If you get ganked and have to go back, you can get it. Otherwise you dont get it.

Unless you're buying Slayer's Wraps for the +10 HP (which admittedly is pretty nice) you should consider Nature's Reckoning. Mid game it's one of the absolute best damage items, it definitley beats Slayer's Wraps.

Nature's Reckoning is one of the best low gold damage item. It's really huge. I use it all the time with my AA-Regulus. The problem right now is that it's hard to stack damage compared to stacking health. If you stack damage, you obviously lack health, the skills however will scale with your character as he levels. So you have low health vs high damage skill, which will get you killed.

Once damage items get a boost, these builds might become viable.

Btw, Blood of the Fallen needs a slight nerf. Seven-hundred or 600 HP would work.

Pricing changes would do more to affect item utility than any effect tweaks, right now.  Cross-reference the common items from the above lists and lower the price on everything else by 25-35% - after a month of affordable items we'll have a better understanding of what needs changing - as it is we buy what we do as much because it's what we can afford as because it's the best stuff...

I would say 90% of my games give me a 5000g budget to spend on items - if you ever make currency II and III effective maybe that will change, but thinking within that budget you rule out the vast majority of items.  It's hard to say what works outside the norms because we can never afford anything else

Dropping the price wont make secondary effects like... 1% chance to do "effect" items any better, unfortunately. There's no point for effects that are so rare or random that they aren't usful, but I guess dropping prices would be a start.

I agree with most of what is being said about what should stay and what should go or get changed. What I would like to see is set bounses, when you finally build a set of items, that set would then give you a plus for having all 3/4 items. I think that might add a wrinkle to the end game.

Yeh damage items need to have health bouses or something

I don't think I'm good enough to really comment on the balance of items so just put me down for seconding whatever Obscenitor says cause he seems to know what he's talking about and has a cool name.

I will say that I'm really hoping that GPG will change the overall philosophy behind favor items someday.  I'd like to see them all become more like Heaven's Wrath and Wand of Renewal, in that they are very fun to play with and change the dynamics of the game more than regular items.

Wand Of Renewal: Starts out kinda useless since you're more or less limited more by mana than cooldowns at the beginning of the game.  Late game you get the upperhand since 20% cooldown reduction is huge late game and can't really be duplicated by regular items.

Heaven's Wrath: Good players use it to harvest creeps that would otherwise be wasted running into your towers while you shop, bad players use it to steal your creep waves before they get close enough to share the benefits.  You can finish off a Demigod who thought he got away for the kill or use it to get an assist on one who's about to get ganked so its just a lot of fun to strategize with and nothing else in the game does what it does.

Cloak of Nights great too, Blade o' dah Serpent... bunch of them are very well designed and add a lot to this game because they aren't really duplicated by any DG skills or items and you can only have one so you need to choose it carefully and modify your game plan accordingly... your enemies have to take into account what favor you have as well which I think is great.  I wish they were all like that but at the very least, I'd like to see the underpowered but interesting ones like Symbol Of Purity or Saam-Els Cloak get a boost.

The things people are putting on their "best" lists are definately worthwhile, but very few of them need to be nerfed:

Unbreakable Boots (recommend reduce mana amount)

Capture Lock (as mentioned in other threads, give lock immunity to a flag for several seconds after a capture lock wears off)

The "blink"-ability general favor item (give it a cast time of 1 to 1.5 seconds so that it's interruptible, but farther distance to make up for that so that it's more like a mini-teleport)

Blade of the Serpent (reduce damage to 20)

Blood of the Fallen (reduce health a bit, or reduce it a lot but up the regen)

Narmoth Ring (reduce health slightly)

Heaven's Wrath (reduce small-unit knockback (instakill) radius so it's not quite as good for killing masses of creeps; do not nerf cooldown or anything else)

The following need buffs (imo)

Most Favor items (the ones with the weaker abilities need some small stats boosts; the abilities themselves I wouldn't mess with)

All +% mana regen items, since those basically suck without 15+ (Vlemish/Hungerling helms or mana per sec flags) mps already (recommend just get rid of that stat and give those helms different stats, like give one 5 health/sec and 10 mana/sec)

