DLC skull thoughts/tiers?

[The Royal Pain]

After trying all 5 there's definitely winners and losers, and I'm curious what others think.

Personally I'd put Spartan at the top of the heap, then Thor and Herc fighting for second. Spartan's just amazing if you can time your perfect blocks and the skills seem almost hypertuned for damage. Thor's great at doling out dozens of hits if you can get a few of its related items and was the first one I beat the bonus boss with, that was a hell of a light show. And Herc's grapples are *satisfying* once you get enough physical damage and skill cooldown, it's the first one I actually beat the game with after the DLC dropped.

Guan Yu, meanwhile, is nice but a bit too weak for how slow it can be, and Arthur was just a letdown. Maybe Arthur'll work better if I can get it on a dedicated magic build but when I saw Spartan drop during the run I tried Arthur I just went 'Gimme' and pivoted.

[Eagle Eye Jack]

Herc, when built properly, is 100% invulnerable to damage, and effortless to play.
Hard to see how that goes second to anything.
I agree spartan is #2 since he can also be very invulnerable.
Then the other two.

[Zylo the Wolfbane]

Hercules is definitely top tier. With sufficient cooldown synergies he's just entirely in I-Frames basically the whole time, does big damage even when built with little in the way of damage items. Definitely the best of the bunch, and incredibly fun to boot.

Spartacus/Spartan whatever you want to call him certainly is strong, but the parry timing feels off to me. I'm not sure what it is, but I ALWAYS get it just too late. I cannot get the timing down to save my life. In addition, his parry is very good against single targets and large foes, but can fall apart against multiple enemies and large projectile spam. If you can't land the parries, he's kinda mediocre, but if you CAN land the parries he's great.

Thor is just solid all around. Not the best of the bunch, but still a solidly strong skull. Very good synergies and interesting build lines, since both his skills and attacks work together effectively, and building for either or both can work great. Only issues I ran into is some of his skills were a bit sluggish, and he can eat hits will trying to cast skills sometimes.

Guan Yu is a bit slow, yes. He definitely needs some attack speed to feel good, but once you get a bit of it he can go pretty damn hard. He hits like an absolute TRUCK, and has huge range for a melee-focused skull. The big sweeping strikes can do a lot to keep enemies at range and keep you safe. That said, as mentioned he is slow, and his special sweeping attack after you build up the charges, while it hits like an off the rails train wielding an extra large hammer, it also locks you down and doesn't feel like it has any I-Frames, so you can eat a lot of damage from that, especially if you lose track of when it's coming up.

King Arthur is definitely a powerhouse. Reminds me of Prisoner/King (Heh, both Kings, so it works out) and other heavy attack-speed focused Magic users. He hits hard, hits fast, and has strong skills. His special mode is also excellent and just tears through things. That said, he definitely feels like he has a bit harder time getting a build together. He wants a lot of attack speed, AND a lot of magic damage, which feels a bit harder to do than getting builds together for the others. It doesn't really become an issue however until about The Hero fight and beyond, he definitely feels like an easy pass through everything else, so the name of the game is setting up your build to clear those last fights.

Overall, all the DLC skulls are excellent, but Hercules is by far the strongest, just due to almost any reasonably set up cooldown focused build making you effectively immortal.

[Galactic hatkid]

imo thor and herc are fighting for 1st
herc can be almost unkillable but thor can be the god of magic dmg
god of war is 3rd, he can do great dmg but something about him just doesn't click for me
and unknown king and spartacus fight for 4th, but I feel like spartacus is 5th
don't get me wrong I love parries, I pick pike on every run but his parry just wont and will never click.

[Jpad4774]

1st Demi-God - the parry and just block have been a treat to play. I'd almost consider it a crutch.
2nd Herc - He's brutal and invincible all the time. Just not really my favorite.
3rd God of War - His reach on his weapon has saved me so many times. Need to play him more. I find him to be one of the best Power Skulls.
4th Arthur - he has power, but his attacks get me hit more than I want with my play style.
5th Thor - Definitely has power, but I find him uncomfortable. His basic string is long and his skills are kinda underwhelming to me for what they hit

[Pinhead Larry]

Build for magic and attack speed and arthur deletes everything before he can take any damage. The Dad fight lasted less than 10 seconds and the dark dad fight lasted less than 13 seconds on Difficulty 7 with attack speed and magic damage items (I had some crit in there too with invisible knife which helped add to the insanity)

