I know lots of people have been whining for Erebus to get nerfed lately, and this has been done. But statistics don't really lie, at least not ones this simple. Erebus is middle of the field in the pantheon. If her were truly as overpowered as all the whiners have been saying, he'd be higher up, if not on the top. That is all there is to it.
So the patch came through to placate people who were getting raped by him. Sure, I agree he's obnoxious and powerful (in my opinion he should be an assasin, and swap places with TB, but that's beside the point) but not OP, or he'd be higher up in k/d ratio.
If anything needs to be changed, it's the demigods on the bottom who should be getting a buff. The only safe thing right now to say is that Queen of Thorns needs a buff. She's been on the bottom since release, and by a wider margin than any other demigod. That is statistics, and that is the answer. Nerfing a mid-range demigod makes no sense whatsoever.
1) Did you read any of the posts in this thread prior to posting? I don’t think you did.
2) What support can you offer that he is only over powered at a high level of play; I don’t think people are playing at a high level yet. Perhaps it would be best to wait for a true competitive scene to developed (namely longer then three weeks) before we just start guessing who is overpowered at a high level of play or not.
3) The stats will reflect what you claim they will not, because they take all instances of play into account.
4) The person who is easiest to win with IS the most powerful... RIGHT?
By the way, this is hilarious!
Anyone who bashes Erebus' is a tiny noob. Who dances to Techno Music. Please note that phenomina in this video
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Bursdude said:
Pantheon stats don't matter, they're probably broken, and for all we know, it might even include AI in it. I'm pretty sure AI is still in pantheon because I just played a pantheon match with 2v2 with 1 team having an AI. I also got a 2v1 before that. Not to mention the abundance of bad players who probably decided to play him after hearing he's overpowered.
No stats to back the nerf up? Bite is an ability with a low cost, low recharge, no cast time that did 300 life drain + snare + armor debuff at level 1 allowing your next few attacks to hit for more damage. 600 points of damage+heal+2 other effects, does way more than other level 1 skills of other demigods.
Erebus is already powerful enough even after the nerf, as he has 2 ways to escape otherwise certain death, and an effective stun.
OK, let's break this down: I'm going to put it in italics to make it stand out. Ready?
Pantheon stats DO matter.
Saying they don't matter doesn't even make sense. Sure, they may be off some. But unless there was a magical error where Erebus is actually top ranked and the others all bow berfore him, which is highly unlikely then Pantheon is what any nerf should go by. And it doesn't matter if the AIis taken into account. Why? Guess what-the AI plays ALL the demigods, which means the stats are just as relavent as if they weren't counted. Sure, he's got a great level one skill. Guess what, I don't care. If he were overpowered, he'd be at the top. Bottom line. There is no argument, there is no equivocation. If he is not overpowered, he'll be in the middle, and if he were underpowered, he'd be The Queen of Thorns.
You know what? I think, a better alternative to the bit nerf, would be to buff the counters for it. Namely, make Oak's Sheild and QoT's Bramble not allow him to recover health.
I agree, just looking at pantheon stats QoT needs some love.
QoT especially. Tonnes of cool looking skills, but everyone can outdo her at everything when it actually becomes important. Only exception is Bramble shield, but even then, it can't stop Erebus. Erebus should be fearing QoT. She has everything that Erebus should hate. A long lasting, spammable shield, great survivability, and great minion killing abilities... And Erebus beats her every time. I don't get it. She needs to be buffed.
The only buff QoT (and Sedna) need is for their minions to be worth a damn. QoT is already nigh impossible to kill in good hands and Sedna is almost as good at taking it. If their minions would be good, they would be unstoppable pushers and able to chase off (though prolly not kill) demigods. Well ok uproot (or whatever the building dot is..) also needs to work against everything, not just buildings. Its just pointless the way it is atm..
About the statistics. The problem with statistics is that they dont tell you why, just what. I don't think its a good idea to base your balancing solely on stats. They are a good place to start tho.
As for Erebus.. I very rarely have trouble killing him. No matter if I'm playing him or against him. It seems that there are only very few average Erebus players. The vast majority are either stupidly good or hilariously bad. I'd actually be interested to hear stats about how many Erebus players always win their games and how many always lose.
