What the heck is medea aspect?

[Fisherman]

How do you use this? I'm so confused

[Fyce]

When you press [Attack] you set the bombs on yourself. They detonate after a while, but the point is to force them to detonate by hitting an enemy with your [Special].

[Neferneith]

I'm confused too.
I though it was like Hera Heart Seeker (loading casts into next attack).
In a similiar fashion, I think Medea attacks are loaded into the next special.
Five drawbacks :
1) Loading 3 skulls takes time.
2) Special is a charged move and takes time.
3) There is no invulnerability frames in special so you eat attacks, bullets and AOE.
4) Skulls appear to unload after a few seconds (not sure)
5) Skulls are dropped when you special, adding the burden of collecting them.

As the principle of Melinoe Argent Skull special was to collect the skulls you had previously fired with attack, I fail to understand the good points of this aspect.

Could someone explain ?

[Vrede]

Originally posted by Neferneith:

I'm confused too.
I though it was like Hera Heart Seeker (loading casts into next attack).
In a similiar fashion, I think Medea attacks are loaded into the next special.
Five drawbacks :
1) Loading 3 skulls takes time.
2) Special is a charged move and takes time.
3) There is no invulnerability frames in special so you eat attacks, bullets and AOE.
4) Skulls appear to unload after a few seconds (not sure)
5) Skulls are dropped when you special, adding the burden of collecting them.

As the principle of Melinoe Argent Skull special was to collect the skulls you had previously fired with attack, I fail to understand the good points of this aspect.

Could someone explain ?

There's a "solution" to nr1 and 3 at least. Theres a hammer upgrade that says something like "throw all skulls at the same time in a spread pattern" which loads all three with one click.
And for number three theres also a hammer upgrade I think, that makes you take less damage while using/charging the special.

[Aquilo]

Originally posted by Warp:

When you press [Attack] you set the bombs on yourself. They detonate after a while, but the point is to force them to detonate by hitting an enemy with your [Special].

This sums it up very nicely. It's certainly a risky weapon, and "you can begin the countdown on a skull, but prematurely detonate it as part of your Special" is vital information that I don't think is tutorialised at all.

But overall it's pretty fun, definitely weird, and one of the Aspects that's most distinct from it's other Aspects.

[Fisherman]

Originally posted by Neferneith:

I'm confused too.
I though it was like Hera Heart Seeker (loading casts into next attack).
In a similiar fashion, I think Medea attacks are loaded into the next special.
Five drawbacks :
1) Loading 3 skulls takes time.
2) Special is a charged move and takes time.
3) There is no invulnerability frames in special so you eat attacks, bullets and AOE.
4) Skulls appear to unload after a few seconds (not sure)
5) Skulls are dropped when you special, adding the burden of collecting them.

As the principle of Melinoe Argent Skull special was to collect the skulls you had previously fired with attack, I fail to understand the good points of this aspect.

Could someone explain ?

Yeah all of the drawbacks make perfect sense. Seems like a very overcomplicated aspect ngl

[Fisherman]

Originally posted by Aquilo:

Originally posted by Warp:

When you press [Attack] you set the bombs on yourself. They detonate after a while, but the point is to force them to detonate by hitting an enemy with your [Special].

This sums it up very nicely. It's certainly a risky weapon, and "you can begin the countdown on a skull, but prematurely detonate it as part of your Special" is vital information that I don't think is tutorialised at all.

But overall it's pretty fun, definitely weird, and one of the Aspects that's most distinct from it's other Aspects.

Absolutely. Devs if you're reading this please make it clear that the special detonates them.

[Noxgarm]

Originally posted by Neferneith:

I'm confused too.
I though it was like Hera Heart Seeker (loading casts into next attack).
In a similiar fashion, I think Medea attacks are loaded into the next special.
Five drawbacks :
1) Loading 3 skulls takes time.
2) Special is a charged move and takes time.
3) There is no invulnerability frames in special so you eat attacks, bullets and AOE.
4) Skulls appear to unload after a few seconds (not sure)
5) Skulls are dropped when you special, adding the burden of collecting them.

As the principle of Melinoe Argent Skull special was to collect the skulls you had previously fired with attack, I fail to understand the good points of this aspect.

Could someone explain ?

Basically, it's just strong. The skulls in Medea's aspect deal more damage than base aspects, especially if you upgrade it. With the proper boons, the destructive power can get pretty crazy. Since you're gonna be close range, it benefits greatly from Aphrodite, and Apollo isn't bad either for the large AoE. It works well with Zeus' Blitz as well, since you're pretty much guaranteed to trigger it if you have at least two skulls loaded.

