I've read many times now from players that are avoiding the Priest upgrade because all it does is feed your opponent gold and XP. Essentially players have overblown the costs of this upgrade and have made buying creep upgrades a bad idea. That's not an accurate assessment of the upgrade.
Priests aren't always a good or bad upgrade to get. They just shouldn't be your first priority. When buying upgrades you really need to assess how you are doing against your opponent. Consider the map and game mode and buy accordingly. In some cases Priests are a great purchase. In other cases Priests should be low enough on your priority list that you won't be buying them.
On the plus side, Priests allow each wave to deal more damage to towers. They also allow each wave to last much longer before getting wiped out, unless they go up against demigod AoE abilities. Left alone, Priests make a huge difference in the effectiveness of your creeps. Priests also heal allied demigods at regular intervals, extending the time your demigod can stay on the front lines without retreating. This isn't something to underestimate. The key to outlevelling your opponent is to stay in your lane as much as possible and not retreat back to your crystal. Using Priests to do this can help win the game.
In general you're in good shape with Priests as long as you've got multiple creep waves going and you're trying to wear down your opponent's towers. Maps like Leviathan, Mandala, Zikurat tend to be good, because you can get creep waves that are unopposed by enemy demigods. When you're in control of the map and you have more spawns than your opponent, Priests are awesome. Even if you don't have more spawns than your opponent, Priests are very helpful if you leverage them to take down enemy towers. They are extra bodies that the AI will shoot before your demigod, and they keep your health up while you stay on the attack.
The downside to a Priest purchase is that you're spending money for the upgrade that you don't put into something else. And if you're not advancing your map control with your creeps then it's wasted money. Plus there's the possibility that your opponent is killing more creeps than are dieing to towers. And if you buy Priests you really want to invest in the Attack and Defence upgrades for creeps. That starts to add up.
You're not likely to get much benefit from a tight game on Prison or Crucible from your Priests. Those maps have tight lanes that are easily farmed. Creeps rarely make it to your enemy's towers unopposed, and most players end up dueling it out in the same space. This is where players who cry about giving your opponent XP and gold have a point. That's especially a problem if you're losing map control.
Cataract and The Brothers are maps where Priest MIGHT help against towers, but can also help out if you steal one of your opponent's portals. Those aren't worth taking unless you have upgraded your creeps, but can be devastating when you have powerful creeps. But they are also maps where you can easily get your creeps farmed if you're not supporting them properly. So if you're being bottled up by your opponent or facing good AoE demigods, go spend your money on Defensive Upgrades or items.
Overall Priests aren't nearly as bad as some people have been claiming. If you support them with your demigod and maintain portal control Priests are a great investment. But if you're not doing well, on a map with tight lanes, or against good AoE powered demigods, you can think about staying away. Overall you should use your brain and assess the whole situation. Overall the statement that 'Priests are just free XP and gold for your opponent' only applies to players who don't know what the hell they are doing.
I like that you post, Chromeweasel - it seems like you are thinking about the game. That said, what are you talking about? Is this post based on games where one team is all Regulus? Crucible is one of the only maps I would ever consider getting Priests early on because one lane means I can support them efficiently. (Actually it's the only nice thing I can say about that map - it allows you to use a broken feature as intended ) Is that what you mean by "situational," you can use it when you are already winning on one map as long as your opponents don't have good AoE or Heaven's Wrath or good minion micro? That sorta narrows it down, no? Outside of that single map a priest's xp feed value far outweighs any utility they have. You get 100 xp for every 3 priests (1 wave) you kill. That's huge, especially with xp upgrades and flags (which is what you focus on any time you have have a reinforcement deficit - forget grunt-mirroring unless you really really need to - just concentrate on your xp and you'll gain 2 levels for every one of theirs). I wish replays were in, because I'd show you one game after another where one team was losing early and midgame they were hitting on the Citadel, some punk got priests, and the other team ended up winning with a 5-6 level advantage. The last game I played like that our opponents were a strong pre-made team and had us on the run, but they made one poor investment. (mcaustin, Morridin, or Phoenix.14 feel free to chime in here) Heck, I've won and lost more than a few games where one team went *giants* too early or without consolidating portals and basically fed their opponents a 10 level advantage. As an ideal, my experience is that you should avoid any reinforcements until you can lock enemy portals and keep them, and then you get the reinforcements and lock the flags all at once. Now, should priests alone be worth buying? Absolutely. But the game needs tweaking for that to happen. The devs need to cut priest xp feed by at least 50% and either put angels as the first upgrade or make them massively more effective. I like angels for the chaos and the scouting and the survivability, would be worth it early where priests aren't. They should also increase gold feed 200% for minos and archers and 50% for every other reinforcement, but that's just icing. All my opinion, of course, but I'd absolutely love to play a game against any takers, any map, with the condition that the opposing team has to get priests at War Rank 3. No? Yah, I thought not...
