Minion Oak, the new build of every single match I'm in

By EldonTyrell2 on July 19, 2010 1:32:12 AM from

Unless someone can convince me otherwise I'm not playing against oak unless it's a player below 35% or so. There is no counter to his lame minion build that I've found. He just throws up a few flags, collects spirits, and rapes your base. The last game against a minion oak we were actively trying to prevent it from around level 4-5. I upped tower offense and defense, we tried to kill creeps away from his flags ... it didn't matter. Despite dominating the game otherwise our citadel fell to his spirits. We had both of their portals and they'd never taken one of ours. For the last half of the game our TB sat on our citadel trying to kill them as they came.

Another game I was oculus and I upped our building D and O almost to max and sat at the citadel using chain lightning and blast off to kill them. The best I could do was freeze our citadel hp at around 15k and I had to stay there the rest of the game, effectively taking me out of the fight.

If Oculus can't prevent it I don't see how it's possible. It's well past time Stardock fixed Oak's many ridiculous OP traits.

This wasn't a problem until recently because most people didn't realize it was possible. Now everyone sees it and is imitating it. It's getting out of hand.

0 Karma | 79 Replies

Queen has tons of area damage

Best thing to do against any full minion build is to gank the player. They're normally very weak since all gold goes to minions and minion items. If you're fighting his minions the whole game then they probably laugh.

As a primary TB player i like it when an Oak or Erebus goes minion. Just buy some extra armor and freeze them all near a tower. With a tower and RoI it should clear them up nice and easy. And once you start getting later into the game, their strength diminishes greatly.

Good luck ganking a shield 3 oak whose only purpose is creating new spirits, not engaging other DGs. It's just not viable.

PBS and taco, it's a full-time job keeping oak spirits off your tower and in endgame they have ~1500 health. If you camp out at one tower he can just send them to another one. And they spread out around their target so AOE often misses some of them. Oculus should be the best at this tactic and it didn't work for me. He's not attacking DGs with his spirits, he's ignoring DGs and sending them at your base.

I sorta agree with this. I've seen some ridiculous Oaks lately, even if he wasn't ridiculous before. Certainly in 2v2 the Oak anti-citadel minion build is an easy win. If one of the two players has to baby sit the citadel then it is just trivial to win with war score, gold and experience. Remember that someone baby sitting gets no experience and basically no gold. I'm usually don't get bent out of shape if a minion Oak is busy tearing up towers. There are a lot of DGs that can tear up towers at a low level. Hell any general can send in Siege Demolishers and be equally irritating. What I do know is that taking Rook against a minion Oak is suicide. They can't be bouldered, are nigh impossible to slam, confuse the hell out of your tower farms and you're so damned slow you'll be lucky to escape.

Shield 3 + Lock + TP, though, is total bullshit.

Quoting SaulTigh,

reply 5

Shield 3 + Lock + TP, though, is total bullshit.

Yeah this is almost as bad but at least it's possible to defend against it to some degree. It's bullshit that if the other team caps one of your portals and they have oak he can hold it indefinitely and there's little you can do about it. But you can prevent him from getting the flag in the first place and unless he's really paying attention and not doing anything else you can often get the flag back.

It's not like Oak isn't already powerful enough without these things either, it's ridiculous. Nerf both of these tactics and he'd still be tier 1.

Minion builds are really only unreasonable in 2v2s. 3v3 minion builds are a liability. Usually I've noticed the side with the pure minion build tends to lose (assuming equal demigod choices).

If you see a minion build, go heavy speed/armor/hp (ditch your mana, you really only need Scaled Helm or Nature's Reckoning against a minion build. Wand of Speed is more useful in these situations than Vlemish, for example). Spirits can't attack moving targets and you'll want to rotate flags as fast as you can. You'll also want to be able to chase him down because once he has all your towers down he'll try to push your portals constantly.

Journeyman's is very useful against minion builds since it will almost always be proc'd.

The other option is play Occulus, or TB. Both counter minion builds excellently. Occ doesn't get to really do it well until levels 8 or so, which is a bummer, but he's still a general.

Both Sedna and DA can counter Shield III - Teleport, though both of those are a poor 2v2 anti-minion build choice.

