I generally find that Narmoth's far outwieghs HoL in usefulness on an Oooze build where mana is never a concern if ever.

It doesn't cause you to stop moving if you keep right-clicking.

my opinion has been and remains that prior to level 10 its not viable to be playing with a hybrid Spit/Ooze build. you get punished too much on the split decisions on items. the best chance at making it work is to lean heavily on Heart of Life. this is doable but kinda requires you to be a skill mismatch against your opponents or else you won't have enough cash to buy it in a reasonable time frame. if its a skill mismatch anyway then it doesn't matter what your build is. 

mid to late game development (post level 10) is a different story entirely. I personally favor starting as a Spit build and picking up Ooze between levels 11 and 14 to give you a strong late game finish. You could easily do the reciprocal thing with an Ooze build and pick up Spit in the second half for added DG killing power. 

Pure Spit builds don't finish very well. I wouldn't recommend that to anyone. Pure Ooze builds are a different story. you can do very well staying just Ooze and just Health/Armor+Damage gear well into the late game. you'll lack in straight DG killing power compared to a Spit+Ooze build but will have other virtues to recommend such as extreme health and auto-attack damage and stronger passive boosts (particularly valuable is maxing out Diseased Claws, which a hybrid build can really never do). Pure Ooze build is a tank. thats all you need to know. ranged support from Regulus or TB or ground support from Oak or Erebus will make a Pure Ooze Beast a ridiculous monster. 

alot of this discussion has left out those all important team dynamics. The hybrid Spit+Ooze Beast is more self sufficient and better at solo killing demigods. thats all well and good. Pure Ooze is better suited for team dynamics. take that for whatever its worth.  

You still have to stop moving for a split second to activate it; it's possible to walk while HoLing, but even a small lagspike (.3 seconds?) can mean the difference between life and death. Narmoth's is better for pure HP anyway.

"First off, can't chase somebody into the towers? What? Are you kidding me? 5k hp by level 6, with enough armor that towers deal ~170 damage isn't enough to tank the towers? It's incredibly easy to get a kill in the towers with an Ooze UB; I frequently get kills on enemies attempting to flee into areas with two towers, and one is hardly a deterrant at all. If I couldn't kill them anyway, I won't chase, but any demigod with under 2k hp is probably going to be cannon fodder for me even at the towers (except Sedna, QoT, or Erebus)."

Towers deal more than 170 damage if you are at lvl 6. You would be taking at least 200 dps per hit from tower. Most smart players would probably have 3k of HP if they know they are going against a beast. If you think you can charge in and kill somebody with at least 3K and tanking their tower at the same time. That is sucidial.

"With the gear you suggested, you get three spits (maybe four if you get unbreakable boots before level 7). Wow. That's pretty pathetic, honestly. Sure, you have your glory; for all of three encounters (or less). Then you have to fall back. Nice."

This is where mana management comes to play. There is a time to use SPIT or not and this is up to the players to decide. 3 lvl 4 SPITs + Ooze do enough damage to kill any player with 3K of HP.

"Also, did I ever say that scaring your opponents away was a bad thing? It's not. But the points in Ooze ARE wasted if you scare people away by spitting on them. Your other passives either give you more stats or allow you to chase enemies better, but having Ooze with spit just gives you nothing until the enemy actually engages you, and then your reduced HP pool or limited mana pool make it pretty shakey (plus the fact you can't chase them unless, as I'll point out later, they happen to fall into a very risky assumption to make)."

It's very most likely that you will engage with your opponent . I havent had a game where I didmt fight my opponent within the first 5 or 10 min of gameplay. It's bound to happen. Hence, by having Spit/Ooze you will have more ground. I played against some Ooze UBs and most of the time I found them to have about the same amount of HP like I have. 7K-8K.

"One point in diseased claw + wand? That only works if your enemy has no speed buffs on themselves or debuffs on them, is dumb enough not to buy a wand themselves, and can be killed in seven seconds. A lot of assumptions there."

People dont run away with wand unless they are low on HP. Guess what? Since you have Spit, you can immidiately SPIT them the moment they run or SPIT them while you are chasing them with your wand + 5% slow on them. If players do stack SPEED GEAR, they will be low on HP instead cuz they dont have gear for HP. In this case, they will die the moment you get into melee range with them. Even if they have natural speed buff, your Inner Beast + Wand will make you faster than most demigod in 7 secs.

