Wow at tribute...

Anyway, this is a bit big of a buff.  I like the difference between open and closed forms but this is just way too much buffs, and this comes from a queen player. Ground spikes is now a solely endgame skill and doesnt counter towers, although I like the longer duration. I understand that it is needed for uproot but I'm still not buying uproot no matter what. You also saw how good shamblers will be with compost right? 60 extra dmg? Seriously?

Closed form 1.5 aoe to 3 aoe.. meh. This makes AOE so easy instead of the bit of micro you need now. And this is a bad thing imho.

Again, queen is way better than everyone thinks and imho is on par with sedna or rook. The demigods that really need buffs are the squishies.

My feedback

The BAD

Ground spike I,II,III seems like a nerf

Heal Tower is IMBA

Tribute is just nutz, so no.

Closed form range reduction is bad, you are breaking some builds for early laneing. 

20% speed for free at level 1? Crazy town.

Compost buff scales way too high. 240 DPS EXTRA for 4 shamblers? 

The GOOD

Increased armor looks right

Mana on uproot is logical, but it is still a bad skill considering ground spikes and minions do the same thing.

Ground Spike debuff is too long? But I agree 5 is too short. I am thinking 7 so an interrupt will get you out of it when fighting, but not interrupting QoT somehow will ensure you are always fighting with reduced armor.

Shield looks good considering what happens to you when you face Assasin Oak or UB Ooze/Spit

Entourage is correct

The Not Sure

Ground spike range. This works fine as is if you use it for what it is meant. 30 at Rank I is a long way.

I'm not too well versed with QoT atm so I can't really say more than this: What were you thinking of when you made tribute haha? I like the idea though, however 50% is so overpowered I don't got words for it... 10% or 15% should be enough.

Good Morning,

So, let's sum up the comments to date, and my responses. I now get to talk too much.

Overall:
Buffed too much
You are crazy

Pt: Perhaps, but I'm also seeing a lot of incomplete theory craft. This mod changes a lot of things that we take for granted for the QoT. I'm not saying it isn't too buffed, it is. However the changes are worse/different than any one so far has imagined.

Ground Spikes
End game only, useless against towers
Nerfed
Debuff is too long

Pt: So the Skill is too good and useless. Sounds perfectly balanced, eh? The damage on it is rather subpar, as always. The creep slaying ability is retained, however the closed form AOE makes autoattacking grunts a better option. As it stands the debuff has NO effect on towers, but will really impair armor users. It doesn't really effect health stackers, except that they will take lots of damage from creeps and minions, which the QoT now has (check out the overpowered compost).

Uproot
Still not using it
Ground spikes and minions are still better

Pt: This is so over powered, I'm sad no one complained yet. It does 2k aoe armor-immune damage for 400 mana at max level. It absolutely destroys tower rooks. It also makes defending at your own tower hazardous forcing you to come out to engage the queen or retreat back to crystal, and maybe even lose your tower.

Shamblers
60 extra damage at max compost is too powerful
240 extra damage for compost is too much

Pt: It is both worse than you think and not quite as bad.

The worse. It is a 240 dps boost from compost (60 per shambler), another 120 dps boost from Entourage (30 per shambler), the possibility with removing all armor from the targets (New Ground Spikes), and 120 dps from base Shambler stats. Which means 480 ranged, aoe, armor-immune (with Ground spikes) damage. All for the low, low price of 10 skill points (14 if you want armor immune attacks).

The not as bad.

The QoT lost some of her DPS, she now does ~70 DPS at level 1, ~250 dps at level 20. For comparison other demigods have ~100-120 dps at level 1 (curse you UB), and ~300 dps at level 20 without using skills or armor. This is largely an early game loss.

Damage advancement for minion buffs tend to be around 10-20 dps for a new minion and 5 dps per additional buff level after that (moral is +4 per level, idol upgrades tend to be around +7, vamp upgrades + 4, equipment buffs vary). The effect of her Shambler specific upgrades is to give double the typical bonus to minions, but ONLY to shamblers, which currently are limited to 4. I figured it was an even trade.

Consider that Vampires do 250 dps, don't cost anything, and come with an demigod that has great speed and many stun options (with armor reduction on one). (They are also non AOE).

Consider the Oak who gains 180 damage price from Soul Power for only 7 skill points.

The cost of these 480 ranged, aoe, armor immune attacks is not cheap. A base cost is 10 skill points, 4 more for ground spikes, 4 more for consume shambler. That's 18 right there, with no shield. So you can have potentially really good minions at level 18, but nothing else. I thought it an interesting potential for a build, and I'm not convinced yet that it would be worth the sacrifice.

Regular Attack
Closed AOE removes micro which is bad
Closed range reduction removes closed build opportunities

Pt: I don't like excessive micro, and I will do my best to reduce it.

The closed form now shreds creep waves. Four attacks will kill most of the minotaur warriors (all of them if you micro).The loss of range means that you'll have to switch forms to poke the enemy, but with 15 range, you can afford to do it.

