Until level 15, if you get Grunt Health at the Citadel, Oak can't AoE anything but the Minos and Archers.

He can't kill angels/priests/cats/giants with his 450 AoE.

Err... really, Oak rapes QoT past 10. If you look at the comparable skills both QoT and Oak share that are used, his are better in every case.

He really can just walk right up to you and kill you with about 25% health remaining, and that's assuming he doesn't pop a potion in your face.

Surge of Faith with Divine Justice will demolish you, and if he interrupts your second ground spike, it is all over badly.

It is just jaw dropping to me to see people say QoT can fight Oak late game, and I am biased towards the greatness of QoT.

I don't remember saying anything about Oak vs Queen...

Wasn't directed at you... just the general conversation flow of, keep QoT in the creep wave late game to fight other DGs. Which doesn't really work, especially vs Oak. You have 0 chance of going toe to toe with any DGs past 13, in or out of creep waves.

Pretty much every DG has a way to deal with your frontline troops except Sedna, but that is fine because you can't hurt Sedna as Qot at that time in the game. You will run out of mana way faster then she will run out of life.

Of the others mentioned...
Reg can mine and engage you from a distance.
DA can swap you into his creep wave and then escape yours quickly with a warp strike.

Gotta remember that if you are QoT and upfront to spike up to the catas/giants, they are all targeting you and you are going to get beat. If you stay in the wave, then you only get the priests (and even then they dont die if upgraded) and you have a DG in you face that is not targeted by giants/catas and that is going to kill you too.

So, I know this has been discussed to death, but if you could make ONE FIX to QuT (from a patch standpoint) to make her viable late-game, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Make Spike-Wave an interrupt?

Seriously buff Entourage (esp. lvl 8) so that Shamblers kick total ass?

Make lvl 10 Shield invulnerable to Special Abilities?

Before we get started, my position on balance.

I think all useless skills should be brought up to tier 1 levels. And the things people complain as overpowerd (UB tier 1 skills etc...) should be left alone. It will be easier to balance this way. If all the skills are so good that you want them all, that it a good thing. 

eg: UB does have useless skills too, like bestial wrath, which should be improved to be competitive with the other skill choices.

On to Queen, her skills that need help (how I would balance her)

1a) Entourage (this is a 2 part fix)
Too weak for what it gives you. You are better off with morale, when you consider the damage output you get from morale for 6 idols + 4 shamblers. Although it does give you shmabler life, shamblers are ranged, and you can buy items so it is of questionable use to pick it for this reason.

However, we can make it an interesting, unique and desirable skill without simply upping the damage output.

Lets say that every point in entourage lowers the delay on mulch explosion by 1/2 second. (it is 2 by detault) That is right, when you mulch it is set to take 2 seconds for the explosion to go off.

1b) Mulch (this is part 2 of the entourage fix)
Good skill, but it could do more and give QoT a uniqie ability.

I would say getting caught in a mulch explosion should also remove all positive effects. For 3,4,5 seconds (mulch 1,2,3). We can call the icon effect "Contaminated" that shows up in you negative buffs.

This is the opposite of negative debuff removal, and I think is the perfect flavor for Queenie and brings a unique ability to the game.

2) Compost
Terrible skill but really really cool effect.

QoT has a problem, mana. Compost should up her closed mana regen. (base is 100% regen when closed)
Compost I closed Mana regen increases 11,22,33 per effect level
Compost II closed Mana regen increases 22,44,66 per effect level
Compost III closed mana regen inreases 33,66,99 per effect level

Inbetween battles, if you are left alone to farm, you can regen your mana faster.

3) Spikewave: Add Interrupt on hit, ever demigod should have an interrupt. (yes even Occ). This skill would still not be as awesome as boulder roll and it is a comprable skill. Although you can interrupt multiple enemies, It gets harder to interrupt on purpose the farther the target is.

4) Uproot: Easily the worst spell in the game... and the double whammy is ground spike allows QoT to eat towers faster then anyone anyways.

To fix
Mana cost to 400 across the board (like rook's towers)
Also stuns afftected tower for 3,4,5,6,7 seconds per skill level.
Each point also increases shambler range by 1 yard

Now it is a siege skill.

5) Goddess of thorns
Remove the goofy 15% crappy acclimation effect. I mean really, it doesn't even work with shields on! We are going to rework this effect for closed mode.
Remove the current 35 damage reflection we are going to rework it for open mode.

New benefits of this skill.
Ground Spike + Spike wave effects increased to last 7 seconds (up from normal 5)
When closed, mana regen is 200% and armor bouns is 20% (up from normal 100% and 10%)
When open, thorn aura does 35 damage to anything in range (like a poor ooze effect, but with larger radius) 5% increased attack speed over closed mode (up from 2.5%)

This would make QoT a tier 1 demigod without making her imba.

Removing buffs would have a terrible backlash. Why? You ask. Because monks "debuff" is actually a buff. In fact, every single self-inflicted debuff is actually listed as a buff. You throw that in there and all of a sudden you'll be healing your opponents. 

Hrmm, but they are classified right? Positive buffs appear on the left hand of the screen, negative on the right.

nope. They are hidden. 

