My assertion is that except for only some crazy corner cases, generals are always served best by picking up some monks when they leave the item shop at beginning of game.
Some info:
At worst case, I could see maybe QoT picking up some HP armor first instead, but then getting the monks asap afterwards. Very often the difference between a player holding a lane, and one that needs to return to base to heal, is that one has monks and the other doesn't. Strong bursting regen helps well against slow kills like Spit, fireball spam, and snipes, and almost completely dessimates a build based on auto attacking. Monks have a lot of HP early on, for most AoE abilities to kill reasonably, and they also heal themselves.
That sounds really counterintuitive. Most likely an overlooked bug.
Yeah, if we're really going to an extreme here, you could have a 3v3 with 3 generals, assign a monk tpye to each general, and split your monks so that each player on a tema has 2 different monks following them. A lot of micro but it doubles your healing effectiveness. Add in being Sedna, or Oak or QoT....
It's a solid choice for any general. I think I'll stick with scaled helm + banded armor though.
I hate fighting 3 generals who all bought monks first thing or close to it.
Another solid trick with monks is that if you haven't summoned them, or they get owned, or whatever, when you resummon them they'll instantly heal. Pretty useful, imo.
Yeah, that little trick has saved me a few times.
However, their insta-heal will not receive any buff from Healing Wind, even if Sedna is right there, and even if Sedna was the one who summoned them.
An instaheal is an instaheal though, and still pretty sweet.
Since the main objective of the early game isn't to kill enemy DG's, but to simply grab flags and hold them, this makes monks a superior purchase to banded armor or scaled helm. Most early specials are too weak out of the gate to do serious harm.
hmm seing as monks only heal when ur in a 10m range and dont heal much and they wander off alot i think i would rather have the equipment
Managing your minions can be a pain - and the god-awful path finding doesn't make it any easier - however if done correctly, I find the monks to be the best item I buy at start-up. They let me stay on my lane for longer - and that's the name of the game early game.
I know this is heresy, but count me in the scale+banded crowd for Sedna. Here's my logic:
1. Scale+banded+BotF will give you the best starting HP+armor combo to start. More than enough to hold a lane from levels 1-3. You won't be forced out before you hit the 1,750 gold mark which is when you were headed back for a Vlemish anyhow.
2. Monk heals are not reliable in combat. You can't count on them to heal you when you need it. So you end up relying on your own heal anyhow.
3. Priests cost 1,800 gold, come in waves of three, are not exp farmable and available at war rank 3. They heal at the same rate as monks and help your whole team. A Sedna with HW2 can backtrack to a priest wave and heal completely very quickly. A Sedna fighting in a creep wave is just as effective as having her own minions.
4. Priest citadel upgrade will nerf you High Priests. There is no guarantee that the HP will be the one that heals you. If you're around citadel priests, you could get a 15% heal and be locked out for 8 seconds from getting a 30% heal from the HPs
5. Starting at midgame there are many counters to priests: QoT: spikes, Rook: Slam or towers, UB: ooze, TB: any AoEs, Reg: mines, Sed: Counterheal, Ere: charm. If you are relying on your priests and suddenly they are gone you are in trouble. HP stacking cannot be countered.
6. Monks are not compatible with speed builds. You will outrun them and they will get lost. They still have awful pathing and are wildly aggressive.
1. Fair enough if that's the role you're taking. It's pretty defensive, the early levels are great for nabbing kills as Sedna before people start slow stacking and you're missing out on that because your entire arsenal consists of health and armor...which doesn't help you push people away very much. Monks give you dps and healing for free, I'd say thats more versatile than health and armor. You already have BotF, more health isn't needed at that point, but you can still only cast 2 heals in early game.
If you take a lane by yourself, fine stack hp that much if you think it works. I take lanes in a pair so I need to be able to heal an ally as well, which drains mana horribly in the early stages. Monks help with this because they can generally account for random fire that hits me, while my ally takes most of the heat and I heal him.
2. You can rely on them as much as you can rely on your own heal. Monks heal you while your being grasped (which you would know happens quite a lot). They also heal you whether you have mana or not.
3. They most certainly are xp and gold farmable, just not as much as before. I still don't buy them immediately, I get the gold upgrade first, and the two tower ups. You can only be healed every 8 seconds, so this will be slower than if you had your own lvl2 or higher monks.
