[Oak] Is It Worth Going With Minions?

there are 2 primary builds of Oak, you'll find variation but here they are, in short

Build 1: Raise Dead Ward focused, emphasis on minions and lane pushing

1 - Raise Dead 1

2 - Soul Power 1

3- Divine Justice 1

4 - Raise Dead 2

5 - Surge of Faith 1

6 - Shield 1

7 - Raise Dead 3

8 - Penitence 1

9 - Last Stand 1

10 - Raise Dead 4

11- Surge of Faith 2

12+ - build is basically complete, flesh out with whatever you like, common to max Morale to increase minion damage

Build 2: Penitence Focused, emphasis on killing enemy DG's with direct attack

1 - Penitence 1

2 - Divine Justice 1

3 - Shield 1

4 - Penitence 2

5 - Surge of Faith 1

6 - Shield 2

7 - Penitence 3

8 - Shield 3

9 - Last Stand 1

10 - Penitence 4

11 - Surge of Faith 2

12 - Shield 4

13+ - build is basically complete, common to max out Divine Justice and get Rally for decisive endgame DG duels

for Build 1 your equipment choices will generally be more focused on minions. you'll get minion boosting armor like Plate of the Crusader. minion boosting damage gear like Gloves of Fell Darkur. maybe you got a minion boosting Favor Item like Ring of Divine Might. you'll probably eventually try to buy all 3 rank 4 Idols. your endgame outputs massive sustained damage with a minion army put you're not very good at ganking enemy DGs since its relatively easy to run from you. 

for Build 2 your equipment choices are generally tanking gear and mana gear. you stay in combat for a long time so you need to take hits and you spam Penitence so you need alot of mana. you've also got your Shield trick so Heart of Life is top priority. you're probably taking Blood of the Fallen as your favor item. probably getting Nimoth Chest Guard, Vlemish Faceplate, and Heart of Life as your 3 highest priority equipment picks. you probably don't care much about your minions for damage but are very likely to get the rank 2 or rank 3 priest Idol because the healing is very useful. 

I'm curious to hear what people think about a potential Hybrid Oak build; one that focuses on Penitence (for anti-DG abilities) and relies on minions to boost DG damage?

The build foregoes Shield and Last Stand, and postpones Surge of Faith, to pump both Penitence and Raise Dead.  Divine Justice gets 1-2 points, and Soul Power gets 1.  I tend to put my last few points into Minion boosts and Divine Justice to gain benefit from the brutal Surge of Faith / Divine Justice creep-killing-army-healing combo.

Problem is, the build is trying to be the best of both worlds, and both skill selection and gear selection suffers for it.  Without Shield your tanking ability is very gear-dependent; and Penitence is not quite enough to carry a DG fight all by itself.  My personal feeling is that this build might be viable if you have a Sedna, Oak, or QoT partner to keep you in the fight while Penitence, Raise Dead, and Surge of Faith put the hurt on your opponents, but that may just be bunk

i've tried it, it doesn't work.

you can definitely squeeze the skill points in, you end up with this mix at level 12: Penitence 4, Raise Dead 4, Soul Power 1, Divine Justice 1, Surge of Faith 2

but the hybrid build doesn't have the item support to be competitive. there's a huge tension between stocking up on Health+Mana (totally necessary for Penitence build) and stocking up on minion boosters (totally necessary for Raise Dead build). 

so you just get a build that has all these awesome skills but either the minions are weak or you're constantly low on life and out of mana, depending on which items you had to skip. you may eventually be able to afford Gloves of Fell Darkur AND a Heart of Life but you're not gonna be able to get both any time soon. similar tensions come up between doing things like buying a good armor piece like Groffling Warplate vs. upgrading to rank 4 Idols. not gonna have enough money to do both. 

so again, its not the skills that limit you its the items. 

1. Raise Dead

2. Divine Justice

3. Pentinence

4. Raise Dead 2

5. Surge of Faith (you seriously only need 1 point in this)

6. Pentinence 2/Shield depending on how strong the other DGs are

and I go from there, throwing in Soul Power when I feel it's time, and beefing up Pentinence/Shield depending on what's needed most in lieu of Dead Ward 3/4.  With 1 rank in Surge of Faith farming, raising souls, and pushing towers is insanely easy, and Divine Justice with a Monk Idol helps out in the beginning where Oak lacks.  I pick up a Vlemish Faceguard/Hauberk of Life/Nimoth's Chest, whichever one I need most at the time.

