I think the main problem with this, imo, is that, even though there are plenty of choices in how to built each DG, everyone generally uses the same one, maybe 2 builds. For generals, this envolves maxing out offensive spells and getting items that only buff themselves.  If a general spent all their points in minion upgrades and got all items that increased minion health and damage, all generals could be strong minion based DGs.

i used oak as a minion based demi i won  most off the time but ur forgeting minnions suck vs   aoes  so any tb build

rooks towers    regs wings and mines  and  ub  has ooze and plauge and loads off other dot's that hurt creeps alot

so using a creep build is  pretty useless seeing as it has so many counters

there are many builds for gens  but most off them are better late game  and if u go as  a minion build late game ull pawn but earily to mid ull  barely scartch them and seeing ass minions are so slow and most people get atleast 1 speed up  they can easily get away from ur minions

I disagree. You use pounce, and your done. The enemy can run away or pound you with his own abilities before it recharges. Sedna doesn't do that much damage herself. With a full minion army, you've got 4 yetis, 2 minotaurs, 2 Seige archers, and 2 bishops doing all doing about... 75ish damage per second, with a little less on the bishops. So 75 x 8 (not including the bishops.) = 600 damage per second. 600 damage each second with no mana cost, and no stopping. Sedna can jump in there with her normal attack and boost it even more. 600 damage dealing machine that you can leave on the battlefield while you go heal, buy gear, citadel upgrades, heal teammates, whatever.

sedna suck most of the time late game   she can counter ability whores with  silence  and is virtually invincible with such a high  hp and hp regen

so she can survive for ages but it takes her ages to kill anything  and aoes  screw her minions over

minion builds are very powerful when played correctly.  the point is, its easier and less macro to play an assassin, therefore it seems to be more effective.  however, come across a good general and its...ouch. 

minion builds are very powerful when played correctly.  the point is, its easier and less macro to play an assassin, therefore it seems to be more effective.  however, come across a good general and its...ouch. 

leth u double posted and they get owned  earily game

If you stupidly decide to spend all your cash on trying to rush for high-end idols rather than getting gear, then yes.

The problem with minions in Demigod is they have no ABILITIES.  They attack.  That's it.  Oh wait, the priests heal.  Oh wait, but you can't control who or when they heal, they just *do*.  Great.

As such minions aren't interesting, they can't be skillfully micro'd, they can't do anything but right click and hope they do good.  Not to mention the UI is crap for managing them.  You have no idea what is selected, so it's mash N and hope none of them got left behind.

Oh, you can send minions over mines to clear them.  Yay cannon fodder.

They need to have something *more.*  Auras, activatible ability that do something good, dots, slows, something that makes them more valuable than just walking hp pools.

I'm betting GPG didn't have minions do something valuable because they didn't want you to stop focusing on your hero, because "micro is hard."  And as such, we have the results instead - minions are weak and boring.

The fact that there's so much +Minion stats on all the items suggests they wanted minions to be a Big Deal.  Until they make them interesting to use, they will never be.

wwhen i useually use spirits i have them so they do  boat loads off dmg and then send them to  help my ally if he needs help  they will kill him  and ill fight on  my own

but spirits  are weak  at low lvls 7 and above there affective

Abilities is the key imo. Right now assassins have no incentive to defeat a generals army rather than just smashing the general.  Even if the army stayed after death they are just cannon fodder at that point...

I'd like to see things like:

-nearby minions soaking damage directed at the general

-synergistic effects from minions

-minions that improve the creep

-slows or other negative effects so assassins cant simply ignore the whole army

Here's an incentive:

Make sure you kill my army before you go after me, or there's no chance in hell you'll be able to survive long enough to actually kill me.

If you play with minions, you are effectively screwed against any demigods with some AOE abilities.... which a lot of them already have.

It is just joke againt TB, and for Regulus' mine case it is more double edged. You may clear mines that were thrown as "mines" but minions are nothing more than triggers for Regulus' mines thrown as "grenades" to you; you may move quickly to avoid mines, but the minions WILL go over the mines and explode, doing damage to you as well.

Just for accuracy, the base dps of lvl 4 idols are : 30.1, 41.4 and 42.9 for minotaurs, archers and priests respectively. (Yes, minos are the lowest.) That's against 0 armour targets, damage reduction from base armour on demigods can be ~7-25% depending on the demi and level. Also, all minions do slower than 1 second attacks so +5 minion damage items give less than +5 dps. Also on the list of less than 75 dps are yetis - 18 DPS on level 1 summons and 30.6 on level 4 summons.

So the army you just listed does 403.9dps against a 0 armour target (that's including attack speed increase from mag. presence). Assuming a 15% base damage reduction since this is gonna be late game that's 343.3dps. Add in pathing and armour items and it's less than this.

