Now, I'm not as clever as most of the people who play this game. I'm not as into the nitty gritty as many others with exact statistics or whatever. But, I have played quite a lot of the game, and with every character, and I believe it's fair to say that HAN-D isn't quite up to par when compared to all the other characters (minus the enforcer, who also needs work, but I really don't know if anything can be done with a character like him). Not that you can't beat the game with him (it?) or whatever, but he certainly has a much tougher time of it than other characters.
I'm not saying this because I love him or something and want him to be perfect, but because judging from what many people in the community seems to think, various tier lists, and my own personal experience, he just seems to come up short when compared to other classes.
I get that not every character can be equal to every other character. I understand that. You can't really make everything perfectly equal, and I don't expect that. Especially considering how so many people like using artifacts when they play, which completely changes the gameplay. However, in the game, some characters seem to have such massive drawbacks that render them practically without use when compared to other characters. The worst case of this is HAN-D. But this can be fixed.
I'd like to direct you to a recent character tier list one particular person called bkroo published in 2015. I'll copy and paste the exact part here for convenience, but it's a pretty good list to read anyway. Please take a look at the HAN-D section at least, as it contains much reasoning for why HAN-D needs help which I will not repeat. I highly recommend it. The character had not changes since this was posted.
http://community.playstarbound.com/threads/ror-character-tier-listing-for-v-1-2-8.98671/
F Tier (HAN-D)
* HAN-D
Boasting the worst set of abilities in the game, HAN-D is difficult to use for beginners and experts alike, and even with lots of practice, the effort to use him simply doesn't pay off unless you're purposefully looking for a challenge. His basic punch, Hurt, hits all enemies the punch connects with, but is ridiculously slow to start as well as recover from. Even with the knockback, it's very, very unsafe to use. Even more unsafe is Forced_Reassembly, his hammer attack. The damage is good (especially against Magma Worms, one area where HAN-D is legitimately capable of being impressive), but it has a tremendous startup time and doesn't inflict stun on enemies, meaning as with his basic attack, you can expect to get hit by enemies when using it. Sure, it knocks enemies into the air, but that doesn't necessary interrupt their attacks or prevent them from hitting you on the way back down! You basically need an Ancient Scepter for it not to suck (which gives it a stun effect it ought to have had to begin with).
In addition to two incredibly unsafe attacks, HAN-D can temporarily boost his attack speed and stun chance with Overclock by 30%, but without a number of attack speed buffs, his attacks will still be much to slow to be considered safe to use. He has no dodge move, with only Overclock providing any sort of defense in his arsenal, in the form of a movement speed buff that barely lasts for any time whatsoever! Instead, for survival, he has Drones, which he has to earn by scoring kills, and which restore a bit of health and do a bit of damage when used, but you can only stock up to 10 of them at a time, and when faced with larger groups of elite mobs who take a lot longer to kill, you can easily burn through your drones trying to keep your health up. They can be used to attack at range, but they're so weak that even firing off all 10 at once may only score only one or two kills. Being able to stock up heals is nice, but it's nicer still to be able to avoid taking damage to begin with, because if those Drones get used up during a boss or a mob of elites and you don't score kills to replenish them, HAN-D can really end up in trouble. In Multiplayer, HAN-D's a bit better, as any kills with earn him Drones so long as he's nearby, even those from other players, so it's easier for him to keep up a supply of Drones in multiplayer. It doesn't fix his issues, but it at least makes him a bit more survivable.
He's so slow that he's bad at melee, he's bad at defense, he's bad at hit-and-run, he's bad at staying alive... he's simply bad all-around. Instead of hoping for items to complement and improve his abilities, HAN-D needs items simply to have any chance at staying alive. As a consolation, he does have better HP regen growth than most characters as well as armor, but those don't do much to offset his incredibly limited set of abilities. Items like Frost Relics serve him well to quickly eliminate threats and boost his capability of maintaining his Drones.
If you choose to play as HAN-D, do so knowing you're handicapping yourself. When using him, don't merely sit still and try to keep enemies at bay with the knockback from your punches - that strategy will go sour when ranged enemies like greater wisps appear. Be prepared to use jumping punches to soar through groups and get some measure of evasion (as a lot of attacks can be jumped over). Also, instead of waiting until you're surrounded by enemies, try to time your uses of Forced_Reassembly to slam the hammer down just as enemies approach you and get in range. Another option is to focus on getting drones and keeping them alive by simply never getting close to enemies. Your naturally higher HP growth does help with drone survivability, and you can eventually build a stockpile of defensive and offensive items that allows you to take advantage of your melee without putting yourself at such risk.
* HAN-D, why do you have to be so slow? His hammer's fun to use, though. If Overclock's movement speed lasted throughout the entire time it boosts his attack speed, he'd be a much more competitive character, but his inability to safely reposition himself combined with his insanely laggy attacks makes me quite comfortable in saying he's the worst character in the game. There's plenty of folks who enjoy using him, and that's totally okay. He can do some pretty decent damage eventually, and build up some mobility items so he can actually escape danger, but he needs a ton of upgrading with items to get to that point.
A few other comments from older tier lists. Very little has changed since then except one minor buff to FORCED_REASSEMBLY which didn't really do much to help, seeing as the attack was still as dangerous to HAN-D as ever.