Angels (don't have the usefulness of priests or cats, and don't have real combat-viability like Giants, so it's pretty much always bought right before cats since you don't want to spend 3k to give the other team experience; give them more damage)

Trebuchet (useless on most maps, with the exception of the fortress game mode; need more forts to pop up via warscore in most maps)

Finger of God (it's not too horrible, but when you compare it to Giants, it sucks balls; shorten cooldown to 20-ish seconds)

Building Damage (damage doesn't scale to endgame-acceptability, especially without a way to revive or plant new towers)

Building Health (recommend give %damage reduction (or at least armor) instead of health since the health component is fairly useless, keep hp regen)

Reinforcement Damage and Health (values are okay, just reduce costs a bit)

Currency (gets too expensive, since by the time you can afford 2 & 3 they're not worth that much for an extra 2 gold/sec because there's not as long left in the game)

Death Penalty (needs to be much cheaper, or more like 20% reduction per level)

Rework most on-hit items, since most of them are too expensive given their unreliability.

A few of the consumables need to be buffed, have their effects worked into trinkets/favor items, or have a price drop.

As an unspecific request, I'd like to see either some of the existing items (including favor items) or some new items focused more heavily around health/mana regen (even dual regen) than the large +health/mana boosts that always accompany them.

That's all that's come to mind at the moment.

I dont think Blade of the Sperpent or Heavens wrath need nerfed. Same with Narmoth. They are fine.

However I agree with death penalty towers, currenct and finger of God

Oh and yeah more forts are needed for trebuchets

Heres how I would stur shit up.

Chest plates:

• Duelist Cuirass: increase to 500 Health 750 Armor and increase damage to 2x
• Armor of Vengence: Reduce cost to 2800
• Platemail of Crusader: Increase Chance to 5%
• Grofflin: Increase chance to 5%

Helmets:

• Theurgist's Cap: Increase Mana to 50%/secound drop price to 2750
• Vinling Helmet: Increase chance to 5%

Boots:

• Footman's Sabatons: Increase hp to 300 mana to 400, drop price to 500
• Assasin's Footguards: Increase attack speed to 7%, drop price to 1500
• IronWalkers: +10 hp minion + 300 minion hp, movement speed under 5 increase 2k armor, drop price to 3k
• Desperate Boots: Increase HP to  750, mana to 750

Gloves:

• Gaulets of Brutality: increase to 30 damage
• Gladiator gloves: drop price to 500
• Wrymskin: Increase 20 damage
• Gaulelts of Despair: Add Increase damage by 40
• Doomspite: Decrease price to 5k

Trinkets:

• Warlords Punisher: Decrease price to 2k, decrease cast to 1s, Increase mana loss to 600
• Ring of Ancients: +600 armor, 40 attack

Favor:

• Mard's Hammer: 50 Attack
• Furious Blade: 10% attack speed
• Totem of War: 30 Attack
• Tome of Endurance: +200 minion hp
• Cloak of night: +400 mana
• Dejewled Goggles: Cast= see an area of the map for 20 secounds, 40 s cooldown.
• Charm of life: death penalty reduced by 30%
• Brillant Bulbe: Increase to 25%
• Magical coin Pouch: 15% cost reduction
• Staff of Warmage: 30 attack
• Dark Crimson Vail: 30s cooldown

Consumables:

• All artifact consumables: reduce costs by 300 gold

Citadel Upgrades

• Trebuchets/Finger of god: These need to be worth it. The need to come with a stagnant attack increase for towers or the need to do more damage,  for example finger could hit for like 750 damage.
• Death Penalty: Trash this whole line
• Tower damage: needs to be higher damage
• experience: increase to 15%, 30%, 45%, 60%

It really must be easy to add items to the game. Although I don't know how many items Stardock/GPG actually want.

This comes across as a very good idea to me.

How about if the Death Penalty Citadel upgrade also reduced the gold reward for dying by the same %?

You want to buff the Gauntlets of Brutality??? 0_o

Oh and I like Haree78s idea about the Death Penalty

The whole attack increase items need help if they are going to ever be competitive vs hp stacking..... It would be fun to see Mards hammer + Gaulets of brutality + Gladiator gloves as a start and see if it competes with Blood of the Fallen + Banded.

