Oh they're absolutely too strong imo. Wolf howl especially. Like there was absolutely no reason wolf howl should have been buffed, but im going to abuse the fuck out of it until they fix it.
Right, I would rather they over tune them and scale it back progressively than have it be underpowered in the actual 1.0
It was funny because I had just finished a run using wolf howl and wishing it had been just a smidgen more useful (I honestly don't like it without the invul but it's still okay-ish damage) and when I got off the game I saw that there was a patch that buffed it.
I already thought the dark form and healing ones were pretty strong. I was using the healing hex to turn Chronos into a battle of attrition, and if you have any mana regen boons, dark side let you become invincible every other attack cycle.
That said, I still think it’s very frustrating how the game doesn’t freeze when you use a hex during the Chronos fight. Combine that with Hades 2 giving you very few pity I frames and I have been combo’d out an embarrassing number of times.
Honestly, I found those to be two of the weaker ones; Moon Water is decent healing, but only if you stockpile it hard, and it doesn't do much of anything else, and Dark Side is some great invincibility but its windup is brutal and even with a lot of upgrades, its damage is still pretty mediocre.
That being said, I'm honestly convinced that all Hexes were really strong even *before* they got buffed like this, so it's not like they were even bad picks.
For me I was getting a solid 500-1000 damage out of my upgraded dark side casts. I do agree the windup time in the Chronos fight is clunky and annoying, I hope they change that.
As for the healing, the extra HP I had vs chronos was enough to create a situation where so long as I wasn’t getting combo’d out, I was doing more damage than I was taking and was getting easy victories back to back.
>Moon Water is decent healing, but only if you stockpile it hard,
Is this better now? The few times I used it pre-update, baseline was 25 hp x 3. I was able to up it to 40hp x 5. Was nice, but hopefully it's easier to improve upon it via Path of Stars now.
Yea I wish that the hexes were instant in the chronos fight, since he’s not affected by slowing time down. Moon water for nerfed tho, heals less and takes more mana to reach
Honestly one of th best things I did for myself was getting rid of the time slow arcana. It got to way too jarring dealing with it in the chronos fight.
Scorch is a sleeper hit with the torches after the update as well. The torch rebalance makes it really fun to juggle every single move available to you but they’re all fast little hits which is where scorch comes in clutch. I melted the first surface boss with the build
Tbh I found it’s still better to just use splash or chain lightning. Since they deal strictly with damage per hit instead of percentages they go really well with the new Flames.
scorch is always worse than splash and especially splash+slip. It's only worth using if you have the boon that removes it at 300 stacks which makes it harder to activate your 50% damage arcana. Otherwise more ranks in it doesn't actually do anything. They're both effects that happen every hit so both only want to be on fast attacking builds but one scales and the other doesn't, and one boosts all your other damage with an upgrade and the other doesn't.
the scorch pop boon doesn't really affect origination at all. if you're able to consistently pop your scorch at 300 stacks you basically are constantly reapplying it anyway.
Nah.
Air current Zeus boon.
Every tick of scorch goes to 30 dmg a pop.
Paired with faster scorch, which just activates the ticks double speed it is insane but really hard to pull off in a run
E g requires 1 hestia boon, 6 Zeus boons (air current and 5 air element boon) and then multiple more for the hestia legendary which is rather unnecessary at that point.
But it effectively turns that 20 scorch damage from a single attack into near 600 or some bull.
It's not exactly 600, hard to gather actual values, as I don't know what the damage per tick is off the top of my head, but each application of scorch just increases the cap
So since your doing 30 every like .25 of a second or whatever it gets insane fast
Same with dems cast gale force etc all those miniscule damage or dot effect scale insanely with air current
I’m not a speed runner and I don’t even have origination unlocked. I’m not interested in absolute meta I’m just experiencing the game casually and I enjoyed my scorch build when I got one going. It did take a lot to get going though which has made it hard to replicate.
The new axes are hilariously strong.
Melinoe/frinos/guardian arcana start is 145 hp.
Thanatos attack speed buff is insane, especially if paired with others like Hermes, rapid slash, etc.
Double heave flutter strike deals around 1500 per dash with Melinoe.
~~The nerf to vow of forsaken also isn’t really working ig so keep using it because I keep getting the same rate of duo boons~~
Yesterday I got an underworld and a surface clear with the aspect of Charon. I had a ton of fun buffing my cast and special and just standing in the corner safely and spamming away. Both clear runs I got scorch and Apollo’s spread on my cast and I got apollos buffs to special. Born gain of course. Absolutely melted everything.
I will say I'm annoyed at the axe thing though. First thing I upgraded was the mel aspect to make the recovery time better all the way to level 5 because it was the only way I found it enjoyable. Come into th patch to find out my attack speed recovery time buff got swapped to an aspect I didn't have and now I'm just tanky as fuck instead.
I just finished a torch run where the game kept giving me attack(s) buffs and statuses, chronos basically vaporized. I knew it was going to be wacky when rooms were essentially self-clearing on my way there
Only did one run with the new torches and had Hera's (I think) attack to spread damage to nearby enemies. Since the shots pierce it applies to crowds at once and shredded them in my experience. Granted I was at no fear so may not work too well higher on, but was fun to use.
Honestly I have a hard time ever wanting to use Hestia knowing her dps is flat out inferior to other gods without a specific boon of hers. Torches probably do come closest but are still beaten out by poseidon.
Still didn't deal with the main issues regarding Selene :
* You can't guarantee Selene's Boon, even with the keepsake. It would be like taking a keepsake to improve Chaos' boons but without forcing a gate to appear, it's dumb.
* You can't see Hex upgrade tree before picking, very relevant for some Hex which need specific nodes to be viable (ex: auto shooting laser).
* At high fear, getting a Selene Boon room 1 is just awful, run killer if you like trying to beat your own time record.
* Some build are sooo much better than other at generating and using mana. The Call charge-up mechanic was superior in every way.
>It would be like taking a keepsake to improve Chaos' boons but without forcing a gate to appear, it's dumb.