The open form is obscene when it comes to ToL. You can't hide behind your tower now, because the QoT will eat your tower if you let her. The enemy has to either engage you (in which you can go closed and run away at 7.2 speed), go back to crystal (and lose lots of tower health while she creeps and destroys your tower), or stay put (and potentially suffer uproot damage).

These changes also open up the possibility of stacking +attack items with the QoT to grant the power to dominate creeping even better than the TorchBearer. Overall, it creates a very different QoT.

Entourage
Okay now

Pt: This is the same important damage buff (+10 per skill point) that compost recieved (not quite exactly, but close enough. Compost allows you to get 2 more levels than the skill points you have invested, so 30 dps per shambler at level 1). See my Compost notes for my comments. It is also interesting that no one was impressed by this one.

Spike Wave Range
30 is too much

Pt: Spike Wave's range has been always a little longer than it seems. I made this change to allow for easier targetting of a skill that already went far enough. This really wasn't an important change.

Bramble Shield
Still doesn't fix it

Pt: I made changes to improve Bramble Shield, but not to make it 50% of the skills the QoT uses. It should be considered a pre-combat potion or ablative armor, nothing more. With the other skills I want to see something besides builds comparisons that argue if you should level Ground Spikes or Bramble Shield at level 1.

Tribute
wow
Giants for 3k
10 or 15% is good enough

Pt: Do that many games really last until level 15 without anyone getting giants? Really? The main use I envisioned for this was for nonmainline items and upgrades getting into play. I'm still not convinced it would work out. Feeding gold to your QoT would only get you a ~20% gold bonus (lose some for selling the items first). It really does come too late for what it is.

Violent Siege

Pt: I haven't replaced it with anything yet, Any ideas?

Looking back of this giant wall of text I feel that I really do write too much.

I do play the Queen, her and the UB are my primary demigods. However, I'm also not a tier 1 player. My observations are limited in that sense.

However, I have maintained an active reading presence of the board. A general consensus of the QoT is that she is very underpowered. Overall, game stats suggest she is the worst of the demigods. Among higher level players, I haven't seen any evidence that she is more desired than any other demigod. The only argument for QoT power I can recall is the game replay of her taking on a top level Erebus. However, the Erebus had never fought the QoT build before and the QoT user himself stated that it was unlikely to occur very often and that the advantage is only present in 1v1s. In mass combat the QoT is a weak link.

There does seem to be a number of people on the boards who think that the QoT is very powerful. However, strangely enough, those people don't seem to play the QoT or don't seem to play anyone else on the board to support their beliefs. I find that to be rather telling.

The ladder is currently very broken and stats on it are rather meaingless. I don't know of a good way to find out who is most qualified to comment on changes based on skill. If you can provide a suggestion I would be interested.

As for myself, well I'd like to think that I've made some minor contribution to demigod related projects and do approach things in a productive manner. I also talk to much, which I've heard, discourages discourse (TLDR).

Shield vs Spikes

Early shield will keep you in the lane. Spiking 1on1 does jack without minions.

Doing more than 1 thing with unupgraded QoT will run you out of mana.

There is one exception when I will use a spike I or II when I haven't returned to base for an upgrade. I have an AA focused partner who is good, at which point I will take warmage so I can hold my lane as normal with bramble and gank in 2on1 with a spike. If I don't have warmage doing this I cannot hold the lane, as I cannot shield and spike without running out of shield and getting hurt.

Forgot to add about shields.

1) You can shield a minotaur to push an out of lane tower and give your ranged troops a break. (All your ranged troops cluster beside you which is bad when the tower damage is upgraded)

2) You can shield a minotaur to clear mines.

3) You can move into tower firing range 1st with shield to draw its fire, so the creep wave can advance and put all its DPS on the tower.

4) You can shield that nasty BoTS UB spit/ooze tank to make him more nasty.

Making shield stronger affects all of these things.

I've always envisioned uproot as getting an interrupt around the tower. As in, the sudden violent upheval knocks DGs off balance momentarily.

This is also not imbalanced against tower rook as Queenie has no defense against boulder/slam other than not fighting.

The Uproot changes are ludicrously detrimental/beneficial to Rook. What happens when a friendly Rook places a forward tower which heals at 200 HP/S and deals 200 DPS (more damage than an AoE spit!) to everythign near it? The synergy between these two characters becomes outrageous, not to mention QoT's current capacity to increase Trebuchet, Tower, Archer, and Tower of Light damage...

Conversely what rook would stand a chance against this? They could never safely stand by their own towers, they could never put multiple towers in range of each other, Uproot absolutely devestates a tower farm in my limited testing, and for a paltry amount of mana.

100% armor reduction is also way off the deep end. As I mentioned it's absurdly powerful with Rook (bear in mind Towers do 190'ish a hit without armor at max rank) and more generally speaking it's just too much. You're talking about a 40-50% autoattack damage increase for its (very length 10 second) duration.

Next up a 50% gold cost reduction is just nuts, especially considering any good team is going to go back to base for 30 seconds, drop all their items, have QoT sell them, and then have her rebuy them all at half cost and max out citadel upgrades or her own gear on top of it.

