It is only in late games that these issues pop up. Just has an epic 2v2 on Exile, 2 TBs vs Reg. and Oak. Game had lots of swings showing a good balance in class and damg. The issue came up around the 50min - 1hr mark.
1.) Ashkandor and Mageslayer make regulus OVERWEHLMING powerful. EDIT: (with only Ashkandor and Mageslayer, by lvl 15 Regulus deals 688 damg a second, NOT including critical hits,which hit for 1.5 -2k. Tested it out last game as Regulus. 5/3/09) At the very end, we were standing in our base next to our crystal firing at reg, freezing him, rain of ice, etc, and still he drained our heatlh (while we were next to the crystal) killing us while he remained at relatively full health. This is due to crits + life steal + attack speed. This combination make regulus unstopable when he has Ashkandor and Mageslayer. Add in some other rings and attack speed items and there you go.
I challenge anyone to win a game vs regulus with that comination (conquest).
This shows that items favor melee based attacks. You can only get 2k-4k crits off of melee attacks but NOT off of magic attacks. Meaning, the team with the better items and melee attacks will always trumph the team with the same or better items and magic attacks. There is no way a magic caster (TB), can win without items that allow him to crit with magic spells.
1.) Solution: I suggest either reducing the elements in those items or.....
1.) Better Solution: Add items that allow +crit% for magic casts.
Now the Oak is killable even with those items. He has to close into range to deal the damg, then run when he gets low on health. Regulus shoots from 6 away, making it much easier for him to escape or chase down enemies. Don't get me wrong, Oak is bloody hard to kill as well, but at least we can drain his life and kill him with teamwork. Even under the Regen crystal, both of us COULD NOT kill regulus with his item comination.
2.) Citadel upgrade -time% DG dealth penatly. You can fully upgrade it to knock off 40% of the time penalty when you DG dies. Broken, as in, we had it maxed and still had to wait 25+ seconds to respawn. Why even both sinking money into it if it doesn't work! (EDIT: Someone did the math and at lvl 20 it does work, just that the penalty is 60seconds) Still is a worthless upgrade unless you constantly die as the Oak to use his reincarnation. Should be replaced with a more useful upgrade or increase the % downtime.
2.) Solution: Fix it so it actually works. (EDIT: see above)
2.) Better Solution: Who actually puts money into that? No one wants their DG to die, b/c when it happens, the game can swing the other way. Instead of -10%, -20%, -40% (which don't work mind you), double it. Have it around -25%, -50%, and -75%. That would make it more worthwhile.
Please feel free to add any late game issues you have seen or comment on solutions. If you want to flame, I suggest to you, test these out. They are real. #2 is a broken issue while #1 is more serious. There is no way to beat that combo. Heck, I used to use it on light side. I truely believe adding +crit% items for magic users would fix that imbalance. As it stands, melee users will always win vs magic users if they both have the same items.
If you're a TB and regulus is spending all his money on +dmg/speed items, you need to stack armor. Get 2 mana helms for your mana, and fill the rest of the spots with high hp/armor items. You will still be nuking for the same on him, and even with his upgrades he'll be hitting you super fast but only for like 150. Groffling Plate, GodPlate, bulwark. You can negate his damage, he can't negate yours (other than a bulwark, but then hes spending on defense not offense).
Oh I dunno about Rook having to sacrifice health/speed. All Fathers Ring, Cloak of Elfinkind together is already like +40% speed, 25% to dodge rate, +30% attack speed, 2250 armor, and other stat boosts. Throw in a Bulwark of the Ages for another 25% damage reduction and more health/armor. With that much armor, I think that Regulus would be doing 1k crits at best while missing 25% of his shots.
I mean, you say you got Boots of speed. 10% speed increase for 1000g. That's supposed to help you win?
Any demigod decked out in artifacts is supposed to be stupidly imbalanced. If you were killing them at a 2:1 ratio, with giants, there really should be no excuse for losing except that you got outplayed.
Unless THEY also got giants, my experience is that one demigod will be unable to kill all the mobs spawning from every portal, including their own, without losing their citadel first.
Also, killing demigods at their crystal really isn't that hard. I've done it with 0 artifacts.
As a full time reg player I use this strat a lot. The problem is vs. good players they don't give you that time to buy 2 massively expensive artifiacts. On april 30th I played a 1hr and 47min game on crucible. It was me on Reg with Sedna as a crappy feeder player until about the 30 min mark when they raged quit vs. 2 TB both using the regen artifact.