I wouldn't of minded a upgrade to the Rooks Armor or Health stats. Its kinda rediculous the Rook has one the lowest armor and health ratings for being a giant castle afterall.
true but his towers make up for it
Ok, there's a lot of threads about this so I didn't want to start another, but I also bet a lot of ppl are ignoring the erebus got nerfed threads. Well even so let's see if this actually get's answered.
I think it has become clear that the vast majority of people (people are unclear from both sides of the fence apparently) are wondering/guessing just how GPG/SD decided to nerf bite? I ask because diminishing the quality of the skill on 3 different fronts that really don't even address the balance of the skill seems a lot like GPG/SD really are just catering to the forums. Can anyone really say they think this will fix anything? I'm still unclear what's was/is broken with it. Increasing the mana seems like he's getting too much use out of it, or possibly he didn't have to worry about mana gear, or holy crap, what if they added a level 15 level to it? Actually make the skill scale? wow then that might deserve a little balancing. I guess my point here is, ok it's getting nerfed, but WHY? I haven't seen one player that is actually good say that erebus' bite is OP'd. Also the fact of the matter is, having an erebus on your team != victory, which is the way it would be if were actually OP'd right? Isn't that the definition of OverPowered? Do some ppl even know what OP stands for besides original poster? It sure doesn't seem like it. OP doesn't mean a half useful skill that you don't like having used on you. Sure it's good at early leves, but how about not rage quiting and stick around for a whole game.
Why? GPG and SD this is directly at you. What kind methods did you use to come to the conclusion that bite is overpowered?
Well think you deserve a karma for actually understanding the definition of OP. The thing is with bite, it does too much for it's point investment. For 4 points it is esstienally better then a TB that invested 9 points to make fireball do 1350 and it's on the same cooldown. No other attack can do an effective 1800 damage in an instant on a 7 second cooldown. Combine that with erebus' already powerful mobility and durability due to his other abilties, and you got a demi-god that has a little too much going for him.
The second closest demi-god to him in terms of being strong is UB. They both have a mana problems but UB not only has them worse, but he has a favor item designed to counter his best ability. (spit and item is Symbol of Purity) There is no counter to batswarm, mist, and bite. The only one that has a weakness is bite due to melee range which is countered by using bat swarm and the fact he is the 3rd fastest character next to UB and sedna.
I think the nerf happened because when you look at what a demi-god can do, erebus can do a little bit too much. He is NOT OP but is slightly too strong in comparison. I'd say maybe a little buff to QoT and the current nerf to erebus may balance the game perfectly.
Stardock likely won't have an response simply because I believe this comes from GPG directly, the developer.
The short answer is that Erebus is balanced badly. He has 3 skills that function completely different than any other gods skills with two of them having a strong synergy together. The three skills are obviously Bat swarm, Bite and Mist. Mist is a optional skills and is not responsible for wide spread Erebus success as much as it is for clever avoidance and self preservation, such as misting through hammer slams or using it to drop debuffs off of you. Its not likely to kill anyone and because of that, the nerf calls for it are much lower.
Of the three skills I listed, the only one that is an actual attack that can be used to as a means of consistent offense is Bite. Outside of bite, Erebus uses his auto attack for damage and that is pretty much the sum of all his attacks in a nutshell. Batswarm has a nice slice of several hundred dmg on it but you must swarm through the enemy, and bat swarm is anything but mana efficient (hint: its a huge mana cost).
Basically the problem is and isnt Bite. Erebus is literally made to rely on Bite in the early game and because its a strong early game ability it serves very effectively at doing enough damage to scare a demigod and also keeping erebus alive, since without it hes just auto attacking. Since they tied a healing move into a damage move, Erebus often bites to keep his life up while keeping his foes life down. This is very annoying to people and devestating to players who simpyl don't know how Erebus plays. A good Erebus player wants to be close, because when hes close to you, even if taking damage, he can still damage and heal. His weakness is keeping him from biting while damaging him. In the early game Erebus is powerful with Bite's scaling but his armor is low early on and he goes down pretty quick when he cannot keep a bite chain going. Its not like there is an alternative to this. If bite is too weak, Erebus cannot sustain a 1vs1 versus many foes in the early phases, The real problem is that it also lowers the targets armor and snares them, so it makes it to wear a Erebus who was fighting for his life to survive vs a Oak is now chasing the oak who is now running but cannot get away. It pisses people off.
