Excluding the networking issues and bugs, heres my analysis of the game currently and how to improve it.


Hero Critiques

Unclean Beast:

•     Beastial Wrath - lasts too short, should last 10-15 seconds with a cooldown of 20 seconds, has a cast time, too situational - only good for siege or a prolonged fight.
•     Unrelenting Wrath - worthless unless Beastial Wraith is improved with 0 cast time, or lasts longer.

Logic:

The issue With Beastial Wrath is that more often than not you end up getting stunned. When you are not stunned, your often times casting Venom Spit or Fowl Grasp. This causes the ability to be fairly worthless if stunned for 2 seconds, and your casting abilities for another 2 seconds. This leaves 3 seconds of attacks, assuming you are within melee range. If you manage to fight in melee range for a full 7 seconds, then the move becomes worthwhile, but between getting stuned, slowed, and being unable to reach them in melee, the move is lackluster in comparison to others.

Torch Bearer:

•     Deep Freeze - should not consume effects, or if it consumes effects should deal a lot more damage. Currently fairly weak and requires other spells to be cast first for dealing a weak amount of damage. Casting all 3 costs a lot of mana
•     Fire and Ice - should be linked with Frost Nova or Rain of Ice to be worthwide to use with fire.

Logic:
Deep Freeze is worthless for a hybrid spec with fire, it requires frost moves to shatter, and thus is based on being utilized for fire and ice. Each effect consumed deals 325 damage, and getting a 3x shatter can be a bit difficult. Frost Nova must be used first since it lasts 5 seconds, then rain of ice lasting 10 seconds, and then into shatter. If the TB gets stunned before it for 3 seconds, that leaves 2 seconds + cast time delay / lag. Its doable, but fairly tight and unable to be done if you get stunned twice.

Rook:

•     Boulder Roll - A bit costly on mana

Lord Erebus:

•     Bite - Cooldown needs to be increased to at least 9 seconds, up the mana cost for balance, to at least 500, 700, 900, 1200 per rank.
•     Bat Swarm - Too expensive on mp, reduce as follows: 500, 700, 800. Range should slightly increase at max rank. Possibly reduce the damage to make up for the range increase. Having this move makes mist a bit weak in terms of aoe. Mist is more of utility than damage.
• Note: Currently Bite is the strongest move in the game. For the mana cost, cooldown, debuffs, life drain it is a ridiculously overpowered move which is what makes the Lord so strong. Buffing bat swarm slightly and nerfing bite should make him a more balanced hero.
  

Logic:
Next to be added. Main logic behind Bite, currently at the max rank it is 595 mp. This is an insanely low cost move, and thus It seems to need to be increased. I'll compare it to Sedna's heal, and TB fireball. The cooldown I would increase primarily for the benefit of the heal. If the heal was reduced, there is not a need for reducing the cooldown.

Regulus:

•     Deadeye - needs a higher percentage and/or a longer stun. For a 15 pt skill is fairly weak
•     Despite people's complaints snipe seems balanced to me. Only issue is that using when someone teleports seems a bit too strong, although makes teleporting a bit weaker (which I feel needs to happen)
•     Explosive Mines have slightly too large of a range.

Sedna:

•     Hp / second skills all combined with her heal seems a bit too powerful.
•     Inner Grace - Convert the hp / second into mana / second
•     Pounce - For a support hero with the hp regen and healing she has, this move seems a bit too powerful. The move has a short cooldown, and interrupts casting. Reduce damage to at least 700. The damage per rank should increment by 100, starting at 400.
•     Horn of the Yeti - Minons cost way too much mana to summon. Cost per rank as follows: 400, 550, 700, 900
•     Counter Healing - a bit weak, possibly convert enemy healing into damage - a priest healing for 400 would instead deal 100 damage to the target they were healing, a rate of 1/4 of the heal on demigods, the full heal on non-demigods.
•     Heal - Raise mana cost by at least 150 per rank.

