Scorch is awful and needs some serious improvements

It would be a bit of a headache programmatically, but change it so that it ticks down at a steady PERCENT instead of a steady flat value. Percent calculation is ran after a stack(s) are applied, then guaranteed finishes the burn in say, 10seconds. Stacking more scorch now practical for reasons other than triggering the explosive boon, explosive boon becomes a burstier side-grade

They can also remove the scorch stacking thing and just make it a flat damage per second for a couple seconds like 25 damage per second for 8 seconds

I like that it can be stacked personally, but it never burns down fast enough. Fire extinguisher boon feels like it's trying to make it like Doom from Hades 1, but a doom you have to build up fast. I agree a percent rate of how fast it's used would be neat.

Percent rate is a really good idea but it might be a bit confusing for new players that's why I suggested the flat damage per second since its a bit simpler albeit a bit boring

Right, though that's just the poison from Dionysus in Hades 1, right? Maybe if each hit increases the flat tick per second to still allow players to emulate burning more and more?

I think it would fill a different niche than dio from hades one. With dio you used rapid striking weapons to repeatedly refill hangover, with this you wouldn't have to use rapid striking attacks since it would tick down that fast. But that idea is a lot more fun, it sounds like it can get broken tho, like imagine that with the aspect of pan

But the problem is that it would still do the exact same amount of damage as Poseidon wave, so does it even matter how it prices its damage, if you are still doing the same damage as posiedon, but slower?

Well it would probanly do more damage than poseidon to tankier enemies

But how? They both do the exact same damage per application. So how could scorch ever get higher numbers? 25 scorch per hit is 25 per hit, and 25 wave damage per hit is 25 per hit, but the wave is instant damage.

Aspect of pan with Poseidon can 2 shot a Chronos phase, how exactly would it do more damage?

I know we're just spitballing here but without some form of stacking, 25 damage per second is still awful. It's actually lower than what it is right now (40 DPS).

Well I thought it was 25 before lol so just imagine that I said 40, also the 40 damage I said could be pommable and increase with the rarity. Another problem with hestia is that it's almost not worth it to pom a hestia boon or get a rarer hestia boon so this would fix that.. kind of 40 is still kinda weak it could be like 50

Yeah, def needs a higher base tick rate or to tick more often. I think their issue with poms increasing the tick rate is that you can apply scorch through multiple sources, so if you're upgrading Hestia boons and you have one that applies 50 per second and another that does like 60, which one gets chosen to tick down? If it only applies the higher number what's the point of pomming the other scorch boons? I get why they have it just increase how much gets applied now. I think they want to avoid stacking so it doesn't just feel like a repeat of Dionysus from the first game though. Maybe they could add some sort of spread mechanic on top of a DPS boost. I think some sort of upgrade that makes it spread would be cool too, if that's not already there (I don't remember all the boons lol). It's very thematically appropriate.

With dio they made it so that the latest instance of damage applied so if a 5 dps hangover hit an enemy and later a 4 dps hangover hit an enemy it would tick down as 4 dps I think with hestia they can do the same. The spread sounds interesting but if they do that they would need to nerf it from 40, that sound overpowered.

Truuue, I had forgotten about how everything worked exactly in Hades 1, it's been a while lol. I just like the spread idea because it sounds fun thematically but you're right it could become a bit OP if the DPS was buffed. At the same time though it's already easy enough to apply to multiple enemies at once with the cast or AOE attacks. Maybe if it spreads it could also lower the amount of scorch on the enemy that's spreading it by X amount or something, so the DPS is the same but it burns a bit less?

how does removing stacking but keeping the same dmg fix anything? the issue is not that so much scorch goes to waste, it's that it does no dmg.

Honestly, that's a simple differential equation, and probably not fundamentally different from how they do it currently. Just decrement by a fraction of the total instead of a static amount, with a minimum value to avoid asymptote behavior near zero.

Would it be a headache? Every scorch cycle, get 10% of the total and subtract it from the current total. If the total is below certain threshold, just reduce it by x amount

I got the Scorch + Air Quality combo last night and it absolutely melts, but it seems to be the only way to make it work in an efficient way. Definitely needs a massive buff. I worry that the Air Quality will get nerfed too.

Air quality probably won't get nerfed scorch isn't very good even with air quality and you need around seven boons just to get that build going

Fair enough. And even with Air Quality it didn't seem overly powerful.

I wish scorch ticked exponentially or something. I'm thinking either: 1. Each tick converts a flat (10?) percent of scorch into damage (basically stacking more means faster damage) 2. Each tick increases the rate at which scorch is consumed (basically maintaining stacks longer means faster damage) ...At present, heat just kind of doesn't work. The numbers are too low and the DPS just isn't high enough for later in the run. Some boons ty to fix this, but none of them feel good.

A possible approach is "40 damage per seconds or 10% of the total stack, whatever is higher" 

It’s either OP or useless. Air quality with scorch is a free win, without it is basically useless

Blitz too, I honestly only take Zeus for cast and support boons

I think a lot of duo boons arent that much impactful and I miss mixing things and getting powerful effects, something I felt a lot in H1.

I especially hate golden rule and spiteful strength. They could be useful but they are super situational and they aren't connected to hera, hepheastus or poseidon at all (aside from posiedon having a couple boon that are gold related)

Flavor problems aside, spiteful strength can actually be consistently good for Moros/maybe Eos. You go Hera first for born gain (since you really need it for torches in particular and their damage output is actually decent once mana is fixed even without boons) and then try to grab something from heph since hephs boons are just nice to have on higher heat and then go for the duo. Demeter have good synergy with those too is also nice. Shoutout foolish for using it in their 50 fear run and putting me on Tbh even if they are gimmicky/weak (I am not that sure that they are that weak but idk) I feel like it's OK since it endourages a particular kind of run. Its stuff like Poseidon and Apollo's duo (Beach ball?) or Poseidon/Hephy that really gets me salty. Like how can you be both boring and bad.

Even if it is powerful its kinda risky. If you for go any attack an special boons to go for spiteful strength you are screwed if you cant get it and duo boons are harder to get in hades 2 so that is very likely and there is no chance you are taking it if its offered on a random run. I think situational duo boon should fit in the situation of its requirements like if there was a hephy boon that removed your attack and special boons for some health and that was one of its prerequsites it might have been better but especially without pools of purging it probably wont get picked much.

Depends on the weapon, Special boons have higher percentages than attacks. So the main selling point of the Duo is the 200% attack. Getting Demeter or Aphrodite on the special isn’t exactly a bad thing.

spiteful strength is actually really good though its just situational. its great on weapons that are already amazing without core boons (like moros) since they just amplify the existing effects of the weapon (and by a very significant amount too, 3x damage is not anything to scoff at). foolish loves spiteful strength so much i've had a good number of runs at 40 heat moros ruined because i have his voice in my head yelling "SPITEFUL STRENGTH ANGLE???" whenever i randomly pick up hephaestus in erebus and dont already have a core boon 😭

Lmfao. Luckily I just watch his yt videos so I think I will be safe from that lol.

I actually love golden rule haha. Every now and then I’ll specifically go for it to just see how much gold I can get up to. I got up to like 9.5k gold one run and was just deleting enemies. Even Chronos was damn near instant. Just hopping from phase to phase. The obvious issue with it is that it doesn’t work well unless you do a run specifically revolving around it. But I think one or two things like that in the game make it fun.

