[Balance] I think the biggest issue right now is priests scaling heals.

In practice priests run out of mana rather quickly.

I often get the chance to duel Sedna + Monks vs Sedna + Armor/HP at level 1. While the monks keep you up at 100 percent health longer, it quickly drops off after a few hits, leading the Armor/HP to win.

Priests have mana?

Same!  Priests have mana???    Back to noob school for me. 

The player with 2k health is either on the wrong side of a massive level disadvantage, or doesn't know how to play. In either case, altering priests to ensure that a 2000 hit point difference is negated is fairly stupidic. Considering Minion's cost they need to scale, otherwise past a certain point they become useless. Minions are strong and provide a significant advantage, however they're not cheap and if you target the healers at the outset you negate the advantages they give somewhat. There are tactics for fighting Generals and Assassins, and targeting only the enemy Demigod is exactly why healing minions work so well - fighting a General like they were an Assassin is a mistake.

Well just because they don't scale off of health doesn't mean they can't scale. They could be based on X number of HP per level, for example.

Also not basing them off of HP doesn't mean they have to be underpowered or not worth the investment, there's no reason why the numbers couldn't be quite generous.

My main issue though would be that this would empower generals over assassins when it seems like generals already hold their own well enough.

True, however as you pointed out the numbers would be need to be generous, where as right now they don't have to be. It's difficult to work through some Demigod's healing minions, Sedna can be a right royal pain combined with her Heal ability, however if it wasn't the benefit the minions conveyed would be minimal at best and this would decrease the viability of a minion build. Don't fix what's not broken.

My main concern is that currently a general must get HP to get the maximum benefit of minions. Seperate minion heals from total health and you allow generals to go for damage or mana earlier and assassins' relative power drops a bit.

The critical hit gloves are a perfect counter to priests...they cost about 3k which doesn't do you a log of good against the level  1 guys but hey mid and late game...you should be tearing people up..

Sorry, I didn't convey that clearly. I didn't mean a pure Sedna minion build. Sedna with Healing Minions is difficult to wear down, because on top of her already character-defining surviveability you have the healing minions as well. However, if the Healings minions did less healing, i.e. a static amount, it would have to be balanced in a whatever way to basically reproduce what we already have otherwise the viability of such minions is called into question. And if we do that, the change is pointless.
A healer with their own healers is always going to be difficult to kill, changing it by making the healers heal less to ensure that this is example is lessened would have repercussions in other Demigods and effect their performance. I used Sedna as an example as she's the character with the greatest surviveability.

Polynomial often said my balance whines are wrong. Maybe. But some things rly need to be changed:

The Yetis need to be buffed.

QoT should be buffed a bit.

Gloves are too weak & Some favor items too.

Fire TBs Autoattack must work, evenso sludge slinger and warlords punisher.

You said we need to check the high level players, which DG they play, i did it some take a few DGs, but some only take UB.

Make them all heal a fixed amount of health, depending on what the Demigod's level is and of course what the gold cost was, this will reward efficient levelling, NOT health stacking, which is too damn powerful.

Miya your posts are usually fairly accurate so this one comes as quite a shock. Priests do not have mana, they heal every time their time limitation allows them to. Also, my friend and I have tested Level 1 Armor/HP Sed vs Monk Sed: Monk Sed wins with 500-700 HP left, every time - and thats assuming they just wail on eachother with no cat and mouse (any of that just leads to a wider margin of victory for monk Sedna). I dominate Armor/HP Seds early/mid/late all the time, every time in actual games. It is completely impossible that Armor/HP Sed might win that fight. 

As for the OP, it seems that the underlying problem you are trying to address is HP stacking, but I question why you try to tackle this so indirectly by focusing on priest healing. From past experience with other games, indirect approaches rarely have the desired effects, usually failing to affect what they were meant to and generating a plethora of new and unintended problems. If HP stacking is the problem, then HP stacking should be addressed directly by dealing with the HP items. 

I think this is completely wrong.  A: static items don't scale, can be pricey and are still heavily used.  B:  If we want variety in this game having 1 player go +dmg +mana + armor items vs another player who went all +health items should be a viable option.  The point of the original poster is +health gets far more utility then it should due to % based heals.