Quoting OMG_BlackHatHedgehog,

reply 7

because once he has all your towers down he'll push your citadel constantly.

fixed.

He doesn't give a shit about portals, or even flags for that matter. At least.. the crappy oaks don't, the oaks that play well and don't rely on minions to tear down the citadel while the other team controls almost every flag on the map. I hate playing against minion oaks, that was 90% of my games yesterday. It's the stupidest way to win. Go play a single player game if you never want to encounter another real person in your quest to the victory screen.

Quoting 4Nana,

reply 8

Quoting OMG_BlackHatHedgehog, reply 7because once he has all your towers down he'll push your citadel constantly.
He doesn't give a shit about portals, or even flags for that matter. At least.. the crappy oaks don't, the oaks that play well and don't rely on minions to tear down the citadel while the other team controls almost every flag on the map. I hate playing against minion oaks, that was 90% of my games yesterday. It's the stupidest way to win. Go play a single player game if you never want to encounter another real person in your quest to the victory screen.

This. Everyone is playing the build now.

Hedgehog you're assuming the minions are hitting you. They're not used to attack demigods, they're sent against towers and your citadel.

Yea the Oak who just suicides all the mid towers then rapes your citadel with spirits seems to be stronger then the one who tries to push your portals. The Oak, EB, or UB on your team needs to stop him before he ever gets started by hunting him all over the map. Oak is the best at this because you can chase him the furthest and still escape. If EB is the spirit Oak hunter, don't forget your mana potions.

If it's against the towers and citadel then you don't really need a lot of items. Cap all the flags, then race to Catapults. Unless there are 2x minion builds in a 2v2 game they won't be able to tear down your Citadel before you get WS 8, and even then...

You also have the option of bum-rushing their portals (especially if you have Wand of Speed - just be careful to walk around the edge of the map so you miss the corner tower and get shot only 3-4 times or so). If they don't port, their minions have to fly back and they won't beat you 1v1 without their swarm. If they do port, then their minions are far from your towers. 'Course you can only do this in a 2v2 and assuming both went minion builds. If they did both go minion builds, and you're, say, Occulus, you can just use Blast Off! and kill everything around you in half a second.

Finally you can just port out. They rarely have an interrupt.

Anyone want to post this minion build? I've played against a bunch of them, but rarely remember to save replays. Not that we want every noob out there trying it, but I'm curious how they go. Just spirits/ morale through level 10? Occasionally there is a shield or penitence thrown in there. Anyone?

I agree. It is the most boring build to play, and the most annoying/ boring build to play against. It is good to see realistic strategies for stopping it. Hopefully we can put an end to this phase of the game relatively soon.

I've seen several different builds, I'm not sure the particulars actually matter. Just take a favor item that strengthens your minions (either +dmg or +health) and focus on creating a constant stream of spirits using AOE around one of your wards. Send every one that's created at a particular target (towers then citadel). Repeat the entire game.

Get Siege Demolishers to add some extra damage.

Take shield so you never die as that would despawn your spirits. Never engage another DG because it will interfere with your spirit production.

There's not much the other team can do to prevent this so just ignore them. I posted this hoping someone had a strategy for stopping it but I haven't seen one yet.

As I mentioned in my first post my strategy for stopping it is refusing to play against Oak until the game is patched. Which will probably never happen.

Well there are those of us who play less annoying Oak builds. I would instead go with waiting to see if he drops a ward level 1 and then concede before three minutes. If you really aren't interested in facing this build.

I thought the counter to this was solved a long time ago....

Take your LE, kill his wards every time he plants one with crawlers.

Also, here is the Oak cheese I was using when the game 1st came out. When I learned LE can kill your wards I basically abandoned the strategy.
https://forums.demigodthegame.com/352768

The guide is a little naive yes, but look how far the game has evolved since I made that post... replace soul power II and III with shield, you need to get Shield III at 7 so you become unkillable.

No need for morale until later... and brilliant bauble is nice when you are pulling a spirit cheese and have XP1 at the cit. You will hit 10 when they are still 8, and it is might tough to stop spirits with that disadvantage.

PS, the community is small now, you do NOT make any friends pulling this crap today.

Quoting LORD-ORION,

reply 15

I thought the counter to this was solved a long time ago....

