Primary Encounter

If i play a tower rook with Staff of renewal, I usually pair with a general+monks (preferably sedna) and TP immediatly to the health flag. I pick banded + scroll + lock. I try to dominate the health flag most of the game. If I ever need to go back to base, I lock the health flag and go shop, and TP immedialty before lock expires. With a general it is extremly difficult to push back a tower rook from a lane in cata because they are very tiny.

blood is better >.> always, do not listen to these people who claim otherwise.

Late game staff of renewal helps with the cooldowns for boulder roll, hammer slam, and towers.  

Izuz, do you generally buy a second tp at your first trip to base?

If I lock the HP flag and walk back to base, I almost always buy a TP and TP back asap, unless I really cannot afford it. I try to stay in my lane as much as I can.

I get Banded and tele+ lock too, and usually grab the archer tower as my 2nd skill point, just to lessen the annoyance of ranged characters. I normally stand just in front of my farm, and move back and forth. Depending on the resistance I meet, I will either be pushed out and head back to buy scalemail or scaled helm, or just wait it out and hold until 2300, when I lock, port and buy Vlemish. The rook I play is a tower/hammerbowl hybrid though, and has some variance in playstyle. Sometimes I'll just grab level 1 bowl and hammer to scare people, sometime I'll force hammer to get kills. It's all relative to the game at hand.

And yes, there is a very significant correlation between pushing a demigod out of a lane, getting the first blood and winning the game.

blood is only good in the first 5 lvls or so...then after that you really just wasted a favor item because 800 life isn't much mid to late game

EDIT: Although i suppose +5 HPS wouldn't be too bad if you're stacking HPS+ items

Thanks for your advice guys, I think it will help me.

Blood isn't always better. Staff of Renewal works fine on Rook.

health stack sucks.... that makes Demigod boring

not even that expensive item but the first preferred item is Blood

Why the hell is Wrath worth 2000favor?? just saying

Whenever I see, beast has 2750

oak has 2500

Erebus 2450

TB, regulus 1800 or whatever

in 80% of the game now days

Boring,, isn't it???

I hate seeing an enemy erebus surrounded by a ton of minions with 8k health, no point in even approaching him late game.

with a sigil on him !!

100% agree. Health items are such a HUGE problem in the game. I HATE THEM!

What's the solution? If you buff DPS such that it is now preferable to health stacking you aggravate the problem twice:

first, people have less health since they are replacing +hp items with +dmg

second, people are dealing more damage, probably so fast that monks become useless since they will get no more than one heal typically.

The game drags out into a quick-draw match. I don't know about you, but I don't like FPS in my RTS.

Alternative strategies are cool and all, but if you nerf hp stacking then they need to increase passive HP elsewhere, or something. Not just buff Gauntlets of Brutality to +100 weapon damage. (please don't, oh god).

Cut HP items in half. Problem solved.

If ALL HP items gave half then they all have the same value relitive to each other but now other items are viable.

Battles would be quicker and not just annoying slug fests.

I'm sorry, but if you think your a bad-ass when your an Erebus with 7k health just sitting in battle...you're mistaken.

High HP items just ruin the game for me. I love Demigod, I really do. I wouldnt post as often I do if I didnt love this game.

Edit: Maybe not half. With the mod I tested with I cut them by about 40%, but different per item.

I said it before, it's a real easy fix. Increase the base HP and HP/level of all demigods by 20%. Health items are now less of an increase, but they still provide the same bang for buck. Upside is, new players don't get raped with sharp rusty iron bars any more.

@Teseer:

Who says I play Ereb? Keep the ad hominem out of your arguments please.

I'm not going to really bother explaining how it makes the game a quick draw. But consider how fast people drop as it is in 3v3 dogpiles WITH sigils. Halving item hp bonus decreases your hp by roughly 30%. Sigils make it another 15%. Yeah.... everyone dies.

