The real challenge on this map is beating two tower farming rooks. If they take your front two towers out, it's game over.  You'll never get out of that one path to your base again unless you buy a warpstone, that costs 5k.  And that's also assuming that by time you get 5k gold you haven't already been pushed so far into your own base that getting the gold flag would be futile. 

It's not that I've consigned myself to having a slower demigod, but rather that my issue is when I'm playing a slower demigod.   Getting speed items helps only so much, because enemy demigods can do the same to you.

As I said, the primary issue is that when the enemy is faster than you, even by a slight margin (or if they have skills like maim or diseased claws) then they're just kiting you all the way back to your tower line, and usually that's enough to bring you to the brink of death, if not kill you.  If you're faster than them, however, there's no problem.

 

It was actually a game as unclean beast that prompted me to make this post, and Sedna was the faster demigod.  I was trying to whittle away her mana with a continual barrage of spits, but as soon as I ventured too far from my towers she just began an all out battle of attrician.  I quickly saw that she was going to win in the long run, so chugged a potion to get back to 80% health and started to run, but all that health was whittled away before I got back to my tower line.

 

I've done that; quite fun but also quite risky.  Obviously you can't hold the gold mine flag against competent enemies, but there are some great DG counters.  Regulus and TB are great for breaking a Rook's advance with their AoE damge, for instance.

 

That doesn't seem smart to me.  I can certainly see locking it after you take it, but "keeping it locked" seems woefully impractical.  In addition to being quite expensive to perpetually keep something locked, you'll easily spend half your time running back and forth between the lane and the flag to keep applying new locks.  If you're actually outplaying an enemy well enough that you can afford to make a trip like that every 45 seconds, I don't think you need the locks in the first place.

Awesome thing about bat swarm is you can ninja the other teams portal flag. Bring pots with you port over use pots while the towers beat on you or move past them out of range works too less damage. Once you get the cap pot up if needed lock it and port back. Enjoy your free XP everytime a spawn comes out of their portal and the beauty of it is your whole team gets it.

The side effect of this is you force the other team to recap that flag and waste valuable time not getting money or xp and might even get them split up where you can nab a kill or just knock down their towers.

Don't let the small size of the map fool you, TP scrolls are really important on this map due to the layout.  flag lock/TP on the gold flag (and later on flags near the enemy base) can be crucial here.  I've had good success as UB with a Rook partner where he'll maintain the main lane and the xp flag while I keep the other two flags and assist him when needed.  Was a pretty stellar setup.

 

It did seem like to get to the light citadel you needed to go closer to the enemy health crystal though, which seemed odd.

 

delete the "just" in the first sentence and you see why it's unfair. there's no problem for erebus to lock the gold flag up himself too, so that's not a good point. about the mana cost... lol! mana... it regenerates fast. and even faster if you always have the gold flag and can afford regen items or potions.

The point is he can do all the same things you can do to keep the flag working for you, but there's one thing he can do which you cant. and that's where it is imbalanced and exploitive behaviour to do so. he just doesnt have to spend any money or use his favor item slot for it! dont you see?!

Damn, it's so cool to be Erebus, because I can sprout little light towers wherever I want, plus I can snipe enemies from halfway across the map, and even lay mines too! With my shield ability, I can remove any debuffs and have up to 9 seconds to attack the enemy and take no damage! Plus sometimes I come back from the dead and can kill you before I finally die. Being able to spit on towers and do massive damage is super sweet, and usually I'll spit on a player as they are escaping and kill them with dot's. The best part is my long range fireballs and ice attacks that slow down the enemy, I can even increase their cooldowns! Man Erebeus is the best!.............

Wait a minute..........

I don't have those skills, some characters have those skills! I have to pay gold or favor points to get something similiar, if I can get something similiar at all!

THIS GAME IS IMBALANCED!

/massive sarcasm

great!

you ripped a part of my sentence out of context and intentionally misunderstood it! well done, you're so sweet

I didn't intentionally misunderstand anything. I may have misunderstood your comment.

I think you feel that because Erebus is able to achieve things other demigod's can't without spending gold or favor points because of his abilities / skillset, you feel the game is imbalanced. Correct?

If I am wrong, correct me.

My counter arguement is that every demigod has skills abilities that other DG's must pay gold / favor for or simply cannot have.

 

no other skill in gives such an advantage for the game as bat swarm on crucible

...really?  The added mobility is nice, but...  How about Oak using Last Stand to kamikaze down fortresses or even citadels, or a trio of Regulus's sniping the citadel from the other side of a map, or a Tower Rook blockading a portal flag (or the only creep path on Crucible - they're potentially harder to deal with on Crucible than Erebus could dream of).

No other character can imitate those techniques, even with favor items.  They provide distinct advantages in certain situations.  That's the whole point of having multiple character classes.  Situational advantage.

With the exception of Rook, none of those are situational.  They are just aspects of the character.  Erebus has no inherently advance on Prison due to his teleport, but he circumvents the normal chokes of the map on Crucible.  Oak's kamikaze last stands work on every map, and it's not specific to any feature that is unique to one map.  The only maps where Erebus can really cross a boundary are Exile, Brothers, and Crucible.  Exile isn't a huge problem, but Crucible and Brothers are.

 

errr....

starting with oak: he has to die for it, so i guess that's why it can be considered balanced

regulus: you can adapt to three of them and the way they are playing, they're easily beaten, there's nothing imbalanced about that

rook: you'll have a hard time with him, for sure, but he can be beaten. in comparison to erebus imbaness, that's nothing

erebus: oh i just bat swarm to the gold flag and constantly hold it, get huge amounts of money and buy items that make me invincible, then i bat swarm over to your portal flag, lock it and teleport back to my base and buy the whole creep row, cause i'm just rich as hell. that's also balanced for sure

It's a virtually unstoppable method of winning a game mode.  I'd think that would be substantially more dangerous to the ephemeral concept of 'balance' than a replicable mobility advantage on one or two maps.

How exactly would you adapt to three regulus' sniping your citadel?  They can bring it down in ~4 minutes, from safely behind their own towers.  There's a long thread on the technique here.  I think the main reason it isn't done more often is because it's not fun.
A good tower rook can cause as or more severe problems than Erebus.  Erebus may be able to cap and back-cap, but he can't trap you in your base like Rook can.  A good Tower rook (or worse: a pair of them) can prevent a team from ever getting out the gate.  In fact, one argument in /favor/ of giving characters warp (either via adding Erebus or a warpstone) is that it is one of the few methods for a team to get around a Rook blockade on Crucible.  Back-cap the flag and teleport scroll to it.

 

honestly...you're pointing out that a good tower rook can cause severe problems on crucible...well, isn't that obvious. i guess a good "anyone" can cause severe problems anywhere. and a good "anyone" will also know how to counter the "good tower rook". i don't see how a rook could get anywhere near as badass as the erebus exploit there.

But also, i think there's no point in discussing this any further

Thank you for making my point.

What boggles my mind about this whole debate is that I've actually found, tested, and abused (vs AI) real game-breaking skill exploits, such as the perma-mist portal camper or the quadruple-regulus early game snipe victory.  This isn't one of them - this is simply leveraging an intended game mechanic to do exactly what it's intended to do.  Erebus is clearly supposed to be the most mobile character.  If there is a problem with Erebus, it's that he's also decent enough at holding the flags he can easily back-cap.  Clearly, Stardock recognizes this as the issue, since they've already nerfed his best demi-god slaying skill once.

play as erebus