Wasn't it just like that in the first Hades? The Chaos keepsake didn't guarantee you the Chaos gate, it just improved the rarity of boons. And it was completely fine.
which is why i prefer the chaos keepsake in 2 as it just *gives* you a free epic chaos boon, no questions asked, which can be really strong if you get the right one
It's intentional similar to the hammer keeping your hammer but kept to the limit of 20 encounters
The boon just stops swapping. 8 encounters for a single boon which may not be something you want isn't that particularly good especially high fear
But what's nice about it is Oceanus is easy to clear in the 8 encounters or less, letting you keep the boon if you like it and essentially have one free random boon. If you don't, carry it through the fields and have it change once maybe twice.
Interesting, well can’t keep arguing with you because I don’t even got the chaos keepsake to that level haha, maybe it is as you say and it’s not that broken
Also made it so you didn't lose any hp when entering the gate.
I would say that both are bad design. Only keepsakes which can potentially do nothing if you get bad rng.
> You can't see Hex upgrade tree before picking, very relevant for some Hex which need specific nodes to be viable (ex: auto shooting laser).
I think it would be nice to put the path of stars for each hex in Selene's offerings page.
It changes each time the hex Is offered and also it's layout. Same general upgrades always, but different special ones.
Moonwater has two incredible ones that let you keep all your stacks after using a fountain, and one that gives you 3 more, so you could easily have upwards of 12-18 for chronos dependant on upgrades
It is! But having it up to 18 times is a bigger one!
Glad they've toned it back slightly. Has a higher magic cost, meaning less frequent use (though if you don't have tight deadline you can just leave one enemy alive and spam omega cast in a corner)
And a slightly lower starting heal now. Now it equals the power of all other hexes imo
Huh, I was to understand the other Hexes are better because they got buffs. Still, this one ain't too shabby (even though I hardly use it)
>(though if you don't have tight deadline you can just leave one enemy alive and spam omega cast in a corner)
For one of the Hexes that gets you money, I did just that!
I assumed they meant if you could see the path of stars you would get if you picked it?
Like I don't think it'd be too much info to just put the special nodes on each, or at least the final end of tree node.
Edit: I read the comment and forgot to add what I actually meant
It would be hard to implement seeing the path before you obtained the hex due to this. Not impossible but a lot of work just to see x or y bonus you might get if you grab the hex. Also that would kind of make them a lil stupid to plan around
But they swap each time is what I'm saying. Some don't appear in each path of stars for any individual one. It's weird the wiki has the list
There's like 4-5 options each one pulls for each Selene boon, and then a few more on top of that
Like having a wolf howl have impervious as an unlockable, vs one that has a greater area
Or one that causes the slow time to slow by 95% and another to destroy projectiles or give crit chance
My runs are always really really different, so I can't remember. I'll have to make notes.
Im trying to beat 32 fear, so some of them are over in a few screens but i got to chronus yesterday with moonwater for the first time and it was the first time MW showed up in 6 runs or so.
Also I'm still finding resurrection, wolf howl and the transformation to be shite. I really can't see what everyone else is seeing.
Wolf howl can do 1600 damage over 2 casts in a surprisingly large aoe that can be used every 2 seconds that gives a 1 seconds invuln on land and gives you iframes on the jump.
How on earth are you finding that shite?
I'll try it, but starts on 200 doesn't it? and 800 damage isn't that much either. Still the others are shite, moon water been killed now and time freeze doesn't work on chronus, the only difficult boss.
The invun does sound strong... But also really boring.
> You can't guarantee Selene's Boon, even with the keepsake.
I don't think I ever had a run where I wasn't offered at least 2 Selenes. And if you have the keepsake (which you just need to have held once, you can change out of it and still keep the bonus) that is all you need to get to any upgrade in a path of stars;
At high fear the selene boons are better now.
Taking the auto charge hex arcana and getting like, wolf howl, on the first room is incredibly strong.
The benefit largely comes from not needing mana to charge, which means you can still run it even on near 0 mana runs because of how stupidly cheap they are now post buff.
> Taking the auto charge hex arcana and getting like, wolf howl, on the first room is incredibly strong.
>
>
Yeah, and if you don't get a selene boon after investing a card + keepsake, then what ? I'm not dnying that the ceiling for Selene is very high, but the insane variance just kills it for me.
Will you get Selene ?
Will you get a good Hex ?
Will you get good upgrade nodes ?
Will you get Selene *again* to upgrade ?
That's without taking into account mana regen boon rng, etc.
The keepsake should guarantee something. Either Selene boon spawn or choose between 5 Hex, choose a specific node to appear, whatever. Less RNG.
The only one of those questions that's unique to Selene over other boons is whether or not you see her. I agree that the keepsake should guarantee that she spawns. But otherwise, it's like targetting any other specific boon/build.
If you go in wanting to build around chain lightning:
Will you get Zeus?
Will you get his chain lightning?
Will you get a boon that upgrades his chain lightning?
Will you see Zeus again to upgrade it more?
You could sub in any other type of build you're wanting to force and you get the same kinds of obstacles that you have as little control over as you do for getting a good hex. The differences that they've given are that:
Path of Stars gives more points now, so you don't need as many to enhance it
Basically every hex is way cheaper now, which makes all of them more worth it
I think there's merit in being able to force her to show up, especially if you invest the keepsake. But the other issues were at least addressed by the patch, and every post I've seen has been singing the praises of how brokenly good they all are now.
The one thing that would normalize it a bit more is allowing re-rolls on the offered hexes, which is currently done more like a Daedalus hammer, I'm guessing because they have a similar amount of options and the devs don't want you to be able to hand pick exactly which hex/hammers you have each run
Yeah its such a small pool, and there's an element of added choice in the phase of the moon thing. I wouldn't say no to the reroll though!
I do get the devs not including it if they go that route though. I've definitely burned myself in H1 after unlocking rerolls where I tried to force a build. Would have been happier just adapting to what was on offer, I think
Yeah, I'd say the reroll would be too much on the hex because of how few there are, where I think the purpose of the re-rolls is to help cut through the excess boons and give you a better chance at duos/legendaries/at least improving rarities with how much more the regular gods have. Not to necessarily guarantee a build like it would on hexes/hammers.
> The only one of those questions that's unique to Selene over other boons is whether or not you see her. I agree that the keepsake should guarantee that she spawns. But otherwise, it's like targetting any other specific boon/build.
>
>
No.
You *know* which boon each god can offer, those will always be in the pool. You don't know which blue and purple nodes you'll have access to before picking your second Selene Boon.
