Making kiling minions 'rewarding' almost implies that you could farm them for a profit or something. I can see problems if minions gave a significant amount of xp. Giving them just a little - like half that of an infantry creep or something - would be just fair imo. And again, microing large groups is not a problem since you can control your entire army in just a click.

I can see the issue here, however I don't think the solution is as clear cut as just giving the minions XP and gold benefits. As has already been pointed out, this would create a slight disadvantage in my opinion for the general in a General VS Assassin fight, as the General needs to kill the Assassin to gain a benefit while the Assassin merely needs to kill the General's minions to see one, albiet a small one.

I agree that minions are pretty powerful, and allow a General to supply healing/DPS in multiple places at one time. Due to the nature of minions for Oak and Erebus, they're also able to be used as cannon fodder to brute force down Towers and fleeing Demigods while the General retreats in safety. Keep in mind that several Assassins, such as Unclean Beast and Regulus, have similar, while not identical, options available to them as well.

I don't think returning a benefit instantly on killing a minion is the best solution.
Perhaps when killing a General you receive additional benefits for the minions he has active and that you killed during the fight is a more ideal solution. The longer the fight, and thus the more effort on the Assassin's part, the more minions would have been spawned and thus a greater reward. This also keeps the balance whereby an Assassin has to kill a General to see a benefit, much like the General needs to kill the Assassin, however the Assassin also sees a return on the additional effort they need to put in place. I feel this would be an acceptable solution?

The problem is that Erebus - for example - can haras you with his minions all he wants while you cannot really do anything about it. Killing the minions is a waste of mana and time, and there is really no penalty for Erebus to harass you like this. Killing Erebus might get you an additional benefit, but you do not just kill Erebus like that, and thus your solution does really nothing in order to solve the problem.

I think that adding xp to the kill of a minion is fair, and I do not really see the downside of it. The general that has minions get quite an advantage in the form of a meatshield that can do a respectable job of damaging the opponent. Now harassing with the minions is free, yet I feel thee should be a tradeoff. Do you want to harass at the cost of giving away xp or do you want to keep your minions close and see to it they do not die?

It is quite annoying to see an Erebus that has a respectable amount of minions and he sends them after you while running himself. You cannot kill Erebus yet you will hve to give up the chase. The minions damage will add up soon and you will even get chased by Erebus as you flee the battle with your tail between your legs.

An enemy Erebus in your lane can therefore send his minions after you while he focusses on killing creeps. He gets xp while you do not get an advantage for defending yourself. Going after creps yourself is not a good idea while you are covered in minions. Therefore the Erebus can effectively push you out of a lane with minimal effort. You really have to go out of your way in order to make Erebus run, while he can just focus on the game.

Please do not say that controlling the minions requires skill, because it is hardly so. There are shortcuts for controlling you and the minions if you need to run. Also you can double click your minions and then use them as a fire-and-forget kind of weapon. It is quite effective yet there can be little done about it. Therefore I think it is only fair to reward the DG that goes after the minions with at least something for his efforts. The general cannot realy complain about this since he has jut effectively bought himself some time to farm xp himself, and he has a few moments in which he himself is not focussed, allowing him to pull of whatever nastyness he has in store.

In the end I hardly think adding xp for killing minions is hardly game-breaking. It may require a bit more reservedness about using minions against other demigods, but in the end we would have to see how it would turn out.

Alright I might agree when (since we are using erebus as an example) Assassins take 18 times the damage from an AoE and minions can get critical hits.

I think something that needs to be pointed out is that a general doesn't equal an assassin, with their minions on top providing a massive advantage. The General plus their minions equals an assassin, so attempting to nerf down minions or make it so that the General needs to keep their minons next to them at all times removes any tactical gameplay or benefit of even having minions. Why not just remove them all together and increase some the General's stats to balance them back out?

if this was true why are there so many builds that do not involve minions with generals.  in fact having minions is ususaly just one or two builds. oak hand stand up to any assassin with either a shield or heal build with no minions in sight.  same can be said for Erebus, Sedna and QoP.  in fact i hardly ever see QoP minion builds same with sedna now i think about it...

