Ever since playing against Antiock, currently the top ranking player in Demigod, in a pre-1.1 Crucible match a couple of weeks ago, I've been rather curious about his habit of hosting 1v1 matches as Sedna, either on Crucible or Prison. After putting a little bit of thought into it, as well as hosting a couple matches of similar conditions out, myself, I've come up with a theory that Antiock does this because he's guaranteed to win since Sedna is THE best demigod for 1v1 matches, hence why he's Rank 1 on the Pantheon stats.
In a 1v1 match, assuming either Crucible or Prison, one player will win if he manages to kill his opposition a lot early on, therefore getting a lot of gold to increase his advantage even more. If both sides are competent, though, then kills will be very minimal, if there's any at all, and other methods would have to be considered to gain the advantage. These methods are generally as follows:
- Stay on the frontline as long as possible with enough health for you to be effective.
- Force your opponent to be away from the frontline as much as possible, whether that's making him retreat to the protection of his towers or all the way back to his Citadel. Bonus if he spends gold on teleport scrolls or potions.
- Mantain control of the majority (not necessarily all) of neutral flags with greatest priority on the gold/artifact flag.
- Be able to attack towers while maintaining health when the opposition is absent.
In other words, the best way to win 1v1 is not necessarily to get kills, but to simply outtank your opponent, and we all know that noone can tank better than Sedna. As her, you're obviously able to maintain enough health to be effective on the frontline through Heal and Priest minions. This makes returning to the Citadel only a matter of when mana is slow, which is easily remedied by a few mana-boosting items. It also means that when it comes to exchanging blows with your opponent, you'll generally outlast him, forcing him to run away. While actually killing him would be nice, the more important aspect of his retreat is that you have free rain over the neutral zone, gaining control of the flags (especially the gold/artifact one), and being able to hit his towers while he's absent. There's also a point to make that Sedna is an effective tower killer, as well, even in the early game, tanking the tower with Heal and also killing it quickly with Pounce. A lot of damage can be done to structures when the opponent is just making a round trip to the Citadel, especially on Crucible.
If you're able to have constant control over the gold/artifact flag, then you'll be accumulating a bigger and bigger gold advantage as time goes on, an especially good aspect since 1v1s tend to be long. Antiock knows this for sure, as I saw him actually pass by the cooldown flag under my control just to cap the gold flag and agressively keeps me away from it as much as possible. The gold advantage is even greater if the opponent spends money on teleport scrolls and potions since such consumables aren't worth it in the long run. As for you (Sedna), the cash should first be spent perfecting your frontline lasting power. When I played Antiock in pre-1.1, he started with Monks and notably got the Heart of Life very early for its mana regen, but since he's still apparently winning all of his 1v1s to this day, I imagine that he has found alternative early items to achieve the same goal of always having mana to use Heal (and Pounce). Getting Currency I is also important, as the match will most certainly last long enough to give back its cost several times over. You can linger in the neutral area for as long as your gold income is greater than his with Currency I and the gold flag. In fact, you might as well do so until you hit War Rank 8 and can instantly upgrade all the way up to Catapults with all the gold massed while prolonging the match, with Giants following as soon as possible. Then you can really overwhelm your opponent as you push in to finally bring down his Citadel. At this point, the gold advantage will be so great that it doesn't even matter if your opponent significantly outlevels you while holding back the creep waves and manages to kill you a couple of times. He's inevitably screwed.
So what do you guys have to say about this theory of mine. Do you agree that Sedna is the #1 1v1 demigod with these strategies in mind, or do you have other ideas? Bonus if I can hear from Antiock, himself, or his close premade buddy Foreshadowed.
