Demigod: v1.20 Partial Change Log

By Frogboy on November 11, 2009 10:31:55 AM from

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

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Demigod v1.2 has passed what we call our tech QA and is now in consumer QA (i.e. compatibility and such).

Here’s a partial list of what’s in this build:

Notable Bug Fixes:

· Fixes a serious desync that could potentially resolve a number of problem cases in MP.

Citadel Upgrades

Graveyard Citadel Upgrade: Increased bonus from 10/20/40% to 15/30/50%

Favor Item Changes:

Samm-El’s Cloak: Buffed cap from 25% to 15%
Dark Crimson Vial: Reduced cast time from 2 to 1 seconds
Staff of the Warmage: Increased mana from 700 to 800
Magical Coin Pouch: Buffed cost reduction from 10% to 15%
Horn of Battle: Increased health regen from 10 to 25

New favor items:

Spirit of the Fallen: Assassin only

5000 Favor Points

1000 Health

8 Health Per Second

Haste Anklet: Assassin only

5000 Favor Points

17% Increased Movement Speed

Pendant of Prescience: Generals only

5000 Favor Points

15% Dodge

20% Minion Dodge

Tome of Champions: Generals Only

5000 Favor Points

800 Health

5 Health Per Second

150 Minion Health

Items:

Hex Scroll: Reduced cost from 500 to 250
Capture Lock: Increased cast time from 1 to 2 seconds
Combat Health and Mana Potions unchanged – we were afraid to tweak this one
Duelist Cuirass: Reduced cost from 3000 to 2500
Theurgist’s Cap: Reduced cost from 3000 to 2000
Hungarling’s Crown: Reduced cost from 6500 to 5500
Ironwalkers: Reduced cost from 3750 to 2750
Desperate Treads: Reduced cost from 5000 to 4000
Gauntlet’s of Despair: Increased mana drain from 200 to 300
Doomspite Grips: Increased weapon damage from 30 to 40
Forest Band: Increased minion armor from 200 to 300
Warlord’s Punisher: Unchanged
Ring of the Ancients: Reduced cost from 3500 to 2500
Parasite Egg: Reduced cost from 4000 to 3000

Game Mechanics:

Dodge Cap increased from 30% to 40%

Queen of Thorns:

Summon Shambler: Summon Shambler now increases health and damage of Shamblers as you gain new ranks. The values are 5/10/15 damage and 125/250/375 health.
Entourage: Shamber buff decreased to compensate for Summon Shambler’s boost. Damage reduced from 10/20/30 to 6/12/18 damage and 250/500/750 health to 165/330/495.

UPDATE:

· Fixed TB’s ability to attack while moving in Fire Mode.

I’ll have a more complete list shortly.

Commenting is enabled to allow people to complain about the balancing since you can blame me for it. I read through the comments and various threads and compiled a list of requested changes along with my own experiences from playing. So you can see a lot of things have been made less expensive. The new favor items are largely just “upgrades” (requiring a lot more favor points) to the existing ones. I tried to request items that could be realistically added. So in other words, don’t flame GPG. Flame Brad (me).

The modding is going to become a big deal I believe as I am hoping we will be able to have our own mods that players will be able to distribute here on the game site or that we’ll eventually bundle with the game if they’re popular enough.

Fixed TB’s ability to attack while moving in Fire Mode.

Yes

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I'm with most people around here, the high end favor items should probably be scrapped. It will just make other favor items less desirable, and there is already enough of that.

As for the Graveyard upgrade, it's still a waste of money that only the AI will take. I think it should have an additional effect of reducing the amount of gold and XP that opponents get for killing members of your team as well. That might make it worth it and might be useful to help mitigate feeders on your team.

I also agree with others that the QoT buff is kind of pathetic in light of the nerf to Entourage. Just buff the shamblers straight out, all they are used for right now is food. I do like the idea of QoT being able to repair towers though, that would be a nice new boost for her.

But... no boost for TB? He needs it almost as bad as QoT.

Koz

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Rofl, right after I post I see the update for TB. That's big, he needs it. He needs more (like a buff to Deep Freeze and Fire and Ice), but that's a good start.

I'd like to see Deep Freeze changed so that it doesn't "eat" the debuffs you place on the enemy. The damage it does should still be based on the number of debuffs, but the effects should remain after being hit by Deep Freeze. If that seems too good, the damage just needs to go up on Deep Freeze.

