Priests - A potential problem and why

Another issue I have with them is that they heal based on a percentage of total health.  While that's awesome and makes them quite helpful I think it's counterintuitive with the war rank they're available at.  When everyone has 5-7k HP late game they could probably give 70 gold and still be fine, but by that time you're likely at war rank 8, which goes back to the major complaint most people seem to have with them:  Priests before rank 8 is generally a self-imposed handicap.

i basically agree with your point about them being worth too much gold....

 

...but i gotta nitpick you on something.

 

its not "about 4" priests per wave. 3.78 priests? uh... no its exactly 3 priests per wave.

 

you're gifting your opponents an additional 99 gold per portal spawn once you buy priests. thats 30 seconds worth of holding a gold mine (for 1 player anyway, mines are better since they affect the whole team) per creep wave! the spawn rate depends on map settings, but if its about 15 seconds in between waves the priests are worth an additional 6.66 gold per second to a player that sits around and farms them. totally nuts. better than 3 gold mines!

There are a few threds disscusing things to fix this "problem" so purely as an idea:

 

What if new creeps were added to the waves based on your war rank?

There were no upgrades to buy them so you couldn't blame the noobs and it would also give a boost in gold/XP to the loosing team?

First off, everyone hopefully understands the versatility of the Priest upgrade.  While they might be granting the other team extra money, they also provide great versatility.  Yes they grant the opposing team plenty of cash.  At the same time however, they are prolonging creep waves staying up and running and pushing up against towers without players having to push with them.  When you can have your enemy having to constantly get back and defend because you have priest upgrades and they dont, you should be able to utilize that time to go somewhere they aren't and take flags. 

And on a side note... try purchasing the priest upgrades paired with the angels right away.  Watch what happens to creep waves clashing agianst each other when you are multiple stages ahead of your enemy.  Just keep in mind that you play to win, and sometimes upgrading your character's items may need to take a backseat to pushing down bases and keeping them on their heels defending.

One AoE spell will destroy most of a creep wave, eg Rain of Ice, or mines, regardless of whether you have creep upgrades. I don't see the argument for buying priests to be strong at all. I most play play Cataract, and I rarely let a lane be completely undefended for long, since that's lost XP/Gold, and potentially lost towers too. If there is a DG in each creep lane buying upgrades will not help you push against them, it will hurt you because of the extra gold/xp you're giving them. If you want to push towers, you should stack one lane and burst damage a tower down in a single push before returning to normal formations (balancing your presence on either side) to farm. Buying priests is not the solution.

Rowskin makes an interesting suggestion, but I think it would completely change the way the game is played. Maybe as an option for custom games we it can be tried out. In my mind its going to do several things: 

- Sedna is screwed because no AoE means less ability to tag creeps

- Everyone will gain XP/Gold faster, making late game characters come into their own faster.

It's a nice idea but the current character balance is quite fragile imo.

I like the way this thread started off with a constructive tone  .

 

I think priests are pretty good late game (like atleast level ten or higher), but bad in the beginning. I never knew they gave that much gold! I play as torch bearer too so I love to hear "enemy priests have joined the battle".

I don't like the way that it's the only upgrade that will not only cost you gold, but will likely help the other team. I'm open to some changes to the creeps.

There have been many suggestions posted, even before my post on the other thread. THB id be happy with any one of them instead of what we have now. I dont believe they have any plans to change them in 1.1, so I suppose we will be stuck with this broken mechanic for some time now.

The answer is pretty obvious really. Make them better/cost less/give less gold,xp. Doesnt take another thread to figure out whats already been said many times.

I shouldnt have to warn teammates every game not to press the red self destruct button. The button shouldnt be there. (and you know it)

 

I had thought about Rowskin's idea before and the only reason why I didn't suggest it is that players might purposely cede flag control to draw out priests...  But the more I think about it the less likely that scenario seems.  Leaving the HP flag, CD flags, gold mines, etc. in enemy hands probably wouldn't be worth forcing the priest spawn.

I think this is more indicative of a general issue with Sedna.  Either a yeti improvement or an AoE damage effect tagget onto her heal at every level, starting at maybe 50 damage would help a lot with the tagging.

This is an issue they may need to address sooner or later though, many games have.  WoW, had issues with spell scaling, so did Diablo II and Warcraft 3.  I hate to just list Blizzard games, but they're the first ones that come to mind. I think some artifacts that increased ability damage by x% or y amount would be an interesting experiment, but I wasn't in beta so I don't know if that had already been experimented with (first problem I can see is a lack of anti-scaling factor like armor).

For the most part I don't really even have an issue with late game scaling, just late, late game when people get their 4x crits and 8-10k HP.  Before that point I feel most DGs are still competitive so I'm not sure the hastened game timeline would be an issue.

This too.

I'm not sure if it's been suggested before, but what if Sedna's heal did dmg to enemy DGs, the same amount it heals? Maybe a small spread of damage as a side skill. I'm not sure since I've played Sedna a full two tiems and hated it, but would this help out Sedna's skills at all, or jsut pointless?

An alternative to giving sedna an aoe would be to give her xp for healing. (where she actually heals, not just casts the spell)

Might be a bit of a pandoras box tho. (ie potential focus for exploiting)

Priests should have more health so they can't be killed with a single AoE spell, also they shouldn't be effected by the "throwing in the air" stuff.

