Battleborn: Benedict

Benedict is a hero in Battleborn

Is part of the Peacekeepers Faction.

Bio[edit]

Brash and arrogant Benedict loves three things: himself, rockets, and himself. Though his left wing was crippled during the evacuation of his homeworld, Benedict is still capable of limited flight, raining down rockets from a high vantage point.

Characteristics[edit]

Agile
Pusher
Advanced

Unlocks[edit]

Rank Unlock: Command Rank 10

Challenge Unlock: Win 5 matches as a Peacekeeper

Abilities[edit]

UPR-SM23 Rocket Launcher: Benedict's trademark rocket launcher deals heavy damage in a wide explosive radius.
Hawkeye: Fires a rocket that deals 187 damage and targets your enemy for 3 seconds. Subsequent rockets home in on targeted enemies.
Boomsday: Launches a player-guided missile that deals 750 damage. Reactivating the skill in-flight triggers early detonation.
Aviant Exosuit: Benedict's battle armor, heavily augmentable to support combat mobility and damage output.
Liftoff: Launch Benedict skyward for a strategic advantage or a hasty withdrawal from combat.
Flyboy: Jump again in the air to double-jump. Hold the jump button to glide for a limited time.

Helix Tree[edit]

Option 1	Level	Option 2	Mutation
Liftoff now launches up and backwards	1	Hawkeye's target effect lasts 1 second longer.	Hawkeye's rockets deal 50% more shield damage
On activation, Liftoff pushed enemies away	2	On activation, Liftoff slows enemies for 1 second
Increase basic rocket launcher reload speed by 30%	3	Increases rocket propulsion speed by 25%.
Activating Hawkeye instantly reloads Benedict's rocket launcher	4	Hawkeye now launches 3 rockets in rapid succession.
Grants a second air jump	5	Increases in air gliding speed by 25%	Using off hand basic attack mid glide causes Benedict to divebomb to the ground, dealing damage and pushing the enemy back. This ability has an 8 second cooldown.
On activation Liftoff damages nearby enemies for 133 damage.	6	Homing rockets deal 20% more damage to enemies.
Increases rocket launcher blast radius by 45%.	7	Lowers rocket launcher blast radius by 20% but increases their damage by 18%.	Holding down primary fire allows Benedict to fire two rockets at the same time.
Reduces Liftoff's cooldown by 25%.	8	Shields begin to recharge immediately after using Liftoff
Reduces Hawkeye's cooldown by 25%.	9	Increases Hawkeye's rocket damage by 15%.	Increase Hawkeye's blast radius by 50%.
Increase Boomsday blast radius by 100%	10	Activating Boomsday again mid flight causes your guided rocket to fire a volley of smaller rockets	Upon detonation, Boomsday leaves behind a scorching area of effect dealing 480 additional damage over 8 seconds.

Gallery[edit]

Strategy Guide/Tips[edit]

Benedict takes time to learn. Sure, it's easy to spam rockets but flying properly takes time.

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You excel at minion/structure damage. This means that you'll usually be on the front lines pushing waves of minions into enemies and protecting them while destroying enemy turrets.

RELOAD ALL THE TIME! You'll still be in moments where you'll have the perfect kill ready and no rockets in your launcher, but as a general rules of thumb try to reload as often as possible rather than waiting until your clip is empty.

You take no damage from your own rockets. Even from your ridiculous Ult. Know what that means? RUN UP ON SOMEONE AND ULT THEM RIGHT IN THEIR FACE!

Liftoff is much more versatile than people think and is extremely important to master. While on the surface, it just lifts you higher into the air, this move actually has a lot of uses, including...

1) Protecting you from melee-oriented characters that sneak up on you. You'll come to appreciate this next time Rath/Kelvin runs up on you and stuns you.

2) Allowing you to cancel animations to move quicker - the best example of this is his Divebomb ability (Rank 7 Helix mutation). When you divebomb and miss, he hits the ground and is stunned for about half a second, but with Liftoff you can bomb and takeoff with no wait inbetween.

3) Drawing aggro. Floating in the air with those big obnoxious wings and that big obnoxious rocket launcher creates a lot of attention from enemy players. This can be advantageous for your melee allies, since enemies now have to choose between looking up and shooting you or watching the ground.

4) Acting as a third (or fourth) jump. You can jump, glide, jump again, float some more, and then Liftoff to look "Majestic as hell!" as Benedict himself puts it. Not only does this look awesome, but it makes you a much harder target to hit in the air and allows you a better angle for blasting fools.

Practice flying around, even when you don't really need to. You need to be comfortable with all your aerial mechanics to be successful including gliding, hovering, and jumping to reposition in the air.

It'll take some time before you're really all that effective. Until you hit around level 4, Ben feels somewhat clunky with his long reload times and stiff flight.

Hawkeye rockets initially do LESS damage than your normal rockets. There are helix traits to remedy this, but it's important to keep in mind. When you have a target locked, you have time to fire about two rockets before the lock-on fades.

Hawkeye rockets do NOT take up your normal ammo.

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SUGGESTED TRAITS

- Persistent Projectiles (Until you gain the mutation for Hawkeye rockets doing more shield damage. Evasive Patterns is nice but ultimately unnecessary)

- Make some Room (The knockback again helps when you're pressured by melee characters and can be comboed behind your melee attack for an expanded pushback.. Probably will get patched though, because it's strong enough to knock Gralls out of the map atm.)

- Ready Rockets (Tested both this and propulsion speed and the reload 30% speed boost is just so much more useful that I'd argue it's near crucial.)

- A Murder of Rockets/Rapid Reload (This really depends on how the rest of your traits look. I take Murder of Rockets - Fire 3 hawkeye rockets instead of 1 per skill use - because of the Mutation trait that makes Hawkeye rockets do more damage to shields synergizes well with this. Rapid reload is better if you prefer to add more traits to your regular rocket shots or did not take Ready Rockets)

- LEVEL FREAKING 5! Alright, now we get shwifty. All three of the potential traits here are great and have uses depending on your playstyle. The triple jump is great for close-quarters fights where you can keep leaping over your opponent's head and fire down on them AS WELL AS reach parts of the map that you wouldn't normally be able to with just double jump (liftoff notwithstanding). The glide speed 25% boost gets you the hell out of danger so fast that you're bound to make some angry kid say "Goddamn Benedict always running away arrghhhh!"

But Dive Bomb (Character rank 7) takes the cake for me.

This takes some devotion to Benedict to unlock, but Dive Bomb essentially gives you a 4th skill to play with. It makes it so that you can get your Peregrine Falcon on and dive down on enemies out of a glide (hit Melee while gliding) dealing massive damage (about 3 rockets worth) and a bit of a knock back. This move is great for securing kills or escaping, as Benedict zooms across the battlefield a decent distance. The angle is surprisingly lenient too, allowing you to cross a pretty wide distance rather than diving straight down. The downside is that if you miss, there is a little period of vulnerability when Ben crashes into the ground, but you can actually manage to "cancel" this crash animation by activating any of your other skills. Obviously Liftoff is best for this (and looks cool as hell diving down on someone and taking off instantly) but readying your Hawkeye rockets also cancels the animation.

NOTE: YOU CAN CANCEL HAWKEYE ROCKETS WITHOUT SHOOTING THEM BY PRESSING L2 (PS4)

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You should invest in some health regen equipment. Ben has rather lowish HP, so it helps to have some HP regen for once your shields are shredded.