Koz

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In order of appearance:

Desync fix - I really hope this will rule out some of the issues. If it does, big thanks.
Citadel Upgrade -
The graveyard buff is nice on paper, but I still don't think people will be using it. There needs to be a secondary buff imo, make it temporary, but a % health/mana increase or a % xp/gold gain increase on respawn would at least make it worth looking at

I don't know if the temporary buff is the right way to go, but I agree that this upgrade will most likely still be avoided.
Favor item changes - All good.
New favor items - Now this is where my main gripes lie.
On the issue of favor items, if the point is to create new favorite favor items, then Spirit of the Fallen and Tome of Champions will be the new ones, which will put any new players at further disadvantage. If the point is to make current favor items more appealing, then this will probably not be the case. I would much prefer a complete overhaul of all favor items which balances them all and sets a single price. That way, the quality and usefulness of favor items is not tied to a cost scale, but instead to how player view the functionality of any given item on any given map, demigod, or build. I personally believe that the current number of favor items could be cut in half without losing anything. Then make the remaining ones interesting and useful enough to force players to make real cost/benefit assessments about them.

/signed

The weakest Demigods that already relied on other favor items such as QoT's Cloak of Night, Reg's Wrath of God and Poisoned Dagger, and TB's Blade of the Serpent will all receive fairly strong indirect nerfs from this change.

/signed

I also found Ke3trel's remarks on the new items true. Overall I feel they alienate new players, marginalize other items (as if that was needed...) and make the already dominant UB/Rook/LE combo even more problematic.
Items - Very nice changes.
Game mechanics - I don't know about this one. I'll have to wait and see.
Queen of Thorns - WOW, this is a letdown. Having QoT as my main I feel dissapointed that the only interesting change mentioned came in a separate post (the tower healing). I see no real improvements here, I don't feel like recapping all of the detailed threads about how QoT needs a structural rehaul, not simple stat tweaks (and definately not such insignificant ones as these), so I'll just say that reply #43 by CosMoe pretty much sums up the situation perfectly...

...which is sad.

I do however, as mentioned, feel that the tower healing (which I guess will be put into Uproot), is a good change and reflects the kind of changes QoT really needs.
Modding - Nice to see that this gets online.

Apart from this I would have liked to have the current state of TB mentioned along with the current dominance of HP stacking chars (the UB+Rook+LE combo for instance). A minor wish would be to have the yetis looked at.

Overall I'm enjoying this partial change log, but the new favor items really struck me as a bad idea.

UPDATE: Finally Fire TB gets his moving attack .

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While I would have prefered a selection of differentiated favor items, I don't think the high end ones are that big of a deal. Its only 200 more health.

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Quoting Underloost,

reply 21

need clickable minimap >.<

Why when you can zoom right out?

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 25

The other QoT buff we're looking into is giving her the ability to repair friendly towers.

Orgasm

TB can Auto Attack! Great cheers to the heavens

New favour items...

...

You're kidding right. You wouldnt actually introduce these? ...

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Quoting ,

quoting post

Magical Coin Pouch: Buffed cost reduction from 10% to 15%

Is the bug where you have to have the regular price in gold available before being able to buy at the reduced price fixed as well? For example, item X is regularly 1000 gold, but I can't buy it for 15% off unless I actually have 1000 gold instead of 850.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 25

The other QoT buff we're looking into is giving her the ability to repair friendly towers.

dear god yes! As far as what happen to QoT I'm not sure what to say, I havent used shamblers in ages.

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Quoting brjoha,

reply 57

Yes

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I agree with all ppl about the 'negative side' of a patch. I already said my own, but want to repeat: we need better balancing! of everything and everybody. I put my hope in next patch/es.

(read what linduxed, koz1120, Cosmoe & Spooky, & I said! i agree with them completely)

P.S. totaly non related:

I just got the idea of buffing bejeweled goggles: in addition to +12 vision radius & can detect invisible objects, i would also add that you can see what equipment enemy dgs have, and how much exactly health and current mana they have, plus (as someone before already suggested) that it can be use actively to see whole map for brief moment! - removes fog of war for 6-10 sec

(Plus maybe some small mana bonus at start)

I really think that this change would make that favor item particularly, to be more viable (but honestly even with that change, with these new 'high end items' it wouldnt really be in match = competent)

edit: it is bold

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I agree with most of the previous posts, the changes look good, except for the new favor items that are just better versions of the items that are already in the game, blood of the fallen was good enough already, theres no need for an even stronger version of that.

