Least Favorite Olympian Boon?

[The Sojourner]

As the title says. For me, it's Smoldering Air (the Zeus/Aphrodite duo boon), which means I can no longer be epic by using an Olympian's Greater Call. In fact, it renders [REDACTED]'s Aid useless.

#2 for me is Crush Shot, but even some of the Duo cast boons don't do it for me (blizzard shot, curse of drowning).

EDIT: it seems Curse of Drowning is faintly winning out among the crowd...

[All talk and no fight]

Sojourner I think you mean "not keen on taking boons that assume I take damage" not do damage, correct? since you are inferring that Aphrodite boons lessen the damage that you take, when not taking damage at all is much better.

Posiedon is just to hit and miss with me these days. Glad to have it on the rail so it can keep the chariots away from me after i use up my dash attacks, but with many of my other weapons I don't want the enemy knocked away from me I want to be dashing behind them for backstabs, or keeping them all close together for mass group damage. Because posiedon's %damage isn't as high as athena, demeter and aphrodite (who has the highest %damage increases for primary attack and special) it almost always seems critical that I get good support boons, like razor shoals. I do love his wall slam damage increases on the 4th stage though. Makes it very easy.

[RCMidas]

Poseidon does have a nice Duo bonus if you can get it, making you immune to stunning and taking 10% less damage from bosses, but whether or not that's worth the buildup (Cast and Rupture Boons from him are the best to get for this chain) is highly subjective. As ever, taking no damage is better than reducing damage taken. Thank you Hermes with +3 dashes and thank you Athena with 20s-cooldown shield.

[letir]

Poseidon's knockback can be devastating in some arenas, and he really start to shine on the high heat, when number of common rabble become a problem. Breaking wave work with everything and can hit enemy several times. In the Styx you can just randomly dash around the room and kill everything by accident. It's especially good for bow, which lacking easy AOE attacks against crowds.

Besides, he offer very strong additional damage against bosses through Wave Pounding, and rupture also work wonders against mobile foes.

[racknae]

Demeter's dash is just plain bad. It only actually hits enemies when you dash directly towards them, has low damage output as a result and is generally an extremely unreliable way to apply chill to enemies. Worst dash in the game by far.

[Tri]

Oceans bounty, throw away boon when the rest are also trash.

[The Sojourner]

Originally posted by All talk and no fight:

Sojourner I think you mean "not keen on taking boons that assume I take damage" not do damage, correct? since you are inferring that Aphrodite boons lessen the damage that you take, when not taking damage at all is much better.

Yep, corrected.

Originally posted by mar:

Poseidon's knockback can be devastating in some arenas, and he really start to shine on the high heat, when number of common rabble become a problem. Breaking wave work with everything and can hit enemy several times. In the Styx you can just randomly dash around the room and kill everything by accident. It's especially good for bow, which lacking easy AOE attacks against crowds.

Pretty much, Poseidon is stupid good in Tartarus and the Temple of Styx, and perhaps even Elysium too. Not as good elsewhere though (I mean, who's been annoyed at a spreader or gorgon being knocked into the magma zone only to see it not really come back? Very insulting without a decent ranged attack).

[The Sojourner]

Originally posted by TehHutch96:

Oceans bounty, throw away boon when the rest are also trash.

But it's great for farming extra resources (plus, the extra coinage means a stronger build, whether that be a Chthonic build using items from the Well of Charon, or an Olympian build). For me, the worst Poseidon boon is actually Hydraulic Might (unless I have a fast, high DPS build, which I don't have about 60% of the time).

[Shamanalah]

I don't like Poseidon because I feel the knockback is really useless against bosses and only good vs regular enemy which I don't struggle against.

Also not a fan of Artemis, I'll pick it but it's just more dmg and a lesser version of Zeus IMO. The call is pretty lackluster from Artemis but can be useful.

[letir]

Originally posted by that funky monke:

Demeter's dash is just plain bad. It only actually hits enemies when you dash directly towards them, has low damage output as a result and is generally an extremely unreliable way to apply chill to enemies. Worst dash in the game by far.

That's not true at all.

Mistral Dash "projectile" cover quite a lot of ground and dissipate slowly, which means you can apply status effect on target and fast pursuers at the same time. One of the best status-producing dashes in the game, on par with Dionysus.

[jordyexists]

There's a lot of boons I don't like; certain gods have terrible synergies with certain weapons/aspects. (IE: Aphrodite is great on slow, high damage weapons like Excalibur aspect sword, but is terrible with low damage, rapid hit weapons like Lucifer aspect rail.) "Worst", for me, are the boons that have the least uses in more scenarios, and my absolute worst boon would be the one that I can find no use for in any build, whatsoever.