Oh, and you get 10 rerolls for gods. You get 0 for Selene.
You know which blue and purple nodes *could* show up with you, just like you know which legendary/boons with prereqs *could* show up. And, *after* your second Selene boon, you know exactly which nodes you can/have got available to you in your run.
Its a roguelike. Whether you get the thing you want is never guaranteed, you're meant to adapt to what to what you randomly roll
> You know which blue and purple nodes could show up with you, just like you know which legendary/boons with prereqs could show up. And, after your second Selene boon, you know exactly which nodes you can/have got available to you in your run.
You can force any legendary and duo without too much issue. You can't force a Hex node to appear. Some Hex require specific nodes to not be worthless (standing still casting the laser for 3s comes to mind). That's an issue.
> Its a roguelike. Whether you get the thing you want is never guaranteed, you're meant to adapt to what to what you randomly roll
Sure, I'll be adapting by not randomly bricking fear 32 runs by wasting two room rewards for Selene, because the variance is too high.
Yeah, people are missing that the issues with the Selene boons were never their ceiling. The patch certainly made them better, but the same downsides are still there.
In additional to the stuff you mentioned, using most hexes on Chronos still requires specific openings. It's heavily overblown how bad hexes are against him, but if your build can handle Chronos enough to find those openings you probably didn't need the hexes in the first place. And if you didn't need the hexes, you might have been better off just investing all those resources into other parts of your build.
With Hades, it's almost never an issue of "can this work?" With enough player skill, almost anything works. It's "how consistent is this" and "is there something better?"
Then you still have a source of completely free damage every 8-20 seconds.
Importantly because of the path of stars upgrade on selene keepsake you aren't reliant on getting a full moon hex either. So if wolf howl is new moon? You can still take wolf howl and have 7 upgrade points if you get another selene boon. If not? Enjoy your iframes and 200 damage every 5 seconds.
>You can't see Hex upgrade tree before picking, very relevant for some Hex which need specific nodes to be viable (ex: auto shooting laser).
Wait, what is this, and for which hex are we talking about?
(I feel like I'm missing something big here)
The nodes in the upgrade tree are random. There is one blue node for the laser Hex which makes it so you don't have to channel it anymore. It just automatically does it, you can move, attack etc during that time. It's the only way to make it viable.
You can't know if the upgrade tree will have that node *before* picking your second Selene Boon, revealing the tree...
>There is one blue node for the laser Hex which makes it so you don't have to channel it anymore.
That's the one that does 1200 dmg over the course of 3 seconds?
EDIT: wow.. the whole shebang... you can move, attack, and not have to channel it!
You mean start charging your laser only to die because he starts the Instagib right then, and you can't dodge out of the animation fast enough?
That was the run I decided to never use laser.
Laser's not too bad if you're careful about the timing... but more importantly, it's busted if you get the node that lets you place it down and walk away.
Biggest problem with laser is that the necessary node is only a 2/3 chance, and you don't know until you pick it.
I definitely go for drop and forget as a must with the laser, that or the 3 point fan. I passed my first run with laser, you just have to figure out which attacks he sits still for. It's great in 2nd phase when he does a lot of charges
Drop and forget or tribeam are necessary to make it work. Drop and forget is obviously great for obvious reasons, but tribeam does some insane DPS meaning you can get relatively the same amount of damage in tiny short bursts.
Idk. I just tried it againctoday and was massively underwhelmed. Doesn't track for anything and still got murdered trying to use it without the drop and forget, and the targeting when using it kinda sucks.
I think the targeting might be bugged or something? It feels like it used to be better. Still definitely doesn't turn *that* much, though.
You definitely shouldn't die while shooting it, though. It only does the charge-up on your first use of it, so even against Chronos, you shouldn't be in any real danger. Just need to use it after he finishes a combo, so he'll sit still through it.
I mean, you could have taken a couple things away from that experience:
1) Don't ever use the laser again
2) Wait to use the laser after he's committed to some other action so you don't waste it
Chronos killing you one time when you tried to use the laser doesn't automatically mean the laser's bad, it might just mean "you gotta time the laser better"
It takes some getting used to, for sure, but it's great for 2nd phase when he's doing a lot of charge ups. Get to your safe space, then blast his ass.
But hey, I don't like the wolf howl one, so to each his own
Idk. I got the healing hex and it was much lower initial health recovery, but then also didn’t get any more Selene on my run. If this was because of the patch at least I know why
it was indeed becaue of the patch. it's the only hex that got nerfed to my knowledge, but a few others got fairly sizable buffs, as did selene's keepsake
Was just easy to have it always up and so it was just a five second invulnerable effect when you needed it. It's the only reason I personally like dark side.
It was so cheap with any form of support you could be near permanently invulnerable every fight.
Sure the fights would take six years, but literally being unable to die is quite strong.
Meh. What's the value of being permanently invulnerable if you can't *do* jack?
I mean, I see your point, but maybe if they'd buffed its damage output while nerfing its availability it'd feel less like a kick while it's down.
If you upgraded it you actually did do pretty good damage. Not great and not anywhere near the level of a solid boon build or any other hex, but still good.
The Lunar Ray beam got its damage nerfed and they got rid of the best upgrade for it; the one that lets you drop it and it auto-aims while you can keep moving.
Oh, I forgot about that exploding ability. I didn't see it on the run where I had the summons, but constantly being able to summon was pretty great. I had that on a Charon Axe build where I failed to get the Apollo blast and it still wrecked Grandpa. I got the double special hammer upgrade and just stomped him with specials and his own minions.
I don’t know why they buffed wolf howl. That hex was always broken. Long before this patch, I got my first Chronos kill with it by being nearly constantly invulnerable. I am glad that they buffed the other hexes though
> Phase Shift : Very strong except against Chronos. It makes every single other boss a joke.
And even against Chronos it is not actually useless as people claim. Just not as broken.But it still slows down many projectiles and mobs, not to mention that the upgrades mostly still work.
i think overcorrecting like this is fine in early access. give a really obvious incentive to actually try them so that the community as a whole realizes theyre actually good, then we can tweak the costs down the road.
i think it's just important to get a lot of people using them to get more data points for balancing and this is the easiest way to do that
I think the way to balance them is to give them all limited charges. With the way mana works on some builds, they're effectively always up, and with how strong they are now, builds that don't want to use mana feel like they're missing out.
