I have never agreed that anything was broken, so I don't see how he can show me anything. I already know that many pug players are clueless about the game, the same could be said about any new player. That doesn't mean that the opinion of every pug player is worthless.

i'm not even one of those guys who plays multiple games a night on a pre-made team. i'm mostly a PUG warrior like alot of the guys who post here but i at least like to know what the fuck i'm talking about, especially when it comes to balance. 

Mines are so far from imbalanced its hilarious. and i completely agree that they're basically just a n00b unfriendly skill tester. if you don't know whats going on its easy to get nailed by them. if you do know its very easy to largely mitigate their effect and their are several ways available to EVERY Demigod to do so. 

i mean, when it comes to out-of-whack balance i can think of like at least 5 things off the top of my head that i consider alot nastier and harder to deal with than the Mines. in no particular order here's my short list

* Sedna w/ Healing Wind rank 2 and level 3 Priest Idol (bugged, heals about twice as much as its supposed to)

* multiple slow stacking with Regulus (Maim, MotB, Shrapnel Mines, Poisoned Dagger, etc.), though hopefully this has been patch fixed by now, if they ever got that working

* Bat Swarm (or Cloak of Night for any general) and jumping right over terrain features on certain maps

* Tower Rook on single lane maps

* Last Stand on Fortress Mode

now those are some borderline broken things. Mines isnt even close to anything on that list. 

Man, this thread makes me so conflicted:

• On the one hand, I agree that mines are pretty well balanced.
• On the other hand, most of the people arguing this point (_Shadow) are being completely irrational about it.

Consider it this way: _Shadow is obviously a pretty darn good player.  He's ranked 3rd on the Ladder and has an amazing win percentage. Because he keeps claiming he will 'prove' that mines are not overpowered, by playing against those who think mines are OP. The logic than is that if he can beat you while you play the OP tactic, it couldn't be overpowered.

This is very much not a good argument, even if it feels intuitive. A Mediocre player being beaten by one of the best players in the game doesn't prove anything. Further more, even if the point is that 'as you get better, mines get worse' the cut off is still important.  If you have to be ranked <100 on the ladder for mines to feel balanced, it still means there are 24 thousand players for whom the ability is not balanced.

Where I used to work, we would refer to this kind of effect as a bully mechanic. A mechanism in a game that allows for experienced players to take advantage of weaker ones. Experienced players always have an advantage in their experience over newer players, a bully mechanic simply scales better in their favor.

All that being said, I do not actually feel that mines fall into this category.  The number of players who have an adversely difficult time with them is fairly small. I am basing this partially on my own experiences, and partially on the number of proponents on the boards to the idea that mines are too good.

The real reason that I think mines are viewed as being too good by certain players, is not due to their strength per se, but in the cognitive dissonance that players have with the way they are used. Some people get it into their head that a 'mine' must be a 'trap' for the opponent, that they must be lured into.  Yet they are just as effective as a combat trick, and dropping them at the feet of the opponent.

Reinforcing this position, is that people suggesting changes to mines do NOT suggest a decrease in damage, or damage/mana efficiency, but rather increasing the casting time, or the arming time.  Both of these effects move the ability away from 'combat use' and towards 'trap use' where they intuitively feel it belongs.

For those in this camp, please realize that the ability simply cannot be put there.  A mechanic solely used as a trap in this sense for Regulus would devalue his combat potential too much. As much as it might 'feel' cool to set up traps for people, as the player base gains experience, this type of strategy becomes less and less viable.

(FYI, one way a game designer deals with bully mechanics is by adding obvious counters to the mechanic, that are generally not cost effective in some manner.  Weaker players who feel they need a band-aid can get the counter, or partial counter, but won't actually be more effective in the game. However, they'll be less frustrated by having an 'obvious' out against the strategy.  As they get better, they will learn not to use the bandaid, and use other more effective strategies. For instance, a band aid against the old Heart of Life would be a 1000 gold trinket that when activated causes a target to take 5 damage per second for 30 seconds, in a range of say 45).

However, one must realize that they can be *both* a "trap use" and a "combat use" simultaneously.  One set can be laid down prior to the engagement in a place where someone is likely to walk over them (i.e. trap use), with the next set ready to be cast once the skirmish actually takes place (i.e. combat use).

Again, I would like to point out the fact that mines is, by far, the most non-linearly scaling damage ability in the game (most abilities follow a mostly linear increase in effect with each talent point).  At rank 1, it does ~22% of the max damage/cast, at rank 2 it goes up to ~52% of the max damage/cast, at rank 3 it does a whopping 89% of the max damage/cast, with rank 4 obviously being 100%.  This perhaps makes the damage of Mines 3 a bit too good.  Of course that assessment leaves out the huge benefit of the snare added on the 4th point, which is somewhat harder to assign a value to.  Also worth noting is the fact that other abilities typically dont get a special bonus added until the lvl 15 point, wheras Reg gets it at lvl 10.  This scaling is largely inconsistant when compared to every other ability in the game which raises a red flag that perhaps it should be looked at.

Dude you're over analyzing here. It's a form of paternalism. My challenging them is the only way I can think of to say "look, you're a scrub, you refuse to listen to people who actually know more about the game then you do, if you actually get your change implemented it will cause more harm than good in the long run." Two or three weeks from now these same scrubs, if they keep playing, will more than likely see the light on their own and totally forget about what they wrote here. Rarely do you see people post retractions to their noob-days ramblings, thus their post always provides fresh ammunition for the next batch of new players to come chime into the discussion, and so on.

