Ok, let's imagine three 2v2 teams. Which of the teams is probably the best?
Despite the fact that UB is generally considered one of the stronger demigods, it's Oak/Sedna that is probably the best 2v2 team in that situation. Why? Because of synergy.
Synergy Basics:
Synergy is basically the ability of your team to work well together. If your team is full of powerful demigods that don't work well together, it could lose to a team of underlevelled, underquipped demigods that do. I will define two types of synergy; level synergy and skill synergy. Level synergy is essentially the synergy that comes from having your Demigods all be at their peak at certain levels; skill synergy is the synergy you get from your skills complimenting each other.
Level synergy:
Level Synergy is just my fancy way of saying your Demigods are all effective at the same level. Why is that useful? Because it means that, since both teams generally stay even on levels, your team is at its strongest all at the same time while the enemy may have weaker links you can pick off. Take an Ooze UB and a Mines regulus; they both get their best skills at level 10 (maximized ooze and shrapnel mines). They also have pretty good skill synergy in other areas as well, but I'll mention that later. Another good combo is TB and UB; TB is effective at level 10, and probably can get a couple levels higher than anybody else, so they can easily start pushing at level 10 when they have a big advantage, and then use the push to gain more advantage because the enemy team may not be very strong at that level.
An example of bad synergy is an AA/Snipe Regulus and a Tower Rook. AA regulus takes a ton of gear and levels to hit his peak, while a Tower Rook hits his peak early because his towers stop being a deterrant to people with even moderate HP gear that can be obtained simply by the basic gold flow at around level 7. At any given level, one of them is weak due to how well (or not) their skills scale, so it all ends up badly. They also have horrible skill synergy, but once again that's for a later section.
So if you are making a team, try to find one that makes sure all of your Demigods are good at the same level, or roughly the same level, as each other (EX: if you have a TB build that makes him peak at level 15, but the rest of your team peaks at 10, it is probably OK because they will still be good at 12 and you can level up faster than them so you will also be OK.) As long as you do that your team will be able to make "miraculous" comebacks (in the enemies eyes) because they think that they are stronger than you just because of gear, which isn't always true. (of course, you could also just slaughter the enemies the whole time and just slaughter them more at your peak levels. )
Another thing about level synergy is that it is incredibly map dependant. On smaller maps, and more open maps (Prison and Crucible... very bad maps) you want a team that hits its peak as early as possible, because the enemy simply can't farm at all on such maps as long as you can out-fight them. Level 5 is generally a good peak for those maps; even if you can't beat the enemy at level 1, getting to level 5 is still pretty easy and generally stuns and other nice options unlock there. On medium maps, you want a peak at about 10; if you peak at level 5 on cataract, the enemy will just lanechange and farm up, and if they are grouped together you can't take both creep lanes. If you are on a huge map, 15 is the way to go; a lot of hugely powerful upgrades to abilities become available at level 15, and with how big the map is, it's not hard to creep farm your way there, though if you can get a team with good skill synergy to push, you can probably shoot for level 10.
Skill Synergy:
Skill Synergy is my fancy title for skills that work well together. Going back to my earlier example of a UB and Regulus, let's look at their strengths. UB and Regulus both have high speed. Both of them have a slowing attack or two. UB has a stun. Regulus has good AA damage and range. UB has good autoattack damage and can debuff the enemies AA. Regulus can make it extremely bad for the enemy to use skills.
Can you see the synergy there? They can both slow the enemy, and since it stacks, an enemy targeted cannot get away. They are both fast, so they can keep up with each other. UB has a great way of keeping the enemy from doing much autoattack damage, and Regulus can combine that with MotB to slow the enemy further or make them consider not using skills (three mines, maim, MotB, and diseased claw slows the enemy down to almost immobile). The main thing there, though, is that they both have great ways of keeping the enemy slowed/stunned. For example, during UB's grasp, regulus can lay mines. Normally, a quick enemy can avoid at least one of the mines because they take a bit to detonate, but while being grasped the enemy is stuck and unable to escape. Now with the enemy slowed, UB can keep him in Ooze so he can't escape and can't deal damage.
That's what Skill Synergy is all about. With a good combo, you can keep the enemy from being able to do anything at all with stuns and slows from multiple Demigods. For example, Stuns normally don't do much damage, so they really only are good as long interrupts (though some have natural combos, like shatter frost nova or bash the enemy for three seconds with mass charm). But with a teammate with a stun, it is stun + free DPS for the teammate, stun + free DPS for you, and your cooldown is probably getting close to another stun. You can synergize any skill, really. The most common synergies, however, are stuns and slows, and for good reason; chaining stuns and slows guarantees you a kill, while doing something like synergizing heals and shields can make you invincible, you still have to rely on outspeeding your opponent to actually get a kill, while your opponents probably can't do much against a chainstun, because it will be 3 against 2 from the first stun onward (and a lot of stuns are group stuns!)
