Too many boons are useless against Cronos

[An-Average-Araminty]

In the first game, I seldom thought that I was getting an outright useless boon. Sure I'd need to settle for suboptimal stuff but suboptimal usually still meant useful, just less useful then I'd like. And there were boons that were more useful against mobs compared to boss fights but they generally weren't useless in either situation.

Hades 2 on the other hand has a laundry list of boons that I'd say are insignificant or even outright liabilities when trying to fight hard boss fights, i.e. the fights you most need boons against!

Air Quality: Dependent on having a large number of other things to matter
Double Strike: I'm baffled by why 5% chance at double lightning is worth a boon, at higher rarity with upgrades and specific builds it's probably good but if you dont have those things it's a wasted pick
Electric Overload: This looks like it would only be useful when paired with Air Quality or Apocalyptic Storm, neither of which is easy to get
Kings Ransom: Only useful if you have Hera boons you dont mind giving up but no good Hera boons
Sworn Strike: Hitch is just not very useful against the bosses (if it's useful at all)
Sworn Flourish: More hitch, at least slightly easier to use
Engagement Ring: This is awesome against rats but means you can only cast half as much which is generally a liability in boss fights. Penalty to fighting bosses and bonus to fighting rats is a really bad trade.
Nexus Sprint: More hitch, still useless
Bridal Glow: Taken close to the end it's likely to do more good then harm but even then, it just isn't likely to boost what you want
Hereditary Bane: This at least makes using hitch a little more practical in non boss fights but hitch just aint useful against bosses
Dying Wish: Yeah Cronos aint gonna even notice losing 40 hp when a goon dies

Wave Strike: Wave damage insignificant against bosses. I dont need more means to kill rats.
Wave Flourish: Same
Geyser Ring: Blocks far, far more useful cast spells and negates anything that has effect in the cast
Breaker Sprint: This one can be situationally good even in boss fights but the magick drain might be extremely bad depending on what your build it
Double Up: the gold or health boost can be nice but getting it near the end of the run can be rage inducing
Hydraulic might: Way too short a time to matter in boss fights
Flood Control: Amazing in the Woods, liability against Cerebus or Cronos
Slippery Slope: A tiny damage boost that only applies against crowded enemies, unlikely to matter much in boss fights
Crashing Wave: I dont think it's even possible to knock bosses into stuff

Local Climate: The number of situations I dont want my cast to follow me vastly outnumber the situations I do want that

Extra Dose: A 5% chance to double hit compared to the 100% chance from the hammer boon
Critical Miss: If you getting hit enough for this to do significant damage, you're dead anyways

Anvil Ring: shrinks your cast for a not very good amount of damage
Smithy Sprint: draining mana for an an attack that wont hit anything while you are running away
Monton Touch: No boss has armor so this does little to nothing in boss fights
Trusty Shield: If you are drowning in mana it would be nice but you can't be sure that will be the case
Tough Trade: A little damage is nice but you can survive way too few hits for it to matter
Mint Condition: This protects you for a few seconds, the least dangerous few seconds

Flammable Coating: If bosses had armor this would probably be cool
Natural Gas: Even in non boss fights, I have trouble getting this to damage mobs who weren't already going to die
Spontaneous Combustion: Will do very little without fire extinguisher and fire extinguisher is only worth it at a higher rarity level
First Blood: Maybe do more damage to bosses in the phases of fights where they are least dangerous.

Mean Streak: This bonus is unlikely to be very large when you need it

Hexes in general: dependent on upgrade trees that you can't even see until you use a second boon oppotunity on them, several are unlikely to give a good return on investment
wolf howl
night bloom
twilight curse: good against mobs, not against bosses
phase shift: cronos completely stops it because it's really fun to spend an entire run maxing this thing out and then find out it's useless. Oh joy, I'm so glad I spent an hour doing that.
lunar ray: this one is more borderline, it offers okay damage if you have really bad damage output but unless you luck into the tree with invulnerability on it this is unlikely to get you through the second half of phase two


Then on top of it you have boons that only help if you are locked into a particular style. For instance the Aphrodite boons are amazing if you are striking from up close, but if you didn't pick the twin blades that might not be viable (depending on other stuff). Quick buck gotten towards the start of the game can allow you to buy more boons later but those late game purchases need to actually be worthwhile and applicable to your build for the reward. Zeus's mana can be good or bad depending on what other stuff you have.

The list of things I could potentially not want is huge. It doesn't feel like Hades 1 where I could adapt my playstyle to getting different boons, it feels like either I'll get lucky and kill Cronos or get unlucky and try to fight him with useless crap.

[Clawyer]

While I will not comment on all boons I want to reply on a few things:

First of all: Getting to the final boss means you have to manage at least a few rooms with loads of enemies. And all bosses have waves of adds to kill.

You seem to overlook the different types of additional damage of some of the boons.
Hitch boons on the one hand have a pretty high percentage of bonus damage compared to other boons. They are great with slow, hard hitting weapons like the axe.
Boons that add flat damage on attacks or specials then work way better on fast hitting weapons like the daggers. The additional damage of wave strike is added to each hit of your combo, probably dealing more damage than half of the pure weapon hits and adding still significant damage to the latter half.

While Engagement Ring may reduce how often you cast that ring it will in exchange keep enemies in that ring way longer. Bad if you need damage from your omega cast and sadly effects like the ice storm don't seem to be prolonged to the cast's longer duration.

Breaker Sprint is very strong if you have any kind of easy to pull off mana regen like Zeuss or Hestia it can save a run with bad hammer RNG. My first Chronos kill run had a very bad hammer setup so in the end Heroic level 2 Breaker Sprint made top 1 in my damage chart, dealing 20% more damage than my attacks and enabling my hex over and over.
The same is true for Smithy Sprint. Try to use them offensively.

[Doomspeaker]

Coming here to say:
Boons like Double Strike that offer these small percentages need a rework. The general idea is nice, but 5%? The solution is there already, make those infusion based! So you start with 5 and the heavier you lean into an element the more you can do.

Boons that relate to armor right now are also a bit wonky. The game practically requires at least one, but once you have exactly one boon that can deal with armor, any further beyond that is useless. I know, specialization and all, but there should be more ways to encourage mixing skills instead of "pick the first one you get".

[noobzs]

Just to comment on double strike.

I was very excited seeing this boon the first time, its one of my favourite boon in hades 1,
then this 5% got me so disappointed.

This is a single player game I don't think those single digit buff should exist.

[Blacksnake]

Some of these critiques seem valid, but the problems with Poseidon's boons were the same in Hades 1.

Aphrodite has a Boon that treats every enemy as a near enemy (which should clear up your issue with hers).

Hera's Boons tend to feel problematic to me still. There is a lot of interplay with hers that may need a rebalance. You need the best RNG usually when you start getting her. I will say that if you Hitch a boss to an add, then hit the add hard, it is ok damage. This is a good way to apply damage safely to a boss. It is slower, but safer.