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A way to simply improve those caster Demigod types so they scale better with UB and others.

By on November 3, 2009 5:11:39 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

I'm going to try a layout in my post here. Tell me how it works.

Problem: Caster types such as TB and QoT late game lack the power needed to take on the melee based demigods.

Why: All their damage is based on ability damage which makes it so there is no possible increase. Demigods like UB and Oak can just stack their ashkandor and easily come up in melee damage with more damage than a TB could ever put out against a target.

What people might be saying to counter that: Well all their damage is ability based so no mitigation or anything. UB and Oak have to health stack. They can't just put their items into damage.

Why that statement does have validity: It is true up until 40k gold. Also no damage items are good enough at that level to make up for the health you would lose in comparison to the cost.

Why that statement only covers part of the issue: It is true but only up until 40k gold. At this point well... TB and QoT fall short (I am using those 2 because their the ones I'm most familiar with). While TB and QoT are even or may even have the upper hand til that point the game is lost after you hit that point. No amount of items can make TB or QoT scale to a UB that has 60k gold. Between the mana items they both need to sustain their damage and the health items needed to keep them alive against UB and such they have no room for damage items that may even make them do damage against UB in their auto attacks. Plus both of them have low auto-attack damage and no abilities to improve it. While UB and Oak have abilities that increase their attack speed and damage and both have a high base.

Solution: I have 2 ways to go about this. I prefer option 1.

Option 1

  • The easiest and simplist way would to allow the player to chose if they want the fix. Which is what this focus's on.
  • Add a favor item with these abilities. Call it The Sage's Amulet or something like that.
  1. Increase mana by 500
  2. Incrase mana regen by 3
  3. All weapon damage increases turn into spell power which effects ability attacks in ways specified on the skill.

Example: Fireball does 300 damage at the level 1 version of it. Something nice and flat. Now to the end of the description you would add something like     Spell Power Ratio: 3. This would mean that for every extra weapon damage you get this attack now does 3 more damage. So lets say you had an extra 25 with those early gauntlets. Now you do 375 for this ability. Significant and since most of the damge items that would make a significant impact are later game this would mostly be a late game advantage. Now this would be availible to anyone.

 

Option 2

Not going on the long spiel I did before. Simply put this as a default on people like TB and QoT as a side bonus for chosing them. So the assassins would be split into Regulus and TB as casters and Generals into QoT and Sedna as casters. The above stuff besides the static upgrades would just be implimented. This would probally be easier to do as it doesn't require you to program an item in that completely changes the game mechanics. This would go a long way in raising these people up to the ranks of others.

The only problem I see is mines. Mines can't get some MASSIVE boost. If either option was in effect you would need to make mines do something like 300 damage at level 1 600 together at level 4 900 at level 7 and 1200 at level 10 to make it so you don't have a 1500 damage ability at level 7. Plus this overall would balance mines a little more. As of right now they do slightly too much damage. But thats another post.

 

Tell me what yo think and if you can think of another option please tell me. I may just put it up here.



Edited in after a couple posts*

 

Now as my above idea states it would make damage items effect casters. This didn't fix the fact that these demigods still can't get those damage items without sacrificing too much so this is my new idea.

Make each mana item have a hidden spellpower bonus that is activated when you get this one favor item.

Example:

Velmish faceguard:

  • 1050 mana (not 100 percent sure on this number)
  • +11 regen
  • +4 regen aura
  • +15 spell power (45 extra fireball damage, 60 extra bramble shield health, and increase damage of each mine by 15, again if this went into effect mines would need to be cut down a little because otherwise we'd see people with 600 damage mines which is FAR too much)

This I believe would solve the problem better and still allow if you want an AA reg to exist with a bonus to angelic fury through his items AND to his attack through his items instead of one or the other. (Again just an example to get the point across)

+11 Karma | 39 Replies
November 8, 2009 2:25:54 AM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

Quote"

Option 1

  • The easiest and simplist way would to allow the player to chose if they want the fix. Which is what this focus's on.
  • Add a favor item with these abilities. Call it The Sage's Amulet or something like that.
  1. Increase mana by 500
  2. Incrase mana regen by 3
  3. All weapon damage increases turn into spell power which effects ability attacks in ways specified on the skill."

1st of I love to play UB and the Queen.

your option 3 would also increase the damage of abiliries of melee classes like venom Spit from UB, and other like abilities.