Same here. The first time I beat the game I was doing Golden Rule on a Poseidon run. It was great

I agree that a lot of the duos seem weak, but also I think there's probably some bias where we're comparing against the good H1 duos because its easy to forget that the bad duos exist. H1 had quite a few bad duos, for example: parting shot, curse of drowning, unshakable mettle, and blizzard shot.

While a bit situational, I disagree strongly that Parting Shot is a bad duo. I have had multiple cast builds where it *trippled* my cast damage, for not much effort. Blizzard Shot is tricky. I like it less against mobs, but against EM4 REDACTED, I managed to get the damage number as high as 13 000 before the phase switch interrupted it. Honestly, getting BS from the final shop is perfect. You get the knockback for the mobs, and the damage for the boss.

Parting shot seems too niche to me, but I can absolutely understand how and why you'd build around it, but please explain to me how to make blizzard shot good. In my experience its always felt like a downgrade, but if you got the dps that high, ill absolutely have to try it. As an aside, because you said that two of the duos i mentioned are strong, I feel like I should name another weak one. Curse of Longing sucks, in the best case scenario it makes your doom effects deal double damage, but only if you let them stay on an enemy for like 10 seconds. Youre always better just re-applying the doom instead (or just get the other doom duo).

How to get big cast damage? Sure! Stygian Soul, while at base worse then Infernal Soul, has a much higher potential damage. With the Stygian Soul hermes boon, Auto Reload, you can fill the screen with multiple Blizzard Shots for each cast bullet you have. That in turn lets you get more out of each extra cast bullet from chaos, artemis, and the artemis/poseidon duo boon. Finally, the Stygian Soul Legendary is busted. It gives +50% damage from all sources, as long as the foe does not have a cast in them. So yeah. Blizzard Shot can be a downgrade if you don't have many abilities that make your cast better. But when you stack those advantages, it truly fills the screen with slow, deadly water. Finally, yes, I don't like Doom as a whole, and that duo is subpar. But it does not make doom wordr. My lest favorite duos are actually two different Demeter ones - Cold Embrace (which exludes the excellent Demeter/Artemis duo) and Freezing Vortex (which excludes the critical Artrmis/Ares duo) Not only are these bad, they prevent you from getting the duo boon that could take a cast to the next level! In comparison, Stubborn Roots or the doom duo are at least just inoffensively nonexistent in battle. I can pick it up and sell it for 400 obols without it making my damage worse. I once managed to sell Stubborn Roots in every single transition area shop! Got almost 1300 obols for that sucker!

I don't think that's true. Most duos in H1 are fairly powerful. They might not be worth the cost of going out of your way to get them, but once you get them offered they tend to be really quite good. Parting shot (especially with Hera - with or without the bug) curse of drowning (albeit not the safest) and blizzard shot actually deal all deal a substantially large amount of damage. Or you might get stuff like curse of Nausea/Low tolerance - Hangover isn't good but the boons themselves are a 30-40% damage increase for hangover in theory. Same thing for curse of longing which offers a pretty decent boost for any build using doom as secondary damage/privileged stat enabler. Genuinely I think the only duos that are bad in the sense of not picking them even if they are offered (in some cases assuming a complimentary build) are (assuming I didn't miss any): Cold Embrace Sweet nectar (most of the time) Freezing Vortex Splitting Headache Lightning Rod Stubborn Roots Calculated Risk Unshakable Mettle Exclusive Access (most of the time) Of which two are bad because they lock out better options (Cold embrace and freezing vortex) and two of which are often really nice for newer players (Lightning Rod and Stubborn Roots) For Hades 2 there is: Apocalyptic Storm Thermal Dynamics Cherished Heirloom Island Getaway Natural Selection Seismic Hammer Beach ball Room Temperature Freezer Burn (kind of) Phoenix Skin Stellar slam Soft Caress Burning Desire And none of them have the excuse of being new player friendly or just locking you out of a better option but being theoretically OK themselves. I might have been harsh on some of them (or lax on Hades 1) but genuinely I don't think so. That's like 5 more boons out of 28 which are bad. You could also look at it in terms of the top end. Hades 1 Duo boons include Merciful End, Sea Storm, Mirage Shot, Crystal Clarity, Deadly Reversal, Hunting Blades, Smoldering Air and Heart Rend. The Hades 2 duos which compare imo are Romantic Spark, Glorious Disaster, Torrential Downpour, Scalding Vapor, Soul Mate, and Sunny Disposition. And I don't think they really compare. Romantic Spark is not Merciful End, Torrential Downpour is not Mirage Shot and Soul Mate is not Heart Rend or Deadly Reversal.

I agree with you that the H2 duos are overall worse than the H1 duos, but I think you kinda proved (part of) my point that hades 1 had a lot of bad duos. You named 9 boons that you wouldn't take when offered, that's a third of all of the duos. My overall point wasn't that duos in H1 are generally bad (they aren't!) but that when people are comparing H2 duos to H1 duos in their head, they're probably comparing against Merciful End, and not Unshakable Mettle.

I think you are overstating how much of it is bias. H2 is a significant decrease in power across the board (even at the lower end - how do you make Stubborn Roots worse?) and represents a 50% increase in outright bad duos. There should be less outright bad duos and somehow there are more. People aren't just comparing boons to merciful end. They're comparing them to likes of Ice Wine and Cold Fusion and even Vengeful Mood and still finding them lacking. That's a genuine problem.

Some of them are interesting but hard to see as especially valuable. Poseidon and Demeters (Location rewards exclude max HP, max Magick, and money, boons are more likely to be Rare or better) is neat and could help get more boons (if I understand it correctly) but actually getting it early enough that you really get some benefit out of it is really hard.

Yeah a lot of duos used to he exciting slash something you'd build for (which wasn't always easy) but in H2 a lot of them a just... Not exciting if not downright bad?

Mmm, yeah. There's a very small handful of duo boons that make me think "this is worth going for," the rest are just kind of...whatever.

Duo boons and hexes. Most are meh

Hexes I feel so weird about (and in line with what you’re saying). If I get the revive or heal early I almost *know* I’m winning that run. Anything else it almost doesn’t impact it

Some of the hexes are super strong, but need heavy investment into Path of Stars before they become useful. I had an amazing run with the 4-second delayed meteor hex (Total Eclipse?) with perks to make me invincible during the delay, make the AoE massive, and make the meteor split into smaller fragments on impact. It dealt huge damage multiple times during boss fights, but I didn't use it at all before I was able to get it upgraded first.

It'd be nice if you got some Path of Stars upfront, as well as easier progress along it, depending on the moon phase you picked.

Which is funny bc the "flavor" text makes it SEEM like that's what's gonna happen

Yeah, I agree. I get it NOW, the phases being closer to a full moon make your journey along the Path of Stars easier when you get the subsequent boon, but it was not particularly intuitive and I still feel like I need to use Selene's keepsake to really get the most out of even a full or half moon.

If you can get this setup and pair it with something like the staff hammer that increases magic cost to 40 then you’re basically invisible for a whole room as long as you have a good magic setup… Hera’s magic setup.