Plus, it makes ability damage an even MORE big of a deal. Spit II would take more than a third of any health-stackers hp. 2 Spits is enough to send any monkless person home.

DA's burst... oh yeah. That's going to really hurt as well. Same with Torch or with Snipe. Buffing these guys is good, fI guess.

Sedna gets nerfed like f'k because she is already the lowest hp melee and lower hp weakens monks and she is dependent on monks to compete with other melee characters.

Now it's going to be even harder to stop a tower Rook. Too much dps to walk through.

Erebus won't die any easier: he still has Bite, Batswarm and Mist.

Oak has massive burst and his late-game woudl be buffed accordingly. Plus he has shield

Spit Beast: buff

Pure-Ooze Beast: nerf

Ereb: not really affected

Rook: buff, though very early game nerf

Sedna: nerf

Asassin Oak: buff

Minion Oak: nerf

Reg, DA, Torch: early game buff (when they are stronger anyway, except maybe DA) mid game slight buff

Queen: buff (shield)

Basically, Sedna would no longer be a competitive character, the upper tier would still stay upper tier and thus low-tier would stay low tier: everyone would just die faster. Blood no longer becomes worth it, so we'd see basically a lot of people running around with Cloak of the Night since that gives more Mana for more ability spamming: which wins games. This of course gives a massive early-game buff to assassins in general (monks weaken) but esp Reg and Torch.

@Regicide:

My opinion has always been:

Incrase starting hp by a fair amount (250-500 hp or so). Weaken Blood by 150. Increase hp/level by 50%. Decrease low-tier hp items by 50% (Banded). Decrease mid-tier hp items by 25% (Unbreakable/Nimoth). Leave high-tier hp items alone (Duelist, Groffing, Artifacts). Make Sigils into 40%. Slight general rebalancing of various demigods.

Half the amount of hp monks heal while you're taking damage (if you got hit within the last 2 seconds with an attack that did more than 150 damage, so that Spit can't prevent monks heals).

No, don't touch the items. Once Demis have more health, items will provide less of a benefit automatically.

Make the priesthood heal 250/350/450/550 health, fixed, not relative to the Demigod.

Make tower upgrades actually do something other than waste your gold.

There, 70% of the problem is fixed.

Dude man, if you think so, that's fine. I played a lot of games with nerfed health items and they were a LOT more fun.

But a lot of games in a closed selection of people is a far cry from a good prediction of a meta shift...

I'm a fan of baby steps. Or babyer.

not nerfing the health items... kidding??

will that make regulus, tb, and queen go high?? NO!!!!!!!!

Buff the dmg items like +50%

Oak should be buffed early game, and nerfed late game. Surge of Faith cuts through waves of giants, and invincibility gives easy flag locking and teleporting as well as stun immunity. Early game, his spirits are very weak, and he has no mana to use any of his abilities more than once.

Then he basically has the exact same power-levels as Erebus. I dunno about you but I /do/ like the fact each demigod has different power peaks and play stles.

Also, if you half hp stacking.... how do you ever plan on killing a good tower Rook? Thik how much damage those towers do ALREADY. Esp when his teammates come porting in.

Acutally now I played another rook build, staff can be competitive because it gives you health too-> its 600 hp against 20 % CD.

P.S. Spirits weak? HAHAHA. 

Towers do not scale well, they take a long time to set up, even with staff of renewal, they don't scare people away, and super strong abilities such as surge of faith, mines, rain of ice, frost nova, fire nova, and hammer slam just cut through their health like butter.  Also, late game when the original towers are down, you can't move your farm around where the creeps will be so you level slower from 12+.  

Having different power peaks is what makes games imbalanced because the early bloomers can turn the tide in the beginning with a few ganks and end up ahead and they are impossible to take down.  (the reason BotF is OP)  Oak is weak compared to sedna, unclean beast, and erebus in the beginning, but by the end he is an unstoppable juggernaut.