Something I've realized (we all know oak is already strong) is that when oak uses his shield. That target no longer gets HIT. It may say absorb or something but when using the heart of life it doesnt' interrupt it. I just had a game where i played against an oak who did this and with 6 seconds of shield some killer armor and me as torchbearer (low health) he was pretty much invincible. Either he could continue fighting even at 500 hp becuase shield then heart of life or he could run away in some of the most annoying circumstances. Through the entire game he died once. Killed over 5 people. (I got disconnected)
In my opinion here are the problems:
1) I doubt this was meant to happen.2) How do you kill someone who does this.3) Regardless of what you do it's impossible to prevent since shield is a nigh instant spell.4) Way too easy to get at 4k to set up.
Problems I had while fighting him:
1) As torchbearer all my damage was burst or close to it with AoE. Yet he leveled faster because he never had to run.2) As torchbearer my damage was all burst and when i came at him i easily took out 3/4 of his health with my spells yet he always regened back. And with cooldowns I had 10 seconds before I could damage him again but as oak he just kept pouring the steam on3) It happens WAY TOO EARLY all he needed was 4k and starting with 1k it isn't that hard. Almost instant invincibility. And didn't help one of my allies fed him a kill. He got on a few assists too and it wasn't too hard to get that money.4) 2 People couldn't even take him down he had wand of speed and boots of speed and ran behind towers.5) Later in the game when the money started getting high all he needed was armor and he had a ton of it. SO that 2000 hp he gets over 6 seconds turns into 6000 effective. It just became way too hard to stop him.5) Our towers couldn't stop him at all he just ran by then and killed us because at 800 health he still could survive the towers.
Now I know i'll get criticism saying "He sacrifices damage" or "He's more vulnerable early game" But the truth of the matter is all it took was 3 skill points so even if you followed the regular build it wouldn't be that hard to do this. And selling items you'd only need 5k worth of them so you wouldn't suffer anyway. Other criticism saying "have you tested this?" Well i haven't but it's a viable strategy that caused me to lose a game quite spectacularly. And one more thing "big deal he can only use it ever 45 seconds" yes but when you have a 35 second death counter he's only got 10 seconds outside of that. And even if you manage to kill him afterward he still comes back with his last stand and if you aren't already dead you will be then. Plus with 15% cooldown flag and 10% cooldown favor item that 45 goes down to around 33 and thats a lot stronger than before.
I couldn't interrupt iwth anyway. It's unstopable to stop the heal. You HAVE TO DO DAMAGE. As i've said before. YOU HAVE TO DO DAMAGE. Stun does absolutely nothing against HoL i've been stunned before by annother TB while using it and it did nothing.
So who ever saying that you can Frost nova/stun Oak in his Buble is wrong - i just tested it with my buddy - we tried interupt HoL under buble - Deepfreese/FrostNova/Grasp/Masscharm - nothing did stop HoL
That's funny because it kind of sounded that way when you said:
So you'll forgive me for replying to what you actually said rather than what you (possibly) meant in your head.
You make it out as though shield+HoL is a pain to counter, that it requires specific builds, reduced effectiveness, etc. Well, no, it doesn't. The counters/workarounds are easy (some already detailed in this thread). It is just not a big deal to fight against. It's not uber mode, it's comparable to many other tactics people employ. Nobody likes having to try to avoid mines constantly, nobody likes an enemy rook building up a tower farm in a good position, people hate spit, heal takes away your potential kills, erebus mists out of negative effects and the list goes on.
In fact, speaking of sedna's heal, it heals for 1500. HoL during shield heals 1800. That 4k item? Might as well have cast heal during shield. Priest idol minions by that point in the game are healing DGs on the order of 500-700 every 10 seconds. That's 1500-2100 every 30 seconds right there and it gets cast on everyone. All you need is a general on your team.
Perspective. Shield+HoL does not stand out. Pop a potion, use towers, spend 1 point so you can stun and run away, use your own team's healing which should be much more than 1800 per 30 seconds, etc. The only special thing about shield+HoL is that is stands out visually and conceptually. You see someone invulnerable and gain a large chunk of hp at the same time - it looks overpowered. The reality is people are being healed all the time by priests, regen, skills and other items. You just don't notice it much.
