God Strength and Stats is generally a waste. If GS had an attack speed increase and if Stats weren't worthless, maybe that'd make it better.

Regarding the balance, if Rook had a tad bit more armor and armor per level, he'd be the best balanced demigod out of all of them, and a definite benchmark/role model for balancing other demigods. Too bad LE and UB will never ever be nerfed

Well, the decicion how much armor to give to a demigod probably is based more on how balanced it is than on how much sence it makes. At least I hope so.

But do you really dont want to tower farm? at level 4 they only cost 200 and you can have a tower farm of 7-8 towers. thats 800 extra damage if your enemies walk into you. Try getting him away from your portal then, eh! I have a lot of fun using towers as well and I ussually dont even get hammer slam. I also like trebuchet, it helps doing damage to nearby enemies though I'm not so sure about the distant tower kills. what's the point? If there are enemies around you must hope that it doesnt target them and taking down towers probably isnt your first concern. (so annoying if it targets sedna) If there are no enemies around then I'd just attack the towers with my hammer. (watch the map if you do that, your enemies will probABLy try to gank you.

But do you really dont want to tower farm? at level 4 they only cost 200 and you can have a tower farm of 7-8 towers. thats 800 extra damage if your enemies walk into you. Try getting him away from your portal then, eh! I have a lot of fun using towers as well and I ussually dont even get hammer slam.

 

Your build is perfectly viable, though I think you should get at least 1 rank of hammer slam to either scare people or kill enemy minions. Tower farms become very cheap at level four, but the mana cost isn't the problem, it's how long they take to set up. IMO, if you do a hammerroll build, you won't have the time to keep up, or even set up tower farms. Once the towers are gone, the game is about mobility, quickly attacking and responding to attacks.  The main problem the rook seems to have is that he requires complex setup, and as a result gets rooted down. This build tries to alleviate that. Of course, as I said, tower builds are fine, and in certain situations they can be more effective than slam rooks. (towers are good against quick melee demigods) In my experience, the hammer is better against minion builds and quick ranged assassins like regulus and tb.

A max stats Rook with God Strength and Trebuchet is a bizarre creature. I played him once. He walks around with 10k health, which is insane with a sigil and priest healing, especially from Sedna. I had a friend that used him and actually won games with it.

Yes I really want a tower farm.

By the time someone can actually threaten me in the farm they wish they hadn't when the boulder/slam comes out of nowhere mid game. 

One thing I am not understanding is the complaints about how long tower IV takes to setup. When you hit level 10, it's not like you don't have any towers in play already. If you lose your farm and need to start building it again, how is having bigger HP towers worse than level 2 or 3 towers?

I'm now really seeing that Rook is a top tier DG up there with LE, Oak and UB using Obscen's build. You can't 1on1 this rook when it is played right.

Building towers isn't about reaching a certain quantity of towers, it's about filling the dead time between battles and building a snowballing advantage during combat. I just think people are viewing towers backwards here. They're not a burden, they're a unique utility, rook is the only DG who can really prepare for combat.

Every tower is a good 80 DPS against even high armor targets (assuming they're not stacking evasion).

Max stats is only 690 health (760 with HP flag), he must have been fed pretty heavily.

 

 

Play however's fun, but a tower hits for 190 every 2 seconds. God Strength is 150 every swing and rook swings about once every 1.2-1.5 seconds depending on your level and stats provide even less DPS. The choice seems very clear cut to me.

I see your point. However, a tower farm won't give you the same advantage it did earlier. While the towers are stronger, they take longer to set up and you should be moving around so much your towers would be all over the map in the late game. Also, in an even game, enemy catapults and giants will WRECK your towers if you don't constantly spam them. If you get staff of renewal, I think taking tower IV is perfectly fine though.

That's why I'd like recharge reduction instead of cost reduction for the L4 towers. Actually, how about 1 second reduction every level?

Obs tower rook build is probably THE best build for cat especially vs pugs.  You can 1 v 2, sometimes even 1 v 3 with a nasty farm setup.  When you get Trebuchet at level 8 you pretty much force the other team to try and stop you or your portal towers are gonna get liquidated and there will be a nice tower farm waiting for you at the port flag which will then be chain locked.

It really takes considerable coordination to stop this push, and anti tower builds such as a minion Ereb.  If everyone just 'does their own thing', even if they don't make any large mistakes, the Rook will win out on warscore and sieging.  It's one of the few strats that force the entire team to deal with it or lose, and oftentimes they can't coordinate well enough to stop it.  Also, if they try to 3 v 1 the Rook, competent allies can just tp in and now you're fighting with a serious advantage to the Rook with that lovely tower farm to deal with.

Tower farms not being good late game... maybe not as much.  But it's game over anyway once you have their port on lock down by level 12 if you're an effective Rook pusher.  If you manage to stop the Rook, he will almost surely have a significant warscore advantage based on all the time you've wasted trying to stop him.