+Cons+
-Slow; No dodging frames
-Reliant on killing groups of enemies; often times that isn't an option
-Stun from C keeps enemies out of Z range
-Is very bad at fighting the final boss
"all the characters can make it work, but you're kidding yourself if you think HAN-D has just as easy a time making things happen as some of the other classes. If you don't have healing bots, fighting a Cremator is a pain in the ass, let alone an Overloading Magma Worm. Without attack speed (which your third skill only gives for like 50% of its cooldown time) your melee strikes aren't too great at keeping enemies at bay. Some mobile enemies like the winged lemurians and bees are tough to kill, and HAN-D isn't very mobile himself."
"HAN-D has a slow basic attack, but it is also strong and as a bonus it always has knockback (sand crabs and stone golems usually don't). Drones are good if you horde them, but he is pretty lacking on survivability without them. Overclock is a good way to buff his basic, but not enough to make him that good. FORCED REASSEMBLY takes too long to be good"
The first person obviously knows the game quite well, and gives a very well constructed explanation on why HAN-D fails when compared to other classes, as well as a few suggestions as to how they could be improved. The main points of it are that HAN-D is an incredibly unsafe character whose abilities (even his basic HURT) are largely dangerous and not as effective as other characters. His hammer should stun naturally, his speed buff should last the entire time rather than for a split second, the HP increase doesn't do enough in a game where you die super quick anyway, he lack of dodging is killer, his attacks are dangerous to do since they take so long to recover from, the overclock ability makes enemies move out of your hit range when you punch (I personally love the fact that HAN-D has knockback, but it can really backfire when using overclock), the boss is much more difficult without specific items ect ect ect. The others make good points as well, if not as in depth.
Personally, I think this person makes some pretty good points, and while mobility may not be the point of HAN-D, his moderate increase in power is just not nearly enough to offset the negatives compared to other classes that he deals with. Maybe making him a bit more powerful in all areas would at least give him some purpose, but there are better ways of fixing him.
If I could give a suggestion, making overclock give him some dodge time (invincibility), while also giving a longer speed boost, would really help. Also, allowing HAN-D to recharge at least a few drones over a period of time would be a pretty neat ability (maybe up to a max of 3 or something, with enemies needing to be killed to get up to 10, or maybe just up to 10 anyway without a cap). You know, so that killing enemies gave you drones, but they also recharged at a rate of maybe 1 every 10 seconds or something. The hammer (FORCED_ASSEMBLY) stunning naturally would be really helpful as well.
If that is too much work, then I suppose his damage could just be buffed by a reasonable amount, which would help make him not as awful, but it wouldn't fix his problems. The only reason I'm even stating this is because something needs to be done to make him better, even if it is a pretty unimpressive, easy solution. The previous suggestions would more than likely be a million times better if they were all implemented. His abilities don't need to be completely changed. Just slightly altered. Give HAN-D the recharge of the engineers mines for his healing drones, a second or so of dodging+continuous speed boost when he goes into overclock mode, and a stun for his hammer (while changing the ancient scepter effect for him, or just keeping it the same with just the shock), and he'd probably be golden and worth using over other characters, without being OP (and without even being close to top tier) or anything. I'm not sure if changing the knockback when using OVERCLOCK to be lower is a good idea or not, because while it is often annoying, it can also be useful, and it's super fun to punch enemies across the map, but the other stuff would benefit from change.
I'd like to note this is not an isolated case. In pretty much any tier list people make for the game, HAN-D, along with the Enforcer, consistently fall into the lower category on any tier list. Be it last, second last, and on occasion, third last. I understand that tier lists are subjective, but many of them give very good reasoning as to why they believe what they believe, so I believe there's value is listening to them.
While this isn't normal gameplay, I feel it right to mention that, In the few times I manage to play online on a server that people host (not friends, just strangers), people always use glass. From my experience, HAN-D is much harder to play on glass (as is enforcer). Once again though, glass is glass, not normal gameplay, but it's still annoying how some characters have a much harder time when the only main difference is less health and stronger attacks. I get that HAN-D is a type of tank class, but you can get killed so quickly in this game a bit of extra health doesn't make that huge of a difference, at least from my personal experience. The fact that his attacks are so slow don't help when a bad enemy spawn at the wrong time can completely screw you over because you take so long just to finish a basic HURT, and that since you have no dodge moves the slightest error ruins you in a second.
I also have a much harder time fighting against the final boss with HAN-D (as do some others), seeing as the only projectile attacks he has are weak healing drones, which get used up fairly quickly, and unless you get lucky with good items, his melee focused abilities puts him in serious danger considering providence is a melee attacking boss, and how he requires you to pretty much constantly be moving fast (which isn't HAN-D's strong suit). I basically find myself needing to get lucky with good items or stockpile on attack drones to have an OK chance. It's annoying since there's no way to recharge healing drones without killing enemies (which there are only 4 of in the final room, not including providence). Hence why I think that even a slow drone recharge extra would be pretty darn helpful.
I personally very much enjoy slow and strong characters, and I know that being slow is kinda the point of him, but HAN-D does seem rather disadvantaged to me after all my hours of playing. I would hate to see him just become another fast weak character, but there are other ways to fix him, as that one guy discussed, and in the ways I mentioned. Granted, you can still beat the game with him, but that doesn't mean a buff of some sort wouldn't do him good. I know some people who are utterly godlike at the game can do well with him, but to be fair, they can do even better with every other characters, because they are godlike.
Thanks for reading if you did. I know it's a lot of complaining to take in, but I really do love this game, and it makes me sad that there are characters that could probably be so much more effective with minor changes that would make them not be as bad when compared to everything else. I'm not even sure if the devs read these massive posts, but either way, I appreciate the time given to my words.
Keep on truckin'
NeonAbomination
Last edited: Jul 14, 2016
