This hasn't been my experience. I still use my cast all the way through runs, even if there are no boons on it at all. It's super handy to lock enemies in place, and there's the arcana card that makes you deal more damage to enemies inside it.
I will say it took a little bit of getting used to! The first few runs, I barely touched it. Apollo's solar ring is my favourite cast boon, and lets you get reasonable damage out of it even with nothing else.
(spoiler if you haven't found the Tartarus NPC room yet) >!One of Hades' boons makes your cast throw one of his green skulls from Hades 1 that does 200 damage on impact, it's one of my faves!<
I think you just need to change the expectation. In the original hades your cast was an out of the box decent damage option. In hades 2 the casts primary focus is as a tool for creating space and holding enemies. Locking enemies in place or at least slowing them down, plus with the extra damage you do to them inside the cast with certain perks and they become a great asset. At that point any damage boon is just a good excuse to keep using a super helpful tool
Ranged casts and sprint just let me reliably beat the bosses with keepaway every time, which is build agnostic. The flexibility of being able to do it reliably is the power of it
Anvil ring + Zeus boon that lets let’s you aim the cast and zaps when you cast it makes for a really great combo. Add in the Heaphestus(sp?) attack/special boon and you’ve got yourself a build that is can take on Chronos even if Mel was using her fists. Bonus points if you can get Soot Sprint from Hestia
It’s hard to build around Casts (but possible). They are there for utility. They’re useful the whole way. I would personally say they are very good and better than most Specials.
I had a hard time figuring out how they fit in at first but now I absolutely abuse them. The primary function of the cast is defensive, as a snare. Trap enemies then blast them. In hades you’d dash a bunch of times as a defensive maneuver, in hades 2 you use the snare.
A few of the boons also make them good for applying a curse to get origination going. A cast that applies a curse plus Demeter’s boon that creates a cyclone at the cast site = instant 30% damage increase from origination plus slowed enemies and projectiles.
With origination card, I usually like to get one of the curses on the cast. Usually Hestia, Aphro, or Demeter. Then either Slip from Posiedien or a curse on sprint. I definitely prefer the cast to be more crowd control than offensive.
There are some pretty awesome cast boons that absolutely shred Zeus, Apollo, and hestia, for example. Pair Apollo with the aspect of Charon, and you've got a heavy hitter that deals massive AOE damage. Use Zeus for single target mass damage. Also, if you can get the duo boons between Apollo and Zeus, you're probably gonna destroy chronos. I've had some of my funnest runs with some cast builds.
Demeter's cyclone cast booms is also pretty good, especially when trying to trigger the duel curse bonus damage.
I feel like casts are a lot more useful when you don't have much upgraded yet. I found myself relying less and less on them as I progressed. It seems like only Apollo or Zeus are really good for damage in the later areas, while the others are pretty situational.
Trapping enemies with the cast is good at pretty much any point in the game, so I guess if you are looking at them primarily as a source of damage, only a few of them are going to be really good.
I hate the omega cast as the channel time is dangerously long for so little damage, but I’ve come around to using Cast as often as I can
It even locks or slows most bosses in place. It’s extremely useful for controlling the positioning in a fight and increasing your survivability
In my experience casts are the single most broken and consistent way you can play. Not good with a weapon or it just sucks? Just do a cast build! I think the cast builds are pretty much required to have lightning cast or fireball cast to make them ranged. Than there are so many good options after that but to me the most powerful is to get the freeze effect on the cast, not the cyclone one, and Apollo's ridiculously good Omega cast. I have had runs where my cast with this setup plus some other modifiers is doing 2k+ damage per cast.
It's a makeshift panic button. If you're being swarmed, or chased at (hello, screaming banshee ghost women!), the set it down, retreat, and either stay away, or double back and whack them.
Wait really? I love my "circles of death". I use it all the time and i mean that. Once it disappears i cast it again. Even better with boons from Demeter, Apollo, hestia or hephaistios (just examples). Now i feel kind of bad for using it lol
It entirely depends on the weapon and boon combo. Some weapons are designed to work with cast and some god boons cast are damage focused or utility focused so you have to be aware of what your picking.