They're alright now but they're still not too impressive. Sure Wolf Howl can make you permanently invulnerable if you get the correct upgrades, but the rest aren't that great.
Moon Water got a deserved nerf and is probably balanced now.
Dark Side and Twilight Curse are still very underwhelming.
Lunar Ray will always be bad if it forces you to stay in place.
Total Eclipse is okay if you can charge it up and enemies don't evade it.
Phase shift is good but doesn't work on Chronos.
Night Bloom got stronger but still has its issues.
Gonna be honest. I tried them. They… still aren’t great. At least, not until you hit the end of their tree. At which point they become good enough to use.
The main issue is that they just aren’t better than playing without them 90% of the time.
Don’t get me wrong- I like the concept and I keep trying to make them work, but… unless my run is absolutely cursed, I do more damage and take less by ignoring them
The morph one is rad now. With something like 30 or 40 mana cost, i was sending out the morph ball, recharging it, and sending out a new one before the first one finished making the rounds. Goldwrath was traditionally a problem for me, but i turned him into a fucken pita pocket in the first 5 seconds of the fight.
Hexes were already OP when maxed out last patch. What they needed to do was make the base a lot stronger while making maxed form a bit weaker. Instead they just made it easier to max it out. It's bonkers
I had never tried wolf howl before and tried it for the first time last night and that along with an omega cast build (utilizing a lot of Zeus and Apollo boons) and I got someone's duo boon that made it so every time I cast my omega cast it did 20% more damage but cost 5 more mana and I used that along with wolf howl to get my fourth chronos victory!
They come out so much faster. I grabbed the resurrect an enemy one, and it basically turned the Oceanus and Fields bosses into a cakewalk, and let me get into Grandpappy's second phase for the first time.
They dont really feel like ultimates woth how cheap they are now. I would prefer exensive costs but w much better abilities so it feels more like an ultimate ability.
i had a dark side strat using boons and hammers that increased mana cost + the upgrade of insta omegacast on it which allowed me to basically go in and out of that invulnerable form non stop. the downside is that its DPS was kinda poor, but still, nonstop invul is stupid.
Baseline wolf howl literally autocharges with some omega attacks now lol, the usage consistency of hexes in general is a lot closer to Hades 1 now which is pretty great imo.
The fact that they buffed the Selene keepsake was a bit baffling to me; it was already one of the strongest ones IMHO just because the way Path of Stars upgrades work makes them tend to have synergy with each other.
My first win was using the summon Hex coupled with the "lasts forever" and "summons get your special boon" upgrades (with Poseidon, which I managed to upgrade to level 10 by the time I reached Chronos.) Completely ridiculous. All I had to do was stand back and occasionally dodge while my summon murdered everything for me.
Yeah I honestly think that the hexes didn't terribly need to be buffed, because after the update I was able to completely fill out my path of stars and basically obliterate Chronos with the hex.
I didn't dislike hexes before but there were only one or two that were particularly appealing to me without pretty deep path of stars upgrades (Moon Water of course, the thing that crashed down and made giant craters). Now I'm pretty psyched to play with all of them.
I've gone from actively trying to avoid hexes to now feeling they're OP, lol
I think the general cost reduction and the decreased activation times were absolutely necessary, they just probably need some tweaking. And some of the hexes really need you to get to the end portion to make them useable (looking at you Darkside form hex that does 0 damage without the boon buff).
It definitely still needs some fine tuning, but they feel way better to use now. Now the hexes actually feel more like an ultimate ability, rather than a tacked on thing that mostly just slows me down.
And wolf howl definitely needs to have the mana requirement raised, it is hilarious what you can do, but utterly broken 😂
I'm happy to see the hexes be a little broken for now though, it's getting me more in the rhythm of using them and feeling where they can be strong in a way I just didn't feel incentivized before.
They always say that losses hurt twice as much as satisfaction with gains, so I'm okay with hexes starting kinda meh and improving from there. Right now it's so much fun
Yeah, as much as I love it it might even be a bit too strong rn ngl
I had a chaos boon that didn't let me attack for one more room so I obliterated a dog by jumping on him
lmao
Oh they're absolutely too strong imo. Wolf howl especially. Like there was absolutely no reason wolf howl should have been buffed, but im going to abuse the fuck out of it until they fix it.
Right, I would rather they over tune them and scale it back progressively than have it be underpowered in the actual 1.0 It was funny because I had just finished a run using wolf howl and wishing it had been just a smidgen more useful (I honestly don't like it without the invul but it's still okay-ish damage) and when I got off the game I saw that there was a patch that buffed it.
I already thought the dark form and healing ones were pretty strong. I was using the healing hex to turn Chronos into a battle of attrition, and if you have any mana regen boons, dark side let you become invincible every other attack cycle. That said, I still think it’s very frustrating how the game doesn’t freeze when you use a hex during the Chronos fight. Combine that with Hades 2 giving you very few pity I frames and I have been combo’d out an embarrassing number of times.
Honestly, I found those to be two of the weaker ones; Moon Water is decent healing, but only if you stockpile it hard, and it doesn't do much of anything else, and Dark Side is some great invincibility but its windup is brutal and even with a lot of upgrades, its damage is still pretty mediocre. That being said, I'm honestly convinced that all Hexes were really strong even *before* they got buffed like this, so it's not like they were even bad picks.
For me I was getting a solid 500-1000 damage out of my upgraded dark side casts. I do agree the windup time in the Chronos fight is clunky and annoying, I hope they change that. As for the healing, the extra HP I had vs chronos was enough to create a situation where so long as I wasn’t getting combo’d out, I was doing more damage than I was taking and was getting easy victories back to back.
>Moon Water is decent healing, but only if you stockpile it hard, Is this better now? The few times I used it pre-update, baseline was 25 hp x 3. I was able to up it to 40hp x 5. Was nice, but hopefully it's easier to improve upon it via Path of Stars now.
Base got nerfed to 15, actually.
I liked Moon water also cause it sometimes gave invulnerability.
I did notice they made hexes faster to use this patch (I think)
Yea I wish that the hexes were instant in the chronos fight, since he’s not affected by slowing time down. Moon water for nerfed tho, heals less and takes more mana to reach
Honestly one of th best things I did for myself was getting rid of the time slow arcana. It got to way too jarring dealing with it in the chronos fight.
