COLOR SCHEME:

All balance suggestions in this thread are subjective opinions or complaints submitted by posters in this thread.

To highlight how strong others agree or disagree with these opinions I introduced the following color scheme:

• Plain black/white: Undisputed complaints. No one has offered a different opinion on that point yet.
• Green: Claim/suggestion is mostly accepted as true.
• Red: That statement is under debate and no consensus has been reached.
• Plain/crossed out: Statement is overwhelmingly refuted.
• Bold/larger font size: Emphasizes the strength of the consensus.
  

Also, the balance suggestion format is to be interpreted like this (currently reformatting):

• Skill name/problematic aspect: Here's the description of the issue that bugs the players posting here.
  • Proposed Change 1
  • Proposed Change 2
  • ....
• Issue 2: ...

Status changes as discussion progresses. Check the update history at the bottom of this post to see which posts have been accounted for.

Read this first! (or at least skim over it)

On the whole the current cast of demigods is quite well balanced. A win is mostly decided by skill and less by the choice of your avatar.

Admittedly some builds seem downright overpowering - immortal Sednas for instance - but even those builds can be cracked ... and they usually have a harder time in other aspects of the game, like getting to the point where they are finally awe-inspiring.

I want to know what the experienced players think about the current state of balance (sorry newbs, but getting trashed by tower rooks and not having a clue how to beat them doesn't make rooks overpowered).

Also, I'm not looking for single-skill complaints - everyone knows by now that QoT's Tribute skill sucks (at level 15 at least) - but rather how the overall performance of a demigod skilling strategy compares to the rest of the game.

For example: Regulus has at least three skilling strategies one can pursue: Snipe, Mines, Angelic Fury.
* Clever minelayers are quite feared for their incredible burst damage and can easily dominate careless players but they can be comfortably countered by competent generals. Strong build but not everpowering.
* Snipers deliver unexpected kills from a great distance, frustrating many players that fall victim to him. Can't really be countered, but the skill depends on the target having low health in the first place which means that the snipes rely on the performance on your teammates or the carelessness of the opponent.
* Angelic Fury - er, I played that in the beginning. Are there good builds out there?

Anyway, Regulus has several main paths he can pursue, several pretty strong ones but not so strong that he can't be beaten without the need of a balance patch. But are some of his skills so weak that they will never get picked at all? If so, how should the change happen?

Please post your opinions and suggestions and I'll do my best to summarize the general consensus (btw, the initial QoT summary is solely my perception of her. Additional opinions welcome).

Lord Erebus

Build Strategies:

Summary:

Balance Suggestions:

• Coven: Erebus Minion builds are currently perceived as strong and cheap.
  
  • Nerf slightly (4/6/8 minions). (It's been suggested that only a certain item causes troubles - not the minions themselves)
  • First point of Coven is too strong. Distribute benefits over the levels (4/7/10).
    
• Improved Conversion Aura: Same as Coven, minion builds appear overpowered to some.
  
  • Reduce health gain slightly  (100,200,300) (It's been suggested that only a certain item causes troubles - not the minions themselves)
• Mist: Can be kept up indefinetly with the right items. Makes Erebus practically unkillable.
  • Add a max duration.
• Bat swarm: Range 30 at level 2/3 too great? Also, Bat Swarm is interruptable (really? Never noticed.)
  
  • slightly reduce range at lvl 2/3 (20-25 range)
  • Make Bat Swarm uninterruptable (currently has 0.1 sec casting time.)
• Bite: Still one of the most useful skills.
  • Nerf the speed debuff on victims
    
• Stun: Due to long casting time this skill cannot be used as reliable interrupt.
  • Reduce casting time-
    

Oak

Build Strategies:

Summary:

Balance Suggestions:

• Soul Power: One point into this skill is very well worth it if you're getting minions, preferably early on so you also can take advantage of the passive bonus to the fullest. But getting level 2 and 3 is a lot harder to justify, since level 1 grants a static +20 damage boost plus the damage boost depending on the number of active spirits.
  
  • Increase or distribute the effectiveness of damage boost throughout all three skill levels.
    
• Last Stand: The trigger animation lasts too long, giving the victorious demigod enough time to flee to safety.
  
  • Reduce trigger animation duration. Skip the fall-then-rise animation, and give Oak a damage buff depending on the number of minions he had when he died (level 1). Level 2, make Oak give any nearby allies a temporary bonus (ala SoF, without the dmg) when he dies.
    