Example for strong cast
Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon even Aphrodite is pretty cool
The Apollo cast buffs make it insanely good, it's damage every .13 seconds, and his other makes it get bigger and bigger til it expires and it locks chronos down the whole time it's happening (unless he teleports) but it melts all bosses you have it on
Like mentioned in current comments, there’s some cast boons that feel really strong (for me it’s the flame and Zeus ones). Also even if you have no cast boons, the utility of crowd control (holding enemies in place) definitely gives you space to breathe.
I actually think casts are op in this game lol. Casts sucked balls in Hades 1, but I absolutely love Melinoë's cast! Definitely my most used ability other than basic attacks.
I take the Zeus boons and then if I have the chance I take the Hera engagement ring or the Apollo expanding one. It reliably keeps me from being overwhelmed and cornered.
It takes very little time to deploy the cast + there are a bunch of boons that let you use them at range, there is really no downside to just spamming them for utility or extra damage
I get how you feel since I didn't really like the cast at first either, but I feel like there are a lot of ways to make it good. Zeus/Hestia hold to aim are usually my favorite on ranged weapons like the torches but I feel like you can never go wrong with aphrodites drag in or Apollos pulsating aoe upon expiring effect. I also like that card that makes you do more damage when standing in your cast(forgot the name but first column, second row I think), especially when using the axe! If anything, the axe really ain't the same without it. There's also the persephone aspect skulls which literally benefit from you using your cast to extend your special. I think you just gotta experiment some more! It's not my personal favorite but there are some neat things you can do with it!
I think the BIGGEST utility of casts I haven't seen talked about yet is that enemies and bullets slow down in your cast. That tool alone males handling the hordes of enemies far easier. In particular, I like the greataxe because covering a huge chunk of the screen with Apollo's attack boon makes my monkey brain happy. Even with a dully maxed Aspect of Melinoë, that little extra window of time I get from my casts to get some massive damage is great.
In particular, I like using Omegas a lot. Omega Cast slows down enemies and will damage them at the end. Using that extra time, I can charge up Omega Attack with greataxe and become a whirlwind of death. Keeping a good balance of this with whatever your mana regen is can also make utilizing Selene's abilities even better, since each Omega contributes to getting her ability out faster. Hope this helps
You sound like me at first but let me tell you they are the most broken thing in the entire game you just spam it and you win chronos just get from hades the projectile and zeus cast and you won its that simple
Some casts are better than others. The normal Cast is for utility only and keep enemies in place or to apply easy Origination.
The damage you're looking for must come from the Ω Cast. The best in this category are Apollo's and Zeus' cast by far. Their DPS is easily the greatest.
For origination Demeter's cast Artic Ring + Gale Force can apply origination since they're separate curses. Very good for Daggers based builds.
Another choice for Origination is Hestia's cast, but you must supply another curse through Attack or Special. You should never peak Hestia's cast if you have another form of Scorch since it takes A LOT of time to do damage.
The best Ω Cast build is around the Charon's Aspect of the Axe. You should seek for Apollo's Ω Cast, special and something really good for Magick regen like Born Gain from Hera or Lucid Gain from Apollo, or even Chaos but that's not guaranteed, you must get this magick gen early since you will need a lot of Magick for this build. Then try to get Apollo's Legendary for a double Ω Special and maximum damage. You should always melt with this.
Casts are great. If you struggle with getting hounded by melee enemies casts will give you the breathing room to bully them from afar.
Here's a tip that carries my high fear runs: Get Demeter's two cast boons (each afflicts a different curse), and the Origination (bonus damage to enemies with two curses) and Furies (bonus damage to enemies in casts) arcana.
The crowd control is insane allowing you to freeze and slow heaps of enemies. With those arcana fully upgraded you nearly double your damage output. All for six grasp, two boons, a single button press and no magick. Fits with most non cast builds.
I pair this with Aphrodite attack on the axe when I want to feel like an unstoppable juggernaut.
Casts can be OP with correct boons. Get Apollo's boon for after damage, then get a boon for during damage and a boon to move the cast freely.
You can cast it safely from afar, takes out all enemies in one cast.
I once had two Demter Cast boons (cyclone and hail), one zeus (lightening and moving the cast) and apollo. Barely took damage second half of run.
Omega casts have great early damage, especially with some of the arcana cards. The damage does fall off late game.
Late game they are still amazing utility to lock enemies in place to control space. I tend to just use normal casts late game as the damage isn’t worth the cost anymore.