There is also insane synergy with some hammer augments. The one that lets you fire all skulls at one (or in this case, load them up) really helps with downtime. I also like the one that reduce your number of skulls to 2, in exhange for them returning to you almost immediately, since it means you don't have to recollect them manually. There's also an augment that reduce damage recieved if your special isn't fully charged

Finally, unless they changed that, a fully charged omega Special does makes you impervious. Charging all 3 skulls than using channeling omega special is a bit of tight window, but it's doable, and it easily deals 300+ damage, even early in a run.

You also don't have to load 3 skulls at once. You can load one skull, dash into the enemy, then re-do it and pick up the previous skull as you go.

All in all, Medea's aspect has one of the highest burst damage potential, with the drawback of a lot of downtime, and a big risk since it requires you to be in your foes' face most of the time.

[Neferneith]

I see, thanks for all the info.
I think this one is a bit too complex and bonns/daedalus dependant for me at the moment.
With 3*5 weapons to master, I'll stick to easier ones for the current time.

[vincent.jan.goh]

This aspect is...not great. Like, it's unclear to me what benefit there is to making the skulls auto-detonate after 3s. There's no timer or onscreen messaging for how long you have left, so what am I supposed to do, count out loud?

So you've charged the 3 skulls and the clock is ticking, now you ALSO have to charge your dash. If it's safe, you can get away without doing the Omega special, but you probably want to for damage. But if you mess up, then you face-plow every bullet that you move towards. Great.

You've charged a skull but you had to run away from some attack? Well, now you've dropped the skull in the middle of nowhere and hit nothing.

Maybe you've charged all three skulls and you're about to send it into a huge pack of enemies. The explosion radius is pretty big, but it really looks like it detonates when it hits the first enemy, so you might detonate everything on a weak enemy, leave the skulls behind and end up standing in front of an elite enemy with no skulls to your name. Hope you actually killed everything behind you because you need to go pick those skulls up.

Trying to use the dash attack on enemies in Oceanus that are in the water but along the walls? Good luck; 50% of the time the skulls don't detonate if you do the dash.

Same with Cerberus. There's a good chance you'll actually just dash right up to him and stop, and the skulls won't detonate because of the dash, so you just stand there and eat damage.

The attack is basically unusable UNLESS you're doing the dash, but the penalty for not being quick enough is so much higher than with any other weapon, and there's no benefit.

There are times when the gameplay is fun, just like the Shield in Hades 1, but at least you didn't drop the spell charges until you actually HIT something.

As a first balance attempt, I'd really just remove that mandatory 3s drop timer. If you've charged all the skulls, you can just dash and drop them to get them back. Maybe you can use the Omega attack to get them all out at the same time, too. But as it stands, I don't see how this aspect would be viable for anyone except the best players with the luckiest runs.

[-=MM=-Savage]

Originally posted by Neferneith:

I'm confused too.
...
3) There is no invulnerability frames in special so you eat attacks, bullets and AOE.
...
5) Skulls are dropped when you special, adding the burden of collecting them.
...

3) yes there are. not the whole attack, but there are iframes for the first 2-3 lengths
5) so exactly like the hera bow then...

[Neferneith]

Originally posted by -=MM=-Savage:

3) yes there are. not the whole attack, but there are iframes for the first 2-3 lengths
5) so exactly like the hera bow then...

Exactly like the hera bow except points 1 2 and 4.
A mix of the worst traits of Hera Bow and Argent Skull.
I guess a mix of their stronger points would have been OP.

Currently, Melinoe aspect is the best Argent skull by far. Even unupgradded. And that's ok. Sometimes overengeneering is just wasted time.

[Yiddish Schnozz Goblin]

Remember the shield from hades 1? Remember the aspect that let you load casts into it?
Instead of loading casts, you load attacks.
Now imagine it doesn't block any damage.

I really don't get it myself, it just seems like a direct downgrade from an aspect in the first game that only worked because the charge attack blocked projectiles and attacks.

[vincent.jan.goh]

Originally posted by -=MM=-Savage:

Originally posted by Neferneith:

I'm confused too.
...
3) There is no invulnerability frames in special so you eat attacks, bullets and AOE.
...
5) Skulls are dropped when you special, adding the burden of collecting them.
...

3) yes there are. not the whole attack, but there are iframes for the first 2-3 lengths
5) so exactly like the hera bow then...

Yeah, except the Hera bow is pretty good even without the loaded spells. You can still FIGHT. You could conceivably clear the game without loading the bow, even though that would be stupid. I cannot imagine a situation where you could clear the game without loading the dash with Medea. I have a hard time believing that you could clear the game only using the attack and not the dash in combination with it. It's a very strange weapon.