4. False. They apply different debuffs.
Monks
if Buff.HasBuff(target, 'HighPriest01HealCooldown01')
Buff.ApplyBuff(heal, priestBuff, unit) Buff.ApplyBuff(heal, 'HighPriest01HealCooldown01', unit)
Clerics
if Buff.HasBuff(target, 'HighPriest02HealCooldown01')
Buff.ApplyBuff(heal, priestBuff, unit) Buff.ApplyBuff(heal, 'HighPriest02HealCooldown01', unit)
5. So sell your priests in midgame if you think they're poor at that point. I'll keep mine because they force my opponent to remove them before they can get to me. None of the AoE spells kill them in a single swipe, so as part of a creep wave they'll survive quite nicely, and if they die you can resummon for instant heals.
6. Yep. Not sure why you'd need a speed build as Sedna though, it's not like you're a dps machine. There's better things you can be doing, like stacking mana so you can silence/heal/pounce spam.
I've started taking cloak of night/totem of revalation/monks for the start, I must say it's been pretty successful. People don't expect you to blink/pounce to nab them when they run at the start.
If they aren't healing you, it is because they have already healed you. If you are looking at your monks while running away with 100 hit points thinking "See they aren't healing me right now!" then you probably missed the fact they healed you once already in the last couple seconds, and you would be dead without them. Playing as sedna, you rarely heal more with your Heal spell, than your monks heal over time. Only if you are in short brutal combats, and then die.
A lot of builds say that "they can't be forced from a lane at the beginning," but when one immovable object meets another, one of them will give. The fact is you will be forced from your lane by just about any build using monks.
If they aren't healing you right now, its because they already healed you recently.
By that time Sedna could have High Priests, which are >>>> Priests.
No it doesn't. The rule is you can be healed once per 8s per type of priest.
You said yourself that your objection was about starting items, right? Even so, Priests scale up into the late game just fine. Free +2000 HP every 8s is nice.
Learn your facts, Minions move at the same spped as the DG that controls them.
I prefer buying gear instead of priest with the first 1k. I get priest once I make 900 more gold. One of the reasons is that the heal doesn't amount to much when you have less than 2k hp. If you are going to get priest the only way to get over 2k hp at the start of the game is to get one of the HP favor items which I rarely do. I also find that players often under estimate your ability to dps or mitigate damage early game when you don't buy priest.
For erebus I prefer getting scaled helm because it allows me to bite 2 more times. At the start of a game, bite will heal more than priest and you can control when you get those heals.
Against Erebus, scalemail will help prevent bite from owning you. At the start of the game, Bite will easily counter priest heals considering the base damage and armor debuff.
If your monks pop their heal right before combat when you're down 50 HP most of their heal has been wasted and you're going to take 8 seconds of damage without a priest heal. But my point is that you never know when you're going to get a priest heal. The only time you can really bank on priests keeping you alive against an enemy DG is lower level 1v1 matchups. That's great holding lanes early in the game, but as the game goes on those scenarios drop off and priests become less reliable in any strategy. They are extremely useful for healing you after you back out of combat, I'm not denying that. But if you're in a mid to high level 2v2 combat, where you as Sedna will be the obvious target I'm going to want extra HP to handle burst damage as well as stun/slow counters.
It's just a matter of philosophy. I'm willing to give up big random heals becuase I want to remove the randomness. When I fight with priests or monks, I do not count on them for anything when planning out what I'm going to do. That's because I could just as easily find myself without their help if Erebus drops a seven second stun on them. Armor and HP stacks are known quantities which, if arguably less effective on average, are consistent.
No, not really. I'm coming out with an extra 600 armor and 500 health and +5 HPS over the monk user. I'm going to hit them harder and can absorb more hits. In an opening 1v1 on a lane I'm going to hold my own until it becomes 2v1. And let's face it, that's what really happens in a game. It doesn't matter a whit I can hold a lane 1v1 for 45 seconds and a monk user can hold it for 50 seconds. Something is going to happen in that time that will break the stalemate.
See my comment aboveBy that time Sedna could have High Priests, which are >>>> Priests.
Relying on a bug which could be fixed any day? Regardless of that, citadel priest upgrade puts 6+ priests on the map to help your whole team. I would easily argue that they are more valuable to your team game than HPs are to your own game. You said yourself that your objection was about starting items, right? Even so, Priests scale up into the late game just fine. Free +2000 HP every 8s is nice.