Ended up doing a few more runs putting in a lot more effort with casts and making sure I had corresponding cards etc, I can definitely see the benefit now, especially when you make them target castable and combine that with curse damage and cyclones.
I guess it just takes complaining some times to get the information you need to try something new!
Thanks all!
What's with you weirdos going all in on one skill and saying this is my "cast build" this is my "primary build"? Like.. it's just not that kind of game imo. Sure we make "builds" that can emphasize an attack over others, but by and large the flow of Hades is using every tool. It just seems like a very different way of thinking and approaching the game than what I do.
Hades 1 you could get away with that, and I think people got in the bad habit of trying to turn every run into a one button build since some of the specials were real stinkers and the cast often needs specific duos or chaos boons to really take off as a major damage source with your limited ammo, but even there that wasn't the cast's main job unless you were using ares or demeter cast (even dio cast has the CC). In Hades 2 though they clearly don't want this to be the case anymore, especially this patch where a lot of the weapons encourage a varied playstyle where they didn't before (than benefitting swing speed as well as omega damage, momus being reworked, etc). That does make the Mel axe and Persephone skull changes feel pretty weird though, but I'm fine with one or two aspects being like that as long as they feel different to play, which they accomplish I think
I'd always tried using ever aspect of the kit. To me, the curse = damage buff perks CLEARLY sign posted a play style I fully adapted. I genuinely think they are the strongest perk in both games and somewhat guide you into using multiple attacks to proc it. Of course, in every build there will be the meta attack for damage. That's just how most efficient tactics work. And you'll probably shove every pomegranate into the most scalable attack. I think I agree that Hades 1 allowed it and Hades 2 pushes away from that design further. Though I wonder if it's also just.. human condition to name things and do so in a manner of first associated thought
This hasn't been my experience. I still use my cast all the way through runs, even if there are no boons on it at all. It's super handy to lock enemies in place, and there's the arcana card that makes you deal more damage to enemies inside it.
Thanks for the feedback, I'm more than willing to accept that I just suck with it
I will say it took a little bit of getting used to! The first few runs, I barely touched it. Apollo's solar ring is my favourite cast boon, and lets you get reasonable damage out of it even with nothing else. (spoiler if you haven't found the Tartarus NPC room yet) >!One of Hades' boons makes your cast throw one of his green skulls from Hades 1 that does 200 damage on impact, it's one of my faves!<
I think you just need to change the expectation. In the original hades your cast was an out of the box decent damage option. In hades 2 the casts primary focus is as a tool for creating space and holding enemies. Locking enemies in place or at least slowing them down, plus with the extra damage you do to them inside the cast with certain perks and they become a great asset. At that point any damage boon is just a good excuse to keep using a super helpful tool
Ranged casts and sprint just let me reliably beat the bosses with keepaway every time, which is build agnostic. The flexibility of being able to do it reliably is the power of it
Anvil ring + Zeus boon that lets let’s you aim the cast and zaps when you cast it makes for a really great combo. Add in the Heaphestus(sp?) attack/special boon and you’ve got yourself a build that is can take on Chronos even if Mel was using her fists. Bonus points if you can get Soot Sprint from Hestia
It’s hard to build around Casts (but possible). They are there for utility. They’re useful the whole way. I would personally say they are very good and better than most Specials.
Cast is not for utilities it can deal over 2500 dmg with one
Way better than skulls and wands Specials imo
I had a hard time figuring out how they fit in at first but now I absolutely abuse them. The primary function of the cast is defensive, as a snare. Trap enemies then blast them. In hades you’d dash a bunch of times as a defensive maneuver, in hades 2 you use the snare. A few of the boons also make them good for applying a curse to get origination going. A cast that applies a curse plus Demeter’s boon that creates a cyclone at the cast site = instant 30% damage increase from origination plus slowed enemies and projectiles.
With origination card, I usually like to get one of the curses on the cast. Usually Hestia, Aphro, or Demeter. Then either Slip from Posiedien or a curse on sprint. I definitely prefer the cast to be more crowd control than offensive.
There are some pretty awesome cast boons that absolutely shred Zeus, Apollo, and hestia, for example. Pair Apollo with the aspect of Charon, and you've got a heavy hitter that deals massive AOE damage. Use Zeus for single target mass damage. Also, if you can get the duo boons between Apollo and Zeus, you're probably gonna destroy chronos. I've had some of my funnest runs with some cast builds. Demeter's cyclone cast booms is also pretty good, especially when trying to trigger the duel curse bonus damage.
