[Feedback] Torchbearer has no variety

Eh, I have a build that I consider good where I go blizzard and fireball.  Blizzard the hell out of units/heroes as they approach, switch to fire for the mana regen and to nuke a hero, then back to frost to blizzard him again as he runs.

I also agree that you should go all fire or all ice.   I hate switching back and forth.

I'm actually saying the reverse. You should be able to mix Fire and Ice without gimping yourself compared to pure fire or pure ice, because otherwise it really cuts down on possible Torch Bearer builds.

In my experience, that's not the only problem with the torch bearer.

In ice form he kinda sucks late game IMO. Yes, he can AoE mobs awesomely, but he has no single target damage which makes him lose pretty badly to most heroes late game. Even generals.

He's great when playing as a team tough, between the slow and nova, no one can escape.

True, but then no one NEEDS to escape. They can just kill him because he loses every time vs other heroes in late game.

And having one or two heroes following the torchbearer around hoping to kill their enemies is not a winning strategy

Each hero should be good on his own throughout every stage of the game. This simply isn't true for Ice Form Torchbearer.

I use both ice first to kill units and freeze them, than I go fire to do alot of damage.

Yes, but that's dodging around the fact that going pure Ice is weak.

And seeing as how I can choose from:

1. Ice

2. Fire

or

3. Ice and Fire, one of those three shouldn't be lame. They should all be viable choices in a regular game. (1v1, 2v2 etc)

As ZeratulTheDT said, right now, both Ice and Ice & Fire are lame, and even Fire needs help.

I think the general balance issue that's making this tough to gage for me is the Generals.  They are OP.  They have strong combat abilities on-par with assassins, and an amazing amount of minions.

Generals should be gimpier and be able to stay further from the action  (right now, the interface is such that my General ends up in the frontline, sometimes by accident).  Once that's satisfied, General abilities need to be looked at.  Roots, Snares, Stuns, Drains, Aura's, Ports are all in the right direction.

more on this later when I can better articulate what I mean

What I *really* don't understand is why the Generals are melee heroes. Also, why is the Rook an assassin hero when he has more strategic abilities than any of the other Demigods?

Why not? Demigod is a pure team game - having one hero, have one build that is incredibly useful when coordinated, and not as good when alone is hardly against the spirit of the game.

No. But let's say you have a 3v3 game, with one team of 2 heroes following a torchbearer, and the other team each person doing "his own thing".

Team 1 is the team of 2 heroes following the torchbearer, team 2 a regular team.

Team 2 goes around, captures everything on the map. Team 1 maybe gets a kill or two off the heroes as they do this. Team 2 finishes capping the whole map, while team 1 chases heroes fruitlessly around the map watching as they die horribly.

The end.

That's a very narrowminded view of the situation, not to mention fairly unrealistic. An ice torchbearer/assassin demigod combo will generally beat simple dual demigod combos with a little application of tactics and teamwork - which is a huge advantage, seeing as how that means you can generally clean house on locations of your choosing.

I don't see how. As mentioned, the ice torchbearer has no direct damage, so it won't be able to help the assassin demigod very much. Versus two skilled non-torchbearer assassins, they shouldn't need to worry about escaping. They should just kill the enemy assassin and then the ice torchbearer will fall apart.

The Ice Torchbearer can basically disable an enemy demigod, making him easy pickings for a teammate. And let's not forget "no direct damage" is something of an overstatement.

Basicly tochbearer ice is for team play and weakening the enemy. Fire is for killing. If u have unclean beast and torchbearer pair they will crush other duas that dodn't have torchbearer because he can stun them than deepfreez plus his aura. Meanwhile unclean beast can rip 1 of them apart, if 1 tries to run torchbearer can use deep freeze again and unclean beast can outrun all the other demigods unless its unclean beast or they have item.s So deepfreez will give a Unclean beast plenty of time to finish the job.

Still, having to go pure ice or pure fire doesn't lead to much variety. There's essentially two possible builds; a fire nuker or an ice support-type. There should be another option, like being able to use ice and fire at the same time in exchange for penalties (damage reductions, no access to certain skills, etc.) or something similar.