I saw the 2 TB's so I setup for a dps pressure build knowing they'd try and hit and run. My team mate feeded not watching for fireballs X2 and so we were behind. However they didn't seem to cap the artfiact/gold spawn until way later in the game. Basically what happened was both teams leveled up wiht the forces of darkness having a massive advantage and pushing right into my base and killing me. They had continuosly used the regen artifact to peel back and heal up then come back in. While I was dead they got my Cit down to about 8K health. Which as most of you know is an easy easy EASY kill for 2 TB's to suicide on. Insted they kept running out and healing up. One ported out to buy upgrades or artifacts then I was able to push and kill the one in my base still.
Cit at 8K and healing slow so I pumped all my cash into the building upgrade to get health back and then followed a massive zerg of spawned in creatures that had been in my base. That is the point they should have won the game. They didn't finish it and then I just started farming the giants and what not for cash. My AI team mate re-capped the artifact flag and I jumped over with my 50K money that I couldn't spend since they'd had it locked up (I'd already upgraded mobs and Cit) and bought the works. The key here is I bought the 80 damage and silence axe.
Both of these TB players were so confident in their ability to stun me that they didn't even watch the cooldowns when they button mashed. One would rush in and I'd use the axe to disable abilities for 6 sec. Now if any of you have played vs. a late game pure dps build reg you'll know he can push about 1.5-2k damage per second. 7000Hp on TB and 6 seconds of no abilities is gonna get you killed fast. They couldn't understand why they couldn't kill me.
They let the game drag out like that and they lost after I solo'd both of them repeatedly to push to the final flag then burn their Cit down.
The key here littleOz is to know you're DG's strengths and weaknesses. TB is a very very strong middle game pusher and I'm sure you win most of your matches in that 30-45 min mark easy. The problem is there is NO OTHER DG that can stand toe to toe with Reg late in the game when he's pushing 65% attack speend and 700+ damage a shot. He's got the range to get in about 4 free hits so even a similar buffed UB is dead meat as well. Toss in the AXE (can't remember it's name) and any skill based DG is gonna get hosed with it's 6sec disable. If you let a Reg player farm up that much cash (he's not spending it on creeps or team based upgrades) and you can't crush him...then you need to look at your playstyle.
I've never lost a game when the other team is stupid enough to get in a stand off with me when I've got 2-3 of those artifacts. The key is to push hard knowing that Reg either has to save and then explode or gimp his late game with team based upgrades. If you can't keep the pressure on with 2 TBs vs. a Reg + whatever then you've just got to get more aggressive. The artifacts are balanced and they're powerful enough to stop stalemates. Skill based DGs need to know they're on a running clock with Reg. You let him build up and hit level 18-20 and it's gonna be over for you. Especially on maps like the one you mentioned where the Mobs all group up onto a narrow causeway to get hit with angelic fury. Thats where Reg starts to farm and exp up. Hit Tab at the START of every round and adjust your play style to the other teams DGs.
Mord, that was an excellent post. Very enlightening. I usually win all of my games around the 20-40 min mark give or take 5. Good to know your input. As for us not killing their citadel when we had giants in their base and were destroying their mobs easily, three things went awry.
1.) Couldn't kill their DGs since they ran back to the crystal, which was very close.
2.) On exile, your mobs have to spawn a LONG distance away to get to the enemies citadel. Takes forever. Slowed down the hammering on their citadel.
3.) The biggest thing that caused us the game, and the funny part was, the other team even said, "Great comeback guys, gg" was that my fellow TB decided to run back to our base in the middle of everything and buy some stuff. *sigh* Leaving me there holding it for a good 4-5 minutes (which as a TB with heart of life can be done), but he didn't get back soon enough. That's when Reg. got enough gold from killing the giants and what not to upgrade.
I can see now from your post why the items are built like that. To kill a stalemate. Makes sense. And yes, I never realized it fully, but TB is a mid game monster. Reg blooms late game with the access to those items. After all this discussion, I still would like to see Ashkandor's price raise a couple of thousand to delay someone getting it and have the lousy -% for time to respawn removed or buffed. Otherwise, this has been a fantastic discussion for the most part.
+1 karma Mord. Nice insight.
