The Forums Are Now Closed!

The content will remain as a historical reference, thank you.

My Oak build and strategy: Stay in Play

By on May 20, 2009 11:00:53 AM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

I didn't see anything like this in the guide compilation, which is kind of surprising.

Overview:
-Self sustaining minion build, with low early mana requirements and exceptional healing to keep you in play when others must return to base.
-The point of this build is to not slay other DGs with impunity, but rather to control creep battles, support your team and not die.
-At level 5 you can quickly crush towers safely thanks to surge of faith. Infact it is beneficial to be fighting towers at the same time as enemy creeps so you can heal everything around you. This is usually not desirable or viable to do for other DGs.
-Insane DPS output and healing during battle later in the game.
-Staying alive and controling the creep battles have many benefits. It denies your enemy XP and large gold chunks.

Cons:
-High initial costs, so you won't be contributing to citadel early.
-You are a general, and as such micro is higher (avoiding AOE and such).
-Not a DG killing build. As mentioned above, DGs can be fought off, but if they have any skill they will usually escape.

Opening:
-Minotaur Berzerkers
-Siege Archers
-Early Monks not required, you have Divine Justice.
-Wait a few seconds and buy a teleport scroll. Not good early teamplay, but you will make up for it.
-As for favor items, you might consider Blood of the Fallen to give yourself a wider margin of error at the beginning of the battle (yes, I just said you SuXxor politely) but this trinket quickly diminshes in value later during the battle because you can heal yourself so rapidly. Because this is a build for staying power, you might consider Brillant Bauble to further increase your leveling advantge.

Playing

Start: Levels 1-3
-Everyone aspires to kill creeps and cap flags to level up, with minions you can do both. (run the minions to a creep battle while you cap)
-Some anti-DG configurations can be overpowering as they follow the creeps in... that's nice, they still can't fight you at towers yet. Death ward the creep battle to harass the enemy DG with any made spirits and fall back. When he kills your creeps, his creeps will advance. Fall back to towers, death ward again, and kill the creeps while ignoring the DG with Oak and attack with all your troops. The XP from the creeps is more important then making him run away earlier. After you kill the creeps, They won't be able to stay for long if they don't want to have to return to base.
-If you are hurt, fall back to towers, wait for creeps, kill them and this heals you. If you get severly hurt before level 2 and thus can't heal, you didn't play good.
-Try to stay in play, unattended creeps will restore you if you are hurt.
-Astute team members will realize that they can heal quickly too, saving healing potions.
-If you aren't in battle and are waiting for the next creep wave, your siege archers should be shooting at an enemy tower, every bit counts.

The unmovable: Levels 4-5
-Farm creeps and drive off enemy DGs, once you have raise dead 4 pick a place and own it. If someone tries to push you away, you can mess that someone up if all your minions are in play and then heal yourself in the field while they must retreat. You might attack DGs of opportunity (wounded and such), but this can still be counter productive because they can hurt you if they are an anti-DG build. (eg: They click a button and do several hundred dammage to you before withdrawing.)
-Once you have surge of faith, you can put a serious hurt on. The DPS you and your concentrated minions can inflict is overpowering. You might notice mana depleting now if you use Surge of Faith too much.
-Once you have surge of faith, you can start attacking towers. Follow the creeps in, cast surge of faith and you can put a hurt on the tower. Don't lose many troops doing this, you need them to fight off any DGs that try to gain control of your lane.

The destroyer: Levels 6-10
-Start being aggressive, it's hard to kill you now.
-You can demolish enemy DGs fighting near your creeps. Minions should always be attacking the enemy DGs during a fight, and you should be whacking creeps nearby to heal everything around you.
-You can demolish towers along the creep path when you have a full minion load out. Follow the creeps in, surge of faith, and it's going down. They crumble so fast they give a rock eating Rook envy.
-Since your don't have an Oooffffff! kind of instant 600+ dammage output, consider investing in a universal gadget to nail retreating DGs if they are a little too cocky.

Levels 11+
-Continue on the same path because this is working So making it work more is not a bad idea.
-A note on buying last stand when you can't buy a new Raise Dead, Divine Justice or Soul Power. A better idea is not to die, and it is infact even hard to die playing this build right because of fast healing. Spend the spare point on minion stats or save it.
-Upgrade items further as desired. + Minion items are the most desirable.

