Can we please nerf Oak already? He's jokingly overpowered for a General. I don't even see people play him as a general, as he's the strongest 1v* hero killer in the game right now. He deals entirely too much damage and is far too resilient. Early game he can hold points with invuln/penitence and his damage output mid-game is just silly. No other General even comes close to how powerful Oak is without minions. The only comparison was pre-nerf Erebus.
Oak lacks burst, if you have a decent sized HP pool and play properly you can fuck him up, as soon as he goes invuln, move away, after his invuln is over go back to mashing him. as sedna i've not had a problem killing oaks.
And master Shake, HoL is a bit buggy, and iirc(used to play oak) if you are shielded and use HoL, any other heal dumped on you will break it.
As a frequent player of the "assassin" Oak, I have to say that he is balanced, but may shine in certain ways that are frustrating to the point of someone throwing up their hands and saying "How the fuck do I beat this?" Let me elaborate.
1.) Oak assassin's effectiveness is partially map-based. As other people here have said, Oak's burst, while not horrible, isn't what wins him fights. Oak kills people by latching on to them and never letting go, taking a beating while killing them, if necessary. On certain maps, this is incredibly easy to do. For example, let's take prison. Prison has a ton of towers in each base, but the "no-man's land" part of the map has NONE. This makes it stupidly easy for Oak to chase someone indefinitely. Having been on the receiving and dishing end of this, I can't see how to really stop a smart Oak player from killing certain DG's (squishy, low-hp) on prison unless said DG sees him coming from a ways away and RUNS IMMEDIATELY. However, on maps like Cataract, this is much much harder to do, and often ends in a killswap, if anything. So you can't really blame Oak for being OP on certain maps; it's the same situation as Rook on Crucible.
2.) Oak's killing power revolves around an enemy DG letting himself get too close to the brink. Think of it this way: if you're fighting against one or more Regulus who are heavy snipe build, you know not to let yourself get below a certain amount of hp. The same thing applies to Oak, but people have trouble accepting this fact. Let me give an example. An enemy Rook drops down to about 1.5k-1.7k hp, and I have second level pentinence. If that Rook does not retreat IMMEDIATELY upon seeing me, he will die. 400dmg penti + 2 slashes, and you're at less than 700 health, and I'm on top of you. The thing that whiners need to realize is that when an Oak is on the map, you need to play things differently. Oak's kills rely on that Penti + latching on to you, despite being dragged through fire. You just need to adjust accordingly. That Rook could have taken measures that I, as the Oak, can't be immediately aware of in order to survive. He could boulder roll me and run. He could have wand of speed and muscle through my pentinence before I can actually start hitting him. People just don't know how to adapt because they're used to preparing for suddent burst damage as opposed to hard-to-avoid sustained damage.
3.) Assassin Oak's are probably the most speed-dependent DG. This works both ways - denying them speed is often more painful than any kind of damage. Let the Oak rush in after you, deep into your towers, then do something to bind his movements and he will likely die on the way out.
These are just what I can come up with off the top of my head. Just try to remain open-minded with the Oak, as you should with any DG. There are counters for everything, but they may require you to play differently than you are used to. This does not mean they are OP, it just means that they're doing it right and you're not.
Master - I wouldn't get too attached to the shield + HoL. Its a deadly combo.. and I doubt its working as intended. I would guess they will change this down the line. If some one says you can stun him while shielded, I can't confirm or deny but a lot of people don't seem to take advantage of that fact.
Currently however, with Oak shield + HoL is indeed different than HoL with most other DG's. Anyone with invuln capabilities has an advantage since you can wade into the thick of battle, shield, HoL for 3,4 or 6 seconds or however long you're immune for, fighting away the entire time.
If interrupts do effect you while you're shielded, than potions/scrolls would be interrupted as well.
I don't understand how you are doing HoL + Shield wrong. You need a few ranks of shield, or it will wear off to fast. Then you just click shield on yourself, then click the HoL.
Not exactly the most complicated strat.
Oak is nice but you need to be around 5+ and more likely around level 10 before you get your shield plus heart of life combo. Weak demigod till over level 5 and early game play usually means the game.