In addition to the health, HoL will fill mana too. It's not comparable to heal.
The healing component is comparable to other heals. There is no problem making this comparison. It just means that after the comparison, you have to remember it gives mana too. If you want we can always compare the mana component to regenerating mana in other ways, but it just doesn't seem that people are up in arms about the mana part, probably because it's easier to regain mana than health and while mana is the "using abilities" resource, health is more the "staying alive so I can actually use those abilities" resource which is important over everything else.
Not saying that the extra mana isn't good, just that it doesn't have as much an impact mid-fight the majority of the time.
Maybe it has always been this way but I have problems foul grasping a shielded Oak.
He hits the shield and then I fould grasp. I'm still stuck in the animation, gaining health, as he is still hitting me. Other times he just runs away while I'm still stuck in the animation.
1) All right what i meant is it isn't UNCOUNTERABLE but it's UNSTOPPABLE. You can counter it but you can't stop it form happening. NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO HE WILL STILL GET THE HEALTH WHICH IS MY POINT.2) Sedna is made to heal it's a skill she sacrifices area damage and otehr burst JUST FOR IT. Plus she's a support demigod while Oak is not he isn't meant to have heaa.3) True People hate spit and a rook building up tower farm. But at least you can stop those. If you're good get 3 people on you team to periodically wipe rook towers. If you have spit on you don't run if you die keep attacking maybe you could kill them before it kills you or better yet RUN EARLIER.4) I agree people are always being healed but you can KILL priests you can NEGATE regen skills normally SACRIFICE damage and other items aren't REUSABLE. Potions still have a COOLDOWN so do TOWERS. No differance there. I'm not against heart of life it makes the game more interesting but using it IN battle is what annoys me.
Nothing stops shield or interrupts heart of life while in shield I'VE TESTED IT.
Totally true. Sedna doesn't fill mana. Sedna runs out of it. While heart of life COMPLETELY REJUVINATES a mid-level and can change the tides high level in a 1 on 1 and even 2 on 2 conflict.
O.k. getting a little offended here. I'm sorry if i didn't make myself clear. Kindly pointing it out would have been better. As said above i cleared that up. There are ways to drain mana ways to interupt a heal... Shield+HOL= INSTANT UNSTOPPABLE 1800 HEALTH and MANA plus whatever else he can milk out of it.
When comparing sedna to oak + Hol i would like to point out that sedna can heal repeatedly while the Hol combo can only be used once in a 35 sec period, which usually leads to oak retreating the battle. In addition to Sedna's heal she receives her hp/sec bonuses plus the proper armors makes her practically impossible to kill without your teamates ( I am only using Sedna as an example). And Xavier, you even said that when a Rook puts a tower farm it is 'possible' to take it out if you get 3 OF YOU TEAMMATES so how does that make Rook anymore balanced?
This is a completely wrong way of thinking. This isn't an MMO where you have to build yourself against a theoretically infinite array of differently capable opposition. It's a 3v3 (most times) game where you have exactly 3 threats you need to deal with. Saying that you 'screw yourself over' to attempt to counter one of these 3 threats, or that it is a waste of time simply doesn't make sense. What else are you doing? Building up to defeat some theoretical enemy? Persuing a strategy effective only against people you aren't playing against?
EVERY build is dependent on what forces you are up against. All of them. Ignoring it is the surest path to failure.
Am i also wrong about that some demi's aren't as good as others against a certain demi. And sometimes when you already get far enough to tell as strat your well into your levels. Level 7 at LEAST. Trying to guess what they are going to do and guessing wrong is just as fatal as switching from a damage build on UB to a status build at level 10 just because your enemy is playing differantly. Why play 2 strats at 1/2 strength. You still aren't as effective even if the 1/2 strength build is good against a certain demi/build.