1st 10 levels

1) Raid Dead Ward
2) Divine Justice 1- Why instead of Soul Power 1? Damage output is adequate for creeps right now, so Soul power not required yet. Aspire to heal yourself and initial minions as your primary tactic.
3) Soul Power 1- DPS goes up allowing you to kill creeps and heal faster. This is important. If you can whack a creep in 1 or 2 hits, it is better for your survivablilty in battle than taking 3 or 4.
4) Raid Dead Ward II-
5) Surge of Faith 1- Now you are pretty much unmovable unless teamed up on. For best results, use during creep battles, that 300 damage means you will be 1 hitting creeps and thus keeping your entire army and creeps at full life. Use it intelligently, you don't have the mana to click it on your every impulse. Enemy DGs will find it is not a good idea to fight you at creep battles, because they can't hurt you and will quickly have to deal with your creeps in addition to you.
6) Soul Power II-
7) Raide Dead Ward III- You can crush towers along the creep path, follow the creeps in, surge of faith, and and watch the towers crumble in seconds.
8) Soul Power III- (You are now at +60 damage with 1 spirit or +100 damage when you have 6 spirits, you should be killing creeps and thus healing at a good pace)
9) Divine Justice II-
10) Raise Dead IV- Good luck for any level 10 or less DG taking you on. The DPS and healing is alot to overcome right now. Enemies following and fighting with their mobs are actually worse off then fighting you alone as they are sustaining your DPS by feeding you the dead and allowing you to quickly heal everything around you.

Early Items- You have many things to buy, and minion DPS and life is important because you want to save your mana for Surge of Faith, not putting minions in play. So killing faster and minion life help with this strategy greatly. Get them as you have the cash. You'll make it up to your team later.

- Monks: 900
- Gladiator Gloves: 750
- Hauberk of Life: 1750
- Theurgists Hat: 3000 (combo with another + mana Helmet later)
- Minotaur Kings: 1850
- Siege Demolishers: 2050
- Bishops: 2700

Some other notes to consider
1) Never, ever send in your spirits first to attack a tower, they can all be killed while overlapped.
2) Make staying alive your primary consideration, that means oak should be putting his axe in creeps, and not enemy DGs. Use your minions on enemy DGs. When it is clear you are about to send the enemy DG running, then sick oak on them + minions.
3) Spirits cannot hit moving DGs, this also means it is hard for DGs to hit you because if they stop for long they get nailed. Don't chase them with Oak, stay with the creeps and your troops, stay alive.
4) In case it hasn't sunk in yet, Stay alive, damnit!

+38 Karma | 30 Replies
May 21, 2009 5:55:42 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

Be a genessassin and it will work out for you.

May 22, 2009 1:57:29 AM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

Ok, soul power 2 and 3 just don't have enough bang for their buck. Swap out those two for a point or two of penitance and that build gets remarkably better. Penitance keeps that DPS train rolling, and can allow for a quick kill if they run. The faster you get cash means the faster you get minion boosting stat items. Faster you get items, the faster you level. The faster you level, the faster you kill you them....and the snowball builds until Oak stands supreme.

May 22, 2009 8:49:08 AM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

I've played as Oak, and I think this guide has a lot of wrong points...

First of all, I've to say that I started playing OAK vs CPU, there I focused on divine justice+surge of faith to win... it worked so good, killing creeps, healing myself, etc... But when I started playing online, I sucked, because a human is not a computer, enemies don't let you farm alone, they're more agresive, they don't die on turrets...what a mess :/

So you should think a lot of human behaibour that can not be plated as cpu

1) Start: Levels and divine justice

-Some DGs can be overpowering as the follow the creeps in... that's nice, they still can't fight you at towers. Fall back, death ward, and kill the creeps while ignoring them. -> BAD! Enemy will kill 5 creeps, you will kill 2 creeps, that's nice?

-Try and stay in play, unattended creeps will restore you if you are hurt. -> There're a lot of priests arround the map ???

about divine justice, it can heal 10% when fighting minions, but at start, if you kill the enemy minions healing yours, your survivant minions will fall down on the enemy turret, so is no reason to heal your minions! And is better that you have monks to heal yourself. That's why you should pick divine justice when your team gets priests and survivant minions can do something vs turrets, never before. At the beginning monks are better.

