Ah, you're right. Looking at my notes again I have seen 1 Blade of the Serpeant on and 1 Poisoned Dagger both on Unclean Beast.

Rook using BotS just for you:

http://www.gamereplays.org/demigod/replays.php?game=51&tab=upcoming&show=details&id=96349

I tend to actually use it a lot more than in this replay but the game favored our make up (Fortress w/ Rook/Reg) and was over very quickly

I support an indirect flag lock nerf. I wouldn't shed a tear if you couldn't lock portals at all.

Prior to the spanking I got tonight I'd have said no way.  But after having a well co-ordinated team demonstrate how completely it can be locked down I think a nerf of flag locks of some sort is perhaps worth considering...

I love the mechanic and I would like to see it remain but giving the other team a chance to contest the flag after the first lock wears off before allowing another to be put immediately in place should be considered...

I use Amulet of Purity depending on the MU. If I am playing as Rook, Erebus, Oak, UB, Reg and I see an Erebus or UB I am taking Amulet of Purity hands down. No more spit, no more armor redux/movement speed redux really saves your ass.....

So, I watched the video and had some thoughts.

Very nice defensive work with the QoT. Your phases are spot on. The mulching was very good. As I see it, the strategy was to avoid dying and focus on creeping. I believe you accompolished this very well. The build was focusing on survival with mulch, shield, and Shamblers. There was a high amount of mana available for the shield and mana regen was prioritized.

On the other hand, I'm a bit critical of the Erebus player. I have to admit I'm probably unqualified to critique a high level Erebus player, however I hope you give my comments a fair unbiased trial. His build was full bite with Night Walker support and main damage coming from autoattack and minions, pretty traditional. His strategy was defensive, wait until you over extend and then take advantage of that? I guess? He didn't do so well on this.

My critique and questions:

• Erebus played a very nice opening game. He dominated the flags.
• He achieved war rank 10, when the QoT had rank 3 at ~15 minutes into the game. Why didn't giants show up at 16 minutes in? (at least whenever he could have sold all his gear and bought them)
  
• He purchased rank 4 siege minions, yet never used them to attack towers, only to hit creeps for the most part. Isn't this a waste?
• Why didn't he ever press the attack onto the QoT's Towers in the early game. The QoT was avoiding combat and this would have forced her to fight or lose towers.
• He never really passed the halfway mark on the map, and never really became offensive. Unless I am mistaken, isn't Erebus is a very offensive demigod that should press the attack to the enemy rather than be passive, right?
• He tended to leave 2 or 3 creeps behind when he fought creeps, not just once or twice, but almost always.
• For the first half of the game he had the Experience boost flag, yet the Queen kept up in experience.
• He had half the mana regen of the QoT. Now the QoT does have a regen advantage, but Erebus is a seriously mana hungry demigod, and he was almost always out of mana. No trips back to refill and no priority on increasing regen.
• Parasite Egg... Really? He kept resummoning shamblers and therefore killing them himself. His priests were level 1, which leaves minotaurs and siege minions to be effective targets?

Now, I'm not saying that the Erebus was bad, I'm jus saying his strategy was weak against the QoT strategy. His damage focused on bite, which was countered with shield. The QoT had twice the mana and regen, so he would never win out on that battle. His minions were countered with mulch. He kept his minions around him as a defensive force, in the end he lacked any sort of effective attack options.

It seems then that competitive play focuses on being very defensive unti an opponent makes a mistake and overextends rather than creating an openining. In this case Obscenitor presented him a solid defense and left no openings, so the Erebus was rather lost on what to do about it.

That's where I have issues with this. Sure it is a great example of 1v1 against someone with a bad anti-QoT strategy. However, in team play the DPS is going to double, and the healing can't keep up. As I see it the QoT had no effective offensive abilities, using this strategy in a 2v2, would lead her to abandoning her team or dying because damage is increased to higher levels than she can heal through. Either way, it is then a 2v1 matchup. Now, I like the QoT, and I think Obscenitor did a fine job, and I am mostly reiterating his points. However, I just don't think we should consider this proof that the QoT is awesome.

Lastly, I have a question, why only rank 1 priest idols?

Given the slow nature of the game we talked a fair amount and he definitely regretted not having tried to be more aggressive earlier. I think he avoided the towers because at that point in the game he was still just shy of 4k HP and had only his base armor. He probably didn't want to get low enough to have to return to his crystal for fear of falling behind in levels.

Giants are a 17k'ish investment and at war rank 10 he had literally no gear other than two minion idols and about 5k gold. The complete lack of kills forced some very hard decisions and in all honesty I think if he'd continued to neglect gear and gone for the unit upgrade he still wouldn't have had catapults before 15, at which point I could have insta-killed a full wave with mulch. The bonus xp and gold from inflated creep waves in conjunction with what would have been extremely low HP for him might have been a big liability (though maybe it would have been enough pressure to get a kill which would have started a chain event).