Penitence is what gets people most of the time. It's a moderate sudden damage attack, but it's the fact that it causes an enemy to take more damage that makes it freakin deadly. Also the short cooldown means that you can use it as an opener and finisher, which is how I always use it.
When battling Oak I always, Always, ALWAYS kill his spirits. They give him attack power, and it's just that many more enemies that are gonna try to kill you. Spirits are easy to get rid of because of their momentum flying motion which tends to make them zip right into towers. They don't have much health so an AoE really does the job too. Just be careful of doing an AoE around enemy creeps when Oak has his ward up, because that'll just give him spirits.
In my opinion what makes Oak so amazing is his heals after killing blows, and wards. This makes him an amazing 1v1 DG when creeps are around. If a creep dies, Oak gets more attack power. If Oak kills that creep, he gets more health. If I remember right Oak can get around 50 hp per creep that he kills. So if you're battling Oak, are about to die, and start running towards a tower, Oak can throw out his AoE and heal himself. If he kills 5 creeps, he has just enough health to last through one more tower shot than he would.
So ya that's my take on Oak.
My point was that if it's true that stun interrupts HoL even when Oak is shielded, then I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was just being interrupted.
Oak is the second most played class by me after UB. My HoL got interrupted once or twice out of a hundred times i've popped shield and used it. HoL is your priority number 3 item. First you get mana helm, then 1500 armor, then I usually save for HoL, it's a pretty ridiculous combo, that may need nerfing. Also get shield3 for HoL to finish casting, i usually don't take it past 3 ever.
As for his other abilities peni may be a tad too strong, if i remember correctly it's 800 damage at last level, 7 sec recast. UBs spit is 1500 10seconds, so oak's peni can be cast a time and a half over that time thus equalling 1200 damage which is almost comparable to spit, except it can't be cleansed with items like UBs thus making it even better than spit imo. And it works great on runners, as people try to get away you start spamming them with -15% run speed, and I always buy 1500 gloves that have 25% run speed debuff.
I've also made a hammer rook ragequit yesterday after i've interrupted his hammer 4 times in a row, all of which resulted in his death, instead of opening with peni i'd start autoattacking him press peni and just hover the mouse pointer over him so that the second he'd try to hammer me i'd interrupt him in a split second since peni cast time is much much shorter, also if timed well you can interrupt UBs spit with it too, but it's a bit harder.
10+ his damage with soul power 4 (I always train first) and spirits(I train 10+) can come close to 500. around level 15 I remember having 450+ damage per swing, and .7attack speed with mageslayer and cloak, i could burst people down who were standing next to health stone without much difficulty.
Oak is my main, and in my opinion, he and TB (my second) are the most balanced demigods in the game. Heart of Life needs to be changed so it stops healing after a hit, and not after damage which would prevent the Shield + HoL combo, which I agree is too good.Soul Power might need slight toning down, but that's about it for nerfing Oak, and also making his Last Stand not do full damage to buildings.
9 times out of 10 UB wipes the floor with Oak if the UB has a clue. The only thing I would change as Busdude mentioned is not have last stand do full damage to buildings, i've ran into quite a few suiciding Oaks that like to thrash buildings in last stand and there isn't all that much that can be done about it.
If you let Oak get up in levels... he can suck serious balls.
But early game he is "meh", midgame is a winnable fight. I mainly play Sedna though. Typically something retarded on my part has to happen for him to do anything special until just past midgame. I would say early game is his weakpoint. If you play another DG thats weak early game... GL to you. Best course is to try to gain a level advantage early on him, else it gets rough (not that it isnt true with any other DG lol)
if I can't win before late game? he hands me my face... badly
"9 times out of 10 UB wipes the floor with Oak if the UB has a clue."
UB is my main, and some oak players...well they just rape my face. i agree with this stat. what on earth is that tenth player doing to totally dominate me? wonder if its just the really good players or a certain build .
the ones that wipe the floor with you are the ones that know how to Shield and how to Penitence. if your timing is good you can Penitence the first Spit and Shield the second.
alternatively (though these aren't mutually exclusive) its just a Tank type gear build. Tank gear builds are a natural advantage over DPS oriented Demigods like Regulus and Beast.
