[Balance] Oak's Last Stand is too amazing

I agree.  The way that the game is designed now, with very hard-hitting, very durable towers that are permanently damaged and permanently destroyed, the big burst of unstoppable damage from Last Stand is unbalancing.  You basically win after dealing a pre-defined amount of damage to the enemies structures, and what the Last Stand buff is allows you to rack up damage points with no opposition possible.

Demigod AI Nightmares use this as well as well to quickly rush into the enemy base and lay seige to your Portals. It's very nasty, and easily exploited by someone who is completely bent on laying siege to the base and nothing else. It's be nice to have some way to 'stop' more easily. I can't even stun or freeze Oak while he's in this form. It'd be better if we could stun him, that way he'd waste precious seconds.

I agree.  While it's a cool idea, and definitely fun if you're the one playing Oak, I don't think a player should be rewarded for dying.  I found myself playing Oak and thinking "hm, this would be a good time to suicide..."

You want to encourage players to stay alive and kill the opponents.  This skill does just the opposite - encourages players to die and discourages their opponents from killing them.

I disagree.  I feel it is balanced out oak's lack of other killing moves.  I mean I guess he isn't an assassin, but I Feel like he still gets a short of the stick otherwise.   Once he goes into it all you have to do is keep him from killing you for a few seconds,. and you know then he will be dead.

Maybe I've just played too much dawn of war where the necron lord does that, except he doesn't die as part of the process.

Last stand is a cool idea, but I think there need to be 2 changes:

1) Oak does no or very low damage to buildings (I managed to do reduce citadel to about 30% hp while being in last stand (with a few seconds alive before) in the late game. Now Imagine a team with 2 or 3 oaks, they will just destroy your citadel without being able to do anything against it.

2) he shouldn't be able to capture flags in this mode.

He just needs to be damageable. If he has about 50% of his max health in Zombie mode it'd still be a cool thing for the Oak player, but not uncounterable for the other team.

Change it completely, I say. Make the Oak unable to move, but provide a large temporary amount of units in the area controlled by the AI. In the story of the Oak, he summons a large amount of spirits to do his bidding after being defeated in melee. Do something with that. Maybe 50% slow in a large radius around him. Maybe the dead stationary oak provides significant healing for a while.

A number of good ideas here.  I agree that something has to change.  Just think about a 5-man oak team.  You could drop any part of the base, including the citadel, pretty quickly if you've got 5 Oaks with last stand parading around.  It would be unstoppable.

I don't think you understand the point here.

The reason why it's overpowered is because towers and the citadel don't regenerate health and once destroyed are permanently gone.  All you need to do is rush to the tower you want to destroy, die, and use those 10 seconds to quickly rack up damage.  I don't think that's at all what was intended.

What about increasing the respawn time based on the level of "last stand"?  Doubling your respawn time or some number would make killing yourself for a few seconds of invincibility a bad idea.

Well that's not quite correct anymore. The defensive building upgrades in the citadel grant regeneration.

I think this would be an acceptable change.

Really quality ideas here.  It doesn't really address the idea that kill Oak basically renders an opposing hero pointless for 10 seconds as he chases them around trying to beat on them - but it's a step in the right direction.

This is a pretty bad idea, in my eyes, because it makes the choice of taking Last Stand a huge drawback since it is not a triggered ability.  It also still fails to address the reward issue.  Sure he's dead twice as long, but does that really matter when he's still suiciding your base repeatedly?  I really think they need to address the actual effect of the ability itself.

True, but it's not nearly enough when a guy is cranking huge damage on it for 10 straight seconds every 20 seconds or so.

Oak's ability is just too much.  A self-rez is fine, but making him invulnerable on top of that is just imba.  Let him self-rez, full heal and all that jazz, just strip the invulnerability.  A self-rez is pretty damn powerful on its own anyway.

Whoops, that's right.

We're not talking about him doing this early game.  It's mid to late game... around level 12-15 that this becomes a BIG problem.  Sure he might be giving you gold, but you literally cannot push as fast as he can go suicide into towers.  If there's just one Oak, it isn't really a big deal - if a team of 5 people had 3 Oaks it is an ENORMOUS problem.  3 Oaks could probably suicide bom your Citadel in a minute or less with the shortness of the death timer in this game.

very interesting, an another change that needs to be done is that you shouldn't gain gold from the demigods (and maybe even from the creeps, but that is way more important) you kill while using that ability.

Because as it is implemented now, some demigod kills you, you can easily use your frenzy to quickly kill him back regaining any money you had just lost, doing some more domages arround, and then both you and your killer wait some time:

so- you wait before resurecting, but so does the guy that has just killed you

-you do not lose money!

-you do some damages.

so it is really too costly to kill an Oak, which is a big problem

Perhaps simply restricting Oak to a certain area near where he died when he is briefly resurrected in his Frenzy state would be enough to fix this. 

Although I agree he shouldn't do much (or any) damage to buildings.  Maybe he is simply in "Spirit" form so he can only damage living beings for the duration of his "Frenzy"?

Last stand should be exactly how it is, except Oak raises up with 100% hp and dies in 10 seconds. Same concept but not invulnerable.

Even better would be an ability while the oak is still alive. I like the idea of how certain demigods do stuff when they die, but that is just crap since we try to stay alive. We need live abilities.

Having played mostly the oak it didn't seem so much of the ubber skill as it seemed at the begining. You need to put skill points in an ability you only use when you die (doesn't happen all that often with the oak). Imo you are better off taking other skills (max power of the oak, flag, shield..) that keep you alive and doing damage rather than chain suicide on towers to get them down, especially considering you stop levelling up and its not a sustainable strategy on the long run.

Its true that with last stand in this version you generally take an enemy demigod down with you but it seams more of an ai problem than anything else (if the ai fled rather than try to kill an invincible oak you wouldn't kill anyone...) The main problem with the last stand seems to be the damage you can do to buildings (change the ability so that you can only damage living creatures?) and the ai that doesn't run away from you.

How about not being able to hit anything but still be able to use your skills and control your minons? And in this 10sec mode you insta-use your summon skills.

Edit: Cooldown still applies of course.  Also maybe he could become a living totem that summons spirits. So he has something to work with. And as to not make the skill useless all his skills refreshes and mana get restored. Otherwise he won't be able to do anything since he probably already used his summon skill before he died.

How it works now means he just does damage after death. If you die a lot this is a very powerfull ability, when you don't its useless. Change it instead that he is resurrected(when the players pleases so) and doesn't die after 10 secs, but doesnt get invul or frenzy and prolly also begins with half hp. Obviously add a big CD.

So a rook kill your oak. Your timer begins counting, when the Rook leaves the area you rez yourself at half hp.

make him rez just one time and die second time ? (ie like Tauren Hero W3, sorry for the reference )

I think the best idea was restricting him so he cannot damage buildings while in last stand.  The problem is buildings cannot defend themselves against last stand.  A player can try to run away and hide.  You citadel can't kite and the damage is somewhat permanent (he does a lot of damage in last stand, enough so to kill a tower, or so much that your citadel won't fully recover before his next last stand rush.)  I could see this being a really nasty strategy that has no real counter if the team takes an oak player and plans for it.  Oak specs stats boosts and melee enhancements while neglecting his other skills.  He grabs increased attack speed and increased damage items, saves up for some big +damage items, and come 15 just starts suicide rushing the enemy base.

However, restricting him so he can only damage buildings makes last stand only do temporary damage and more or less discourages a team from killing oak first (and thus letting him play a support role with his shield.)