QoT offensive build? Lategame?

I play a build very similar to this.  Though I tend to leave shamblers at level 1 and go for some utility such as a point in spike wave and some compost.  I really wish they'd replace uproot with a skill that was useful to give me some variety, but I digress.

In longer games, I have 3 tips for you if you decide to stay with a more offensive build:  

1-Don't underestimate the power of decimating buildings.  Often enemy teams have ignored me on a side, or even right up front at their citadel.  Then they wonder why their entire side is suddenly defenseless or why their citadel is at half life.

2-Creeps.  You can take out whole waves.  Your level 4 ground spikes will probably take out everything except giants.  This can help YOUR creeps get an advantage.  No one wants to fight someone that has minions, can reduce your armor, and ... wait for it ... are surrounded by creeps.  Your priests will heal you.  Your minos and archers will damage them.  Catas will damage them.  Remember with ground spikes, your creeps are all doing bonus damage against the enemy DG.

3-Stick with your team if things get rough, or there's a push on.  Your armor reduction can be absolutely deadly, not because of the damage you do, but because it magnifies the damage others do.  If fighting in a lane, it's sometimes effective to hold off on the ground spikes until you can reduce the armor of your enemy DGs and wipe out part (or all) of a creep wave.  Once again, they're taking bonus damage from all your creeps and your team doesn't have to worry about their creeps.

I might also recommend that you forgo getting the tier 4 idols (just stick with tier 1) and save your money for the artifact of your choice.

-- Tukulis

i've been trying out this build lately, it works decently.

1 - Ground Spikes 1

2 - Bramble Shield 1

3 - saved

4 - Ground Spikes 2 and Bramble Shield 2

5 - Spike Wave 1

6 - saved

7 - Ground Spikes 3 and Bramble Shield 3

8 - Shamblers 1

9 - saved

10 - Ground Spikes 4 and Bramble Shield 4

11 - Spike Wave 2

12 - Shamblers 2

13 - Shamblers 3

14 - Shamblers 4

15 - Goddess of Thorns

16 - Spike Wave 3

17-20 - morale or entourage

the alternative to Shamblers would be to take points in Uproot for late game tower smashing (only useful on certain maps) or to pour the points directly into Morale just to boost your Idol minions. 

equipment for this build:

Favor: Cloak of Night

starting: monks

early game: banded armor, scaled helm, mana potions

midgame: nimoth chestguard, vlemish faceguard, Bishops idol, Siege Demolishers idol

lategame: Hungarling Crown, Gloves of Fell-Darkur, Minotaur Kings idol, Hauberk of Life

endgame: you won't benefit much from artifacts for the most part. if you have alot of discretionary income though you can get great results with the artifact shop consumables. if you're feeling decadent you might go for an Aegis Shield or something. 

playstyle notes:

this is the offensive type of Queen build. you basically play as a team support nuker. your best partner is someone who can deal alot of physical damage to better take advantage of your armor debuff. Beast, Regulus, or a minion build of Oak or Vamp works well. 

you'll generally shield you and your partner before going into combat. then you'll open the flower to get ready for your attack run. its typical to open the fight by using Cloak of Night to warp in behind the enemies to catch them in a sandwhich between you and your partner. you'll then immediately fire off Ground Spikes and Spike Wave to put hefty armor and speed debuffs on them as well as damage. then you close the flower and Bramble Shield your partner who will try to make the kill. 

shambler placement is very important with this build. they will do zero damage if they have to move around alot so make sure you park them at a good spot before you start fighting. never use the "N" button to select all minions and yourself. the shamblers need to stay at the perimeter of battle and act like portable turrets. their damage adds up quickly if they can actually fire. 

Tier 4 idols are quite crucial if you want to maximise you mid game damage. With ring of divine might tier 4 priests do almost 90 damage each and siege demolisher do about 80 damage which amounts to 340 damage. A complete army should do almost 700 damage which gets quite devastating when enemy armor is 2k and below. Most artifacts don't really boost minions builds that strong (while having to pay a higher price).

I don't use spikes for creeps until lategame as ring of divine might usually takes care of them and i do not buy mana items except the first helm. As I'm not going to spend much points in shield in the beginning (and do not use it all the time), mana is not needed that much, usually for spikes when fighting enemy demigods (which I usually start using at lvl 7 when spikes drains more 1 armor). HPs and Armor will be needed much more, if you don't rely on shield and just use it to get out of dangerous situations.