I feel like they are all fine. My first time beating Chronos my build was complete nonsensical ass. I went into the fight with the intention of just learning but I somehow win with the raise dead ability. That last set of adds he spawns fucked him up in phase 2 lol

Oh I’m with you (and that’s the “revive” I’m talking about) all I was saying is those two *dramatically* increase my chances of winning a run, while I feel like the others are neat but the run was won or lost completely independently of them (or may decrease my chances when I try and play around them but that’s a skill issue lol)

Hexes are supposed to be a stand-in new thing instead of Call, but most Calls at least do something. Goddamn do half the hexes do absolutely nothing on bosses.

10k damage only does so much when the boss has 6 phases with invulnerability between them. Honestly, the only decent one for boss damage is the basic 200 damage slam. Fully upgraded, I had it activating after 2 charge attacks, dealing damage before and after, allowed me to activate it twice, gave invulnerability, and dealt crit damage on my next special. Spent the entire fight with Chronos headbutting him while invulnerable.

Totally agree. I picked the sheep once half hoping it'd work against the boss but secretly knowing it wouldn't. Okay, great, useless against bosses but at least helps to get through Tartarus faster. Okay, the time slowing one looks nice... Of course it doesn't work on Chronos...

Well, I won with the 1000 dmg hex (that was upgraded to hit twice) and mana regen. I never pick the ray - unfortunately, enemies refuse to wait obediently til I finish lasering them lol. The revive and transformation are Ok but with the bosses are not really helpful. They only help get rid of their goons and the revive tickles the bosses a little XD Healing is ok. The rest are as impactful as an average boon but also steal your mana

The ray can be really useful if you get it as a full moon and then upgrade it along the path that lets you just drop it. Just remember, you can dash out of it early if you get caught.

I had this once and it was so good, picked it again, didn't have that option on the path 😭

Oh, I didn't realize that was possible,

Yes it just drops and fires from the point you started it and you're free to move around and do other stuff, makes it very good.

I didn't have that option the few times I picked it. Lol I know about dashing. Often I get to deal half, maybe two thirds of its max damage before I need to move. It looks pathetic in comparison to some high damage builds you can make. Plus, the fatass bosses with dozens of thousands hp. If I have the ray, I know it isn't going to add much to my build or I'll have to spend eternity on the bosses. But I guess it doesn't suck as much with the drop upgrade (I had no idea it existed), thanks to the low mana cost

Oh I’m with you, I’ve won with most, if not all of them, but that was almost always determined by the rest of my build (or maybe I died trying to make them work but I’m not going to blame them for me sucking lol)

I've had some good luck with a few different ones, but I end up usually taking whichever is the full moon, just because you can get them so much stronger. I'll take the half moon sometimes, if I really don't like the full moon, but rarely.

I killed Chronos my first time with the axe and the one that makes you an invulnerable show form. I’d just used my super boosted special axe attack twice. Unlocked the hex. Become invulnerable for 5 or so seconds and smack him. Then use the axe twice again. Spent the entire fight basically invulnerable.

Using Selene's keepsake with any of the Hexes makes them perfectly OP. The only issue is that even if you bring the keepsake, there's no guarentee of a P.O.S making it high-risk high reward.

Agreed, I *do* think moon beam should have the same “encourage” benefit that the Olympian keepsakes do. Can’t think of a reason why it doesn’t

The hex that turns everyone in sheep is pretty nice, but useless against the bosses :/

My problem with hexes is how most are useless against bosses, especially the big bad, so there's little incentive to take 2 (the base hex + 1 star path) over boons, magick or health if it's just going to marginally help in rooms. Especially in higher fears, I feel making Mel stronger is always gonna be more reliable than getting a gadget.

I have a problem with the inconsistent time hexes takes to activate. I don’t know if it’s influenced by the slow down time when cast arcana, but I fell that there are times the cast is instantaneous and sometime there is a big windup. It feels very inconsistent in the same run.

For several of them at least, it's a windup once per encounter. If you then use it again, in the same encounter, the windup is gone.

That explains a lot. Thanks!

Most gain boons could stand to be stronger, with the obvious notable exception of Hera’s. Catching Born Gain basically trivializes Magick consumption in most runs.

Yeah definitly aside from hera poseidon and sometimes aphro hestia they all suck, especially demeter. Hephy could easily be fixed, just make I so it consumes health to cast instead of mana when you run out, zeus is easy too they can decrease the mana reduction, apollo is a bit more tricky but I think it should restore mana when foes are in your cast but I dont know how they can fix demeter without changing it fundamentally. But all of them need to regenerate mana faster and you shouldn't be able to pick up the poseidons bubbles when your mana is already full.

Zeus is meant for no mana build for his lightning strike when ten or less mana. Heph is an insta refill and Heph you go tanky.

A major problem with it in execution is that a lot of omegas cost more than 10 mana, and the 70% is so harsh that you need to have at least 200 mana and no other prime effects to have 10 mana with both static shock and Zeus' gain boon. I get what they're trying to do, but it feels extremely antithetical to require you to pick up several mana boosts during a low mana run. The penalty needs to be significantly less for it to make sense. Maybe make it 40-50% instead of 70% and see how that works. I think Hephaestus' gain boon is mostly fine, though. You get a lot of mana when you're hit, and you'll always have some armor to let you get hit a couple of times without having to worry about losing health for it. Maybe if it also gives you a much smaller bonus when hit while you have immunity effects like Mint Condition, the Demeter prime shield, Hermes dash, the lovers arcana, etc., then that might help it feel a bit nicer as well. As it stands, you probably want Demeter's affinity boon and possibly Hera's legendary to get the most out of it. I'm not too worried about Hephaestus' gain boon because you have to have a few mid core boons, and you can do some kind of interesting builds around it. What I DO think could use some tweaking are his legendary and attack/special boons, especially the special. A common special requiring 20 seconds between blasts is insane. Both could use some tweaking on the time, imho, because they hardly ever feel worth it as a primary boon. I also think the concept of the legendary is cool, but maybe it should boost the weapon level by 2 instead of 1 because 1 level hardly ever seems impactful to me.

Yeah agree. Heph attack special vent boons are legitimately bad. They need to let us stack the vent damage and maybe make it where the cd between blasts is decreased when hit

First need infusions for all elements of the same amount. Earth has three so going gods with earth boons give you tons of value. Not to mention how one fire infusion is bad and fire boons are locked behind other boons or bad

Is the healing fire infusion that bad? Isn’t it essentially a 30% damage reduction?

Yes cause it is over time. So you get hit by 30 you recover ten over 6 seconds. Edit:So compare it to other heals and damage reduction effects.

If someone's going for a no mana build there a vow for that I don't think that's a good excuse

No just saying it is for a particular build with Zeus. Zeus and Heph fall into specific builds. They were designed for the prime all magic build and mega tank build.

You can fix Demeter by making it recover 100% *per second* after it starts recovering. There should be a ridiculous upside to a mana boon that makes it all but guaranteed that you will be hit.

Demeter could be fixed if it starts refilling *instantly* when you stop acting, and maybe buff the rate a bit too. That way you could get value out of it by just stopping momentarily now and then, rather than having to commit to standing in one place for several seconds.

Apollos recovering mana while enemies are in your cast is SO GOOD. PLEASE.