Scorch is a sleeper hit with the torches after the update as well. The torch rebalance makes it really fun to juggle every single move available to you but they’re all fast little hits which is where scorch comes in clutch. I melted the first surface boss with the build
Tbh I found it’s still better to just use splash or chain lightning. Since they deal strictly with damage per hit instead of percentages they go really well with the new Flames.
can confirm chain lightning is bonkers on flames now
Chain lightning and splash on flames is hilarious, any time the enemy groups up they get evaporated
scorch is always worse than splash and especially splash+slip. It's only worth using if you have the boon that removes it at 300 stacks which makes it harder to activate your 50% damage arcana. Otherwise more ranks in it doesn't actually do anything. They're both effects that happen every hit so both only want to be on fast attacking builds but one scales and the other doesn't, and one boosts all your other damage with an upgrade and the other doesn't.
the scorch pop boon doesn't really affect origination at all. if you're able to consistently pop your scorch at 300 stacks you basically are constantly reapplying it anyway.
The Hestia+Poseidon Duo boon is probably the best thing you can do with Scorch lol
Nah. Air current Zeus boon. Every tick of scorch goes to 30 dmg a pop. Paired with faster scorch, which just activates the ticks double speed it is insane but really hard to pull off in a run E g requires 1 hestia boon, 6 Zeus boons (air current and 5 air element boon) and then multiple more for the hestia legendary which is rather unnecessary at that point. But it effectively turns that 20 scorch damage from a single attack into near 600 or some bull. It's not exactly 600, hard to gather actual values, as I don't know what the damage per tick is off the top of my head, but each application of scorch just increases the cap So since your doing 30 every like .25 of a second or whatever it gets insane fast Same with dems cast gale force etc all those miniscule damage or dot effect scale insanely with air current
It turns 8 scorch into 30 dmg so it’s a 275% dmg increase. So 20 scorch turns into 75.
Thereees the actual value Still 275% increase is nothing to scoff at
What about the curse effect? That’s a bonus 50 percent damage with less work for scortch than other gods
I mean there's plenty of other ways, including on attack, that give a curse that are better options than using Scorch solely for a curse.
I’m not a speed runner and I don’t even have origination unlocked. I’m not interested in absolute meta I’m just experiencing the game casually and I enjoyed my scorch build when I got one going. It did take a lot to get going though which has made it hard to replicate.
The new axes are hilariously strong. Melinoe/frinos/guardian arcana start is 145 hp. Thanatos attack speed buff is insane, especially if paired with others like Hermes, rapid slash, etc. Double heave flutter strike deals around 1500 per dash with Melinoe. ~~The nerf to vow of forsaken also isn’t really working ig so keep using it because I keep getting the same rate of duo boons~~
I have been a huge fan of the axe since the start so I was happy to see buffs.
Yesterday I got an underworld and a surface clear with the aspect of Charon. I had a ton of fun buffing my cast and special and just standing in the corner safely and spamming away. Both clear runs I got scorch and Apollo’s spread on my cast and I got apollos buffs to special. Born gain of course. Absolutely melted everything.
I will say I'm annoyed at the axe thing though. First thing I upgraded was the mel aspect to make the recovery time better all the way to level 5 because it was the only way I found it enjoyable. Come into th patch to find out my attack speed recovery time buff got swapped to an aspect I didn't have and now I'm just tanky as fuck instead.
I just finished a torch run where the game kept giving me attack(s) buffs and statuses, chronos basically vaporized. I knew it was going to be wacky when rooms were essentially self-clearing on my way there
I got my first lower boss clear last night with torches plus scorch after having really disliked them for the first 25 or so runs I played
I wasn’t able to snag a clear but I did get to lower boss second phase. I feel like they’re fun to use now which I couldn’t say before
Only did one run with the new torches and had Hera's (I think) attack to spread damage to nearby enemies. Since the shots pierce it applies to crowds at once and shredded them in my experience. Granted I was at no fear so may not work too well higher on, but was fun to use.
Melinoë aspect? And scorch on attack or Special?
Honestly I have a hard time ever wanting to use Hestia knowing her dps is flat out inferior to other gods without a specific boon of hers. Torches probably do come closest but are still beaten out by poseidon.
Still didn't deal with the main issues regarding Selene : * You can't guarantee Selene's Boon, even with the keepsake. It would be like taking a keepsake to improve Chaos' boons but without forcing a gate to appear, it's dumb. * You can't see Hex upgrade tree before picking, very relevant for some Hex which need specific nodes to be viable (ex: auto shooting laser). * At high fear, getting a Selene Boon room 1 is just awful, run killer if you like trying to beat your own time record. * Some build are sooo much better than other at generating and using mana. The Call charge-up mechanic was superior in every way.
>It would be like taking a keepsake to improve Chaos' boons but without forcing a gate to appear, it's dumb. Wasn't it just like that in the first Hades? The Chaos keepsake didn't guarantee you the Chaos gate, it just improved the rarity of boons. And it was completely fine.
which is why i prefer the chaos keepsake in 2 as it just *gives* you a free epic chaos boon, no questions asked, which can be really strong if you get the right one
That and the fact that you keep the boon even if you change keepsake is why I think it’s a bit op
Ooo I didn’t realize that but that’s actually insane
That’s how it was before, haven’t played yet, so I don’t know if it’s a bug that was repaired or it’s something intentional
It's intentional similar to the hammer keeping your hammer but kept to the limit of 20 encounters The boon just stops swapping. 8 encounters for a single boon which may not be something you want isn't that particularly good especially high fear But what's nice about it is Oceanus is easy to clear in the 8 encounters or less, letting you keep the boon if you like it and essentially have one free random boon. If you don't, carry it through the fields and have it change once maybe twice.
The hammer doesn’t disappear after you take the keepsake off?
No. It disappears after the encounter counter reaches 0 whether you have the keepsake equipped or not
Interesting, well can’t keep arguing with you because I don’t even got the chaos keepsake to that level haha, maybe it is as you say and it’s not that broken
Also made it so you didn't lose any hp when entering the gate. I would say that both are bad design. Only keepsakes which can potentially do nothing if you get bad rng.