If a random noob team mate buys priest earlier then war rank 7, rage quitting is justified!
Kestrel, (or anyone else) do you know where the XP/Gold rewards per reinforcement are in the lua files? I was thinking of trying out your changes against the AI, but I could only find a general multiplier (which isn't terrible helpful) after a quick search.
EDIT: To clarify, I'm interested to see just how much extra gold doubling the minos gold reward will give, and whether it screws with the pacing of upgrading your items/citadel in apositive or negative way, and also whether a Sedna character, who will generally kill less reinforcements, can actually keep close to the pack in terms of XP/Gold.
Never ever the priests are good soon, as an example, yesterday i was playing a game with a noob team mate, in the begining he was more or less holding the middle and i were pushing my flank, we were up on lvls and map and suddenly... he buys priests... soooooo a bit more late on game we were lvl 11+- and enemies where 17+- then they started to recover all, buyed all the creeps until gigants and gg.
This is the same in EVERY single map and game if your enemy is not a complete noob, u cant push enought with early priests, u only feed and u cant get exp and money because all the enemy creeps are killed by them and they die to DMs is the noobest move u can do in a game.
BTW GPG take a look at your game philosophy, is ridiculous to be handicapped by buying improvements... seriously...
I don't see how we can have a priest thread without discussing the demigod healing they do. A single wave of Priests can heal your demigod for 750 pts, a far from inconsiderable amount.
To be sure getting them at war rank 2 is foolhardy, but at war rank 4 or 5 they can work well - especially if your enemy lacks AOEs.
It doesn't help you that there is more XP to be had if the enemy can stay in their lanes (because of priest healing) while you have to run back and forth. Additionally, it takes a lot of priest kills to = the gold you get from a tower kill. And if you suffer heavy tower casualties at mid war ranks, you run into the situation where the enemy is continually capping your portal flags midgame and pressuring you into your base. It is possible to recover from this if the enemy can't finish the job, but I've seen (and been on) more than one overconfident team that went down this way.
Priests certainly have their place and can help push a team to taking out some towers or even just help gain some ground. Yes getting them too early will gift your opponents xp and gold but i see no reason to always wait till WR8.
Before people comment please read this wiki page Ö
http://demigod.wikia.com/wiki/XP_and_Gold_mechanics
That is 99 Gold per Priest wave......
3 waves = 1 Tower
Before the 100 gold wave boost, you are earning 36 gold per wave. Buying priests early gives your opponents a huge advantage.
It is broken in Theorycraft and it is broken in game.
The only time it is viable to buy priests is towards late game where you have the advantage. Pretty much any time before level 15 it is a bad idea, unless you are already about 10 kills up on a team.
Spend your money on reinforcement strength upgrades if you want to push towers.
Priests just need to be buffed. They should have HIGH settings dmg and healing and HP.
The trouble with early priests is that they cost as much as a medium level item and have the benefit of essentially one combat potion per wave of priests that you support. This might be alright for the cost, but they're also feeding your opponents a ton of gold and XP for every wave they intercept or nuke with heaven's wrath. They're only really worth it as a transition to catas or giants.
I was in one of them. I think that was a map problem though, not an early giants problem. If we'd been playing on cataract instead of exile, the giants would have ended it.
Yep, I just played in another game where a person new to the game, happy to take advice... he did quite well actually, played a nice Sedna for how new he said he was, but he bought priests early. We made an initial early push but the enemy regulus and oak quickly picked up the slack and Oak ended up 4 levels above everyone in the game and rand Shiel/HoL.
There is something wrong when we could roll Priest>angles>Cats into one espensive upgrade and it wouldn't really change the game at all. Actaully, it would probably make it better because then "newb" players wouldn't be able to make the mistake of buying Priests early
Early Priests needs to be viable just for the sake of diverse strategies in this game. What should be done? A buff to damage and healing, or a nerf to gold and XP?
Nerf to gold and xp.
Agreed, if I'm paying money for a team upgrade then it should help the team to some degree, never hurt. No exceptions. It'sa matter of game design.
On a related note, the graveyard upgrade should reduce the amount of gold received from killing people on your team or something. Its current effect is worthless and counterproductive to the point that I wonder how it even made it into the game.
I think it would be funny if priests were like archers in that they spawned automatically once you hit a high enough war rank. It'd make it much easier to turn games around.
Seriously though, priests are awful, and yet like most awful things, you can find some uses for them. That being said, the fact that a scratched CD makes a fine frisbee or a fried hard drive makes a lovely paper weight doesn't mean they're working like they should.
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