Pretty much describes all close games where the team are evenly match and players are of similar skill. I see a ton of people do that. Insted of finishing off the game they go back for one more round of upgrades with out portal scrolls or such. The problem is when you've got them that close to their base they will have 3-4 spawn waves of mobs attacking. As soon as they push out that giant clump of mobs is gonna roll your reinforcments till they get almost to your base. Letting them take map control or the artifact flag back. Thats when the big bucks get dropped and reg/oak/UB become monsters. Keep em pressed in and without a chance to get map control back.
I've never gotten into a fight with regulus that stretched beyond forty minutes, but I can already formulize a build to counter your 'unbeatable' regulus.
Erebus:
Cloak of Elfinkin
Ashkandor
Those gloves that debuff attack speed on hit (2k gold or something)
Mageslayer
Bulwark
He has two teleports essentially. You interrupt his skills, he runs in and teles with his cloak. If he doesn't out-damage you with crits and steal back enough HP to survive for a while with mageslayer, his cooldowns will be up and he can stun, bite, and bat form if you cloak tele away. If he can't out-life steal and out-damage your damage, he will probably survive the 6 seconds enough to mist form, wait for cloak to recharge, exit out and tele back in with a bite.
It's a shitload of gold to farm, but Erebus is essentially the #1 counter demigod against regulus, and just manages him with his bat-form and stun, so I don't imagine the fight going that far anyways. Throw in a sedna to support the erebus with a UB on the side for some extra melee pressure, then just focus fire the regulus every fight, the regulus is rendered useless.
Dead regulus.
Am I the only one who doesn't really like the idea of this dynamic? Certain DGs are only good at certain points of the game? If there is a 1v1 verses TB and Reg, both players of equal skill, does that mean TB will always win because he is better mid game than Reg? Or you play a really great 3v3, both teams upgrading at relatively the same pace, all the DGs get to level 20 at about the same time, but because one team had Reg they win because Reg is just good late game.
Why can't all the Demigods be good at every stage of the game? Good at different things, but still balanced?
Hey LittleOz. I'm pretty sure I'm the Reg in question. I'm assuming you're Bert or Charles? If not I played exactly the same game.
Great game and thanks, first off. Lots of back and forth like you said and I had a ton of fun. Let me also say that I totally agree with you about Regulus, and I've been playing online with him specifically to see how people deal with this, since I have the same issue you do late game against him.
From my perspective: Early on you guys were mopping the floor with us as we tried splitting up to get map control. We communicated badly and kept getting ambushed. It turned around for me when I got Heart of Life to stay in the field longer, shortly after which your priests and angels started showing up. I held the center gold points as often as I could from that point on and it seems you two were working together less, allowing us to go 2 on 1 more often. The kills, many of which were extremely cheesy across-the-map snipes (sorry), combined with the central gold and npcs got me enough for the veiled storms orb and Mageslayer about the time you pushed into our base. The fairly long pitched battle there netted me a ton more gold (lots of npc kills with the orb in that tight area), and I slipped out to get Ashkandor.
For what it's worth, Mordicain, I was spending a bit on upgrades as well, and my partner as Oak was doing pretty well without as many items allowing him to do the lions share. We did intentionally hold off on getting priests until we could bring in most of the extra reenforcements, but I can't decide if that helped or hurt us. The idea was to rob them of the extra gold and xp, but they had an easier time pushing to the base while I was knocking down towers preparing for the final charge.
Never really said it was unbeatable by anything just said for TB it's important to not drag a game out to the point where Reg can get all those artifacts.
Your last paragraph isn't very thought out since it looks like you're setting up a 3 on 1 to counter Reg. I'm not sure what you think the other 2 players on his team are doing.... Reg's range advantage gives him a huge boost vs. other DGs. If they try to rush in on him he can always back peddle till their in a think swarm of reinforcements and then start plunking away from range....lots of damage from giants and what not at that point in the game. Also Reg doesn't have to stick in the fight all the time. You can just whittle away down to 1/3 life or whatever and when they pull back to heal just switch targets. Keep that up and most other DGs run out of mana at some point. Pressure mounts and the battle line keeps moving forward.
Anyhow I'm off topic really since it was a question about TB vs. Reg and how to play around it. As for Connatic's comment about late vs. mid game strength I think it's kinda important that its in the game. Brings a little more strategy to it. I know that when I play with Reg vs. TB I need to push early so that I can start my upgrades a bit sooner. Usually I have til about level 8 or so and then I can't really pressure again until 15+.
