Fire Torchbearer for Experienced Players?

No, you can't be. You're awful late game and you can kill mobs just as effectively with Rain Of Ice. The only reason you're tripling your teammates damage because you're killing mobs with your AOE all the time. TB should always have the most damage.

If anyone is running from your when you dish out 2k damage, which is all you're doing with nova and fireball, they're awful. If they're letting you catch them when they're weak, they're awful. TB is for supporting/assists. He can't solo a decent player. There is no way you Solo'd three people unless they were all 10 levels below you, and if that happened, they're awful.

Only skill you need in fire is Fireball so you can get Fire and Ice.

Most full fire TBs I've played with don't seem to do nearly as well as the ones who take skills from each side, or the full ice TBs either, mainly because so many of the skills from the ice tree are beneficial to a team, whereas fire is just damage and creep control.

Full Fire TB's are useful in the same way that a snipe build Regulus is useful: it puts you in the position of ending the game early. Since going on an auto-attack binge as TB typically doesn't end well, all TB builds rely on abilities to do damage. The difference is, ice offers team support and control elements, even when their damage becomes outscaled, whereas a fire TB eventually becomes less able to keep up with DG's that are pumping out serious auto attack DPS or have stacked HP through the roof.

Therefore, the answer to your question ultimately comes down to your team's strategy. If you're confident you'll all be dominating early game enough to completely destroy your opponent and end the game around lvl 15, go for it. Hell, even if you let them catch up to you in levels, as long as your team has avoided deaths consistantly, you should still have the money advantage to have superior gear and end it. But if something goes wrong, and they start matching/exceeding you in gear, your fire TB has becomes much less useful than an ice TB.

The thing is, I get *better* late game, I typically end the game when I'm level 20 and everybody else is 15...with Ashkandur and Mageslayer. I'm a beast as fire, and no amount of control can keep up with it. Every time I try throwing a hybrid build together it fails miserably.

Keep in mind this is all just from my personal experience, and that's mainly been me and two friends against four hard AIs. I can take on two or three at a time and send them all running or kill them. But again, in my personal experience - Fire > Fire + Ice > Ice.

Full fire, with the ice attacks to boost fireball is only way I play tb. You have to remember that fire gets speed/attack speed/damage boost from one of the passives in fire. While you cant fire on the move, if you add a bit of movement speed, then the usual demigod item mix for damage boosting/attack speed you can single autoattack people down just fine, then finish with a fireball/blast wave combo. Combine with the mid game leveling speed from all the ae it works quite well. I've faced plenty of frost Tb's and while the cooldown increase is annoying all you have to do is move back for a short time since you're faster as fire. The ice skills in general just dont charge fast enough to be a big threat and are rather weak until you hit level 15.

You need to play and gear fire much like you would a melee character, high armor/health. Attack Speed/Damage/Life Tap. Late game the abilties are just there to soften them up and you need to be in close to get the most out of circle of fire and fire nova. Finish with fireball.

While alot of the game is teamwork, Fire Torchbearer is one of the setups I think of as my most likely to win as when I play. Until support skills are boosted more, damage is king.

I can tell you right now its because you are playing against AI. Your strategy would not work online and you would not have 2 Artifacts.

My build is Straight fireball + rain of ice until lvl 8 and 1 frost nova in there > 1 in shatter thingy at 9 > 2 in Fireball and ROI at 10 > restin to shatter thingy until 13 > 2 in Fire and Ice and the lvl 15 ROI thing, rest into frost nova and w/e you want.

All you can really do is Peg people with fireball and ROI until you hit lvl 15. If you're getting close enough to fire nova, CoF, etc, you'll get slaughtered online.

I actually just wrote a guide on Fire Torchbearer, as I have no doubt in my mind that playing as full fire can be highly effective both early game and late game.

Torchbearer of the Immolation (Fire) Guide

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/350605

My guide is based off of experience and winning online with random teammates and versus players as apposed to computers.

Ice is about support and you lose a lot of damage this way, Fire is about damage...and damage is control, in many cases.   I believe they both can serve thier purpose, however I have not yet had much experience with trying to jump from one to the other, and remain....skeptical as it is not feasible in a combat situation to waste time switching forms, however it is possible that the utility of ice could be used within a group to be highly effective.