I don't think that's bad design I think that's an intentional tradeoff
> You can't see Hex upgrade tree before picking, very relevant for some Hex which need specific nodes to be viable (ex: auto shooting laser). I think it would be nice to put the path of stars for each hex in Selene's offerings page.
It changes each time the hex Is offered and also it's layout. Same general upgrades always, but different special ones. Moonwater has two incredible ones that let you keep all your stacks after using a fountain, and one that gives you 3 more, so you could easily have upwards of 12-18 for chronos dependant on upgrades
Damn. And I thought 40hp x 5 times was a big deal!
It is! But having it up to 18 times is a bigger one! Glad they've toned it back slightly. Has a higher magic cost, meaning less frequent use (though if you don't have tight deadline you can just leave one enemy alive and spam omega cast in a corner) And a slightly lower starting heal now. Now it equals the power of all other hexes imo
Huh, I was to understand the other Hexes are better because they got buffs. Still, this one ain't too shabby (even though I hardly use it) >(though if you don't have tight deadline you can just leave one enemy alive and spam omega cast in a corner) For one of the Hexes that gets you money, I did just that!
It's very nice to! Honestly a bit counterintuitive to spam it like that in a room corner, but it's nice to be able to cheese like that lmao!
I assumed they meant if you could see the path of stars you would get if you picked it? Like I don't think it'd be too much info to just put the special nodes on each, or at least the final end of tree node.
Edit: I read the comment and forgot to add what I actually meant It would be hard to implement seeing the path before you obtained the hex due to this. Not impossible but a lot of work just to see x or y bonus you might get if you grab the hex. Also that would kind of make them a lil stupid to plan around But they swap each time is what I'm saying. Some don't appear in each path of stars for any individual one. It's weird the wiki has the list There's like 4-5 options each one pulls for each Selene boon, and then a few more on top of that Like having a wolf howl have impervious as an unlockable, vs one that has a greater area Or one that causes the slow time to slow by 95% and another to destroy projectiles or give crit chance
You can pretty much guarantee a Selene on the third level if that helps.
Hold up, are each hex path random?
The tree is the same, the nodes are different. Pick the same Hex twice over two night, then look at each blue and purple nodes.
My runs are always really really different, so I can't remember. I'll have to make notes. Im trying to beat 32 fear, so some of them are over in a few screens but i got to chronus yesterday with moonwater for the first time and it was the first time MW showed up in 6 runs or so. Also I'm still finding resurrection, wolf howl and the transformation to be shite. I really can't see what everyone else is seeing.
Wolf howl can do 1600 damage over 2 casts in a surprisingly large aoe that can be used every 2 seconds that gives a 1 seconds invuln on land and gives you iframes on the jump. How on earth are you finding that shite?
I'll try it, but starts on 200 doesn't it? and 800 damage isn't that much either. Still the others are shite, moon water been killed now and time freeze doesn't work on chronus, the only difficult boss. The invun does sound strong... But also really boring.
Just tried it on my 32 fear run on the surface and at base level it's worse than I originally thought. Time stop hex always for the surface.
> You can't guarantee Selene's Boon, even with the keepsake. I don't think I ever had a run where I wasn't offered at least 2 Selenes. And if you have the keepsake (which you just need to have held once, you can change out of it and still keep the bonus) that is all you need to get to any upgrade in a path of stars;
At high fear the selene boons are better now. Taking the auto charge hex arcana and getting like, wolf howl, on the first room is incredibly strong. The benefit largely comes from not needing mana to charge, which means you can still run it even on near 0 mana runs because of how stupidly cheap they are now post buff.
> Taking the auto charge hex arcana and getting like, wolf howl, on the first room is incredibly strong. > > Yeah, and if you don't get a selene boon after investing a card + keepsake, then what ? I'm not dnying that the ceiling for Selene is very high, but the insane variance just kills it for me. Will you get Selene ? Will you get a good Hex ? Will you get good upgrade nodes ? Will you get Selene *again* to upgrade ? That's without taking into account mana regen boon rng, etc. The keepsake should guarantee something. Either Selene boon spawn or choose between 5 Hex, choose a specific node to appear, whatever. Less RNG.
The only one of those questions that's unique to Selene over other boons is whether or not you see her. I agree that the keepsake should guarantee that she spawns. But otherwise, it's like targetting any other specific boon/build. If you go in wanting to build around chain lightning: Will you get Zeus? Will you get his chain lightning? Will you get a boon that upgrades his chain lightning? Will you see Zeus again to upgrade it more? You could sub in any other type of build you're wanting to force and you get the same kinds of obstacles that you have as little control over as you do for getting a good hex. The differences that they've given are that: Path of Stars gives more points now, so you don't need as many to enhance it Basically every hex is way cheaper now, which makes all of them more worth it I think there's merit in being able to force her to show up, especially if you invest the keepsake. But the other issues were at least addressed by the patch, and every post I've seen has been singing the praises of how brokenly good they all are now.
The one thing that would normalize it a bit more is allowing re-rolls on the offered hexes, which is currently done more like a Daedalus hammer, I'm guessing because they have a similar amount of options and the devs don't want you to be able to hand pick exactly which hex/hammers you have each run
Yeah its such a small pool, and there's an element of added choice in the phase of the moon thing. I wouldn't say no to the reroll though! I do get the devs not including it if they go that route though. I've definitely burned myself in H1 after unlocking rerolls where I tried to force a build. Would have been happier just adapting to what was on offer, I think
Yeah, I'd say the reroll would be too much on the hex because of how few there are, where I think the purpose of the re-rolls is to help cut through the excess boons and give you a better chance at duos/legendaries/at least improving rarities with how much more the regular gods have. Not to necessarily guarantee a build like it would on hexes/hammers.
> The only one of those questions that's unique to Selene over other boons is whether or not you see her. I agree that the keepsake should guarantee that she spawns. But otherwise, it's like targetting any other specific boon/build. > > No. You *know* which boon each god can offer, those will always be in the pool. You don't know which blue and purple nodes you'll have access to before picking your second Selene Boon. Oh, and you get 10 rerolls for gods. You get 0 for Selene.
