(These specific enemies also have an interesting property where staggering them it also deletes all of their current airborne projectiles). For example, a Longbow-Man or Bandit Retainer who has their attack interrupted will not be able to use it again until their internal cooldown is up. Staggering not only disables and knocks the enemy back for a short duration, but it can also interrupt enemy attacks and put them on cooldown. This section will explain how the stagger mechanic works, as it's very important to surviving the early game as Ao Bai, and remains effective throughout the game at preventing incoming damage. !! Don't over-commit to explosive ascensions before you have a good launcher !! Since you cannot properly determine if you can get a strong one until area 2 at the earliest, it's not recommended to invest in pure explosion ascensions in Reincarnation+7. Unfortunately due to harsher enemy scaling, the likelihood of having a viable launcher decreases as the game difficulty increases. After you obtain a launcher you determine to be 'boss viable' then both primary explosion ascensions become significantly higher priority, as they offer heavy benefits if you're using launcher as a primary weapon. However sometimes you find an especially powerful launcher either through strong inscriptions or a good combination of scrolls you end up with a 'boss viable launcher' (you'll be able to judge this after enough experience, but it typically involves bonus projectile inscriptions or being able to mitigate or avoid the reload time). Your build will be worse if you want to swap to a new weapon and you have a bunch of explosion ascensions that end up doing nothing. Not taking dedicated explosive ascensions also retains your build adaptability Ao Bai can use a wide variety of weapons and there's a very high chance you will be offered some especially powerful non-explosive weapons.

As a result it's usually better to invest in ascensions that improve the whole build, rather than the dedicated explosion ascensions that will only help your offhand weapon.

Dual-Wielding 2 heavy weapons also destroys most of your mobility, so you really need strong offence and/or defence capability for that.įor a typical launcher, you will primarily use it to clear rooms, and rely mostly on your other weapon (and Dual-Wield) to be able to handle elites and bosses. This is typically much more reliable than having launchers in both weapon slots (especially since some powerful ascensions require an automatic weapon to function properly). Reserve the first weapon slot for a stable automatic or semi-automatic weapon that can cover cover for its weaknesses. Unless your build is very powerful and you know what you're doing, I recommend only taking a launcher in your second weapon slot (if taking a launcher at all). Since most launchers lack good element effect rates, they can't rely on fusions either (which is unfortunate because dual-wielding fusion builds are extremely strong). Additionally, most explosive weapons have a relatively low damage output against a single target, and require specific inscriptions or occult scrolls to compensate. Some enemies (and anything with the 'defensive' prefix) are very annoying to deal with if you can't land criticals or fusion effects (though some launchers can land crits). While Launchers can end up being powerful, they are an inherently restrictive weapon type that needs more support to do well by the lategame. Many people will probably pick Ao Bai just because they want to blow everything up. Taking the 'One Dog Army' blessing mitigates some of these downsides, though it also results in a very basic playstyle. He's definitely a weaker choice if aiming to play Re+7. Overall all of Ao Bai's weaknesses have become even more exaggerated and he did not get any significant benefits from the update.

I do not recommend Explosive specific ascensions at high Reincarnation levels because they are only viable with specific builds (such as damage gemini 'justice' or magazine gemini 'tiger cannon') that you cannot reliably expect to get. Explosive weapons are in the worst state they've ever been in as most lack crit scaling or elemental effects they have trouble keeping up with the high enemy HP scaling. (see the Spiritual Blessings section for details.) Ao Bai Spiritual blessings aren't that good, except for the newer 'One Dog Armor' that tries to put a band-aid over his other core issues. The burst damage protection talents in talent 2.0 are far less effective on Ao Bai because of his high HP:shield ratio. It's very sluggish to recover HP after taking multiple hits. Ao Bai's HP sustainability is now a serious issue when even the weakest enemies on Reincarnation+7 can break your shield in a single hit. *Added new sections to the guide, and updated the ascension ratings and descriptions.

Gemini spirit guide