Oak's minions are devestating, and he can take a beating while his minions pound face. Pentinence does some decent damage and adds on a hell of a lot of extra damage to your minions (not to mention the interupt and slow) and demigods on your team.

Oak rules.

When you have 6 level 4 minions and nearly a dozen or so spirits surrounding you in a creep wave and with high enough Divine Justice your creeps even stay alive you can really push like crazy, especially if you have a UB teamate along for the ride in the wave to take on any DG's one on one with you assisting.

But like others have said, there are several builds for each DG and they play to several play styles.  But I would not recommend trying to make a "jack of all trades" build as you'll just get owned at the higher levels.

I think the level 1 idols are the most cost efficent items in the game, and you should always get all three first. Priests are the fastest way to regen hp after the health crystal or HoL, Archers outrange towers and hit multiple enemies with their attacks, and Minotuars are dirt cheap.

Additionally, things that generically say they effect your "minions", like the Glove of Fell-Drakur, also include Idol minions. Therefore the puny +8 damage it grants is multiplied by up to sixteen times.

Now, wether to eventually upgrade your idols to level 4 is up to you. They get about twice as strong, twice as hard to kill... but cost 4-5 times as much to buy, and twice as much to summon. Up to you.

level 1 priest (monks) costs 900.

level 4 priest (bishops) cost 2700.

about 3 times as as expensive, not 4 to 5. 

Oh, the cost went way down since I last checked, then (used to be 1000 and 4750). Thanks for the tip~

If you play a general without minions = Fail

 Oak's spirits alone in my build do +600 damage on top of Oak you only need 1 point in pent to interrupt and 1 point in shield to save your butt.

The build I use with Oak is:

Lvl 1: Penitance.  Scares people (except UB) out of your lanes to let you level.  Oak's best power hands down.

Lvl 2: Death Ward.  Mooks are good.

Lvl 3: Divine Justice.  Health and mana are better.

Lvl 4: Pen II or Death Ward II.  Depends on what I'm facing.  A lot of assassins and I'll take pen, generals death ward.

Lvl 5: Surge of Faith I.  Oak's second best power, and really speeds creep farming.  At this point I feel comfortable fighting most demigods, but I'm still pretty cautious with assassins.

Lvl 6: Pen II or DW II (see lvl 4)

Lvl 7: Pen III.  At this point I want to see Demigods running from me.

Lvl 8: DW III.  Spirits are a major part of my DPS at this point, and often surprise people by how much I put out.

Lvl 9: Soul Power.  I've got enough spirits for it to matter at this point, and the boost will be a bit of a surprise.  I can match virtually every DG in straight melee by now.

Lvl 10:  Pen IV.  Now you can't even run.  800 burst damage to lead and finish a fight plus slows.

Lvl 11: DW IV.  Full power to minions.

Lvl 12: SoF II.  Again, basic power increase to a great power.

Lvl 13: Morale I.  My minions at this point match me in DPS, and nobody else on the battlefield is close without artifacts.

Lvl 14: Save.

Lvl 15:  Frenzy and SOF III.  If I can't drop every enemy DG in a straight melee by now, something has gone dreadfully wrong and they've outmoneyed or outleveled me.

Lvl 16-20:  Morale it up, fuzzball.

By the end, without artifacts, I'm slamming down a ton of DPS.  The weakness of this build, of course, is someone who stacks armor (not health, I'm a damage machine by now) because all my damage except Pen and SOF is physical.

I am not sure it's Oak's best build, but it has worked for me.  I always purchase monks early, speed and more speed, and minion damage equipment.  The best thing to do is run from a demigod while assigning your minions to attack him, so he chases you for that kill, but ends up getting rocked by the unexpectedly large minion damage.

Behrens, what items are you using with that build?

1:  Monks

2:  Boots of Speed

3:  Vlemish Faceguard

4:  Plenor Battlecrown

5:  Hauberk of Life

6:  Fell-Darkur

7:  Rest of minion idols

8:  Artifacts that boost minion damage if it goes that far

Actually, most of my money tends to go to cap locks and tele scrolls early after 1-3, so it'll be pretty late that I get any of those, but Oak is one of the demis who has good natural health, so I can generally handle myself.

Switch up to suit situation and enemies (UB I'll tend to take more life items, QoT I'll generally get more minion damage, etc)