I know this may be unheard of, but you can buy more than one lock and teleport scroll at a time. For a 3 second investment at the shop, I can buy 6 locks and 3 teleport scrolls. Second, if you lock at portal flag on Cataract, you are also locking a gold mine. The amount of gold you get from keeping that mine offsets the lock. Not to mention it pushes the other team back to deal with that portal so it gives you the rest of the map. Other maps that have locking issues are Crucible and Prison. It is extremely difficult to turn around a game if you can't get your portal flag back in the mid to late game.
If you're carrying 6 locks and 3 scrolls, then you're not carrying any combat items. Like I said, you're sacrificing some of your combat ability.
In regards to Cataract, I would say that's more an issue of having let the other team push through to your portal in the first place. Regardless of whether or not they manage to perpetually lock that flag, you've lost your gold and your portal, and you're going to lose more flags as you attempt to get the situation back under control at your base. Unless your team has also pushed to an enemy portal, you've pretty much already lost. On Prison it's a similar scenario, only worse because the portals are right next to the citadel. What I'm saying is, on these maps you've done something very wrong if you allow the other team to take your portals, and they deserve the advantage it gives them.
Ziggurat is only one of many maps. And you don't need to keep every flag locked down, only the important ones. I could care less if the other team wants to perma lock the 15% mana flag. I care very much when they lock my portal, gold, damage, or HP flag. There is something wrong when it is trivial to perma lock a portal flag.
I never said anything about locking all the flags. And yes, of course you're going to care if your HP, gold, etc. flags get locked. Well, you shouldn't have lost the important flags in the first place.
Still, though, let's look at Cataract. You've lost the HP flag and the other team locked it. Well obviously this is very bad. If you can reestablish control of the lane, though, you'll be able to take that flag back. It's not nearly as severe as losing your portal and I'm sure you've come back from it many times.
On Zig, it's easy to perma-lock one of the neutral portals. You're right about that. If both the portals are controlled by one team, though...well, I think that's a matter of simply being outplayed. Focus on one of the portals and you should be able to take it.
Two things wrong with this statement. First, your counter to a flag lock is to tie up two of your teammates on the chance that you can turn the flag in time. In other words, you are going to cede control of the entire map while you hang around the locked flag. Now who is losing out on gold and exp? Second, two people cannot turn the flag before it can be locked again. The person that locked the flag knows exactly when the lock will expire by looking at his cooldown + 5 seconds. So that person can be there exactly when the lock fades to put a new one up.
Well obviously you're not going to camp the flag for the entirely of the 45 seconds that it's locked. You can approximate when it's going to go down soon, though, and have multiple people teleport in somewhere near. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask two or three people to beam in to an important objective, whether it's a locked flag or a fort that needs protecting. It's true that you might not be able to take the flag, but if there's only one demigod opposing the group, it shouldn't be too difficult. If he tries to run in and cap lock, he'll likely get killed. If you're opposed by a group, then other parts of the map are being left open. Like, say, the other portal on Ziggurat.
Pretty easy to fake out a person and cause them to use an interrupt. I do it all the time.
You're right, I didn't think of this. It's certainly not fool-proof, though...
