Torch Bearer underestimated

Honestly, I don't think anyone in their right mind would think Torchbearer is a lesser Demigod. Built right and played right, it can be brutal!

As far as your rotation, however, you might as well add Deep Freeze for the Shatter proc after being affected by Frost Nova and Rain of Ice. It deals 950 damage on the 3x proc at its final rank, and it's instant cast. If you need points for something else, you could replace Fire Nova with it since you'll gain more damage, plus interrupt and cooldown increase.

TB isn't lesser but he's pretty much as frail if not frailer than regulus.  He's got a lot of AoE attacks that require you to get kind of close to use properly so it's really easy to misjudge a situation with him and get owned.

That's the thing, unlike Regulus you can skip his normal attacks. It's very viable to just buff TB up with +mana regen and +hp/armour items, completely skipping +damage items. 

From my experience fighting against him, most people just don't know how to run with him. TB should be running whenever someone starts attacking him. He just doesn't have the resiliance to survive in combat. I've made tonnes of kills against TBs that just don't know when to run.

Thing is thought with that rain/nova/freeze + fireball which is a total of 3100 damage come at level 15 and u need to save some points to get it. If you try to get all the synergies for the 3x shatter you wont have frost aura so you wont be slowing them down.

You will also be having 1 point in nova wich means 1 second stun. It takes about 2 secs to go to fire and start casting fire ball, that gives them enough time to get out of your cast range so its doubtfull to do it with easy at lvl 15, it can be done easier at level 19+ when u ll max nova and frost aura. But at level 19 expect them to have 6k-7k life. Every decent player will back up and heal that damage.

At level 15 i doubt anyone will run with 3k health. Most likely they ll have about 4k, and even if u get them low enough u are gonna have to finish the combo in fire mode which means u cant run and shoot at the same time.

By the time u switch back to frost so u ll be able to run attack (which u still have ur frost spells on CD btw) the enemy will most likely make a run for it. Unless you play with bots that is

Dont get me wrong, i love the combos but IMO it comes pretty late game for it be very effective.

I would preffer if am going with so many points in ice to get the abilities that help me survive more, shatter/frost aura  (which is the point of ice anyway, control the battle, not burst damage), add maybe 1 to fireball to have a finisher and then work my way up to get the end talents.

Just my two cents.

PS cant be arsed with spelling, its 4am here

Shitting me?

With FB you can get the recharge to 3 seconds.  That means in slighlty more time than the 10sec duration on spit(a single spit won stack.  Also you have to factor in cast time.) you can do 4050 damage from 3 fbs.  That's uh.. considerably more than spits 1150.  Not to mention fireball is 20yard range and spit is 15.

People just don't know how to play.

I dont think it really an "underestimated" problem as much it is a "Dont know how to run the character" problem. I've only played a handful of online games, half of them with a TB. I get alot of kills with him mostly because i have a well idea of how to run him (Plus i work with other people then solo. Fireball at the right time and their dead). Any character is like that. I think the hardest thing to kill was the damn Rook in any match.

I assume you mean taking the favor item, the flag and the artifact weapon that gives -20% cooldowns. Well the tooltip might say 3 seconds but is not, try it for ur self. You will see on the count down timer that it will show 4 seconds, and if you time it u ll see again that is indeed 4 seconds.

So 4 secs CD + 1 secs cast, thats 5 seconds for 1050 damage or 1350 if you are fully talented. And you can and will be lock out of ur spells eventually with all the silences and interrupts that goes on. Thats is 100% it will happen. Atleast 1 every 15-20 seconds.

Now consider your white damage with max fire aura, 7-8 points in enchanced attribitues (meaning skipping the end talent of fire bolt) and ashakndor weapon. You ll be hitting for 400 damage per 0.6 seconds and u ll have a 10% to score a 4x hit for about 1.6k damage. In 15 seconds with 0.6 attack speed u will fire 25 times. 25 x 400~ = 10k damage.Am rounding up numbers here, you can get up to 600 with the right gear.

You will also have a 10% chance for a 4x hit which is 2.5 of your attacks, i ll round it down to 2. It will be 2 x  1600k hits. Basically for each crit you hit for 1.2k more. So thats 10k from normal plus 2.4k from crits, 12.4k damage in 15 seconds with no fear of a silence or interrupts (stuns will stop you though but then again so at your fire ball which will put it on a CD again with out actually casting it)

You can ofcourse spam fireball each time its off CD, it takes 1 seconds, but you can have almost 2 normal attacks in 1 second with the chance of a 4x crit hit.

I personaly like to keep it of cooldown and use fireball as a finisher when the opponent is getting low. Its a solid damage and you can cast it as you said from 20 yards and will travel even further, it can even follow teleported people.

Basically it all depence on your gear. At some point normal damage will out dps the spells which makes me thing this is a flaw in the game. Spells should get some benefits from gear damage wise.

P.S also dont forget you leech life from normal attacks which makes u stay more in the battle.

This is just my opinion ofcourse. i could be wrong

I don't underestimate TB, I usually run away when I see one. Of course that is true with any DG I fight against....

If you're going to go for an "autoattack spec", wouldn't you be better off going frost?  You can freeze your opponents, slow them, and move while attacking.  The only downside is you lose your fire aura, but I think that might be worth it.

Fireball is possible to make 2 sec CD with artifact or ~3-4 without.

its easy to under-estimate the Torch because he dies so easily. you really can't lead an attack on your own as TB, its just a recipe for getting a quick death. on the other hand if you're working with someone kinda tanky who can either help keep you alive or help keep enemies controlled you get to seriously abuse the massive AoE and burst damage potential of Torch's numerous damage spells. 

you will, however, surely die if your general approach is to walk up to a fight and start nuking everything in sight. Torch is a glass cannon. 

Which indicates that the UB player had no idea what he was doing.

It's hard to make judgements about DGs when so many players can't play well.

Doesn't change the fact I had 5000hp and 2500 armour with TB. :/

Does fire aura work on TB without switching to fire (since it is a passive skill)?

I've played with more people playing TB then anything. Reg/UB tied for second.

No, you need to be in the form the aura is for.

that is what I figured.

People were too busy creaming their pants at OMG 4X SHATTER 2900 DAMAGE in beta that they didn't realize frost TB has some great debuffs.  Getting your attack speed and move speed reduced so much by TB is insanely painful.. especially when they're mostly aoe's.

Well, in the last Pantheon (won by the goody goody forces of light!), TB came in tied for third as the top Demigod, at least in Win percentage. And he's just a hair away from the 1st place DG, the Rook. So...I don't really think he's considered obsolete in the least. Maybe more fragile...but definitely not obsolete.

With the proper build, Unclean Beast can leave Spit at level 1 and shred other DGs. Mind you the build leans heavily on the correct items (and if you play in a game with Favor items disallowed, it won't work), but a UB without maxed out or high level Spit is very viable.

I've yet to play someone who went full ice TB. I've only seen one who tried both fire and ice, rest went fire.

I love ice TB. Shatter is till a decent combo when you level it up. He still slaughters creeps, plus frost nove is great against buildings.

I see fire as more damage and frost as abit better control / surviability.

Personaly i kinda like fire more and you can stack the cooldown items and your damage is insane. I will try out some more frost builds and see how it goes.

I don't no if this is just me but when in fire mode and chasing someone TB has trouble attacking them while they run away anyone else noticed this ? and he seems to slow down quite alot.

Frost doesn't seem to pack the damage needed to really kill anyone maybe im doing something wrong with shatter but i could never get giant big ones :/

We needa play. Ice with fireball is the way to go!