Top 5 Amazing Go-To Hades Builds
Overwhelmed by options and looking for some great, reliable go-to Hades builds? This Hades builds guide is just what you need. 5 amazing Hades builds for any weapon.
If you’re playing the wonderful new aRPG Hades, you might be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of different skill upgrades, duo boons and build combinations. So, you’re going to want to learn as much about Hades builds as you can. This Hades builds guide has you covered.
Now, there are a ton of different builds, and thanks to the diversity of weapons in Hades, some are tailor made for certain weapons whereas others really fall flat if you’re trying to make them work on the wrong weapon.
Certain builds are spectacular for a single weapon, but difficult to use on any other weapon. This guide will show you the top 5 builds that tend to be good on multiple different weapons. You should definitely continue to experiment on your own, but these 5 go-to Hades builds should give you a solid foundation to beat the game and start experimenting with your own crazy weapon-specific build ideas.
Let’s go ahead and get into the list. This is the Top 5 Amazing Go-To Hades Builds.
5. Poseidon/Zeus – Best Hades Builds
Poseidon gives your character a massive percentage based damage upgrade when you collect his attack or special boons. His abilities also generate tons of knockback which, when combined with his passive upgrades, pinball enemies all over the map and tear them to shreds.
Thanks to the way Poseidon’s mechanics work, he’s ideal to pair with two types of weapons: weapons that already passively generate knockback, and weapons where you’re trying to maintain your distance between enemies. He’s also great for medium-speed weapons that hit relatively hard.
That makes Poseidon an ideal choice if you’re going for a build that uses the spear special ability, the shield normal attack or dash attack, or the fist special.
When you’re going a physical build with Poseidon, one of the best things you can do is try to collect roughly an equal number of Zeus boons, because once you unlock Zeus and Poseidon’s duo boon, every Poseidon-empowered attack also becomes empowered by Zeus’s various chain lightning effects and all the related passive upgrades available to Zeus.
Poseidon should be your main focus with this build, because until the duo boon gets collected the Zeus upgrades do nothing for you in terms of helping your damage, and even afterwards the majority of your damage is still going to be coming from Poseidon.
Zeus also helps shore up Poseidon’s weakness when dealing with bosses. Although Poseidon does get a build that provides a 30% damage increase against bosses, they’re largely immune to Poseidon’s knockback mechanic and all the related damage bonuses, so adding Zeus’s lightning strikes to your Poseidon-empowered attacks really makes a difference in terms of boss killing speed.
This build is really fantastic at clearing rooms and if you’re using any of the weapons I mentioned (spear, shield or fist), you should be pretty happy whenever you run into a Poseidon node.
Not the most broken of the Hades builds we’re going to cover, but it’s a reliable build that’s good on a variety of different weapons.
4. Dionysus/Ares – Best Hades Builds
Dionysus/Ares is one of the more niche Hades builds, but you should still be aware of it. Basically, this build is good for weapons that have an ability that spreads Dionysus’s Hangover curse rapidly and another ability that you use to inflict Ares’s Doom curse.
You want to use this setup with the Privileged Status mirror upgrade turned on, which increases damage by 50% against enemies afflicted by two or more curses.
The reason Dionysus and Ares go so well together is for two reasons. First, both gods provide damage inflicting curses, whereas all the other curses do something else, usually something more defensive (except Jolted from Zeus, but that requires a few extra steps to acquire). Second, the duo boon between Dionysus and Ares significantly increases the damage from Dionysus’s Hangover curse.
The idea here is you want to keep Doom and Hangover applied as often as possible to as many enemies as possible. The poster child for this build would be the Shield of Chaos, where you can use the special to rapidly apply multiple stacks of Hangover to everything on the screen while using the shield’s Bull Rush attack ability to reapply Doom every time it ticks.
Some other good weapons to use this build on are the Aspect of Zeus (shield, Dionysus special, Ares attack), Aspect of Rama (bow, Dionysus special/Ares attack), Aspect of Demeter (fist, Dionysus attack/Ares special).
This is probably the best of the Hades builds on the Aspect of Chaos. For other weapons, there are often better builds to shoot for, but it’s still good to be aware of this because it’s super fun. If you happen to get more Dionysus and Ares nodes on your run, this can be a really fun build to shoot for.