An example of a non stun/slow synergy is the infamous "5 regulus sniper team." One shoots an enemy, all five snipe (tracking bug.) The enemy dies, or has to burn a teleport scroll to make it back to the crystal before the second volley (or burn potions).Most all teams with multiple of the same demigod have this kind of skill synergy, because all of them can do the same thing. Five fireballs, five foul grasps, five mass stuns and 10 bites, etc. They all work well because they all stack and keep the enemy preoccupied. A favorite of mine (though annoying if it is used against me) is the five last stand oaks team. Basically, they max out soul power and Last Stand, park a bunch of spirits at their base far from harm, run up to the citadel and start bashing on it. When they die, they get amazingly buffed attack to bash on the citadel. Five oaks can kill it in two-3 volleys at base health (with Soul Power and a ton of souls, oak can hit crazy DPS, and having it given huge buffs to attack speed and attack power just makes it even more absurd.)
Another, less "5 of the same guy" example is Sedna and Oak. Those two together are a very tough team. Whenever any of them is at low health, Sedna heals, and if things get tough Oak can burn a shield to help one of them run or stay in the fight, and Sedna can heal through the shield so when they come out, they are no longer weak. It's a great combo, and the fact they both have fast interrupts that deal good spike damage and are fairly fast just helps even more.
An example of bad synergy is the sniper/AA regulus and Tower Rook combo. Let's see why! Rook is slow, and practically immobile because he can't leave his tower farm. Regulus, early game, has to rely on snipe kills to kill demigods. He can only get a snipe kill if his teammate fights, which a tower Rook won't because he has to stay in his tower, so the only way for regulus to snipe is to get an enemy dumb enough to stand in a tower farm for a while. Then you have to realize that a tower rook probably has no stuns to keep them there (they generally focus on shoulder upgrades and towers, not Boulder Roll), and neither does Regulus, so you can't even make full use of your tower farm (high sustained DPS by being stunned and bashed while inside of it.)
Also, you want your team to have at least a secondary focus on taking down towers. While any group of three demigods can probably just bash on a tower until it dies without a fatality occuring, if you can bash towers safely and don't have to sacrafice demigod fighting synergy, the enemies have to fight your push, and guess what? You can kill them. For example, a team of Regulus, Torchbearer, and Spit UB is incredibly good against towers. They aren't the best synergizing team for killing demigods, but they are still really good at it, so you can essentially take down towers at your leisure and have a pretty good ability to chainstun and slow demigods that try to stop you.
So you always want good skill synergy. Two stuns? Good! Three stuns? Great! Three stuns, three slowing moves, and good AoE from all teammates? Amazing! Three stuns, three slowing moves, Good AoE, and the ability to take down towers safely? You win! Just make sure that your skills work out well together, and you should be fine.
Tying it all together:
Ok, so you want Level Synergy and Skill Synergy (though personally I feel Skill Synergy is more important). But you still need some other tips. First of all, none of this matters if you can't function as a team. It doesn't matter if you have a perfect chainstun build that can gank the enemies at level 4 and doesn't lose its power for the rest of the game, if you are all fighting in 1v1 battles in each lane, synergy won't do a damn thing for you. Work together!
Here's an example 3v3 team that really ties together all the elements that make synegy great. Torchbearer (fire and ice; fire for Fireball, Ice for Ice nova, Ice rain, and Shatter.), Erebus (assassin; bite, batswarm, and mass charm, mist optional), and UB (Pure Ooze). Let's see; they all hit their peak around level 11 (my TB build usually hits its peak around 12, but he levels up quickly anyway). TB gets his level 10 upgrades to skills and Ice Nova by level 12. Erebus gets his most advanced Bite, an improved Batswarm, and the last stun time upgrade for Mass Swarm at level 10-11. UB gets max Ooze at level 10, and maxes out all of the skills needed for the build (besides acclimation) at level 11. So they all are really, really strong at the same time.