2)The unmovable: Levels 4-5

-Farm creeps, once you have raise dead 4 pick a place and own it. If someone tries to push you away, you can mess that someone up if all your minions are in play and then heal yourself in the field while them must retreat. You might attack DGs of opportunity, but this can still be counter productive because they can hurt too.

-Once you have surge of faith, you can put a serious hurt on fellow generals, and the DPS you and your concentrated minions can inflict is overpowering. You might notice mana depleting now if you use Surge of Faith too much.

How you pretend to farm if an enemy assasing is farming there? as you can't push him, is hard to farm! Also you think minions are so great and outumber enemies, but they're weak and also only 3-4 survivant creeps on your hand...

Scourge of faith does 300 damage, Penitence II does 400 damage, so scourge don't overpower penitence so much... (as I said, scourge vs computer works so good, but vs human is not as good as indeed)

At level 4-5 neither your dps, not your minions dps, not any combination, will be overpowering

Starting levels are so complicated to OAK, and your guide does not help him.


3) The destroyer: Levels 6-10

-You can demolish enemy DGs fighting near your creeps? -> NOT TRUE, an assasin DG can kill you on 1vs1 fight with minions
-You can demolish towers along the creep path? -> NOT TRUE, oak is not a demolisher
-Since your don't have an Oooffffff! kind of instant 600+ dammage output, consider investing in a universal gadget to nail retreating DGs. -> WHAT? I whant an item that does instant Boulder Roll, how much is it?

 

4)About Penitence

penitence at the beginning works as a cry! is like being the lion king, when an enemy aproach you, you penitence him saying "beware, i want to kill you" If the enemy has fear, he will retreat, it will be nice because you can keep farming.

But if the enemie continue agresive to you.. now you have to retreat crying because sure he will kill you

at more advanced levels, penitence will cry : "Beware with your 1000hp, my penitence will deal 600 and slow you!" so enemies low hp will retreat quick, praying not to be penitenced again...

 

Penintence does a lot of psicological damage, more than phisic!

 

So I think your guide is good vs cpu, but not vs player.

Thanks anyway for sharing your build and let us discuss the pros and cons

 

May 23, 2009 7:23:41 AM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

kerdovian:

reading your response to op part 3 I can see you didnt played this build enough / got it right:

1) you CAN demolish other demigods since your damage output will already be well above avarege, if not than read my previous post and you will find that this build not nessecerly about killing.

2) now here I can see you just didnt got it- Imo in this level Oak can be the best demolisher in the game, because all that HUGE damage from you creeps and yourself cant be broken by armor because towers doesnt have any, so they take full damage plus the fact that your minions and creeps distracting the towers mean it will be down in seconds.

3) the fact that you dont know universal gadget is a proof to a lack of expirience and unexpirienced players doesnt get trash builds like that without knowing them well enough.    (sorry if I'm a bit too agresive, but thats pretty anoying)

May 24, 2009 2:17:10 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums

Thanks for all the feedback everyone, it has allowed me to clarify a few things on how I play this build and I have updated the main section.

I know some of you aren't happy with this build because it doesn't have DG crushing capabilities, or use penitence . I would submit to you, however, that your DG killing build's success also depends a large part on your opponent. Is he going to let you kill him?

Right now, people are playing like a bunch of cowboys. They bring in their DG crushing builds, pew pew pew each other and alot of people fall dead.

How unfulfilling would it be to bring your DG crushing build and run into a team of good and smart players who don't let you kill them? Then they slowly grind you down by controlling the creeps? I can imagine the "OMG IMBAAA! I can't kill you" cries because of builds like this that stay alive, stay in play and control the creeps when executed properly.

Anyone can kill a DG who wants to die, but can you win a game against people who don't?

Stardock Forums v1.0.0.0    #108434  walnut1   Server Load Time: 00:00:00.0000172   Page Render Time:

Stardock Magazine | Register | Online Privacy Policy | Terms of Use

Copyright ?? 2012 Stardock Entertainment and Gas Powered Games. Demigod is a trademark of Gas Powered Games. All rights reserved. All other trademarks and copyrights are the properties of their respective owners. Windows, the Windows Vista Start button and Xbox 360 are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies, and 'Games for Windows' and the Windows Vista Start button logo are used under license from Microsoft. ?? 2012 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.