Take your LE, kill his wards every time he plants one with crawlers.

Also, here is the Oak cheese I was using when the game 1st came out. When I learned LE can kill your wards I basically abandoned the strategy.
https://forums.demigodthegame.com/352768

The guide is a little naive yes, but look how far the game has evolved since I made that post... replace soul power II and III with shield, you need to get Shield III at 7 so you become unkillable.

No need for morale until later... and brilliant bauble is nice when you are pulling a spirit cheese and have XP1 at the cit. You will hit 10 when they are still 8, and it is might tough to stop spirits with that disadvantage.

PS, the community is small now, you do NOT make any friends pulling this crap today.

WHAT do you mean LE can kill wards!? How much HP do they have?

Quoting LORD-ORION,

reply 15

Take your LE, kill his wards every time he plants one with crawlers.

*LE?

Lord Erebus (LE) has minions called nightcrawlers which can attack and kill Oak's spirit wards.

Minions definitely need a tweak.

If the opponents go mad minions, they will cap flags and farm for exp while you waste time killing the minions. If they invest in buffing the minions, the entire army becomes strong enough to kill the cit all alone, while you can murder the demigod over and over, which is plain stupid.

Right now, you gain reap a huge benefit from using minions, but gain nothing from killing them.

Yea the fact that chances of you killing a player with minions are little to not happening, and you can get raped if you are ganked.

I thought I told everyone on Vent that nightcrawlers can kill wards.... it came up one day after Peter did the minion buillshit on Levi and raped the citadel.

Anyway, only Nightcrawlers can do it. Observation Totems don't "expose" them at all (which sucks, it would be a good way to balance it if they could). However, wards have like 450 HP which takes a decent time for Nightcrawlers to kill, especially since they don't target it very easily. And, it only works as a counter early game because once they have raped everything and can place 4 wards at a time then you can't keep up with them. But it does really shut down a minion oak until about level 10.

Quoting Rav3nIX,

reply 19

Minions definitely need a tweak.

If the opponents go mad minions, they will cap flags and farm for exp while you waste time killing the minions. If they invest in buffing the minions, the entire army becomes strong enough to kill the cit all alone, while you can murder the demigod over and over, which is plain stupid.

Right now, you gain reap a huge benefit from using minions, but gain nothing from killing them.

I would say towers need a tweak. Firepower 1 is a pretty serious downgrade vs minions.

Also, some maps like crucible are just terribly built vs spirits.

Quoting OMG_BlackHatHedgehog,

reply 21

I thought I told everyone on Vent that nightcrawlers can kill wards.... it came up one day after Peter did the minion buillshit on Levi and raped the citadel.

Anyway, only Nightcrawlers can do it. Observation Totems don't "expose" them at all (which sucks, it would be a good way to balance it if they could). However, wards have like 450 HP which takes a decent time for Nightcrawlers to kill, especially since they don't target it very easily. And, it only works as a counter early game because once they have raped everything and can place 4 wards at a time then you can't keep up with them. But it does really shut down a minion oak until about level 10.

Yeah - I agree. A decent erb that can micro his crawlers really can contain a minion oak pretty damn well. Consider that erb doesn't need to go a minion build at all to counter... just send the rollies everytime the oak sets a ward. He'll keep leveling his wards, you play assassin style and get ready to gank him with batswarm, bite, stun. But, you really do need to speed your time microing those crawlers. Its pretty effective in 2v2 and 3v3. You can even "convince an minion oak to stop with that spirits if you harrass them enough.

Firepower 1 is a pretty serious downgrade vs minions.

Agreed. I hate when people buy that and think they are doing you a favor. Oh well, though.

Quoting OMG_pacov,

reply 23

Firepower 1 is a pretty serious downgrade vs minions.
Agreed. I hate when people buy that and think they are doing you a favor. Oh well, though.

Because of the splash damage? I don't understand.

I didn't know that nightcrawlers can hit wards, is it the only way to damage them? Weird bug if so. It's the first potentially legitimate strategy against oak minions that I've seen though, thanks.

The splash damage is bugged. It reduces tower's splash from 100% to 10% making it raped by minions.

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Minion Oak, the new build of every single match I'm in