Next, their arsenal. UB slows attack speed and enemy movement speed, and has a stun. Erebus has a stun and slows enemy movement speed and Armor. TB has a stun, a slow, an interrupt, and a spike move. The combo? Ooze on, Foul grasp, Bite + Fireball, Ice Rain, Ice Nova, Shatter, Mass Charm, Foul Grasp again. The damage of this combo is enough to kill pretty much any demigod not specced entirely for health. It's absurd. Not only that, but only UB's stun can be interrupted, the enemy will be too slow to escape if that happens anyway, and Mass Charm and Ice Nova are mass stuns, so any enemy minions will be stunned for a huge amount of time, and all enemy demigods will be chainstunned for 6 seconds by the two moves. The enemy demigods will have no escape, they will be softened up by a 40% attack speed debuff by Ooze, they will be hit by AoE attacks and AoE stuns, and so in the end, three enemy demigods will quickly become two enemy demigods at three quarters health with very low speed.
Hopefully this guide helps you out when figuring out your team composition. I don't expect it to help much in randoms (people generally pick whatever character they like, and teamwork is nonexistant), but when playing games with people you know, try synergizing! Trust me, it will improve your game way more than any build order or item guide will.
Some other synergies by Transitive ( for him): feel free to submit your own!
1. Unclean Beast with Foul Grasp and Rook with Hammer Slam. pin them in place and then drop the hammer. massive burst damage combo. (how did I forget this?)
2. Queen of Thorns Bramble Shield and Torchbearer's Fire Spells. the Fire AoEs are both very effective and high damage but are centered on TB himself so they put you in alot more personal risk to use against enemy DG's than you might be comfortable with. Bramble Shield solves this problem alot.
3. Sedna and Frost Torchbearer. can chain interrupts, stuns, and silences to keep an enemy team mostly ineffective for long periods of time. require expert timing and coordination to do it correctly though. (Really, really tough and requires Sedna to forget about healing. High risk, high reward.)
well written,
me + my partner using a lineup ub(ooze)+senda(pounce+heal) which also have a great synergy )
UB and Sedna really don't have great synergy. Sedna can heal... but honestly, their skills don't compliment each other at keeping the enemy from getting away or dealing damage. The only thing is that they have two effective interrupts, which means that by staggering them you can keep the enemy from potting/teleporting.
Granted, Sedna's heal works well with everything, but really, that combo has no ways to keep an enemy in range to be killed that a lone UB doesn't (besides Sedna's interrupt). Well, Silence works well at keeping the enemy there, but it doesn't really synergize with anything in particular, you kind of just use it.
hihi lets play sometime :/
1. 24hp/s allways good for an ooze build
2. pounce/silence/foul is a great combo anyways :/
3. u cant bring down an ooze ub with constant heal :/
4. both have staying power on their own
5. map controle
6. ???
7. profit
Also, as for challenging me... challenging me to a fight won't change the fact that the two don't combo better than any other Sedna + X demigod or UB + X demigod team; Synergy is about getting special benefits from the combination of abilities, and being able to heal damage taken and having an interrupt are things that Sedna always has. Having a chainstun, having a shield + heal combo so that somebody can be invulnerable while you bring them back up to HP they can fight with, stacking slows so enemies can't escape, combining a characters mobility with snipe to keep somebody in range, etc. are examples of synergy, and UB and Sedna have very little of that.
Also, note that I did not say they have no synergy, I said they didn't have "great" synergy; their synergy is a completely normal healer-tank relationship with limited combo potential and a difference in damage (Sedna has spike with pounce, UB has slow DoT with Ooze, and they have no way of keeping somebody in Ooze long enough for it to last). Sedna has plenty of options with better synergy, as does UB. Synergy isn't the only thing that makes a team important; the individual strengths of demigods are important as well, but other demigods that go well with UB (erebus, for example) also are a lot better on their own than Sedna.
ub/ooze stands the fight, sedna just jumps in for some good timed pounces. no lineup without sedna/qot can hold this. mapcontrole is through these DGs are the fastest, and as i mentioned 1v1 both have a good staying power.
since both DGs are very fast, the 5% from ub slowing is more than enough to chase someone down.
vs healing DGs pounce/silence/foul gasp is all you need
for Example: enemy sedna wants to heal, pounce in(7sek cooldown), gasp(2sek stun), silence(at lvl 1 3sek silence)...and it should be over, if not, pounce again for death strike
about synergie:
both have a great early game (1. lvl spite for ub ; 1. lvl pounce + priests for sedna)
and middle game its a top of the hill position. through sedna may lack in endgame vs giants, but if u cant hold your advantage from early/mid u will stompf them down before they touch warrank 10
pretty good guide, and very verbose so there's alot of food for thought here.
i think some minor corrections are due though.