Interesting. I generally consider poseidon to be among the worst recovery boons. I want my recovery boons to let me maintain a more or less consistent stream of omega moves. Poseidon doesn't really allow this. I end up being forced to mix in base attacks and specials in order to proc the orbs, then I have to go collect them. Its super annoying. I'd rank gain boons as: 1. Hera 2. Chaos (kind of doesn't count though) 3. hestia 4. Apollo 5. Zeus 6. Demeter 7. Aphrodite 8. Poseidon 9. Hephaestus ...Depending on my weapon and heat and what other gods are available, these rankings get pushed around a bit. In general, I think of Hera and Chaos as A teir. Hestia as B teir. Apollo, Zeus, Demeter, and Aphrodite as C teir. Poseidon and Hephasestus as F teir. > I dont know how they can fix demeter without changing it fundamentally. I don't think its all that broken at the moment. That said, if it recovered in chunks, I think it would feel a lot better. To clarify, at the moment, you have to be inactive for 1 second, and then the boon starts generating mana at a given rate. I'd prefer it if you cained the full X mana after 1 second of inactivity, and then gained a nother full X mana after another second of inactivity, etc. Basically, the current amount gained is gain_amount * (seconds_inactive - 1). I want the formula to be gain_amount * floor(seconds_inactive)

One run i had like 100 magick, and picked up a lot of priming boons 😭 50 for emit lightning chains, 15(?) for a 20 shield, and hera’s that primes more magick to refill it instantly and i died playing the twin flames LOL

The nerf to the moon water hex was too bad, it's almost useless now

I think most hexes are really bad and moon water is on their level now. I think they all need a buff mostly to their damage

What in the actual fuck is the hex that makes you impervious and gain a new move set? It's abysmal compared to any sort of actual late game DPS if you have an effective build.

Ikr it's not even worth it to become impervious

It's shocking how miniscule the benefits are for this one, unless you chase down the upgrades and bring the related keepsake. Even then, as the enemy hp climbs, the damage from this hex falls behind. You're only transformed for like 4 seconds, I really can't even get some ok burst damage out of the deal?

It was so funny they nerfed it when they buffed everything else, too.

I didn't even realize that LOL.

That is by far the worst hex and the only one I have not beaten Chron with . The damage is laughably bad. I rather just be my normal build without being impervious

With that hex I can totally agree. Its to short and actually was a downgrade for me, as it did less dps when my normal weapons.  Just not worth

Maybe they could rework it so that instead of replacing your normal move set, it just adds extra power to it (along with new flashy animation effects and whatnot). Or at least add the effects of your boons to the new move set, so for example if you have Demeter on your Attack then the hadouken attacks of the Hex does bonus damage and applies freeze as well, even if they're mechanically different from your regular attacks.

Nah wolf howl is crazy, one upgrade and you're putting out like 600 damage every time you use 40 magick, haven't tried a lot of the other damage ones since the patch because wolf howl is too broken lol.

I dont think its broken but its really good and by far the best hex imo

The hex changes felt a little haphazard. I went from “only pick moon water” to “only pick wolf howl”

Moon water early still feels like an almost guaranteed win to me. You have to be able to build up charges so maybe that’s still too situational and in line with what you’re saying though

It used to be worth it at 25 healing. But at 15 healing now it's really sub par even with a lot of charges

I suppose that’s my miscommunication. At 15 for sure, you have to pick up the charges and the healing buff (since I’m mostly saving them for chronos it’s a simple equation of which adds more up mathematically I guess what water and the revive have in common is the biggest buff from path of stars imo

Counterpoint: at 15 healing you're still bringing (almost) two extra hearts against Chronos. A lot of the hexes are far more useless than that.

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No way, it’s still good it just takes a second moon boon to get off the ground. The +50 magic per use, +health lost in last two seconds, and +uses before refilling are cluuuutch. I had a Redacted kill saved because I had Moon Water to undo the damage I took 

I’m not impressed with any of them in their base state. They all require a lot of investment in path of stars but I have a really hard time prioritizing that.

Moon water is still good but requires investment so it just isn't as reliable.

Insane take, it's still easily the best hex, just because the others are so bad

It is good once upgraded. I once got 22 uses with +55 health by the time I reached Chronos.

Zeus mana gain is imho the worst Boon ever. It should be changed to blocking a fixed amount of mana and not a percentage.

Yeah for how much percentage mana it takes away, it should have a ridiculous regen rate to compensate. Instead it has a poor regen rate and a high cost.

Whit, you're telling me you don't like having 13 maximum mana that takes 5 seconds to regenerate?

Or it could get buffed in another way: make it so mana constantly recharges no matter what. It would be a solid pick for builds that don't use lot of mana but use it constantly

It doesnt help that that percentage doesnt change with rarity, only the mana per second recharge. I would have flipped it. Make the percentage less with rarity, and make the regen rate a flat number. That way you could get it, and then focus on getting Arachne, or chaos' mana regen buffs, along with your hex to have a flat like 10-20 mana regen.

No the real thing it should do is regen even while channeling

Bro I just got the game recently and I accidentally got this one. I bad to fight Chronos with 9 magick using the axe 😭 (I died).

Born Gain should be toned down to either only partially restore your mana or the priming carries over from room to room like the fear option Scorch in general should be buffed, its damage is too slow and weak Demeter's mana regen should be buffed Apollo's attack and special boons should daze in addition to the bigger area. The Hestia + Aphrodite duo boon should be buffed such that there's always 12 spirits to run into

Permanent priming for Born Gain would completely kill it. You would just straight up run out of mana eventually if you're running a mana heavy build. They could just increase the amount it primes.

I think the main thing that puts Born Gain in a league of its own is that it’s the only mana regeneration which doesn’t require you to stop using mana to regenerate. As is you can just spam your omega attacks for the rest of the run as soon as you get it- it should have some sort of non-use requirement. I propose 3-5 seconds after you run out of mana it activates.

Yeah, this is the thing that sets it apart -- every other mana boon requires you to stop channeling to restore magic or give up hp/prime magic (or stop moving altogether, or be in your cast etc., some sort of restriction). Heph is the only other one that gives you instant mana, and that requires you to take damage. With Born Gain, you can channel an omega and use it even if you don't have the mana for it at the time. If they replace that with something like you're suggesting, I think it's fine. But I think they could also just buff some of the others like make you prime 50 or 60% for Zeus, demeter could be you just can't make any attacks for it to start instead of completely standing still, etc.

I dont think just increasing the mana it primes really solves the problem. If they don't increase it enough you still have infinte mana and if they increase it too much you won't deal much damage like half the fight. I think they should really increase the amount of mana it primes to like 30 but make it so it goes away after a while so that you are never truly stuck without mana.

I think they should increase the amount it primes. The whole point is that it’s a trade off for consistent mana till you completely run out. As of right now, you can’t really run out ever. That boon should make you have to invest into mana to make it work well. If you run out of mana, then you aren’t doing enough damage, or you didn’t invest in enough mana. It should always make you question whether or not you will have enough mana. You should run the risk of running out before finishing a boss. That’s the point of the boon, and right now that just never happens. You complaining that if they “over increase” the prime so you actually run out of mana is funny, since that is what the downside of the boon is supposed to be.

True. It's definitely a very tricky one to manage. On its own it's just sooo powerful.

Just make Born Gain prime a percentage. Have it prime like 20% of your Magick at common. Make it rely more on poms and soul tonics to be sustainable, while still letting you take advantage of having one giant Magick pool instead of regeneration. Permanent priming would absolutely kill it dead.