It seems easy to do when you say it out but unless you get a code thats so complex and involves every spell ingame it cant be done.

The code would have to link each item with each spell ingame to make sure that only some spells get affected, and i mean spell from caster types.

Now the simples thing would be to make a amulet like you said before or something like that and make the damage->spelldamage conversion only work on a limited few classes.

I personlly know that once the UB gets tweaked up wiht damage+attackspeed+life leech they can not be stopped.

Well. changing the game style completly  is rarely ever a good thing.

I personally started few weeks back and i like it the way it is.

It is unbalanced atm but balance should be made in tiny steps else the shock can mae people leave.

November 8, 2009 10:16:24 AM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

DeNNi u havent played single onlone game... How can you talk about balance without expierience. I bet u picked Tb once or twice and AI whopped ur ass so you running around alling things unbalanced.

The think that buffs Qot and Tb the most in game are cooldown reduction items.

I cannot i magine someone picking ashkandor for QoT or Tb. It is senseless since those are not meant to be AA demigods, they are caster and they have Stormbringer which is an ultimate artefact made for both of them NOT ashkandor.

combine it with diamond pendant and Tb becomes ultimate killing mashine U can inflict

1350(firebal) + 800(firenova) + 800(rain of ice) +1350(firebal) = 4300 damge in under 5 secons without using any mana and still be out of range of oozing beast, leaving him with health and mana regen reduced by 75 and attack speed reduced by 40% or comsume those for another 300 dmg and increse his cooldowns by 200%.

If beast gets in range to mele you that means u are wek TB player not that Tb is underpowered.

November 8, 2009 10:40:19 AM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

Quoting irek1988,
DeNNi u havent played single onlone game... How can you talk about balance without expierience. I bet u picked Tb once or twice and AI whopped ur ass so you running around alling things unbalanced.

The think that buffs Qot and Tb the most in game are cooldown reduction items.

I cannot i magine someone picking ashkandor for QoT or Tb. It is senseless since those are not meant to be AA demigods, they are caster and they have Stormbringer which is an ultimate artefact made for both of them NOT ashkandor.

combine it with diamond pendant and Tb becomes ultimate killing mashine U can inflict

1350(firebal) + 800(firenova) + 800(rain of ice) +1350(firebal) = 4300 damge in under 5 secons without using any mana and still be out of range of oozing beast, leaving him with health and mana regen reduced by 75 and attack speed reduced by 40% or comsume those for another 300 dmg and increse his cooldowns by 200%.

If beast gets in range to mele you that means u are wek TB player not that Tb is underpowered.

You spelt: Online, Experience, Calling, Imagine, Artifact, Machine, Fireball (twice), Seconds, Consume, Increase, Melee, Weak wrong

But anyway

Stormbringer is very pricey and most people dont get to that stage, so to be honest the talks about the ashkandor are a bit stupid anyway. That setup however is pretty good

November 8, 2009 5:38:06 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

hmm did it anyway made my post hard to read?
did u not understand the message i wanted to send? im not native speaker and i having some fever rite now (not to mention it was 2 am when i wrote it) but thanks for correcting me.

The think we could use in this game is more cooldown items in regular shop combine with mana boost say:

vlemish with +5% cooldown reduction for 2k

hungarian with +15% cooldown for 7k

or make new items that instead of having lifestal have mana steal and cooldown reduction. this would make game bit more interesting.

#1 Ring of spirits

+5% cooldown reduction on all spells and abilities +5% mana drain from killed creeps and demigods +500 mana cost: 3k

November 8, 2009 8:50:52 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

Any solution to the problem has to address the scaling issue. Stack3d's post, while succinct, does touch on this. What I mean is that, even if a favor item with +300 dmg to fireball was added it would still not solve the problem because it has a static bonus. Some sort of ability damage scaling is necessary for true parity. It's possible that this could be achieved through a favor item, but that is a suboptimal solution - the purpose of favor items is to provide some diversity in playstyle, not mandate that a hero choose a specific favor item all the time just to be competitive.

A better solution would be to tie existing stats into abilities somehow. These ideas are purely conjecture, but: increased attack speed could provide a bonus to cooldown or cast speed; increased weapon damage could provide a % of its bonus to ability damage; life steal could operate on abilities at a diminished percentage, etc.

The advantages of this solution is that no new gameplay mechanics are introduced, and the fundamental playstyle of the intelligence heroes doesn't change. Extensive rebalancing would be required though.

