Give me a hint about the TB!

What I do is stack health regen.  herbaurk of Life, Slayer wraps, Unbreakable boots, Nimoths Ring, and the expensive armors do nicely.  If you are not getting Fire Aura get boots or speed or wand of speed too. 

A good way to play is to jump into a battle, set off your spells, maybe get in some auto attack damage for a SHORT amount of time, then get out before you die.  Then you can let your health regen and do it again.

Hopefully we can get game replay's soon.  It would be a great way to see how the good players play.

My TB set up is pure fire , staff of renewal favor.

Scalemail + Banded to start off. Save for Vlemish and Unbreakable. Then Nimoth Chestplate. Wand of Speed. From there you can optionally look into upgraing Banded to Narmoth's Ring but even before that I basically consider my gearset done. Vlemish and Unbreakable essentially solve all your mana problems. If you're uncomfortable with "squishy", go Blood of the Fallen, and Blade of the Serpent *will* cure any mana problems to the point wher you can swap Vlemish for Hauberk of Life or etc if you like.

Going ice, I change nothing, but i still pick up Fireball for a nuke. As pure fire, lategame I start getting the Stats upgrades. Torchbearer's fire aura, combined with a quick form swap, along with stats means his autoattack is suddenly ranged and also very respectable (and not entirely slow) for damage.

I've heard tell that they're fixing the TB Fire autoattack bug, so once that's fixed, he'll be able to attack on the move as fire. This HUGELY ups his chasing ability.

TB's role depends on how you build him. In my pure fire, you can sub out late game stats for Rain of Ice or even Frost Nova. Deep Freeze isn't worth it unless you're going to be in ice form most of the time, which as a fire TB you will not be (except to pop off a rain of ice if you go ther,e or a form swap for +75 damage). In that incarnation, you're alost entirely AoE damage with many impressive nukes. As a pure ice, you lose out on damage but you get area control, which in a team game ccan be mor eeffective. Every ice spell has a debuff associated with it, and Deep Freeze is a .1 second ranged interrupt, the longest ranged interrupt in the game, iirc. Frost Nova is TB's "Mass Charm", and will score you kills and save your ass all in one. Ice Aura also increases your (and your allies'!) ambient mana regen as well as the tooltip stated enemy debuffs. Ice TB probably isn't going to score as amny straight out kills but in a 2v2 fight he suddenly has control of the flow of battle with debuffs and interrupts. Tower Rook looks sort of scary sometimes but then oops, Frost Nova.

