How would people rank the gods and the characters so far?

[cANe]

After 6 hours or so of gameplay and having unlocked all the characters and beaten Dracula I can't help but think how people rate the different gods and characters.

I feel like I haven't played enough to get a good grasp of things but I've had issues getting Lightning god to work very well but maybe I just haven't been using the best skills. Time god also seems a bit iffy unless you really get all the good skill that combo well with each other.

Death, Justice and Conquest all seem pretty top tier to me but Fire is also putting in some good work.

Curious to see what other people have had success with

[Optimistic]

So many things depend so heavily that it's hard to say, but here are some thoughts. Most of these thoughts are ignoring completely how the fireball spell changes on taking that gods attack, since this is a very warping choice and only relevant on one character. Thus if you only play the sorc I'd imagine that would change greatly how you feel about the gods, especially because she does such good AoE clear already herself.

The most generically useful to me so far seem to be Justice and Time (chrono is obviously great defensively but his shard xp/pull + AS/MS combo is very strong).

Fire is great as his attack + dead enemies make fire ground by itself solves all spam waves and does decent elite/boss damage with just two points, while still having some very good points outside of that.

Death is kinda terrible at low investment (other than dash) but insane at high investment.

Conquest I'd put a tier lower than these though its not bad, kinda serves a lot of the same purposes as fire but takes more points and seems to have worse boss damage.

Ice feels not quite strong enough at anything (leaving blight aside as random autocast damage is not to be underestimated), but she's generically strong at all facets (single target, spam clear, defense), so is a totally reasonable 3rd god.

Lightning is the god I've had the hardest time with getting good value.

[hajabuba]

Lightning sounds good with time and merris full map exp shards pull perk, yet to test it though.

[Malzand]

I think it just depends on whether you're going for an attack, spell or minion build.

In my experience having mostly only played attack builds so far in 10 hours, it goes something like:

Justice is always nice to have defensively, though not necessary for certain characters.

ATK: Ice+Justice is all you need for damage and survivability, then just go anything as your 3rd god for the AOEs. Ice is broken with melee imo, cos you'll be able to easily CC a lot of enemies and then turn that into a ton of damage (between the passives which grant attack damage per enemy impaired/frozen and extra damage to impaired/frozen enemies). I've had runs with 1000%+ attack damage with ice.

Summons: Only really one good option that has all the summons - death. Feels like you need good gear with summon damage to make a summon build work, but having death/summons as extra damage works nicely for most builds if you dont need the 3rd god slot

Spells: Time and Fire seem the best I think, followed by Conquest then Lightning. Time is nice because you just get a lot of free exp along the way, but the exp also genuinely does a ton of damage as it passes through the enemies with the right passives. Fire has nice aoe and the "burning enemies leave a pool of fire" talent is pretty good. The implode passive (I think its called?) is also really strong. Conquest seems okay, as it has a decent amount of AOE between the chains and blades. I havent had much success with lightning - any time I pick it it seems to do no damage by the end of the game, even if I've invested a fair bit into it.

[Null Winter]

If you're not aiming for a no-hit and max difficulty run, then Justice is top of the pyramid: you can, very literally, make yourself unkillable via Luck stacks, Regen, Armor, and the blessing that stuns and damages enemies from any distance with no cooldown when they try to attack.

If you're aiming for perfection, though, then Mort is probably the best if you use Alterations to ensure you're always stacking her stuff. She has an infinitely stacking damage boost blessing, which nobody else has; grab that and crows early to casually reach 200% before the Baron. Phantoms deal percent damage upfront and then the Curse burst, and Scythes can reliably spread your status effect from a different god's basic attack blessing or mass activate Curse. Her dash deals stupid amounts of damage and can lock on from off-screen while healing if you do end up hurt.

Summer is strong in how basic and straightforward she is: light everything on fire and keep kiting. Her blessings don't require thinking and she can do a little bit of every form of offense, though to get summon damage with her you need to luck into the Legendary dragon.

Time can scale well if you wholly dedicate yourself with Alteration re-rolls; all that extra EXP adds up throughout a run, and Za Warudo can render a boss totally harmless since they are not immune to it. His upfront damage is lackluster, though, so he combos better with damaging blessings from other gods; fitting, since he brought everyone together for this undertaking.

Winter is strong simply due to Freezing. An enemy can't kill you if they can't do anything, and with how high your damage values can get you'll have plenty of time to finish them off while they're frozen or focus on a bigger threat; Freezing also ignores enemy armor thresholds and boss immunities, rendering it universally useful. The damage and area scaling on her basic attack blessing are also surprisingly good considering how powerful the status effect is. She's also good for farming, since she can increase drop rates when you shatter a Frozen or recently Frozen enemy.