  • Keep the obvious trigger animation but increase movement speed buff. Let them run but let Oak catch up.
  • Remove the bonus (both for him and allies) when hitting buildings, to avoid fortress-exploits and similar multi-Oak strats. (meh, I like the kamikaze demolisher strategy)
• Shield: Level 1/2 too strong since they remove debuffs. Description says otherwise: Only Shield 3+4 should do so.
  • Remove the debuffing feature of Shield 1+2 (it's not THAT strong. look at the recharge time of shield).
    

Queen of Thorns

Build strategies:

• Minion build: Shamblers+Entourage+Compost. Support with shield, spikes, mulch.
  
• Shield Support build: Shield+Spikes+Goddess of Thorns. Support with shamblers
• Siege Support build: Shield+Uproot+Spikes. Support with compost/shamblers.
  

Summary:

QoT fares bad with every build against every Demigod. Sure, at the beginning she has great staying power, comparable to tower rooks. But she will barely ever land a kill. Her dps and burst damage are low. Popping into open form for spikes/spike wave/uproot consumes much time. Theoretically a combo of ground spikes, spike wave and mulch could deal heavy burst damage, but the delay between form switching makes that unfeasable.

She has only two feasible ways of playing her: Support and Siege.

Balancing Suggestions:

• Shield: Shield doesn't scale well at higher levels. Also takes unmitigated damage (which kinda makes sense).
  • Improve Shield strength by granting it more hitpoints.
    
  • Let personal shield take mitigated damage. Switching all shields to mitigated damage would make your team tanks nearly invulnerable. But if armor may influence the damage taken by the Shield QoT casts on herself, then it offers a good compromise. Could be an extra level 15 skill. Maybe balance that out by increasing cooldown.
    
• Form switching: Popping out for spikes is highly risky. That tactic can become feasible again if you can cast spikes faster after switching forms ... and close faster after coming out.
  
  • Reduce time and casting delay
    
  • Keep auto attacking while switching forms
• Open form: The closed form bonuses are great. So great that no one wants to play in open form, eliminating the desire for any aggressive QoT build.
  
  • Add passive bonus to open form! Give her open form AoE attacks (maybe even larger ones) attack speed bonus, minion bonus, whatever. Has the added advantage of seeing more QoT on the field in all her naked glory.
  • Reduce attack range to effect range of Ground Spikes.
    
• Tribute: Available too late to make any difference.
  
  • Make Tribute available earlier.
    
  • Replace Tribute instead. Add a skill to improve Shambler effectiveness either by increasing dps or range/AoE of their autoattack.
• Uproot: Universally regarded as weak. Only works against buildings and offers zero other uses (unlike Rooks structural transfer, which at least provides health).
  
  • Allow it to reduce the damage the tower does over the duration(-10,-20,-30,-40)
  • Add stun effect to affected buildings (reducing damage to 0).
  • Add a 'shaking' effect at the spot, slowing down units nearby? Uproot on a tower as a snare could be an interesting if limited effect, that would also synergize with the level 15 ability. (Maybe even add a chance to interrupt enemy DGs ?)
  • Make uproot target the ground and provide an area effect. Nice anti tower rook effect.
    
• Summon Shambler: Shamblers are expensive, low on health and plainly ineffective. Too many skills are needed to make them somewhat useful.
  
  • reduce level 1 mana cost to 200. (Um, only Shambler 1?)
  • reduce mana cost of all summon shambler skills by 200.
  • reduce amount of skill points needed to make shamblers useful, i.e. buff up support skills and remove some levels.
  • merge the Entourage skill into summon shambler, basically making them stronger and making the minion tree less skill point intensive.
    
• Mulch: Mulch has only limited use since it only works on the expensive Shamblers.
  
  • Make mulch work on every unit, not just Shamblers. However, only Shamblers will explode for damage. (I like the idea. Fits her character.)
• Entourage: Only affects Shamblers.
  • Give combat bonus to other minions, too.
• Compost: Only affects Shamblers and Uproot.
  • Give combat bonus to other minions, too.
  • Give a combat bonus to QoT herself, too.
• General suggestions:
  
  • QoT has no stun. Give her one.
    