November 8, 2009 9:47:04 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

Any solution to the problem has to address the scaling issue
Why? How do UB, Oak, or Sedna scale better than than ToB or QoT with DPS items?

November 8, 2009 9:52:15 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

Two pages for this? Really? Obscenitor nailed quite some time ago; QoT and TB have underlying issues which cause them to underperform. System wide modifications to the damage mechanics to improve those two Demigods are only going to create new issues and is completely unnecessary. Give TB a working AA and you'll see his performance jump significantly, and QoT needs a few ability modifications and the health glitches with the Shamblers corrected. There isn't some mystic number hidden within the code that allows other Demigods to scale better or worse; QoT and TB have legitimite problems that require attention.

November 9, 2009 7:42:28 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

Quoting irek1988,
hmm did it anyway made my post hard to read?
did u not understand the message i wanted to send? im not native speaker and i having some fever rite now (not to mention it was 2 am when i wrote it) but thanks for correcting me.

The think we could use in this game is more cooldown items in regular shop combine with mana boost say:

vlemish with +5% cooldown reduction for 2k

hungarian with +15% cooldown for 7k

or make new items that instead of having lifestal have mana steal and cooldown reduction. this would make game bit more interesting.

#1 Ring of spirits

+5% cooldown reduction on all spells and abilities +5% mana drain from killed creeps and demigods +500 mana cost: 3k

Lol. Mines are too powerful. Its that his other abilities aren't good enough to make up for it if it was nerfed. Nerf mines and buff his AA ability.

Quoting irek1988,
DeNNi u havent played single onlone game... How can you talk about balance without expierience. I bet u picked Tb once or twice and AI whopped ur ass so you running around alling things unbalanced.

The think that buffs Qot and Tb the most in game are cooldown reduction items.

I cannot i magine someone picking ashkandor for QoT or Tb. It is senseless since those are not meant to be AA demigods, they are caster and they have Stormbringer which is an ultimate artefact made for both of them NOT ashkandor.

combine it with diamond pendant and Tb becomes ultimate killing mashine U can inflict

1350(firebal) + 800(firenova) + 800(rain of ice) +1350(firebal) = 4300 damge in under 5 secons without using any mana and still be out of range of oozing beast, leaving him with health and mana regen reduced by 75 and attack speed reduced by 40% or comsume those for another 300 dmg and increse his cooldowns by 200%.

If beast gets in range to mele you that means u are wek TB player not that Tb is underpowered.

Okay make them more mana dependant so now they have even more problems keeping their mana up. Perfect. No you need to have some way to increase their items damage. So they can health stack not so they become completely dependent on nuking the enemy til they die and if that doesn't work you just die in seconds. Trust me UB can do 3000 damage in that time and sustain it. TB has another 10 seconds before he can do that again.

Quoting irek1988,
hmm did it anyway made my post hard to read?
did u not understand the message i wanted to send? im not native speaker and i having some fever rite now (not to mention it was 2 am when i wrote it) but thanks for correcting me.

The think we could use in this game is more cooldown items in regular shop combine with mana boost say:

vlemish with +5% cooldown reduction for 2k

hungarian with +15% cooldown for 7k

or make new items that instead of having lifestal have mana steal and cooldown reduction. this would make game bit more interesting.

#1 Ring of spirits

+5% cooldown reduction on all spells and abilities +5% mana drain from killed creeps and demigods +500 mana cost: 3k

This would make it too powerful. Now all the sudden all TB needs is velmish and hungarian with that favor item that increases your mana by 700. He just hits the ground with a fire nova and boom full mana. Now you give him the ability to cast fireball every 3 seconds which is already insane and now he can have the bulwark of ages and other health items. Way too powerful.

Quoting ZehDon,
Two pages for this? Really? Obscenitor nailed quite some time ago; QoT and TB have underlying issues which cause them to underperform. System wide modifications to the damage mechanics to improve those two Demigods are only going to create new issues and is completely unnecessary. Give TB a working AA and you'll see his performance jump significantly, and QoT needs a few ability modifications and the health glitches with the Shamblers corrected. There isn't some mystic number hidden within the code that allows other Demigods to scale better or worse; QoT and TB have legitimite problems that require attention.