Once Erebus gets batswarm, now he has a zip line to get close to bite people and to keep biting them. When you factor in bite is a 7 second cooldown, but on a few maps, capturing certain flags brings that to a 5 second cool down and shit gets wild.
The flip side is in the end game, Bite is weak. It still helps and is by no means useless but you find enemies no longer lose the gracious chunk of life they once had before. Its dps effectiveness tops out around level 11-12 and from there on the other gods are only getting more used to it. As a balance I guess, Erebus armor value begins to scale highly at high level, compare to his squishy low level values. Its quite odd really but all the gods seem to have some quirks like this (different strength at different tiers of game time).
I personally think the nerf was a bit misguided. It nerfed the skill in odd ways, rather than say, remove the snare entirely or increase cooldown, they sliced it up on the sides and left both camps unhappy. Nerf cries fear its still too strong and Erebus players wonder why the mana cost was increased and the effectiveness was lowered.
I will agree that Bite has some nice debuffs attached to it that should perhaps be reconsidered or tweaked, but the base damage volume was fine and quite needed unless they take the skill back to the drawing board and scale it better for his entire game. A erebus player would rather have a good bite to rely on for staying alive in a fight than have one that slows/lowers armors and generally makes running from him impossible. Perhaps a way to chose if bite becomes a big health taker or a big debuffer would have offered some more build options with him and spliced the problem. Not sure. Sorry for the long post.
You're missing the point. The nerf may not even necessarily be because Erebus is overpowered in cross demigod matchups, but that he is not internally balanced.
EVERY build includes Bite. This is a problem. This is not balanced. Thus, you must buff everything else, or nerf Bite. Since they're most likely worried about the cross balance if they buffed everything else, they nerfed Bite.
Whether nerfing this one skill makes him underpowered in team matchups remains to be seen. If so, they'll probably buff him.
But will you get Bite every single build now? Maybe not? Purpose served.
Note that this doesn't imply that every other demigod is internally balanced either. Several, like Sedna, are not. Give it time.
How does bite do an effective 1800 damage? Are you factoring in a max level batswarm into that? Serious question, I just wonder why you always say 1800 (two bites?).
I don't think you'll ever see a Erebus build that doesn't include bite unless he is given a new dps/instant damage ability to replace it. Imagine not taking bite...what are you going to do? Auto attack and bat swarm escapes? Kill players with mist?
A erebus without bite may as well just go on mine patrol and farm for citadel upgrades because I honestly cant think of anything meaningful he would bring to a demigod battle that any other general wouldnt bring. This is the fault of how they built Erebus though, not of player builds.
I actually see regulus who dont have or use snipe much, or mines. With Erebus, there is no such thing as a no bite build. Hell one game I grabbed stun as his first skill by mistake since I was clicking fast and boy did I pay for that.
I don't expect large balance chances this early though, so i can only hope this selective fixing does end up crippling characters who need to wait for "bigger picture" adjustments.
He's a general. He's not supposed to be killing players.
That's kind of also the point of the nerf. Perhaps they need to buff the minions so they're actually viable....
Thats not entirely a true statement Vengeance but I think a better thing to say is "Not killing players AS MUCH" as he was.
This doesn't make sense to me. Do you really believe that should be a factor in deciding which skills get nerfed? That sounds like the DCI when they banned skullclamp. "It was in 47 of 50 decks at PTQ". This was an excuse to ruin the rav/affinity deck without banning cards that made it obvious what they were doing. Even the editor at of inquest agreed. So is bite GPG's skullclamp? I don't think so, so I'm not really in agreement with you on this.
This sounds far more reasonable an answer. However, I do think the nerf is the lazy solution to this problem.
I've come up with another, much more optimistic idea. R&D (do you have R&D?) aren't testing this with the same game that we're playing. Maybe this is a minor adjustment with future tweaks/skills/demis/updates in mind that we as players aren't aware of. Just to content myself, this is what I'm going to believe.