"Also, HoL is pretty terrible for Ooze builds; it requires them to turn off their Ooze and Narmoth's ring is a lot better (for HP) in the same price-range, because it actually lets them heal during combat. And you can't have diseased claws maxed by level 10 with spit and ooze; you can have two points in it if you skip foul grasp."

Ooze is completely a melee build that requires you fight head to head which you will lose alot of HP whether you can run away or you kill your opponent. Not having HOL is just a bad idea. This saves you time running back. And I'm not saying you need to max out diseased claws out. With my build, at lvl 11 I have Spit/Ooze maxed out and other passive skills.

First off, learn to use the damn quote feature. It's annoying that you can't figure out how to click a button properly.

It's called "armor." Scalemail + Narmoth's chestplate = 170 damage dealt by towers. Killing somebody with 3k HP? Obviously not (unless it's reg, or TB not using skills, or Rook without a tower farm; there are really a lot of exceptions to this!). But unlike a spit build, if I've been fighting somebody towers will not deter me from continuing on to the kill. You might want to read what I say, and not assume I mean "LOL CHARGE AT ENEMY TOWER NO HURT ME!"

...and? If you spit somebody three times to kill them, and they teleport away, you have NO defenses less. Yeah, you have Ooze, but you are behind on passives. A lot. You just won't be able to handle it. Even with perfect timing, you are going to need more than three spits to hold off your enemies for any decent amount of time; with what you've suggested, you wind up having to go back to the crystal for mana as often as you actually push enemies away. Not a good thing.

Very most likely? To quote the internet, 'lolwut?" Anyway, if you are relying on your opponenets being dumb enough to fight you when they don't have a chance, then your build isn't good. If you only get kills because people are dumb enough to run in after spit, then... yeah, it's not going to work out that well. Also, you only have 7-8k hp because you don't buy any mana items so you can't use spit anyway! You are just an Ooze UB without stats or passives, that sometimes gets to throw around a spit and run back for more mana.

Once again, relying on the opponent being stupid is a bad idea. You can't "immediately" spit. You don't have enough mana to always spit everybody who is running away. And what the hell is with the random capslock spam? Anyway, you don't need to stack speed gear to escape a wand of speed. You just need a wand of speed of your own, and a passive speed buff/debuff. Oak can escape you just by using pentience plus wand of speed, Erebus can escape with bite + wand of speed, TB can escape with ice + wand of speed.... actually, about everybody except Rook can escape with just their skills and wand of speed (even with the 5% debuff.) Also, how do you have inner beast AND diseased claws? For a spit/Ooze UB, that is actually impossible. You only have one point to spend on passive skills until level 10. Not only that, you get your passive skill at level 8. You are going to either have to wait until then to be able to chase people down, or make the build even weaker by delaying your damage skills.

And? You can't kill people just by spitting on them either. You still have to go head to head to take a lot of damage; spit really isn't that effective when you only have 3 casts. Also, 3k is not the average HP at level 10. Maybe average without equipment, but generally by that point most people have 4~5k HP. So your three spits would have to be burned fighting ONE person to the death, and then you would be an ooze build with less passives. Not that great.

Basically, your build is just an Ooze build that swaps passives for Spit. With no mana gear at all, you are not going to have any chance of spitting enough to win fights, let alone being able to interrupt and spit (which is actually USEFUL for team play) plus without passives you won't be able to help your team as much. You are good for single 1v1 demigod fights, but whether you win or lose the fight, you will always have to pull back for more mana (or have Heart of Life, which is hard to get by level 10 with such a weak early game unless the enemy is feeding you), and you can't really support your team.

Also, on Heart of Life: How is it useful? It doesn't increase my max HP, and I get way more HP/s from Narmoth's ring than I do from the HoL. Sure, the HoL gives me a huge heal out of battle... but as an Ooze UB, getting out of melee range usually means I am losing so badly I should be running back to the crystal. HoL is great when you have mana needs, but when you don't, waiting 10 seconds for 3k HP is not really preferable to having the slot open for Sigils of Vitality (instant ~4k HP), flag locks, or TP scrolls. Ooze UB is one of the few builds where a HoL really isn't that useful.

you know the quote button is outright broken on certain browsers right?

i'm on Chrome and it doens't work ever. 

You don't need the quote button to quote. You can just type [*quote] and end it with [*/quote] (ignoringthe asterisks). Works like a charm.

I got murdered with ooze vs ooze/spit. The spits basicly never allow you to use HoL while the other UB can use it, as soon as he is a bit away from you.

