Demigod Analysis: Lord Erebus

from Demigod Forums

I like the design of this demigod, his skills are quite interesting, at the same time he seems like an obscenely powerful demigod.  He is on par with any assassin, then he gets minions to top it off.  Now part of this is due to the red wand of AoE healing in favor items available to generals (which works extremely well with mist.)  At the same time he has some amazing flexibility and his builds function with a number of skills not needing much investment to be effective.

Bite: Amazing skill.  A huge health swing, plus a snare, plus an armor debuff.  This skill helps him stay in a lane and survive pressure quite well.  I like the overall power, but perhaps it could stand to have an extra few seconds tacked onto the cooldown or be a little less cost effective.

 

Mist form: This skill is just too good early on.  At level 1 and 2 you can wipe out most grunt waves with ruthless efficiency.  However, it is just a plain waste to invest into level 3 and 4.  It also dispells all negative effects and makes you invulnerable.  Taking 100 damage per second every second usually wins out over the enemy demigod attacking you.  The skill just encourages you to keep it at level 1.

A few things need to happed with this skill.  First, I think that the health loss should not exceed to damage at high levels.  It turns the skill from a good proposition to a bad proposition.  Second, I think the skill needs an activation cost and a cost to sustain.  Having the cost to sustain go down on each level starts encouraging the player to go beyond level 1 or 2.  I take level 1 of this skill in all my builds for creep killing and sometimes upgrade to level 2 (if their creeps aren't dying to it quickly), but I never go beyond 2.  The health loss is just to great and the skill becomes crap.

An example of what I am thinking follows:

Rank 1: 200 mana, drains 100 mana per second.  75 damage to enemies, 50 damage to self

Rank 2: 275 mana, drains 75 mana per second.  150 damage to enemies, 100 damage to self

Rank 3: 350 mana, drains 50 mana per second.  225 damage to enemies, 150 damage to self

Rank 4: 425 mana, drains 25 mana per second.  300 damage to enemies, 200 damage to self

Basically, level 1 needs to be weak enough that players want to upgrade it.  However, the self damage penalty can't go too high.  I think a high drain factor at low levels could be that encouragement to level it.  That way if you want to do more than a minimum mist (3 seconds) you start losing mana fast.

 

Mass Charm: This skill gets worse as it levels.  Its cost goes up, but the hero stun doesn't.  The grunt stun goes up, but I don't care.  I can just wipe the entire wave out with level 2 mist form.  Players are mostly interested in the stun.  I can respect that you don't want this guy to have a super powerful stun, instead opting to have it function more like an interrupt.  I think you should run with it along these lines.  Drop the cast time (heck make it instant) and make level 1 expensive and on a long cooldown, say 30s.  Each level could then drop the cost, up the AoE a bit, and drop the cooldown by about 5s.  This makes the skill weaker at level 1, but more powerful at level 4 (instant cast stun that interrupts and hits a lot of players on an aggressive cooldown.)

 

Batform: It is just too good.  An amazing teleport and great damage.  Just shave down the damage a bit, don't hammer it, maybe try 80% of what it is now?

 

The minion skills: Coven is just great.  The other one, I forget its name, isn't so useful.  It only increases the chance to get more nightwalkers.  The problem is stuff dies a lot and mist form shreds enemies, making this an undesirable skill.  Add some sort of side effect to also make the minions stronger.  A great effect in theme for this character would be giving them a life steal that heals the vampire (and maybe increasing their damage a bit with it.)

 

Potion skill:  The potion is a cool idea, but it should heal allies.  A friend dying to your potion isn't cool.  The regen is what you really take this skill for.

 

Vampic Aura: This skill is really inconsistent, sometimes it makes everything by me die, other times it doesn't.  What is it actually susposed to do?  When it works it seems to be very effective.

 

Right now he is an amazing lane hero and his only weakness is that he is poor at siege.  I would like to see him toned down just a bit while some of his skills be made so that there is a reason to invest beyond 1 or 2 points.

I typically max bat form at highest priority, bite at second priority, the potion skill at third priority.  I take 1 level of mass charm and two levels of mist form.  I max coven over time at a low priority (trying to squeeze it in over time) and mix a single level of the minion spawn rate increase in when I get the chance.  I then shift to stats.

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Reply #1 from Demigod Forums Top

I respectfully disagree.

I have playtested beta 2 extensively and Lord Erebus is under powered compared to the other demigods.

General
Health and mana are too low. Erebus just goes down too easily.