regarding Regulus, you mentioned that he has above average speed and auto-attack damage. this isn't true. his move speed is totally average. he moves at 6.0 (base move speed of Reg and 4 other DGs) and has no ways of increasing his speed except from equipment. its totally average. his auto-attacks are actually WEAKER than other Assassins in their unmodified state. he needs to use Angelic Fury (and thus spend mana and skill points) to get a stronger auto-attack. the commonly played Snipe+Mines+MotB build doesn't take AF at all so his autoattacks will be weak (damage wise anyway, they'll still have very long range and a slowing effect).
other than that relatively minor point the rest of the info in here is useful.
some other effective Skill synergies that come to mind:
1. Unclean Beast with Foul Grasp and Rook with Hammer Slam. pin them in place and then drop the hammer. massive burst damage combo.
3. Oak and himself. Surge of Faith and Divine Justice. wow thats a strong combo for lane pushing. its highly beneficial to other DG's standing near him as well as they'll get buff and healed just the same as Oak and his minions.
4. Sedna and Frost Torchbearer. can chain interrupts, stuns, and silences to keep an enemy team mostly ineffective for long periods of time. require expert timing and coordination to do it correctly though.
If Sedna isn't fighting, which is really dumb, then the two on one against UB will kill him easily; one DPS source with healing is beaten by two DPS sources with stuns. Not only that, but it's impossible to get off a "well timed pounce" if she isn't in the fight, because she has to run in, and nothing except a teleport or big health potion wouldl afford her enough time to move in and pounce if she was out of combat range before getting to her.
Both demigods are not very fast. Sedna is only moderate in speed. You also assume you are always going to be faster than the enemy, which simply isn't true. Against anybody with a slowing effect early game (Oak, Erebus, Regulus, UB, TB, QoT [or is that her armor lowering attack]) you can get away.
If you hold your Sedna back, you aren't going to be pouncing any heals, shields, or even teleports if done by a ranged Demigod. You have to have your Sedna in the fight, and then she gets chainstunned to death.
You seem to assume that other demigods can't stun/interrupt. Two demigods with stun and AoE damage beat one demigod with stun and another sitting back and doing nothing.
For your scenario: Enemy Sedna wants to heal. Your sedna tries to run in to pounce, but because you hold her out of combat, she can't get there in time. The rest of the combo breaks down. (Not only that, but I never mentioned an enemy sedna.) Also, your combo doesn't do NEARLY enough damage to kill somebody; by stunning with foul grasp, UB is doing almost no damage, and your Sedna is only pouncing, so you've got a grand total of 2x pounce + 400 something damage from Grasp. Not very good at all; even at level 5, health stacking can get a mana reliant DG 4k health or a non-mana reliant demigod 5k health or more. With 400 damage from pounce at that level, that's all of a fourth of the enemies HP, tops. And then you have cooldowns on grasp and pounce while the enemy has two stuns. Easy peasy.
Real combo: TB and UB versus UB and Sedna: UB runs in and foul graps sedna, TB fireballs. TB ice rains both, Ice Nova's both (the fireball hits before the stun, and the TB can ice rain before the stun ends), your UB stuns.... somebody (either TB: smart or UB: not that great). Frost nova stuns both of you, shatter kills Sedna, UB versus TB. You can't do a thing against chainstunning when all you have is one stun and an interrupt that can't be used unless Sedna actually gets in the fray, where she would be powerless to prevent her own death at the hands of chainstuns.
Both of them have a good early game, but not the greatest. Sedna's early game is only good because of priests; an Erebus with priests and bite easily outclasses a Sedna without heal, and an Ooze UB can go toe to toe with a Spit UB on level one (it depends on who has the +15% health flag). (plus a TB erebus combo, again, has two slows, two stuns, a chase move, and ways to increase enemy damage taken.)
Middle game is top of the hill for them both, true. But practically everybody has their top of the hill at level 10, except for a few builds. And as I said, skill synergy is what matters most, and you have almost none of that.
Also, learn to spell, please. It's annoying how hard to read your posts are.
Ah, sorry, I haven't played Regulus in a bit and I forgot that his speed was average. Anyway, I generally find that most players are going with a mines + angelic fury build (I've seen a lot of it) so his autoattack damage is pretty nice. His synergy isn't the best with UB (who I main, as you can tell), but the slows really help keep UB in range.
As for the synergies:
I'll add your combos to the guide, though.
Oh contrar..BOTH have movement increase abilities so they keep pace with one another.