In the beginning and mid game this can be very strong and you should be among the demigods who dish out the most damage but lategame usually is a huge problem when enemy demigods just start to feed on your army while your damage is relatively low due to high armor and hps. The biggest problem is that spikes are almost useless when fighting an enemy with more than 4k armor.

I personally find that the only way to be effective lategame is to follow the same path as other attackers:  auto-attack and lifesteal items.  Grab ashkandor, ground spike with goddess of thorns, stick to teammates, and pray.  There isn't any question you're going to be one of the worst out there at that level, but at least you can still add enough damage that they can't ignore you.  You can solo creeps well, so just run from demi vs demi unless you have teammates.

This is correct.  I tend to use my minion more as "icing on the cake".  My DG is the real powerhouse and I the minions are along for the ride.  I typically end up with 1k+ hp level 1 idols midgame, so they don't simply die to a single AoE, but they are not vital to my success.  I go Blood as my favor and do a bit of HP stacking.  Say... Hauberk, Chestplate, Helm, Crown, People don't seem to know how to deal with a QoT with 5k hp.  Erebus in particular often warps in, bites, then doesn't know what to do when I've barely taken any damage (+ my priest idols just healed it).  Then he notices I'm surrounded by minions and he's taking a good bit of damage after I spike him.  For this style of play, a Mageslayer is probably more valuable than tier 4 minions.

I typically throw up shields in an emergency, when I'm running or when a team mate is on the verge of death and about to be sniped.  So I don't put alot of points into it.

This is why I don't pump alot of effort into minions.  Late game, I'm still a force.  I can wreck buildings if not watched, and with my team I allow them to do alot more damage.  If I'm rich enough, I toss in a Orb of Veiled Storms, Mageslayer, and/or Cloak of Flames.  These all add personal attack speed which enhances the effect of the armor drop because that drop only lasts a short time.  Slayer's Wraps are also in this catagory.  Getting hit by a 1k crit hurts.  Again, though, in the lategame, if it's a close game, I mostly spend my time helping my team mates dish out the beatings and/or wreck structures.  I don't try and go toe to toe with another DG unless I see a good opportunity.  If the game's not close, I am probably able to solo DGs with alacrity.

It's just a different play style using a similar build.  Give it a try sometime if you're feeling adventerous.  I've just found minions aren't that great on Generals (Except Erebus who is in a class of his own).

-- Tukulis

I would love to see someone take Mard's Hammer and dps items, and rely on bramble shield + bishops to stay alive. Then the benefits of ground spikes (and spike wave) can really be capitalised on.

Mard's Hammer is assassin only.

I play QoT the most.

Shamblers are the worst minion in the game. (You can argue for Yetis I guess)
Trying Spike +Shield + Shamblers is more bad, as you will never have enough mana to be effective against someone who is good.
If you want to use shamblers, try staying in closed mode the entire game and concentrating on life and speed + have basic mana regen to use shields so you have staying power.
Shamblers IV is a waste of a point. If you lose 4 shamblers at once, you did something wrong. If you wait for all 4 shamblers to die before recasting, you are doing something wrong. Shamblers III is sufficient.

Most of the time you won't have the mana to power shield III at level 7 against good players. So until you have something like scaled + Vlemish + Plenor, it is usually detrimental to take it.

You can make a more effective build using idols only...

eg:
1: Shield I
2: Spike I
3:
4: Shield II, Spike II
5: Wave I
6: Morale I
7: Spike III
8: *
9: *
10: Spike IV, Wave II *
11: Shield IV
12: Morale
13: Morale
14
15: Goddess, Wave III
More morale but most games don't go this long if you are playing right.

* Indicates at some point you will take Shield III, when you can power it. Really, having Scaled + Vlemish and then getting Plenor greatly increases you mana pool, and brings your mana per second from around 25 to 42 at level 10. Even then, you can still run out of mana in 1 battle, but you can still be effective quickly thereafter. Without Plenor, you are going to be taking a risk in the middle of most battles. If you get slowed, and are out of mana, you are dead.

Morale increases your DPS by around 12 if you have all 3 idols. It adds up.

I've never used an oak minion build.  I almost never play oak, so I don't know much about him.  I do not recall ever playing against an oak minion build that was effective.  From the little discussion I've had with those that do play oak, his spirits are hard to control, and mostly used to feed his Soul Power skill.

I certainly could be wrong on this topic as I think I've played oak a grand total of 3 times.  I haven't yet fought an oak that used minions effectively, however.  I normally see assassin Oak (often with priest idol), and he's a real threat.  Maybe I'll give it a try next time Random gives me Oak.