HoL isn't good for Ooze builds; Narmoth's Ring is better. Anyway, if you are relying on HoL to win fights, you really need to play UB more; you can easily chase him away from using HoL. Plus, you should have way more HP than him, or he's going to be so low on mana so he won't be able to spit much.

Another thing people forget about are consumables. If you have something like a Sigil of Vitality, you can easily crush somebody at the last second.

Well he could use HoL because he wasn't constantly having spit debuff like me. Yes, of course, we both used alot of pots. The HP difference isnt large. You have about 2800 mana with Unbreakable boots (at level 10). Assuming he replaced a HP item with a MANA item, he had maybe 600 health less and 1050 Mana +15 mps more, which is 3850 mana and about 21 mps regen (at level 10).

You easily outweight 600 health with spit, very easily!! Spit IV does like 2000 dmg every 10 secs (stacked) and he can do that atleast 3 times, which is 6000 dmg and thats 2 big pots which is 800g. He refills this mana for 350g. It's really simple math.

The one or two levels of Inner Beast will never make up to this.

Items:

Ooze (2750 hp, 1617 mp, 168 dmg, 16% arm @ level 1)
Favor: Blood of the Fallen, Dark Crimson Vial (unsure which is better, I take the Heart), Furious Blade could be good (unknown)
Item 1a: Banded Armor
Item 2a: Scalemail
Item 3a: Gauntlets of Brutality
Item 4: Nimoth Chest (+1850g >> 3925 hp, 2137 mp, 225 dmg, 35% armor @ level 6)
Item 6: Wand of Speed
Item 5: Hauberk of Life (+4530g >> 5065 hp, 2028 mp, 251 dmg, 46% armor @ level 10)
Item 2b: Unbreakable Boots
Item 3a: Wyrmskin Handguards (+6410g >> 5935 hp, 3036 mp, 254 dmg, 39% armor @ level 12)
Item 1b: Assassin's Footguard (im pretty sure these pay off)
Item 1c: Namoth's Ring (+10320g >> 7130 hp, 3769 mp, 291 dmg, 41% armor @ level 14 assuming stats +5)

Ooze/Spit
Favor: similar, Blade of the Serpent (maybe, does it work with Spit?)
Item 1a: Scaled Helm
Item 2a: Banded Armor
Item 3a: Scalemail
Item 4a: Gauntlets of Brutality
Item 5: Unbreakable Boots (+2400g >> 3225 hp, 2937 mp, 225 dmg, 33% armor @ level 6)
Item 6: Wand of Speed
Item 3b: Nimoth Chest
Item 4b: Vlemish Faceguard
Item 2b: Wyrmskin Handguards
Item 1b: Namoth's Ring (+10880g >> 5955 hp, 4294 mp + 21mps, 267 dmg, 40% armor @ level 14)

Pure Ooze has around 25% (700) more HP at level 6-7 then Ooze/Spit has. Spit II can be used 5 times which amounts 4500 dmg, that's about 6 times the HP the pure Ooze build has more, and this is around 600g worth in Health Pots. That's about the gold cost difference of the items. The longer the game takes the more the Spit/Ooze build will benefit.

You are taking non-armor (or wand of speed) items as an Ooze UB. You are playing him wrong.

You are taking Narmoth's as a spit UB. You are playing him wrong.

I've been playing the last few days without beastial wrath to test it out. I thought you guys were crazy for saying it sucked, but I've been won over. Here's my new build. It's intensely good, and Furious Blade (+100 hp, +5% attack speed, 15% chance for +30% attack speed for 5 seconds) is phenomenal with it

Level 1: Ooze I

2: Diseased Claws I

3: Inner Beast I

4: Ooze II

5: Foul Grasp I

6: Post Mortem

7: Ooze III

8: Inner Beast II

9: Inner Beast III

10: Ooze IV

11: Diseased Claws II

12: Diseased Claws III

13: Enhanced Attributes I

14: Enhanced Attributes II

15: Acclimation

16:Enhanced Attributes III

17: Enhanced Attributes IV

18: Enhanced AttributesV

19: Enhanced Attributes VI

20: Plague I

Item progression has changed slightly as well.

Favor:  Furious Blade (1750) if you can afford it, Blood of the Fallen (750) if you can’t.