    Logic:

           Currently with talents Sedna has +48 Hp/sec and a heal. Converting the one from hp to mp would allow her to heal more with her actual heal, and would generate hp per second much less, in total 24 per second instead of 48. By converting her other hp per second to mp per second, she would be healing more with her castable, cd heal vs. passive healing. This would require her to stop running around, stop to heal, and put her main heal on cooldown. Raising the mana cost on heal by 150 mp would also help to make sure this mp gain is not too powerful.

           The other major change would be reducing pounce's damage to 700. While this seems fairly strong of a nerf, the buff to Counter Healing helps to even it out.

Currently priest healing:

Rank 1
200 health to non-demigods
10% of max demigod health.

Rank 4:
290 health to non-demigods
15% of max demigod health.

Oak:

•     Spirit Frenzy - Increase proc rate to at least 15% or increase the duration once proced.
•     Moves should debuff more than they currently do.
•     Divine Justice - should proc from spirit / minion kills
•     Penitence - increase the effects of damage taken to 20%, slightly increase mana cost by 50 per rank.
  
•     Surge of Faith - Slightly increase the damage to at least 650. Increase the duration of the buff or convert the buff to a passive aura.
•     Rally - should heal for more than 1000 hp, at least 2000 hp - lvl 15 move should be stronger
•     Shield - Rebalance rank increases:
         Shield 1 - no change
         Shield 2 - 4 seconds, 500 mp, removes debuffs
         Shield 3 - 5 seconds, 600 mp, removes debuffs, heals for 300
         Shield 4 - 6 seconds, 700 mp, removes debuffs, heals for 600
         Purity - After the shield wears off, decreases damage taken by 30% for 3 seconds.

•     Personally feel he is the weakest hero - seems like a tank but is not that great of a tank currently.
•     *He seems like he should have another aura, maybe change surge of faith to also give the movement speed and attack speed bonuses as an aura.

    Logic:

                Oak currently can be fairly powerful if he gets consistant hits on a target, and is able to chase them for fairly long periods of time. He is also very strong "post death". His aoe healing move is very powerful, and his shield is very strong as well. His weakness is his damage is fairly weak, and his nukes are not very powerful. Rally being so late in the tree, it seems fairly weak at that stage in the game. Killing a demigod should not happen very often, but when it does, and it only heals for 1000 hp over 5 seconds it seems a bit weak for a move so late in the tree. His spirits I have yet to see used as a gamebreaker, and thus the +15% increase should help to even the playing field. The amplification of damage on Penitance is the biggest buff. While it is not a huge difference it allows him and everyone else to be dealing a great deal more to a target. Currently one of the main problems with his shield is a quick burst being cast as your shield is ending. Due to this problem, having a 3 second decrease in damage allows him to prevent this.

Queen of Thorns:

•     Uproot / Violent Siege is horrible, compared to Rook's Structural Transfer which currently is not used that often. This move is absolutely worthless.
•     Spike Wave - Should move faster in comparison to other hero's ranged moves, should move about the same speed as the Rook's Boulder Throw.
•     Tribute - by time you level up that high, tribute is a fairly weak skill. either dramatically increase the gold earned (at least 10 /s or more), increase for the team, or replace with a better skill - Prefer it would be replaced.
•     Entourage - should improve all minons, maybe by half the amount as the shamblers.
•     Summon Shamblers - rebalance
          Summon Shamblers 1 - summons 2, 2 max, 450 mp - lvl 1 requirement
          Summon Shamblers 2 - summons 2, 4 max, 550 mp - lvl 4 requirement
                  passively gives shamblers +10 movement speed
          Summon Shamblers 3 - summons 4, 4 max, 800 mp - lvl 6 requirement
          Should combine an end rank with Entourage for a new move:
                Shambler Army - Shamblers hp/sec +20, and each hit reduces movement speed of your target by 10%.
                       When you cast a spell all Shamblers gain +20% attack speed for 5 seconds.

• Note:     Currently making Shamblers worthwhile requires too many talent points. The Queen of Thorns appears to be a fairly heavily minion based hero, but due to the the issue requiring ranks for the shamblers and not global minion buffs, this currently does not occur.