Runners up:

Crush shot: If you're using something like fists or sword, this removes your only ability to attack from range, which can cause huge problems dealing with witches that like to sit over lava or giant rats who surround themselves with poison. However, it does extremely high damage so it can be used with Hera bow or Beowulf shield.

Cold embrace: Demeter's cast is my second least favourite cast after Crush Shot, since it not only removes the ability for the cast to stick in an enemy and grant you a damage bonus, but is slow to target the rather quick moving enemies. That being said, I'll happily take it if I have Artemis on my list of gods for that run, as Crystal Clarity (Artemis + Demeter duo) makes it one of the best casts in the game and resolves every problem it has. The opposite end of the spectrum is Cold Embrace (Demeter + Aphrodite duo); it actually makes it even harder to use and even less functional. Yes, you can go out of your way to try to make it work, but considering how quickly both you and your enemies tend to move 99% of the time, even setting it up correctly often results in only a second or two of meaningful use. It makes a bad cast absolutely terrible...

But the absolute worst of the worst, avoid at all costs and even avoid taking boons that might enable it because it is essentially a total waste of a RNG boon slot when it is offered: Curse of Drowning (Poseidon + Ares duo).

It combines everything terrible about Aphrodite's cast (lack of range) with everything awful about Demeter's cast (doesn't stick the cast into the enemy, completely impossible to set up in a useful way in actual combat). There is literally nothing good about this boon and the fact it is a duo that requires prerequisites makes it even worse; the only use it has is to be sold for 450 gold... And that assumes you're "lucky" enough for it to appear as one of the three to sell when you find a cleansing shrine. While you have it, you're definitively weaker...

If it pulsed constantly for 10 seconds and did massive damage, I could see the use... But it pulses once per cast and is absolutely useless. The only time I'd ever recommend taking it is to get it for fulfilling the prophecy to try every boon.

Some of the other boons listed in this thread (and my runner's up) are certainly weak relative to the vast majority of the other boons... But this one even makes those look godlike in comparison.

[The Sojourner]

Originally posted by jordyexists:

Crush shot: If you're using something like fists or sword, this removes your only ability to attack from range, which can cause huge problems dealing with witches that like to sit over lava or giant rats who surround themselves with poison. However, it does extremely high damage so it can be used with Hera bow or Beowulf shield.

Indeed... and recently I found this piece of entertainment:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2453034230

[Mph mmphmph]

It's interesting how much hate does Ares-Poseidon duo get here. I actually found it to be pretty much devastating. Yes, it limits your range, but listen to this: you're making flood shot to get cast around yourself multiple times + you can stack this effect with multiple uses + you always drop the crystal next to yourself. With Hermes' flurry cast you're literally "covering" yourself in constant flood shot that is amplified by an amount of your cast charges.

As for the least favorite boons: smoldering air (it messes up with quite a lot of aids) and cold embrace (quite a dmg buff, but it doesn't feel like you can use it in full power most of the time).

[splurje]

For me, i love smoldering air, especially combined with dyonisus's boon, offering constant high damage hangover. My least favorite is probably athena's boon granting invulnerability frames after death defiance. It's fine i guess if you are getting absolutely destroyed, but to me it's main worth is the death defiance it gives. My second least favorite might go to zeus's cast, because it is low damage, and could be subbed out for posiden's if you really need that aoe.

[tri.sapphire]

Originally posted by splurje:

For me, i love smoldering air, especially combined with dyonisus's boon, offering constant high damage hangover. My least favorite is probably athena's boon granting invulnerability frames after death defiance. It's fine i guess if you are getting absolutely destroyed, but to me it's main worth is the death defiance it gives. My second least favorite might go to zeus's cast, because it is low damage, and could be subbed out for posiden's if you really need that aoe.

At least that boon can refill a Death Defiance, so it does have one use.

I also love me some Smoldering Air, and I usually take it with Zeus's aid on a close-combat build. It is a bad pairing with Aphrodite and Artemis though.

Hydraulic Might gets my vote. Especially since enemies take time to spawn in, and some rooms are rather large. Would be worth taking if it was 25-30 seconds. Enough time to clear a wave or two.

[Doogles]

I destroyed with smoldering on an Excalibur run (2 heat). I had Zeus's call and just smashed the enemies every ten seconds on top of of all the another damage I was doing.