Bite
Does not deal enough damage, especially in late game.

Batform
Does not deal enough damage. Does not teleport far enough.

Mist Form
I agree that the increase in self-DOT makes upgrading Mist Form counter productive.

Basically, whether it is me or the AI, to be playing Lord Erebus is to be at a disadvantage.

Reply #2 from Demigod Forums Top

I disagree that batform is underpowered. It can take out an entire wave of creeps, and the teleport distance is pretty big too IMO.

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Demigod Forums Top

Quoting Vordrak, reply 1
I respectfully disagree.

I have playtested beta 2 extensively and Lord Erebus is under powered compared to the other demigods.

General
Health and mana are too low. Erebus just goes down too easily.

Bite
Does not deal enough damage, especially in late game.

Batform
Does not deal enough damage. Does not teleport far enough.

Mist Form
I agree that the increase in self-DOT makes upgrading Mist Form counter productive.

Basically, whether it is me or the AI, to be playing Lord Erebus is to be at a disadvantage.

You aren't playing him to his full potential then.  Put the AI on hard and watch how they begin to play erebus.  You don't put mist beyond 2 and you leave mass charm at 1.  Take the AoE heal wand as your favor item.  It is hard to say exactly what you are doing wrong, but you are certainly missing something.  Saying that you don't think he is overpowered because he is poor at siege, that would be an opinion I could understand.  Saying he is underpowered,  that is just wrong.  Make sure you take the right minions too, open up with the priest minions on Erebus and take the ranged minions second.  Do not build him to do damage, build him with dodge, armor, and health regen items.  You don't really use your melee attack, you use your skills and minions to do the work.

Reply #4 from Demigod Forums Top

Basically, whether it is me or the AI, to be playing Lord Erebus is to be at a disadvantage.

You need to play against someone who knows how to use Erebus then.  If anything, his minions are wasted, in this Beta, because he is a much more effective AOE Assassin than he is a General.   

Reply #5 from Demigod Forums Top

I am not quite sure what it is, perhaps it is the vampiric aura, but having played several times vs an AI Erebus, I was hardly able to kill him with my Oak. He is healing - especially in bigger combats - an amazing amount of damage simply away. I would never call him underpowered, but more overpowered. Being very fast, as he is, and armed with many good spells and this vampiric aura or whatever causes his enormous defensive capability, I always experience him to be EXTREMELY hard to be killed.

Reply #6 from Demigod Forums Top

Quoting the_ZJ, reply 5
I am not quite sure what it is, perhaps it is the vampiric aura, but having played several times vs an AI Erebus, I was hardly able to kill him with my Oak. He is healing - especially in bigger combats - an amazing amount of damage simply away. I would never call him underpowered, but more overpowered. Being very fast, as he is, and armed with many good spells and this vampiric aura or whatever causes his enormous defensive capability, I always experience him to be EXTREMELY hard to be killed.

I would love to know what items the AI goes for.  I don't know if that is the favor wand he is using or if he is just that hard to kill normally.  The AI pumps priests quickly too, those heal a lot of damage back.

Reply #7 from Demigod Forums Top

I guess that's why I suck with him then.  Being a General, I try to use him as, you know, a General.  I focus on getting minions and such.  Guess we need to play everyone like an Assassin in this beta.  There's still time for them to fix it...

Even so, I have noticed some of the abilities and have a few comments.

Bat Swarm:  Overpowered.  It can wipe out a group of creeps, is almost instant for chasing people down or escaping, and has a very large range.  Personally, I would like it to stay focused on transportation and take a large hit to damage.  Keep the short cast time and long distance, just make it stop killing everything.

Mist:  Broken.  To be honest, I don't think damage taken should increase at all.  I've found this to be an amazing defensive tactic, as you are essentially invincible for however long you can keep it up.  If it is reduced to 50 hp/sec for level one like the OP suggests, then you could just get a bunch of health regen and become literally invincible by turning it on.  I think the current initial health loss is decent, but it would have to take a lot of incentive for me to ever upgrade this past level 1.

Here's a thought to compleatly change the entire ability around.  How about you give him some kind of life steal aura that gives him health depending on damage inflicted by allies.  You could have the health loss grow (less than it does currently) with each level, but even it out by giving him a more powerful aura.  This way, he would be forced to use it as a General and not an Assassin.  In order to survive, he would need to be surrounded by allies.  Heck, you could further this by, instead of him doing damage to enemies, he grants himself and all nearby allies shared lifesteal.  A percentage of the damage inflicted by any allied unit under the aura would be added to every allied unit under the aura.  It would compleatly change this move from being a one man AoE Assassin to being the ultimate minion supporter.  Isn't that what Generals are supposed to be?  Just a thought.