Regulus

Build Strategies:

• Minelayer
• Sniper

Summary:

Balance Suggestions:

• Dead Eye: Current implementation appears ... weak.
  • Buff either chance or duration while auto attacking
  • Change to work with Snipe only but give a 1 second stun 100% of the time
• Mines: Stepping into a full mine field can spell instant death (6*450=2700 damage) (only if you're dumb enough to waltz into it. Caution against minelayer Regs.)
  • Nerf mines. Every part of them. (Mines are strong, yeah, but they are quite easily countered simply by walking! Experience helps.)
  • Increase Spread of mines
  • increase casting time

Rook

Build Strategies:

• Tower Rooks
• Rook ninjas
• Rook assassin

Summary:

Balance Suggestions:

• Structural Transfer: Limited utility and nearly useless inside of combat because it's too easy to interrupt
  • Make it uninterruptable.
  • ST should leech mana. Energizer does something similar at level 15, but it's late (when everyone has interrupts) and only increases mana regeneration (by 150%) instead of leeching. (Personally I think that would make him overpowered)
    
  • Structural Transfer should repair own buildings. Interesting idea. Eat enemy and summoned towers but repair your own fixed defenses (with what? Health? That makes for some interesting tactical choices. This would prevent him from emergency munch his team's fixed defenses, though.)
• Power of the Tower: Towers are overpowered (sigh...)
  • Nerf towers. Reduce health and attack speed. (deeper sigh...)
    
• Base Attributes:
  • Increase movement speed from 5.4 to 5.5 or 5.6 (matter under debate. slowness is part of his design. besides: Rook has ranged attacks.)
    
  • Increase armor (well, he does have the lowest armor in the game, despite being a big walking castle)
• Boulder Roll:
  • Increase Damage (dunno. BR is usually used in conjunction with Hammer Smash, which means LOTS of damage).
  d
• Hammer Slam: Apparently it doesn't deal enough damage.
  
  • More damage late game.
    

Sedna

Build Strategies:

• Heal & Pounce - Good burst damage and extremely high passive and active healing capabilities. Nearly immortal.
  

Summary:

Passive and active self-healing skills can make Sedna nearly immortal. Her Pounce deals good damage and doubles as an interrupt. Silence interrupts, too, and prevents skill usage alltogether for some time in a large area. One of the strongest - if not the strongest - demigods around when played correctly. In fact, her healing builds are so strong that every other build of hers that isn't a variation of that becomes obsolete.

Balance Suggestions:

• Summon Yetis: They  suck. Too often Yetis can't reach the enemy because some midgets stand in their way.
  
  • Remove or reduce collision area or improve pathfinding of Yetis.
  • They are too weak for their cost. Make them stronger.
  • Yetis should do splash damage at all levels, something like 15/30/45/60%
• Wild Swings: By that time this skill's usefullness is limited.
  
  • Yetis should either have a 50% chance to knock small units into the air or a 10% chance to deal 1.5x damage.
    
• Inner Grace: Right now this skill only improves Sedna herself (but quite decently).
  
  • Additionally increase Yeti damage by 10% per level.
    
  • Apply all current bonus effects from Inner Grace to Yetis.
    
• Silence: Expensive
  
  • Reduce casting cost of  Silence 1 from 800 to 750 (I didn't have the impression that Sedna is particulary weak. And the suggested change doesn't really seem significant.)
    
• Healing Wind: As a +24 hps aura is a decent enough skill without needing the uber healing upgrade to priests. Especially regarding High Priests.
  • Nerf actual bonus to minion healers from 15/18/20/22 to 13/15/17/19 (I think it's good as it is. Minus the High Priest bug).
    
  • High Priests (level 3 monk idol) heal 30%, which is plainly a bug. Correct that bug!
• Heal: The Basic heal for Sedna is just too good early game.  You can heal significantly more ability damage per mana than anyone can deal.
  
  • Nerf Heal from 600/900/1200/1500 to 450/900/1350/1800). This makes the effect strictly worse until level 7, and then it gets a little better.
  • Increase cooldown from 7 to 10 seconds.
    

Torch Bearer

Build Strategies:

• Pure Fire
• Pure Ice
• Hybrid AoE master.

Summary:

Balance Suggestions:

• Permafrost/Fire Aura: Auras stay active for a short time in the other mode. Too short?
  
  • Increase aura duration slightly when switching between fire/ice form. (How long do they last anyway?)
• Circle of Fire: Increases damage, but not size.
  
  • Vary radius of Circle of Fire as it levels.
    
• Deep Freeze: This interrupt is too slow for some.
  • Make it instant instead of 0.1 sec
• Basic Attributes: Ice TB can attack while moving. Fire TB can't. Also, mode switching costs lot's of time.
  
