"Sprint is useless" crew: come in

[Specific Beef]

I see this comment a lot, and I always think it's strange. Poseidon's sprint alone gets you out of so much trouble, and when upgraded and buffed it becomes positively unfair to groups of enemies.

Here's a video of Haelian using the Hephaestus Smithy Sprint (jump to 43:50 for the end stats screen)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7izMsG_Q1o

Look at those Most Damage Inflicted stats: 64520 for the sprint blast! I didn't realise quite how much it was doing until those last scores.

It's hard to feel a lot of the time, since it's not something that's constantly announcing itself to your eyes, but if you're not using sprint or putting points into it then you're leaving a lot on the table.

[Morton Koopa Jr.]

Because people aren't being logical.

Hell, there's a common complaint that sprint isn't useful cause rooms are so small.

Like really. You're basically saying moving faster is not useful.

[Silyon]

Sprinting is a new mechanic for Hades and veterans of the previous one arn't used to it. They're used to double-dashes or spamming dash. Sprinting is solid, and Nitro Boost from Hermes makes any of them significantly better.

My personal favorite ones are Apollo's and Demeter's, the former because speed and the latter because cyclones on demand is never a negative. Zeus and Hera are aggressively ok, no complaints but not my first pick. Hestia's is a trap because of how tiny the anti-projectile effect is, you have to be in the process of being hit for it to do anything. Haven't tried most of the dash boons, I tend to focus more on attack/special/casts depending on what my weapon is.

People need to get used to sprinting around. The larger arenas combined with massive AoEs demand it. I didn't beat Cronos and had a hard time with the Infernal Beast until I learned how to run.

[Hagrid]

Too many people are trying to play a different game than the one in front of them (most obviously, Hades !, or maybe Super Smash Bros). Zag was a melee bruiser type character, as you can tell from his weapons and upgrade systems.

This game screams the word "witch" at you from lasers burning it into the sky as a chorus of angels yells it in every room of your house, and people are still like 'grr never gonna build a hit and run caster build grr'. Sprint is very well designed for helping a player use the entirety of Mel's core move set, which yes, includes and highlights the Omega moves.

[Darthelmet]

My experience with sprint so far is it's just not that safe in a lot of situations. You don't really get any protection while in it, a lot of enemies have attacks that need the dodge iframes to avoid, and needing to release the sprint button to then hit it again for a dodge kind of slows down my response time. The sprint boons I've tried were conceptually fun, but they got me hit a lot in the process of using them. Maybe I'm missing something about how to play around it, but I think I'm better off avoiding aside from a few niche situations with some bosses.

[Discombobulating]

not useless but doesnt feel good to use and showing 1 or 2 sprint boons that can do some damage doesnt prove any point, hep sprint doesnt even work proper cant sprint normally without using magick in the process even when no enemies are nearby then u gotta time it weirdly instead of it just proccing when you're close to an enemy, unintuitive

[Morton Koopa Jr.]

Originally posted by Hagrid:

Too many people are trying to play a different game than the one in front of them (most obviously, Hades !, or maybe Super Smash Bros). Zag was a melee bruiser type character, as you can tell from his weapons and upgrade systems.

This game screams the word "witch" at you from lasers burning it into the sky as a chorus of angels yells it in every room of your house, and people are still like 'grr never gonna build a hit and run caster build grr'. Sprint is very well designed for helping a player use the entirety of Mel's core move set, which yes, includes and highlights the Omega moves.

Lmao. This is so true. Imagine being a caster in an RPG and then getting mad you can't tank.

It's clear from the first time you fight a banshee or those fishes that oh. This is a different type of character

[Discombobulating]

Originally posted by Morton Koopa Jr.:

Originally posted by Hagrid:

Too many people are trying to play a different game than the one in front of them (most obviously, Hades !, or maybe Super Smash Bros). Zag was a melee bruiser type character, as you can tell from his weapons and upgrade systems.

This game screams the word "witch" at you from lasers burning it into the sky as a chorus of angels yells it in every room of your house, and people are still like 'grr never gonna build a hit and run caster build grr'. Sprint is very well designed for helping a player use the entirety of Mel's core move set, which yes, includes and highlights the Omega moves.

Lmao. This is so true. Imagine being a caster in an RPG and then getting mad you can't tank.