"Negative" buffs are just buffs with a "debuff = true" flag set. Just because debuff is set doesn't mean that it's "bad", it just means it is classified as a debuff to be cleaned by Shield or Heal III or Mist.

Buffs can't get cleansed by those abilities (which is good, mind you!). From the code's persepective, there is nothing inherently "evil" about being a debuff. It's just a switch that is flipped that indicates that it gets removed when certain abilities are used and that the display of the icon is handled differently (if it is shown at all. The monk "buff" isn't shown). 

All right, I see what you mean, not everything that is debuff=true is bad, so that doesn't work at all unless you can do some ugly hack that iterates through all the skills you want to disable, one by one. (which is probably bad for the engine anyways)

OK plan 2, I really want entourage to tie into mulch, as most of QoT's other secodary skills buff other skills too.

1) Entourage 1 (in addition to shambler buff, adds the following effects to mulch)
Does 250 mana damge to demigods when it goes off on them
Lowers mulch explosion time to 1.5 seconds.

Entourage 2 (in addition to shambler buff, adds the following effects to mulch)
Knocks smaller units into the air
Does 375 mana damage to demigods when it goes off on them
Lowers mulch explosion time to 1 second

Entourage 3 (in addition to shambler buff, adds the following effects to mulch)
Heals QoT allies for 350 life in a small radius
Knocks smaller units into the air
Does 500 mana damage to demigods when it goes off on them
Lowers mulch explosion time to 0.5 seconds

Tribute
Lowers mulch explosion time to instant

Explanation

QoT usually mulch's when she is fighting for her life, so this line would have an anti-eqilibrium effect in combat. It looks like you are going to get a kill, and then you are not. This is QoT's "The bait hides the hook mentality".

1 The mana damage will probably prevent them from firing off that last finishing skill if they aren't paying attention.

2 Knocks smaller units in the air: You are also giving alot up in your other skill lines if you take shamblers, mulch and entourage. This allows her to farm a second lane, or take out the frontline of upgraded troops if you invest the points.

3 The heal to allies is a boon because minons and shamblers really start to die fast vs level 7 AoE spells. QoT goes from holding her own to pwnd in 5 seconds when this happens. The 350 life gives you a few extra seconds of dealing out more DPS or an additional monk heal vs AoE.

This will also help greatly if you want to play a safe build and not open for spikes etc...

Mulch Explosion delay being 2 seconds is most likely a typo. I'd suggest putting at a value that makes sense given the animation and not using it as a balance feature.

So, I'm currently not working on the Uberfix because I don't know what GPG/SD has done (nor is anyone giving me any early information about it *sniff* *sniff*). I've been digging out older unfinished projects and my QoT Improvement mod is the one I'm working on now. Anyone interested in helping out with ideas there? I guarantee I'll listen to your opinion and give reasonable feedback. I also can promise that something will be done instead of just talking about it. For your convenience, a link to the thread.

I'm also considering helping out by trading implementation for play testing. If you have a reasonable mod request I'll make you a mini mod, in exchange you have to help playtest other mods. I've noticed that many of these balance ideas are viciously argued over, but very few actually make it to the game. This may be a way of doing it.

Edit: More on Mulch

Looking at the mulching ability more I think I understand why there is a 2 second delay before the damage occurs. The answer is that Mulch Shambler has a casting time of 0.1. If there was no delay after the animation, then the ability would be an unavoidable 250/500/750 damage attack. I'm guessing that GPG wanted to give the targets some chance to react before being hit by the damage, hence the added delay. This typically isn't noticed because it takes a "long" time to find and target a shambler to detonate.

First, she needs an interrupt.  Period.  Attach it to Spike Wave, I don't care.  As Lord-Orion said, all demigods should have an interrupt.

Second, she needs a viable minion build.  There are a number of ways to tweak Entourage and/or Compost to accomplish this.  However, since she can't really be played as an assassin like some other generals (e.g., Oak, Erebus, Occ), she needs a solid minion build. 

Third, she needs better lvl 15 skills.  I like the idea behind Goddess of Thorns, but it really needs a buff.  Violent Siege is a near uselss lvl 15 skill (there are very few, if any, towers around by that level).  And Tribute, well....

But, I digress...

If I could change QoT in one way in a patch, what would it be?  I would cut the time it takes to switch from close to open form in half, even if the animation has to be sped up to look less graceful. 

Out of everything that was said in this thread I think making spike wave an interrupt similar to boulder roll would make her EXTREMELY competitive. No other change needed.

Yes, I remember suggesting this ages ago    Faster form switching, a spike wave interrupt, fix the minion hp issue, buff entourage again, reduce the mana cost and increase the damage on uproot to make it fun (even if not viable in pro games) to have an almost fully open build.

POW!!! Queen is now competitive!  As easy is that.

Pointless level 15 skills are a bit annoying I suppose, but it's not completely critical IMHO seeing as most games on cataract end at level 10 - 14.

If Queen gets faster form switching, TB best! I'd kill to be able to form switch and deep freeze after someone started porting

I will say, my favorite thing about Queen late game is that if you get to the cit, its over. lol.

Balancing things the hardway... it is obvious fire nova should be an interrupt.

RoI should stun.