 

You just further cemented my point Alien, thanks

A minion build detracts from the power of a General, who have Minion or solo builds available to them, however grants them mobile DPS/Healing as the trade off. Assassins have only solo builds available to them, however they still have multiple builds. Rook, for example, can go Tower or Boulder/Slam and can either Tank with HP stacking or Speed to increase the mobility of his Boulder/Slam DPS or his surviveability. His towers also grant disconnected, and slightly unfocused, DPS with the benefit of being able to retreat while still dealing damage.

Trying to make Generals more like Assassins with less Mobile DPS removes the entire benefit of the trade off. If we're going to have minions basically sitting next to the General for the whole game, why bother having minions at all? I can't take off UB's Arms to decrease his DPS so why should I be able to kill Erebus' minions if they can't move away from him? It's counter-productive and non-sensical.

You assume the intention of minions is to allow a player to demolish structures or players across the map and not to simply give them an alternate means to approach normal combat situations.

I doubt that fighting across the map is minions' intended purpose. We'll see whether the next balance patch is kind to them or not.

I don't follow your logic here. If a minion build is equal to or greater than an assassin build in direct combat then why do they also need to be able to fight in two places at once?

If the DPS of the minions wasn't intended to be mobile, what is the purpose of abilities and items that are minion focused and, indeed, minions themselves? That's the trade off of a minion build - it's purpose - is to disconnect a portion of a General's DPS from the General and make it mobile, able to be relocated at will such as attacking Towers. A General using a minion build with their minions in direct combat against an Assassin is basically an even fight, with allowance for the obvious variables. A General using a minion build without their minions in direct comabt against an Assassin is a lop-sided fight. This is how balance is achieved.

I've nearly finished the process of learning Erebus, having learnt Rook, and a common thing I see when I enter into a 1V1 is people targeting me, ignoring my minions, and then spamming chat about how OP Erebus is. I can't kill off large sections of an Assassin's DPS, however they can kill off large sections of mine if they play intelligently. The trade off to this is that the same section of my DPS is also mobile and seperate allowing me to supply healing/DPS in two places at once. Attempting to remove this aspect removes the purpose of minions - mobile and disconnected DPS - and returns them into nothing more than a cosmetic feature, in which case any control over a players minions should be removed enitrely and they should be made apart of the General's player model to ensure that they are always by a General's side. They would then need to be made invincible to balance with Assassins correctly, unless they introduce a mechanic whereby an Assassin can lose a limb in combat and thus decreasing their DPS to balance out being able to kill a General's DPS indirectly.

You go way out on a limb here. The tradeoff is that they pour a significant amount of mana and time into destroying your minions which you can quickly replenish with next to no effort. If they attack your source of DPS they're not attacking you, that's the tradeoff.

No, I really don't think so. I seriously doubt they temporarily disabled the horn of battle just because the buff was active on newly spawned units automatically, I think they disabled it because it allowed generals to truly do what you think they're intended to do.

I think they balanced minions to die frequently and be rapidly replaced (with the exception of yetis and shamblers, which only come four at a time and have more HP). To make them disposable but not completely useless against AoE characters they had to strike a balance on HP which resulted in them having more HP than most DGs can reasoanbly be expected to counter solo, which resulted in them being able to crush buildings and wander off independently.

I think their spawn mechanics clearly indicate their intended proximity to the general which summoned them.

You keep saying that if minions are by your side they'd might as well be removed completely or made invulnerable. I don't see the idea behind this. Minions are just another way to fight, no more or less interesting than the skills you replace with them if you choose to spec for it.