Their heals scale, but their survivability does not. I find that by L10, unless you're going with a minion build, minion priests can be countered by someone. If your priests get countered and you are counting on them to buff you, you need to back off and recast them.
Minions get your base speed I believe but not your buff speed from equipment. I know I have easily outrun my minions with a raw speed Sedna
Yes really. Monks at level 1 with 2400 HP are about 30 HPS and added DPS. You are going to be driven from the lane and the Monk user will be at full hp. It doesn't take that long. If its 1v2 whatever, no build can hold that. But we're talking about holding a lane in even circumstances, and monks are unbeatable in that situation.
Priest Citadel upgrade isn't very good. The monks dont't follow you around, come at sporadic times, and heal for less than the upgraded monk idols.
Not my experience at all.
They do. My friend has gotten his Bishops to follow him around with a 12+ movespeed LE.
Sedna's base stats with BotF: 2400 Health7.82 HPS380 Armor104 DPS63 seconds: Time to kill at 104 DPS
Sedna's with BotF and Monks: 2400 Health 37.82 HPS 380 Armor 104 DPS 92 seconds: Time to kill at 104 DPS
Sedna's with BotF, Banded and Scale: 2900 Health 12.82 HPS 980 Armor 104 DPS122 seconds: Time to kill at 104 DPS
Armored Sedna will force off Monk Sedna. Do the math yourself if you insist. The extra DPS from the monks makes it about even. But the armored Sedna can kill off both monks in 14-15 seconds forcing a recast at a cost of 200 mana. Truth is that when I'm on a lane with another Sedna at L1, I don't bother attacking her. I just ignore her and farm creeps. Even if we bought nothing at the start, we can slug it out for over a minute disregarding heals.
Your math is flawed because you're not taking the DPS from the monks into account, as well as the fact that Monk Sedna has 2 different ways of healing herself, one of which isn't restricted by mana.
Also there is cat and mouse in cataract lanes. We've had this discussion before, your assumption that one takes constant dps is what leads you to your false conclusions.
It is obvious that this discussion is fruitless. I've played both monk builds and HP stack builds. HP stack builds always win for me. Getting back HP is relatively easy with some planning and thinking. It's easiest for Sedna of all the DGs. But having a max HP high enough to take burst damage is something else. Sedna is a gank target who will be dropped in far less than 8 seconds in the midgame unless you're carting 4000+ HP. I want that extra 1,500 health from Scale + Nimroth + Unbreakable as fast as possible. That's simply how I play.
So.. if you fight solidly for 92 seconds without a break, the monks fall behind with your numbes? Also, I think your math doesn't look at all right.
104 damage per second, with 37.82 HPS and 380 armor (13.2% reduction) = (104 * .868) - 37.82 = 52.452
2400 health at 52.452 is a surviveability of 45.8 seconds.
Second scenario, even disregarding monk dps, we have (104*.718)-12.82 = 61.82 damage per second total
2900 / 61.82 = 46 seconds of survivability.
That's your best case scenario and disregards the damage from monks, which is very much relevant. If you sit there fighting with no abilities, and using no HEALS (heal extends combat for both sides, and gives more time for better HPS to take over) this is what happens.
In reality though, a lot of damage comes from sources that ignore armor, and combats rarely involve people wailing on each other unto death with no interruptions. Also, this doesn't take into account a 2v2 scenario where your monks also heal your ally.
I guess I feel like it's a bad investment long term, when money is tight at the beginning of the game. You're going to have to sell them eventually, and you've got no money for any other item. But I definitely see it as effective, just bad in the long term. Though short and long term planning is balance in itself in the game.
SaulTigh,
you've drifted off the original topic of discussion into a tangent regarding the midgame. the debate as originally stated is whether or not there is a better use of the first 1000 gold than to buy monks.
most of us have agreed that monks are the best. your original dissent was to state that you think its better to get Banded and Scalemail. fair enough, i disagree but you can play however you like.
a more interesting question to proceed on is what to do with the second 1000 gold. i'll usually buy Banded and a Scaled Helmet with my second 1000 gold. i'd imagine if you started with those items you might instead go for Monks with the second 1000 gold.
i'm gonna go ahead and say that if you're on Sedna you're just playing wrong if you don't go for Healing Wind and High Priests so i'm gonna leave her out of the discussion. how about the other 3 generals though? does everybody get Monks (or better) or have some of you developed good strategies that skip these minions entirely?
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