Is Regulus underpowered when it comes to capping and holding flags?

Take some time to lay mines between you and the direction the enemy will likely be coming from.

Is that realy gonna work though, because QoT will just absorb all the damage, Oak will just make himself invincible etc...and I'll still get owned at the flag dispute?

Regulus is by nature more of a back lines heavy hitter. His unique strength is his ability to affect combat far from his location either through use of Sniping or Mines, and his autoattack is even potentially the longest range autoattack in the game.

The trade off is having 0 stuns and a glass jaw. He'll always be one of the more fragile DGs.

However, pair him up with, say, a general or a Rook with a tower garden, and if you use Mines effectively and don't get mana screwed, you'll be able to deny territory like mad.

So no, Regulus is not the guy you want to solo the front lines. But if you know his place in the game, you'll be able to make a substantial contribution to your team. DG is a team game, and especially in Regulus's case, it's rare that you should let him be without support for too long.

Mines are very good for holding flags, although as fixmyfavor notes, there are counters (it would be stupid if there was none).

The key to Regulus being good isn't his flag holding abilities, but his ridiculously good anti-DG and anti-creep abilities. The fact he can harrass someone out of a lane from half the map away is very useful (and very annoying).

So then I should stop trying to cap or hold flags on my own when playing as Regulus, right? 

The thing is it seems natural to do that because if I don't go to that flag right away, then no one else will since my allies are already busy capping other flags.   Therefore it seems like a tradeoff in that the enemy can get more flags capped initially.

On the other hand, being alone as I cap or try to hold flags causes all the other problems mentioned.

I guess the tradeoff is just something I have to accept, and stick with an allied DG at all times to cap and hold even if it means we have one less guy (me) capping individually and therefore we get less flags due to that?

what you do is leave a nice juicy neutral flag as bait for an enemy DG. irresistable bait. the flag, of course, was surrounded with mines and you're hiding just out of visual range ready to charge in with Angelic Fury on and go take pot shots at the guy. then you Snipe him dead when he panics and starts running away.

My Regulus can stand alone against other DG's only early in the game. That's when I'll be getting our first flag caps in while grinding mobs to get my first couple of level and harassing other enemies players out of my lane.

In early-mid game, however, I will absolutely need support to at all harass the enemy and cap flags. After I have levelled up my mines, I will be able to seed areas well enough to hold of the enemy for short periods of time. But even then I can only do that temporarily if there isn't a strong bottleneck, which few maps have.

And no, it should not be a "trade off," as you put it, since if you and a another player team up together to push back all your enemies that are trying to solo, they will not be able to stand up to you, and you can confront them, quickly force them back, and cap/re-cap your flags.

So if your enemies are foolish enough to try to solo everything, and you know how to play as a team, you should not be getting less flags: you should be getting more flags. In games I have won, I do frequently get the highest number of flags capped.

He is weak in the first few levels.  Yes you should retrieat and let the enemy cap the flag.   But you should also kite them.

While they are caping the flag, shoot at them from a distance.  If they run at you, you run away, once in a while snipe them.  They should not be able to damage you that much.   Eventually they get annoyed of you and need to retreat with very low health.

If you are not good with kiting, then yea stay away from the enemy until you get stronger with better items.

Thanks for the good insights, everyone.

Seems my biggest problem was conventional thinking of "cap every flag that needs to be capped and hold every flag that needs to be held" even when I don't have effective ways to do so. 

I shall try the more sensible thinking outlined in this thread instead.

I basically agree with this. The advantage lies in that early in the game, your ToLs are usually close to the flag. TB aside, Regulus has a longer range attack than any other DGs (really, QoT's weak vine slap doesn't count), and he can more easily retreat to safety of his ToLs' range and come back out at attacking distance than the enemy can.

Regulus is also underpowered at healing his allies, and stunning people.

Not all DG's are as good as other DG's at everything.  Regulus kills people, rook captures and holds flags.  Everyone else is somewhere in between.

Regulus would probably be my last choice for DG in a 1v1 (except against AI's, who are stupid) for the reasons you list.  2v2 or larger and he's fine.  So long as you have a buddy to fall back on Regulus has breathing room to do what he does best: pick away at the enemy.

Considering Regulus is probably the best Demigod killer in the game, I don't think he's underpowered at all.

I just played a game 1v1 against regulus as sedna (well, 4v4 fortress on prison, but the rest were AI running in circles getting themselves killed lol)

A lot of the match was fighting over the one flag that would let the citadel upgrade to level 8 and allow catapultasauri to kill off the fortresses.

It came down to the fact that it was impossible to kill regulus due to his slow and long range, but he couldn't come near to me to cap the flag without me killing him. Needless to say I stood my ground and eventually forced him to hide in base.

That said, if it was a real 2v2 I wouldn't have been able to run away to safety if another DG came to help. Also he was able to snipe off most of the dumb AI, I had to do a lot of running to get the same number of kills.

I've found that I can take most DGs out with an auto attack Regulus build on a 1v1 basis from the mid game onwards.  There are some enemy DG builds which are an exception to this.

But yes, the biggest strength of Reg isnt his 1v1 abilities, but rather his teamwork.  If you can work properly with the rest of your teammates, you can do very bad things to the other team.

If you know someone is going to come for you at a flag like another poster said lay mines in the direction they are coming and Have MoB cued up to hit them as soon as they get in range then get mines re-cued up again.

I would have just outranged your fortresses.

Reg in the early game, you can forget it, trying to hold a lane, the best bet is to conserve your mana and wait for the DG to go back to base.

I use Reg to harass and to ninja flags when DGs move off. The best thing to aim for is to make sure you are always keeping at least one teammate in snipe range, so you can help them by sniping the dueller.

Cataract is an easy example. Hopefully you have two good team mates, who can hold the creep lanes. Now as Reg you can keep the middle flag busy, then simply run back and forth to help people out.

If the other team has no Reg, that means that at least one of them are tied up keeping the middle flag for their team, with no real way of helping a teammate.

Once you get to 3 mines, then you really can start to hurt other players, before that you are pretty much support and hassle material.