QoT is designed to destroy buildings, just like UB is designed for fire and forget hit and run strikes and rushing, Regs is designed for burst damage and range, TB is designed for stunlock and AoE, LE is designed for life drain, Sedna's designed for heal/silence support, Oaky's designed for countering burst damage and overwhelming with minions, and Rook is designed to be a BIG FRIGGIN MOBILE FORTRESS WITH A BIG HAMMAH.

Honestly.  Let's not nerf DGs for what they are good at, else we'll all have yellow cubes with the exact same abilities.

The primary problem I see with UB's Spit is that it's simply too good /not/ to get.

There's a conceptual internal imbalance whenever a given character can use something of such utility.  Low cost, high damage, executes quickly, and medium range all far outpace the way that, say, Ooze requires perpetually being in melee range, does less damage per tick, or costs a high amount of health, or even the way the the frenzy state lasts seven seconds and increases melee damage.

While there's little reason to use something other than spit as a primary weapon for the UB, that means that the opposing team will have to play a certain way in order to defeat them.  Oak will more than likely have to choose shield, Sedna will have to use heal, and so on.  One person playing one class should not dictate how the other team will respond in their grand strategy.

fennel,

i disagree. one person playing one class really ought to be an influencing factor on how the other team wants to play. Beast is a strong but narrow offensive class. it only makes sense that his presence should cause the other team to want to fight back with strong defensive classes like Sedna. 

having a metagame of "which DG is a counter to which other DG" is the essence of a vibrant strategic field of competition. it would be incredibly dull if the DG's were all so similar (symmetrically balanced) that it didn't matter what the other guy was playing. if that was the case you'd mostly be picking your DG just for cosmetic purposes and strategy wouldn't come into it much.

i do however agree with your point that there may be internal balance issues within the skill tree of Beast himself. Venom Spit really does outshadow all of his other abilities by a large amount. its clearly the first place you put skill points whenever you can. a case can be made that it ought to be adjusted just to make Beast a more diverse and interesting character. he does seem to be headed very strongly in the direction of cookie cutter build right now. 

That's exactly what I mean.  Whenever he's got such a strong ability that even UB players won't pass it up, it means that by and large UB's going to be played to his particular strengths, ones that cause most characters to pretty much lay down and die for most of the game. 

As mentioned in another thread, it's a design oddity when such a character that has such strong affinities for melee combat, what with passive boosts to move and attack speeds, snares he applies on his default attacks, and two active abilities that rely on being in melee range, it seems really peculiar that he should have an extremely fast, high damage DoT that extends to such a range.  There's hit and run harassment and then there's one shot, one kill.

What I mean about limiting options for the other team primarily comes from the idea that if, say, there's no UB in a match at all, then there's going to be more leighway in how everyone plays their characters.   Sedna may go for a pounce build, Oak might go for a spirit-heavy build, and so forth.  Making it so that a certain character's presence is so powerful that it dictates what builds their opponents use indicates an imbalance.

Here's the thing about a hero like the UCB - the difference between being underpowered and overpowered is very, very small. Melee heroes are almost always like this. If they are excessively kiteable, then they are going to basically be an XP fountain for ranged classes. However, the flip is true - if you can't kite the UCB, then he's going to own all but the most durable classes. Right now I'm reserving judgement as to where he is. We just haven't played the game enough. He is frustrating to face however, which means he does have some tricks up his sleeve.

Overall, I think that this game has fairly good balance right out of the box.