nom's nasty and definitive guide on passive (Gear) Items (minion builds excluded)

NT

Generals should not always gimp themselves for early Bishops. They are really only useful in very particular matchups. 

Rather, they are already pretty good in 95% of matchups, but "rushing Bishops" is rarely a good idea. 

Orb of Defiance for Rook, UB. Occ and other DGs if you find yourself being the main target often, and already have your basic set and the spare money.

Extremely strong on Sedna as her best late game escape/survival option (Heal > Orb > Heal > Silence > TP; monks heal you in Orb mode, of course).

Nature's reckoning (1500g, almost must-buy for Sedna and DA, good 600 mana pool increase and gives much needed 250 AoE damage that procs. a lot more than it should, hedgie would never explain what's the bug with it)

I think it actually procs exactly as it should... Any "firm" information to the contrary, or just your experience with the item? Still, a mini-Girdle of Giants is a good investment for any Sedna in 2v2 (not so sure about 3v3: at least, I don't think it's top priority item in most 3v3 matches).

Rather, they are already pretty good in 95% of matchups, but "rushing Bishops" is rarely a good idea. 

Sednas (especially Tank Sednas) should rush Bishops more often than not, I think. But that's an exception.

Fair point. I don't think i said generals should gimp themselves for early bishops, though. What i meant is, bishops are a much better upgrade item than groffling, hungarlings or any other of the questionable items, specially if there's only one general in the team (with the already mentioned exceptions, Jmans tread and maybe hungarlings for Ereb and Queen).

Sure, the jump from 10% of max HP to 15% of max HP heals (along the incresases in HP and damage) doesn't seem worth the hefty 2700 gold cost jump from the 900g price tag of monks.

But once DGs get a decent HP stack and near the 5000HP, you're getting additional 250HP healed (500 to 750, 10% to 15% of 5k HP) every 8 seconds for 2 different friendly Demigods, that's "like" gifting a 30 HP/s magical item to 2 friendly DGs for just 2k gold (the cost of selling monks and getting bishops: 2700 - 700 (80% of monks cost)). All this without taking into account the increased damage and survavility of Bishops vs Monks (almost double the base HP, 700 vs 1320), and how easily monks die once some decent AoE skills hit the field (1 Lvl 4 Oculus Chain of Lightning (750 damage) or 1 RoIce lvl4 (800 damage) = dead monks).

So, yeah, if there's more than 1 general in the team, monks+clerics are often more than enough, but if there's only one, IMHO bishops are the top priority for him/her once he/she has the "basic" 5 "good" items set (i.e. banded-nimoth-unbreakables-plenor-vlemish).   Curr2 is even a greater priority for me than bishops at this stage of the game (as long as Warrank is 5-6 max), but that's no the point of this thread and i guess many people would disagree with me.  

It still depends.. hungarlings can be a better team purchase over bishops.  Are you running out of mana before you can kill, but hp is still doing alright?  Gifting your team 25% mana cost reduction can be a much better gift then slightly better heals.

I agree with nom bishops > other shit

unless your queen, then I want 2 helms + hungerlings yesturday.

Right. And Mines. As a general there is nothing more annoying than looking up every 7 seconds to see that Occ has chain lightinged all the way back and fried your monks yet again, and you have 22 seconds till you can summon them again, while he pushes you off the flag. Against certain Dgs, yeah the Bishop Rush is vital, just for the survivability.

It procs far more than it should given a few particular instances. I consider it cheating (like using Silence thru Shield IV) so I try not to intentionally do it. However, you can easily achieve over 1000 dps if you intentionally put yourself in the instance for an extended period of time, but it's difficult to do that and survive. UB actually can REALLY break it but luckily most UBs are too stupid to try anything new.  

Against Occulus and Queen are the only two matchups where I would prioritize getting Bishops earlier than normal. However, a lot of the times the general is also getting Currency and usually around the time they have a full 1500g item set, have purchased currency and monks, and have invested in sigils and ports and a few locks around that time it's WS 8 and they need to purchase Priests, and Priests have a larger swing "anyway" (0 -> 10%) for the same price, at the cost of giving your enemies more XP and gold. 

Wow, it's almost like i asked you to say that

The jump from monks to bishops is great, there's no dispute there, it's just a matter of when.

j

Also, depending on who you are up against, consider high priests as a viable option instead of bish.  I believe the difference in heals is 13% vs 15% with bishops (eg it's not substantial). Also, think about the joys of a sedna with a high priest and a bishop nearby... 22% + 19% heals every 8 seconds... mmmm...

well normally it'll be every 10 seconds because of the mechanics behind monk heals. 

The two major benefits of upgrading your monks are NOT only larger % heals. It's actually

1- They die less 

2- They don't heal themselves as often so they actually heal every 8 seconds on a Demigod instead of 10 seconds. 

