This is another one for the "game balance" and "game design" department and it is in regards to the skill mist.
First off, it's a very interesting skill. I like it. I don't want it nerfed or anything like that unless absolutely necessary. However, I encountered the use of it in a game last night on the map Exile that was nearly gamebreaking.
First the scenario:
It was a 4v4 on exile. It was a 46 minute long match (give or take) that was fairly tight up until the last 5 to 10 minutes. Basically, we were all at level 20 or within a few levels of it and both sides had giants going with my side dominating towards the latter part. I was working a Regulus along with our Sedna on a final push. We were held at bay by their Reg and Torchbearer. Between their giants, pults, mines, and flame aoe's it was kind of a stalemate. What I noticed after a while was that our giants never made any forward progress to help us in our push.
So, I took a stroll back to our base and found their Erebus in a PERMANENT mist state at the critical choke point where essentially nothing could pass. The gist of it was that between their reinforcements and his constantly respawning Nightwalkers a "front" was created right over his mist. Our reinforcements would fight there, get the aoe dot, die, and respawn new Nightwalkers.
It was quite ingenious and worked well.
So, I thought, "at 125 man per second, he can't stay in mist forever". Well, I was wrong. When dps'ing down his creep waves (that never seemed to end - partly because his 3 other team-mates were free to handle flag capping and stemming our assault) I thought I'd just camp him for a bit and nail him when he came out of mist. To my surprise he remained mainly in mist the rest of the game. Only leaving it to push forward bit by bit to our citadel. However, his mist "up-time" was well over 95% of his gameplay at this point.
For all it's seeming cheapness, it won the game. Gratz. Kudos to that guy. We lost. Thought I felt like I wasted 46 minutes of my life to 10 minutes of Mist abuse, it wasn't the end of the world.
But it got me thinking - "how the hell did that guy stay in Mist so long?" I've dabbled at Erebus and I know at low levels w/ low mana regen you can't stay in mist long at all.
So I figured I'd test it out and ran a couple of test games where I played the comp and started at level 20 w/ 25,000 gold and high gold regen. I wanted to see what you had to buy to get the high mana regen rates to sustain mist. I found that it wasn't that hard.
Basically it goes like this:
1.) Mist cost is 125 mana per second, while in mist.
2.) Erebus at level 20 (no gear) base mana regen: 7.77 per second (unbuffed)
so approx net cost of mist at this level is 118 mana per second
3.) With these items (all non artifacts) - less than 15K gold (Hungarling, Vlemish, Plenor, Plate visor, and Vinling helm),
112.12 mana per second.
approx net cost of mist is now 13 mana per second and you are sitting at 6884 mana. You can now live in mist for 8 minutes and 48 seconds if you start with a full mana bar.
4.) Drop the el cheapo plate visor and switch to Cloak of Flames (a 9400 gold exchange) and you now have 145.85 mana per second regen plus 7934 total mana.
This will cost you about 23,000 gold total and only 20,300 if you get the price reduction favor item. 23,000 gold by level 20 is not that much as most games people are usually getting 30000 to 40000 gold per game at a minimum, and that's without hitting level 20.
At this point, Erebus can become unkillable at a moment's notice, indefinitely, with a nasty AOE effect. If you camp him, you stand to waste a lot of time. If you don't he just moves on to his next choke point, flag cap, or portal cap, with virtual impunity.
So I gotta ask: Is this intended?
The only down side of this is that you now have now slots for +health or +speed except for favor slot. However, you can counter both of those w/ a speed wand and heart of life trinket (not to mention never ending bite, bats, and stun).
Now, if this is not intended here are a few fixes I can think of:
1.) With each pulse, the mana cost grows so that after a period of time, it well exceeds any theoretical mana regen state, forcing Erebus to leave mist and open himself up to attack.
2.) Erebus can be "shocked out of mist" after a 20 seconds or so of mist by any DG with a stun ability as well a consumable made available at the shop for DG's that don't have a stun.
