I really wanted to like Hestia

[Rhacius]

I don't think it is a big stretch to say that Hestia isn't the best god at least when it comes to her attack modifiers, especially since they are only really useable on high attack rate weapons. Her damage output is low and the fact it is a slow acting dot means it often times isn't even effective, because it is often cheaper and better to just keep attacking to finish opponents off rather than dash away and let the dot finish them off for you, especially since in those cases where the dot is enough to kill them you must have already gotten them rather low to begin with.

Hestia seems to only become worse once we consider what she goes up against. Especially compared to other gods that benefit from quick attacks like Zeus, whose boons not only weave themselves a lot easier into other builds, but just does way more damage in general and more importantly it actually guarantees the damage on procs rather than having you dash around dodging low hp enemies for maximum efficiency. But obviously it isn’t just Zeus, all the gods that give % damage will in all likelihood outperform Hestia and that’s before you consider that they apply modifiers that apply useful bonus effects beyond just mere damage. But the saddest part is that Hestia would even lose out against high rarity Hephaestus, who is way more useful especially if you want to do the whole weaving in and out of battle, since rather than running away from an opponent with a dot you just kill them.

So to summarize, you don’t want to pick Hestia as an attack modifer, because she is
-Hestia is already limited to high attack speed attack/special, since this is the only way to stack her numbers, pretty much pointless on slow attack weapons like the axe
-primarily only synergizes with herself unlike for example Zeus who can be applied with a slow attack and then proced with a high attack speed special or vice versa.
-worse than other gods for damage, while offering almost no utility, like the boon that lets you burn through armor quickly is nice, but if my attack just does +50% damage I am faster.
-You don’t want to leave potentially dangerous opponents on low hp just to actually get use out of fire damage.
-Her “best” boon for stacking fire damage ends up turning her into a worse Zeus.

Now I could forgive all of that if she were at least useful against bosses, who at least in theory have the hp and the drawn out fights where her ability would be the most useful. Even ignoring that she is outclassed by other gods and just straight % damage modifiers, she can do somewhat decent damage. Which is not to mention the big red number under your opponent that keeps going up, chasing the dopamine high of which is the main reason I gave her a shot to begin with. Now I say in theory, because in practice this dos not materialize, because in practice even if you manage to stack really high burn damage on your target, you will likely already have gotten the target low enough to be close or already transition into the next phase. At which point the number disappears as the boss transitions into a period of invulnerability. So not only did it take me way longer to clear the boss, bringing with it all the risk of messing up and taking damage, but now the supposed benefit, which is this long term damage I had to meticulously build up over a prolonged fight is just erased.

Ultimately all Hestia really boiled down to for me is a cool visual effect upon my weapons and attacks, Daedalus ended up doing the heavy lifting. A nice little placebo effect, while 90% of the heavy lifting is done by my actual attacks. With the one tangible benefit being that Hestia dose count as a modifier if you happen to have the arcana card or other effects equipped that care about modifiers being applied.

The worst offender is Chronos who goes thorugh to my knowledge at least 5 instances of invulnerability. 3 in the first phase (1/3rd, ½ and 2/3rd respectively), plus 1 during the transition between stages and one more during the middle of phase 2. That isn’t even accounting for previous bosses like Zerberus who can just dig out of the fight. Again no other god is affected by this quite as Hestia and it is in the one instance where at least theoretically she should be at her most useful.

Now, I understand why you wouldn’t necessarily want dots to stick to bosses and I most certainly don’t want Hestia to just be buffed to where her dps is more comparable to that of Zeus (the fact she has a talent that basically does this by letting you proc your fire stacks are honestly kind of lame in my opinion, especially since they both end up competing for very similar niche). For now my suggestion would therefore be to give Hestia some sort of buff that scales by how much of her boon was purged. You could even lock this behind a boon if you really wanted to. As a mere (by no means a straight up suggestion) example if the player gained 0.1% more damage to Hestia boon afflicted attack/special for each stack that was removed for a brief duration afterward, they could quite easily gain a 400% modifier which is at least something to set her appart and no other god can offer. Spending all your time in one phase to slowly cook the enemy, to then reap the reward of your labor by having a much stronger second phase.

Which is all to say Hestia right now could really use a pay off that is uniquely her own rather than just being in competition with Zeus over who has the more effective attackspeed into damage ratio or having to go up against the raw numbers of % modifiers other gods can offer.

[Rhacius]

p.s. you could always just freeze her dot during invicibility phases too, which would eliviate my concerns a great deal without having to majorly change anything.

[Asshat]

Agreed, I like the DoT in concept, but it just doesn't pull enough weight in execution and is too restricted to attack speed to even really trigger its effect.

A few suggestions improvement
- scale with damage dealt down to a minimum value where it currently is so slower weapons can have some use
- scale DoT to the amount of buildup - the DPS is already lower than almost every other god's effect so this would put it closer to the straight % damage ones
- a native debuff that increases damage taken to armor

For extra effect boons
- AoE field around affected enemies
- % max health damage (with a cap)
- burn affecting both armor and health simultaneously

[Rhacius]

Thats a really good point, the boon that makes your burn effect do more damage to armor would have way more application if it made it so that burn affects both armor and health simultaineously and the extra damage to armor was just native to the boon itself would work much better.

[Asshat]

Burn really just doesn't do enough on its own or synergize with anything that I've found so far, but at the same time a DoT can very easily be game breaking especially when defensive and ranged playstyles are so viable this time around, I figure it should have some niche uses like as an anti-armor option that can be built into real damage later game since it's taking up boon slots.

[dacarpen]

Yeah, its rather awkward. Burn kinda has a natural optimum where you apply it at the same rate it goes down, maybe a bit faster so it benefits from gaps in your offense, but you can easily reach a point where its stacking damage that won't trigger. She does have a boon to make stacks of burn auto-trigger, and that helps a TON, but you may not get that offered.

[Asshat]

The trigger on burn threshold is the only thing I've found that makes it anywhere close to comparable with others, I think it effectively puts its DPS just below an equivalent Poseidon boon, which would just do the flat damage every hit, where Hestia would be doing a portion of the flat damage every few hits with a little bit coming from DoT. You need a very specific boon after getting a burn effect for it to compare to others, and burn offers very little innate utility.