  • Enable auto attack while moving in fire mode!
  • Reduce time it costs to switch from ice to fire mode.

Unclean Beast

Build Strategies:

• Spitting Beast
• Oozing Beast
• Hybrib Spit-Ooze Build
  

Summary:

Balance Suggestions:

• Spit: Too strong. And apparently there are issues regarding spit stacking and feeling counterintuitive. (I have no idea what that means).
  
  • Increase the cooldown on spit to 10 seconds.
  • make Spit not work on towers.
• Foul Grasp: Bad scaling. No incentive to invest more than 1 skill point. Also quite expensive.
  
  • Change  to 1.5/2/2.5 seconds of stun.  Makes it a smidge weaker early on, and makes it worthwhile to get more points in later on. (It's been suggested that an increased stun is actually a nerf due to the current foul grasp mechanics. See here.)
  • Reduce Mana cost.
    
• Bestial Wrath: BW is too expensive and cast time is too long.
  
  • Reduce Mana cost by 100
  • add attack speed bonus (+5/10/15/20%) (um, UB already attacks very fast at higher levels. fastest attacker in the game, in fact)
  • Reduce cast time to 0.3
  • Add a movespeed bonus.
  • Increase effect duration
  • Temporary life leech effect.
    
• Acclimatization: Skill is too good, giving UB a strong advantage against heavy hitters (like Hammer Slam).
  • Nerf damage reduction to 25%.
  • Let it trigger only once very 10 seconds.
  • Nerf is somehow. (It's accepted that this skill is maybe too good. )
    
• Ooze: Free damage and powerful debuff. Only costs health.
  
  • Make it cost mana when activated
    

ITEMS

• Horn of Battle:  Abusing this item allows generals to hoard minions and send them unscathed directly to the enemy citadel, destroying it with several tries. Also, the effect applies to newly summoned minions even after the horn was used.
  • Nerf range of horn effect so only minions close to the caster are affected.
  • Don't let the effect work on minions summoned after using the horn.
    
• heaven's wrath: too good mid/late game for pushing (and early game for leveling)
  
  • increase its cooldown by 30 seconds. (it already has 45 sec cooldown. Item is ok by my book)
    
• Heart of Life: who uses it now?
  • reduce cost of HoL. Maybe 10000?
    
• blood of the fallen: Health bonus too great.
  • slightly reduce from 800 to 750. (big deal. change barely matters. and to lower hp further makes it worse than charm of life)
    
• caplock:
  • increase cooldown slightly(2-5 secs) (don't fix what ain't broke)
    
• All artifact consumbles: Too expensive.
  • reduce costs
• journeyman's treads: movement speed bonus too powerful
  • nerf movement speed from 50% to 40%
• Armor of Vengeance
  • Increase trigger chance from 1% to something higher
    
• Platemail of the Cusader
  • Increase trigger chance from 1% to something higher
• Parasite Egg: It's high cost makes it nearly prohibitive, even though the effect is interesting.
  
  • Reduce it's cost from 5000g to maybe 3000g.
    

Update history:

1. Included Schobbos reply#1 criticism of QoT Tribute & minion damage.
2. Aeris130 reply#2 Oak complaints.
3. Color scheme for marking disputed complaints/suggestions.
4. ItchyDustbin #7 & Schobbo #1 Yeti remarks.
5. StAcK3D_ActR #4 remarks. Some of them, at least.
6. Polynomial #10 and rest of StAcK3D_ActR #4. Alphabetical DG order.
7. Added suggestions from #11 -#25
8. Added suggestions from Obscenitor #27 and repeated suggestions from Shadow (sorry it took so long). Painted Erebus minion nerf suggestions red as result.
9. Added #29
10. Added #32
11. Moved color-index to top at request of abuggeredhedgie #39. Added #37 suggestions excluding the Ooze one which I didn't understand.
12. Acknowledged posts up to #46 (boy this is work. This should be done by forum administrators, honestly).
13. Acknowledged posts up to #52. Added items. Didn't include items that had no real complaint or suggestions. (sorry, stacked)
14. Acknowledged posts up to #75. Mostly quarrels between Sedna & Erebus - em - experts.
15. Acknowledged posts up to #92.
16. Acknowledged posts up to #132
17. Acknowledged posts up to #143
18. Acknowledged posts up to #157
19.