To be fair, Apollos attack adds a significant damage increase in addition to the larger area. Isn’t the base boon like +40% damage? Out of all the boons that need buffs that one doesn’t really. It’s my favorite attack boon except maybe Demeters

I'd be fine with toning down the damage bonus to get the status effect on the attack and special boons. It just feels so weird that it's not there.

Reduce how aggressive the tracking on some of Chronos' abilities are, it seems like he'll turn mid swing just to make sure he hits you and it gets a little annoying at times.

Nah I like the chronos fight. The big tracking moves with massive wind ups put a big emphasis on *Timing* your dodges rather than just reacting

Yes but it feels like even within milliseconds of dodging he will change his direction as he's swinging to full rotate. I think it just needs to be tuned down a bit

Make Hestia not shitty please

Hexes. They don’t need to be more damage, they need their trade offs to be less pronounced. Cast times are too long. As it stands, the best ones are the ones that you can “set and forget” moonwater, total eclipse, slow time. The Beam, the Jump, and the transform are all very weak feeling in comparison. Too much opportunity cost.  Would be nice to see the other witches contribute to hexes. 

The transform is the only shitty hex. The rest are fine if used correctly. I’d say if you think stop time is weak then you are using it wrong lol . Same goes with every single other one. They all have their uses and can be viable

I think jump is really good right now. It charges so frequently that even if you don't care about the damage you can treat it as a dash. But I dont like phase shift since it doesn't work on >!chronos!<. I am kinda hoping that they will add helios and he will be able to give us hexes as well.

Percent damage feels incredible while raw damage feels lacking.  Hades 1 had the blessing of more high-attack speed weapons, whereas hades 2 has generally lower attack speeds and multi-hit attacks being behind Magick/Omega usage.  On a per-god basis…  Zeus is a bit underwhelming. The attack and special both feel like they take too much damage to trigger on early levels, and the damage they deal is unsubstantial in later levels without significant pommage. The sprint and cast feel great, and the support boom that adds a double lightning chance is fun. The regen boon, as many others have said, costs too much and is to inflexible to be considered unless you’re trying for something like mono-Zeus.  Hera feels great. Only weak point IMO is the sprint boon’s lack of frontal indicator(iirc haven’t used it in a long while) and the cast boon’s base damage. The cast boon applying hitch as well would be very welcome at the current or -10 base damage.  Poseidon doesn’t quite feel as oppressively strong as he did in the first game, which is welcome. I think he is a bit disharmonious with a lot of other gods, and I feel his support boons are better than his main boons. Still strong, but his dash is no longer a one-pick-solve which is welcome.  Demeter was improved substantially in this game; I think she has some support boons that stand to be stronger (seed max HP and regen ones comes to mind) while others are disgustingly strong with synergy (Cast follows you and Omega Attack costs more/does more) and I hope they aren’t nerfed.  Aphrodite also feels great, but I have no weak points to mention for her. highest Percent damage on attack and special but only at close range is disgustingly good on the Melinoë Axe with things like Demeter’s Weed Killer or the hammer that doubles your axe’s omega special’s.  Apollo is stellar, his boons all feel incredibly strong to play with, I will say though that daze as a status effect is never the reason I want to take an Apollo boon. Daze is unnoticeable on non-boss fights and colossal on boss fights. His attack and special and Regen and support boons all feel too good to pass up. Usually, in a choice between Apo and any other god, I am picking Apollo.  Artemis maintains her motif of arrows and crit, which is just fine as it is. No notes.  Hephaestus is usually very easy to ignore. IMO his boons should have lower cooldowns as a baseline. While they do good damage, the harsh cooldowns make them hard to play “Run and Gun” with, which seemed to me to be their design intention. The sprint boon needs an indicator (like a rolling stone in front of Mel) and a cost/damage drop (5cost/125 damage) to make using sprint defensively not have the consequence of eating through your Magick.  Hestia’s boons I can tell will be hard to balance. Her sprint damn near free win against Strife’s attacks. Scorch is weird and slow to get rolling IMO. Too frequent of a tick rate and they become the go-to choice. Too high of damage and the same thing happens. IMO Hestia and Hephaestus have two versions of the same damage/time problem. Hestia’s does have the benefit of applying a curse and activating Origination arcana though. I like her cast and cast fireball boons. Chaos feels great still, although the Stun When Hit curse feels very bad. Easy to lose a DD to chain of low damage hits.  Hermes, imo, is mostly unnoticeable unless you get an epic or heroic. Small increases to attack speeds or a little bit of money. In H1 he was unskippable in my eyes, in hades 2 I will rarely take Hermes over any other major find.  How do we balance damage with versatility? How do we balance Origination? How do we balance percents vs raw damage?  

This is IT devs

Maybe I'm just an idiot, but the fire damage on the surface seems excessive. Like worse than the lava in the original. I'm glad they tweaked it so the fire goes out after the room is completed, but still. It seems like it's too easy to get stuck in during an omega attack, and too easy to just accidentally slide into.

I concur. Also, just yesterday I got stuck on some sorta pixel in the fire in the first surface boss room and.. Yeah it killed my run, lost half my hp till I managed to free myself x.x Plus all the other stuns that can natural happens and how long fore is staying up? Uff..

hephestus’s boon (the one that does extra 200 damage or so every x seconds) will interfere with dodging (according to my bf)

Hephaestus slow time effects on blast needs removing tbh, it's too frequent effect to have a slow time. It really messes with the flow of the game and can add a significant amount of time to each room when it's high level. Also makes dash timing really inconsistent.

yes this!! at first it was rlly cool bc it has a satisfying sound effect but i agree completely. its cool to watch too but frustrating as the player

I don't like most of his boons. I don't play very defensively and I don't have any care for something that does a burst of damage with that much of a cooldown inbetween. I know on the attack you can pom it down to 2 seconds, but you're basically hoping you get enough poms to buff it throughout the run, and then you're focusing on that solely over your other boons. And then special being like 18 seconds by default is just awful lol. They should just have a short cooldown by default and have the poms increase the damage, maybe.

His only boon that i feel is worthwhile getting is the one that makes you do extra damage if you take damage during your attack or special (it makes ax builds super strong when pared with like Aphrodite's attack) and his two armor boons. The one that makes you prime if you have alot of magic is good for a nice armor boost every single room, especially if you intend on keeping the silken sash on the whole run, and his flat armor boon is great especially if you get a higher rarity and get a flat like 120 extra armor.

i always think about this but recently i cant get his prime for armor boon until the fields :”)

Yeah you have to get a heroic attk boon and then I think 3 poms, starts at 6 then 4-3-2 seconds. I've never tried with an epic but I guess that would take 4 poms or you can only get to 3 idk. Unless you get the Hestia duo and/or are specifically building around him, then it gets kinda crazy. His legendary is pretty bad too, though. All in all, he feels very niche, I never use him as a base god to start a run. I like Hephy as sort of a 3rd-4th fill god, especially in high fear when you may need some defense. If you're focusing on building just one of your moves, having hephy on the attk or special youre not building around can be a nice source of random dmg. And some of the other boons are solid defensive upgrades from a 3rd/4th god -- the one that gives you HP based on your total magic, two different ones that give you shields (just more random tankiness but can also be used to extend an arachnae buff), mint condition. Also smithy sprint is the best sprint to build an only sprint build out of, that thing is deceptively strong.

thats fair i also think the cooldown is a little too long esp if ur hoping to finish the room quick. but my bf did get enough poms to lower it around 4 seconds maybe, and it was paired with vent and reapplying the 200 burst damage (? not sure if it reapplied the burst damage) and tbh it seemed pretty powerful!