People continue to think of this game incorrectly. This is a team game. Everyone who is complaining about "balance" thinks of this game as 1 demigod against another single demigod. That's not the way this game goes.

I'm not really trying to prevent HP stacking.  I think it should be a viable tactic.  I'm trying to prevent how much regeneration becomes passive.

I play a premade team 90% of the time.  I have a monk idol at the beginning of the game with me in my lane no matter what demigod I use.  If I am on Beast then my teammate will send his monk over to me.  If I'm on Oak then I'll send one over to my partner.

Generals always ALWAYS must get idols both for themselves and their assassin teammates.

Early gameplay is harassment in good games, and managing monk idols across the map is a huge part of that stage.  I think this is a good thing for metagame and skill, but I do not think that it should impact early game gear decisions so heavily.

During late game, the number of priests healing you for high values can be pretty crazy, but *only* if you stack tons of health.  I've gotten to the point now where I find that good teams don't even consider buying damage artifacts anymore if a game drags.

[Edited out last paragraph.  It strayed from topic.]

I'm not sure how this changes the argument of percentage based heals?  Are you saying only an idiotic team wouldn't have 1 or 2 generals on it?  Are you saying in a team environment it's easier to kill the monks making them less efffective?  I don't get why increasing the number of players in the equation overrides the argument.

yes but WHY ON EARTH the general with 2k hp should stand a chance with a general with 4k hp?

absolutely true

this is exactly the point

the end of this discussion is "a team of assassins only would lose against a team of only generals"

probably is true but... WHO CARES?????

its like saying" a team of 11 goalkeepers would lose against 11 midfielders"

who cares?

a team need still midfielders AND a goalkeeper to succed

Unless, of course, you're the midfielders that creamed the goalkeepers in your example.

Its not so much that they think of it as a 1v1 game, its that a 1v1 situation is really the only fully testable situation since anything else gets very complex and you cant really test well.

Think of it this way - one side of the argument has results from a test.  Its a nice piece of evidence to support the argument, although its hardly completely conclusive as you point out since its just a 1v1 test.  But the other side of the argument has no support in terms of evidence and just requires that people accept that things are fine on their word alone.

So while 1v1 tests arent conclusive, they do provide some information, which is better than no testing support at all.

You can complain about the results of 1v1 testing all you want, but I still maintain that the following two points that are closely related to the OP are well established:

1) HP stacking is THE way to go and is generally superior to other stacking strategies

2) Healing minions are EXTREMELY powerful to the point where all generals would be fools not to use them.  They are probably the best value for the money that any general can use.

The strategic depth of the game probably suffers since there are well established "best" practices instead of a wide range of choices with advantages and disadvantages that are roughly equal to each other.

It sure would be nice if there were situations where a damage stacked DG with lower health could beat a HP stacked DG with lower damage output.  Maybe not enough to overcome 2k hp (which is an extreme example).  But the point is that it really should be possible for somebody to spend their money on damage items and have a chance against somebody who spent all their money on defensive HP/healing items.

1v1 is a skewed way of testing one Demigod over another. Some demigods do more damage than other. Some have more support. That is done by design. Demigod was not made with a 1v1 mindset. The only way to tell if something is really overpowered is in multiple team games over time with organized sides and if one thing really carries one side to victory constantly then you have a balance issue. You cannot gauge a Demigod's power by putting him or her up 1v1. A demigod's power is determined in a team setting. Not on an individual level.

Honestly I think your interpretation of this game's methodology is completely off. No DG in this game is designed with the old school RPG mentality of being dependent on other characters to do anything. Rook is slow, but he has bonus HP to help make up for it, Regulus has low HP but range to make up for it. Rook is not so slow that he can't run at all and he can still use teleports, Regulus is not so fragile that he can't take a hit.

All characters have powerful defensive items available to them, the majority of HP comes from equipment. The healers have their own powerful attack skills. This isn't dungeons and dragons or shining force or whatever. The characters are designed to be effective in small encounters, including solo. Some have advantages and disadvantages, but not as extreme as you think they do.

DAMAGE??! PEOPLE THATS THE PROBLEM. THE DPS ITEMS ARE UDNERPOWERED...

Ok question. If minions are so costly and need to stack. (Which makes sense minions need to be more viable late late game >lvl15). Then why do only healing minions get this? Why doesn't minion damage increse based on how much health your opponent has?