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Well this all seems well enough except for one thing:

High End Favour Items

By adding these you make it almost impossible for one to pick any other than these new items since the new are so much better. I mean... 1k + health? Seriously...

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Hate the QoT entourage nerf. It was hardly worth it before but now it's just useless. Why get an ability that is now half as effective as it was. How about incorperating some other ability like QoT damage increase in or some vampire effect for her.

That and the high end favor items don't have any mana items. You just hit QoT just as hard as before. Now unclean beast and everyone else can get these favor items while QoT is stuck with staff of the warmage *bleh*. This makes her scale WORSE now.

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Hate the QoT entourage nerf. It was hardly worth it before but now it's just useless. How about incorperating some other ability like QoT damage increase in.

yes, there is so many threads concerning Qot buffing that i'm kind of disappointed of how they handle her (i hope that her other skills that are not mentioned here are buffed better (if they are)). As Cosmoe said, it still seems they left tribute the same. If they did it's a shame. Buff like incorporating tribute in entourage would be pretty good buff imo. Like: lvl 1 entourage(=shamblers buffing plus:) +1 gold, 2nd lvl +2 gold, 3rd + 3gold, smth like that. And it wouldnt be game breaking. Consider that for a while.

Entourage means: 'A group of attendants or associates; a retinue', so i dont see a problem of why they (shamblers) couldnt pay the tribute to Qot as soon as first entourage point is taken. After all, everybody agrees that +4gold bonus that late (on lvl 15) is waste - game is mostly finished by then, and that bonus also afflicts only Qot. (Even if bonus +8 at that stage it really isnt helpfull (not even of game lasting to 20 lvl! imho)

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This is awesome so far...loving the list. However

New Really Strong Favour Items:
...umm...what the hell is the point of this? You have just made the already small list of viable of favour items not viable. Wow..Have you not see the threads on hp stacking. You respond with a favour item giving a ONE THOUSAND+ hp boost with 8hp per second. Seriously guys

Also, seriously increase graveyard bonus by more.

That is my ONLY complaint from the list. Apart from that I love the changes! You really listened to the community, good job

The other QoT buff we're looking into is giving her the ability to repair friendly towers.

Plus 1

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Quoting Izuz,

reply 51

Fixed TB’s ability to attack while moving in Fire Mode.

Yes

OMFG YES YES YES YES YES YES YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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First off, I am ecstatic about the fire form autoattack fix. Fantastic.

Second though, we really do need to talk about favor items. I apologize for rehashing this, but I think it needs to be said. The numbered list is to show quantity, not quality. They are in no particular order. Currently we have three tiers of favor items:

Tier 1: Broadly useful across both multiple DGs and multiple maps

Blood of the Fallen
Blade of the Serpent
Staff of Renewal
Swift Anklet
Cloak of Night
Horn of Battle

Except for BotF these items may not be useful for every DG they're available to, but regardless you will see these used quite frequenly by skilled players against each other on a variety of maps with multiple DGs. It's impossible to really prove one is better than the others.

Tier 2: Situationally useful, based on DG and/or map

Heaven's Wrath
Cape of Plentiful Mana
Amulet of Teleportation
Blood Soaked Wand
Diamond Pendant
Tome of Endurance
Ring of Divine Might

These items still see varying degrees of use. Some, like Heaven's Wrath for Regulus, are viable for a small portion of the DGs they're available to, others like the Cape of Plentiful Mana are useful because of a particular map feature (in this case +15 MPS flags). I also include ones which can work but are still not especially popular here as well, such as the Blood Soaked Wand.

Tier 3: Used extremely rarely, generally accepted as inferior to the alternatives

Everything else

Alright, some of these seem like designs gone wrong, like the Brilliant Bauble, Staff of the Warmage, Wings of the Seraphim, Mard's Hammer, etc.

However, some are just cheaper beginner's items which seem to be intentionally replaced. Examples include the Totem of War vs. Ring of Divine Might, Charm of Life vs. BotF, etc. On some level that's fine, I have no problem with there being a small handful of items like that.

Then some just seem like they're relics from earlier design phases. For example the Bejewled Goggles seem intended to counter stealth or invisibility which didn't make it into the final game (besides reg's mines).

But here's the important part:

Currently there are at least 12 favor items other than BotF which get limited or broad usage. Every time a player chooses an item other than BotF they make a significant sacrifice, they take their chances at dying early, being unable to hold a lane, etc. and get items which offer alternate, unique benefits.

