Sorry, I named it "drain thingy" because I was too lazy to turn the game on and check -  plus I had to go to sleep. Foul grasp is overpowered, because of its stun. The damage is no big deal, but a 2 second stun in the hands of an UB is just absurd - all UBs start a battle with spit. That is 100 + damage per second. Add the damage of foul grasp to it, include a possible ooze and you get absurd amounts. Honestly, I switched from rook to regulus because of his nice range, and then to UB because he simply could leave me crippled after a combo like that (being at 1/4 health when you get a chance to attack back is nothing short of OP). And the mana cost - what is the problem with that? Most skilled players will either have a favour item to regenerate mana or a heart of life/potions.

Add the drain effect to that, and you get another extra - it is not *just* 600 damage - it is 600 damage to my enemy and 600 health to me. This draining effect cannot be compared to real damage, but I will do a try - lets say its 1200 damage with 0 drain. Compare it with Rook's hammer slam - a skill that does only 500 more damage (which you considered nothing in your post) but has such a crazy cast time, it is easily avoidable and provides no stun.

Yeah, misting away from Hammer slams is awesome.  Many rooks don't know to stop swinging, and waste a bunch of mana and cooldown.  And heck, you still get to do a little damage to him.

Mist can be good if your team has no other AoE damage.  Late game, a mist form erebus, especially one with good mana regen, can halt an advancing lane completely.  I theorize it is also a decent skill for getting gold... but I've never really used it that way.

A lot of early guides simply left out mist, and so my theory is a lot of people went with a minion build. That's what I did, until one day I was tinkering with the rest of his skills and found out how useful mist was.

I really don't start using mist regularly until level 8, because by the I usually have a large source of mana plus heart of life so the mana it drains is no problem. At 75 dps you can kill the group of mobs fairly quickly. I think before level 8 and level 2 of mist, it's takes too much mana to use, which leaves you vulnerable should an enemy demigod show up and you don't have any mana to bite him.

Not balanced as in it's more valuable than his other skills?

Or not balanced as in because since every player get's bite, he's not balanced with other characters?

Who cares if one skill in his tree is too valuable to pass up. Same can be said for other abilities in other character's trees.

I think the more important issue is if Erebus as a whole is balanced amongst the other characters in the game, not whether or not bite is more powerful than his other abilities.

And as far as other paths go, you can either go minion build, utility build with mist and teleport, or mix it all up.

The difference between an ability you must have and an ability that is good for any build are two different beasts.  Not that all you listed are, but some aren't must haves.  Towers, Snipe, Circle of Fire, Heal I'm iffy on but probably is a must have, i dunno.

Although not expicitly stated i believe what the other posters meant was not just picking an ability every build but getting the highest rank every build.

This is pretty much the case with bite. Not so much however with your other examples:

I rarely get more than rank2 heal with sedna,

UBs spit is most powerful in the early game when there are no counters but higher ranks aren't required for the later game (some would argue unnecessary)

Can't speak out of personal experience on the others but there are plenty of skilled frost TBs out there, as are rooks who don't go for tower farms.

As for Regulus I'd have said it's his mines, not the snipe which must be maxed out... but then again that just proves my point!

Shouldnt NERF ... never ever...

instead they should buff Under powered DG like QoT

The mana cost was not inline with other General's direct damage skills so it had to be raised. I beleive it got nerfed because they forgot to adjust it when they adjusted all the other abilities. So in essences they are just bringing it in line with the other abilities.

General's overpower Assassins by swarming them with minions + stun or interrupt or armor reduction.

General's without minions should never out assassin Assassins.

General's without minions is like fighting with one arm tied behind your back. If you are still owning, either you opponents suck or you are overpowered.

This.....isn't quite right.  Demigods can pick quite a few of their skills (even all).  They just won't max them all.

Erebus is like the Rogue class from WoW.

Everybody played one and everyone thought rogues sucked.  But out there somewhere is a guy who truly gets how the rogue class works.  And can cheese you all day with it and beat you while naked if he wanted.

My rogue example was true, maybe not true for Erebus in the "while naked" part, but this is how I see Erebus.

So if Erebus had only two abilities, Mistform and Morale, would you have to neuter mistform until it was as bad as morale?

I think you cannot exclude an ability as 'too good' compared to other abilities, but rather can say that an ability is 'too weak'.

If an ability is so weak that it is never(or an approximation thereof) a better choice than a different ability, it is inherently unbalanced (on the weak side).