Initial 1000 gold: 1 TP scroll, Banded Armor, 1 Capture Lock

After that:

1: Wand of Speed – 1250 gp

2: Unbreakable Boots – 1500 gp

3: Hauberk of Life – 1750 gp

4: Narnoth’s Ring – 4000 gp

5: Mageslayer – 8000 gp

6: Wyrmskin Handguards - 1500 gp - the movement speed slow is nice, and the weapon speed reduction means that with ooze on, you're reducing their attack speed by 55%. That's really, really nice.

7: really, past Mageslayer it's all optional and based on your personal playstyle and preferences. I prefer +attack speed items, so I like Orb of Veiled Storms, or Parasite Egg if you have a particularly pesky Oak.

Going for more armor after 40% is questionable ... cost alot, benefits little. Gautlets is 25 dmg for 400 gold, which you sell again later, this cost you like 80g in the end. If the enemy has "Wand of Speed", you most likely need it to catch him. "Unbreakable Boots" are +600 hp and +5 hps, there is no better hp option for 1500g, even if you dont need the mana at all. "Wyrmskin" have 15% chance to slow and its also +24 dmg bonus. What items would you get... you tell me.

Now the question is if "Armor of Vengeance" is superior to "Wyrmskin Handguards". It's 51% mitigation instead of 40% (which is around 20-25 less damage a hit) and also 35 dmg against the enemy for each time he hits you. However you will get this very late in the game, assuming you will get the "Namoth's Ring" first, because it's just huge.

@Tortheldrin: Forget "Post Mortem". Completly unneeded with "Ooze". "Plague" sux, the only thing its good for is preventing HoL, however its only 30s and there is a 180s immunity after that, also it cancels "Post Morton"! I'd always prefer "Inner Beast" over "Diseased Claw".

Armor scales linearly; no matter when you buy it, a scalemail actually winds up giving you 24% more HP (against armor reduced attacks).

HP for UB is the most important of all aspects if he is going Ooze.

I said you were supposed to buy Wand of Speed.

Armor also means the armor class of items, and not the armor stat; I was referring to armor class items (and Wand of Speed and Narmoth's).

Armor of vengeance is terribad.

The effect isn't linear however, for several reasons, and that's what counts. 1) Armor doesn't work vs spells... 2) The costs for more armor goes up: the cost/benefit gets lower with every item.

You start with 16% armor at level 1, and for 400g you get 30%, which is huge and you should always get! For another 1500g you can get 42% (you get hp too, so we'll do that). The next armor source after that gets you to 53% (which is only +11%) and you pay 3250g for that. You can get more benefits from cheaper items, so you wanna get those first.

The +% is irrelevant, though. Getting +12% from the Nimroth is actually giving you MORE extra health than the +24% from the scalemail, because it comes later (it's hard to explain, but basically getting 10% more armor from 80% to 90% is a lot more than 10% more from 10% to 20%). Also, the effect IS linear; spells don't affect armor no matter what and cost does not matter in regards to how much armor affects your HP (just how affordable it is).

It's superior to get Scalemail+Banded Armor though: 2788.5 Modified Armored Health for 950g... Nimoth is 3054.5 Modified Armored Health for 1500g. So the first one is more cost effective. Now it's debateable if you get the Nimoth third, or you get the cheap "Gauntlets of Brutality" for 400g, which give you 15% more damage for the time you are saving for Nimoth. If you want to ultra tweak you can sell them once you can afford Nimoth, and you only lose 80g! But I believe the higher damage will pay off, because it gives you the edge over the enemy UB.

You can't buy scalemail, banded, and gauntlets at the same time.... and if you have to go back to the base and don't have 1.5k, you probably took a stupid risk and got pushed out. Gauntlets are OK, but not great when you could upgrade the citadel for a very similar price.

armor scaling is only hard to explain if your math is poor. 

the easy way to say it is graph a chart of time-to-live vs. increasing armor quantity (which gives percent mitigation related by the formula: % mitigated = 100 x (1 - (2500 / (2500 + Armor))). 

its a straight line, the slope remains constant and increasing. d/dx = c, however you want to say it

the clunkier and less precise way to say it is in english:

imagine you're at 50% mitigation and taking un-mitigated damage of 100 DPS. you have 1000 life. this will give you a time-to-live of 20 seconds. now increase that mitigation to 75%. your time-to-live went up to 40 seconds. you only increased your mitigation by 1.5 times but you increased your time to live by 2 times.

new mitigation is compounded on top of existing mitigation and thus is much more effective. the % mitigation only appears to have a diminishing return because the % rate itself grows more and more slowly. but you don't care about your % mitigation rate you only care about your time to live. measure the right quantity and you will understand the system correctly. 

get it?