Same with sedna and regulus who happen to be the other 2 casters i've talked about. Seeing a trend. 4 demigods are obviously weaker than the others endgame. It's not just those 2 it's these 4. I just wanted something that actually would fix all 4 instead of doing tiny buffs to everyone to their base stats.

If you read my posts at all I say that i'm using QoT and TB as my examples. Not as the only people fixed. System wide modifications to damage mechanics as you said wouldn't be needed. It's just an addition to 4 demigods. It's not easy but nor is what you are suggesting.

And of course they have problems. Thats not because they don't have high enough bases. You don't seem to realize you are trying to turn these Demigods into the other ones. QoT and TB are CASTERS not people who support their abilities with DPS and health items like everyone else. They are set apart quiet a bit. But buffing their stats and improving their attacks isn't the solution. That makes them into another Oak.

Quoting obscenitor,

Any solution to the problem has to address the scaling issueWhy? How do UB, Oak, or Sedna scale better than than ToB or QoT with DPS items?

Have I not said this several times. Its not the scaling. Its the combination of their abilities and the DPS items. Oak and UB both give themselves bonus's to their AA speed other buffs.

Quoting bfuoco,
Any solution to the problem has to address the scaling issue. Stack3d's post, while succinct, does touch on this. What I mean is that, even if a favor item with +300 dmg to fireball was added it would still not solve the problem because it has a static bonus. Some sort of ability damage scaling is necessary for true parity. It's possible that this could be achieved through a favor item, but that is a suboptimal solution - the purpose of favor items is to provide some diversity in playstyle, not mandate that a hero choose a specific favor item all the time just to be competitive.

A better solution would be to tie existing stats into abilities somehow. These ideas are purely conjecture, but: increased attack speed could provide a bonus to cooldown or cast speed; increased weapon damage could provide a % of its bonus to ability damage; life steal could operate on abilities at a diminished percentage, etc.

The advantages of this solution is that no new gameplay mechanics are introduced, and the fundamental playstyle of the intelligence heroes doesn't change. Extensive rebalancing would be required though.

This would work too. It wouldn't be easy but it would work. Which the fixes you guys are suggesting aren't easy either. It's much harder than you people would think to find a bug that may occur within several thousand lines of code. One number out of place could be causing the bug. It's not that easy.

 

November 9, 2009 9:21:40 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

I just don't think you understand why the strongest late game demigods are actually good and why the bad ones are so bad.

November 9, 2009 9:26:35 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

I read another thread and was thinking, why don't we just be more creative and add more buffs and debuffs to the spells? We could also take a DotA approach and give the "casters" a little AA buff. For example, a Rain of Ice makes others move and attack slower. TB's Ice Nova may create ice in the area around him, causing all enemies to move and attack slower. TB's Fire ball may cause extra DoT and decrease armor. Maybe QoT's Spikes spell interrupts and stuns the enemy DG for one or two seconds. Many spells in their current state do nothing but deal damage and give a minor buff or debuff. Making those into more noticeable buffs and debuffs may make them more indispensable.

November 9, 2009 10:00:40 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

XaviorsFist, i seriously doubt that this idea to add damage to abitites would in anyway benifit having a fun game or  compeditive ballance. Leave ideas from lol in lol.

This is needlessly complicated solution that introduces a poor but complex game macanic when there are simpler solutions. Atifact items that reduce cooldown time for abilities would have a somewhat similar effect to increasing damage, (only fire tb would realy benifit from greater ability damage items(unless they were rediculosly overpowered) most other demigods use there ablitys for other effects).

Yes fixed number abilities do not scale into the late game but they are not ment to. This means that some demigods are more powerful early on and have to use this to win the game or get a suffient advanage to win the game.

Linear item buying is no fun and and removes verity in the game.

Last thing mines are only op if your team does not have answers for it. All generals (especially sedna) as long as the have the speed to avoid mines, can deal with them (350 monitor idol and some health stacking is a good start) to  the point mines become pretty shit as long as you dont play too agressive vs reg. Mines are only 'op' good vs mele assassins and for allowing reg running away and avoid ganks.

 

Edit: How does increasing abilites by fixed numbers differ from the current fundimental 'problem' (you could call it game ballance) say you increase penance debuff percentages or oak sheild time this is still going to scale way better into the late game. Its the ablitys on UB and Oak that scale better into the late game that make them powerful, its not in any way the stats by them selves (they are better but items would effect this ballance much more).