I think HoL is the only item in the whole game that needed a nerf. Half the items need a buff because they are worthless.

Do you really need to add items to make them part of a set? Some items already share a name, others would just need to be edited to show what set they belong to.

My thoughts exactly, thats why I put all buffs up.

BotS = never need vlemish or other mana pieces for tb (haven't tried much with other DGs, although I don't think it's very good for rook); the extra damage is icing

I'd rather not have Heaven's Wrath nerfed, since it's part of my favorite build, so I just suggested nerfing the knockback radius as the means to nerf it if it does need to be nerfed (I'm pretty sure someone suggested a nerf on it)

Narmoth is at the point where you're running out of slots available, so the price being more expensive than the stats would be acceptable, and I don't even care about the lifesteal on it.  However, since there's only a couple lifesteal items, nerfing that part of it wouldn't make sense.

I came back to this thread cuz I remembered something I wanted to put but I've forgotten already....

I strongly urge more people to make a list of the items needing a buff before 1.2 comes out.

NOTE TO READER:

Two items are often discussed that can be hard to notice because they are similar:

NARMOTH'S

and

NIMROTHS

The first is a 4000 gold trinket, the second is a piece of armor for 1500 gold, both give large boosts to defensive capabilities. Both good items, but don't mix their praise/condemnations together or you might miss out.

By the way, I think that this thread is not a good way to determine good/bad items.  I think instead you should get purchasing statistics out of the game, and aggregate the data, so you can see first hand which items are being used, and which aren't.  If people are defending, say, Theurgist cap because in theory it can be good.... but never get around to actually using it, I think that speaks of the item's balance.

I'll give a short list:

Thumbs UP:

Unbreakable Boots

Sigil of Vitality

Teleport Scroll

Vlemish Faceguard

Narmoth's Ring

THumbs DOWN:

Plate Visor

Ironwalker Boots

Vinling Helm

Vinling helm is exactly the same as Plenor Battlecrown, except it costs twice as much, gives 500 less mana, and has a random proc.  This 3% proc for 350 mana can be averaged to give you an average of 10.5 mana every time you get hit.  You will need to get hit an average of 50 times then in order to make up the difference in starting mana between this and the battlecrown. Against an opposing DG, this would mean more than a minute of continuous 1 on 1 fighting, without stop or break, or someone dying.  Needless to say, the math is really against this item.  Increase the proc rate by about 300%, and this will start looking like a good mana source.

Ironwalker Boots give to the Demigod 1000 Armor for 3750 gold.  If that was all it did, it would still be an 'ok at best' item.  Compare that to the Armor of Vengeance, another rarely used item, that costs 3250, and gives 1000 Armor  *ALL* the time. Ironwalkers only give a modest boost to armor in the rare case that you are slowed by more than 15% (A little easier for Rook). If you want an item that allows players a strategy to counter slow/snare heavy builds, make this give a flat damage reduction instead (Similar to the Bulwark) when slowed to this amounts, like 30% less damage from all sources while at lower than speed 5.

Plate Visor: Even on maps that start with a +15 mps (leviathan) This item is still not worth it compared to a scaled helm. 35% of 15 = 5.25, scaled helm gives 4 mps.  Difference is 1.25, but the Scaled Helm gives 525 mana to start, meaning you'd have to play for like 7.5 minutes or something before that change in MPS catches up... and it only starts ticking once you use mana!  I'd like to see this item give the same boost, but perhaps a small reduction in spell cost, or perhaps -5% ability cooldowns.

This... and below

Wand of speed - best item in the game - period. For any demi god, in any situation, on any map.

Sigil of vitality - great on any dg, ridiculous on some demi gods.

plus add scaled helm and scale mail to the list of good items. I wouldn't start off with scale mail although I use it at the start when beast from time to time. but it's cheap enough to fill that last item spot - and resell = 80% of your money back on any item, so you don't lose much when you go to upgrade to the thing you really wanted to fill in that final equipment slot.

for favors, I'd throw mard's hammer and staff of renewal up there when placed on the right dg on the right map.

for useless favors im gonna go with heavens wrath. I wrote a whole post on way it's atrocious, not gonna argue about it in here, Here's the link if you want my opinion on the matter: http://forums.demigodthegame.com/364512