At the start of the game, the mines seem to be a decent investment so that you can take care of creeps that try to close in, especially for toebomging but once you can afford the Rokkur Gauntlets (AoE +1.5), you can micro him to hit many creeps in an AoE and never need the mines in the first place. Investing in mines takes away from the ability to level up Snipe, which makes him bad in 1v1 Demigod combat.
Stun Mines, obviously, do not suffer from this because they do 200 damage at level 1 and also, of course, stun. They are invaluable against The Rook.
In a nutshell, I can think of many reasons not to take the mines past level 1 or 2:
-AoE items + weapon damage + attack speed make the AoE of the mines needless, as Regulus does more damage per shot than mines do until around level 4 anyway.
-AoE items make the Slow effect of Maim spread to all the creeps it hits, meaning oftentimes melee creeps won't reach regulus before dying, and if they do, the AoE of the gauntlets will be sufficient to stop them. Upgraded Angelic Fury will take care of Giants.
-Mines seem to have a damage area smaller than or the same size as the trigger area, so it usually only hits 1-2 creeps when they do get stepped on, making them poor at killing masses of creeps.
-They take FAR too long to set up, which is precious time you could be spending shooting creeps and valuable energy you could be using to snipe, or set up stun mines later on, or save for Angelic Fury.
-You can have up to 30 mines active at a time, but this hardly seems like a restriction and more like something you'd try to achieve when going for a record unless you spend all damn game placing mines around the flag.
-By the time you'd want to get level 6 mines, 270 damage is as much damage as Regulus does per second, if not per shot, if you had spent the points on stat buffs alone.
-Luring players into mines rarely works after the first few times. This coupled with their low damage and difficulty to set up make them ineffective against players. Snipe doesn't require you to fool your enemy, and can take out fleeing demigods very easily.
-Toe-bombing, AKA running up to creeps and laying mines at their feet, is the best way to get the most out of each mine due to their small AoE. This is not only dangerous but unnecessary if you had gotten AoE gloves instead.
Again, Stun mines are fine and need no changes.
In order to fix these problems, I propose a list of buffs, which I am not suggesting all be used, but I would like to see multiples:
+ Halve the number of levels needed to max out mines. Double the power the mine gets out of each level jump.
+ Reduce the number of max active mines from 30 to 10, but increase their damage and AoE.
+ Keep the trigger AoE the same, but widen the damage AoE to make them more effective as creep traps.
>> A small trigger delay would make them more vulnerable to Demigod AoE attacks when stepped on. A decrease in trigger AoE while keeping the Damage AoE the same would make them harder to use as traps, which does not need to happen.
+ Make additional mine levels increase their Trigger and/or Damage AoE as well as their damage.
I encourage discussion and would like to be proven wrong about mines, but in my experiences every time I choose to go down the Mines path I am very weak and find it very difficult to use mines because it takes so long to set up multiples, and singles rarely kill even the lowliest of creeps, and also rarely hit that many creeps. Every time I choose to specialize in Snipe and Stats, by contrast, I feel like a force to be reckoned with. I rarely see enemy Regulus players use mines, and those who seem to skip them in order to get more stats + Snipe levels can easily be not only powerful creeping players but excellent Demigod killers.
I actually think a lot of people who think Regulus is bad may just be putting too many points into Mines and not enough into Snipe.