[Arc]

Slave is super generous with its i-frames and does very high damage. If the enemy uses a multi-hit attack, you just have 2 dodges + invul to deal with it, so its still better than nearly any other Skul in the game. Feels like the best designed new Skul.
Invulcules is a free win. Like legitimately, you take that Skull, you take frost/tree/slime/mana inscriptions and you can spend 100% of the time completely invincible. It probably needs a nerf (or to be set at legendary rather than just unique, maybe even both) but nerfing it too much would make it not fun anymore and it is easily the most fun of the new Skul's.
Thor is boring. His gimmick is based around basic attacks but his basic attack tree isn't particularly fun to use, he's mostly carried by one particular skill being incredibly powerful.
Wargod sucks. When I'm fighting an enemy that summon spikes under me while also summoning a teleporting golem while an entire squad rolls up on me and a giant is smashing the floor and another is ramming me and half of these things blow up when they die, I don't want to commit to an overly slow attack then an overly slow followup.
King was weird. I had > 500% magic attack and high crit, yet he was only doing about 20 damage. Feels like something glitched out.

[BigScug A.K.A Heroic Mr. Piss]

Originally posted by The Royal Pain:

After trying all 5 there's definitely winners and losers, and I'm curious what others think.

Personally I'd put Spartan at the top of the heap, then Thor and Herc fighting for second. Spartan's just amazing if you can time your perfect blocks and the skills seem almost hypertuned for damage. Thor's great at doling out dozens of hits if you can get a few of its related items and was the first one I beat the bonus boss with, that was a hell of a light show. And Herc's grapples are *satisfying* once you get enough physical damage and skill cooldown, it's the first one I actually beat the game with after the DLC dropped.

Guan Yu, meanwhile, is nice but a bit too weak for how slow it can be, and Arthur was just a letdown. Maybe Arthur'll work better if I can get it on a dedicated magic build but when I saw Spartan drop during the run I tried Arthur I just went 'Gimme' and pivoted.

Herc is best esp with skill cd it gives a boatload of i frames. i like spartan but i can see some struggling with him since his whole thing is parrying. arthur is fine i like his big slash in his blue mode. thor seems pretty good but i found his thunder charges to be hard to manage (could fully charge when you enter a new room or something) until legendary and skills felt rather slow. guan yu is cool but feels painfully slow since dodging cancels the combo and he doesnt have i frames (to my knowledge) so its almost impossible to hit with the follow up without taking atleast one hit since the basic and follow up ranges are very different its kinda tough to get spacing right and his skill follow ups are pretty good but his basic attacks are pretty bad vs faster enemies making his legendary follow up which feels like its supposed to be the goal to get and burst on bosses but seems like itll only work with chimera and maybe joan (unless you manage to get to legendary in first zone then ent is also included) but for final boss and alot of enemies until then it feels like a waste to use or very hard/risky to try and hit with it. all of my thoughts on guan yu are subjective and i have little experience with arthur

[815|Shouldabeen]

I ended up playing Herc for my first run of the DLC. Played it on ML4 because I haven't played in a while. Beat the final boss on first playthrough. Herc feels really strong compared to pretty much any of the standard game skulls. Was a fun run too. Got some of the new items.

[Arc]

Originally posted by Pvt. Parts:

Originally posted by The Royal Pain:

like spartan but i can see some struggling with him since his whole thing is parrying.

You can just use the switch parry which is like 5 seconds long for the giant damage buff and play it like any other Skul and its still an above average Skul. It doesn't even get parry alternates for its skills until legendary anyways. Its skills are all very safe and do high damage quickly.
Why the hell is this in quote box.

[BigScug A.K.A Heroic Mr. Piss]

Originally posted by Arc:

Originally posted by Pvt. Parts:

You can just use the switch parry which is like 5 seconds long for the giant damage buff and play it like any other Skul and its still an above average Skul. It doesn't even get parry alternates for its skills until legendary anyways. Its skills are all very safe and do high damage quickly.
Why the hell is this in quote box.

[815|Shouldabeen]

Just played a mutant build with thor and bomber, and hot damn did it feel strong. While it doesn't have the safety of frost/bomber, it makes up with overwhelming damage. When you swap to legendary thor with this swap skill, lightning strikes 3 times. It outputs a ton of damage. Then with mutant upgrade for final boss, some good RNG lead to me just deleting it.