this is definitely needed.
These two effects cause this passive to make Loader an absolute UNIT. Very few survivors are as tanky as Loader and none have her innate survivability.
Knuckleboom
Probably one of the simplest abilities in the game. Loader punches out any enemies that get in front of her for 320% damage and gains shield ala her passive.
Loader’s Secondaries
Loader can choose between two different grapple fists. One pulls you towards the target and does no damage, while the other will pull smaller enemies towards you while stunning and damaging any other enemy hit.
Spiked Fist is literally just an upgrade to the Grapple Fist, so as soon as you unlock it, use it.
Loader’s Utilities
Loader has two loadouts for her utility slot. The first, the Charged Gauntlet, requires you to charge up to do full damage and does slightly more than the Thunder Gauntlet at full charge. The tradeoff, however, is that it does less AOE damage than the Thunder Gauntlet and has to be charged to do the maximum damage.
Personally, I prefer to use the Thunder Gauntlet, but both are viable and the difference isn’t night and day anyway.
Loader’s Special
Loader’s Special is one of the less impressive parts of her kit. All it is is a Pylon that floats in the air that will zap up to 6 enemies for 100% damage.
The whole purpose of it is to take care of pesky aerial enemies that can’t be easily taken out by Loader. Essentially, a lesser wisp eradicator.
Now that we have talked all about Loader’s abilities we can get into her rotation.
Loader’s Rotation
An ideal rotation for Loader is as follows:
- Grapple to speed Loader up
- Charge your Gauntlet mid Grapple
- Release at the point where you are going the fastest (aka mid-swing)
- Repeat
You shouldn’t be using your other abilities much at all as Loader. This is because you do so much damage with your Gauntlet and Grapple combo AND because they have such a low CD there really isn’t time to do much else. There is a reason she is called Risk of Rain 2’s one-punch woman.
The only time I can think of using the other abilities is when I am running to the teleporter or there are zero tanky enemies around, so I just punch em to death.
Best Items for Loader
It should be no surprise that items that increase Loader’s damage are going to be king here.
Here are some ideas:
- Ukulele
- Kjaro’s band
- Crowbar
- Gasoline
- Lens Maker’s Glasses
- Wil-o-the-wisp
- Focus Crystal
- Paul’s Goat Hoof
- ATG Missile
Some of these should be fairly obvious, like the Ukulele and the crit glasses. However, some might be surprised by others, so let me explain a little.
Crowbar is killer because you are a burst character who should be trying to one-to-zero every enemy there is. Crowbar provides a nice lil damage boost for that endeavor.
Gasoline and Wisp are good items to make up for your lack of AOE on Loader. That way, when you end up killing one you might get a couple more for your effort, rather than having to burst every enemy individually.
With Survivors of the Void coming out, we have some more items to add to your Loader build. Keep in mind, this list comes from a paid DLC.
Here are some great items for Loader from the Survivors of the Void DLC:
- Shuriken – gives you a ranged attack
- Egocentrism – since you’re always in melee range
- Goobo Jr. – equipment that creates another gummy loader
- Polylute – great item in general
- Safer Spaces – tougher times but with a CD
- Voidsent Flame – helps with burst damage
End
And that’s it for this Risk of Rain 2 Loader guide. I hope this helps all of you future Loader players out there get to Monsoon and beyond!
Cheers!