Shhh... don't tell anyone.
I own Oak with TB until very late game. Even then I can usually take him down with one teammate.
What's really overpowered is Oak and QoT shielding and bubbling each other... doesn't matter which one you attack, you can't kill either of them.
I think the general problem with generals in general (no puns intended) is that everyone seems to be playing them mostly as assassins.....instead of actually "generals". The "assassin" builds for the generals seem to be more worth while then a minion build....Sedna, Oak, Erebus....QoT is a bit under those three but she is the most "general" like imo.
With the presence of powerful AoEs, and the time it takes or mana it takes to summon up minions, you're often better making them assassins. It'as no fun to crank your full minion build to full wrath as say, Erebus, and have a UB spit in the center and start draining them all, or Regulus Mines, Oak's Surge of Faith, Rook's Towers, Ground Spikes from qoT, numerous TB skills... etc.
Minions are fun, but outside the bouhght idols, it's often a very heavy skill investment for stuff that just doesn't seem to pay off very well.
Or I'm just no good at it.
The problem with minion builds is that they made a mistake by making them do a bit less damage then the other DG abilities. They should be the strongest damage in the game. If that was the case, it would be ok that an AoE stun could take them all out for the duration of the fight and it would be ok that they would be very vulnerable to AoE damage since if you could protect them, they would melt face. Now since they do less damage then just focusing on melee or other powers, its just more effective to use them since they have no downsides.
Last Stand needs a rework btw. The only time its good is against rooks that dont have any speed items and buildings. Every other time its useless since:
1. You have to die to use it.
2. The few seconds the "I'm immortal and will kill you if you stick around"-animation plays, means that everyone around you just got plenty of warning that they should move away and every time you are actually killed (since the killers are usually at least a wee bit skilled and know that they should move away), there is no-one around to hit which means the +move speed isnt nearly enough. The only time I've taken that second point is in a game that an opposing reg got artefacts or something and suddenly went from being a mild threat to something I knew I would die every time I saw him at max visual range no matter what I did. So I naturally thought that I might as well try to take him out too. I had anclet, speed boots and some other speed item (forget which) and I got perhaps one or two hits in in the 10 secs it lasts.
So my suggestion is that there should be no activation animation - being on low hp should be warning enough. Then you should cut the damage against structures. The problem that I can see with that is that it would be OP against UB since UB has to come to melee and has no good escape mechanism that works for this. Rook would also be in trouble. Still it would be better then being useless against all ranged DGs and most melee DGs...
I don't care for the general's stat spec line. It's crappy compared to assassin and it's buffing minions. Hoping they add something on it for the demigod too or tweak it up some for the minions otherwise it seems worthless to me.
UB's foul grasp will, its a channel stun that breaks just about anything in the game with a cast time.
Be careful of having preist minions while using HoL - if they heal you they will interupt the HoL, as their healing counts as negative damage.
I play Oak most of the time - the most annoying opponent by far is UB - his grasp goes straight through shield, so you cant shiled up and run away if things aren't going well. Early game you need to avoid beast most of the time. Oak has serious mana issues early on- I take divine justice just so I can recharge my mana from minotaurs.
Oak is crazy good at closing gaps and slapping you around a bit. Pentinence + snipe = massive burst potential, almost as much as Grasp + Hammer. (Btw, easily my favorite combo in 2's. 6-0 in 2v2 with UB/Rook on Crucible.)
Anyways, Oak's one weakness is his main damage ability is his only interrupt. If you juke him, depending on the ability, it's very easy to get away, heal, get off a cast time spell. Last Stand's animation should be shortened a bit, but invulnerability + IAS + MS is a lot for 1 point...I mean common you just died.
Oak is my 2nd favorite support DG next to Sedna. His shield makes cluth saves and his Pentinence allows you to stomp someone's yard. Nerf worthy? Not yet, but maybe if someone finds a great way to abuse something else. (Sheild + HoL is lame but HoL is just ridiculous on anyone.)
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