Lei is lackluster. I understand the idea of his kit: stack his blessings so you're a rapid-fire machine gun of multi-attacks and chain lightning while detonating the shock mines with all those basic attacks, but his dash completely shuts his own kit down due to locking you out of basic attacks. He'd be a lot better if he stole Justice's dash effect of allowing you to move at nearly full speed while attacking after a dash.

Krom baffles me. His attacks aim to Rupture enemies and bleed them out via... running away like a coward. On paper, the devs want you to Rupture an enemy and then use knockback to force a faster bleed, but enemies are way too resistant to knockback (and immune while armored) for that to work; by the time you've invested enough to knock them back far enough to matter, you've also invested enough to just beat them to death in melee. He also has no defensive or supporting blessings, aside from reducing enemy armor thresholds.

The Fates are, fittingly, more of a supporting god(s) than a main investment; they can boost your effective DPS via attack speed and crit chance upgrades, but you'll never achieve the same damage as you'd get with another god. It doesn't help that they seem to be the rarest to pop up, so you can't reliably stack your crit chance or attack speed to levels that matter.

[rommel457]

If you want lightning to shine, just get haste, lightning bolt, and his dash. Then speed around the map gathering blessings from shrines etc while you auto kill everything. This obviously works the best with high upgrades. This works well paired with good auto spells like Flare or Retribution (I think it's called from Justice.) Lightning's auto attack is just garbage with it's low activation percentage even with luck boosts. Only grab the Chain Lightning or Lightning mine skill if they appear as epic or master and you have no option for the main three at decent levels.

[The Nue]

Time feels like the best hands down to me; Gem Rush can create a feedback loop of scaling speed that makes you a nigh untouchable killing machine where your only problem is potentially losing your stacks cause you killed EVERYTHING. Force can really do intense amounts of damage even for a character lacking in damage scaling gear, and especially shines with Warp Strike (which is especially good with Sorceress). And obviously "The Summoner" is phenomenal as an early get if you're also running Mort. That said, the Dash is a liability and the CD skill is almost useless.

Mort feels like the next best... Necromancy at sufficient ranks or rarity can make an enormous army that will delete even the Baron near instantly... Crows and Soul Stealers are all but a means to an end for this goal, but honestly do pretty solid damage in their own right, especially if you choose to run her Attack ability. Her dash is solid damage with less precision needed, and can even save your life (especially with characters like the Barbarian who count "1/3 health" as a pretty big number between Life and Armor bonuses). And as other people noted, Mayhem can get scary if all the chips fall in place (albeit I don't find that very reliable to plan around, so much as a neat bonus if it happens). The Mortis Sickles or whatever can be useful as a debuff vector, but honestly it's rare to have a lot of on-hit effects outside Warrior with the Hydra perk. I feel like these two gods are the smartest choice for anything but a truly esoteric build.

Mercy is a weird one because the Shield and Passive Regen do so much in terms of giving you a bit more "margin of error", but this goddess just doesn't give any ability to increase DPS worth a dang or even grant control like Winter does... honestly most of her kit is garbo once you have one rank in those two skills... but she's maybe my third most-picked because just how GOOD those skills are for taking off some of the pressure... Good if you have a lot of Skill Alteration charges, I guess

Lightning is another odd mixed bag... it's Dash and Attack shift are unusable trash, Move Speed is a terrible buff because it's not enough to be noticeable, and Lightning Bolt is too random to rely upon for anything but anti-mob attrition. That said, Chain Lightning is probably the best Spell DPS in the game outside of Mort's skeleton army and is eminently easy to use with any character to boot. It also has the best CD skill, as its scattershot coverage and short cool-down means enemies are essentially slowly taking damage from it at all times.

I really wish Ice was better at dealing damage... the trait that gives a stacking bonus based on Incapacitation just can't be relied upon (trash mobs die too fast, typically), and the large bonus to incapaciated targets isn't a help on anything you can't freeze entirely. Like the crowd control is SO GOOD, but if you aren't leaning into damage HARD with your other pics, bosses will take too long to croak. It's a shame, because the ice trail and both autocasts have pretty great targeting parameters, in terms of hitting things often, and it's got one of the better dashes. I'll say it's strange to me how much better it's attack shift is for some characters than others.