I meant no offense by this btw. I should clarify and say that I'd really not seen any supporting evidence that made me agree that the skill was overpowered (or even just nerf deserving). Really good, yes, at specific times in the game. His best skill among others that, even though synergistic, aren't on the same level as other demi's next tier abilities, definitely. But that's why I don't understand. People keep saying "add these factors up and he's too good". Add those factors up and that's all he does well... Yes, bite is a great skill but by comparison his other abilties really kind of suck when you look at them truly objectively, and most of this comes from the insane mana costs. I'm not "QQ cause my demi got nerfed", I'm actually concerned about why they are fudging with the demi's only real skill, and one that's not really all that great when scaled out across the span of a whole game. Not every demi was designed to run in and beat face pre-level 10. I think people should concentrate more on developing skills that compliment their demigod, instead of just trying to kill other demi's right from the start.
Personally if we wanted to give something to erebus other then bite, make a gaze ability. (fits in with a vampire demigod) Have it add something with minions so they're more attractive. Maybe even go as far as to make it mana cost heavy as well so being able to bat swarm bite and use it, simply isn't possible.
The less stuns we have in the game the better. So maybe add an interrupt effect so he still has that ability to stop spells like with mass charm.
Uh, yes, it should. All builds should be viable in different situations. If every build has one ability then that ability is obviously too strong (or the others are just too weak)
While I agree in a way with you, I wanted to point something out.
Here's a typical scenario. Oak runs up and starts beating on an erebus early game, lets even say pre-level 4. Erebus, with his weak armor, loses much more life than oak in the melee battle. Suddenly, erebus bites oak, gains a couple hits worth of health back, deals a couple (and by couple i specifically mean two or a little less, nowhere near 3) hits worth of damage. This really wouldn't be enough to do much to help erebus. However, the oak is also slowed and now has reduced armor.
Now at this point, if oak turns and runs, he is slowed, and erebus continues to fight and waits for his bite cooldown. Oak is no longer dealing damage, only receiving it because he's fleeing. Death or near death in this situation is now pretty much assured. What is wrong with this scenario? If the oak used even one potion or got one strike in from a tower on the erebus, the tables will have turned back in the other direction. This does not indicate to me that bite is too good, but rather it is erebus' saving grace. thank god he has it, or what would he do? mist the oak for 150 or so damage, be out of mana and die? so erebus isn't easy to kill, who is, if played well? do new players have an easier time of playing erebus over other demis? maybe, but might that not just indicate that erebus is one dimensionally geared towards things that noobs are inclined to do?
i'm in the minority that thinks that erebus needs some help. nerf the bite, ok. but vengeance's post also makes me realize that poor erebus has been designed one dimensionally, and i just think making bite less effective and more costly just isnt' going to help anyone.
i agree bite is his meat and potatoes move, personally i think the nerf was done in all the wrong areas. i also suggested to brad that if they nerf bite either remove the slow effect or increase the cd by 2-3 secs. im just shocked they did all that they did do to it considering his other skills are at best support skills to keep him alive. i dont know how bad this nerf really screwed erebus up yet but i wont be surprised if he becomes abandoned orturned into nothing but a scout/flag capper that runs whenever he sees another dg.
im also shocked they nerfed him at all when all the stats obviously disagree with the ppl screaming for nerfs. hes ranked 4th middle of the pack, and they cant use well ai's liek to play as him because ais play as everyone equally. and they cant use that well there are alot of bad erebus players either cause it holds true for all demigods. id rather put morepower into actual stats than the rage quiters who come on here crying for nerfs any day of the week.
what about regulus's mines? 770 mana for 1350 dmg with jus 3 mines with a 30% slow. if you use 6 mines thats 1500 mana (slighlty more than erebus bat swarm) for 2700 dmg and 30% slow (yes i have hit ppl with all 6 mines, trick is useing them like mines instead of hand grenades). but yea lets nerf the dmg on erebus 900 dmg bite /end sarcasm.
i would also like some kind of explaination from gpg on why they did the nerf the way they did. sorry for long post and thanks for reading.
So by your logic, there are items that also need to be nerfed, like the heart, scrolls, and potions. Do you use these items consistently? You can stop trying to convince me that being consistently used or even over-used means it mandates a nerf, because i just do not, and will not, agree with you. I can understand your want of balance, and multiple builds, but you seem to be confusing good with overpowered. Out of all the reasons I've read that people think there is a need to do something, people using it in their builds is the worst.
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