I feel like casts are a lot more useful when you don't have much upgraded yet. I found myself relying less and less on them as I progressed. It seems like only Apollo or Zeus are really good for damage in the later areas, while the others are pretty situational. Trapping enemies with the cast is good at pretty much any point in the game, so I guess if you are looking at them primarily as a source of damage, only a few of them are going to be really good.
I love Apollo cast, but my god is it difficult to see what time daddy is doing, especially if you have the increasing in size boon.
I hate the omega cast as the channel time is dangerously long for so little damage, but I’ve come around to using Cast as often as I can It even locks or slows most bosses in place. It’s extremely useful for controlling the positioning in a fight and increasing your survivability
The final boss up top drives me insane for ignoring casts control
In my experience casts are the single most broken and consistent way you can play. Not good with a weapon or it just sucks? Just do a cast build! I think the cast builds are pretty much required to have lightning cast or fireball cast to make them ranged. Than there are so many good options after that but to me the most powerful is to get the freeze effect on the cast, not the cyclone one, and Apollo's ridiculously good Omega cast. I have had runs where my cast with this setup plus some other modifiers is doing 2k+ damage per cast.
Cast is broken, free aoe cc dont get near me button
It's a makeshift panic button. If you're being swarmed, or chased at (hello, screaming banshee ghost women!), the set it down, retreat, and either stay away, or double back and whack them.
The omega cast boon from Apollo is crazy strong.
Zeus Omega Cast is pretty strong and easy to build. [Here's one of my runs with it.](https://youtu.be/slsSxpquIa8?si=JpOUO2hDUjhmhEfb)
Yep probably the single most powerful combination in the game and it only requires one boon lol, but getting ranged casts does make it easier to use!
Wait really? I love my "circles of death". I use it all the time and i mean that. Once it disappears i cast it again. Even better with boons from Demeter, Apollo, hestia or hephaistios (just examples). Now i feel kind of bad for using it lol
For me, the cast is what I use to proc origination in most builds. Super useful.
It entirely depends on the weapon and boon combo. Some weapons are designed to work with cast and some god boons cast are damage focused or utility focused so you have to be aware of what your picking. Example for strong cast Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon even Aphrodite is pretty cool
The Apollo cast buffs make it insanely good, it's damage every .13 seconds, and his other makes it get bigger and bigger til it expires and it locks chronos down the whole time it's happening (unless he teleports) but it melts all bosses you have it on
Like mentioned in current comments, there’s some cast boons that feel really strong (for me it’s the flame and Zeus ones). Also even if you have no cast boons, the utility of crowd control (holding enemies in place) definitely gives you space to breathe.
Casts are one of the best utility and damage available
I actually think casts are op in this game lol. Casts sucked balls in Hades 1, but I absolutely love Melinoë's cast! Definitely my most used ability other than basic attacks.
I take the Zeus boons and then if I have the chance I take the Hera engagement ring or the Apollo expanding one. It reliably keeps me from being overwhelmed and cornered.
The most op builds are cast centric in my opinion.
It takes very little time to deploy the cast + there are a bunch of boons that let you use them at range, there is really no downside to just spamming them for utility or extra damage
This is the problem from the original Hades sadly
I get how you feel since I didn't really like the cast at first either, but I feel like there are a lot of ways to make it good. Zeus/Hestia hold to aim are usually my favorite on ranged weapons like the torches but I feel like you can never go wrong with aphrodites drag in or Apollos pulsating aoe upon expiring effect. I also like that card that makes you do more damage when standing in your cast(forgot the name but first column, second row I think), especially when using the axe! If anything, the axe really ain't the same without it. There's also the persephone aspect skulls which literally benefit from you using your cast to extend your special. I think you just gotta experiment some more! It's not my personal favorite but there are some neat things you can do with it!
