Light Flux Pauldron

Stat
 Skill Cooldowns
 Attack Speed

The **Light Flux Pauldron** is an lunar item in Risk of Rain 2, added in the *Survivors of the Void* expansion.

After all other cooldown reduction and attack speed modifiers are applied to the holder, this item reduces *both* their final attack speed and final cooldowns. Cooldowns are reduced by 50% (*-50% per stack*), while attack speed is multiplied by `1/(stacks + 1)`.

## Notes

* Correction: The in-game description of halving attack speed per stack is incorrect. Only the first stack reduces attack speed by half; subsequent stacks have a lower penalty.
* Because the Light Flux Pauldron's modification applies after all other changes, it makes attack speed bonuses less effective, and offers less of a cooldown reduction in the presence of other items that provide cooldown reductions.
* After applying the attack speed penalty, the game checks whether the value is less than 0.1 and sets it to that. Therefore, 9+ stacks will have the same effect on attack speed, assuming a starting value of 1.0.

## Tips

* can make good use of this item, as its utility skills (/) and  are not affected by attack speed. With a couple Light Flux Pauldrons, these skills can be rapidly used to great effect.
	+ However, , , and  fire much more slowly, making them much less reliable.
* is an excellent candidate for a Light Flux Pauldron because she is mostly cooldown-based. Her primary skills (/) see great benefit from this item: just one stack will nearly allow for continuous firing of either primary skill. Both  and  also benefit profoundly from cooldown reduction.
	+ is severely weakened because attack speed determines its number of damage ticks per second, making it the lesser choice over  when carrying any stacks of Light Flux Pauldron.
	+ Both secondary skills (/) charge much more slowly. The  is hurt worst, since  still provides the utility of freezing foes and executing low-health foes without needing to be fully charged.
		- Arguably, despite lowering their charge rate, a Light Flux Pauldron makes these abilities easier to use because they can be held for much longer without fully charging and automatically firing. To see any regular benefit from either secondary ability, it is recommended to take no more than one Light Flux Pauldron, as the charge rate and firing animation can become intolerably slow.
* sees mixed results with this item. His primary skills (/) fire as quickly as the player can click, but are still negatively affected since they will take longer to reload with lower attack speed. Although  can be used to give a nearly permanent uptime of stealth with just one stack of this item, it does not deal much damage. His secondary skills (/) and specials (/) can be used more often, but the reduction in attack speed hampers their usefulness by making the firing animations of all of these abilities much slower.
	+ The cooldown of his special skill (/) is paused while he is firing it, meaning that the benefit of reducing their cooldown is offset by the drawback of delaying the start of their cooldown.(This needs testing)
	+ already fully resets itself and all of his abilities (and fully reloads his primary skill) when it executes a target, making Light Flux Pauldron especially ineffective with this skill.
* Similarly to Bandit, ' kit changes drastically with this item. While it does hamper both  and 's rate of fire significantly and slows down 's startup animation, it does allow the player to spam their secondary, utility and special (particularly ) abilities much more often. Taking this item essentially sacrifices the effectiveness of proc coefficient-dependant items and sustained damage for extra mobility and a more bursty damage output.
* This item is excellent for  , as just a single Pauldron will reduce the cooldown from 40s to 20s. The cast time of his  will increase slightly, but is not that detrimental due to its limited use.
	+ Keep in mind that Captain's  will charge slower and have longer ending lag, however.
* This item is difficult to use effectively on Survivors that scale heavily with attack speed.
	+ Assuming  has no attack speed increases and a single Light Flux Pauldron, his  bullet count is reduced to a measly 3 bullets.
	+ 's , , , and  are all affected by attack speed.
		- Just one Light Flux Pauldron allows for permanent uptime of .
		- Although his special skills (/) can be placed or replaced much more frequently with the reduced cooldown, they will inherit this item and suffer from the poor attack speed. This makes them better candidates for strategies that rely on their disposability, such as using the .
	+ gets a longer cooldown and more bullets by stacking . While it may seem useful to reduce the cooldown again using the Light Flux Pauldron, the decreased attack speed makes it more practical to just use one stack of Visions of Heresy instead.
	+ signature  debuff leaves little use for this item, as hitting exposed enemies reduces skill cooldowns by 1 second. Even without this item, a skilled Mercenary player can constantly cycle through skills.
		- Using  isn't affected by the negative attack speed, unlike ; making Slicing Winds more preferable if you are getting Pauldrons.
		- Interestingly, by using more Light Flux Pauldrons, Mercenary will stay in his  and state for a much longer amount of time than normal.
	+ , , and  all fire much slower.  not only takes longer to charge, but also disables her weapons for longer.
		- scales with attack speed, changing the size of the perfect reload zone.
* isn't a bad pick with this item, as her  and  do not scale with attack speed, enabling incredible mobility. However, her barrier gain is significantly impacted, as  and  take longer to charge and  attacks slower.
* scales with attack speed, but can be immediately fired by sprint cancelling.  does not scale with attack speed, so the Light Flux Pauldron allows using both in quick succession for a very high damage rate.
* with just one Light Flux Pauldron can achieve greater damage per second early on with .  can be maintained 100% of the time with ease thanks to the Pauldron's cooldown reduction, enabling excellent crowd control and healing.
	+ However, the firing speed of  is reduced, which hampers its damage and self-healing over time.
	+ With enough Light Flux Pauldrons, the cast time for their utility skills (/) becomes high enough that REX can walk around during the delay between activating and actually firing the skill.
* is terrible with the Light Flux Pauldron, as all its damaging skills are affected by lower attack speed.  and  also take longer to cast, and have no cooldowns to begin with.

## Math

Skills' new cooldowns are determined by the formula `cooldown ⋅ 0.5 ^ amount`. Note that the minimum cooldown for most skills is 0.5 seconds.

The holder's final attack speed, however, is determined differently, with the formula `attackSpeed ⋅ 1/(amount + 1)`.

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## Lore

```
"The wind guides us all. Listen to the song of the wind, and dance according to its instruction. You will find yourself dodging every blow, countering every strike. You will find that the wind will lift you up, making you as free as a fallen autumn leaf. But heed, and do not lose yourself to the wind. Running is a viable option, though eventually you will find yourself with nowhere left to run to."

-Will of Combat, Second Excerpt
```

## Trivia

* The item's lore entry seems to refer to its function. Its reduction of firing rate will make fights generally take longer, but since the majority of survivors have at least one movement-related skill with a cooldown, the cooldown reduction will often make it easier to dodge attacks, and perhaps more notably, flee from unfavorable fights that may result from the player's reduced offensive capabilities. The last line of the lore seems to caution against relying on this hit-and-run style too much, as the limited size of each stage naturally means that the whole map could eventually fill up with all the enemies a player keeps running from.

## Version History

Survivors of the Void
* (Undocumented) Added New Item: Light Flux Pauldron

1. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k\_jbveqJwZY