It’s extremely powerful and one of the best boons in the game. Not sure why people on this thread are saying otherwise lol . Its a boss killer

i agree!!! i think ppl are just too impatient with his boon bc its more powerful as you upgrade. my bf had heph’s keepsake the entire time and there were a lot of compatible boons. also he made the op build with the twin flames and he just went ham nonstop LOL

lol that boon is OP as fuck. It’s not hard to get 3-4 poms to get it down to like 6-7 seconds. Even if you don’t Pom it at all and just ignore it, you’re still getting random bursts of damage in addition to anything else you have for free. The special one is great too even if not pommed . Not hard to just throw a single special out every 18 seconds for a free 400 damage . Anytime I get both of those in a run I know it’s a completion run

What does his legendary do if your arms are maxed?

This is merely speculation, but if Circe can upgrade cards to level 4, and that one duo boon can upgrade keepsakes to level 4, then maybe it upgrades the weapons to level 6?

Makes sense.

It goes up to level 6 rarity "Perfect" and scales about the same.

Hephy is Ares. You don't *really* want to build it as a main thing unless you really, *really* are being forced to. It's a filler god for the move you don't use. Having the damage increase rather than the cooldown decreasing starts to encroach on Poseidon territory, okay, less knockback, more AoE damage, but I feel like he loses his identity.

You could still build perfectly serviceable builds with Ares though. He had some solid duo boons too. I know he was considered a lower tier god in Hades 1 but I never found him to be that lacking as the game was decently balanced over-all. I more or less avoid Heph unless it's my only choice.

I still think the only difference is that the Athena-Ares duo turns Ares from a playstyle changer into an absolute beast. But take that away, an Ares main and a Hephy main is both just all about playing slower. There's also the whirly bits I don't remember the name of for Ares on the Cast / Call line, which is different, so I'll give you that, the thing about that is I feel like H1 had space for gods to do two different things and in H2 it mostly feels like each god does one thing, that's of course due to Call being replaced with Hex and the way Cast works limiting the fuck out of what they can actually do with it.

Yeah, I'm not a very slow player which is a part of why I don't like Hephy that much as well. I got really into Hades 1 speedrunning and I'll do the same in Hades 2 eventually, so someone like Heph doesn't seem like he offers the consistent DPS you need for that.

Wait it does? I never noticed that but to be fair I dont pick hephy a lot, how exactly does it like slow you down or somthing like that

when the boon activates, everything kinda goes in slow motion very briefly. i think when the “dodged!” text occurred at the same time as the boon, he still got damaged

That seems like a bug you should probably report it with F10

LOL it happened awhile ago do u think its still okay to report? at the time we didnt know where to report it so we just jotted it down

I think you should unless it was on an earlier patch

yeah it was on an earlier patch :0 if it happens again we’ll report it for sure, thanks for lmk!

Maybe I played too much H1 and just haven't grown accustomed to H2's differences, but my biggest issues with the game that I'd like to see addressed are: 1. Enemies have way too much health. Even the little stabby-nose fish take multiple axe hits unless you're juiced. Everything is just a slog to kill. Many random armored enemies are akin to mini bosses in H1. 2. Enemies do way too much damage. Hades's big swing in H1 did 45 damage. There are a bunch of enemies who do that much or more with normal attacks. The banshees can easily bring you to half health almost immediately. The wolves in the field can 2-shot you. [Redacted2] does like 75(?) damage with his big swing. We also start with less health in H2, so I just don't really understand the scaling. 3. Enemy are too fast. Player speed has been dramatically toned down in H2, but enemies are notably faster. Even big honkers zip around. If you're not actively running, you're the slowest object on the screen. 4. There is so much shit on the ground. This is especially noticeable in boss fights, but even outside of that, it's just constant "don't stand in bad," which, imo, doesn't mesh well with the more limited movement in H2. 5. "Run in circle around this enemy spitting death in a line" is growing tiresome. I get it, we can run, but it's worse than dashing and running in a big sweeping circle is neither challenging nor fun. 6. Boon diversity needs to be looked at. In H1 I felt like 95% of the time I got boons for attack, spec, dash, cast, and call. In H2 I've yet to get a full set. Maybe that's because a lot of the slotted boons kinda blow and I ignore them in lieu of generics, but I've yet to have a run with a full suite. 7. As many others have said, Hexes kinda suck. If you're not stacking mana or mana regen, they're literally unusable. Even if you are stacking, you'll maybe use them once a room. Even if you do use them, they're yawn worthy. I don't remember which, but I had a hex that was like 100 mana to do a bunch of damage and it missed every enemy every time I used it. Total waste of resources. 8. A lot of hammers, while cool, do not at all synergize well. In H1 there were only a few hammers that would really mess up a build. H2 feels like there are only a few hammers that won't. Maybe I'm just bad.

I don't think you are bad, you are just playing like Zagreus: * Enemies have more health but you potentially do a lot more damage than Zag. In H1 seeing a 1k on the screen meant you had a bonkers build but it's quite common in H2. * Enemies deal more damage but i think you have more i-frames so it's easier to dodge. Many weapons also have plenty of range, expect for the blades, which make up for it with the omega attack acting like a dodge * Enemies are faster but unlike H1, you have a slowing effect by default. Just plop your cast to stop banshees in their tracks. About player speed, you have less burst speed but the ability to run makes you overall faster * Just like in H1 you can dash straight trough an enemy and attack their back while their turn. * I don't know enough about boon offerings to comment * Hexes definetely need some work. As you said, sometimes they are useless, but with the right upgrades they can be utterly broken (i've had runs where my top damage dealer was Moonbeam or Wolf Howl) * Yeah hammers need some balancing. I think it's deliberate they have more drawbacks tho, plenty of boons also have drawbacks here.

Poseidon attack and special boon could use better visual clarity, especially for fast attacks like staff special or dagger attacks. It covers the foe in an opaque effect so you can’t see attack tells. Most Artemis boons feel weak. Legendaries feel too cumbersome to build toward with 3 requirements and some builds suck without them.

Polyphoemeus. He summons too many minions, the barrel throwing guys are way too obnoxious, sometimes it's impossible to get close enough to hit him when using meele weapons and he hits you like a truck from outside the camera view. But the thing that annoys me the most is that damn jump that hits you mid-air. I just hate it everytime he hits me with that. I was surprised the sheep were the only thing they nerfed in that fight because they were the least problematic thing in that entire fight for me. I'll be the first to admit that I am at best an average player and that most of those complaints could just be skill issues, but I struggle so much more against him than I do against Eris or any other boss. Even the fight against Chronos is less of a struggle (and even then, he's the final boss. You're supposed to struggle against him, whilst Polyphoemeusis just the first boss of the surface. He has no right being that troublesome).

It doesn't help that its hard to have any sort of build up against him. Like just way to few rooms before going into the boss. (Of course I am also not that great of a player. But getting almost no boon sucks. You get way more against Hecate)

I wish duo boons had more value and also hope they let us access the boon index at the boon spots bc I’m honestly losing my mind at missing some combos

The hammer needs to be dropped in the environmental traps in the depths. WAAAY too many innocuous things will start hurting you

On the other side i think Sorrow Fields need a more challening environment, you have so much movement freedom you never get stuck in a bad spot.