No, that's a residual benefit of the main purpose - disconnected DPS - you can only attack one source at one time unless you use AoE attacks. It's in this residual benefit that most people believe there to be a problem. Assassins, like UB, can quite easily take down those minions however with Oak and Erebus, if they play intelligently, they'll try and move the fight amongst creeps - so that they're minions are being respawned as you're killing them. Oak has an even greater benefit of being able to place his little Wards down instead of it being tied to his direct position like Erebus. This isn't a problem with the minions, it's a problem with people fighting a General like they're an Assassin.
This is something I discovered after I fought one very clever TB as Erebus, who kept pulling me back away from the creeps and then AOEing down my minions. Before I realised his tactic, I was out of minions and had to run for the nearest creep wave, being AAed and eventually killed running. It's a matter of tactics per Demigod. Countering an Erebus who rushes your face with Minions and himself is a matter of disabling his minions - stunning if possible - or him, and then focusing on the opposite one. And of course it isn't easy to do, if it were minion builds would be pointless. As I stated in my original post, I do agree that the reward for fighting a General is currently disproportionate to the effort required, and offered a feasible solution.


I agree with your reasoning - however with a pure minion build, having minions that can be killed as easily as they've spawned would create a weak and utterly pointless build because one AoE attack away from a creep wave and you've just knocked out the primary source of DPS for your opposition - like what happened to me when I learnt this tactic. Having the ability to create strong Minions while having to sacrifice a General's solo ability allow for much greater flexibility. If Regulus can AA down towers without fear of damage, how is it unreasonable that a General can send his Minions in when the minions can be killed, and respawned, rather easily. If Rook can throw four towers on one lane, and then move other to another why is a General doing the same thing considering deal breaking?


I think both Oak's mechanic and the fact that they can move disagrees whole heartedly.


If minions were kept beside the General and unable to move away, you'd be fighting a singular source of DPS. The difference is that during the course of the battle, a General's DPS could be lessened compared to a Assassins. Open with an AoE attack on a General away from a creep wave and you've not only taken some of HP away, you've taken some of his DPS away as well. As it stands now, if I see an enemy about to AoE down my boys and I can't get them away in time, I'll move myself away and respawn them as best as I can before engaging the opposition. If the minions and I were unable to be seperated, I'd have to run away because no clever use of abilities is going to make up for a 20% health reduction and a 35% DPS reduction (random numbers pulled from thin air, take them with a grain of salt) before I've managed to land a blow.

Lemme reiterate that I'm not suggesting minions be glued to your hip, I think 40-50 yards is plenty.

I have to agree with ZehDon, it is not in any way unbalanced that the minions can be moved over the map away from the general. First, the general is weaker without his minions and thus easier to kill and second they are rather easy to get rid of if they are without their general. They might harm you quite a lot though but not enough to kill you.

Then I wholeheartedly support a major minion nerf. The DPS on snipe is one of the lowest of any direct damage spells in the game because of its range. Fireball does less damage than spit because of its range and has a 1.0 second cast time. Hammer Slam does the same damage as Spit in a significant AoE because of its limited range.

Short range abilities have DPS dramatically superior to ranged abilities unless they have a major secondary bonus, aka lifesteal+armor debuff, slow+armor debuff, or an interrupt and extremely short cast time.

So logically generals using minions should do significantly less damage than assassins because they have the benefit of indefinite range.

I too think that idols should cost a bit more mana and should perhaps have a 60 second cooldown. Maybe Nightwalkers (and Spirits) should have a bit less health because they're numerous and practically for free.

But do you really think Yetis and Shamblers should be nerfed too? Before you say yes, try playing builds that use them.

I thought it was implied that no one wants yetis nerfed.

As for shamblers I dunno, I'd have to see them actually work first. They'd be quite different if they could actually fire while running like siege gunners, monks, spirits, and night walkers.

You've never seen Shamblers in action? Now why might that be?

 

The second sentence there should show that's not what I meant at all. I mean I've never seen them chase fleeing opponents correctly (their attack shuts off) and that's a basic functionality all other minions have.

Shamblers are a powerful anti-erebus minion build even as-is, I just want to see them function correctly before I say their actual stats need tweaking.