Feedback on the balancing of Health and Damage...

[Steen]

First off,

I want to say, this game feels far more balanced than the first Hades when it comes to build diversity with many of the weapons (but oh my god the staff is bad), and my criticisms here do not involve this game's Heat system being the Fear system, since it's in many ways better *and* worse. But there's design choices in this game that I have to ask if they're intentional for the sake of long-term progression buildup or intentional for the sake of difficulty.

First point, Melinoe's starting max health.

With Frinos and the maxed arcana that grants more starting health and magick, she sits at 80 HP. Now, compare that to Zagreus' max base 100, plus if you chose the Aspect of Arthur which gives an additional 50, and Zag has anywhere from 16% to 90% more HP than his little sister to *start with*. This wouldn't be a huge problem if Centaur Hearts weren't kind of a pain to get in this game either.

If this is intentional and there will be higher ranks of Arcana cards even for this, then I would understand that and I would think that's fair, but for anyone else reading this, the max HP you can start with overall won't even get you 30 HP back when you use a Death Defiance. To have a meaningful amount of HP restored from a DD in the late game, you need around 200, and that amount of HP would help you survive numerous attacks from Chronos once or twice. That's a pretty tall ask unless you get really lucky with reward sets in the Fields of Mourning or have insane luck with Poseidon's Boon that gives you a chance of a double minor find, which can give you a second Centaur Heart (which you want it to be Epic by the way).

Meanwhile, almost everything else you do in this game gives you so much more magick out the anus, and you can even run into Medea on the surface who can grant you a buff that literally gives you +10 max magick from each encounter. Oh and there's an Arcana for passive magick regen, plus a boon from Hestia that does the same thing. Why not anything for health.

Anyway, about damage from enemies.

A lot of enemies in this game deal a truckload of base damage. I would understand this for the late game such as Tartarus, especially when taking alternate paths are intentionally risky, but even from Erebus to the FoM there are enemies and minibosses that do way too much damage for making a single mistake. This kind of ties in with the HP problem cause it would be fine if these enemies did slap you around when you start with 100 health and not 80, but if you don't get lucky or choose not to get Centaur Hearts that's when it becomes a problem.

Chronos is probably the most egregious example in my opinion, where his damage can wipe you of half of your health if you don't pay attention to his attack patterns, which is exacerbated by the amount of minions he can spawn mid phases, and that you can only reduce by rolling an effect from a Boon of Hades .

There's a few ways I can see fixing these sorts of things for the casual or average player who struggles with this.

1. Buff the base strength of Hephaestus' resistance boon and Poseidon's resistance boon. Both of these boons are really good if you can line them up effectively and/or are able to rareify either of them. Demeter also has a boon that can slash all damage taken to a maximum of 15, but that requires you to have 6 earth boons which are difficult to get when you aren't hard focusing her and Hephaestus.

2. Give Melinoe more possible starting HP or integrate an Infusion boon from Hestia that gives a passive health regen.
Whether its giving Frinos upgrade potential, buffing the Arcana that increases max health/magick, or giving Hestia an infusion boon that requires a moderate amount of Fire boons, anything can help with making a tank build that can be viable.

Note that I haven't found everything in this game yet, I can't find the damn Cat to recruit them, and I don't even know if Athena is in the game yet (I miss you Athena :( ). And obviously there's still a lot to do for this game, but right now the weakest aspect of this game's balancing is Melinoe's starting HP and some enemies hitting a bit too hard as a result.

This game is a 9/10 and I can't wait to see what you guys have in store. :)

[Sintonir]

I would remind you there is an Arcana which raises max HP every 5 rooms. It can easily bring Melinoe's HP to 110-120 before you account Centaur Hearts.
Also, Frinos can be improved to give more max HP.

[Demon Swords]

I think the game is a bit harder from a max health / enemy damage dealing standpoint, but Its also balanced out by the more ways to kite enemies.

Your cast can now hold enemies in place (or severely slow down others) and you have a lot more spam-able range attacks (so you have more ways to start far away from enemies, thus less likely to get hit).

The only loss is the inability to double dodge, but all the bosses seem to have at least one of the following compared to Hades 1: slightly more telegraphed attacks, smaller AoE Effects, bigger areas / less hazards / less mics. enemies running around. Though you definitely get less invulnerability frames from only 1 dodge, with all the other factors, its definitely worse for melee builds but should be about the same for the bigger roster of range builds Hades 2 has.

I do think the game is too unforgiving early on, so I am not against a slight starting health buff, but I think that when your like 75+% maxed out on everything is probably too strong, so I would prefer a nerf somewhere else as well then.
- So maybe like +10 Starting health and maybe also Mana and then have Titan or the other health and Mana per 5 rooms arcana be slightly Nerfed.
- Or maybe do something really radical like giving +20 starting health (and maybe mana) then having Titan only give health (with maybe a +10 more then current) and the bonus health and mana every room only give Mana (with probably either a buff to the mana given per 5 rooms or decrease the number of rooms required.) (With this change, Titan is less necessary for mana builds and the other one can be ignored for mana-less builds, instead of currently running both for just about every build.)

[Steen]

Originally posted by Sintonir:

I would remind you there is an Arcana which raises max HP every 5 rooms. It can easily bring Melinoe's HP to 110-120 before you account Centaur Hearts.
Also, Frinos can be improved to give more max HP.

