Hello everyone,
I'm DemiSpets, I haven't posted here before but have been stalking these forums for months now, and have been playing Demigod since Day 1, as all Aussies and some US pros will attest.
Like most experienced players I'm not too happy with the new high-favor items, but not because they're OP (gimme a break, +200hp to botf will do f-all, the new dodge builds will out-bs that). I just think that the concept overall is a bit stale.
Expert (high-favor) items should be for expert situations, period. Expert play is not about having 9000hp, it's about all those things we love to hate - the spawn lock race, the set-up gank, the bait and switch, the creep control, etc. So, high-favor items should be of massive use for those situations, and actually quite useless for general play.
Here are some ideas that I feel would be supported by most veterans. All of these focus on massively supporting true expert play (i.e. TEAM PLAY), and have very little disbalancing effect for the general pugger:
The Rallying Cry
5,000 Favor | 180 Sec Recharge | 3 Sec Cast
When cast on a captured flag, this item causes an additional creep wave (as per current cit upgrades) to come forth IMMEDIATELY, regardless of when the last wave was. This wave does not count against the regular waves.
This can be used for a bit of creep wave building, but is mainly intended for a single DG trying to defend an about-to-run-out locked flag against a superior foe, for instance when the other 2 teammates are busy fighting at another spawn.
The Flux Capacitor
5,000 Favor | 120 Sec Recharge | 1 Sec Cast
When activated, this item will prevent all teleporting (enemy AND friendly) into the general area of the caller, around 20yrds (around the same as Batswarm 1) for 10 seconds. Teleporting OUT is still allowed.
This is an anti-gank item once you've fought through to an enemy spawn. The enemy must now tele in on the supporting towers, missnig the opportunity to prevent the flag capture (still enough time to interrupt lock though).
The Cruel Mistress
10,000 Favor | 120 Sec Recharge | 3 Sec Cast
When activated on a LOCKED ENEMY FLAG, this item will break the enemy lock.
This is a very powerful item, meant for the telespawnlock race at the end of the game. Allows team efforts against previously-thought secure locked flags. Would massively escalate the expert end-game. May need to bring the recharge time on this to 180 secs, but try with 120.
The Mortar of Jericho
When activated on a FRIENDLY tower, this item will heal the tower for HP based on the citadel tower regen upgrade level, running at +2000/3000/4000/5000HP.
This is primarily meant as an anti-collapse tool for fighting at towers that are about to fall against a weakened opponent. Often good/aggressive players will continue to focus on the tower for an additional 2/3 hits to bring it down even if surrounded by creeps and you're almost upon them. Their survival in this situation depends on teh tower going down. With this, you can quickly prop it up (notice cast time) and fight them back.
The Crown of Thorns
10,000 Favor | 30 Sec Recharge | 3 Sec Cast
When activated this item causes 100% of all damage suffered by the activator to be transferred as healing to friendly DGs within 15-20yrd radius (activator still takes the full damage).
This is a massive ganking support item for late-game assaults/defenses at spawns.
Great ideas!!! Would much rather see these than the current addition in patch 1.2.
Very good stuff. Some will be hard to implement though. Like the tele-blocking. I don't know how you would do that with the current code base.
Amazing items. Maybe we can put these into a mod patch since GPG can only give us "current items + 5%".
Great ideas. I'd be very excited to see any of these implemented. Thanks for the post.
The new SotF subtly shifts the balance against those alternate items, it makes it even harder to make up for the HP you're missing. SotF IS overpowered, that IS the problem. It will disrupt the current balance between those less popular favor items and a pure HP one, it's OP.
Your favor items aren't bad, but they wouldn't generally be picked over SotF.
The Rallying Cry, The Cruel Mistress, and The Mortar of Jericho would see virtually no usage by experienced players in tough matchups, especially with the existence of SotF.
You're right, but this is not OP, this is "choice-depleting"
The question is, do I cry and throw my toys at the prospect of fighting a DG with SotF while myself carrying HW or anklet, and the answer is no. They may be much stronger than me individually, but then that's a given a lot of the time depending on DG choice - if I'm a reg, a decently-played UB will ALWAYS be more powerful than me anyway. I find kills to be a planned cooperative effort 95% of the time, and in this situation any hp-stacking is powerless.
A 3 UB team all using SotF and all going rambo will get massacred by a 3 QoT team who play well together and plan, ergo I dont put that much emphasis of all these "stat-boosting" items.
EDIT: Oh, and I personally would be packing the Cruel Mistress almost every match.
Alright, let me fall back here for a moment - these items have been suggested INSTEAD of SotF, and are meant to prevent precisely that sort of mindless stat-building. Now, I'm of the opinion that this stat-building wouldn't matter in a good team anyway, but even if you disagree this is not the point. The point is simply that massive-cost favor items should be ultra-specific game-situation items as opposed to stat-boosters.
I really think the situations in which some of those listed are so specific that there's nothing expert about their usage at all. Take the Cruel Mistress. There is literally only one situation in which it's useful, and ignoring the cost, even a beginner would be able to use it 'expertly.'
I would much rather see something along the lines of an upgraded Sympol of Purity, if there were one with perhaps 400 health and mana, that would give an expert player a major advantage if they used it cleverly and its best usage wouldn't be immediately clear to a newer player (at least outside of 1v1s anwyay).
Or perhaps something like a favor item on a 40 second'ish cooldown that reduced all damage taken by 30% for 3 seconds, something along those lines.
Those aren't perfect ideas, but I feel those are better directions for 'expert' items than ones with extremely rigid and narrow usage.
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