Hybrids of course are going to merge various facets of each.

~~~~~

Hopefully that's helpful to you. You can play TB like sedna, especially in Fire form, because he does become fast with fire aura and wand of speed. And I suppose if you upgrade Banded Armor to say Journeyman's Treads or something that also ups speed. I'm generally not willing to go swift anklet on him but it's always an option and might be more attractive especially with the fireform autoattack. In the end, I'd suggest you try stacking more HP over speed on TB, and see how that works out for you.

For most characters, I would highly recommend Blood of the Fallen, Scalemail, Banded Armor, Nemoth Chest Armor, and Vlemish helm. There are variations, but its an extremely cheap and powerful way to itemize.

With the except of wand of speed that tormaksaber already mentioned, speed items are not a viable way to build most characters. 

you could try a Permafrost build. its very good at providing support damage and debuffs. heavily disruptive. can also be very hard to kill due to all your slowing effects, you can run away quite effectively. 

skills:

1 - Rain of Ice 1

2 - Permafrost 1

3 - Deep Freeze 1

4 - Rain of Ice 2

5 - Frost Nova 1

6 - Permafrost 2

7 - Rain of Ice 3

8 - Permafrost 3

9 - saved

10 - Rain of Ice 4 and Frost Nova 2

11 - Deep Freeze 2

12 - Deep Freeze 3

13 - Deep Freeze 4

14 - saved

15 - Biting Chill and Frost Nova 3

16+ - stats

Items:

Favor - Swift Anklet

Starting - Banded Armor and Scaled Helm

Early Game - Nimoth Chestguard, Vlemish Helmet, Wand of Speed

Mid Game - Plenor Battlecrown, Unbreakable Boots

Late Game - upgrade citadel

playstyle: 

your primary behavior is to harass with Rain of Ice. get some practice at lining it up for optimal target coverage. you should be able to simultaneously hit an enemy DG and wipe a creep wave with it. or at least hit a tower and a creep wave anyway. if you're on a map where you can cover 2 lanes you should try to farm them both. you have enough move speed and AoE to pull it off and its worth the extra experience.

the way you fight Demigods is by wearing them down. you are not a burst damage build. your strengths are from your powerful debuffs, not your damage output. don't try to shatter people at all, its crappy damage. you want to hit them with Rain of Ice and Frost Nova to stack the debuffs and then you can kite them around with your auto-attack. this works great against melee demigods, they'll never lay a finger on you. its much riskier against ranged. 

this build is a great offensive team support player. the debuffs and AoE damage are an excellent compliment to a DPS powerhouse like Unclean Beast or a big minion army from Oak. 

Deep Freeze is just for interrupting. use it to cancel out teleport scrolls, health potions, etc. alternatively, later in the game (once you've got Deep Freeze 3 or 4) you can actually use it pre-emptively to screw up their cooldowns. seriously. considering using it immediately after an enemy has used a spell to prevent them from being able to cast it on the next cycle. example of this: Sedna casts a Heal on herself. you missed the interrupt on it but thats ok, Deep Freeze her anyway. that way she wont be able to heal when the cooldown comes up again 7 seconds later, it will be extended from the freeze. 

the build is equipment light. all you really need is enough health and mana to last in combat. you don't need much besides that so you're a good choice to save for lategame citadel upgrades like catapults and giants. 

get used to shifting into and out of fire form anytime you're not actively in combat. keeping those form shift buffs cycling is a very nice bonus and you should try to take advantage of it as much as possible, especially the increased mana regen bonus from shifting into fire. 

The key to playing Torchie well is figuring out early which serves you better favor item wise.. Some maps its BotS so you can more or less farm endlessly and keep mana up without going back to base...

Others its the Staff of renewal and being able to let the world burn...

Those two favor items are by far the top two for Torchbearer...

Mmm... not quite. Deep Freeze (unless a patch slipped under my nose) has a duration of 7 seconds, after which opponent cooldowns return to normal... even if that means the ability is used again. For *interrupting*, this means nothing. Blast away in the middle of their cast animation. However... in your Heal example, the ideal thing to do is wait for sedna to Heal, then count 5-6second, THEN Deep Freeze her. Because her Heal is still on Cooldown, the cooldown timer will  spike back up, and she won't be able to heal again for another 7 seconds, when Deep Freeze wears off and her Heal returns to normal cooldown regardless of what deep Freeze's timer stated. You can apply that to most any cooldown timer character to keep erebus from getting a crucial bite, or to halt a Spit from UB, etc etc.