Now for the pound for pound pounce vs yeti comparison :

For 4 skill points you can get 122.6 DPS with bad pathing from yetis that is reduced by armour, or a 1000 damage burst that interupts and is equivalent to 137.0 dps (1000/7.3 [cooldown+cast-time]) from pounce. [Edit - including mag. presence for yetis' DPS and shorter cooldown for pounce since it was mentioned in the example, it's actually 141.0 vs 158.7 DPS with mag. presence]

So yeah, pounce looks better than yetis on almost every count when you use accurate numbers.

Sorry for double post, but since it's come up again, I whole heartedly support giving the general's minions something interesting.

Separate General/assassin items (how can any item that gives minion bonuses that isn't too cheap for generals be cost efficient for an assassin?) and get some more interesting minions benifits than +hp, +damage and +regen. Make some items that give unique bonuses like %chance for minions to drain/destroy target mana and %damage to demi transfered to minions. Then you can see some more interesting minion builds rather than the one DPS build available now, which is lackluster at best.

For all this talk about how Generals are so awesome, why are 3 of the top 4 (statistically) Assassins, and 3 of the bottom 4 Generals?

Uh.....because the stats are FUBAR and you shouldn't trust them?

On the one hand, I don't think the power of minion builds has been fully explored yet, you can do a lot of crazy things by splitting your minions up, pushing/scouting in multiple places. Thats just really hard to do though, thanks to not really great UI and stupid pathing.

On the other hand I agree that minions are kinda weak. Especially I think the upgraded versions are not really worth it. I think the damage is okayish, but what InfiniteVengeance suggested would be a good idea to make them more atractive - give them some abilites/effects. Let Lvl 4 Siege Archers have a ministun or an included slow. Let Lvl 4 Minotaurs apply an armor-reduce debuff. Let Yetis have a Dodge Aura. Whatever, give the General some added effects he misses out on by not picking the more "assassinish" parts of the skill tree.

If you play with minions, you are effectively screwed against any demigods with some AOE abilities.... which a lot of them already have.

No. I see plenty of people try to whore AOE, and it never ends up doing much. It weakens, not kills, the army...and unless you actually attack and kill the army before it heals up again, it means nothing.

Just for accuracy, the base dps of lvl 4 idols are : 30.1, 41.4 and 42.9 for minotaurs, archers and priests respectively. (Yes, minos are the lowest.) That's against 0 armour targets, damage reduction from base armour on demigods can be ~7-25% depending on the demi and level. Also, all minions do slower than 1 second attacks so +5 minion damage items give less than +5 dps. Also on the list of less than 75 dps are yetis - 18 DPS on level 1 summons and 30.6 on level 4 summons.

Yetis do 30 damage BASE with a .6 attack rate. That's 50 DPS, not 18.

  ive never seen a minion build that really scared me.   some are powerful but sometimes you play a good player and you know you are in for a tough game,  a minion player never made me feel that way.. maybe my style just counters them good.

    I hear people say it takes time to get minion builds up and running and you need to max the morale skill(wtf lol),

but even if thats the case ive usually set the pace for the game by the time you get to the mid levels,  and then its widely accepted minions dont scale so well when you get to the end game.  so what levels/part of the game are minions supposed to dominate in?    10-15?  fair enough

   im fine with minions not being dominant though because to me its just a whole less clutter and micro management to have to deal with.    

   but I do feel QoTs minions should be stronger or at least melee range minions for her munch skill to work effectively.  as its widely accepted she defintly doesnt play very well as an assassin demigod.

30 damage base with a 0.6 rate of fire, that's attacks per second, not seconds per attack. Don't believe me? Check giants, their rate of fire is 0.2, if you believe they attack 5 times per second you're on crack.

I go through due diligence when I do my work, thank you.

And I'm even more careful when I take it upon myself to correct people.

i agree  the ammount off time it would take a  reg for example would be like 1 min to kill them all then the person will just summon more and ull be lower on health and back were u started

the point is for  assasins to kill the generals  not for the assasins to kill the minions

and minion builds work great most of the time

P.S. Here's another issue w/ minions that makes them suck even just a bit more. Armor.

If you go full on abilities and direct damage, it's not mitigated by armor. However, minions are, so it's easy to counter act any steady dps of a minion build w/ armor and hp's.

Honestly, the more I think about this and try out different builds the more I realize this is a huge game design flaw on the part of GPG.

It's not that I would even want minions to be more powerful...I mean, who the hell wants to be fighting a gaggle of super powered summons and idol minions?

Rather the real issue is that Generals have a half-useless talent tree.

I wished they had scrapped the "General" concept altogether and gave those DG's more viable choices in the tree.

I've read all the comments above but I'm not convinced of all these "super duper dps" minion builds because I've tried each class both ways and it's a lot easier to focus on AoE and direct damage attacks than it is to deal w/ minions that don't path right, stay when you tell them go, go when you tell them stay, or don't react at all.

Well the thing here is that the fastest way for some demigods to kill minions is to kill the Demigod. I mean around level 10, you can amass like 8000 hp of minions without too much trouble. Unless you have heavy AOE its just easier to kill the DG.