1701

Me and a friend played Rook and Sedna vs. a TB and Regulus on the Crucible map last night.

Oh man were we rendered completely ineffectual. My friend hasn’t had a ton of play time, but I figured I could go the supporting Sedna route and keep his big fat ass up and destroying. Ya… um… that didn’t work so well. He was a bit gunshy and spent as much time retreating a bit as he did attacking, and the speed/range advantage of the other two hurt. I finally started specing into a bit of combat around level 8 as my healing wasn’t doing the trick, but it was far too late.

The match ended up with us not killing a single defensive structure, or one of their DG’s.

Man that map sucks :)

On the upside, the connectivity was as one would expect. Which is far better than previous attempts :)

~C~

1702

of course,doesn’t help that am in HK, not exactly a large local pool of non pirates. Best results are with oz games.

1703

I’ll take Sedna’s healing wind for a point or two and maybe a point or two for her direct heal, but I mainly use her Pounce and Yeti’s (and powering up the Yeti’s skills) to eat people alive. Since you get four Yetis three points in, it’s very hard for people to kill them all. They want to focus on you instead…so you Pounce, get a couple of times and run…while your Yeti’s destroy them.

I’m with you though, Cougar, on playing against two DD DGs. I tried that with Rook and Oak and we just couldn’t hold them. Between UB and TB, we got slowly but surely pushed backwards…just couldn’t stop them with the amount of damage they could do before we could even really respond.

1704

Does anyone know where favor points are stored? I thought it was the game.prefs file, but maybe that has changed in a patch due to the cheaters? I have no idea.

My favor points haven’t changed in the last 3 games I’ve played, and I’m trying to maybe track down the problem.

1705

Favor is the new/ returning bug of the weekend. Not much to be done.

Also I think they are storing MP favor server side now.

1706

After a good amount of games here are some thoughts.
I’d like to hear how others feel about the Demigods.

I like playing support chars so I played lots of Queen and Sedna.
If either is present in my team already I go Torch Bearer.

I found that Queen is at a tactical disadvantage (=generally underpowered).
Bramble Shield is great in the beginning but average at best in longer games.
Shamblers (like most minions) are meh…
The two damage skills are below average, too costly with not enough damage.
Uproot and that other skills that enhances it are not worth it. The first few levels simply do too little damage and the last levels come so late that it mostly doesn’t matter any more.
In my Queen games I’m pretty much a Bramble bot and little else. Getting kills is difficult (assists are easy if you stay with your team …which you pretty much have to).

Sedna is more than “the healer demigod”. While I’m often last in the damage rating I get a good amount of kills (often in the upper third).
While she only has pounce as an attack healing makes her able to tank, she got a speed boost skill and silence and the pounce interrupt allows you to considerably shift the balance of a fight in your favour.
I never bothered with the healing aura. Priests are crap and the regeneration will rarely save a team mate. You need burst healing for that.
The cooldown reducing skill is ok but I mostly only skill it up very late in the game.
Yetis suck.
The combination of healing and pounce allows you to control a lane in the beginning vs most demigods, you are a valuable asset in both defense and offense midgame and in the end you do decent damage. A good timed silence will win big battles and your healing still still is an asset until the end (although less powerful than midgame in relative terms).

Torch Bearer is strong both as Fire or Ice mage.
Fire eats creeps for breakfast and makes you a nuking machine, ice decides games if you have (good) team mates that do decent damage.

I think that Rook is at a strategic disadvantage. While he is not underpowered in itself his slow speed makes him a liability.
I haven’t played him myself, but every time the I see an enemy Rook I’m relieved. He is not fast enough to fight me if I don’t want to and he wont escape me if I have the upper hand.
The same is true if there is one in my team. I know he will rarely be at big fights at the right time and will be unable to retreat.

Regulus appears to be very versatile.
Mines (aka grenades) are strong vs demigods and creeps, the range ability allows easy tower killing, direct damage builds seem powerful. Looking at his skills there seems no set that is not useful in some way.

In general minions seem very weak.
Unless your team completely lacks an AOE attack and the enemy REALLY focuses on minions (perhaps with more than one demigod) they seem simply too weak, too difficult to manage and to expensive to support.
All the general demigods that I met and would describe as good players basically played their generals like assassins.

1707

I’d like to see some kind of bonus for having more minions. As it is, the amount of money you invest on the Idols is just ridiculous for how little benefit you gain from them. Any Demigod with AOE just chews straight through them, almost always on accident while they’re trying to damage the general who summoned them. Whenever I play a fire TB, I’m so happy to see a general with minions. It’s the easiest exp around, and I don’t even have to spend extra mana to do it.

1708

You don’t get xp or gold from killing Generals’ minions.

1709

So some QT3 games tonight?

1710

Hey I just played against someone named Jason Cross in pantheon. If that was you Jason gg. My playing handle is Hafbee. Also thank god the game seems to work for me now. I’ve played two pantheon games with nobody dropping and one of them was even a 4v4. Now hopefully more people will start playing and this game will get the audience it deserves!

1711

Yep, that was me, and I saw you in there. I didn’t know that was you at the time, though. :)

My partner (playing Queen) was a total noob, though. I think he was level 10 or more before I said “don’t you have bramble shield?” and he said “no, I’ll get it now.”

Therlun, regarding Queen’s strategy and effectiveness - I disagree that she’s generally underpowered. She’s just a poor demigod-killer. She’s awesome for capturing flags and tearing down towers and stuff. The most effective Queen players concentrate on that. Uproot really can tear down a tower or fortress right quick, and time is of the essence in a good match. She’s a great partner to have when taking on another demigod, especially if the player is smart/skilled enough to know when to cast bramble shield on her partner instead of herself.