I also don't recommend levelling Deep freeze up past level 1 unless you intend to get Fire & Ice. All you're doing is increasing the amount of mana it costs to interrupt the enemy. You shouldn't be using it to shatter debuffs because you *want* the enemy to be debuffed! All levelling Deep Freeze does is increase Shatter Damage. It's as effective an interrupter and "Silencer" at level 1 as it is at level 4. Use those points elsewhere.

And to reiterate his point: Learn to love the form switch bonuses. Switch often, switch always. fighting a creep wave? swap twice and top off your form buffs. You never know when you'll hit an enemy Demigod, and especially early on, the +75 damage autoattack and the increased mana regen of fire will help keep you topped off and hitting hard.

duration on Deep Freeze is is 5/6/7/7 seconds (based on rank). for that reason i like to get it up to at least rank 3. i would agree that rank 4 is optional and maybe should be avoided to save the skill point and avoid a mana cost increase that doesn't add much performance. but rank 3 i would always want to get because i use the pseudo "silence" effect quite a bit. 

and yea, in my example i should have phrased it differently. you want to deep freeze not immediately after they use an ability, but just sometime before they can use the next one. ok to wait 3-5 seconds. getting 7 seconds of lockdown on them is very nice though. 

Oh? It's been awhile since I played. PC issues, I can't really game again until I upgrade my comp. I thought Deep Freeze's upgrades only increased damage.

It also carries a cooldown timer multiplier that expires in the times stated above...

edit:...Changed my Mind....TB rules anyway you play him.

I know very little about ice builds, but heres my take on a pure fire TB.

First of all, Blade of the Serpent is absolutely mandatory.  Activating BotS and then circle of fire on a creep wave will generally refill your mana bar.  This is the main draw of fire TB.

As for fighting other demigods, play conservatively.  Don't stand toe to toe with other demigods, don't walk too far into the lane.  Most new players get killed by fighting their opponents in avoidable, disadvantageous situations.  Harass your opponents with fireball to force them back to base.

What are thoughts on staff of renewal for a frost TB?  I know it's butter for a fire TB.  I do like swift anklet, but staff late game seems like it would be more dominant.

I also occasionally like to put a couple of points into fire nova instead of deep freeze- especially against minion builds.

I've been told I play a pretty brutal fire TB.

First off I won't play fire TB in a 2v2 against Sedna, I just won't. Even in a 3v3 if they have Senda I'll only play TB if my team is stacking heavy damage. It's just too difficult to beat Sedna in a mana war, I'll generally go Rook if I expect to be fighting extended battles.

This will change if the autoattack bug is fixed. Currently though 90% of your damage is going to come from your damage skills, much moreso than any other DG. If someone runs from you your damage will stop completely between fireballs and if that person's health is bouncing back up from sedna's heals you're not going to get a kill. TB's fire autoattack is very, very respectable with the fire aura and form swaps though, so if the autoattack while moving is fixed you'll be able to push back against those heals with it and TB's viability will increase dramatically.

Anyway, my standard build is as follows:

1. Circle of Fire I
   • Early fireball does piddly damage, I prefer to clear the creeps and retreat initially. Cast this very early and let creeps come into it rather than heading into spit/pounce range and then casting
2. Fire Aura I
   • If the opposing DG is being ballsy and/or you have a regulus on your team you may want Fireball here instead
3. Fireball I
4. Fireball II
5. Fire Nova I
   • Use this sparingly!!! It costs a shitload of mana
   • If you're fighting a minion swarming Erebus you may want to get Circle II here. Fire Nova seems nice for minions at first but ultimately the mana cost is just not effective for it at all, Circle II is much better for protecting yourself from them
6. Circle of Fire II
   • If you're not fighting Erebus there's no point in upgradingthis skill earlier than this. In fact you might even take Fire Aura II instead because the real purpose of CoF is to clear creeps and shoo people away and rank 1 does that just fine.
   • Remember Fire Aura II is a 10% AoE run speed improvement. That's absolutely incredible team utility, if you have a UB or Erebus your team because nearly inescapable.
7. Fireball III
8. Circle of fire III
   • Rank 3 is when I feel this spell gets really dangerous and becomes a legit single target damage ability. Cast this sucker in the middle of a fight when players are distracted and if the enemies don't flee or move the fight off of it your team will most likely win.
     • If you're the one being focus fired, don't advance forwards into three enemy DGs to do this without special items or heals!
9. Save