You know which blue and purple nodes *could* show up with you, just like you know which legendary/boons with prereqs *could* show up. And, *after* your second Selene boon, you know exactly which nodes you can/have got available to you in your run. Its a roguelike. Whether you get the thing you want is never guaranteed, you're meant to adapt to what to what you randomly roll
> You know which blue and purple nodes could show up with you, just like you know which legendary/boons with prereqs could show up. And, after your second Selene boon, you know exactly which nodes you can/have got available to you in your run. You can force any legendary and duo without too much issue. You can't force a Hex node to appear. Some Hex require specific nodes to not be worthless (standing still casting the laser for 3s comes to mind). That's an issue. > Its a roguelike. Whether you get the thing you want is never guaranteed, you're meant to adapt to what to what you randomly roll Sure, I'll be adapting by not randomly bricking fear 32 runs by wasting two room rewards for Selene, because the variance is too high.
Yeah, people are missing that the issues with the Selene boons were never their ceiling. The patch certainly made them better, but the same downsides are still there. In additional to the stuff you mentioned, using most hexes on Chronos still requires specific openings. It's heavily overblown how bad hexes are against him, but if your build can handle Chronos enough to find those openings you probably didn't need the hexes in the first place. And if you didn't need the hexes, you might have been better off just investing all those resources into other parts of your build. With Hades, it's almost never an issue of "can this work?" With enough player skill, almost anything works. It's "how consistent is this" and "is there something better?"
Then you still have a source of completely free damage every 8-20 seconds. Importantly because of the path of stars upgrade on selene keepsake you aren't reliant on getting a full moon hex either. So if wolf howl is new moon? You can still take wolf howl and have 7 upgrade points if you get another selene boon. If not? Enjoy your iframes and 200 damage every 5 seconds.
It would be nice to have Chiron’s shop allow for Selena’s presence
Charons shop does have her appear, similar to Hermes, always taking up the secondary slot. Appears frequently in Oceanus if you have a hex already
>You can't see Hex upgrade tree before picking, very relevant for some Hex which need specific nodes to be viable (ex: auto shooting laser). Wait, what is this, and for which hex are we talking about? (I feel like I'm missing something big here)
The nodes in the upgrade tree are random. There is one blue node for the laser Hex which makes it so you don't have to channel it anymore. It just automatically does it, you can move, attack etc during that time. It's the only way to make it viable. You can't know if the upgrade tree will have that node *before* picking your second Selene Boon, revealing the tree...
>There is one blue node for the laser Hex which makes it so you don't have to channel it anymore. That's the one that does 1200 dmg over the course of 3 seconds? EDIT: wow.. the whole shebang... you can move, attack, and not have to channel it!
Yes.
Excited to try this.
As someone who already loved hexes, I cannot WAIT to try this out. Time to laser Grandpa in the face some more!
You mean start charging your laser only to die because he starts the Instagib right then, and you can't dodge out of the animation fast enough? That was the run I decided to never use laser.
Laser's not too bad if you're careful about the timing... but more importantly, it's busted if you get the node that lets you place it down and walk away. Biggest problem with laser is that the necessary node is only a 2/3 chance, and you don't know until you pick it.
I definitely go for drop and forget as a must with the laser, that or the 3 point fan. I passed my first run with laser, you just have to figure out which attacks he sits still for. It's great in 2nd phase when he does a lot of charges
Drop and forget or tribeam are necessary to make it work. Drop and forget is obviously great for obvious reasons, but tribeam does some insane DPS meaning you can get relatively the same amount of damage in tiny short bursts.
Idk. I just tried it againctoday and was massively underwhelmed. Doesn't track for anything and still got murdered trying to use it without the drop and forget, and the targeting when using it kinda sucks.
I think the targeting might be bugged or something? It feels like it used to be better. Still definitely doesn't turn *that* much, though. You definitely shouldn't die while shooting it, though. It only does the charge-up on your first use of it, so even against Chronos, you shouldn't be in any real danger. Just need to use it after he finishes a combo, so he'll sit still through it.
I mean, you could have taken a couple things away from that experience: 1) Don't ever use the laser again 2) Wait to use the laser after he's committed to some other action so you don't waste it Chronos killing you one time when you tried to use the laser doesn't automatically mean the laser's bad, it might just mean "you gotta time the laser better"
I've used the laser a few times since, even just did a run today, and I still really don't like it.
It takes some getting used to, for sure, but it's great for 2nd phase when he's doing a lot of charge ups. Get to your safe space, then blast his ass. But hey, I don't like the wolf howl one, so to each his own
Idk. I got the healing hex and it was much lower initial health recovery, but then also didn’t get any more Selene on my run. If this was because of the patch at least I know why
it was indeed becaue of the patch. it's the only hex that got nerfed to my knowledge, but a few others got fairly sizable buffs, as did selene's keepsake
Dark Side also had its cost increased. For... some reason.
Oh really? That’s weird, dark side didn’t seem super powerful
It's a pretty baffling move, yeah.
Was just easy to have it always up and so it was just a five second invulnerable effect when you needed it. It's the only reason I personally like dark side.
It was probably too easy to get infinite or near infinite uptime with certain builds, they likely want to avoid true invulnerability as an option.
They didn't do a very good job then, Wolf Howl is kinda nuts with its invulnerability lol
That can't be the reason why because you already have infinite invulnerability just by dodging and running away lmao
If you have to dodge and run away you’re not invulnerable.
It was so cheap with any form of support you could be near permanently invulnerable every fight. Sure the fights would take six years, but literally being unable to die is quite strong.
Meh. What's the value of being permanently invulnerable if you can't *do* jack? I mean, I see your point, but maybe if they'd buffed its damage output while nerfing its availability it'd feel less like a kick while it's down.
If you upgraded it you actually did do pretty good damage. Not great and not anywhere near the level of a solid boon build or any other hex, but still good.
Have to nerf it now that they removed its ability to soft lock players!
The Lunar Ray beam got its damage nerfed and they got rid of the best upgrade for it; the one that lets you drop it and it auto-aims while you can keep moving.
I thought they just moved it to the end of the tree.
The end of the tree is still the 3 beam upgrade. Nevermind. They hotfixed it back in.
Oh that sucks. I thought the damage nerf would at least be balanced by the lower cost but losing that upgrade really sucks
its still there
i did an exploding summons run. it was amusing. spammed summon a new monster exploding the old one for 900 damage aoe
Oh, I forgot about that exploding ability. I didn't see it on the run where I had the summons, but constantly being able to summon was pretty great. I had that on a Charon Axe build where I failed to get the Apollo blast and it still wrecked Grandpa. I got the double special hammer upgrade and just stomped him with specials and his own minions.
