N00blet seeking help ;)

Rook is actually one of the worst demigods to start with.

UB is the best, since he is the most simplest and the hardest to strew up with.

I would say Sedna is probably the second best, but you have to be careful: a bad Sedna can very easily lose the match since your teammates may overextend. You have to know when to heal yourself (answer: almost never) and when to heal your teammates (pretty muchh always) and when to heal and where to heal... and stuff

Erebus is stupid strong, so he is third

Oak has several very simple builds that are quite effective but he is much less durable in the early game than the three above which makes him much more tricky to play until you are used to being a total pansy first few levels.

Then is Reg. Bad Reg is almost as bad as a bad Rook but if you manage to not play like a retard, at least you don't die, so you don't feed.

Then is Rook. He has no capability toflee and he is the easiest demigod to gank and requires the strongest team to reach his full effectiveness (which is quite high).

TB is next. He has a lot of difficult form dancing and he is squishy, though terrifying if played correctly in the correct situation (Levels 15+ TB dominates... not so much the 15 before that )

Queen is crazy micro-intensive, which is really fun if you like that sort of stuff. That said, well, she is an artform...

Hehe thanks for the info mate. I totally agree with everything you said; I always knew Rook is very hard to play against actual opponents, and it looks like UB is the best bet for me. That being said;

So Rook is actually pretty powerful when used correctly and with a good team? I mean, I know that if he is at level 20 and has good equipment he becomes a wrecking ball (depending on the build), but still......you know what I mean. I'll stick with UB and.....hmm....Erebus for general. I sorta like Erebus; not as much as Oak, but I am better as him.

Thanks again mate!

That was a typo, sorry. I meant to say "Oak" there. It's funny, I just said he's a no go than I say he's one of the  best starters I must be tired.

Ooops sorry; my internet stuffed up when I submitted the first post, so I redid it; didn't notice the first post had actually been posted. Sorry for the double-post.

"

So Rook is actually pretty powerful when used correctly and with a good team? I mean, I know that if he is at level 20 and has good equipment he becomes a wrecking ball (depending on the build), but still......you know what I mean. I'll stick with UB and.....hmm....Erebus for general. I sorta like Erebus; not as much as Oak, but I am better as him.

Thanks again mate!"

From several hundred games, these are the trends that I have noticed for demigods: (this is pre-Oc/DA, of course)

-- Sedna is very strong early game. Levels 1-5 are her shining point, with a weak point at 4 where her skills aren't able to match up with the increase of others (you can get a larger heal, but you don't have the mana for it so... could die if you had enough for Heal I but not Heal II . You could get Pounce, but you'll never have mana for that. Last choice is Inner Grace which is decent but meh). She is a very good choice for designated Currency-bitch since she can basically survive with monks and Blood of the Fallen for a decent portion of the game, which makes her a stronger team-character.

She continues to be quite useful and strong, with a weak point around 6-7 again. Level 8 she can typically kick other general's ass due to Counter Healing but as bursts become stronger and engagements more intense she again begins to decline for a few levels. Finally, levels 10-12 she has another rise in usefulness. 1k pounce hurts, Silence locks portals and heals from herself and bishop heals are huge. However, as other demigods start to get Artifacts (which she can't really make full use of and overrides her ability to out-heal damage) she finally tapers off at the end.

-- The rule of thumb with a typical hybrid beast is this: If you have an even number of levels, you A are weaker than others. If you have an odd number of levels, you are stronger than others. However, Beast has a high bar and it stays high most the game, gradually rising. A hybrid really shines levels 7-10 where they can just spam Spit and Grasp over and over and over and this dps is terrifying. Once people start walking around with 7k and lifesteal, Spit becomes not much of a threat.

A pure-ooze starts weaker and less pushy than a hybrid but is much, much more useful in games with large dogpiles and once level 8 hits. A pure Ooze can pretty easily hitting 7k, though it's a bit of a greedy build until mid-game. He is also completely dependant on holding the HP flag the whole game. However, once Sigils hit the map and very few 1v1 skirmishes occur, an Ooze Beast outlasts a pretty much every other demigod, with the last man standing getting a portal...