3.) Erebus can be targeted in mist if you drop the "see invis" ward.
4.) Cut down or eliminate mana regen in mist state.
===============
As a side note, I was able to win a game on Cataract vs AI using mist only when pairing it w/ full buffs to Nightwalkers and Vampiric Aura. All I had to do was mist where the enemy's reinforcements tracked and use my Nightwalkers to take down towers. Then all I did was upgrade to priests and camped his citadel in mist. This took down both of his lanes of reinforcements and supplied me w/ never ending Nightwalkers.
I did not put one point into bite, bats, or charm. My only activateable skill was mist. That's it. Granted, this was only vs. Easy AI and we started at level 20 but oddly enough the AI wasn't too bad that game. It never died and actually managed to cap my portals a couple of times (of course I had to recap them). But once I was able to get his reinforcement lanes choked w/ mist, all my reinforcements overwhelmed his base.
This kind of mirrored what happened to me originally on exile.
An interesting way to win, at any rate
Anyhow, I just wanted to this write-up for several reasons.
1.) Ask the basic questions: Are the devs aware of this? and... Is this working as intended?
2.) If it's working at intended, I'd like to give Erebus players a head's up as to what's achievable with mist and mana regen that's not too hard to obtain in this game. On the flip side, if you see an Erebus player who seems to never have to leave mist, then he probably doesn't have to. You'll have to warn your team mates and adjust to that.
Finally, if this is working as intended, I have to ask "what kind of game design allows one character out of 8 to remain invulnerable indefinitely?"
yeah right nightwalkers take down the citadel....
Just ignore him, mist is by far the weakest aoe in the game really, at max it deal 125dmg, plus creeps just ignore erebus when in mist.
As en erebus i can just whipe out every creep wave but giants with batswarm, at a fraction of the cost and in 1 sec, plus im not sitting useless for the entire duration.
Besides at level 20 with 25k , regardless of the dg, you are already a killing machine.
You just had to ignore him, go to his citadel, kill the other teammates that are now outnumbered, flagcap their portal and win, all in 30 sec, while the poor Erebus receive in chat from his team what he deserve "thank you noob!".
Actually, it can be done for less money than you might think and earlier.
Level 14: Cloak of Night, Hungarling's Crown, Magnus Rod, Plenor Battlecrown, Vinling Helmet, Vlemish Faceguard
This set costs 16300 gold and 2000 favor points and will bring you to a mana regen of 124.96. This should be enough to stay in mist form as long as you like.
At level 10 the same set of items will net 121.71 mana/sec. So it's really more about the money than anything else.
double post
thats the point, and over all WHATS the sense in that?
sure it would make opponent pissed sometimes but its not a setup to win games at all
that is exactly why when i play him i dont use it it is a risky skill i would rather take qa chance with a bat swarm then have to wait on my ass in mist not doing much dmg and not being able to do much
...You did read the post, right? RIGHT? No. You didn't. You fail.
First and foremost, it's a psychological tactic - it throws an opposing team into utter confusion. Even the AI is vulnerable - when I tested it out in single player, the AI kept vacilated between defending theit base and holding the middle, which allowed my allies to make up ground despite being down a member.
One other point: several people have refered to it not being a severe disadvantage because "You can still max bite and pwn demigods". You certainly can, but you'll be gimping your mistform capabilities by doing so. While in mist-form, your only real contribution to the team comes from your nightwalkers. This means you'll want Army of Night, Bloody Haze, and Vampiric Aura. To get this at level 15 requires all 15 skill points. The five remainining points should probably be spent on Morale - a 20 minion damage boost is not at all insignifigant, when you have 10 nightwalkers.
Army of Night, Bloody Haze and Vampiric Aura? Vampiric Aura is pretty useless in Mist form no?