Plus if you combat against ONE only then what if another demi attacks you. You have a 1 in 3 chance of fighting that demi and if he has an ally thats with him what you run every time. It's nice to have a general build. Something thats specilized but NOT TOO NARROW. What you are saying is that each person should succeed in one on one-ing another player. Well thats 1 in 3. A smart team would just switch people and bam they have 2 others to kill you with. It's more like rock paper sissors except you beat one and the other 2 beat you no matter what. Not good ods.
Personally i think rooks balance is off. This was just higher up on my concern list. Rook tower's are number 3 on my list next to adding a delay to Regulus's mine activation. And sedna is made as a support character. Lacking any effective AoE besides Yeti's (Which no one gets because your points are better spent elsewhere). At least oak and sedna are 2 demigods while Oak and HOL is one. And HOL is pretty common. Making this strategy pretty common and easy to get. So what if sedna doesn't die. You can force her to retreat what about Oak. He just sits and heals. Forces you to retreat not him.
So what if oak runs. If he held you up for 30 seconds anyway and used this at half health wouldn't he have some battle time to recharge. It may be only 20 seconds inactive out of battle before he can use it again. Plus cooldown flags and the cooldown favor item it wouldn't be hard to get it down to a 25 cooldown.
Sedna is made for tanking. Rook is made for pushing. Oak is made for being pretty general. Why specialize him in survivability when he already is decent everywhere else. Sedna is bad at pushing back creeps. Rook is bad at holding his own without towers/running. Oak is bad at what. He used to have to run and wait because he normally didn't last long enough to kill the other demi before they ran or he had to run but he can get away and he can push back creeps. Now with HOL and Shield it covers that up. What does he have running against him. The fact he can be beaten by 2 demigods or someone with a specialized build. THAT GOES THE SAME WITH EVERYONE.
Also EVERYONE you do realize that OAK wasn't meant to HEAL he's already got his healing skill that currently is decent. And along with Oaks incredible damage late game this makes him last just long enough that he can kill you and run. And i've lost games to this. I've played against 2 oaks and a sedna doing this... yes it is overpowered.
Have you ever tried using it yourself and finding how it interplays with Oak's performance? Have you played with and against it using various demigods? Have you both won and lost a high number of games with it in play?
The more vantage points to construct an idea of balance the better. All I see is "but oak isn't MEANT to do x" and "this is what happens when oak uses HoL". Except these situations you describe happening are not what actually goes on most of the time. Maybe they happened to you a few times. How HoL works out is a lot more complex than a couple of retreat scenarios you give. Further, your justification based on what demigods "should" do is worthless. "Oak is made for being pretty general"? Why? Who said that was the case? Who decided oak isn't allowed to heal? (certainly not whoever came up with priest idols) Who said sedna is for tanking? You are mixing up descriptions of how demigods tend to play with what they are "allowed" to do.
Everything you say just seems to show lack of time spent in matches with shield+HoL in play, or at least a one-sided experience.
I've avoided the HoL + Shield combo with Oak just because I was thinking it was going to be one of the first things that gets nerfed and I didn't want to have a playstyle that relied upon it.
However lately I've started using it during some games. Its not that great. Its useful of course, but HoL is a useful item anyway. To be able to step away from a fight for 10 seconds, then come back with full health + mana is a beautiful thing and anyone can do it, you don't need shield.
As for Oak not supposed to being able to heal? Try this combo in the late game when priests, angels catapults and giants are running about. Run into the thick of battle and watch your health drop. Shield then Surge of faith (combined with divine justice of course) and you can heal a few thousand points instantly to yourself and everyone around you, assuming you catch enough creeps in the radius. Its a beautiful thing.
Plus its a really really expensive item to get in the early - mid game. I could buy level 4 priests & Siege minions and still have cash leftover and honestly I think they make a bigger difference in the grand scheme of things.
So buying an HoL early enough to maximize its usefulness, isn't even necessarily all that useful.
Shield + HoL does not change the course of the game. Really i'd say it really only saves my butt maybe 2 or 3 times in a long round.
And for the record -
Stuns do not interrupt shield+HoL. At least not any stuns I've seen erebus, UB or TB launch. I've been testing it all evening.