10. Fireball IV + Fire Nova II
    • Same crossroads here. If you're fighting a minion swarm who's taking morale and piling on minion HP items you might get more mileage out of CoF IV, but also remember you often cross threshold with Nova II in that you kill weakened units outright. I would say if Night Walkers have broken 1200 HP you should probably go CoF IV unless the other team has been neglecting to stack health and the extra burst is likely to net a DG kill.
11. Circle of Fire IV
12. Fire Aura II
13. Fire Aura III
    • Fire Aura is underrated and oftentimes enhancing your team's run speed by 15% has a much greater effect than doing a few hundred more damage yourself. Usually I get stuck holding a lane by myself so I prioritize damage skills, but when I'm paired with a melee chracter I'll often focus on the aura instead of ranking up my AoE (I always max fireball no matter what).
14. Save
15. Inspiration Flame + Fire Nova III
    • Seriously Inspirational Flame is the best level 15 skill in the game. Most games don't reach that level, but when they do the TB is an absolute blast.
16. You're on your own! I recommend Blizzard here because of the ridiculous creep grinding and because the attack speed debuff helps to counter artifact acquisition. Once you get Inspirational Flame you'll have a crazy amount of mana and can really unload on people with Blizzard + Fireball. However it's still viable to get Deep Freeze or Frost Nova depending on what you want to do.

I alawys, always go Staff of Renewal and I have no idea how these guys get by with so little mana. I have to have Plenthor and Vlemish (Vlemish first!) to keep casting at full tilt.

Once I hit level 4 I just start pelting DGs with Fireball on every cooldown. I swap forms to keep my +50% mana regen buff active, and I rarely, rarely use Fire Nova on anything but DGs unless I'm planning on going to the crystal anyway or I'm totally capped on mana and don't expect to burn mana quickly.

I really don't think that swapping a Blade of the Serpent for the Staff is a good investment in the long run. These guys who do that could get nearly the same effect for just 1500 gold if they picked up that mana crown, but there's no way to balance out a 20% cooldown reduction.

Especially as fire I'll aim to get an Orb of Defiance, I've killed many a UB with it. What usually happens is I see the UB and I cast Fireball which finishes at about the the same instant his spit finishes due to the superior range. Then I cast Circle of Fire where I know we'll engage (usually on a flag). The circle usually finishes casting just as he enters melee range and prepares to grasp. If he doesn't withdraw I hit the Orb immediately. It removes the Spit and protects me from damage, so I'm at 95% or higher HP while he cooks in the circle for 5 seconds. Most players will also burn their stun while you're invulnerable.

If the stun is already burnt then you have a few options. Usually I'll fireball, recast CoF, and then cast a potion even if I'm at high health. I can always interrupt the potion and I feel being 3/4 of the way through a health poition cast while I'm at 60% HP just gives me a lot of options. If he's Ooze/Spit you'll generally get a good 2k heal off of it since he'll spit while you cast your second fireball and the Ooze is ticking along with his autoattacks whenever you're not invulnerable.

Anyway, your mileage may very, but the key to making fire work is speed and harassment. Fireball, run, fireball, run, fireball, run. Stand your ground only when you've got an advantage. With fire aura you can break even with almost anyone speed-wise.

Its very good there too..

Especially since it decreases the cooldowns of ALL items as well...

To sum up the beginning (Miyamiya has the general gear for most Demigods down pat): Torchbearer is extremely squishy at start. So at the very start of the game, you'll want to get Blood of the Fallen favor item (assuming you have the pts atm, if not, just make sure you don't buy any other favor item until you do) and buy Banded Armor and Scalemail or save up for Scaled Helm instead of Scalemail, you'll want both early on.

Gear info:

http://demigod.wikia.com/wiki/Equipment_Items

After the first few levels, TB gets much easier to play, improved Fireballs become worthwhile (lv1 Fireball is meh, higher lvls are great) for fire, and for ice, Frost Nova.

TB General info and Skills:

http://demigod.wikia.com/wiki/Equipment_Items

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/demigod/images/a/a9/Torch_Bearer_Skill_Tree.JPG

All of the things said above are well and good, but theres one thing they are all forgetting.

You have to say his quotes out loud, preferrable over VOIP, and at least once every 2 or 3 minutes you have to type one out for the opponents to read.  Several of my favorite:

1. Ice Ice baby...

2. The weather outside is...frightful!

3.  I...hate...you...ALL!

If you are not saying at least these 3 lines, outloud,  every 2 to 3 minutes, you're doing it wrong.