You need Mist (III will do, but IV is best, naturally)
Improved Conversion Aura III
Coven III
So with Mist IV, you'll be lvl 10 all stacked out for the Mist/minion combo. And Bloody Haze is not really needed in my opinion, but sure. Can't get it until 15 anyway. Same with Army of the Night. Though they're quite ok, you'll make a new nightwalker 80% of the time you kill a creep anyway.
That leaves the points from 11-14 unused. Put them in Bite (earlier in the game of course) to help you actually survive to be high enough level and afford the necessary mana gear for this strategy to work. I guess you could put them in Morale, but I think Bite will be far more beneficial. You can get Morale from 15 and up anyway.
I'd probably do something like:
Bite I
Imp. Conv. Aura I
Coven I
Bite II
Coven II
Mist I
Bite III
Mist II
Mist III
Now you are lvl 9 and ready to start (possibly, I don't really know if you can afford all the items by now.) Now park yourself at a chokepoint and watch the xp come rolling in while you micro your minions.
Can you use this technique to perma-mist beside the enemy citadel? LOL! Think about it...
You cannot just "leave him alone" while you attack his base. After you leave he can unmist and take your back portal flags on his own or kill towers in your base.
If you tp back he returns to his position (with bat swarm) and remists. He'll regen hp back to full and wait until you leave.
If you're really hurting his base he can unmist and tp back - not outnumbered anymore - but you won't have any creeps for a while - now YOU are outnumbered.
He can unmist between creep waves, let mist cool down, bite creeps to regain health and remist.
Hmm wonder if you could use bat swarm to get near an enemies citadel on a map where the creeps walk by it. Mist not damaging structures or HP wouldn't matter if you could stay in mist indefintely. Continiously spawning nightwalkers that would take down towers and then eventually the citadel. Big IF's but would neat to see it done.
In my opinion a max time you can stay in Mist form sounds about right. Some where around 20-30 secs and then he comes out and then he can do it all over again once cooldown is done. But that way he has to come out and gives other demigods a chance to catch him.
You could do this one Exile - all creeps walk through the front of the base through a narrow passage.
You could do it on Cataract - all creeps run through the front middle of your base.
You could do it on Crucible - all creeps run through a narrow walkway and there's only 1 wave.
You can backdoor on Cataract way too easily to make mist actually worth doing(both offensivly and defensivly, just not worth it), and I'm sure we all know that Erebus has better ways to deal with Crucible...
Yeah but it facilitates the BD on Cataract. With all the creeps dead out mid you have to deal with the creep swarm invading, allowing the others leeway to move around the sides and grab your portals.
Excellent OP, didn't realise this. It must be a mistake or oversight on the dev's part.
Either way, couldn't you have taken the other team 4v3 with the Erebus out of the way?
No. According to his post, their reinforcements were making up for the lack of another DG (all the way up to Giants, remember), while his own reinforcements were all AWOL thanks to Senior Mist.
First, thanks for complimenting my OP. Secondly, I imagine in retrospect there was a way to counter this. However, we were 4 random guys and at the time there was just a lot of confusion. The key to this particular instance is that on exile all creeps leave the base at a narrow exit point which was blocked essentially by the misting Erebus. What was happening is that none of our creeps could make it out of our base to assist our push.
Now, it's true, mist is a slow DOT (damage over time), however it's cumulative effect is huge because the Nightwalkers and opponent reinforcements essentially kept our reinforcements standing on the mist long enough that the damage was enough to farm the reinforcements and create a never ending stream of night walkers.
To those who say "mist is weak", I think they are forgetting that most aoe effects that seems strong have a cooldown and do their damage in bursts and therefore seem like big damage. However, the amount of damage done over time by mist equals or exceeds alot of burst aoe effects. The key is to getting the reinforcements to stand there for the duration and that's where using Nightwalkers and your own reinforcements come in.