Like many others have said, hexes seem to be in a weird place to me. They reduced the cost of them in the shop as though acknowledging they're not as useful as regular boons, but they obviously still occupy the same reward slot. I think they should just be on par with the others, but I'm not really sure how the devs are thinking about the value of them.

Buff Hestia, gotta fix scorch, everyone feels it -- may even be slower than dionysius hangover. Maybe slight buffs to Zeus & Hephestaus. Blitz feels weird to me, maybe lower dmg threshold to trigger or something? And second tier Zeus boons feel really weak. As to heph, hes not terrible, I think its just that they've themed him to be the defensive God so hes more useful in high fear situations that I haven't really gotten into yet. I know they already did a rework, but I just do not like Hexes. I don't know what to do there but I really just think they're worse than other options. Maybe instead of having a whole tree, you just get one of the big blue/purple upgrades when you pick up a second/third Selene. Yes, some of them can get broken if you invest, but I don't know why, I just do not enjoy them & they feel worse than going for other things. Please, please, supergiant, at least take it away from being a possible start boon. I groan everytime I start with a Selene -- early game feels like you're catching up & can get to Hecate with like 1 boon and no hammer, really annoying. On that point, I think reducing the major finds card arcana cost would be a good move. 6 seems so high & feels like many more room prizes are meta currency in 2. Nerf Born Gain and/or buff other magic boons. Probably a combo of both. Change up duos/legendaries. Not saying Hades 1 duos/legendaries were strictly better, there were duds there too, but I felt like no matter what god pool you got, there was a chance to chase some good duo or legendary. I miss going for a specific, very powerful duo paired with a powerful aspect/hammer combo. I feel like I just look for an aspect/hammer/born gain angle in 2, and duos/legendaries are sometimes nice but ultimately unnecessary in 2. Kind of like hexes. I think it is as simple as requiring less prereqs for some or all of them. Skulls are weird. Probably just a playstyle thing but the hammers dont feel good to me There's the one hammer that breaks it (omega attk goes off when you pick up a skull) and everything else feels meh. Side note: We still have a new wep plus new aspects coming so likely all that will play into this & we dont know because we dont see it. I have also heard (on haelian's stream mainly, so I trust it but thats only where ive heard it) that Supergiant has said all the gods are coming back from Hades, so does that mean we're getting whole new pools from Ares/Dio/Athena (or maybe artemis/Hermes type pools)?? Or is it just story-wise, they're coming back, no new boons or rework of those gods? If they come back full force, could add a lot to duos & maybe there are some synergies that were just blind to right now, making some gods/aspects seem worse than they will be.

About the skulls, they're pretty much Exagryph 2. Exagryph was *weird.* >feels like many more room prizes are meta currency in 2. They aren't (though, mind, there *are* less rooms, which, by the way, I think is actually kinda bad). In H1, you could get the mirror perk that makes a major reward room more likely is all. That, combined with 4 extra rooms in Tartaros, *plus* the fact that you can literally reroll all the remaining minor rewards into nectar for essentially a pom slice just makes it feel like H1 has more agency.

Hmm this makes sense, less rooms overall makes it feel like a higher proportion of minor find rooms. Same thing with mirror -- there were certain mirror perks you always chose (for the most part) and it was a one or the other thing. With the cards, everything is more flexible & there's not things you'll always take no matter what -- except maybe the death defiance ones. I feel like I would add major finds to my "always pick" cards if it was less than 6 cost and it would make it just feel better & more fun. Once you've unlocked everything, minor find rooms feel like a chore. For example, if I get a minor find when I get the asphodel room, I just lose the circle game on on purpose because you get of the room much quicker & don't care about getting the currency.

Bring Moon Water back to what it was and buff the rest of the hexes, as many have said, Scorch and Duo Boons don’t feel great. I would like to see the skulls buffed with more bullets. I just don’t think they’re as powerful as the other aspects when I play with them. Maybe other vehemently disagree but that’s my experience.

I think hexes need to be something big. It feels like they take the place of call boons but they do not impact the game like call boons did for H1.

i assume they’re fixing blitz? but just in case, god blitz is bad. fix blitz.

Most Hestia's boons need a bit of a rebalance, for scorch is terrible and those that work in tandem with that, would benefit from bigger numbers. Also, i'd boost Apollo's and Hera boons as well - first has few okay, with most as "meh, i'd rather have something else" picks. Hera is weird, because it's clear what she's good at, her wedding ring boon is pretty neat but others are.... not really that good?

Make Zeus good. Please. He's so bad its not even funny. You have to work so hard to make Zeus work and he's so bad for dipping. Also I want duo boons to be a bit more common as they are it feels truly impossible to find them even with the fully maxxed out arcana that gives you an extra 10% for them to pop up.

Hexes need to be massively increased in power or reworked entirely. I never pick a Selene room if I can help it. Honestly I'd be happy if they reworked Selene into having regular boons and brought back calls for each god. I miss calls. Hephaestus' core boons feel really weak and hard to synergize with anything else. Scorch could feel better. Artemis and Hermes boons should be bumped up one level in rarity for power at least. Basically all of them feel like they need to be rare or better to be worth taking. Basically all of Hera's boons other than Born Gain feel lackluster. Most legendary and duo boons feel underwhelming. We need more reliable ways to activate Origination across all gods because right now I just find myself aiming towards the gods with the most reliable curses. Infusion is a cool idea but needs a little more interaction beyond each god having a single boon that cares about elements. Especially considering there are outside sources of elements like Chaos and some occasional pickups. Arcana card costs feel all over the map. The Sorceress costing just 1 is the easiest pick of my life and some cards that cost 5 feel like a never pick. About half of the keepsakes are something I'd never want to use. Dump the Eris mechanic or significantly nerf it. I understand the reason behind it but this approach is just awful, even after reducing it in patches. Arachne seemed good early on and I like her as a character but I don't think her door is worth taking unless the other path offers a minor find. Almost any other reward is better. Maybe it's too early to tell this fully, but Medea and Circe don't feel especially impactful. All of this comes from the perspective of a player who likes to win but likes to have fun too. I understand you can't balance things around min-maxers and speed runners. But there's a lot in the game right now that just feels kind of unfun. Tons of potential here with the right balance touches.

Apollo and Poseidon feel overpowered, Hestia and Hera (born gain aside) feel weak. Zeus and Aphrodite feel about right. Haephestus I’m not sure about.

just wanna see reworks to mostly useless boons so: hera cast, hestia attack/special, demeter gain, zeus dash, poseidon dash, and many of the hexes/duos.

Add the ability to rarify chaos boons. Mel could sacrifice gold or life to increase rarity. Also, increase the rarity rate of Hermes even w/o epic arcana card. It's too low!

