Ranting about Demigod!

I feel like ranting after a day of playing Pantheon. I'm gonna try and avoid shouting nerf, but I will point out my views on various characters and abilities.

Items:

• Siege Idols: They can outrange towers, and while they are easy to deal with I think it might be a bit excessive to allow this.
• Universal gadget: It's about time I mention this wonderful item. It comes in handy early on for killing enemy demigods. I have yet to be on the recieving end of one, but it's scored me a number of kills. I can't really say if this item is balanced or not, but it is quite handy early on. It's pretty useless later on, unless you need to save a fort or tower.

Team Joining:

I have issues with it. Premades make the game fun, and I'm guilty of doing this quite a few times. It's better to lose because you fought someone better, and not because your ally was not up to par (not that I'm all that great myself). I see premades as fair game.

Regulus: (big surprise eh?)

After playing a lot of matches agaisnt Regulus today (mostly 2 Regulus) I've reaffirmed my beliefs that he needs some tweaking. Regulus is one of those characters that really doesn't feel right when I play as/against him. His abilities tend to make most of the fight a little impersonal (maybe not the word I want) as he can place mines and snipe. Sniper's Scope only adds to this.Regulus is just one of those characters that scales far too well.

Regulus has abilities that boost both his attacks and he has some high damage abilities, so he has a nice balance of abilities; some of which are mitigated by armor, and others by health. This means that at higher levels opponents really have to put in decent amount of money to counter both. With most characters you buy one piece of armor that suits the opponent.

I really don't mind snipe, but it's one of those things that detracts from player to player interaction... Mines on the other hand are a bit too annoying. The slow debuff at Rank IV, the high damage output, and the ability to just leave them in place makes them a bit excessive in my eyes. Now, you can't remove mines without activating them or having Regulus place more than six. Even Rooks towers have a time limit, can be seen, and destroyed by players. I just can't fathom why there's no solid counter to Mines. Yes, a General can summon minions as a counter, but what about other Assassins?

Torch Bearer:

I feel that ice is lacking. I think a glaring difference is with the auras:

• Fire Aura versus Permafrost: The Fire Aura works at all times, thus benefiting the user greatly, while Permafrost only works when enemies are around. So, basically, Permafrost is only useful "sometimes" and Fire Aura is useful "all the time."
• Deep Freeze versus Fireball: The cooldown increase goes away when the ability is no longer effecting the target. In the end the cooldown effect didn't have much use, but it might have had some.
  

Queen of Thorns:

Easily my favorite character... Now if only there was an assassin variant of her. The ability to debuff is great, but I feel that her minions (Shamblers) are lacking. They require a lot of investment to make useful and overall it just doesn't seem like she has as many build options as other characters. I know there's been a bit of debate on this subject, but I haven't been swayed away from the idea that they are weak.

My other gripe about her is Uproot and Compost. Uproot isn't terribly useful, all it does is damage structures. Sure it sounds useful, but in the end it only saves you a couple of seconds on taking out towers. I'd rather see uproot effect an area on the ground and knock enemies around a bit. Because Uproot isn't all that useful, it means that Compost is less useful. Since I don't find Shamblers to be worth using I can never see much reason to take Compost. It does help Uproot a fair amount though, so it's not useless. I guess I'm just set in my ways after an extensive amount of playtime using the Queen. I've found what works for me, so it's possible that minions are fine.

On a side note: Open form should have a default benefit, like boosted damage or a poison.

Sedna:

Sedna is pretty well balanced. She isn't a killing machine, but she does a nice job at surviving and supporting her team. I think my only gripe about her is that she can reach a point where she is too durable and it just becomes too easy for her to run into your base while you retreat; of course, she escapes with minimal injury. Mostly it seems to be a result of her +health regen combined with +health regen items to get a very large bosot of health regeneration.

Her Yetis need a buff! What more can I say? I couldn't fathom a person actually using minions over any of the other great survival abilities that she has. I feel that Yeti's need to be powerful enough for someone to replace pounce or heal.

Oak:

He's the most balanced character in the game. He should be the reference point when trying to build fun/balanced Demigods.

Unclean Beast and Erebus:

Not too sure about these two. Erebus seems fine to me, but UB is pretty insane with Spit+Foul Grasp+Ooze. I wouldn't say he is unbalanced, but it's certainly a nice combination.

Rook:

I love Rook and his towers. But I think they should vanish when he dies, and the last Rank probably shouldn't decrease their mana cost.

Maps:

• Crucible: the worst map in the game. The first team to lose their towers at the center seems to lose the match. It's far too linear of a map to be fun. I wouldn't recommend making such linear maps in the future.
• Exile: My favorite map, but the choke point at the very end seems to be an issue at times. Still, it's a very unique map and I hope to see more like it.
• Brothers: Boring as dirt. It's far too big and not very interesting. For such a large map it winds up being very linear.
• Other Maps: Pretty much balanced. Symetrical and plain (but not too plain).