-- Tukulis

the spirits can do a gigantic amount of damage to a stationary target. they won't hit runners though so they can be unreliable. they die very easily but fly quickly and complete ignore map terrain so they can cover multiple lanes easily. a spirit air force is actually a good way for oak to push two lanes at the same time. 

Oak himself can really juice the spirits damage with Penitence and Surge of Faith though, it can be a truly frightening amount of DPS. you won't be able to trade shots toe-to-toe for more than like 3 seconds before getting totally wiped out, you basically HAVE to run away. 

Max the shield, spikes and spike wave as soon as possible. Get the morale when you're not saving a point for one of those three skills. You can do silly things with the shamblers (like farm another lane) but they're mostly gimmicks compared to idols.

It is ok to put a Slayers wraps or Wrym-skins on a QoT, btw

Thanks for the replys. I might try out getting speed items (but I think sacrificing idols might not be worth it. All lvl 4 idols cost around 8k and probably would dish out more damage than a single mageslayer). Problem might be that I will do less damage than my opponent and will die quickly if I spend my money on items like mageslayer and ahskandor.

I just had the chance to try out Goddess of Thorns in a game that went til lvl 20 together with Armor of Vengeance and Bulwark of Ages which gives you a lot of staying power against 1 or 2 Demigods when using mulch. This might be the better way at this time of the game as relying on your damage should result in you still having less damage, less armor and less HPs than the enemy.

Another thought that came to my mind was (especially if you get to play with a beast that skilled bestial wrath) to get  Braclet of Rage and get you team mates to stick close together. This might be very helpful to kill those high hp/armor lategame demigods or (in case you almost lost) make an desperate attempt to kill the enemy citadel (minions + other demigods + spikes + 300 damage extra for each demigod might just be enough to get it down before getting killed by enemy demigods).

I'm just curious:

Are you talking about how to play a QoT against AIs or beginners or a skilled pre-made team?

Because your options decrease a lot if you play against skilled premade teams.

Well I'm usually playing random teams and the problem should only arise when the teams are pretty evened out.

If you are playing against a beginner only team, the game would end at around level 10, same goes with a skilled pre-made team against a random team. In the end it's about what strategy might be the best depending on the circumstances past level 11 (at least for me strategy til then is relatively fixed, but after that point it's completely open).

I would call myself a pretty average player, not a noob but not too skilled as I still make mistakes (especially when it comes to micro).

I played a game against Regabond last night and I have to say, his QoT was amazing.  By far the toughest Queen I think I've ever gone up against.  Maybe he'll be good enough to drop some of his tips here if he sees the thread.

What I can tell you is that he used bramble shield and ground spikes extensively.  He was able to do massive damage over the course of the game and his huge grunt kill score let him soundly outlevel everyone else in the game.  He did have shamblers but only a couple that I saw so I'm guessing he only had a point invested there, possibly to use for mulching.  He was extremely difficult to kill, and while we came close a couple times he managed to slip away.  He definitely had a few speed items in his equipment, and he had obviously invested in health items (and most likely armor as well).  With at over 4,000 life by the early/mid game, once I took his shield down it was nearly impossibly to wear him down in time before he had another shield back up.  With his speed and shield, not to mention his effectiveness against towers, it was difficult to him him away from our portals once the game reached the later stages, which kept us from creeping/leveling while we defended our base and cemented his level advantage.

-dolynick

heh I remember that game, and it's pretty cool to be remembered. Yea that was a fun game. I have been using QoT extensively lately.

The shamblers actually only came after lvl 10 when I had spare points to invest. Normally I go with Uproot to tear through structures without having to risk getting close, but I felt adventurous and wanted something new.

Someone had recently asked what I had used in a PM and here is basically what I do with QoT...

Skills: All I generally do is focus on Bramble Shield, Spike Wave, Ground Spikes until level 10. Then I'll tend to add some points in either Uproot and Compost or Shamblers and Mulch. At 14 I save that and the next point to get the last 2 skills in my combat trees. With Shamblers I get some extra dps and minions to play with. Mulch also adds to my defensiveness and helps a lot when paired up with another DG. I can shield an ally and mulch for myself.

Items: I start off with Banded armor and Scaled Helm. This will normally last me until I need to buy 1 or 2 mana helms. This build is extremely mana intensive. I'll try to buy the Vlemish and Plenor Helm in any order next. Then Nimoth armor and Unbreakable Boots. After that it all depends on how you're feeling for items. Lately I've been sacrificing an extra armor for another mana focused item such as the magnus rod. Mid to late game I start buying minion idols, mostly to take down towers and stand my ground while healing/shielding.