Exactly that. No matter how "hard" the AI is, its still a AI and the AI in demigod are prone to suiciding into Human players with relative ease. I can devour them in my sleep. And it wouldn't be that hard to nuke a bunch of them to death with the Torch Bearer, as AI are very good at feeding human players.

But online I have hardely seen a TB player since they aren't usually that great, I like the TB though, especially for what he says ahah, but not the Demi for me.

Hm, well, I myself am relatively new but I use fiery Torch Bearer with relative success.

It was said that he is for assists...and there's nothing wrong with that.

The way I see it, it's important to stick behind your ally as a pure fire Torch Bearer, dishing out damage while remaining unharmed. That coupled with AoE to quickly take down reinforcements while leveling and gaining stronger Fireballs, well, that just seems like the fiery Torch Bearer play style, and I like it. Especially with a Rook on the team. Great fun.

I consider myself an excellent demigod player, I have 15-20 screenies of endgame stats with me 3-7 levels higher than everyone else in the game with 200+ favor points etc.  I play full fire tb and I believe that is the best way to go.  There are only two times I switch to ice:

1) when capping flags or early game in idle periods in order to grab the mana buff real quickly

2) when I am oom or other situations when I want to be able to run and shoot normal attack simultaneously, like when chasing someone down when I'm too oom for a fireball.  Typically this is early game stuff as well.

i agree with a previous poster arsonide.  to test a spec you MUST play online against intelligent humna beings.  You can comp stomp all day as any spec.  Try Fire on pantheon and report back what you find, i myself am tinkering with the TB and would benefit from your analysis. 

I think its been proven already that the following formula is foolproof:

1) Go pure DPS

2) Unload all your damage

3) Win Duels vs. Hard AIs

4) Farm up a couple Artifacts

5) Own a couple of comp-stomps with your friends

6) Post on forums that all DPS builds are the way to go

Try playing pantheon or team up your friends vs. an equal team then get back to us.  There is a huge difference between duels and team battles, Comps and Players.  You only need to play against one good player with any general to learn that all fire TB is lulz-worthless in most situations unless the rest of your team carries you with disables.

For everyone else, let me give you a couple of easy fixes for Fire TB:

Erebus: Swarm, Bite, mist dodge fireball, own TB.

Oak: Penitence as soon as you see fireball animation.  Shield the aoe attacks, own TB.

QoT: Your shield is already on and can be recast pretty soon after it drops, spike damage tickles.

Sedna: He just did 3k damage to you but you have 6k total, 70 hps regen, and healed 1200 of it, who cares.

Rook: You are probably just Boned (unique case), try to bolder roll stomp and out dps him.

Regulus: Mark of the Betrayer, mines, probably a draw if you survive original Damage dump.

UB: Self explanatory: venom, ooze, grip, lulz, only issue is getting in range, let any general initiate.

Ice or Combo TB:  Interrupt Fball, lulz when you outdps him from range, chase down with aura/superior moving attack, lulz more cause hes probably going back to play more comp-stomps after this

Fire definately has the DPS advantage, but having to get in close to use CoF and FN make it quite dangerous. I'd still go with some frosty skills tbh

1) Not talking about playing against AI. If your opponents are distracted/not melee-oriented, it's entirely viable to run in with fire nova and CoF and then run out, especially if you're using a HP heavy TB build or have speed items/wand of speed. Need to assess the situation, obviously, since sometimes it will get you killed, but this isn't an AI strat...I have no reason to discuss AI strats with a guy who is asking about playing online.

2) Never mentioned having 2 artifacts, or even any artifacts. I really don't even know why you bring this up, since I don't see where it matches up in my post.

Oh, why didn't you say earlier?

That explains it all.

I quoted you instead of OP on accident.

I will say this...there is something to be said for the surprise factor of playing a hybrid. The enemy never quite knows how to engage you and you can mix up the way you start combat. Keeps you from falling into a rut and people adapting to your spell sequence.