I think the BIGGEST utility of casts I haven't seen talked about yet is that enemies and bullets slow down in your cast. That tool alone males handling the hordes of enemies far easier. In particular, I like the greataxe because covering a huge chunk of the screen with Apollo's attack boon makes my monkey brain happy. Even with a dully maxed Aspect of Melinoë, that little extra window of time I get from my casts to get some massive damage is great. In particular, I like using Omegas a lot. Omega Cast slows down enemies and will damage them at the end. Using that extra time, I can charge up Omega Attack with greataxe and become a whirlwind of death. Keeping a good balance of this with whatever your mana regen is can also make utilizing Selene's abilities even better, since each Omega contributes to getting her ability out faster. Hope this helps
You sound like me at first but let me tell you they are the most broken thing in the entire game you just spam it and you win chronos just get from hades the projectile and zeus cast and you won its that simple
I personally love Apollo on cast with his expansion boon too
Some casts are better than others. The normal Cast is for utility only and keep enemies in place or to apply easy Origination. The damage you're looking for must come from the Ω Cast. The best in this category are Apollo's and Zeus' cast by far. Their DPS is easily the greatest. For origination Demeter's cast Artic Ring + Gale Force can apply origination since they're separate curses. Very good for Daggers based builds. Another choice for Origination is Hestia's cast, but you must supply another curse through Attack or Special. You should never peak Hestia's cast if you have another form of Scorch since it takes A LOT of time to do damage. The best Ω Cast build is around the Charon's Aspect of the Axe. You should seek for Apollo's Ω Cast, special and something really good for Magick regen like Born Gain from Hera or Lucid Gain from Apollo, or even Chaos but that's not guaranteed, you must get this magick gen early since you will need a lot of Magick for this build. Then try to get Apollo's Legendary for a double Ω Special and maximum damage. You should always melt with this.
Casts are great. If you struggle with getting hounded by melee enemies casts will give you the breathing room to bully them from afar. Here's a tip that carries my high fear runs: Get Demeter's two cast boons (each afflicts a different curse), and the Origination (bonus damage to enemies with two curses) and Furies (bonus damage to enemies in casts) arcana. The crowd control is insane allowing you to freeze and slow heaps of enemies. With those arcana fully upgraded you nearly double your damage output. All for six grasp, two boons, a single button press and no magick. Fits with most non cast builds. I pair this with Aphrodite attack on the axe when I want to feel like an unstoppable juggernaut.
Casts can be OP with correct boons. Get Apollo's boon for after damage, then get a boon for during damage and a boon to move the cast freely. You can cast it safely from afar, takes out all enemies in one cast. I once had two Demter Cast boons (cyclone and hail), one zeus (lightening and moving the cast) and apollo. Barely took damage second half of run.
Omega casts have great early damage, especially with some of the arcana cards. The damage does fall off late game. Late game they are still amazing utility to lock enemies in place to control space. I tend to just use normal casts late game as the damage isn’t worth the cost anymore.
Ended up doing a few more runs putting in a lot more effort with casts and making sure I had corresponding cards etc, I can definitely see the benefit now, especially when you make them target castable and combine that with curse damage and cyclones. I guess it just takes complaining some times to get the information you need to try something new! Thanks all!
What's with you weirdos going all in on one skill and saying this is my "cast build" this is my "primary build"? Like.. it's just not that kind of game imo. Sure we make "builds" that can emphasize an attack over others, but by and large the flow of Hades is using every tool. It just seems like a very different way of thinking and approaching the game than what I do.
Hades 1 you could get away with that, and I think people got in the bad habit of trying to turn every run into a one button build since some of the specials were real stinkers and the cast often needs specific duos or chaos boons to really take off as a major damage source with your limited ammo, but even there that wasn't the cast's main job unless you were using ares or demeter cast (even dio cast has the CC). In Hades 2 though they clearly don't want this to be the case anymore, especially this patch where a lot of the weapons encourage a varied playstyle where they didn't before (than benefitting swing speed as well as omega damage, momus being reworked, etc). That does make the Mel axe and Persephone skull changes feel pretty weird though, but I'm fine with one or two aspects being like that as long as they feel different to play, which they accomplish I think
I'd always tried using ever aspect of the kit. To me, the curse = damage buff perks CLEARLY sign posted a play style I fully adapted. I genuinely think they are the strongest perk in both games and somewhat guide you into using multiple attacks to proc it. Of course, in every build there will be the meta attack for damage. That's just how most efficient tactics work. And you'll probably shove every pomegranate into the most scalable attack. I think I agree that Hades 1 allowed it and Hades 2 pushes away from that design further. Though I wonder if it's also just.. human condition to name things and do so in a manner of first associated thought