Playstyle: You are extremely weak until you get 1 or 2 larger mana helms and until you're level 5 and/or 10. At level 5 your get Spike Wave so you can sorta chase others down but your damage is very low. At level 10 you basically get your final damage upgrades to your main spells and the secondary effects are extremely effective by this point. Do not act like a tank because you have low HP and your shield uses precious mana and time to change modes. Generally stay on the edge of fights and use your extreme ranged skills and attack to deal damage to as many things at once as possible. Before you enter fights with anything, close up and throw a shield on yourself. You may also do this in the middle of fights if you need staying power more than fighting power as you will miss out on 4-5 of your auto attacks. If you are only fighting a handful of lesser minions, just close up and attack. Your closed attack has a small AoE. Also stay closed as often as you can when you are missing any HP or mana. The regen rates are very effective early and late game. By level 10 everyone will tend to think you are the weak one on the team and go for you or ignore you. Both are good. You can effectively deal with 2 DGs with all of your long ranged AoE skills if you kite properly. If they ignore you, you can use Ground Spikes on an incoming creep wave next to one of their towers. This will kill their creeps normally and lower their tower's armor so that your creep wave will do 2x or even 3x damage to it. If you know no one is going to be coming to harrass you during this time you can also shield a creep that is getting hit away from the others. And as long as it is shielded and you have Ground Spikes still working on the tower, it falls in mere moments. Late game (level 15-20) depending on how good you are and what kind of items you were able to get, it's normally a good idea just to focus on kill all of their creep waves so your waves can push in unopposed.

Favor: I'll generally use Blood of the Fallen for the early and mid game advantage. Cape of Plentiful Mana may not be a bad choice as it will let you cast a bit more mid to late game. I've used Blood Soaked Wand once with this build and found it to be fairly effective but redundant with all the other shields and heals, still useful though.

This! This has been the final build (as I can come up with nothing better) that I've been using for QoT for sometime now. It's a great build and it involves saving a few points for the purpose of getting Shield/Groundspikes ASAP.

Same build as me Regabond. But i get vlemish as my first non-start item, then gunners (great for chasing enemy who has been spiked). At lvl 10 i put my points into uproot as well...it isnt very useful but the other tracks are useless too at that point.

i dont know about you guys but i like to go with.

1. Shield
2. Ground Spikes
3. Shambler
4. Shield
5. Ground Spikes
6. Shambler
7. Shield
8. Ground Spikes
9. Shambler
10. Shield
11. Ground Spikes
12. Shambler
13. Munch
14. Munch
15. Goddess of Thorns
16. Munch
17. Entourage
18. Entourage
19. Entourage
20. Tribute

Items would have to be:

1. Monk
2. Scalemail
3. Banded Armor
4. Scaled Helm
5. Vlemish Faceguard
6. Nimoth Chest Armor
7. Highest level Preists / Archers
8. (replace Scaled helm with Platemail of the crusader)
9. (replace Scalemail with Mage Slayer)
10. Orb of Veiled Storms
11. Cloak of Flames

PlayStyle: This is the build i currently like to use with QoT, it stays around keeping shield maxed so i can support my teamates better, but at the same time it keeps me in the fight and doing good amounts of damage via Spikes/minions/AA.

but sense i dont do QoT that much i maybe wayyy off with this build.

= Profit! 

This is where I things got weird, to say the least, sorry. But I will tell why.

lvl.7 - 13 ppl do have the armor+HP stacked already, be it a casual game where killing is easier and you have the gold to spend, or on a pro game, where you wont have the money for lvl.4 idols as you describe and your damage output wont be so great against the mid armor HP stacking, and if you do have the gold, your enemy will have it as well, on this funky pro game I'm describing.

On the other hand, I like your build, I have played against similar stuff and it is a pretty solid QoT build, imho. I haven't played myself, maybe I should . Thanks for the post.

I don't like getting armor and health items since I try and let my shield take as much of the damage as possible but I've started using Assassin Footgaurds since the dodge helps my shield last longer.

Do any of you use this item when playing QoT?  I feel it works well but I'm just a casual player so you never really know from playing public games.

Does not compute.

If you hate her so much don't play her.

Anyone played QoT extensively since the 1.2 patch? Are shamblers still worthless?