I suspect the usefulness of DA has been argued to death in other threads since his introduction to the game.

You could answer my other questions if you wanted...

heh - yes we could...

See discussion in this thread about da.  Good at ganks - weak at flag control.  Occ is useful some as a tank, but I find to be one of the weaker dgs (several broken skills as others mentioned and some aa bugs). 

There has been no meaningful balancing of the dgs.  The tier 1 dgs are oak, erb, ub.  tier 1.5 - rook.  and so on. 

nope.  heart of life got nerfed some time ago so that it is at the artifact shop and costs quite a bit more

Nope - same system.

Your last game is saved locally automatically, but is overwritten whenever you play a new game.  You can save the replays via in game menu immediately after a game, though.  There is no automatic replay hosting.  Most of us have posted replays at www.gamereplays.org.  The replay editor is nice when its doesn't bug out... you can change view from character to character.

Yes and no.  No maps... rudimentary hero modding.  You can take existing maps and mod them (adding towers here and there... portals, etc), but there is no map editor - you have to manually find the correct coordinates and plug it in.  See modding section of forums.  There is a good AI mod called skirmish ai, uberfix - a collection of community bug fixes (it makes occulus work almost exactly as intended - still has the AA bug if I'm not mistaken). There's also favor mod, which uses favor items that excentric dreamed up - alot of fun ideas there.

Nope.  For a different type of game, try out enfos' mod. 

Skirmish mode was removed.  Pantheon is dead.  Custom games are it.

And there you go!

Bummer.

SD has historically had a good record of supporting games very well for a long time.  Perhaps its because they published this instead of developing in-house that the scheme is different this time around.  I remember they worked unbelievably hard to fix the launch issues, but it seems support dropped to nil very quickly.

It's really kind of embarrassing, since I've been a big SD advocate for a long time.  Gal Civ 1 and 2 were great, and even Sins was quite fun.  But man has the software quality dropped off recently.  First Demigod with its trainwreck of issues and now Elemental was released in a similarly poor state.

I hope they get back on track soon.

Agreed re: hope things get back on track. 

Have you ever seen a level 15 DA? you basically turned my statement into a "DA RAPES EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME LOLZ I AM NOOB" Learn how to read. I SPECIFICALLY CALLED OUT LEVEL 15 DA IS A MONSTER AT THIS LEVEL.

The rest of the game he is dominated in all 1v1's unless its a reg generally.

every dem

you can call any demigod a "monster" at lvl 15. Fact is da is the smallest monster of all!

no noobs cow

well... not really reg

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't DA swap ability offer you the only chance to counter a oak-shield-port if you time it right. i.e you (as da) end up at their health crystal from which you port out or sigil run like a mofo and your team gets to clean up oak who ends up back where he ported from.  Can be quite a surprise for an oak who thinks he is beyond gank late game (or after shield 3).

I actually did some tests with 4nana. If the oak tps right after he shields, the teleport will still get trough. Only if oak does something else before he ports the da can stop it. For example, shield and lock portal and then teleport, the da can stop him. Also, this can be a surprise for mid skilled players maybe, but should not be the case for veterans... da is too predictable, and with the gamespeed easy as pie

i take your point re. experience but it is technically still the only counter...

in my experience you time the swap from when the tele "aura" starts around oak. So it doesn't matter if he tools around with the first couple of seconds of his shield. You need to wait about half the period of the tele aura before you swap or you will get him prior to the tele with no interrupt (of course). Either way if you time it right the oak is back where he started with his shield and tele on cd.

agreed. 

Silence  

But you just have to time the swap with the port. Wait for him to cast the port, count to two, then cast (it has a 1.2 second cast). Even if he "jukes" you by canceling the port last second (like a pr0) you still burnt 2 seconds of his shield, and he has to recast the port now or whatever.

ah yeah silence!!... as a sed noob i didn't know that silence went through shield.

I don't think it does... hedgie?

I didn't think so but wasn't sure. I guess its not really a counter then once shielded. Still I have seen it gank lots of oaks that sigil late in a bad situation or want to stick around to be a smart arse 1v3...

yup - a sedna with even the slightest bit of intelligence can shut down any dg in a team battle with silence.  Just have to figure out the right time to cast just before someone pops that sigil and boom.  I never, ever, understand when a player picks sedna and doesn't grab silence... prob the best ability in the game imo. 

I remember you, you were that wonderful erebus with cloak. I was a big fan.

I never really understood cloak of night choice for erebus given that bat swarm is picked up at level 5 and its mana benefits are less than a scaled helm that sets you back 550.. I have seen it used effectively to avoid ganks but really as erebus you shouldn't be dying anyway. Is it used as an early game benefit mostly?

That's how I've seen it used the most as well.  Early game hops. You get extra mana so you can get an extra bite off, but I'd rather just take a small mana pot along with botf early game. 

Not worth it for early hops imo - and if you need to save yourself... stop playing erb.  It does give him extra range for ganks after level 5 (batswarm + hop), but i still don't think its worth it.

BUT - if we are talking about competitive 2v2 - then its a different story.  It can be a VERY good item.

why is it better for 2v2?

and...

is the jump far enough for crucible?

It's not, no competitive 2 v 2 Ereb is going anything other then Blood.  If they want to win that is.

yes - on crucible, you can hop across with erb... that means hop to get there and bs out if needed. 

On competitive 2v2 with erb and oak.  You can get extra early game kills this way by being aggressive.  Both oak and erb need cloak tho.  You have to be a solid team to pull it off, but its quite strong.

edit - mcshane is probably right... or crazy...

If you time it right, you can. There's a bug/exploit.

Rather, I'm just saying that the Oak tries to ninja your portal with Giants behind, and dicks around. Then you Silence him and he is banged on by Giants and dies (:

right - that's what I thought you were saying.  On a level 3 shield, though, you can't silence period unless the shield wears off.  What was it, a level 4 shield that had the bug where sometimes you could interrupt?

both