Ygnium Redesign

[AsianJaysus]

So I've got like 60+hrs, something like 15+ clears, I've cleared heat 8 with a few weapons, and am at a spot where beating the two final bosses is largely guaranteed. Just to give a feel for my "credentials" or whatever.

I feel that Ygnium needs a redesign. Not for reasons that a lot of y'all in these forums have been complaining about though. The aiming works really well and if you aren't hitting the right enemy, it's a simple matter of: repositioning, letting go of "attack", and reclicking "attack".

No, I want to change the Special. In Hades I, the thing I think a lot of us can agree that we loved about the aspects/weapons was that each one had a viable Attack, Special, and Cast build. No matter what weapon, you could reasonably clear a run by simply choosing the right aspect and build for that weapon. In Hades II though, there are a few builds that just simply do not work and Yngium Special is one of them. And obviously in this one, you have to use your Cast as support on practically any build, but you should be able to reliably build your main dps as either Attack or Special.

The issue with Ygnium's Special is that no matter what build you use, it just never feels good. In a game where you have to face dozens of bulky enemies while trying your hardest to not get hit, a close-ranged attack that's awkward to aim and does low base damage feels extremely out of place. Most of its hammers don't help it at all and in some cases make it even less useful (the one that makes it lose its piercing) and in most runs, the only one I ever take is the 80% armor break (which scales with armor damage btw) to support my Attack based builds. Aspects make this problem even more obvious bc they focus heavily on the Special damage and feel worthless because adding more damage doesn't fix the fact that the attack itself feels bad.

My suggestion for a redesign is to change the Special to replicate one of Hecate's attacks. They added a bunch of references to Yngium being her weapons already, it's weird they decided to go a different direction and didn't even add a Hecate aspect. My picks would be either her expanding flame circle or her wave attacks. The flame circle would be a nice contrast to the single-target nature of the Attack, but might feel too similar to Cast (and honestly might be a little OP). The wave on the other hand would be a nice spammable attack that's simple enough to mod with hammers. Off the top of my head: multi-wave, bigger wave, returning wave, hold for wave spam, etc.

Like it honestly makes so much sense to me that it feels almost intentional that they used something else. As if they wanted Hecate's aspect to be the hidden 4th with the wave Special and didn't have anything to replace it with so went with "Attack but in spirals"

I dunno. Thoughts?

[FreakEr]

Check out Haelian's video (I think from yesterday) of Ygnium with a Poseidon heavy Special build. It is absolute insanity and shreds everything. I've had some outrageous Ygnium runs myself - today I had an Aspect of Moros run that leaned super heavily on the special, plus the fact that if you just spam attack orbs everywhere and multicast omega specials to have a ton of orbiting flames you can run around popping them like crazy. You can also precast an omega special ring and stand in melee range to an enemy and hold Attack to instapop the attack orbs as your omega special orbs rotate - with the right boons and hammer it is extraordinarily powerful.

[AsianJaysus]

That's an issue though. Like if a build requires specific god boons AND hammers to not be literally unusable, it's a bad build. Yeah you can do a lot to force the gods you need, but hammers are fully random and H2 doesn't have the same aspect restricted boons that H1 did so you're running on hope and a prayer at that point which is honestly just bad form in a roguelite.

And regardless of if it CAN work, wouldn't you rather have an attack that ALWAYS feels good to use instead of one that you have to mod to hell in the hopes that you can make it work?

Also, sidenote: I hate when people say "go watch this video" like, "yeah let me just go watch a 15min video so we can continue this conversation" BUT I do know Haelian, so I might just go do that lol

[rick432656]

I definitely think you going to have to use arcana card for regen and just spam omega attack. The very little I used of torch’s felt okay. I would probably focus on hexes with this since you can easily fill up energy need to spam hexes. But yah the normal attack is trash don’t even bother with it. While maybe they should fix that is clear they want you omega attack to do anything remotely useful with it. I had a axe combo with Zeus lighting and poseidon waves that could easily clear out enemies if used with the torch’s. And if you use the god keepsake you can pretty much get a decent boon to start out with 9 times of 10. But yah they need to work on it some more

[AsianJaysus]

Originally posted by rick432656:

And if you use the god keepsake you can pretty much get a decent boon to start out with 9 times of 10.

Oh I forgot the reworked the god keepsakes too. I haven't gotten around to maxing those yet, I've only made it up to Charon's so far. How does the rarity upgrade work? Do you have to have Purple>Heroic? Or can you use anything lower? Like, say Common>Heroic?

[TheCopyUniverse]

Originally posted by AsianJaysus:

Oh I forgot the reworked the god keepsakes too. I haven't gotten around to maxing those yet, I've only made it up to Charon's so far. How does the rarity upgrade work? Do you have to have Purple>Heroic? Or can you use anything lower? Like, say Common>Heroic?

I know it's a little late, but I might as well clear it up for anyone who comes across this thread: When you Rarify a Boon, you increase its Rarity by one stage. So a Common Boon becomes Rare, Rare becomes Epic, and Epic becomes Heroic.

The wording on the Boon-based Keepsakes is a little unclear, but it allows you to Rarify Common Boons (Rank 1), Rare & Common Boons (Rank 2), or Epic & Rare & Common Boons (Rank 3).