I played a pantheon game that was the fortress-smashing one on the big snake-looking level (can’t remember the name). It was tough because there were no real gold mines to pick up, and only two flags on the map for a HP bonus. We didn’t have Queen, but she would have excelled at that. With so little gold to buy items or troop upgrades, she could have torn down fortresses and towers twice as fast as anyone else.

Also, generals can do fun stuff with their minions, like select them and send them off to attack a tower or fortress that they don’t even go near. You can stay “out of the fray” and still be effective.

1712

Really? That’s crazy. I love how I keep finding things out about this game that I should have learned in, say, a tutorial?

Heh.

1713

I did my first multiplayer game yesterday (4v4 custom). We all got in ok but it was a little laggy. It was playable but there was some definite frames dropping going on. I couldn’t get into Pantheon at all - just searched endlessly.

1714

Do 8 player strategy games ever work well? I remember in Company of Heroes it was always laggy because someone had a crappy computer.

1715

If it wasn’t P2P it would work well - WoW has similar mechanics and it can handle many more than 8.

1716

Rise of Nations worked well 4v4- and it had a lot of units to track.
Although I am agreeing with Tim James, as I have only played through entire 4v4 CoH games with no dropping or horrible lag at lan parties.

1717

Long time reader, first time posting here. Great forums =).

I played my first 2 online games a couple nights ago with UB after the patch came out, but in LAN/AI games I’ve mostly experimented with TB. Circle of Fire at level 1 is fantastic for staying power at a flag and killing creeps; significantly better than Fireball first. A pure fire build is pretty straightforward and lethal - great AOE vs creeps and strong nukes. But after you’ve used all your spells there isn’t a whole lot you can do anymore, unless the enemy is standing in your Circle of Fire. Staff of Renewal reduces cooldowns helps so that you can open with a fireball and end with another fireball (ideally as a finishing blow). An ice only build is weak early game with Rain of Ice as your only real weapon but strong once you get the 3x shatter late game. It took me some time to find a nice hybrid build - I didn’t find it all that feasible to take all the actives and lay them down at once for a bunch of kills. But if you open with Fire Nova + Fireball, switch to Ice (shorter transformation time), you can kill with Rain of Ice + Deep Freeze and chase with your passive. The passive is real important because with Boots of Speed and Wand of Speed (both cheap) that’s how you stay alive and chase for kills. I’m thinking about subbing Frost Nova for Deep Freeze for that disable, although Deep Freeze would be useful to kill a Sedna or QoT. Blade of the Serpent or Swift Anklet are a good favor items for this build; for other items I get mana regen (Vlemish) and HP/armor.

I think that Rook is at a strategic disadvantage. While he is not underpowered in itself his slow speed makes him a liability.
I haven’t played him myself, but every time the I see an enemy Rook I’m relieved. He is not fast enough to fight me if I don’t want to and he wont escape me if I have the upper hand.
The same is true if there is one in my team. I know he will rarely be at big fights at the right time and will be unable to retreat.

I find that Rook is strategically very powerful due to area control from his towers. With the right items (and naturally higher HP) he can be hard to kill and he’ll most likely stay in his tower farm. He can make it hard to re-cap a flag or to prevent the capping of a flag because of his towers. On a side note, I tried a towerless, DPS type Rook one day and it was not as effective as the typical tower Rook.

Regulus appears to be very versatile.
Mines (aka grenades) are strong vs demigods and creeps, the range ability allows easy tower killing, direct damage builds seem powerful. Looking at his skills there seems no set that is not useful in some way.

I agree. I played him once with an auto-attack spec with Angelic Fury, Mark of the Betrayer, and Maim. It was against AI so I was ridiculously powerful (and misleading). But when I played online, his mines were very dangerous and he was versatile with mines and snipe. Easy to kill with UB though.

In general minions seem very weak.
Unless your team completely lacks an AOE attack and the enemy REALLY focuses on minions (perhaps with more than one demigod) they seem simply too weak, too difficult to manage and to expensive to support.
All the general demigods that I met and would describe as good players basically played their generals like assassins.

I played against an excellent support QoT with shamblers. Didn’t get many kills but pushed well and Bramble Shield sustained her allies in fights significantly. A role lacking in glory but very useful for the team. An Oak with Raise Dead Ward can also be very dangerous - a lot of staying power with Divine Justice and potentially a killer as well. I’m pretty intrigued by the numerous possibilities with Oak and I’ve still been experimenting.

I did my first multiplayer game yesterday (4v4 custom). We all got in ok but it was a little laggy. It was playable but there was some definite frames dropping going on. I couldn’t get into Pantheon at all - just searched endlessly.

I got 2 good 4v4 games in a couple nights ago. First one ran smoothly, but the second one had a couple spikes. Both went well though.

Anyway, seeing that this is a schedule thread, do any of you get together for some games? I’d love to get some quality games going since it seems like connectivity has really improved =).

1718

CoH works well when people use playable settings for 4v4. The only real reason 4v4’s tend to lag is most people choose their settings based on what their compy can handle during a 1v1. It’s pure user error.

1719

I don’t know if I would call that “pure user error”, per se.

1720

It seems pretty logical to assume that if you’re computer chugs down to 15 frames per second in a 2v2 then rendering twice the map size with twice as many units at the same settings might make the game unplayable. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a player to figure this out.