Level 1: Power of the Tower I

Level 2: Archer Tower

Level 3: Save

Level 4: Power of the Tower II

Level 5: Boulder Roll + Tower of Light

Level 6: Hammer Slam I

Level 7: Power of the Tower III

Level 8: Trebuchet

Level 9: Hammer Slam II

Level 10: Power of the Tower IV 

Level 11: Boulder Roll II

Level 12: Hammer Slam III

Level 13: Hammer Slam IV

Level 14: Save

Level 15: Dizzying Force, Poisoned Arrows

Level 16: Boulder Roll III

Level 17-19:  God Strength

Level 20:  Stats/Structural Transfer

 

 

Favor Item:  Blood.  I recommend blood if pugging.  Puggers tend to be slow to assist and that extra hp really helps keep you alive to kill/escape.  Renewal is ok but I usually have no problems getting a farm up quickly and with well timed boulder slams you only need one boulder+slam combo to get the job done before they mess with you again.

 I usually have no problems getting a farm up quickly

Using ToL IV without staff of renewal, the first tower you placed will fall down ~3 seconds after you place the 8th. My problem generally comes with tower farm upkeep (which is boring as hell imo). Why would you take poison arrows before Boudler roll III? Also I would never take Structural Transfer I at level 20, it would do absolutely nothing.

What is the duration of a rank IV tower?

When you've taken an enemy portal what do you do in the downtime between fights? Show me any good replay and I'll easily find 20+ second periods where there's no DG vs. DG combat going on and people are just sitting on their hands waiting for the next event.

It's not set in stone, it's just that in the majority of cases the arrows are going to result in more overall damage. There's only a handful of situations where I'd pick boulder isntead:

• I'm not able to hold my ground consistently and I need to be able to stun+lock on command
• I'm being constantly engaged by 3 or more DGs - arrows aren't going to affect a large enough percentage of the total DGs to make them effective
• My team is constantly supporting and we have a strong, steady snare
• I'm on a heavy burst damage team and the enemy is waiting until very low health to sigil/shield

It's a throw-away point. If I had made a guide I would have included (or stats if you want). Personally I don't find stats very compelling, not even against rank 1 structural transfer. 800 HP isn't a lot, but it's still noticeable and if you're not being sieged constantly you can use your rear towers to heal up a fair amount. Again, not a huge boon, but neither is 100 HP/mana at that point.

It seems like you're implyign only a complete tower farm is useful. They hit for ~190 every two seconds, on a high armor DG they're still doign 95'ish damage, or a good 46'ish DPS. Even 4 towers is more DPS than rank IV spit, and you've got boulder roll and hammer slam on top of it.

The thing about rook damage is that everything adds up. He gets small increments of damage from independent weapons, god's strength, and autoattack, and those together outdamage hammer slam considerably. Hammer slam is for show and finishing, the meat of his damage lies with the more subtle abilities.

 

But people should still pack Hammer slam for mass creep/general duty, and for scaring people.

Hammer Slam on creeps is usually a waste of mana. Towers, independent weapons, and his auto-kill AA swing are usually enough, I usually only hammer when I"m trying to stop tower dispersion.

I had a friend I was trying to get into Demigod who SWORE he got more experiance when he hammer slammed creeps instead of just killing them. Would not believe anything different.

Needless to say I gave up on him a long time ago.

Just creeps? Yeah, waste. Archer/Priest creeps and you see a DG incoming? Bust that baby out!

You do get more gold since you tag though. That said, I think Arrows tag too and those things are free

Towers, Archers, Light and Treb do NOT tag, as far as I know. Even if you kill a Tower with your treb, you don't get the 300 gold...

You don't get 300 gold anyway. Giants are 50 gold ffs

Towers and Forts are 300 gold, no exp. I'm talking tower towers, not Rook towers.

Yeah man, I go for that last hit.  

i tried pure tower build a few times recently, but just get totally raped.

3v3 cat conquest.

i was in 2v2 lane with hp flag, with staff of renewal favor.

they just destroyed all my towers every single time before I could get a farm up. (whether i spread them or put them close, didn't make a difference).

we had lost the game before lvl 10.

http://pantheon.demigodthegame.com/game/1194672/player/50684/

i also find ub is easily able to push a tower rook out 1v1 early game.

i have real problems with actually placing towers so they hit enemy demigods. most of the time they attack minions, and all that extra dps they provide is wasted whilst the enemy demigods go to town on me.

 

towers can be very effective vs noobs who are too scared to attack them.
vs experienced players who constantly attack them so you can't get a farm up even with staff of renewal???

maybe it was just unlucky setup or something.

I'd have to see a replay. My guess is that you were just too aggressive too early or that you didn't have a monk. It's also possible that your partner didn't play correctly, you made a few mistakes and they got too far ahead on gold (an old habit of mine) or that you were just overmatched. Then of course there's just some comps that you can't really handle until certain break points.

A frustrating but critical part of playing Rook well is knowing when it's just best to tower up at your own static tower and use that crutch until you hit the right break point to push out. Most people expect you to hold a flag indefinitely, but that's certainly not always possible.

I avoid the HP flag on cat precisely because it's a 2v2 fest, and towers fail there. I just go camp the Mana flag and that's it.

I like going mana for the power leveling, but generally it's better to sit rook on HP... Honestly I just don't undertsand why it's so problematic if you're not fighting another rook.