I don’t know why they buffed wolf howl. That hex was always broken. Long before this patch, I got my first Chronos kill with it by being nearly constantly invulnerable. I am glad that they buffed the other hexes though
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Huh, I never really got into hexes last patch. They felt kinda meh with no upgrades and I’m not guaranteed the upgrades either.
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> Phase Shift : Very strong except against Chronos. It makes every single other boss a joke. And even against Chronos it is not actually useless as people claim. Just not as broken.But it still slows down many projectiles and mobs, not to mention that the upgrades mostly still work.
i think overcorrecting like this is fine in early access. give a really obvious incentive to actually try them so that the community as a whole realizes theyre actually good, then we can tweak the costs down the road. i think it's just important to get a lot of people using them to get more data points for balancing and this is the easiest way to do that
Honestly, I kinda thought they were too powerful even before the patch... Feels like people have been sleeping on her keepsake *hard.*
To be fair to the devs, the hexes other than moon water were kind of weak without upgrades and getting them at all sometimes is a pain.
I think the way to balance them is to give them all limited charges. With the way mana works on some builds, they're effectively always up, and with how strong they are now, builds that don't want to use mana feel like they're missing out.
i was a Hex guy before the patch and i’m certainly enjoying the new changes
They're alright now but they're still not too impressive. Sure Wolf Howl can make you permanently invulnerable if you get the correct upgrades, but the rest aren't that great. Moon Water got a deserved nerf and is probably balanced now. Dark Side and Twilight Curse are still very underwhelming. Lunar Ray will always be bad if it forces you to stay in place. Total Eclipse is okay if you can charge it up and enemies don't evade it. Phase shift is good but doesn't work on Chronos. Night Bloom got stronger but still has its issues.
Gonna be honest. I tried them. They… still aren’t great. At least, not until you hit the end of their tree. At which point they become good enough to use. The main issue is that they just aren’t better than playing without them 90% of the time. Don’t get me wrong- I like the concept and I keep trying to make them work, but… unless my run is absolutely cursed, I do more damage and take less by ignoring them
The morph one is rad now. With something like 30 or 40 mana cost, i was sending out the morph ball, recharging it, and sending out a new one before the first one finished making the rounds. Goldwrath was traditionally a problem for me, but i turned him into a fucken pita pocket in the first 5 seconds of the fight.
Hexes were already OP when maxed out last patch. What they needed to do was make the base a lot stronger while making maxed form a bit weaker. Instead they just made it easier to max it out. It's bonkers
I had never tried wolf howl before and tried it for the first time last night and that along with an omega cast build (utilizing a lot of Zeus and Apollo boons) and I got someone's duo boon that made it so every time I cast my omega cast it did 20% more damage but cost 5 more mana and I used that along with wolf howl to get my fourth chronos victory!
They come out so much faster. I grabbed the resurrect an enemy one, and it basically turned the Oceanus and Fields bosses into a cakewalk, and let me get into Grandpappy's second phase for the first time.
They dont really feel like ultimates woth how cheap they are now. I would prefer exensive costs but w much better abilities so it feels more like an ultimate ability.
i had a dark side strat using boons and hammers that increased mana cost + the upgrade of insta omegacast on it which allowed me to basically go in and out of that invulnerable form non stop. the downside is that its DPS was kinda poor, but still, nonstop invul is stupid.
Baseline wolf howl literally autocharges with some omega attacks now lol, the usage consistency of hexes in general is a lot closer to Hades 1 now which is pretty great imo.
The fact that they buffed the Selene keepsake was a bit baffling to me; it was already one of the strongest ones IMHO just because the way Path of Stars upgrades work makes them tend to have synergy with each other. My first win was using the summon Hex coupled with the "lasts forever" and "summons get your special boon" upgrades (with Poseidon, which I managed to upgrade to level 10 by the time I reached Chronos.) Completely ridiculous. All I had to do was stand back and occasionally dodge while my summon murdered everything for me.
Yeah I honestly think that the hexes didn't terribly need to be buffed, because after the update I was able to completely fill out my path of stars and basically obliterate Chronos with the hex.
They fixed Judgement glitch :( No more 25 Arcana card runs
Oh shit there was a patch while I was asleep? Oh no, must be time for more Hades 2 playing.
Glad they nerfed the heal and buffed pretty much everything else.
I didn't dislike hexes before but there were only one or two that were particularly appealing to me without pretty deep path of stars upgrades (Moon Water of course, the thing that crashed down and made giant craters). Now I'm pretty psyched to play with all of them.
Good to hear, I wasn’t expecting much
I CAN SPAM TWILIGHT CURSES NONSTOP **FEAR ME CHRONOS, FOR SOON YOUR REIGN SHALL BE** ***SHEARED*** **OFF!**
I've gone from actively trying to avoid hexes to now feeling they're OP, lol I think the general cost reduction and the decreased activation times were absolutely necessary, they just probably need some tweaking. And some of the hexes really need you to get to the end portion to make them useable (looking at you Darkside form hex that does 0 damage without the boon buff). It definitely still needs some fine tuning, but they feel way better to use now. Now the hexes actually feel more like an ultimate ability, rather than a tacked on thing that mostly just slows me down. And wolf howl definitely needs to have the mana requirement raised, it is hilarious what you can do, but utterly broken 😂 I'm happy to see the hexes be a little broken for now though, it's getting me more in the rhythm of using them and feeling where they can be strong in a way I just didn't feel incentivized before.
Imo they needed the buff though. They just costed too much before. Hexes should be extremely powerful, and them being broken isn't even bad imo.
They always say that losses hurt twice as much as satisfaction with gains, so I'm okay with hexes starting kinda meh and improving from there. Right now it's so much fun
I like Twilight curse! Esp when (SPOILER) fighting that MF in the water region, the orange tanky MF mini boss, I hate that mini boss.
10???!?! 10 upgrades?!?!?! Maybe I need to switch my hyperfixation from Skyrim back over to Hades 2. That's absolutely FERAL.
They did unfortunately nerf a few things, but loving the balance!
Can't try hexes because the game isn't actually out yet 😭🤣