Without Horn of Battle try beating minion Oak 1v1 let alone Erebus.

been doing it with erebus without horn of battle really isnt an issue imo or do you mean beating a minion build in which i agree.  I've actually got to a point of being bored with the minion build because its so easy.

Indeed, there are DGs and strategies that are good. Torch Bearer with Ice, Reg with mines and/or Poisoned Dagger, another Erebus with Mass Charm maxed, ...

Minion Erebus is nice to play. It is the only DG i have really played so far. It´s nice to have minions that heal and do the damage. But if there is a decent player who can destroy or stun my minions I have to retreat quite often. Erebus alone is not that good in my opinion. I think he quite often needs a mate who is doing the damage after the opponent is bitten.

This proposal is more zynical than serious:

Make them cost just 50% of the mana cost of Shamblers (450mana) or Yetis (550mana). But I guess you won't see any more Nightwalkers then.

I still don't get it why the two generals who already can get much more minions than the other two get their minions practically for free.

Thats kind of my point. For me its gotten almost boring to play the minon buil because i know I can chase any DG out of a lane pretty much whenever I want without putting myself at risk. I dont really have a problem with it being powerful at endgame because it should be after you stack armor with minion upgrades etc. IMO the horn of battle really isnt that big of a deal. It only prevents me from having a good 10 seconds of invicible minons that no one can kill.

I think the biggest problem is I have not seen a real counter. Reg with mines does some dmg and yeah if he double stacks them they can kill most of the night walkers, depending on lvl, if they are in a tight group. Thats not a real counter cause i just suicide a few walkers and his mines are a moot point, even if he gets them im far enogh away that I just walk back and recast my preist/archer/warriors and send them right back at him, while i farm some more walkers. What other dg comes close to that?

queen? Shes usually dead before she can get off enough aoe dmg to kill my walkers off even with the bramble.

regs wings build can hurt if hes really powered up but your still doing so uch dmg to him that even if he kills them off you will have rebuild your troops before he gets in range of you.

Rooks tower farms are a joke and his hammer slam can be easily dodged.

Maybe TB with a stun but still that just gives him time to run away cause hes not going to kill them before the stun wears off.

Does anyone think they can produce a viable counter with a different dg to the massive minions?

Maybe the new dg's will have one IDK, but as it stand right now I  havent found one.

I just dont want the nerf stick to kill erbus completely because hes so much fun to play, which is why I made the htread, to figure out how to balance him out without making him stupidly squishy and useless.

Definately. And there is no range limit.  From your base, summon an army of minions.  Then send them to take down towers.  Like Sedna.  Send a small army to take down tower, ignore them. Then go and help your teamate DG on the other side of the map with healing.  So its like 2 battles at once.  No skill, no management, no risk.

-Limit range of control of minions, or extend idol timers, or give gold/XP.  Creeps give gold and XP, minions who has 4-5x their health should do the same.

If that's the case, are you saying she's horribly overpowered with her minions in tow? What DG's can or can't hold their lane against a minionless Sedna?

I doubt the build is unstoppable.  There's a few good aoes that can take out the whole army in 1-2 shots.  The problem is that kind of aoe isn't available for everyone.

I think there needs to be fewer of them.  Less health is no good because then your build gets easily countered with 1 aoe spell.  Less damage and they'll still be imba for tanking towers/forts.  Having a decent mana cost would be bad for Erebus, because it would prevent him from having mana when he really needs it for one of his real skills.  This all basically applies to Oak as well.

Edit: To give a number, I think it should max out around 5-8 of the little buggers.

My favourite is when a stacked/premade gets Oak, UB and LE. Game over man.

Anyways, I've fought off LE's before with my Reg, usually requires maxed mines with wings plus damage bonuses, but its annoying because I'm not actually hurting the DG himself and he can easily replace them and I get nothing for wasting my time/mana on minions.

The other thing is the idols, quite often I see them running across the map to a fort/tower and start raping it, alone, while the player commanding them is elsewhere killing npcs/dgs/helping teammates. There needs to be something done to make minions worth keeping alive, and not suiciding to enemies, plus nerfing them a little bit. If there was a cost for getting minions for LE and Oak, and they gave good xp/cash to enemy on kill, then I'd reckon they'd want to keep them alive, rather then suicide spamming DGs/Towers/Forts.

So from what I'm reading thus far theres basically a consensus that there is no real counter for the minion build. Counter meaning you can actually kill the dg or run him off not quell his army for 10 seconds while he recast and rebuilds his nightwalkers.

I really dont mind the build, but there needs to be some counter to it, thus far no one has even come close. If it takes 2 dg using aoe to do it that is not really a counter, it actually confirms the point that something needs to be tweaked as it shouldnt take 2 dg's to present a challenge to 1dg.