3. Artemis/Aphrodite – Best Hades Builds
Artemis/Aphrodite is going to be a build that you get a lot of mileage out of. Essentially any weapon aspect that encourages you to alternate between your special and your normal attack is going to benefit immensely from combining boons from Artemis and Aphrodite.
Typically, you seek out Artemis as your main benefactor and augment your build with choices from Aphrodite. You want to get Aphrodite on whichever ability your weapon aspect of choice uses less often.
For example, on the Aspect of Chiron, you want Aphrodite on your normal attack, because you’ll be tagging enemies with your normal attack and then spamming your special.
However, on Aspect of Nemesis, where you’ll be tagging enemies with your special and then spamming your normal attack, you’re going to want to get Aphrodite on your special instead.
Aphrodite’s abilities all inflict Weakness, which reduces enemies’ damage. But, more importantly, if you get the Artemis/Aphrodite duo boon, your critical damage dramatically increases against enemies afflicted with Weakness.
With Artemis/Aphrodite you can not only expect to see some insane crit numbers, but also you get a fair amount of extra damage mitigation thanks to the various defensive boons available to Aphrodite.
Out of all of the Hades builds, this one probably gets the most use. So many weapons benefit from this build. The bow, the sword, most rails and even certain fists. It’s not the most OP of the Hades builds, but it’s incredibly powerful and it’s extremely reliable to acquire.
2. Ares/Athena – Best Hades Builds
Ares/Athena is an insane build. It’s very, very powerful and once you’ve tried it, you’ll see why. However, it requires the duo boon. Until you get the duo boon, it’s pretty average at best.
The duo boon between Ares and Athena makes Athena’s deflect-empowered attacks instantly detonate the Doom status effect provided by Ares. As you probably know, the high damage of Doom is balanced around the fact that it takes a long time to activate and can’t be stacked. With the Ares/Athena duo boon combined with certain weapon aspects, you can rapidly inflict and ignite Doom curses over and over again.
There are two main ways to abuse this. The first is to get the Athena dash and the Ares attack for a melee weapon that makes regular use of dash attacks. Gilgamesh, Demeter and most of the shields are good examples. Just continually dash attack through enemies and you’ll be exploding them in seconds. It takes very little practice.
The second and perhaps even more broken way to abuse this is with the Aspect of Zeus shield. Get Athena special and Ares attack, throw your shield on top of an enemy and just keep attacking them. With a little practice with keeping the shield spinning on top of enemies, every single attack you make will instantly detonate its doom effect.
Make sure you get the Ares upgrade to Doom that increases their damage at the expense of their detonation speed. Jokes on them, you just get the damage. Detonation speed is instantaneous.
This is one of the most fun Hades builds. Definitely recommend you try this.
1. Ares/Artemis – Best Hades Builds
When we’re talking about Ares/Artemis, we’re talking about one thing and one thing only, and that’s their Hunting Blades duo boon. If you’re going for a casting build, this is one of the most busted, totally absurd things you can do in the game. If you can manage to pick up all the necessary upgrades, it’s basically god mode.
Fully upgraded Hunting Blades will clear full screens in seconds, melt bosses in record time, and just generally make the game so easy you can get through a run with your eyes closed on any heat level.
The problem with this build is that it requires a fair amount of luck to collect all the upgrades necessary to make it good. At the bare minimum, you need the Hunting Blades duo boon, which requires Slicing Shot from Ares and some investment into Artemis.
Then, you’re going to want every single upgrade to Slicing Shot that Ares has available and, if possible, Artemis legendary (extra spell casts), Hermes legendary and an extra blood shard from Chaos.
Manage to put all that together and you can just enter a room, throw out all your spell casts and everything will automatically die. It’s an instant win button.
Hunting Blades is best on Poseidon, but it’s also good on Beowulf and Hera and it can be abused on any weapon if you just happen to be getting lucky with finding Ares and Artemis boons.
While this build can be difficult to achieve, it’s definitely one of the strongest and most versatile Hades builds around and you should definitely try it.
That about covers it when it comes to the top 5 best Hades builds. Be sure to check out more Hades Game Guides, check out the Main Page for everything the site has to offer and click here to subscribe to my new Bright Rock Media YouTube channel where I’m posting game reviews, site updates and occasionally some other types of content.
