Hades - Stay a While and Listen

Hades is a well rounded God capable of fitting a niche role as both tank, initiator, mage, and support. He is suitable for many player skill-ranges from beginner up to advanced due to his escape mechanisms and versatility and it's up to me to show you just how fierce the forgotten brother of Zeus and Poseidon can really be.

(5/18/13) - v1.0 Released.
(6/5/13) - Athena patch. No major changes to Hades or build.
(7/21/13) - Chronos patch. Updated builds to reflect order items should be purchased. Updated items for new item spread. Changed boots to reflect new 'tiered' boot choices. Added a note on Arachne. Fixed some typos. Updated language to reflect state of the game.

Let's get right to it. After bouncing around with a number of tank/support Gods I finally landed with Hades and quickly shot him up to Mastery 1 using the build below. I find Hades to have both an excellent amount of damage and a modest amount of tankiness. Couple this with his escape mechanisms via Death From Below, self-heal from Devour Souls, Silence from Shroud of Darkness, and AoE slow/pull from Pillar of Agony and you have a versatile, and tough meatshield with damage not to be scoffed at.

Let's begin.

Blight is your passive. It will leave a debuff on the target for a few seconds that will cause additional effects from your other abilities when they land.

It is important to note the 'cascade' factor of Blight + Devour Souls. Each creep or enemy under the effects of Blight when you cast Devour Soul's will 'explode' dealing damage and healing nearby players. This has a exponential effect when cast on large packs and the explosions overlap each other producing noticeable damage and substantial heals.



Death from Below is your get in/get out ability. It will also apply Blight when it lands. It's important to note that you can get caught out of position by movement restricting abilities such as Whirlpool and Shackles so be careful. Additionally, a good player with fast hands will predict where you will appear and have an ability queued up as a 'gift' when you appear.



Shroud of Darkness applies a silence which can be used as an interrupt for a number of abilities. Thor's Berserker Barrage, for example, can be effectively shut down with the silence, among others. Additionally, Shroud of Darkness will apply a fear effect when the opponent is blighted. Good for crowd control and set-ups.



Your de-facto 'nuke'. Besides being able to clear packs of creeps later on you can also use this as a sustain as blighted enemies will heal you when nuked. That's a two-for-one that shouldn't be ignored and your opponent will do anything they can to keep you from doing this (or punishing you if you do).



Lastly, your ultimate. Pillar of Agony draws all targets in the area of effect towards Hades. Most players will attempt to flee the pillar and ultimately get caught in it anyway and take the full duration. 'Smart' players will realize they can't get out, and just turn right at you and unload on you so be prepared when you cast this to take some damage. 'Smarter' players will realize that Beads of Purification will let them escape and effectively shut down your ultimate. Play cautious but use this whenever its up for a quick kill or as a gank-assist for your team.

Important Note

You'll notice that I forgo getting Shroud of Darkness until level 6. I do this purposefully for these reasons.

1. The fear becomes much more useful after you have Pillar of Agony
2. By alternating between Devour Souls and Death From Below the damage you output will scale higher than an opponent whos focusing on three abilities. This allows you to nuke harder, heal harder, and poke/sustain longer.
3. The silence is so short at level 1 it's value to me is debatable in early game

The Law of the Underworld

What this build is - the build focuses around 3 main principles:

1) Moderate to heavy defense to both magic and physical damage
2) Enough magical power to be threatening
3) Magic Power from health

What this build is not:

It is not a pure tank build. I wouldn't be picking up rod if it were. It is meant to be threatening, without being boring.

Start With

I begin every game with Level 2 Greaves and level 1 Meditation

Why?

Hades is a tank. Of all the attributes for a given God, Hades defense stats scale the highest. You can attempt to build him 100% pure mage like, but it's typically frowned upon as you're expected to play the 'role' of tank for your team. To that end, I build him with a little bit of both in mind.

When all is said and done the above items should land you at around:

Health: 3390
Phys Resist: 213
Mag Resist: 180
Mag Power: 300
Mana: 1975

That's more than enough to handle most situations and of course items can be swapped out as needed depending on enemy team composition and how well you are (or are not) doing.

With all the new actives and 'tiered' actives, it's hard to say what one fits hades better than another. Each game is situational, and actives should be bought to correlate to enemy God's abilities and your own team comp. That being said, some suggestions:

Salvation: Hades does get fairly low on mana quickly and the group heal is nice to get you out of a pickle as well as assist in team fights.

Creeping Curse: The poor man's GoI. As we're technically a tank, buying a GoI should be reserved for games where you are absolutely stomping and don't need the tank gear as much. In lieu of those rare occurrences, pick this up and at the end of your ult, hit it and as any leftovers attempt to flee, they'll be slowed to a crawl for easy cleanup.

Spiked Shell: This is kind of fun to use just prior to hitting your ult. A smart player will know they're caught and just turn to fight you. With this up, not only are they eating your ult, they're killing themselves attacking you as well. Damned if you do, damned if you dont.

Overview

The build plays fairly straight forward. You will want to initiate on an enemy using Death From Below first into Devour Souls then back off. This is your best 'poke'. When setting up for your ultimate I try to provide as much time for my team to set up and get in position as possible. To that end I will initiate with Death From Below into Shroud of Darkness for an additional 2s of fear THEN go into Pillar of Agony. After the channel is through, Death From Below should be off CD and you cast that into Devour Souls for follow-up burst of damage and heal.

Tips

- Be a team player, you aren't out for kills and you can farm just fine with your 1/3 combo
- Packs of creeps are typically JUST shy of the width of devour souls however if you take potshots at the front-runners of the pack they'll stumble backwards towards the archers and bunch up into a grouping that a single 1/3 combo will hit them all
- If you're doing amazing you can actually forgo some of the tankier items for things like Staff of the Magus and Gem of Isolation but remember your role.

Pros

Good initiator
Solid tank
Modest damage
Self-heal
Good escape mechanism
Ultimate can be chained (Release the Kraken,etc) for massive AoE

Cons

Not as tanky as say, Ares or Athena
Not as much damage as a 'pure' mage
Ultimate can be shut down instantly via Purification Beads
Medium length cooldowns. CDR helps.
Does not do well against fear/silence