I did also take that Arcana into account and I think its effects are fairly negligible when you take the Oath into account since enemy damage can scale proportionally to that amount.

But you can upgrade Frinos? Where the hell can you do that??? lmao

[Varsoon]

Originally posted by Steen:

Originally posted by Sintonir:

I would remind you there is an Arcana which raises max HP every 5 rooms. It can easily bring Melinoe's HP to 110-120 before you account Centaur Hearts.
Also, Frinos can be improved to give more max HP.

I did also take that Arcana into account and I think its effects are fairly negligible when you take the Oath into account since enemy damage can scale proportionally to that amount.

But you can upgrade Frinos? Where the hell can you do that??? lmao

Feed him treats.
The Cat can also give you an extra death defiance, meaning you can walk into Chronos' fight with at least 5 Defiances.
You also get WAY MORE access to healing than Zagreus ever did. His only reliable way to get mid-fight heals was Bouldy or very specific aspects whereas Melinoe has aspects and even a whole Selene Hex Path built around getting a heal.
Furthermore, if you're still having struggles of having low health, there are more boon paths to get bonus health. Hestia has one that sacrifices a boon for a big buff to HP and Mana. Hephaestus has a scaling HP for Mana one and multiple Armor-focused boons. Aphrodite still offers bonus HP from hearts. Demeter offers Seeds as max health ups. Poseidon has multiple boons than can increase your rate of getting Centaur Hearts. Arachne is the special encounter for floor 1 and always gives Armor.

You have a much easier time mitigating damage taken than Zagreus ever did because your cast creates and AoE circle that doesn't let enemies ever come close to you. Furthermore, every single build has ranged options, too.

The bigger issue I have is that many enemies can be very damage spongy if your build isn't over the moon and it can be frustrating to just sit there looping them in a stagger animation until they're dead.

[Steen]

I want to be clear, I haven't really had an issue with low health, and enemies being very spongy is a point I was going to bring up but I then have to remember we don't have access to weapon upgrades yet and we're relying on damage specific boons. In this case, I always go for Hera and Aphrodite early on since they give the biggest base attack increases which massively helps with Twin Blades. I really wish Hestia was a bit more common since her boons are a lot more beginner friendly but have massive payoff.

[Neo NiGHTS ®]

What we have been missing (as in "we were used to, but we are trying to adapt to it") are two huge defensive skills:

1) Athena's boons, especially her dash (that's almost a necessity for runs with higher Heat);

2) The shield, which would block *ANYTHING*, even Hades attacks.
Also it would block as long as you hold the shield up.

Now we don't have anything like the shield dash and the Axe Special doesn't block everything (there's quite a few unblockables, actually) and it leaves a huge opening when you're casting the omega special.

[Steen]

Originally posted by Neo NiGHTS ®:

What we have been missing (as in "we were used to, but we are trying to adapt to it") are two huge defensive skills:

1) Athena's boons, especially her dash (that's almost a necessity for runs with higher Heat);

2) The shield, which would block *ANYTHING*, even Hades attacks.
Also it would block as long as you hold the shield up.

Now we don't have anything like the shield dash and the Axe Special doesn't block everything (there's quite a few unblockables, actually) and it leaves a huge opening when you're casting the omega special.

Yeah I agree, missing Athena's dash is stinging pretty bad. Though I'd be OK with the shield not returning unless a suitable replacement or overhaul was made, cause it sucks to use as a fighting tool if you're not using Aspect of Zeus.

I'd be perfectly ok with nerfing Athena's Dash to priming some of your Magick in order for it to function and dispersing the invlun effects to your Omega moves.

[Neo NiGHTS ®]

My biggest gripe with the Axe is that you can't block everything and you can't tell which attack you can and can't block.

The big window between blocking and the omega special is bad, but it's something you can account for. Not knowing WHAT you can block is pretty punishing, to say the least.

[Steen]

Originally posted by Neo NiGHTS ®:

My biggest gripe with the Axe is that you can't block everything and you can't tell which attack you can and can't block.

The big window between blocking and the omega special is bad, but it's something you can account for. Not knowing WHAT you can block is pretty punishing, to say the least.

That and it basically just being Shield and Arthur combined makes it feel like a very clunky weapon that didn't seem to get a lot of testing. Whenever I do a run with the Axe I usually focus the Omega Attack and leave the Special for specific hard hitting effects I happen to come across that make sense, such as Poseidon's or Apollo's Flourishes. Beyblade builds are the best way to go imo.

[jimmyliou1990]

I sometimes feel like the reason why enemy damage, Mel health, and the new dash perhaps shape like this in Hades II is because SuperGiant knows that over 90% of the players in Hades II right now are a bunch of fully upgraded, father-destroying, godlike Zagreus that would disintegrate Chronos in no time if they don't dish out major challenges.

[Helen Damnation]

Centaur hearts count as minor finds??? I have been ignoring that poseidon boon. screaming. Now I know!

Jimmy Liou - you're right, Hades 2 definitely feels like a game for people who are already father-destroying Hades players. As much as I'm enjoying it, I would recommend anyone to play the first game first, from a gameplay perspective even more than a story perspective. It builds and expands on gameplay from the first game, adding complexity, which is great for Hades veterans but probably would be a bit much for a new player.