The 50% improvement from Monks to Bishops isn't actually huge when you consider the cost of it. 

crazy talk - 8 seconds per buff and individual buffs per healer type, right?

or... if 2 HP + 2 Bish = what Im talking about

it's not crazy talk It's a knowledge of the mechanics.

The "you can't heal me" debuff lasts 8 seconds. Monks have a 5 second cooldown on their heals. When a Monk's heal cooldown drops, it does an iteration of all the units in range, starting with the demigods and then doing themselves and then doing the rest of the units around them starting with whatever is closest (this tends to be the other monk).

The second it finds a unit that would not be "overhealed" (basically at a % HP where the healing will be wasted because it's super-close to 100%), then it performs the heal on the unit, attaches a debuffed to the healed unit and puts the heal onto cooldown.

Let's say that you have 2 monks, and you're against a Level 1 TB with Rain of Ice. TB does RoI on you and your monks. You'll usually instantly be healed at this point assuming you haven't taken any damage. This attaches the 8 second debuff to you. Then, one monk will heal themselves. 5 seconds pass (heal cooldown).

The monk that didn't heal himself will heal himself (doesn't have the 8 second debuff). The last monk will look around for units to heal. If it can find a minotaur to heal, it will. Otherwise it'll just idle for 5 seconds and do nothing (yes, put on cooldown again). Then 3 seconds pass and your debuff expires. However, both monks are on cooldown for another 2 seconds.

The only way to actually get monks to heal you every 8 seconds is if they are staggered from when they were summoned (eg, you lose just one monk and resummon just that monk and it pulses at a different frequency than your other monk).

Code as follows:

###############################################################
# Ability - Heal
# After healing someone, this spell applies a debuff to them
# which prevents them from being healed. Debuff - "HighPriest01HealCooldown01"
###############################################################
AbilityBlueprint {
    Name = 'HighPriest01Heal01',
    DisplayName = 'Heal',
    AbilityType = 'Aura',
    TargetAlliance = 'Ally',
    TargetCategory = 'MOBILE - UNTARGETABLE',
    AffectRadius = 10,
    AuraPulseTime = 5,      # This is the "cooldown" of the ability to cast the heal spell
    OnAreaAbility = function(self, unit, params)
        local heal = false
        local priestBuff = 'HighPriest01Heal01'

        # ==== Try to heal a hero first ==== #
        # Hero units in range
        local heroes = EntityCategoryFilterDown(categories.HERO, params.Targets)

        #If we can heal a hero unit and we didn't heal him last, heal him.
        #If the hero is the only thing we can heal in the area, heal him.
        if table.getn(heroes) > 0 then
            for k, hero in heroes do
                # Unit has the cooldown buff
                if Buff.HasBuff(hero, 'HighPriest01HealCooldown01') then
                    continue
                end

                # Do not heal heroes flagged not to be healed
                if hero.PriestsDoNotHeal then
                    continue
                end

                # Do not heal heroes that are near full health
                local hpercent = hero:GetHealth() / hero:GetMaxHealth()

                if hpercent >= 1.0 then
                    continue
                end

                heal = hero

                #Check to see if the priest is affected by Healing Wind II
                if Buff.HasBuff(unit, 'HSednaHealingWindPriest02') then
                    priestBuff = 'HighPriest01HeroHealHealingWindBuffl01'
                else
                    priestBuff = 'HighPriest01HeroHeal01'
                end

                break
            end
        end

        # ==== Heal other units ==== #
        # No heroes found; grab nearby units based on priorities and try to heal em
        if not heal then
            #Non-hero units that can be healed.
            for k, target in params.Targets do
                # Don't heal heroes in this body section
                if EntityCategoryContains( categories.HERO, target ) then
                    continue
                end

                # Don't heal units with 50% or more health
                local hlthpct = target:GetHealth() / target:GetMaxHealth()
                if hlthpct >= 1.0 then
                    continue
                end

                # Unit has the cooldown buff
                if Buff.HasBuff(target, 'HighPriest01HealCooldown01') then
                    continue
                end

                heal = target

                # Priest is affected by Healing Wind II, use the more powerful heal.
                if Buff.HasBuff(unit, 'HSednaHealingWindPriest02') then
                    priestBuff = 'HighPriest01HealHealingWindBuff01'
                end

                break
            end
        end

        # ==== Healing here ==== #
        # Hey we found someone to heal; apply both the heal and cooldown buffs and make pretty effects
        if heal then
            if unit.Character.IsMoving then
                unit.Character:PlayAction("HealMove")
            else
                unit.Character:PlayAction("Heal")
            end
            #LOG("*DEBUG: Healing: "..heal:GetUnitId().." with: "..priestBuff)
            Buff.ApplyBuff(heal, priestBuff, unit)
            Buff.ApplyBuff(heal, 'HighPriest01HealCooldown01', unit)

            # Create Priest heal casting effects
            AttachCharacterEffectsAtBone( unit, 'priest', 'CastHeal01', -1 )

            # Create Heal effect on actor being healed
            AttachBuffEffectAtBone( heal, 'Heal01', 0, heal.Trash );
            return
        end
    end,
}

It procs far more than it should given a few particular instances. I consider it cheating (like using Silence thru Shield IV) so I try not to intentionally do it. However, you can easily achieve over 1000 dps if you intentionally put yourself in the instance for an extended period of time, but it's difficult to do that and survive. UB actually can REALLY break it but luckily most UBs are too stupid to try anything new.  