The new favor items make the prospect of picking a non-pure HP item even riskier. The new favor items effectively cut the number of viable favor items from around 13 to 2.

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P.S. the item cost changes seem good. The cap lock change is especially important.

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Quoting Leon108,

reply 29

while playing against those, who could afford much better items? I think not, although that was a serious disadvantage. At least you and I are still here.

But that's not the same situation. With the new favor items you may be forced to use SotF now, if you don't want to have a serious disadvantage.

Quoting Epiphenomenon,

reply 33

It was barely worth it passing up BotF in the past. I'm not sure how any assassin can afford to pass on an extra 1000 hp. My teleport amulet and BotS builds are less useful now, meaning that I'll probably have to solely use these new favor items. HP stacking has been made worse.

Exactly. I am almost always using the teleport item and I am simply afraid that I won't be able to use it anymore if I do not want to lose against any Demigod who uses SotF.

Btw. I haven't said anything positive yet . I am otherwise quite pleased with the changelog. Except the Horn of Battle... however:

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 50

It's backwards. HoB decreased from 25 to 10 per second.

if that is the case, then everything is fine. But may be you should edit the original post so that people don't get confused about it

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I think it would be interesting to make the death-penalty upgrade have something similar to Oak's Last Stand:

2 / 4 / 6 / 8 seconds (would trigger BEFORE ls).

You would have ZERO hp, and there would need to be some sort of SUPER OBVIOUS way to tell that this ability is active so that an obvious 'fake death' animation such as Oak's Last Stand doesn't become neccassary (and then this upgrade becomes useless). If you are Oak with LS, since you have 0 hp, you die, come right back.

Second option:

Make it like Zelda fairies: Everyone gets the following buff:

Revival -

If you fall in battle, you return with 500 hp and 0 mana, and a 5 second +10% movement speed bonus after ??? seconds.

---

Maybe you would have to increase the revival-hp, maybe you would have to give them half/full mana (Oak shield/Sedna heal/Erebus Mist), maybe you give them an Oak shield for a few seconds (though if it's invincible to stuns then it makes portal-suiciding even easier - I walk up there, try to lock, if I fail, oh well, free shield, teleport out).

----

Super favor items... not liking them :-/ now SotF is pretty much a neccessity. 1k hp is ... a lot. The 'buff' between BotF (which I considered a strong, high-level favor item but not imbalanced, just really good) and SotF is only 200 hp, sure. That's like 1 auto-attack. But BotF didn't NEED that buff, and it hurts burst-demigods such as TB (the fire auto-attack fixes most of his weaknesses, maybe his Cold Touch could be buffed, and maybe a few other very small +2-5% buffs to other abilities, but a good TB is terrifying).

I think that the other favor items need to be buffed first.

Other options: keep these uber l33t favor items, but make them have drawbacks as well:

Spirit of the Fallen -> Burden of the Fallen

+1100 hp , +8 hps, -200 mana, -3mps

(doesn't affect pure-Ooze UB much but whatever)

+1000 hp, +10 hps, -5% movement speed

Makes Rook even harder to push out of a lane, but even easier to gank if you get the upperhand on him. Not quite as viable for UB, who might need to chase, etc.

+1000 hp, +10 hps, -3% attack speed

-3% attack speed is like 9 dps early game, so not really a big deal. Maybe it needs to be 5%, I don't know.

Haste Anklet ->

... can't think of anything really +2% isn't really game-breaking. I would prefer it to not be Assassin only, but if you compare the superior Assassin-only Staff of Renewel to the universal Diamond Pendant, Staff is clearly the superior and this fits that paradigm.

Maybe you could make it a +20% but it has a small -hps to compensate for it.

Tome of Champions ->

Just made Erebus even more terrifying. The thing about a minion-build Erebus is that he tends to have low hp and isn't very terrifying if you can actually MAKE it to him (many also tend to sacrifice batswarm). Now, he can give up Horn of Battle to give a constant +150 hp bonus to his minions while still retaining a decent amount of hp for himself. Makes hybrids pretty terrifying...

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 50

Wait what: Horn of Battle: Increased health regen from 10 to 25
You BUFFED Horn of Battle? ZOMG, WHY?!?

Is minion Erebus not bad enough as it is damagewise already?

It's backwards. HoB decreased from 25 to 10 per second.

Glad to hear it!

