What's the point of Hera

[Musclebob Buffpants]

Shared damage to compensate for AoE that you could just get with Apollo but less work or literally any other gods curse effects? Sure being a shared damage is interesting but you could get that same thing with Hestia or delayed damage from Zeus but better boons and actually useful against bosses. Just what weapons or boons does she pair with? Nothing??!

[iovita-rein]

Uhhh, have you only played with her once or something?? Sure she's not for everyone but, like with all boons, you need to build it up and pair with other boons to get boss-killing damage

[kira]

yeah i can see finding some of her cast and support boons weak at face value (although on higher fears she has amazing utility) but it seems like a lack of understanding and experience to call her attack and special boons weak. a nice % bonus for the heavier base power weapons with a status for origination that allows finishing off groups or a few hefty enemies across an encounter simultaneously - top tier i'd say.

[Rediz]

Born gain.

[Specific Beef]

Hera is one of the most powerful gods. Whatever your current weapon's strength is, get Hitch on the Attack or Special and then play speed tag with the mob. It is much, much better than AOE. Don't stay on one enemy if possible: keep moving. Massive DPS. Where it is appropriate to just slam a group of enemies at once, say with a broad effect from a hammer or boon, you'll see enormous damage if you've built it well.

And yes, Hitch does pair well with other effects! And her Legendary goes wild, also some excellent Duos. Plus Born Gain is the best magick regen.

[Rediz]

Also great for origination.

[Travis Touchdown]

It's a force multiplier, innit? In your example, using just Apollo, you could hit multiple enemies where they will take the one instance of damage. If you use Hera and hit multiple targets, they take the damage from the hit, but also damage from all other hitched targets that were hit.

Damage ramps up real quick. Plus, it's one of the boons that gives a guaranteed curse with only the one boon buy-in for attack or special. I really value easy-to-apply curse boons.

[Musclebob Buffpants]

Alright I'm convinced.

[Musclebob Buffpants]

Yeah still seems bad but at least her cast is great, duos and infusion too. Her attack boons seem to be better than Apollo's. Feel like I kill groups of enemies and single targets faster with most other Olympians.

[hilfazer]

She has a boon that hitches every enemy that spawns. Very strong.

Sadly that's incorrect. The boon does not inflict Hitch.

[Pαιɳɯҽαʋҽɾ]

Hera is very strong when played correctly. Example, her main attack buff + Zeus' Blitz. If you're using Axe, 1 max whirlwind and you could wipe the whole screen clean.

[SPRITENADO]

Oh Hitch, my beloved. Absolutely SHREDS crowds of enemies. Especially with the blades or the axe. You hit one enemy, you hit them all. Drop a cast, get Dying Wish and clear encounters in seconds. I love Hera so much

[Soulcatcher]

Originally posted by SPRITENADO:

Oh Hitch, my beloved. Absolutely SHREDS crowds of enemies. Especially with the blades or the axe. You hit one enemy, you hit them all. Drop a cast, get Dying Wish and clear encounters in seconds. I love Hera so much

Same.

[Matticus]

Hera has a mix of the best and worst boons in the game. Always happy to see her 50% of the time. Also unlimited mana

[Tim]

From what I understand, Hera is a high-Fear (high-difficulty) staple because of how good Hitch is. It lets you focus on dodging attacks instead of taking down specific targets, so it's good for both big AoE/chain hits AND zippy little hits like, say, the twin blades' and the black coat's attack.

Born Gain is obviously incredible... I find Blood Line to be somewhat underrated. It can be difficult to manage combined with Born Gain, but it's INCREDIBLE for enabling Hexes.

For having some of the best core boons in the game, she has crummy general utility, which makes sense.

[Songbird]

Hitch is so ridiculously good with more enemies spawning it's crazy. Multiplicative damage boosts basically do not exist in Hades, and here you have one that's super easy to access and scales crazy fast since it works on any and all damage. (Blitz is similar, but for single-target damage -- always be looking for ways to use a Blitz special if you can).

Probably the simplest way that I can describe it is that you can have a room with 15 enemies in it. You can either do damage equivalent to 1500% of one enemy's health split between them, with any overkill not counting, to kill them all. Or you can Hitch them all and then do 333% of one enemy's health (or 166% hitting two enemies together, etc.), which you could just do in one hit that overkills hard enough if you can make it happen, and every enemy in the room immediately dies (provided they're in the Hitch leash range, which is huge but not unlimited). So even if Hera provided 0 damage with her boon, Hitch almost quintupled your damage output. This scenario actually happens pretty often late in Tartarus with moneybags, too. Also, since Hitch is generally doing damage over multiple smaller hits as you fight through the room, it does a good job of hitting through armor and HP alike, rather than wasting one big chunk on breaking armor (which doesn't let damage leak through).

As a reminder, when you take any boons (literally any, except Romantic Spark, to my knowledge) that say "+50% damage" or whatever, they don't multiply your damage output, they just add that percent of your base damage again--even if they have completely different conditions or are worded very differently. So 50% from boon A and 50% from boon B together just add to +100%, rather than 150% * 150% for 225% or anything like that. Whereas Hitch is basically taking your final damage number, after everything else, and multiplying it by 1+(0.3 x [number of Hitched enemies - 1]).

Hitch also makes negating the second damage shield (and first, if you're applying it with Engagement Ring) trivial, which is much more of a time save than you'd think.

It's so ridiuclously powerful that you pick it in room 3 of Erebus over a hammer every time at very high fear. Like it literally halves your room clear times or better. The only other effects with such a strong immediate return are Poseidon waves and Scorch on fast-hitting weapons, but these tend to fall off really hard as the run goes on (especially waves since there isn't a Freezer Burn for them), while Hitch remains a 30% (or better) multiplicative damage boost per enemy and thus scales with your power, no matter how you're increasing it. Dying Wish and Hereditary Bane are both really, really strong as well.