    Logic:

       The Queen of Thorns has by far the weakest nukes in the game. As such, it appears that she should be heavily minion based, or support. Her absorption shield is very powerful, but that is the only support move she has. Thus, minions are her greatest strength, and it seems as if it should be buffed for survivability and a slight bit of damage. Minions currently die from AOE fairly quickly, everytime I run into combat my minions end up fully dead, shamblers without Entourage end up dead as well. With the buff the shamblers are able to survive a bit longer, they can be useful but still are lacking damage since the Queen's nukes are not very strong currently. In order to use the Queen's nukes the Queen is forced to switch forms which has a casting delay. Due to this problem, her damage is needed to be delt by her minions. The options would be to buff her minions or buff her damage attacks. Buffing the damage attacks would lose the uniqueness of the Queen, and thus it would be better to buff the minions.

Improvements:

• Ability to see shops / citidal upgrades without having to be next to it.
• Level up display to be more transparent, or shrunken to be able to see the main window while leveling up
• Angels need to attack more vs. fly around
• Only 3 items improve speed, the cheapest is 1k but no other stats
• Better Item tooltips, showing how much an item will increase your dps, hp/s, mp/s with your current stats.
• assign groups for units, such as cntl-1
• Hero is difficult to select without minions - mwaicromangagement with minions is difficult
• When dead, you should still be able to browse shops, your Citadel and your skills that are within your seeable range.

Needing better descriptions:

• Building Fire Power citadel upgrade: "and splash damage" is given with each level, does this increase the aoe, and/or dmg?
• Rook's towers: benefits from citadel upgrades? linking towers does what?
• Rook's Independent firing towers
• Queen of Thorn's compost, does it improve with rank? current tooltip shows no improvement.
• minion stats - Yeti, Night Walkers, Spirits, Shamblers, purchased minions
• Vampiric Aura - what percentage of lifesteal?
• What does / doesn't stack?

Balance:

• Increase the cost of capture lock and teleport scrolls, probably 400g each instead of 250
• Need more inexpensive items that passively buff regen
• Citadel Upgrade: Experience - as time goes on, this upgrade becomes worse - the cost should justify this change. All ranks besides the first should be much cheaper.
• Attribute bonuses for skill upgrades seem a little weak, consider buffing, possibly doubling.
• "Warp" items are very weak, they should have a range of 25 yards. Currently the cost is too expensive for the small range of teleportation. 2 Warp items currnetly exist, one costs 5500 - Warpstone, and the other costs 12000 - The Cloak of Elfkind.
  

     General Heroes:

• Unable to play with a minion build currently, items + minions cost too much and required to survive against Heroes & Towers AOE
• Are not many cheap items with minion bonuses, those that do exist give many hero stats causing the price of the item to cost more
• Should be weaker at killing heroes, but stronger at attacking bases / random enemies.

Forces of Light vs. Dark:
Light = Regulus, Rook, Oak, Sedna
Dark = Unclean Beast, Torchbearer, Lord Erebus, Queen of Thorns
Dark > Light - reasoning as follows:

• Light's strength is survivability - healer + oak shields + high hp
• Dark's strength is damage & aoe - torchbearer + unclean beast have the best aoe
• Light has next to no aoe:
     Sedna has at lvl 20 yeti aoe
     Regulus has mines and wings - best aoe for light
     Oak has a weak aoe
     Rook has his Hammer, made for single targets but is slightly aoe, rock throw can at times work for aoe.

• Difficult to counter Erebus & Queen of Thorn's minions due to the lack of aoe
• Stuns - all dark heroes have a triggerable stun, Regulus and Sedna do not
       light side ends up getting stunned much more
       fairly balanced still - since Sedna have a silence, Regulus has mark of the betrayer

• Light generals are fairly heavily support - dark Queen of Thorns is somewhat support, Lord Erebus is not support at all
      This causes all light teams to need rook or regulus for damage, dark can use any set of heroes and it will work

• Dark better at killing heroes, Light is better at Sieging
      Benefits Dark - Dark can hold middle while it is more difficult for light to get across the map to siege

New Content:

•   A personal ranking system for people you play with, with an editable note field
•   Move-Attack: preventing having to click on targets in order to kill them.