About BotF and the new HP++ items:

They might work better if you would start out with a moderate HP buff that increases over time like:

- Blood of the Fallen
+ 800HP, +5HP/s -> +200HP, raises a demigods max HP by 10%, +10HP/s

This way BotF would scale better and wouldnt give you an incredible buff early game. A level 1 UB with Banded would have ~400HP more than without BotF and it would even out somewhere at level 10. It would eventually become stronger than BotF lategame which would make it a very good strategic choice for Ooze users and health stackers.

The numbers might need some tweaking, this is just supposed to present the general idea how I would imagine BotF/SotF.

PS: Glad Torchy got his fire auto attack.

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Thanks, Brad, for getting the capture lock change in place. I think that 1 extra second will change things up a little bit. Hoping there was a cooldown change as well, but I’ll take what I can get here. Also, thanks for taking the time to post the partial change log as well! Much appreciated! From what I’ve read, I like all of the price reductions I’m seeing. Dodge cap should be interesting (remind me, anyone, does dodge activate only on auto-attack or special moves as well?)… looking forward to trying out a few new builds.

Re:QoT buff… what you listed is better than nothing, but I’m hoping to see a little more in the final release notes. I was excited to see your comment about QoT healing buildings. Cool idea and one I hope that can be implemented.

Re:graveyard – I’m glad you’re trying to make this more viable, but I still don’t think I’ll be buying this upgrade… the problem is that if you need this, you are generally in a world of hurt already. Wonder if there’s anyway to make it more desirable… another bonus tied to it? 2% building health increase or something maybe…

Re:old favor item tweaks – I’m not sure what the impact will be… interested in trying them out. I completely agree with giving the magical coin pouch a higher value, but its still not strong enough to make it a serious consideration. Getting close though… instead of giants costing 6,000 reg, the old coin pounch would save you 600 gold (eg no big deal). At 15%, it would save you 900. If you bumped it to 20%, it might be an interesting item 1200. I completely agree with the direction you chose to go here, though. I think of all of the favor items along the lines of what will help my team the most.

Which brings me to the new favor items: I completely agree with your decision for single player and can see how people in SP would love this. Not so much in MP. I really don’t like how spirit of the fallen is simply super BotF. As in, once you have SotF, you will never, ever use BotF under any circumstances. You’ve made BotF useless for anyone with enough favor points. We already knew which items were good. So buffing what is probably the best item in the game was probably not what we were after when we asked for favor item buffs J What we need is the ones that aren’t good to become viable options…. I’m glad to see you are working some tweaks on existing favor though.

All in all, you’ve changed enough things to make me want to play the game all the more and try out new strategies. Thank you!

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@abuggeredhedgie

no, i wouldnt agree with your graveyard suggestion; 15/30/50% is fine, but only if smth else is added too. Like someone suggested in this thread that it could also reduce the gold& experience you give to your enemies and/or (my idea, afaik) that it also increases the death time penalty of enemy dgs! for maybe 10/20/40%. That effect would force enemy team to buy it as well(if you bought it first of course), because if not, they could get in big trouble.

interested thoughts of changing new fav items, but i'm not really sure what to say else atm.

edit:

@pacov

maybe the above graveyard idea is good enough for you? or everybody else?

And, about the Magical Coin Pouch, if we want it to be competitive and more valuable/desirable in game we ofc need even better buff than just 15%. BUT i wouldn't increase that anymore, don't underestimate 15%, it is good (it's not just the giants you're buying, but all items; it is 15% for your all in game purchasing. But ofc you know that) however, the main problem about Pouch imo is that it still gives you 80% cost back when selling items.

take this example: You're buying Godplate for 10000 gold without Pouch, when you sell it you gain back 8000 gold. Now with the Pouch you buy it for 8500 gold but you sell it back for 7225 gold. That is in fact both gaining with Pouch and at the same time loosing with it (cause there is a lot buying selling in game), and because of that fact it will never be desirable in competitive play (now even less after introducing this 'super new items'). So i think that my proposition of making Pouch to give back the original money cost of item (that is 8000 gold for Godplate) would make it desirable item in competitive game. What do you think?

I say only then it would be worthy of calling it self a 'Magical Coin Pouch' !!

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Morale, which is 2,5 times better for Oak and Erebus because they have 2,5 times more minions.

That's more than a bit of an exaggeration, considering you would have to actually skip monks for it to be true. If you get all three idols it's even less accurate.

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The other QoT buff we're looking into is giving her the ability to repair friendly towers.

Yes Please.

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Demigod: v1.20 Partial Change Log

Frogboy