From my experience, I've found that upgrading priests mid game is extremely helpful.  Yes, they give more gold and xp to the opposing team, but they significantly help push the lanes (in Cataract).  While the lanes are being pushed, I have the opportunity to flank greedy opponents trying to farm the creeps.  More times than not, I get the kill (depending on which DG I am).  In addition, I've found that pushing with the upgraded priest waves substantially helps.  Moreover, once the creeps push enough towards the center, I am able to ninja the opposing team's portal flag(s) and lock them up. 

 

Certainly, everyone is well aware of the cons of upgrading priests, but not many are aware of the pros.  Just today, I got scolded for upgrading priests mid-game.  Once the waves pushed towards center, I ninja'd the enemy's portal flags and it was gg.  The guy that scolded me denied what I had told him about upgrading priests and exclaimed that "we had already won anyways."  This was certainly not the case.  IMO, the match was pretty even at the point I upgraded priests. 

 

This is just how I play.  I have had a lot of success, so you don't have to take this to heart, but test it out for yourself.  Don't just think about the cons... experiment with the pros of upgrading to priests in mid-game.  You'll be surprised.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a Priest upgrade early to mid-game. As already pointed out, it's a strategic decision that helps to further push against the enemy. Sure, if the enemy has absolutely no Problem with holding you back, then it was simply a bad decision, but that doesn't mean that the upgrade needs fixing... it only means that your strategy needs "fixing".

The only thing I can agree on, that the xp and gold benefit from killing a Priest is maybe to high, compared to a Catapultasauri for example. But there is nothing inherently wrong with buying priests early on.

I agree with Spooky and g0chu, as I haven't run into this as such a severe and devastating problem as some people have.

As has been suggested before, closing the gap in xp/gold a touch could help balance it out a little more, but it still has its strategic uses where it is now.

That's exactly what we've been saying.  Really every other point here is moot, we can go around and around in circles about when priests can help, and no reasonable person is going to say that priests are an auto-loss 100% of the time or that they never serve any purpose.  

If priests gave 40 instead of 50 xp and 15 instead of 33 gold would anyone be posting here asking for their value to be raised?

For comparison let's get this in here too:

 

Unit	Exp. value	Bounty value
Soldier	33	4
Archer	33	8
Priest	50	33
Angel	50	66
Catapultasaurus	30	66
Giant	50	100
Tower	0	300
Fortress	0	300

 

I never get Priests early game personally because I don't think it's worth the gold but when people on my team do it's hardly a bad thing.  I often get healed by the Priests to keep me in the lane longer and in some cases help me in a fight.

Plus my sides minions then always win and start chipping away at the towers giving me an opportunity to take them out quicker, denying them teleport locations.

Unfortunately, there are some people here claiming exactly that.  (Nah, not in this thread Obscenitor, this one is actually constructive, it's nice)

Suggesting the drop to say 40xp sounds pretty reasonable, and gold to 15-20 sounds pretty reasonable too, would this make things so earth-movingly better though?

A couple things:

You acknowledge that priests give more gold/exp to the other team but you say it has pros as well, without ever really saying whether you think that the gold/exp they give is appropriate.  I don't really think we're talking about quite the same thing because of it.  You're defending the unit as a whole without giving your own quantification of its worth or supporting/disputing the current quantification of that value, which is 50 exp/33 gold a piece.

Again I don't feel that people in this particular thread are coming from the perspective that priests are worthless, just that being worth quadruple the bounty of archers and 8x the bounty of soldiers seems out of whack.

It just really seems to me like the developers didn't anticipate people skipping the upgrade completely.  Honestly if both sides would get priests when they become available I think the game would be much more fun, there's just no way to guarantee the opposing side will follow suit.

Thats why I was suggesting having them linked to the war rank. Both teams would end up getting the priest at relativity the same time.

If by here you mean the boards, then yes, but in this thread I haven't seen it so far (maybe I glossed over it though).  We can agree that anyone who says that is being unreasonable or hyperbolic.

Well relative to the effort involved I think it would be one of the best changes possible.  Most other player complaints are about bugs and lack of heroes which take an immense amount of effort or DG balance (though honestly complaints about specific abilities are extremely low key here relative to other forums) and rebalancing DGs seems like it would take way more research and risks disenfranchising people fond of those DGs.

On the other hand changing priest bounties seems incredibly simple and very few people would be upset by it, so when it comes to risk vs. reward or effort vs. reward I think it's one of the best changes that could be made, and while it's not earth moving on its own, you can't build a giant bone temple all at once, you have to build it one skull at a time.

Well, I got the impression, that everyone thinks that the Priests only purpose in early game is to feed the enemy, regardless of how much xp and gold they give.

If you couldn't tell from my post, I didn't mention the xp/gold "issue" because I don't see a huge "issue" with it.  It's never been a game-changer for me (negatively).  If you get priests, I encourage players to do something with them, not just upgrade them and hope for the best.  Again, gotta have the cons with the pros of anything.  The cons are obvious and overstated.  The pros, not so much.  I don't have any complaint regarding the xp/gold associated with the priests. 

 

Honestly, it surprises me that so many people are complaining about this.  There are way, WAY more important things to fix in the game.  But that's an alternative topic.

How true.

It's not actually many, it's a few people who have claimed to not get Priests as a strategy and then a few people who think they know that you shouldn't get Priests who can't see the benefit of them.