I would like to add:
You can equip the TB the same way. You also can switch t ofire then back to frost to get a decent damage boost. Now, combined with the damage boost and the boost from the items you are up to paar with most melee chars, and you cna still nuke/freeze/shatter them.
Oh, it does assume theres other players. Notice I said 'focus fire.' This assumes that theres other people to be mis-targeted. The Erebus has bat form, and both sedna/UB with boots/anklet and passive move speed will inevitably move faster. THREE stuns, you are NOT getting away from that. If the other two teammates CC any of the three, the sedna will be able to pick up any lost health with a few heals. Once the regulus is dead, the other two targets can easily be switched and killed even faster, if they aren't behind their towers already.
However, I didn't see the portion about this specifically being about how to beat reg with a TB. The only thing to that I can say is basically the same thing. TB has more lane pushing abilities, much more effective AoE and thus a better ability to farm. He doesn't have snipe, the ultimate harass, but he has fireball which is the next best thing. He also has a massive amount of move speed to move in and out. Combat wise, he's pretty even but he can generally out-farm a regulus if he knows what hes doing.
I am mostly worried about team coordinated game with 3vs3 or bigger.
Each side will be forced to use a regulus, or lose. Because those non-reg players will just buy items and drop for reg to sell to get those money. With several of them, 26k isn't hard to get, then it will be all down hill for the other team if they don't have someone with those 2 godly items too. Even without mageslayer, ashkandor alone is enough to send other team to hell. 18k is even less of an effort, then from deaths of enemy team, easy mage slayer.
Probably most ideal with 1 reg, 1 erebus (teleport stun), 1 something.
hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
I have a better solution, don't let regulas farm over 30k worth of items in the first place.
!!! That would be horrible if people used that tactic. It would definitely work. This brings me back to the original part of the post that Ashkandor + Mageslayer (and whatever other + life drain or + attack speed items) with a Regulus using "wing form" is an instant win. I have never seen any team come back from that.
For those who have never seen Regulus using those items in winged form, here's the low down of how it works. Angel form allows him to hit multiple tagets. Not a big deal until he has a 10% chance of 4x crits. That means every couple of shots, he crits for 2000-4000 damg and wipes the all the creeps extremely quickly. One shots giants. Combine that with Mageslayer and he shoots every .7 seconds or lower and heals himself for at least 12% of damg done. That's 120 hp off a 1k shot and each shot hits 5-10 creeps, letting him gain 580 -1200 per shot! Now imagine a 4k hits out of that, boom, 480 HP instantly in .7 of second.
VS another DG, in five seconds he fires seven shots doing anywhere from several hundred to 4000 damg each. At max, he can do multiple thousands of damg in 5 seconds. In FIVE seconds! While healing himself no less.
Please don't squabble about the math, sure it might be under or over stated, the point is that the dynamic that just one Regulus getting both those items has on the game. Try setting it up. Do a 3v3 with just one Regulus. Have the Light team feed items to Regulus to sell, and then have him get that combo of weapons. That team, in conquest, has a 100% chance to win. There is no stopping it. How can you stop a DG that can kill waves of creeps in seconds, regen faster shooting than being under a health crystal, and can hit for 4k every couple of shots? You can't. The mechanic is broken. I never realized until Fhoeng made his case. There should be no "ultimate" DG. Every individual should be good but not so good with certain items to win any game.
...Okay. I guess you're dumb. I'm going to stop explaining how regulus is countered and just use him if I ever encounter your team in the team pantheon, so I can watch you run around in circles and cry. So useless...
For your Regulus problem, I think your best bet would be to combine unclean beast (foul grasp and ooze specced) with another demigod with a stun. Ooze reduces regulus' attack speed, plus foul grasp prevents him from attacking. Combine with a stun and significantly high DPS and you can smack down regulus quite nicely. What time he isn't stunned he'll be under the effect of ooze and have reduced attack speed.
That said, I tend to agree that IAS + life steal gets insane late game, and needs to be toned down. In fact, I think we need more late game alternatives to IAS, life steal, and crit, which everyone seems to get given enough time.