One has a SLOW ability for attacks that drains health and does AOE goody damage. The other has an AOE Heal that nicely offsets this.
One has an anti heal ability for opposing priest and a silence to interupt the other has foul grasp to also interupt, BOTH have high damage single target abilities as well. If you don't see the advantages of being dual swooping speed demons of death and the synergy therein there's something wrong with ya
How about Regulas and ???. My friend; who is still noobish, loves Regulus; won't play anything else, but, being noobish, he always ends up at the front lines. He always wants me to play Sedna so I can keep healing him (ya, I keep telling him to RUN), but she can't do much else after she heals. I was thinking TB; maybe he can freeze and slow everything as to keep them away from "Noobulus".
YAY teamwork
Ice TB and Ooze UB have pretty nice synergy, you have Diseased Claws and Ice Aura slowing their movement speed, you have Ooze and Ice Aura/Rain of Ice annihilating their attack speed (now imagine if they both have a Sludgeslinger too ), and you have an interrupt/2sec stun from UB and a ranged interrupt and AoE stun from TB in seperate skills. This can pretty much remove most of the enemies damage output except instant cast skills, their attack speed will be at a snails pace after a rain of ice and with two interrupts most skills with cast times wont get to go off either, and good luck escaping with two stuns and the dual slow effect.
Regulus works well with TB. They both have slowing abilities, they are both ranged, and TB can stun the enemy for regulus's mines, which is very nice. It's as good a combo for regulus as any, honestly.
First off, it's au contraire. Sorry, I took french, and seeing people who don't know french trying to spell it is just a pet peeve (actually, bad spelling in general is a pet peeve for me). Secondly, they both have movement speed. Ok, but keeping up with each other isn't really a huge synergistic bonus; it's more of a detriment to the faster demigod if the slower one slows him down. Though having speed abilities help.
UB doesn't have an AoE slow ability. UB has an AoE attack speed slow ability, which is what I assume you are talking about. Also, heal isn't AoE; it heals one target, and the damage dealt by the AoE attack is so pathetic it's worthless against minions or anything stronger than soldiers. That's not a great combo. You might have also been talking about Sedna's healing aura ability, but it's really hard to tell with the way you wrote that sentence (you didn't specify which character was which, didn't specify what kind of slow you were talking about, and didn't specify whether the AoE on AoE heal is AoE healing from the aura or AoE damage from heal IV. It's just confusing trying to understand you.
Ok, opposing priests aren't really a huge deal. If the enemy has priests... they either have giants, so priests aren't your concern, or they suck, in which case you have an easy game anyway. Idol priests let you get a bit more use of counter healing, but that only caps your enemies HP, it doesn't help you deal damage. Silence interrupts. Big deal! Interrupts don't combo! Slows, stuns, and armor/damage taken in general debuffs combo! An interrupt can't be chained with another interrupt to keep the enemy DG in range! It just doesn't work. Foul grasp leaves you with just one stun and just one slow, both on the same character. Not that great.
Next, they both don't have high damage abilities. UB does. Sedna does not. Sedna has pounce. It is an interrupt and does 1000 damage at close range. Pentience does the same damage and increases all damage taken and slows the enemy. Bite does roughly the same, drains health, and lowers armor and speed. Fireball has better range and does more damage. Snipe has way more range. Shatter combo has way more detrimental effects, does more damage, and chains a stun, an interrupt, a pseudo-silence, and a slow together into one big ball of debuffs the enemy can't avoid. Pounce is only good because Sedna can lower her cooldowns and because it's her only damage skill.
Also, they are both fast. That's about the only synergy they have. I honestly can't see anything else, and hell, even UB/Erebus is more mobile than UB/Sedna (since Erebus, despite saying haste is wasteful, moves at the same speed as UB in the beginning and has batswarm, plus can stack speed debuffs to keep the enemies in line).
Better combos:
UB/TB. Huge AoE (TB) with good AoE damage lowering from UB's ooze (plus it softens up enemy creeps pretty fast on its own.) UB, with his high speed, can easily stun an opponent for long enough for TB to get his ice combo off, which leads to the enemy being stunned again, with enough time for UB to deal some serious damage and TB to shatter and get another fireball on the fleeing demigod. This combo kills anybody who hasn't stacked to 5k or more health if TB opens with a fireball (if not, 4k).