As far as I've tested, that's right - shield doesn't prevent stuns or interrupts but HoL keeps on going.
What does interrupt it is healing, but not every kind. All active heals like sedna heal, divine justice from a killing blow, a potion, priests, etc stop the HoL effect on anyone. Health regen and lifesteal doesn't stop it.
So to anyone who doesn't know why HoL is randomly dropping, it's because of those healing abilities. Priest minions are the annoying ones. You have ot watch for when they heal you and use HoL in between, and that goes for anyone.
Yeah, I thought this was pretty inaccurate also... stuns don't stop HoL if you're shielded, only damage does.
As for Oak being OP... it's not... whenever someone plays someone better than them, they complain that their class is overpowered to make themselves feel better... if you want to learn how to beat an Oak (or any class for that matter) become good at playing that class. Once your good at playing a class, you know how to exploit it's weaknesses and their generally not so tough anymore.
Actually to tell you all the truth I've lost about 2 games against an HOL oak and won about 10. But thats lack of experience on their behalf. It's pretty basic on the forums. It's that one in every 10 people that worry me. The people who ACTUALLY use it well instead of some of these new players who just go on the forums and look for strategies.
As far as I can tell, having done this to people, stun works through shield, but does NOT stop HOL. HOL's stop condition is damage, which is prevented.
A similar thing can be done by QoT + Shield, but it wont' be assured of 6 seconds of stopping, just however much her shield is.
An Oak/QoT can also do this to a teammate who is in trouble, just wait until shieleded then pop the HoL, and continue fighting, if you know it's coming.
(And there are other things that are nasty to do in this vein, but I won't put them out for now, until I know they work well online.)
I don't think enough credit is being given to how powerful this combination is, and it is primarily because of the mana returned (total of 2700) and not the health regained.
Since you will rarely ever need more mana than your opponent has health, Oak using sheild+heart of life is able to completely ignore his mana pool and focus instead of health items, since he can regenerate (and cast) all his mana while doing this trick. In effect oak is capable of obtaining a bonus +600 or so health from the slot he saved on not using a mana item on top of his already high health, then an additional +1800 from the heart of life, and a mana pool that will always be large enough to defeat his opponent.
Mid game when health totals are 3-4k that extra 2400hp is enough to win any 1v1 combat. However, this isn't taking into consideration the 6 seconds of invincibility that saves him approximately 600-1200 health from autodamage (more if against multiple foes) and completely prevents any spike damage. What this means is that oak can often engage 2v1, defeat an opponent and then escape.
That doesn't mean there aren't counters to this. Ironically you mentioned that you were playing torch bearer, which is one of the banes to this strategy. Deep freeze increases cooldowns by approximately 130%-220% for 5-8 seconds depending on it's rank. The increase to cooldown is caculated on the 'base' and not 'current' ammount. In other words.. if sheild has a 30 second recharge, and he used sheild 45 seconds ago, casting deep freeze (even rank 1) will stop him from using it again for the duration of deep freeze. Even if oak manages to activate sheild, you can still use this on him to shutdown his ability to use the heart of life.
edited, i m wrong.
TLDR all ur walls of text
is a very cheap spell.
Any DG can use HoL and if you don't know how and when to get away from battle you don't know how to play Demigod. So step away and heal, and be back into battle within seconds. Works for pretty much any DG with HoL. Don't confuse Oak's strenghts and overlook his weaknesses based on a popular, possibly in need of rebalancing item.
So is Rook Towers, Spit, Snipe, Bramble shield and I'm sure a bunch of others...
Agreed. And if your gonna Nerf the heart then somethings gotta be done about the invincible Unclean beast that can solo towers and kill 1 demigod wile holding 2 others at bay or what about that Rook that just wont die!!. Fact is Iv seen this Oak build get owned by Unclean beast, Torchbearer, Vampire lord and the Queen of thorns. Good timing is the key. Its no more overpowered then any other. Just keep practicing and one day you'll be good enough to take Oak out too.
agreed. except for rook towers, they suck.
Yeah but people still complain Actually I don't think any of the above spells is realy cheap.