Can you be more specific concerning those 'particular instances'? I won't tell anyone, I swear! Look, maybe that's a common knowledge, but as an inexperienced player, I have no idea what you are talking about... I have tested it on creep waves after I read your post, and from what I've seen, the AoE effect triggers approximately once per every 6 AAs (as it should according to the description).

I think if your attack speed is pretty fast, you can attack before the nature's reckoning animation finishes, it will proc again and again. Although I'm not 100% sure about this though.

Oh, and great list Nom

There's only two people who know about the glitch and it's not something that most people know about, and only a tiny subset of players get Nature's Reckoning anyway. I'm saying it's glitched and it will proc a lot more often than it should in a "normal" game than a test. The glitch is useless for farming because it doesn't trigger when farming. 

No. If that were the case getting it on Sedna that would never happen because she has high hit-power but low attack speed. 

heh - that's because the less exploits that are explained and utilized, the better - he gave enough of a description, though...

Many tier 1 players use the orb on UB builds (blood/bots).  I think its useful and I've seen players use it well and horribly.  Its best use generally happens the 1st time you cast it if you are playing well, imo.  After that, good players generally know what to expect (and to focus on other targets based on proximity. Its also an excellent counter for a tower rook if you have teammates pushing with you - go in first to draw all of the tower fire - then orb while the rest of the team focuses on the rook. 

I try to get narmoths ring into most builds based on money.  It's an excellent item.  750 hp/20 hp per sec/8% life steal.  I generally agree about the dg selections though.  I'm very likely to get it on ub/speed fire tb while other dg's I'd always LIKE it, but its not as big a priority as other items, etc.

That's why you drop it at the crystal and someone else picks it up on your team It's a strategy I wish that people picked up on, but, sadly, no  

Priority for Orb of Defiance (imo):

Sedna > UB > Rook > Queen > DA > TB > Occulus

Demigods not really able to use it well, or it's just redundant:

Reg, Ereb, Oak

heh - that's because the less exploits that are explained and utilized, the better - he gave enough of a description, though...

Honestly, I find it hard to believe everyone and their grandmother would begin to use this exploit immediately, even if it were described in greater detail (and the players that would be tempted to do so rarely visit Strategy section, as a rule). I've yet to see any Rooks actually taking advantage of that Ironwalkers glitch or even Oaks massively rushing citadels with spirits. Moreover, from Hedgie's description I understand it's actually quite difficult to exploit this glitch consistently in a way it could be considered game-breaking. But as you will: I think I've got a general idea as to what (and how) it does, and since now I'm really curious, I'll experiment a bit to see if my assumptions were correct.

Sedna > UB > Rook > Queen > DA > TB > Occulus

Heh... Happy to see it's not just my incompetent noob opinion about OoD being the strongest on Sedna.

I would tend do disagree on sedna being number 1 and put rook/ub there. 

I would tend do disagree on sedna being number 1 and put rook/ub there. 

I don't have enough experience with Orb-using UBs (apart from some Orcun's replays :)), so cannot really argue here. And yes, maybe Rook should really be #1 on this list... Anyway, the point is Rook, UB and Sedna (the exact order is not too important) are the most Orb-friendly DGs.

While i dont typically get orb for occ, it is definitely fun in 3v3 situations since the shield animation doesn't work.

Sedna is focus fired the most in 3v3 mashups, and she doesn't have the HP to survive it very well. If they manage to chase off the Sedna they will collapse and destroy the remaining 2 demigods. Sedna also gains more of a benefit from the passives of having Orb (+500 HP and Armor) since 500 HP is a greater % of her HP compared to UB and Rook. 

For UB, Orb gives a stalling mechanism for when he is caught with his pants down and needs one or both of his support bitches to port in. This is great and all but Orb is, by nature, a defensive/reactive item and UB is an offensive/proactive Demigod. It does allow you to be somewhat more aggressive while chasing because you can secure a kill and then Orb.

Rook and Sedna are both defensive/reactive so they are able to use Orb more effectively. Both are "tanky" and Orb is an item that compliments that. The reason I rate UB so highly is because of the stalling, and the fact it adds an impressive 500 HP to the sigil-spamming fucker. 

I s'pose that an Ooze beast will be able to utilize Orb somewhat better than a hybrid.