Besides, it's a lot of fun to play ice most of the match and then when a DG is running away suddenly switch to fire and hit him with the big fireball he didn't know you had.

there's a place for a full fire TB build in multiplayer. its not a DG killer though. it is however exceptionally good at lane pushing since nothing owns creeps as much as those Fire AoE spells and Fireball is a great anti-tower spell. combine that with the aura that buffs up all your reinforcements speed and damage and you've got a first class lane pusher.

on the other hand, if you expect to actually be useful in multiple DG clashes you need to be ice. Deep Freeze and Frost Nova are way too good to not have when fighting enemy DGs. 

I Picked the game up a week ago, was an avid Dota player for about 2 years . 

I have had a total of 12 online games half those as a fire TB the other half as Ice or Hybrid  I know this isnt a ton of experience. 

However, I agree a 100 % that the fire TB late game is weak in terms of skill  spell damage, it just isnt enough to counter Hp stacking the spell don’t scale .  That being said you can play very affective support from the back winging fireballs and keeping the lanes clear and tag teaming , (this is a team game).   

The Fire TB shines from lv 4-14 If you can get the kills early you can gain the upper hand.  The only issue is see with having heroes considered early - mid game is that there are only 8 heroes to pick from so it makes it very undesirable to chose one .    I feel this is the case of  any of the glass cannon heros though there  item based and very dependent on wining the early game.  

As the writer of the Icebuild TB guide, I want to add some precisions to what I wrote.

In terms of raw DPS, FB does more damage than IB. That's just plain numbers. But the whole point is, is DG a game about raw DPS or teamplay?

When your write "damage IS control", I couldn't agree less. Controling a fight is determining the outcome, in other words knowing if you can defeat your opponenent or if you will have to run oom or outnumbered. Having the ennemy DG flee is, imo, exactly what you DO NOT want. If you can't kill your opponent alone, you can prevent him from retreating, waiting for support.

When you blast your FB + FN and the ennemy runs, you just lost a kill. If you let your opponent engage you, slowing his attacks with ice rain + frost aura, eventually freezing him for 3 sec and shattering him, when your mates arrive the target is mid life and fully debuffed. At this point let me quote my friend George Clooney : "Ice build, what else" ?

Hybrid build is tricky and imo not ideal for every game, partly because its only fully operational very late in the game (15+, obviusly). Now lets suppose you got a maxed out hybrid (max fire ball and shater, max ice rain). If you open at a range with a FB, your opponent will flee in a 1v1 situation, so you loose. I would start in Icec stance, approach target, IR, freeze shatter and then only turn to fire stance and FB him.

The way I see it (I still have to test this out), this is a fail because even with a IR, Freeze, Shatter, FB combo you will not drop your target (remember we talk end game here). And you end up in fire stance, not slowing down your ennemy's retreat, having FB on cd and too far away for a Fire Nova. But I will test a hybrid build i promise!

That's why I prefer sticking to the Ice build, still swapping stance for mana regen or improved weapon dmg as stated in my guide

No burst damage will ever really take down targets end game....you have to wear them down with a mix of autos and skills and save your burst for the killing blow, imo.

I agree that he shines early game, however I am certain he is able to shine late game as well properly equipped along with most DGs.   As I point out in a later reply when I am playing Ice TB, Icebearer is slower to get going but can be more effective late game.   One of the fanciest things about Fire Torchbearer however is his Area of Effect Damage.   Sure Ice can deal 1000 with blizzard.   That isn't nearly the same as Fire's area damage.   If enemy players rush at you and try to make a push the fact that you can deal damage to an entire area can be significant and also give your other allies the upper hand.   Obviously every DG is better in different situations.   Fire Torch isn't nearly as effective even early on if there is a Sedna around.

Obviously things are highly situational.   You have to remember that in many games of equal skill, harassment is just as effective of a tactic as anything else.   Very skilled players will not put themselves in a situation often where they could be killed in general.

Both builds are good.  I prefer going mostly with fire, and getting deep freeze up so that you can get the 1350 fireball.  The key to TB is to grab a mana helm or two then stack hp/armor.  Don't go for +dmg items, or faster attack items.  If you stack hp/armor, you can have 5k hp+ with a ton of armor.  Remember armor doesn't negate spell/ability damage, so end game their dmg(regulus, oak, unclean beast) has gone way down while yours is still good.

Hey man, you found your sweet spot, that's what matters