November 18, 2009 4:06:29 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

Quoting nzac,
XaviorsFist, i seriously doubt that this idea to add damage to abitites would in anyway benifit having a fun game or  compeditive ballance. Leave ideas from lol in lol.

This is needlessly complicated solution that introduces a poor but complex game macanic when there are simpler solutions. Atifact items that reduce cooldown time for abilities would have a somewhat similar effect to increasing damage, (only fire tb would realy benifit from greater ability damage items(unless they were rediculosly overpowered) most other demigods use there ablitys for other effects).

Yes fixed number abilities do not scale into the late game but they are not ment to. This means that some demigods are more powerful early on and have to use this to win the game or get a suffient advanage to win the game.

Linear item buying is no fun and and removes verity in the game.

Last thing mines are only op if your team does not have answers for it. All generals (especially sedna) as long as the have the speed to avoid mines, can deal with them (350 monitor idol and some health stacking is a good start) to  the point mines become pretty shit as long as you dont play too agressive vs reg. Mines are only 'op' good vs mele assassins and for allowing reg running away and avoid ganks.

 

Edit: How does increasing abilites by fixed numbers differ from the current fundimental 'problem' (you could call it game ballance) say you increase penance debuff percentages or oak sheild time this is still going to scale way better into the late game. Its the ablitys on UB and Oak that scale better into the late game that make them powerful, its not in any way the stats by them selves (they are better but items would effect this ballance much more).

Is that not linear. The fact thatthe only way to stop mines is just to rn around them or get monks and heal them off. Thats the only tactic. Plus it wasn't just a mine nerf. This would buff mines too. And health stacking as the only way to counter mines is linear.

Sugestting better cooldown items may seem good but think about it. Already the fragile casters need mana items more than health items and now you want to make it so they need mana items MORE. So screwing health for casters and just going to pure damage isn't linear?

This suggests not introduces. And the thing is late game is so important that the end game demigods normally end up winning. Early game you may seem like you are winning but things early gae have a much smaller impact than late game. Early game a heavy lead is a destruction of 2 towers which does practically nothing. End game a heavy lead is a UB single handedly demolishing tower after tower the only defense to your base in less than 10 seconds. 10 minutes of early game advantage don't stack up to 20 minutes of late game advantage.

And if you read the posts I've made these numbers aren't FIXED!!! Testing can be done. It's not like the numbers I gave are definite. This actually does scale because as the game goes on you would get more spellpower giving you more damage. Not just a flat 300 damage increase.

November 18, 2009 5:07:48 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

Quoting XaviorsFist,

The whole point is that UB doesn't have to interrupt his auto attack to use his abilities while TB and QoT do. QoT to stay alive needs to be in closed form and that screws her open form moves. Now if bramble shield lasted longer she could get out a ground spikes that could be devastating besides just getting blasted to pieces.

The problem with bramble shield isn't the time limit, but the amount of damage the shield adsorbs. The shield doesn’t scale well after let’s say level 7, hell let’s say level 10. Around this time the shield remains in stasis, it does nothing but adsorb a small amount of damage that about 4 maybe 5 shots from a tower could get rid of, even less if you are also dealing with creeps. Bramble shield doesn’t give anything back, doesn’t increase with armor or even reduce damage or make the wearer immune to stuns, dot, or even counter reduction abilities like ooze or Frost nova which really could make a difference in the end.

 

November 18, 2009 8:55:05 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

Yeah u right about my ideas. I would just like to see alternative to stacking hp by everyone. Even having 1 or 2 mid game cooldown reduction items  aroun 3000 and 8000 would give us another effective build. Since the animation for fire TB atto attack are getting fixed i would give us another effective build. In my opinion Tb, reg and  qot are for 3v3 games as a support. I cant see chance to win 2v2 where u get reg or tb (qot only if the player is very skilled).

I still think best way to avoid too much hp stacking is speed stackin = 1000 boots + wand of speed or swift anklet favor + 1000 boots or wand of speed (mid game), later jurneyman threads (not sure about the name) instead of 1000 boots. This will give you great survivality. and u still can fit 2 helmets in your inventory +2 hp/armor items (if u need more mana 1500 boots or natures reckoning for extra aoe). I high high hopes for prices changes in 1.2 mabe the will bring more playable/end game builds.

Also great item for mana managment is magus rod which many people tend to overlook. I dont need to mention blade of the serpent

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