Example, I tought spit is extremely OP early for chasing you out of a lane and giving UB such an advantage that it was impossible to contend. Seems I just needed to learn to work against it... pretty much like with everything else.
This guy pretty much speaks the word of god to me...
PLUS EVERYONE LISTEN TO THIS
I JUST PLAYED A GAME WHERE AN OAK USED WINGS OF SERAPHIM AND HOL!!! HOW IS THIS NOT SUPER OP.
He pretty much had an instant around 3500 health EXTRA plus mana and as said above oaks mana is totally worthless with it. Theres no need to worry. Expecially if you get some 70% extra mana per second that works on HOL and make him restore all of it.
Quoting Misfortune, reply 20Any DG can use HoL and if you don't know how and when to get away from battle you don't know how to play Demigod. So step away and heal, and be back into battle within seconds. Works for pretty much any DG with HoL. Don't confuse Oak's strenghts and overlook his weaknesses based on a popular, possibly in need of rebalancing item.Quoting StAcK3D_ActR, reply 19...Oak Invincibilityis a very cheap spell. So is Rook Towers, Spit, Snipe, Bramble shield and I'm sure a bunch of others...
But if i'm correct he can use it incombat uninterupted. And bramble shield is only good begining of game and while QoT has mana. Spit is good but not OP. Snipe of course is good but not anything differant from spit and fireball. It just gives regulus and assist or kill neting him gold. He's not a very good creep farmer and actually tends to underlevel (when not using mines). All of these people have this as a PURPOSEFUL skill while Shield+HOL is a combination of a spell and an item, an item which a lot of people get anyway so it isn't uncommon, making it BETTER THAN those others. All those cost mana all have casting time (except towers and bramble) but none RESTORE health and grant temporary invincibility and regen.
Agreed some balances wont be fixed but when the REALLY big things like regulus getting early mines (which i think is only op in begining i'm not one of those people totally against it). At level 7 he can dish out 1500 burst damage every 8 seconds or so. But this is an easy fix and normally someone focusing on mines as said above underlevels for the begining portion of the game. Plus they sacrifice for mana items instead of health and damage. But Oak invincibility is AN ACCIDENT it wasn't balanced at all it was put in there by accident. All people have the ability to escape and use HOL is true. But WE ARE TALKING IN COMBAT PEOPLE. Sure its no differant than a pot but a pot can be interrupted expecially the 2 second ones. Sedna's heal was meant to be in the game and it costs mana it doesn't give it.
EDIT-
For all of you who read this WALL OF TEXTING thank you. Thank god most of it is quotes so you didn't need to read as much. If you read the quotes get yourself a cookie.
No, sedna's heal is not throttled by mana. The point where someone can afford a HoL? Well, minutes before that was the point nobody should be ever having mana troubles. If you buy a plenor and HoL as sedna you are doing it wrong. All she needs is a decent mana pool (vlemish+boots) and robust mana potions are the end to mana problems. It's much cheaper to spend the money on mana potions than anything past the first crown. You will actually have more gold and more mana for at minimum 15 minutes.
The mana component of the HoL is nice for oak but that's all it is. A nifty bonus. If the HoL is overpowered then it's overpowered to "casual" players only.
Ok, you know what? Let's just put the effect of shield+HoL into perspective here. At the stage of the game where you can buy a HoL (all of these are in-combat abilities):
Shield+HoL - 1800 hp/mana per 35 seconds
20 hp/s from standard gear and passive - 700 hp per 35s
Any general's priests - ~2100 hp per 35s
Any general's priests with sedna aura - ~3100 hp per 35s
High priests with sedna aura (bug) - ~4200 per 35s
Sedna's healing wind - 840 hp per person per 35s (and this is from *really* early on)
Sedna's heal - 7500 hp per 35s
Erebus' bite - 3875 hp per 35s
QoT Shield - 7250 shield per 35s
Shield+HoL just isn't very spectacular. Sedna alone can pump out 10k-15k healing per 35 seconds without breaking a sweat. The only reason I can see people think it's overpowered is because of its visibility and obviousness of it happening.
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