Impressive.

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.

The only reason I would put more points in mist is if I was going to sit in the enemy base invulnerable while mist constantly kills their grunts giving you new minions to attack their towers/citadel with.

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.

Early game, mist is also quite useful for creep farming.  Remember that you only need to do 25% of the damage to an individual creep and be in the general area when he dies to get his gold/exp.  A quick mist/unmist (minimum time) does enough damage to a line of enemy minotaurs that when your creeps then kill them (which they will, because mist has also healed them), you get all the gold/xp.  It's by far Erebus' best early-game farming tactic.  I'm shocked at how little used it seems to be.

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.

Following the logic of abilities picked almost every build, we must nerf:

Sedna's Heal

Rook's ToL

Unclean Beasts Spit, and apparently Foul Grasp

Regulus' Snipe

TB's Circle of Fire

Queen of Thorns' Bramble Shield

Erebus' Bite - because regardless of taking 125 hp less and 100 armor less at the max level, it is still an essential item to almost every build.

So really, put a sock in all this nerf talk until the Clan Wars package comes out and you can see actual competition and the builds put to the test.

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.

I think Erebus will do just fine after the nerf, he's already the best at being tricky, fast, and annoying; just because he's taken a hit to his 1v1 skills doesn't nearly make him useless.

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!

I rarely get more than Rank 2 in Bite for my Erubus build.

Minion build, I wouldn't max it till lvls 19 or 20 and with nerf probably won't bother.

I save my mana for stun and bat form. Minions do all the heavy lifting, I just stand around looking arrogant.

Shouldnt NERF ... never ever...

instead they should buff Under powered DG like QoT

How can a general overpower assasin without some sort of hidden hp ability. the other 3 know dwarf LE in this matter and befor he at least stood out enough to use. Yes the 3 stats on bite were a bit high, but there wasno need to lower 2 AND raise the mana cost. This is a serious issue and im hoping that we can all figure out a better way of doing this?

stick with new damage, go back to old armor reduction and keep new mana cost

go back to old damage and armor reduction and mana cost but raise cooldown to maybe 8

old damage new armor reduction new mana cost

new damage old armor reduction old mana cost

There is enough talk about this to have Frogboy make a comment soon hopefully.  With my exsperiance ingame there are way more problems that need to be addressed before skills get balanced, besides is 900 hp really alot vs anyone at lvl 25 that actualy knows how to build agaist who they're fighting and not just cookie cutter.

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.

Same way (for example) a frost TB is fighting with one arm tied behind his back because he has no fire spells! Right? Or Rook without boulder roll!

In fact all DGs are gimped because no DG can pick all skills! Nor can a DG equip himself with all items/idols due to lack of money (and slots)

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

I really don't see why they need to nerf Erebus. If anything I consider him underpowered. I easily beat the single player tournaments on Hard difficulty with Rook, TB, Regulus, etc., but I can't make any headway as Erubus. His minions are useless late game, bite only does 900 damage at it's best, his health is low, mist just leaves you stranded, and nobody grabs the poisoned health drops. Early game he's impressive but late game he's relagated to the sidelines.

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.

How come i keep seeing this? who plays a general without minions. this is off topic, the disscution is about the overdown downgrade. bite is the staple of any good LE (hes a vampire)

Maybe lower the cooldown and keep the skill as is. more spam with less return forcing the LE to take his mana more serious and waiting for creeps befor the first bite.

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).