If Medea is the aggressive option, Circe is the safe one — and it is safe without being weak.
Aspect of Circe makes your animal Familiar cast alongside you, forming a Psychic Leash that deals persistent damage between the two of you: 10/15/20/25/30/45 damage every 0.2 seconds by rank. Your own Attacks and Specials exist to proc status effects and reposition. The leash and your cast fields handle the killing.
The result is a build that sustains heavy damage without ever entering melee range.
The loop
- Spam Omega Cast, so both you and your familiar place overlapping binding circles connected by the Psychic Leash.
- Use basic Attacks and Specials only for status application and repositioning.
- Keep the leash connected. The damage is persistent and automatic — it fires alongside your own attacks without changing your rotation.
Late-run Circe does not feel like one character with a pet. It feels like two characters, both lethal, covering each other’s gaps — and because the familiar scales with your boons, by the late regions you have an autonomous damage engine running in parallel with your own.
Boons
| Slot | Take | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Cast | Zeus — Storm Ring | Repeating lightning strikes in every cast circle. |
| Cast (alternative) | Hestia — Smolder Ring | Persistent Scorch ticks inside each circle. |
| Magick | Apollo — Lucid Gain | Close to mandatory. It restores Magick when your Casts expire, and Circe expires Casts constantly. |
| Global | Hera or Aphrodite | Push cast damage into absurd territory. |
A Hestia-flavoured variant works too: her flame effects on the Circe cast fields stack persistent Scorch.
The Arcana loadout — and why no Furies
The standard Circe shape is eight cards inside 22 Grasp:
The Sorceress 1
The Wayward Son 1
The Swift Runner 1
Persistence 2
Death 4
Origination 5
The Champions 4
The Fates 0 (Awakening)That leaves room to push Origination to rank III.
The notable omission: no The Furies. Circe rarely sits above 75% HP — which is the card’s condition — so its bonus rarely holds. Many meta loadouts also drop Wayward Son for the same reason if they run a familiar.
Hammers
Clean Coil and Rapid Cast. Both increase cast frequency, which is the single stat the whole build scales on.
Keepsake
A Zeus or Hestia keepsake to lock in your Cast ring early, then Jeweled Pom or Blackened Fleece later. If you are going for the ring specifically, equip the god keepsake in region 1 so their ring appears in your first boon chamber.
The two caveats
- It is Magick-hungry. Until Lucid Gain or equivalent sustain arrives, the early chambers can feel weak. Do not judge the build before it comes online.
- Melee pressure breaks the loop. You are strongest at range, so anything that closes distance is the thing to solve for.
Circe versus Melinoë
The Witch’s Staff is the only weapon where both aspects are strong, and the choice is genuinely yours:
| Melinoë (default) | Circe | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free at rank I | 5 Lotus, 5 Marble |
| Playstyle | Fast, flexible ranged | Methodical area control |
| Boon flexibility | Works with nearly everything | Wants a Cast ring |
| Best for | Learning, high Fear at low rank | Players who prefer control over frantic combat |
If you are new, start with Melinoë — it works with nearly every boon combination and teaches fundamentals that transfer. Move to Circe once you want the area-control game.
Related guides
- Weapon Aspects Ranked — all 24 with forge costs
- Best Arcana Builds — the full card rankings
- Gods and Boons Guide — the four-god cap
- Medea Skull Build — the aggressive counterpart