Milskidasith

Join Date 05/2009

Priests: a buyers guide.

Now, a lot of people I meet drop the money for priests in pretty bad situations. In my last match, my UB and my partners Oak were getting shut down by a ninja tower Rook and a pure fire TB. Not pretty. However... they bought priests at level 7. Hooo, boy. We got a 3 level advantage on the rook and a one level advantage on the TB almost immediately, and we just kept getting stronger after that. Priests were just tons of free EXP.

So I will set out to make a priests guide, in flowchart form.

1. Is it possible to buy priests? If Y, go to 2. If N, don't buy priests.

2. Can you afford priests? If Y, go to 3. If N, don't buy priests.

3. Are you a general who could just buy better priests for yourself? If Y, don't buy priests, if N, go to 4.

4. Are you an assassin who can buy one of his early game critical equips or are fairly close to a rushed strong item, like HoL? If Y, don't buy priests. If Y and still have enough money left over to buy priests, or N, go to 5.

5. Are you playing against Unclean Beast? If Y don't buy priests. Ever. (unless they went without ooze for some reason. Even then, don't buy priests. (they'll just grab it.).EDIT: If Y, also go to step 8, but don't even bother with the next few steps. If N, go to 6.

6. Are you playing against TB, Regulus with mines/angel, Tower Rook, Hammer Rook, Oak, Erebus with bat swarm, or QoT? If Y, go to 7a. If no, go to 7b.

7a. Did you get a phenomenal early advantage with ganking, have a team well set up to hit towers early (Regulus, UB, Rook, Oak [iffy]), and the enemy are low levelled? If Y, you have the game in the bag, but buy priests here to speed things up. If N, go to 8.

7b. So you somehow managed to be fighting a team of all regulus going pure snipe/MotB, Rooks who went pure structural transfers, and sedna. Surely you have better ways of fighting them than with priests! If this happens.... just control the lanes, they have crap DPS anyway. Use priests here when you finally feel like pushing.

8. Can you use your teams combined resources to skip straight to giants, or at least catapultsari with upgrades to their health and damage (with giants coming soon?) If Y, Buy priests here and quickly skip ahead to giants. If N, go to 9.

9. Do you feel like giving the enemy an easy win? If Y, Buy priests here. If N, go back to step 1 and repeat.

10. Don't forget to keep farming creeps while going through this checklist! Staring at text flowcharts during the game is probably a good way to get you to lose.

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o right you were talking about citadel priests.

Sometimes they can help push, especially if its a big map. Different maps would require different times to buy priests.

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They do when you buy them at the citadel.. which is the point of this post..

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He's talking about the reinforcement wave priests.

Ben

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I was the Oak in that battle, and that EXP was extremely useful

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too many words to make a small point.

Rule 1: Don't buy priests until you are already solidly in the lead.

Rule 2: if you're not sure if you're solidly in the lead, don't buy priests.

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Quoting transitive,

reply 5

too many words to make a small point.

Rule 1: Don't buy priests until you are already solidly in the lead.

Rule 2: if you're not sure if you're solidly in the lead, don't buy priests.

lol exactly

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depends on map, what character builds your team has and what character builds the enemy has... in addition to how the particular game is going.

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As a UB player all I can say is priest = OMNOMNOMNOM

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I know my team is always happy to see priests, it makes us level a ton faster. I try to make sure our team almost always saves and buys up to catas at rank 8.

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This proves less that priests are bad to buy and more that the design behind priests is inherently flawed. GG stardock.

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i disagree Rain. they're a useful tool for putting a game away once you've got a good lead. they can really be the nail in the coffin and push your creep waves all the way to the citadel pretty rapidly. the reason there are so many threads discussing the proper use of priests is just because alot of people DO IT VERY WRONG. if you buy them at a bad time they won't convert a lead to a win for your team, instead they'll feed the enemy team. as with so many things in life and gaming, its all about timing.

also....Stardock is the publisher, GAs Powered Games is the designer/developer.

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Never EVER should an upgrade give your enemies such a huge advantage. Its a CLEAR design flaw. I would get it of priests say had a neutral effect. But the fact that buynig an upgrade can cause you to instalose against equally skilled players=DESIGN FLAW.

The solution? Take away all XP for priests kills, or reduce is drastically. Problem solved.

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I think priests priority should be as following:

- big maps when you hold a middle portal (they really help the grunts push forward against towers)

- small maps when you are starting to push towers and especially when you are starting to capture portals

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Quoting RainFall2112,

reply 12

It's as much a design flaw as Queens being able to be taken by Pawns in chess. It's just the way things are. Its not the job of the game to prevent you from playing badly or to enforce the one true strategy. There has to be a progression from being a bad player to a good player. Learning to time your purchases is just one of the elements of that progression. The game doesn't stop you wasting your money on buying Gold III two minutes before you destroy the enemy citadel. It doesn't stop you buying Doomspite Gripsfor your Torch Bearer. It doesn't stop you buying Finger of God (which I buy solely for the purpose of being able to "give the finger" to opponents that I'm far ahead of - which as far as I can see is its sole purpose as I've never seen it do any good other than to show off to opponents that you can afford to waste money and still beat them).

When I first played, I kept buying priests not realising my mistake. Then I learnt and was pleased because I'd progressed. If you smear everything out so that everything is equally advantageous in most circumstances, then it would be a very dull game.

My two pieces of gold, anyway.

Newb.

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I recently found out about this myself.

I'd like to add my voice in help spreading this gospel.

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Rain,

if two teams are equally skilled than they will each have equal skill regarding judgment on when a good time to buy priests is.

your notion that every upgrade should be instantly beneficial under every circumstance is what is flawed, not the design of the priests upgrade.

as NEWB said, there must be meaningful decisions in the game to distinguish between good play and bad play. if you always benefit no matter what the game conditions are then its not a meaningful decision.

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