Dionysus, god of wine and parties, is also the god of damage over time effects in Hades, and his Hangover status or Festive Fog can give you plenty of damage and disruption options. In addition, he provides several support and survivability boons you may want to keep an eye out for. This is all well and good, but you might be unclear on how best to utilize everything Dionysus has to offer. Fortunately, we’ve constructed this guide on all the best boons and builds for Dionysus in Hades.
Hades Dionysus Abilities and Mechanics
To start, let’s go over Dionysus’ abilities and mechanics to keep in mind.
Hangover is the god’s primary damage dealer and will deal its damage once every 0.5 seconds. Hangover can stack on enemies with five stacks being the maximum, and every four seconds your stacks will disappear from an enemy. In addition, Hangover deals more damage the more it is stacked, and if you stack the maximum amount of Hangover on an opponent, they will take the maximum amount of DoT possible.
Festive Fog is the unique field left behind by Dionysus’ cast, which is a mortar-like explosive that deals damage in an area of effect. This field disrupts enemy movement as well, acting as a stun of sorts. This can synergize with Dionysus’ other abilities to ensure enemies take the maximum DoT possible without closing in on you.
Boons
Dionysus’ Boons, meanwhile, are focused around increasing the overall damage you deal with his abilities and talents. We’ve listed them all down below for you to peruse and make note of.
- Drunken Strike: Grants your attack the ability to inflict stacks of Hangover
- Drunken Flourish: Grants your special the ability to inflict stacks of Hangover
- Drunken Dash: Gives your dash a splash damage AOE at the end which inflicts stacks of Hangover
- Dionysius’ Aid: A call which inflicts Hangover in an area around you. A full God Gauge makes it so that this inflicts Hangover for longer.
- Bad Influence: Increases your damage while at least 3 enemies are inflicted with Hangover.
- Numbing Sensation: Hangover also slows enemies.
- Peer Pressure: Hangover will slowly spread to enemies every 4 seconds.
- Trippy Shot: Dionysus cast shoots a mortar-like projectile that comes down, dealing damage in an area and leaving behind a Festive Fog.
- Trippy Flare: Unique to Aspect of Beowulf. This cast deals damage in an area around you and also leaves behind a Festive Fog.
- High Tolerance: Adds damage reduction to you while you are in Festive Fog.
- Black Out: Hangover-afflicted enemies take more damage while within a Festive Fog.
- After Party: Restores your health to a certain threshold after leaving an encounter
- Positive Outlook: Grants damage reduction at 40% health or lower
- Premium Vintage: Increases max health when you pick up Nectar and also gives you 1 Nectar
- Strong Drink: Using a fountain restores full health and increases damage
Duo Boons
- Dionysus + Aphrodite:
- Low Tolerance: Hangover stacks up to eight times on enemies inflict with Weak
- Dionysus + Ares
- Curse of Nausea: Hangover deals damage faster (it’ll deal damage closer to every third of a second rather than half a second)
- Dionysus + Artemis
- Splitting Headache: Adds bonus chance to crit against enemies with hangover
- Dionysus + Athena
- Calculated Risk: Enemies ranged projectiles are slower
- Dionysus + Demeter
- Ice Wine: Your cast inflicts chill and its damage increases
- Dionysus + Poseidon
- Exclusive Access: Makes the minimum rarity for future boons Epic
- Dionysus + Zeus
- Scintillating Feast: Your festive fog will also deal lightning damage
Keepsake
Dionysus’ keepsake, Overflowing Cup, works like all the other Olympian-granted keepsakes. It grants Dionysus boons an additional chance to be rare or better and gives you a Dionysus boon as your first boon from any Olympian.
Builds and General Strategy
Dionysus has a lot of damage potential on his hangover-granting boons, especially when you use Poms of Power to upgrade those boons or you get them at a higher rarity. This is because higher rarity and level hangover boons deal more damage per tick of Hangover. Considering if you stack Hangover on an enemy you can stretch out a relatively small amount of damage into a lot of damage over time, the power is there to be used.
However, there are several things worth considering with Hangover. For one, it can lose its effectiveness against some more aggressive enemies like bosses. While it may be easy to put five stacks on a wretch, you may have trouble doing it as consistently against Hades without being punished.
Also, additional hangover-granting boons generally have diminishing returns. Since you can only stack five instances of Hangover, every strike you land on a 5 Hangover enemy is losing damage it could have dealt if you got a different boon. This is why Dionysus is best built to complement another God and their build. Building Dionysus on one attack — the quickest one typically — and then putting another god on another attack is the best way to go.
Weapons like Aspect of Zeus shield are great because you can put Dionysus’ boon on the special and then use another god on the basic attack. Ares’ Doom-inflicting attacks are a great candidate in this regard. You can then pick up Dionysus’ powerful duo boons later. Aphrodite, Ares, and Artemis are great options for these.
One other thing to note about Dionysus is that a lot of his global hangover buffs, like Bad Influence and Peer Pressure, are perfect for use against crowds. If bosses are giving you trouble but you’re dealing with regular rooms fine, you shouldn’t invest too heavily into these boons. The same is true for his cast, Festive Fog. Low Tolerance is what you will probably want to utilize to maximize Dionysus’ single target damage.
On the topic of build synergy, you’ll find the most success with Artemis. You can use Splitting Headache maximize its damage by adding more crit chance to your attacks. This is the one time it may be a decent idea to put Dionysus on the slower special or attack of a weapon like Adamant’s special, as you can make up for the lost hangover stacks with more crit.
In this build, focusing on an improved crit chance is more effective, and you can still build a bit of hangover generation since your crit chance improves with each stack of Hangover. If you use chaos shield, which has a fast attacking base attack and special, that’s also a good way to take advantage of this duo.
Pairing him with Ares, meanwhile, allows Dionysus’ abilities to shine better, as his Duo boon with Ares buffs his Hangover effects. It’ll make your already existing hangover buffs much more effective, and you can also use a bit of Doom for extra kick. The same is also true of building Ares with Aphrodite, as it adds a bit of survivability seeing as you can put Aphrodite’s weak inflicting attacks on whatever attack doesn’t stack Hangover.
That’s it for the boon and build guide to Hades’ Dionysus. If you want more gaming guides about Hades, then be sure to take a look at our many other relevant articles down below.
About the author