Bite:  This is really good.  It kills your stats, does damage, and heals Erebus.  It is fairly cheap and has a really low cooldown.  This is very powerful.  Once you hit the endgame, it does fall by the wayside like every other ability, but that is more an issue with the current way abilities are handled than an issue with Bite.  Most people on the forums have been saying to increase the cooldown, so I would like to just see how that plays out.

Mass Charm:  The Demigod stun is lacking, and stunning creeps and minions is worthless.  I agree with this thread that keeping it at level 1 is the best option.  I think it could work as it is (being primarily a creep/minion stun) if minions were buffed.  Currently, Generals are Assassins and minions are useless.  If minions were made to be powerful and a real threat, then stunning them would be useful.  Currently, it isn't.

Coven:  Necessary for the Vamps to survive at all.  Even then, they are fairly underpowered.  Minions just don't cut it, especially when they can all be blown away with a single AoE attack from an Assassin.  It helps a bit and lets the Vamps take a few hits.  Also lets you get more at a time, which creates an interesting snowball effect when playing Erebus.  I like it, but minions are useless in general at the moment.

Improved Conversion Field (or something like that):  I agree that this needs a buff.  With the sheer amount of creeps you take out, and since the limit of Vamps is rather low, you don't need this.  Plus, the minions are fairly pathetic anyway.

Poisoned Blood:  I've only been playing the AI, but I once got poisoned by an allied Erebus's blood.  Not fun.  Needs fixing.  Either make them heal allies like a normal potion, or give allies a visual warning so they don't drink it (make it red or something).

Vampiric Aura:  I don't recall ever seeing numbers on this, but I imagine that it accounts for the randomly huge amount of healing this guy does in the middle of big battles.  If so, then it might be broken.  This guy heals really fast, and I guess this is the culprit

Even knowing all that, I can't help but try to focus on his Minions.  I mean, that's the reason you play as a General, right?  To use minions?  If I didn't want to do that, I'd play as an Assassin.  Apparently, Erebus makes a fine Assassin.  Fix please.  If Mist was changed to be like above, Poisoned Blood didn't kill allies, Bat Swarm was purely for movement, and minions didn't suck (relates to Coven, Improved Conversion Aura, and Mass Charm), then Erebus might just make a powerful General.

Reply #8 from Demigod Forums Top

Quoting Random_Guy, reply 7
Mist:  Broken.  To be honest, I don't think damage taken should increase at all.  I've found this to be an amazing defensive tactic, as you are essentially invincible for however long you can keep it up.  If it is reduced to 50 hp/sec for level one like the OP suggests, then you could just get a bunch of health regen and become literally invincible by turning it on.  I think the current initial health loss is decent, but it would have to take a lot of incentive for me to ever upgrade this past level 1.

Here's a thought to compleatly change the entire ability around.  How about you give him some kind of life steal aura that gives him health depending on damage inflicted by allies.  You could have the health loss grow (less than it does currently) with each level, but even it out by giving him a more powerful aura.  This way, he would be forced to use it as a General and not an Assassin.  In order to survive, he would need to be surrounded by allies.  Heck, you could further this by, instead of him doing damage to enemies, he grants himself and all nearby allies shared lifesteal.  A percentage of the damage inflicted by any allied unit under the aura would be added to every allied unit under the aura.  It would compleatly change this move from being a one man AoE Assassin to being the ultimate minion supporter.  Isn't that what Generals are supposed to be?  Just a thought.

I think your health regen does get turned off when mist if up, if not it certainly should be.  The problem I have with mist doing 100 for every level is it makes mist a bit screwed up at level 1.  The skill really should do less than 100 damage at level 1 per pulse.  Right now staying in mist form at level 1 and 2 doesn't have enough of a down side and mist form at 3 and 4 has too much of a down side and now enough of an upside.  Ideally mist form at 1 and 2 should be a strong skill, but have enough of a negative side effect to encourage the player to upgrade.  I think the best way to achieve this is make staying in mist form more expensive at levels 1 and 2, but you don't want to hit it hard enough to make it like the torch bearer's ice storm (1 cast and you entire mana pool is gone at early levels.)  Mist form is going to be really tricky for them to get the right balance on.