Lastly the parasite egg would have absolutely decimated me last patch. QoT's minions used to spawn with base health instead of health modified by items and skills, so what he may have been trying to do was the old strat of egging QoT when you know she needs to mulch soon and then biting as soon as she summons to insta-kill them.

What if capture lock stacks could only hold one? I think they are an integral part of the game to be honest, as they represent a low cost strategic option for a team that may not otherwise have levels/gold.  They can balance things quite nicely.

I think We should have two varieties of teleport scrolls, just like healing potions. Combat Teleports which take 1 second to cast, but cost a bit more, and only teleport a short range (Batswarm level 2 range). Let you get out of combat, but not get accross map. Maybe cost around 400.

Second teleport will be the long range one we have now, used to swoop in to a location, but will cost 300, and take 3 full seconds to cast.  So we make the cost for running away higher, but a smidge easier, and then also increase the cost to get all the way accross the map 'instantly'.

I play QoT, Erebus, Rook, and Oak all pretty well and I normally have more of a game impact as QoT than I do as Oak and Rook. Minion erebus just is too strong to say I don't do well with him.

QoT is in my opinion just a support seige demigod. In a game on cataract I got bramble shield at level 1, uproot level 2 YEAH THATS RIGHT then compost at level 3 and ground spikes at level 4. I was killing buildings by level 3 and by level 7 the game was already swung heavily in our favor with most towers down on one side and exposed portals. The rook held his own land while me and a fire torchbearer literly threw aside everything in our way. By no means is she underpowered just too specilized.

I say uproot needs be dual effect. Maybe have it as a stun. It makes since if you changed it to something like choking vines and had it do the damage effect to buildings and a snare against enemy DG's with a DoT stacked on. Other than that shamblers just need a buff to either the amount of them and lower the mana cost or make them much more like glass cannons doing some very large hits.

Even as rook and minion erebus I can't achieve the amount of building destruction power that a Demolition QoT has and towers are very important to down. Just make her more versiltile so that a demo QoT can do something against other demigods except die.

Back to the origional topic. GREAT IDEAS!!!

The problem with uproot is that Spike Wave is hands down the best demolition spell in the game... well maybe second best if you count Rook's Trebuchet.

Mulch also hits buildings and a lot of maps it'll even hit a few at a time. It may not seem like much, but just suiciding a shambler in for 500-750 damage mid to late game is pretty effective, though admittedly it doesn't offer the same punch early game. Regardless the fact that towers have zero armor means that spike wave lets low level DGs blast buildings for 400+ every second and a half or so.

She doesn't survive well, she doesn't kill well, and she doesn't really help a team survive any better than Oak or EB. So many people focus on how shield is worse than heal... it doesn't remove debuffs, it doesn't benefit from armor mitigation, it doesn't do this or that, but what they forget is that Sedna heals much more off of Healing Wind and super monks than she does direct heals... Shield is a good spell with its own advantages, it's the package as a whole that needs improvement and there's skills which are obvious candidates for changes.

The biggest problem with QoT right now is that shamblers LITERALLY CANNOT ATTACK. It's absolutely impossible to gauge how effective offensively QoT could be because currently if some dude is just standing there attacking you, your base, your partners, or whatever you have to manually direct shamblers into firing range. Because they're so much bigger than nightwalkers and their turn speed was gutted along with all other minions' this patch, they seriously just spend half the battle or more spinning in circles trying to get around you, each other, and reinforcements.

QoT seems decent on paper. Spike Wave is a nice AoE snare, Ground spikes does decent damage and has a valuable debuff, shield is decent since you can prep it before combat and it can't be interrupted, but in practice nothing actually works right on this character.

Her self-healing is so powerful that she can literally completely negate the damage of any one character who doesn't have artifacts. She can win a war of attrition with any other single player...  but as soon as a second player comes in and stuns, silences, or just starts adding DPS, her tiny, tiny HP pool vanishes the instant they break through the shield.

Furthermore all of her abilities take mana. I posted in another thread what I would change to make her minion build viable. The gist is that I would give her an aura that improves her HP and boosts autoattack allowing her to be useful to a team when she's not blowing through her entire mana pool. I also slash the number of points required to make shamblers worthwhile, I make shamblers actually able to attack, and I emulate the other DGs' free minion summon idea by making compost reduce the cost of shamblers and be reset to 0 stacks when new shamblers are summoned...

QoT needs help, and not just a numerical buff. The developers need to sit down and think about what they want this character to be good at, about how they want her to fight, and they need to make some major conceptual changes to Uproot, Entourage, and Compost... and I would really, really appreciate it if they'd relate some of their opinions to the playerbase so we can talk it out and help get it done right.

I'm gonna agree that there is only one build for Sedna. Its an awesome build at that.

But I'd like to have a viable use for Yetis.