UB/Erebus: Grasp, bite, mass stun, melee, bite again, grasp again, if they flee batswarm + another bite for the kill. It's a simple but effective chain combo, and with their high natural speed and the fact that the combo can be fully done (if not done to it's best; no level 2 batswarm = less chasing, and mass stun isn't that great at lower levels) at level 5. With the combination of armor debuffs making UB's autoattacks do more, slows from both of them making it impossible to flee, and Erebus being able to make up for his squishiness by constantly biting and only have one of the two enemy demigods (at best) being able to attack at a time, it's hard to kill either of them.
UB/Hammer Rook. Rook has to buff speed for this, but grasp + hammer slam + boulder roll afterwards plus some autoattacks makes for a huge combo. It will spike pretty much anybody to death.
You want to know why all these are better combos than UB/Sedna? They all have a nearly guaranteed instant kill combo due to chainstunning. UB/Sedna cannot compete with any of these; Sedna will be stunned into oblivion, and the one stun your UB has will only be able to interrupt one of the two enemy stuns, and he can't even interrupt boulder roll or Frost Nova (well, not very often, it's always possible.), so the combo is pretty much secure. All of these will gank a sedna in one combo, and all of these combos will also be able to stand toe to toe with UB/Sedna in terms of damage with both enemies still in play.
Simply put, chainstuns and slowing >>> shield and heals >>> healing + DPS >>>> no synergy for effective synergies. If an enemy team can chainstun, there is almost nothing you can do to stop them (if they go for a slightly more back-loaded combo with the fast mass stun first, like Ice rain, Frost Nova, Shatter + Grasp, Fireball, and then switch back to ice for another volley of ice rain or just autoattack, it is impossible to interrupt the combo effectively). If an enemy can chainstun, they will have one of your enemies out of the game. The only things that can stop or mitigate a chainstun are Oaks shield and bramble shield (and once again, back loading the damage part of the combo in order to put the mass stun first makes this impossible because everybody, including Oak, will be stunned, so they can pick an enemy, probably Oak, at their leisure, to kill) , and it's easy to target whichever Demigod has such skills (though if a team has two people with such skills, it gives a good ability to stop chainstuns, which you should look for). Chainstuns with simply two people leave you with 5k damage taken, which is simply unsurvivable for most all demigods (Even my pure health UB can only hit 8k with normal [non artifact] gear in a normal match where I don't ignore the citadel upgrades, and that's at level 20.
Even better for chainstuns, in 3v3 they actually become true chains. When you have a TB, an Erebus, and a UB who can all stun, the enemy could have 10 levels on you, but you can keep them from doing anything almost the whole time (by the time the stuns are all finished with, you will be almost ready to go on another foul grasp and mass charm with a celerity flag). Basically, in 2v2s there might be a bit of leeway (not much; 5k spike damage + having your team be unable to attack for most of the time is tough to beat), but in 3v3s you simply cannot beat a chainstun because it will literally just chain stun to stun to stun, with a ton of debuffs thrown in for good measure. You can't use Sedna to heal if she is dead, and she will die. Easily
Exactly my point! (though I generally don't go Ice Aura; enemies are already too slow after all the effects, and I like to go with fireball for damage output; it's not hard to start in fire form, switch while the UB runs up, and ice rain to nova before UB's stun ends, and you can even throw in a fireball after shatter due to UB slowing their speed. It just changes it from uber-inescapable but moderate spike damage to inescapable and extreme spike damage.)
This combo will kill almost everybody. The only people who can escape are Oak (Shield debuffing + wand of speed.) and Erebus (teleport somewhere, activate wand of speed, hope that your good innate speed + wand can beat the debuffs, which isn't too hard). Even then, they both have to stack HP (Oak less so, due to his inherent tank-ness) just to not get killed by the spike before the "potential escape while 20+% slowed with super low attack speed" phase.
Also, I cannot actually believe I wrote so much! Tell me guys, did I ramble or was it all useful info?
But seriously, I'm glad this guide has helped you guys, and I'm glad you guys are helping the guide. Hopefully I can get a listing on the sticky thread; synergy is important!
There's a big problem with using any of this outside of playing with friends/people you're on vent with etc, in a match bigger than 2vs2 it becomes pretty hard to put any sort of synergy/teamwork into effect except through luck of the draw on your allies build, because there is no team-chat in the lobby so there's not really any way to create any of these strategies or ask someones build without PM'ing them privately, which the rest of your team then can't see either, or alternatively you can let the entire other team know what you're up to by talking in lobby chat , I really hope they add a team chat in lobbies soon.
Yeah, that would be nice... although hey, does it matter what you tell the enemy if your combo still works well?
It is kind of annoying that you can't get this to work in big games, though. All these nice words wasted.