It's clear from the first time you fight a banshee or those fishes that oh. This is a different type of character

you say that but my melinoe with an axe had 500 health with 3 death defiances and luckier tooth keepsake chronos couldnt even take 1 defiance from me and i couldve done this with the caster weapons

[Falco]

It's because sprints with damage mechanics will simply get you hit. It's counter-intuitive and much worse than to simply use sprint defensively. Pair that with the fact that most sprint boons are pretty bad (yes, we know hermes' sprint is good), then it becomes ineffective and a bad boon taking up another possibly useful one.

[Tiny Tyrant]

It's most useful as a form of damage avoidance, which is perfectly fine. There are some boons that make it worthwhile offensively, primarily the ones you mentioned, but it just feels bad to use in that capacity. It's like you're skating, it feels slippery, not to mention that most rooms are too small to really comfortably run around in.

It becomes good as a tool just from the arcana card speed boost, but it's usually not worth putting boons into over your attacks, specials, or casts. This is much unlike the first game, where the dash could very easily be weaponized and its offensive capabilities could match attacks with the right build. That's the issue I have with it, it doesn't feel worth building into in the face of other builds. Everything else feels good to work with, building sprint feels like handicapping yourself.

edit: 64k damage over the course of the run is also not impressive, Poseidon special builds on the staff usually net me well over 200k damage from waves alone.

[The Hungry Werewolf]

"The veterans will dislike it no matter what" is such a tired and stupid excuse for lack of adaptability. As someone who's played Hades 1, yeah it's different, but it's not BAD. It's really not. Double dash was a crutch. Go play Hades 1 with the single dash (dodge chance one) and run Hermes sprint boon. It'll feel very close to what you have here in Hades 2. Just like 2 frames of startup, which is literally nothing. It's not an issue, plain and simple.

[RandomGuy]

Base sprint is useful to get out of enemy reach but still feels worse than 2 dashes, probably because most non-boss non-elite enemies don’t give you a clear point where you want to be. Still good.
But some sprint boons are killers. Hestia’s demolishes Eris (but it does not work on Cerberus’ fireballs for some reason) and can be used agressively to clean the screen and give you space to move. Apolo’s is just nuts whenever there is an area that can be qualified as safe or safer.

My issue with sprint is that while it can be used offensively with the right boons, it is hard to use defensively in a most normal rooms (on a ship on fire? surrounded by dozen of fishes? dozen of lasers pointed at you? better dash than sprint). But it is in no way “useless”.

[Tony Shor]

Sprint is a nice mechanic. Even while playing "Hades", I thougn "would be nice if I could hold A and run faster", now they've made it in "Hades II". It's nice. Go back, try first game, and you'll miss it.

The Boons for it -- that's a different story. They flood the pool. I can have a whole run, and my damage is barely improved, cause the pool of Boons is flooded with all kinds of stuff that deal no damage.

[Specific Beef]

Originally posted by Croftin time:

not useless but doesnt feel good to use and showing 1 or 2 sprint boons that can do some damage doesnt prove any point, hep sprint doesnt even work proper cant sprint normally without using magick in the process even when no enemies are nearby then u gotta time it weirdly instead of it just proccing when you're close to an enemy, unintuitive

True, but where an item that would be great if not for one thing, you also have to plan for that thing. I think magic in general is being neglected by a lot of people, judging by their complaints anyway. Improving your magic amount, regen, and other qualities is often so much more powerful than taking another boon. I've seen the same kinds of statements on the forum about Chaos boons not being worth it, when just a little tailoring makes those seemingly small stat changes into gigantic effects.

However, I can't argue with you about it being unintuitive. It must be, if so many people are finding these skills unattractive. Maybe some character script lines could point people towards neglected areas of the arsenal.

I'm only mentioning two as examples. Lots of the sprints are also great, but they all need a little bolstering via your choices.

[UNBREAKABLE]

Sprinting is a good mechanic and people should be getting used to it instead of avoiding it - fast moving speed in these games is so good. But I admit it feels a little weird to use, especially while you're trying to attack or when you have boons that make you so fast it feels like sliding.

[GeminiEclipse]

I agree that people just need to get used to things. My example of it is from myself thinking flames were bad and being stuck on Chronos to killing him with flames on fear 16 within maybe a day or so?

As for sprint itself, maybe they could address a bit of the drifting feel, or maybe increase the base speed so it's a bit more useful on something like Cerberus right out of the gate. I know I got caught quite a bit by him until I got the arcana levelled up.