But back your point. What happened in retrospect is that their Erebus blocked our reinforcement line, their Oak went around capping flags, and their TB/Reg halted our push long enough for the Erebus to push their "front" to the last towers before our Citadel. I'm sure there would have been a way to coordinate a better response and overcome this. That we didn't succeed is our own fault. Next time, I think I will be more aware of what's going on and respond better.
I don't want this to be a "mist is overpowered" thread but rather a discussion as to whether the Developers really wanted Mist to become a no cost spell that provides permanent invulnerability w/ some tactical utility.
Now, much of the discussion here is pretty good. I have to agree w/ the Erebus players that Mist does in deed have tactical limitations. However, the ones that act like Mist is just fluff are way off the mark. Being able to go invulnerable is immensely useful. I can't tell you how many times a dead-in-the-water Erebus escaped a grisly fate by employing this skill.
As for "Erebus out of the way" aspect of things. I don't really consider him out of the way as rather "lying in wait". If you babysit him, you are out of the way too because you standing around doing nothing corroborates his sitting in mist doing nothing. However, if you "move on" to better things he is now free to go and do what he originally planned (cap flags, move his push forward, ninja and lock portals). Because not only does a never-ending mist have lots of mana for mist, he has lots of mana for everything else he does too. There's a lot of strategic objectives he can accomplish while the rest of the DG's are trying to kill each other.
Anyway, this has been a good discussion so far.
***P.S. I just thought of something in re-reading this post and that is about the whole aspect of mana stacking. For most heroes strickly mana stacking has a huge down-side of decreased health and speed. In other words, decreased survivability. However, w/ Erebus is the opposite, maxing out mana means maximum survivability. Perhaps this is the paradox that is at the core of my concern from a gameplay standpoint.
Erebus is a fascinating hero the more I think about him.
P.S.P.S In all this I forgot that Erebus is also a general and can have idol minions as well, further compounding the issue of creating a "front" over his mist.
I just won a game using Kalil's build. I have to say it was highly entertaining. I did take bite simply to help out the team in early kills while I set up for misting. Had a few close calls early on before mana regen was up to spec, but ended up closing out the game with 4 kills and 0 deaths.
We played on leviathan and I was able to to choke enough (with night walker assistance) to stop their spawns. Our team was able to cap the map and simply walk right into the enemy base.
It was definitely a funky, fun way to win, but the enemy team did not upgrade creeps. It is a viable build, and can also be countered, so my final verdict still remains that mist is fine as is.
Well, I'm glad Vyper tried it with success. I've yet to try a MP mist + army of the night game although I've done it in single player as I described above.
Neat.
However, I did just win a 3v3 cataract w/ a bite/charm/bats/mist build using only mana helms and idols. I had no problem w/ survivability at all. Sure, I couldn't stand toe to toe or chase deep in their base but I could create alot of battlefield confusion w/ these 4 spells at my fingertips. And yeah, semi-permanent mist meant I never had to face the prospect of dying as long as I was careful.
By end game, I had around 121 mana/sec w/ cloak of flames, vinling, plenor and vlemish. I never bought hungarlings, or the cheap helms. Instead I got idols which was nice for health regen and bomb sniffing (vs the reg).
screenshot of scoreboard:
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/1999/erebussamplegame.jpg
Well, an arranged team versus new players doesn't really add to the discussion, I'm unsure how the screenshot is supposed to validate anything. Erebus is an evasion character, it's not as if we are unraveling some sort of elusive mystery as far as his playstyle goes.
Arranged team? I just hosted a PUG (pick-up group) vs PUG game. I wish I had some friends to roll with. All I was trying to test was how survivability is w/ just pure mana stacking.
You're right it doesn't necessarily validate anything it was just one game.
However, I was encouraged to try out a mana build in a MP match. I did, and it worked fabulously.
Ah, my apologies, you had a known forumer on your team and frankly you guys steamrolled them, in every possible manner, including kills and flag caps.
I'm sure you can understand my mistake.
I've created a monster.
*blush* I'm so proud.
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