The fact of the matter is that regardless of what I write here someone is going to just assume I'm a pompous, self-serving asshole, and refuel this entire, ridiculous issue all over again. What I am confident about is that I'm willing to put my assertions to the test before anyone.

What is wrong with saying if you can't play at a certain level, how the hell can you claim to fully understand what I'm talking about?

Thank you for repeating what I said about people getting tripped up on the meaning of the word 'mine'. If they had called them "proximity grenades" or some other ridiculous name we would be arguing about how not OP spit is instead.

Yah the damage is so darn inconsistent.  Spit level 3 does 50 damage shy of Mines level 4.  Spit level 3 can be obtained at level 7.  What's that?  You have to land on EVERY mine for it to do full damage too?  There's more?  Spit cast time is .3 seconds and mines is a full second?  Mines is sooo OP!

Why don't we just go ahead and strip Regulus of any ability besides autoattack.  After all, one time I played against a Reg and he killed me!  Only the demigod I play with is allowed to kill other Demigods!

Ad Hom attacks.  This is scrub talk 201.  I rest my case, everyone else can decide on their own.  Have fun.

The reason the number spouting doesn't mean crap is because you are picking and choosing which numbers to include.  It's easy to pick one skill and claim OP but you are ignoring several revelant factors.

Regulus is one of the slowest, most vulnerable (hp/armor) demigods and has no form of heal, escape, stun, or interrupt of any kind.  He gets the slow at level TEN.  So the most vulnerable demigod gets an ability at level TEN that does decent damage and has a slow effect.  This ability is easily avoided, interrupted, and countered.

I remember when I first started playing, I too thought mines were a bit on the extremely strong side. Now however, I usually just laugh and ignore them. The only times I tend to get hit by them is when I want to set them off, forget about them, ignore them, or get caught in the middle of a long cast time. And I guess it does catch me off guard every once in a while, but not often at all.

Now look at them from a new perspective. Every DG has some sort of attack skill that does some amount of damage that you can't escape normally. Oak - Penitence, UB - Spit, TB - All spells, QoT - Spikes, Sedna - Pounce. All of these skills do comparable damage and are longer ranged for the most part and tend to have an alternative debuff from the beginning. Mines trades debuffs early on for extra damage. Then later own it gets debuffs but can actually be ignored and stopped easily with creeps unlike any other skill.

Using them like grenades makes it harder to avoid but not impossible. It does force you to react but so would any change to the combat environment.

You can't MOVE if you have a spell that needs to be cast. You could abort the spell, but I have a problem with the fact the design of a skill called 'mines' that make me stop what I'm doing. Sometimes I get hit by mines even though I moved as soon as I noticed them. I usually avoid most of the damage that way, but its still counter intuitive to me.

I know his combat potential would be greatly nerfed if he couldn't just throw mines AT people who are fully aware of it and hope they are a FRACTION OF A SECOND too late to escape from it, but I just hate to see that regulus's design is so dependant on his ability to use a skill in a way it was never intended to be used in order to do well late game.

And I hope not to hear anyone call me a noob in here....

*edit*

is the game playable with reg's mines the way they are? yes. Do I still enjoy a game even though reg uses his mines as grenades? Yes. Do I usually avoid getting hit by mines? Yeah.

Sometimes I get hit by them cuz I was legitimately not payin attention at all, and that doesn't bother me too much. It just gets on my nerves when I see him casting the mines, but i'm *ALMOST* done with my fireball or whatever...but finishing, rather than aborting it, up ends up with me taking a nice dose a pain and slowage...

that kind of trick just makes reg's design feel less than 5 star to me, although I do give credit to the crafty players who came up with that kind of trick.

But see, because he can do that you now have to react fast adds FUN in a way no? ;(

It's been my experience that 'pro' players (in the sense that they talk about Scrubs, not in the sense that they earn money) tend to oppose all but the most blatantly obvious changes to a game, no matter which game we're talking about.  This thread is a case in point.

Even if mines are balanced as they are, I don't think are particularly good gameplay. Increasing mine timers but decreasing mana cost is arguably balance-neutral but would change their emphasis from from direct damage to intimidation, creep killing, and movement control.

But see, because he can do that you now have to react fast adds FUN in a way no? ;(

Forcing players to move is a valid role for mines, but increased arming delay or any of the other changes being discussed wouldn't invalidate this.

>>Game developers, i.e. the people who balance the game, have to tweak the numbers. And do statistical analysis. Lots of time-consuming and somewhat boring stuff.  But you just call it 'scrub talk'.  Absurd, especially in a thread where everyone is assuming the role of amateur game developer.

By 'number spouting', he means that Bob is simply taking one set of numbers completely out of context from the rest of the game, including the numbers and the situation surrounding them. In this case, mines are ridiculously easy to dodge if you don't require a cane and a canine in order to navigate the world of the living, and thus their primary use against non-scrubs is pretty much as intended. It can of course be used as direct damage against slow, idiotic, or stuck players to great effect, but that's alright- Regulus is one of the weaker demigods and can use a strong ability or two.

>>It's been my experience that 'pro' players (in the sense that they talk about Scrubs, not in the sense that they earn money) tend to oppose all but the most blatantly obvious changes to a game, no matter which game we're talking about.  This thread is a case in point.

None of this is remotely relevant. Try sticking to the conversation at hand.

>>Forcing players to move is a valid role for mines, but increased arming delay or any of the other changes being discussed wouldn't invalidate this.

Yes. It largely would. If the arming time is increased, so is the time that the other players have to move. The skill is changed drastically.