Conquest's utility varies... I'd say the self-targeting radial is the most universally solid, as AoE characters like the Barbarian can use it for extra DPS while characters like Sorceress and Assassain can use it as a last line of defense when flanking is imminent. I wish I found things like the stacking Atk Spd or Shuriken more universally useful than they are, but a lot of builds just aren't going to let mooks pile up. The CD blade has too long a wait to be relied upon and frankly distracts me more than I'd like, the Dash is underwhelming. The bonus knockback, barrier bonus damage, and Attack alteration are all pretty underwhelming imo... though the Attack alteration can do some pretty mean damage with a close-combat Sorceress.

Fire is the kit that needs a rework the most, imo. Burning is a great status effect, and the way you can combine Immolate and Combust to just create an enormous area hazard to wear down bosses and stonewall trash mobs outright is really cool... the problem is that the Attack shift and Dash are basically the only good ways to kick off burning (and the Attack shift is painfully bad for Sorceress without pulling Splinters from the Triplets)... All three of it's spells are absolute trash. Fire Breathing feels redundant for the melee characters and just doesn't make sense at all for the Sorceress, being too infrequent to rely on ala Rampaging Chains while also not reaching far or hitting hard enough to be "worth the wait" like Chain Lightning. Meteor Storm feels like someone looked at Blight and Lightning Bolt and said "What if this, but it never hits anything?". And Flare, just... come ON, yo. Give it a big AoE on contact or bounce or pierce or SOMETHING so that this skill that barely ever procs (cause if enemies are swinging on you constantly: you're doing something wrong) reliably hits more than one enemy without investing multiple ranks. Like all three of these spells need buffing, BADLY... I'm talking twice the frequency for the first two and probably a total overhaul for Flare.

Anyway, grousing aside, I don't think ANY of the deities are bad... which hey, props... not many games like this can say that. Even when I get something like Fire or Conquest when I didn't want it and I sigh, it's because the build is "sub-optimal", not because it's bad/useless... they're all fairly useful and satisfying, just "all things are relative" and some are better than others

[Smokinjoe]

Death is S+ for me. The birds combo with enemies dying to curse causes you to get an atrocious amount of attack damage percentage. I was able to kill Dracula in less then 20 seconds with skadi. Also if you get the legendary that causes enemies to spread curse you can clean the map and just stand still while birds do all the work.

[ZeppMan217]

Mort and Time make the game free. Justice's only job is to give regen, shield, and the heal on being hit.

[king.kahuna]

In order of personal preference

Mort and Time feel somewhat above the rest. While Time i feel has some meh parts of his kid, exp gain will always have the most potential to break a run since it gives the most possible late game scaling. Mort is just insanely versatile and its just hard to do anything wrong with her

Winter is next for me. Her cc is just nice while thaw and icebound are just generally useful damage scaling if you invest just a bit into her. Will pretty much never be the star of the show but is just useful support

Leigong is underrated. movement speed is always good, his auto + chain lightning really makes attack speed/luck builds shine. i like his dash on merris to get her out of bad situations, but rarely take it ion melees. Cooldown is situational. Bolt + orbs are kinda just there

Krom feels mostly like an attack speed bot to me. Knockback can be cool with summers combust and some movement speed, but its something i rarely go for. Bonus coolness points for massively investing into attack speed/luck with nixi to become a fidget spinner of death with chains

Summer feels a bit basic and underdeveloped. pretty sure burn doesnt stack, so taking multiple of her abilitys creates a lot of redundancy. Sure, spell damage is good and useful and combust is kinda cool, but i dont think the she brings much to the table that others dont do in more interesting ways

Justice is a special case. She feels like a crutch that totally helps you in the early game, but the better your gear gets the less you need her. I wouldnt mind taking some of her survivability options and moving them to fates and give her some other utility. The better you get, the less you need survivability and its typically something i would rather want to splash than dedicate a whole god to. She does have uses in challenge runs though. I also kinda like her dash

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Fates is fates

[Andycrapped]

Kront + Lightning = EZ win.

[One Man Army]

Mort and Time is all you need to win every time because they allow your power to scale.

You can add Justice for Divine Shield and Regen if you don't want to worry at all about your hp. Celestial Wings Rank 1 is also pretty good for dashing around the map while still attacking, without slowing you down too much.

The rest of the gods don't scale well. God of War is okay, the chains are fun but not needed if you get Gem Rush.
The only reason to select them is to make the game more difficult/challenging.

As far as characters go, they all play pretty much the same way, I don't see any difference but I think Niki is best because you can ramp up Luck with the Rabbit Sigil to boost Soulreavers procs and damage. That skill deletes bosses.