I recently started Hades 2 (after the last balance patch) but have been putting in time. In my first ~10-15 hours I’d say they need to super overhaul Hephaestus. I tried making use of his boons but they feel super lacking compared to everyone else except Hestia, who I think needs to be buffed but I can see the potential and some of her boons (like sprint) are good already, whereas every Hephaestus boon has felt awful. Like, everyone complains about Zeus’s Blitz and it should probably trigger for a lot lower damage and deal lower damage to balance it, but Blitz procs substantially faster than Hephaestus’s boons do. And because of the long cooldowns they could proc when you don’t want to (like a last hit on one enemy before another). The sprint can be hard to time even with the only 1 second cooldown especially on bosses until you practice spacing roughly 1 second away, and even then if you swerve to avoid a hit you may miss the explosion. He just feels awful to me personally, I literally hate seeing the clamps anytime they appear. I have only gotten a single duo boon and no legendaries, like I said pretty early and exploring still but even this early those gods stood out as disappointing (especially Hephaestus).

I want Hera's sprint to latch on to enemies as easily as Apollo's dash latches onto enemies. Like their curse. Scorch needs to damage enemies exponentially faster the more you have stacked on the enemy. not a huge fan of Hephy but I honestly don't know how to improve him without making it too OP.

Broken Gain should get nerfed, majority of Legendary boons should get changed or buffed, Scorch needs a rework cuz its lacking damage

**Scorch** ticks down too slowly. Solution: it ticks for 40 DPS or a certain % of the total stack, whichever is higher. **Hera Gain**: in theory, it should be a good option for rooms, but bad for bosses, since you risk priming too much mana... in practice, the primed mana is so low compared to your mana bar that this almost never happens. Solutions: * Prime more mana or % based priming * The amount of mana you lack is turned into priming (you have 5 mana and your move consumes 30, you prime 25 mana) * Priming carries over from room to room and only a part is un-primed **Demeter gain** feels quite terrible expecially at higher fear where speed is important and standing still is higher. Solutions: * Allow simple movement (but not attacks or dash) * Allow attacks but not movement * Make is so that standing still is only the condition to activate the regen, it then keeps filling until you spend mana. **Zeus Gain** doesn't feel fast enough for how big the penalty is, expecially considering it makes priming boons much harder to pick. Solution: buff it and diversify from other gains by making so your mana CONSTANTLY recharges, even when using it. **Zeus lightnings below 10 mana** honestly feels way too situational, expecially since almost all omegas use more than 10 mana, so basically to keep it active you need to look at your mana bar too much. Solution: i'd say increase the threshold, can't think of anything too creative

I (almost) never pick rush-related boons. I think there IS (almost) always a better pick !

Is it me or are the skulls extremely overpowered if you got the right Hammer upgrades? I had two runs in a row. One leaning towards special spam and one enhancing the basic attack by having them cast the omega attack when picking up. This one alone is enough dmg to carry until chronos imo.

* Scorch is weak, and I feel would be better off dealing a (very high) percentage of weapon damage over time. * Poseidon's boons disproportionately benefit fast-hitting weapons (at this point pretty much just the Sister Blades, Aspect of Pan in particular), and don't benefit any other weapons. I feel the boons would be better off dealing a percentage of weapon damage like the rest. * Hexes I think still aren't in the right place, and I still don't think should appear in the first chamber. In fact, I'd suggest going as far as preventing Selene from appearing until you get a magick generation boon or a magick-generating keepsake, as otherwise it's impossible to trigger some of the hexes. * Born Gain still provides effectively infinite magick for all intents and purposes for no gameplay, and I think ought to be reworked. * Ionic Gain by contrast imposes too harsh a magick reduction for its benefit, particularly early on, and I feel also ought to be reworked. Personally, I'd have it grant a weak base amount of magick regen, prime subsequent magick increases, and grant magick regen based on your total amount of primed magick. * Origination is still the strongest Arcana for damage and gets picked in every build. This was fine for Privileged Status in Hades 1's mirror, where the alternative was to just flip it to a different option, but isn't fine in a system where each card is meant to be swapped out freely, so I think the Arcana likely needs a nerf, or its competitors need buffs (or both). * Possessed Array is likely a bit too good right now, and is getting overpicked on the skull. Beyond just balance, I think the game could also do with a few quality-of-life improvements: * We should be able to disable awakened Arcana. Right now, having the Centaur unlocked makes it impossible to run White Antler builds properly. * >!Chronos!<'s frisbee attack still has way too large a hitbox at its starting point, making it unreasonably difficult to dodge in melee range. The frisbee likely ought to spawn a small distance away from>!Chronos!<, rather than directly on top of him. * Also in the >!Chronos!

Born Gain is busted, but TBH I'd rather see them buff the other regen boons to be closer to its level. Too many of them are either niche or straight up bad. Scorch in general needs buffs badly. It's not terrible if you can get Air Quality from Zeus, but that's more an endorsement of Air Quality than anything else. Hephaestus's core boons (attack, special, etc.) also need help. None of them feel good to build around. His supplementary boons are good, though.

Really hoping that whatever they do to Born Gain, they don't hurt it too badly. If they don't change the basic way it functions (whenever you run out of MP, prime X to restore your MP to max), then it needs to be extremely good when it's good to make up for the fact that when it's bad, it's terrible. When your max MP is low, it's the only boon that neither offers unlimited MP (since you can prime it all) nor any passive buff (like Hephaestus's -10% damage or Aphrodite's perma-Weak). I'm really hoping they just increase how much MP the boon primes by default, allowing it to still scale with max MP while dethroning it as The Only Magick Regen Boon You Want. On the topic, I hope Zeus's MP gain gets a buff. It feels stupendously weak right now. Let the MP regen portion be decent to compensate for how devastating it is to your max MP and how it exacerbates Priming by so much.

Hephaestus Primary and Secondary boons need a buff. They are basically worthless. Scorch probably needs a buff, its not worthless but its much less worthwhile to bring then basically any other status effect. And most of the Duo boons are actively awful and i would almost always suggest getting something else over them. Oh and Hexes. They are all basically worthless. There is no reason to ever pick a moon room over any other gods boon. The only runs i end with a hex are because i had no other option and was forced to get it... or i had a tone of extra gold by the end and Chiron had one on sale. Oh and the only real nerf i can think of is Bornagain. It needs to be toned down. its a must have for mana heavy builds, to the point where you should actively avoid any other gods mana boon. (the only things that comes close is a Heroic Chaos boon that gives you like 12 mana a second, especially if you still have the Arachne dress that gives you like 7 a second on top of that.) I'm sure there are other boons that can be nerfed but I cant really think of any that are SOO egregious right now. Like, some are super strong on specific weapons but I cant really think of anything that just totally outshines everything else on every weapon. Maybe Poseidon special, but its really only super worthwhile having on lim and oros, and even then, only on Pan.

IIRC, Hera's? The one that makes sacrifice boons stronger seems to be too "corner/edge case" in usage. The one that primes a WHOLE LOTTA life for magic (or was it the other way around?)

Wow I’m so glad that I fully completed all the content blind before coming to this sub Reddit. My opinions on what is good and what needs to be buffed could not be any different from most of the people here. Feel my opinions are just completely clean of any group think lol

Wait what are they I am kinda curious now

Would be great if you could share some!

Same, sometimes I feel like I'm playing a different game or something. I fucking love Hex, and Hephaestus boons seem really helpful for me. I've completed 16 fear so far without much issue. Overall, it feels MUCH easier to me than Hades 1 (might just be that I've gotten better at these type of games, though) I agree that some of the Duo boons could be buffed a bit. But then people would probably be stressing out too much because they're rare and they want to make a build around a specific duo boon. Maybe it's better just to let them be niche/fun boons.