I was thinking about playing a frost TB just because of his comments that are the best in the game. One thing i was wondering: Does he really say "Freeze douchebag" or do I just understand it wrong every time? (wouldnt really fit to the setting).

So far I'm having quite a lot of fun with going full burst damage.  Going Fireball, Rain of Ice and 1 point in both novas til lvl 10. Deep freeze til lvl 15 and then getting Biting Chill, Frost Nova max and Fire Nova max. At lvl 16 thats more than 4k burst damage with 2 spells that do have incredibly high range. BoTS as a favor item is just great, as I can forego mana items almost completely and just stack health.

Due to the high burst damage he can go toe to toe against enemy demigods lategame and middle game is really good for gankings as you start out with good aoe damage and your fireball is quite effective at killing retreating demigods.

The first 7 lvl usually are a pain though...

I usually roll the points with

1. blizzard1
2. frost aura1
3. fireball1
4. blizzard2
5. frost nova
6. fireball2
7. fireball3

Blizz early for lane grinding to level 7 as fast as possible and then you can really dent towers and enemy demis hard. Frost nova really helps for taking down towers since it stops their attacks temporarily and slows of demi's caught in it if you need to run.

8. deep freeze (for the interupt)

Usually at this point the enemies start getting strong as well so you wanna have something to counter them with.

9. blizzard3 - stronger creeps need  stronger lane control, and never underestimate the killing power of a blizz on a running demi. I get my kills with it very often.

10 fireball4 - 1000+ damage cant go wrong.

Those are my first 10 levels.

Its actually better when your kid is sitting next to you reciting it as well.

"Everything......EVERYTHING....WILL BE ASH!!!

"Hot Stuff... Coming Through!!"

Fire or Ice, TB has the best voicing

The world will BURN BURN BURN! HAhahahahahahaahaha

If you go ice, you can use your deep freeze spell to screw up people's heal spells. For instance, with a sedna, she will usually heal once during a battle then keep fighting. Her heal is on a 6 second cool down I believe. When you see that first heal, you count to 5 seconds, then use deep freeze on her. This will make her wait another 6 seconds to use her heal, which usually results in a dead sedna...or in sedna's friend whom she was healing being dead. It works on Queen and Oak pretty decently too. 

And its also easy to use deep freeze as an interupt to teleports, potions, etc.

*edit*

Burn in my rageeee...FREEZEEEE in my agoNY!

Blade of the Serpent is awesome for so many reasons ...and so is staff of renewal for other reasons...

When playing with Blade of the Serpent...you don't ever need to buy mana items early (though later you can to give yourself a biger tank of gas for abilities) You can stack HP and gloves and do some serious damage..

With the staff of renewal (which is often more useful on maps where the other guy is being dodgy) You sacrifice some auto attack damage lost with not being able to buy gloves BUT you gain a lot in the OH SHIT of being able to use abilities faster.  You have to have at least two helmets with the staff to keep mana up...

Lots of folks like the velmish and plenor.. however with judicious mana management and waiting a touch you can skip plenor and get the 3300 helmet that gives mana on damage (creeps and towers will help refill you) Having as much armor as possible helps you live through a lot of other demigods thinking LUNCH when they see you... 2 slots on armor and the last slot for speed baby...

You need it to outrun sedna and the beast and erebus and oak and well everyone else that is stacking speed...

when I play TB i usually play him in Ice mode. So here is how i find success with Ice TB.

1. Rain of Ice I

2. Premafost I

3. Deep Freeze I

4. Rain of Ice II

5-6. Premafost II  / Frost Nova I (the order is up to u)

7. Rain of Ice III

8. Premafost III

9. Save

10. Rain of Ice IV + Frost Nova II

Favor item: Blade of the Serpent

Starting item: Banded Armor + 1 Robust Health Potion // or 1 Combat Health Potion and TP

the BotS gives me endless supply of mana and the health potion gives me more survavibility in the field. With these items I usually don't need to go back to the base until lvl 7 (if I've farmed very well). Next item to get is Unbreakable boots + Wand of speed (if your opponents are faster than you) and Currency upgrade for your team. and 1 more thing, never leave you base without health pots, never ever! Since you get all the mana you need for the BotS, you need health pots to push back you enemies.

for lvl 11-14, i usually get stats. I don't like deepe freeze past lvl 1, it just consume a lot of mana and the damage is expendable. however at lvl 1, deepe freeze is the best ranged interupt in the game for just 350 mana! dirt cheap.

Last thing, always switch forms to fire then to ice when you know you are going into combat, and after to regen mana.