Sedna has pretty good synergy with everyone except maybe another sedna and QoT :>
2 of the same demigods (save sedna and QoT) usually have good synergy together because they can stack effects.
my personal favorite is Sedna, Rook and fire TB. very simple builds but keep good pressure on the enemy through out the game so the enemy cant afford to have a slow start ect. Its extremely hard to slow down a rook/sedna combo from pushing.
Meanwhile Sedna and fire TB are both fast demigods and are capable of takeing flags on thier own. If rooks lane is getting teamed up on then Sedna will stick with the rook. fire TB keeps a teleport scroll with him and if rooks farm is ever getting rushed by multiple demigods he just teles in, lays down serious aoe damage and kills all the other demigods.
Sedna has very low synergy with everybody. She just heals. Her synergy is BETTER with QoT, because you can use bramble shields to absorb damage while heal is cooloing down, so your allies are shielded or at a good amount of health. She has no moves that combo well; healing is nice, but without any combo potential it's not really synergy (if it was, then everybody would have good synergy with everybody b ecause they can both attack.)
Next, what Rook are you talking about? Tower Rook and Hammer Smash Rook are entirely different. Also, with Rook's horrible natural armor and already high HP pool, Sedna's heals are (without armor stacking) useless on him, because even base damage from towers can outdamage the heals with natural armor, and Rook already has a safe way to heal himself. Sedna is overkill on heals for somebody who doesn't need it much. Rook can handle a lane by himself way better than fire TB can.
Also, Fire TB is good for pushing (and maybe area denial), not fighting. He is great against towers (circle of fire on two towers, fireball, circle of fire again, fireball, repeat) but horrible against Demigods (a full fire combo has no way of keeping the enemy in it and does far less damage than an Ice combo W/fireball combo.)
So your strategy seems pretty bad, synergistically. You have a fire TB assigned to keep a lane, despite the fact he is squishy himself. You have Sedna assigned to help Rook, who, if he is using the standard Tower Build, won't need heals anyway (he can make his own HP with structural transfer). You have no way of comboing any of your characters abilities together, because a fire TB has nothing that combos well. You have no slows, no stuns (except possibly boulder roll), and no debuffs. IE there is practically no synergy there. If you can make it work, that's fine... but it's one of the worst teams I can think of (then again, pure fire TB is incredibly dumb IMO).
pure fire TB has plenty of good uses.
Area denial is strong. a well placed Circle of Fire is almost as good as a flag lock for map control purposes. on certain maps there are crossroads where multiple creep waves go through at the same time (center lane in Cataract, the X shaped crossroad in Zikurat, the + shaped cross near the base entrance in Exile). a persistent AoE effect in these areas is just unbelieavably strong.
this has alot of natural synergy with DG's who would rather not be up in your face during a fight. Regulus (Fireball+Snipe already well documented burst damage combo synergy), Queen of Thorns, Torchbearer himself (any of the builds), they all benefit from having a Circle of Fire go up in the area. it allows for massive lane dominance, its strong enough so you can start to think about doing 2on3's in your lane.
what you need to be able to do to exploit this lane dominating advantage to the max is be able to teleport ALOT. the TB is gonna have to haul ass with port scrolls so he can repel the enemy team every time they try to advance down a lane or set up a 2on1 or 3on2.
1500 is a pathetic amount of damage when the enemy can just avoid it
Area denial isn't particularly strong with circle of fire. You can't set one up as a flag lock at all; it has less range than the range of capturing the flag, so you can't deny with it. He has plenty of AoE attacks he can use besides a circle of fire to hit enemy creeps (Ice) and that doesn't suffer from the fact that the enemy creeps just run past the circle; you can't use it as a fire and forget to kill creep waves, because at low levels it will just harm, but not kill, the creeps, and at high levels creeps are pretty unimportant except for the big ones that can still survive a circle by running through it. Yes, it's an AoE attack... but there are tons of them used by tons of demigods, and most of them can't be avoided by creeps simply moving or your enemies not standing in a circle of death. It relies on the enemies overextending themselves just to deal it's damage, and unless you are actually there the enemies won't have trouble capping a flag with it. And as for a "persistent" AoE being good in those areas, 10 seconds will only get one enemy wave at max, so it's no better than other AoE's in that respect.
While I admit a circle of fire can deter the enemies from your allies, you can deal more damage and keep them in range with an ice combo, and that also has the benefit of debuffs. I've played TB a lot, and I've always find the fact that you can stun the enemy, inflict them with debuffs, and have their skills silenced for a few seconds more useful than having a circle that deals less damage than the ice combo.