-- A Blood Rook has a very strong levels 1-2, but he goes oom quickly and is then rendered rather useless until he gets a few helms. Mid-game, tower rook is king. Period. Levels 7-10, when the game is more static since most teams have the majority of their towers still up, a tower rook has the best pushing power in the game and a terrifying amount of dps. However, as a game becomes more and more fluid with ninja-capping Rook has less time to build a tower farm and, therefore, becomes less useful. However, he has a ton of HP, Boulder Roll is fantastic and so is a high-level hammer slam. He can also defend a locked friendly portal extremely well, as he can defend a locked enemy one. 

A Staff of Renewel rook starts being useful earlier and for a bit longer at the cost of being weaker early on (6-10 is his moment, but 1-2 is meh).

-- Erebus starts strong and stays strong. Bite is incredibly useful for both offensive and defensive uses. Bite Swarm makes him a wonderful ganker and also excellent at avoiding them. Minions are great for destroying towers... he can be built to do it all. However, he is very mana-dependent and so also tends to not be useful until mid-game. Not as useful as a Rook, however, he stays useful longer since he has excellent ninja-portal capabilities. He also has excellent Level 15 skills. He is similar to Beast, who pretty much is good most of the game, with certain moments being better.

-- Queen is terrifying early levels. She can 2v1 early game like a champ and is excellent at tower demolition. However, she does not scale very well and pretty much sucks after level 8.

-- Oak starts weak, but he is the best demigod levels 10-15, with most builds being very strong starting level 8 or so. Level 7 oak with Shield III should be unkillable, which allows him to be pretty much insane. he also has excellent portal capping abilities.

-- TB is sorta meh through most of the single digit levels. He has decent anti-demigod abilities but nothing fantastic. However, He has excellent farming abilities which means he is one of the richest (and most well-equipped ) demigod on the map, which helps compensate. He can push towers pretty well and adds some nice support but he isn't the best demigod to have at your back.

However, once creeps hit the table, whether Giants or Catapults, he starts being extremely more useful, though less in a demigod-killing way and much more subtly. If you're an ice build, you can pretty much nuke an entire wave at once for massive XP and gold bonus, and let your wave destroy whatever towers stand in your way. If you're a fire build, Fire of Fire suppresses enemy creeps while Fire Aura means any enemy who fights in your creep wave will take extreme amounts of damage. If you have a torch on your team, plan on winning through creeps, not kills. Creeps is typically how most games are won, though, so that's a plus.

Ice or Hybrid TB also has terrifying burst DPS levels 15 and up. He can pretty much drop 2500+ damage on any single target in a few seconds, while killing a creep wave, freezing all the minions that you may have, and fucking up your cooldowns for a good half minute. Fire is more dependent on you being stupid and fighting in a wave, as Fire tends to be more creep-orientated fo the two.

-- Reg's snipe is very useful and he is strong early game (1-4 for sure), and then spikes again when he gets 3x mines. Snipe helps screw with your opponents, making them run earlier or not engage as often. Which earns you lanes and warscore. However, he is poor at holding his own lane and once people have HP stacked to death, snipe is somethign you can pretty much ignore. Mines are still nice, however. Still, with a Reg you really have a sort of 'swaddling the baby in it's crib' mentality. You have to restrict the enemy team so much in the early game they have no hope for comeback.

Mines are nasty though. But, still, he is really not very useful after levels 10 or so. Except on larger maps, like Levi.

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Anyway, hit me up sometime I might walk you thru the ropes, who knows.

Read the strategy compilations and pick one that sounds fun to you. Follow the basic build and strategy, but above all else LEARN NOT TO DIE. Life + Regen items are your best bet when learning.

Some advice on things not to play as a beginner.