The problem with the citadel graveyard upgrade isn't that it sucks, but rather that if you die often enough for it to be useful that you will lose simply because of gold issues. For this upgrade to be useful, the bounty system will need to be reworked such that continually killing the same player gives diminishing returns, thus making strategies of attrician more useful.
*cough*erebus*cough*
a.k.a. reward shitty players for being shitty, and supplement incompetence with a firm hand to walk them across the street.
I heartily agree. Not many late game alternatives that people choose. Adding more would be interesting and add variety.
You're spot on about the citadel graveyard upgrades as well. Diminishing returns could help balance that out.
I can see you are an intellectual. If you paid attention to the post, you'll notice it was only two TBs vs a Reg. and a Oak. Your strategies do not work. Plus, you never even gave any useful thought to any related posts except to flame and troll. Take you trolls elsewhere.
A very shitty combo that is easily destroyed with a support character to maintain a nuker like Regulus. Also, TB doesn't have MUCH over regulus if anything at all, other than superior lane pushing.
Really? I guess you would know, because you played them. Oh that's right. You're still here in this thread debating over how to beat a Regulus. Considering every time I play an arranged match where someone uses regulus, I switch to erebus and they immediately switch their pick. Wonder why?
The thread says Regulus is imbalanced late game. I posted a strategy to eliminate regulus as a factor. Several others suggested nearly the same thing; Using UB/Erebus, or both. But, we all know you've tried it and are still here discussing changes to the game, rather than strategy. Those are not useful thoughts, just a regression of the game.
I do my job, bashing any threads that needlessly discuss changing the game where skill is not factored into the equation.
The game was on Pantheon. You can't choose who your teammate will be. Yes, if you could your strats would most likely work, but this was an instance of a PANTHEON game with two TBs. *sigh*
Okay then. As shitty as it is, it was just a shitty, random pantheon match that can't be controlled. However, for a team pantheon to function, the balance can't revolve solely around pantheon, rather it has to trickle down. There are just too many random factors in the current pantheon right now that can skew how the items and skills play out. For the sake of balanced play in higher competitive levels without the massive polarized levels of skill in playing with pugs, you should wait for the team pantheon to come out and play with some friends. That's pretty much what mindset im translating into this thread.
As for this match, you pretty much got paired up with a random person against two random people. It's really hard to judge the balance when skill levels vary greatly. When you base the balance off of this, it throws the extremes higher and lower. Nerf something for the sake of the normal pantheon, and the best players wont be so ridiculous, but decent players will fall flat. Buff something, and the best players will explode. Nerf something in a team pantheon...no one uses it. Buff something in a team pantheon, #1 played in every setup. See how it doesn't really translate well? In a team pantheon setting, the skill levels will probably be more evened out, when really good teams fight really good teams. Now, if regulus were to dominate in that match with said items, then there IS probably something wrong with the balance, when both TRULY balanced sides have an IMBALANCE in the game. At that point, it'd be safe to look into the artifacts and how they affect regulus.
However...we aren't at that point yet...
This is just an update, not rekindling the fire. Just tested my theory out again on a 3v3.
I was Regulus on a team of 3, vs another team of three. Took me a little while to get the gold neccessary to buy ashkandor first, around lvl 11. After that i quickly leveled up to 15 to wipe the other team single handily after i bought mageslayer as well.
At lvl 15, with just Ashkandor and Mageslayer, I was dealing 688 damg a second, NOT including criticals. Just seems so overpowered. Nothing could get near me. Not even all three of them together. I just wanted to show this as an example. The other team was a TB, a Rook, and a UB. And they were doing well until i bought Ashkandor 25min into the game (give or take 5min).
Total kills by me were 20 and most of those came at the end when i was effective no longer playing a Demigod, but a real God.
Doesn't anyone else see this happening and is worried about it? If not, tell me why. You shouldn't be forced to win the game before a good Regulus hits lvl 11 and has enough cash for an Ashkandor.
EDIT: This was a custom game also. And for the record, I'm trying to bring what i think is a major imbalance issue to light.
Ack, fought against a Reg with this combo yesterday. The game had progressed to our citadel, we'd turned it around (giants on both sides) and pushed it back all the way to their citadel, though we missed the artifact flag... and then their Reg got Ashkandor (one of our players had been feeding them throughout, it was only a matter of time).
He pushed back the creep swarm while his teammates were both dead and wiped us out pretty much on his own.
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