Also, you can't deal with 2v3s with just a circle of fire. 1500 damage, max, in exchange for haing no stuns and the enemy having much more DPS than you from autoattacks just won't work. You don't have "massive" lane dominance, you have a circle that deals moderate damage over a very long time with no other effects, and is easily avoidable. Anybody with stacked HP can ignore the damage, anybody without enough HP to survive can avoid it and still be able to keep you from pushing further, and anybody with faster AoE's can deal more damage to your group.
And TP scroll attacks can be done by anybody, and without a stun, you aren't going to get many kills by teleporting in and activating a very slow damage over time ability. TP scroll in as Ice TB, for instance, and you can instantly slow and damage all enemies with rain of ice, stun all enemies with Nova, and shatter the weaker enemy of your choice. With Fire.... you teleport in, activate fire nova, activate circle of fire, and fireball... but the enemies are still perfectly able to flee. Any Demigod with a slowing or stunning effect is going to be more useful than a fairly slow spike of damage.
Basically, all I'm saying is that Ice TB (w/fireball) has much better area of denial abilities and the debuffs help things out even more against enemy DGs. I like fire TB for pushing towers, though. Circle of Fire will hurt towers greatly, fire nova will burst the towers (though ice nova will stun the towers more) and Fireball can hurt a tower a lot.
circle of fire is like venom spitting on everything standing in it. if your objective was to make them NOT stand in it then you gained something significant, because most people will very much desire to avoid it.
10 seconds isn't long enough to replicate the "lock it down while i go somewhere else" function of a flag lock. what you get out of it is the ability to maintain control of a flag even when 2 DG's come and challenge your lane.
you can use as a flag lock substitute if you place it off center of the flag, leaning towards the hostile side of the map. this way they have to cross over to the enemy side of the flag to control it without standing in the fire. that might put them in tower range on some maps. it certainly eats into their retreat distance if you challenge them for the flag. and they probably had to walk through the circle to get to your side so you managed to score like 700 points of damage anyway.
if they do walk through it, you just cast the next one centered on where they were going to avoid the last one. they'll be stuck in yet another Circle. you can real deal out alot of punishment this way. if they waited on the edge of the previous circle they were out of range of the flag and you got what you wanted, a pseudo-flag lock.
i'm not here to argue the merits of different TB builds. was just pointing out that Circle of Fire is not so bad as you make it out to be. its got plenty of good uses and a Pure Fire build will lean on it pretty heavily. its a unique spell that Ice and Dual Mode builds generally won't have access to and can give Fire TBs some interesting strategic options.
Most people can ignore it. The damage is low, over time, and if the battle isn't working, you can leave. It's not like venom spitting everybody at all, because venom spit is guaranteed damage. Circle of Fire isn't guaranteed, so it's a very bad skill to rely on.
Maintain control? With a pure fire build? Dude, play TB. He's squishy as hell, a circle of fire at max level does a third of the HP of most demigods at level 7 (with equips, obv.), and he's average speed (more with fire buffs, but still not very fast.) He can't win a 2v1 with a circle of fire, and to say he can is absurd. He can hardly win 1v1's with a circle of fire.
You think an enemy would take 700 damage walking through a circle of fire? That requires them to walk through it for 5 seconds (and by the way, it would do 750 then). I just tested it with a friend; you get hit twice walking. That's through a circle (with UB). That's 300 damage at max. Pretty pathetic.
Next, to deal with the fourrth paragraph, if you have to cast two circle of fires just to hit the enemy, you wasted twice the mana and 20 seconds just to deal meh damage they can still run from. Also, getting somebody "stuck" in a circle; without stuns, they aren't trapped in the circle, and even with a stun, they are trapped in the circle for 4 seconds max, which is 600 damage. Unimpressive.
Circle of fire is very underwhelming. If an enemy is running into the circle of fire, he can probably kill you anyway, and the damage taken if you retreat and he runs through it is hardly enough to consider it harrassment; I can deal more with Rain of Ice, it hits instantly, and slows.
Actually, with the right build, Regulus can go toe to toe with any demigod. Half the battle is knowing when you can go toe to toe though.
The perfect toon is the toon that YOU have fun playing.
Toon? 0_o
Anyway, yeah, Regulus can go toe to toe with (most) demigods... it's just that he needs to be level 15 and have Ashkandor. (and even then, UB has a shot. I love UB, if you couldn't tell). Well, OK, he doesn't need Ashkandor, but Reg is definitly a late bloomer, and a noob won't be able to get there before the enemies get there and gear up.
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