Lemme close with saying it's really cool that you got the healing set up on Uproot, that's a change I think almost everyone likes and I think you put together a pretty cool mod here, the numbers are just off at the moment.

re:HorseStrangler

Thanks for taking the time to give it a shot. I completely agree with what you are saying, if you read my long diatribe you'll notice I mentioned many of these concerns myself.

I left them as is to promote abuseable builds, and then work them down into something more appropriate. What is appropriate I'm trying to leave up to better players than I am. I know I have a rough idea of how to play, but I'm not a pro by a long shot.

So address these more focused questions to the crowd:

• What do you think is a reasonable upgrade to the armor reduction of Ground Spikes?
• How long should the Ground Spike debuff last?
• What do you think is a reasonable progression to the uproot aoe damage? Half of what it is now? What about making it affected by armor too?
• Tribute is currently useless. The Coin Purse is a 15% cost reduction favor item which I've never seen anyone seriously recommend. At level 15 players will have ~30k gold total. Of that perhaps 20k is equipment. Selling an item gives 80% return. So that turns 20k of equipment into 32k equipment per player. Is something like 40% off (turns into 25k equipment) more appropriate? Or should a value like 25% (as synnworld suggested) (21k) better? Or grant the ability to all of her teammates too. That would be interesting, a 25% income production bonus. Incidentally, the effects will also stack with the coin purse, so that would also complicate things. Or should we drop this idea and try something else for it?

Really? They are not useless for QoT because she has spikes. My build always has Morale in it. Each point is around 4DPS extra per minion. Then you add ground spike and damage output is noticeably higher. It adds up.

I've played against Magla's UB with QoT, I can outlane him until level 5, but then his life and damage output is high, and if I extend too far the grasp can cripple me or worse, get me killed.

When it comes to late game, UB Spit + Ooze + AA will blow through shield IV in 2.5 seconds. I can match this output with a spike and minions, but what I can't do is stop him from using items. It is so infuriating to watch him laugh at me using a large pot in the middle of a battle or if I catch him not a full strength he can teleport away. The best I can do is turn him away and/or not die.

The other problem is being engaged with UB for 10+ seconds, because ooze is going to take out all my minions and then I have a problem because there is no deterrent for him to chase me into my towers.

Here is the QoT I play, and under I will explain what I do to put a harm on most players.

1) Shield I
2) Spikes I
3) Shield II
4) Spikes II
5) Spike Wave
6) Shamblers I (only since the new patch)
7) Spikes III
8) Smablers II
9) Shiled III
10) Spikes IV
11) Shield IV
12) Shamblers III
13) Shamblers IV
14) Morale

Starting items, Cloak of night + monks

Early levels (1-5)
Lane. Shield. Attack at range, retreat to tower if confronted. It is very easy to get in a position where QoT can warp onto you and kill you by chasing you into the towers with shields, so you can't extend too much. I haven't come across a build I can't push off a flag eventually, but there are problems that require team help. Like if a rook has a monk attached to him. Also, NO SPIKING! You are only taking spikes in preparation of having minions.

After that, it's get idols, get a mana item and stack health items. Punish enemy DGs and towers with spikes + minions.

Usually battle goes like this. I TP in or move in with shield up, minions and in open form. I spike and close form. The enemy is about to take a severe beating for the next few second. Whoever needs shield gets it. If an enemy DG will be in a bad place, I will open, spike and wave. I can either warp out or forward with cloak of night depending how the battle goes. The initial shock and damage following the first spike will usually force people to sigil or start to run.

Now this sounds all good... but the build starts to break down in power late game if things are on equal footing. The armor reduction from spike is not that high against an armor/health stack, and the shield evaporates in seconds. What happens here is I need to try to start spiking creeps and taking down towers to try and get our creeps on their cit. I can be level 20 and the enemy at level 15 if giants are in play doing this, but I still have a problem fighting DGs so getting and holding flags can be a problem for our team.  

If the game is not even, QoT is godlike. If the enemy DGs don't have the cash for armor on their health stack, and I have Gloves of Fell Darkur, they can literally die in 5 seconds following a spike 1on1 

This reminds me, I find no point in taking wave II/III. I don't use this for dammage, I use it for the snare, and the higher levels don't increase the duration of the snare, only the effect. Rarely is Wave I not good enough to keep an enemy in range so an ally can get on them.

Summray: Goddess needs to become the equivalent of Spikes/shields V to scale
Queen could really use an interrupt or item block
Other skills are so bad there is no incentive to take them.

I really like the idea of the longer ranged attack in open form and a shorted closed form attack.

Yes Rook counters Sedna well, but sedna isn't completely negated by rook by any stretch of the imagination. In a 2v2 or 2v1 the Sedna is still useful. A tower rook's towers would be a liability even 2v1 against a QoT. It's silly and pointless. The idea of armor mitigating the damage as suggested by other people here only shows an even deeper lack of understanding of the problem, as armor would do nothing to mitigate the effects against minions, creeps, and towers.

Rook beats sedna because sedna is an endurance DG and rook can outlast her, not because all her shit does half damage to him or hammer slam gets a quad damage bonus on targets affected by ehaling wind.

Sure just let me know when.