If you pick to learn QoT and play well with her, your other DGs will suffer for it.

Fire TB is also easily interruptible, so is hard to play against good players. You'll think you're doing well learning fire TB, and some warping Oak will come in and rape you 7 times in one game even though you are a decent player, and you'll be like "I don't see how the outcome could have been any different"

Some strong builds are boring to play. You can only stand so many bat swarm -> Bite -> thwack with scepter kills before going a little crazy. Learn builds that require you to do different things to win.

Aren't you guys missing the Demon Assassin?

Don't have enough expierence with DA to give a good estimate of him. But he seems to be a demigod-designed for ganks and therefore 'pr0 only'. He should be played like a ranged support character until it is time to BAM Shadow-Swap - Warp Strike - BAM you're dead. But he also tends to be a late bloomer, maybe even a little more so than Oak.

I just started playing a few weeks ago and opted to learn UB and haven't regretted it. I started off with a pure ooze UB that has huge HP and regen and is nearly unkillable in late levels but it's morphed into a hybrid spit/ooze/grasp UB that can control lanes better early on by scaring off enemy DGs from lanes with spit and still has the late game dps of ooze. You sacrifice a bit in stats and definitely need a mana item where the pure ooze UB does not, but you're better rounded overall. I mostly only die from overconfidence and get lured into a mistake or three, not because someone has a stronger build/DG than me.

Lately I've started to branch out a bit, I don't like any of the other assassins so I've been playing some Sedna, Erebus, and Oak. Sedna's great with a good assassin teammate to provide the punch you lack. You can control lanes fairly well and you're very difficult to gank. Erebus doesn't really fit into a team as well so if you're looking for a general to carry a weak team he or Oak is the way to go. He's got much more punch than Sedna and better at finishing off kills with a bat swarm/bite than UB's spit and pray method. Oak is sort of a compromise between Sedna and Erebus, a bit more punch than Sedna and more utility than Erebus. Essentially unkillable once he has a few levels in shield, I would almost recommend you not play Oak as a new player so you learn how to stay out of trouble better.

A mediocre UB is absolutely terrifying. A good UB is unstoppable unless you have a UB to counter with. A thing to note with UB, however, is that he has very low health in the beginning of the game and slightly squishy. I always tell my team to target UB first in the early game. The only thing you really need to remember when playing UB is that you aren't bulletproof. Many people who play UB for some reason have a tendency to pick impossible fights. You can maybe win them in the late game, but early game you have to play conservatively.

Hmm a good UB is plenty stoppable. Hybrids have certain weaknesses that others can exploit depending on your exact build. Ooze is hard to kill and the AA-40% debuff is a complete pain to deal with, making it harder to kill others, but an Ooze beast by itself isn't likely to get kills either. It doesn't have any great chasing abilities (other than his high innate speed) and nothing for escape. So, if you see a huge-HP Ooze beast, you have to guage if you can win it or not, not just right-click and hope for the best. If  you can't, kite him, he has no range. If you can, do so.

Of course, for UB, trading kills is a good thing since he has the best gold -> HP ratio due to his high innate Armor and Ooze. Just keep that in mind.

Yeah, I wouldn't say UB is unstoppable, there are some fights that just aren't worth picking, especially early game. I have a tough time pushing a good Sedna or Rook out of lanes, nevermind killing them. So you have to choose another battle, creep your way to a level advantage and some weapon dmg/lifesteal and then go back and inform them that you do in fact own that flag and you were just letting them borrow it for awhile.

It's not about DG choice per se, but I would recommend reading the "counter strategies for Oak" thread that's a few down from this one as well. RAWRR's post gives a clear and succinct description of how to handle the early game that can be generalized beyond just Oak usage.

Ah thanks for all the replies guys. I'll definitely go through the stuff ya's mentioned, and UB all the way; I'm beginning to like playing him. I'll try multiplayer tonight; we'll see what happens I guess. Thanks again!