Priest Fix

i dont agree. i hear it for the first time that anybody thinks priests should get nerfed. Oo

in fact i think all generals will become underpowerd if you do that. there are some dgs that need some love, qot, tb. but the rest is balanced.

Well, priests were already nerfed once... though that was more a 'correction of an overpowered mistake'. If I wanted to change the Priests of the Generals, I would lower their health value a bit. This way prioritizing your attack on the General's Priests would be a more viable tactical decision. Currently they take very long to get killed by normal attacks, since they also heal another. And during that time, the enemy General probably already did significant damage to you.

switching to fixed values instead of percentage of max health certainly would allow more flexible builds. The synergy between priests and health items indeed is a bit strong right now.

priests are already dying pretty fast after level 5 or 6. lwoering their hp would make them nearly useless.

there is indeed a great synergy between health stacking and priests but no where near overpowered. in fact all generals heavely need mana. theire possibilites to stack health and still atain some armor and maybe dmg is very limited. they need that synergy to be on par.

i cannot see any imbalance between ub, ereb, sedna, oak and rook. in the case of reg i see him in some special situations a bit underpowered but this can be easaly be avoided if skilled properly even though this build is not common. most play him as sniper/miner as i do too. usually it works great but it is due to the opponents lazyness to adapt.

if you push tb and even more qot i think the game would be very balanced. of course some of the dgs shine in late game more than in mid game or vice versa. but this i do not concieder an imbalance because you can exploit this. take the oak and use his strong abilities late game. take an erebus and abuse his power in mid game to gain an advantage at this time. and so on.

i've seen many claims of imbalance here but except for qot and tb i cannot understand them because i see the mistakes made.

guys, remember there is much more than the blance in a 1vs1 fight just standing close together and using aa+specials. some dgs shine only with proper micro. ohers with well selected equip.

some say rook
 is a weak dg because he cannot run. indeed. a rook in your team orks only if the rest of the team adapts to the fact they have a rook. rook needs much support. but he easaly pays off if supported.

and honestly, having a general in a team as a rule is no way imbalanced. having a good mix is allways a good idea and should be part of any balance. thus both teams have the advantages of priests.

I don't know, I wouldn't mind the heals being a hard number. Right now you can be become insanely powerful just by stacking your hp so you get like 800 point or greater heals. This would also mean that priests are actually useful for low hp builds.

Currently monk idols are completely out of hand and they should definitely be nerfed. There could be a problem with leaving them at set values and not changing reinforcement priests, though.

My personal preference would be to remove their ability to attack completely. That would solve issues with them running off to suicide as well.

Also they heal every 10 seconds, not every 8. Notice the heals come at 13, 23, 33

I fully concur to the OP.

Health stacking is even stronger with %-based heals from Idols. Do you really think that it was ever intended that Idol priests can heal up to 2 times more than Sedna herself?

Idol priests heal up to 22% of max Demigod health when buffed by Sedna. A 7000 health player gets 1540 heals every 8 seconds. There's 2 priests, so the maximum healing power for 2 players would be 3080 health per 8 seconds. Which is about 2 times more than Sedna could do herself with Heal. And the idols cost very few mana for summoning.

consider that at the level where you face 7000hp demigods a damage dealer does quite much dmg where a sedna is quite funny with her autoattack. indeed, the priests heal quite alot if someone is stacking so much hp BUT they lack of armor AND at this time sednas direct and indirect heal support is the only thing she offers. you lose a dmg dealer with sedna in your team.

ofcourse her healing part must be STRONG!

i will tell you something, i played many fights with sedna in very balanced matches and reducing this will make sedna one of the useless dgs ingame. see the whole picture. you forget what other demigods can do damage and what ohter items are important depending on oponents and strategie.

sedna has so mcuh healing support because she has so much less damage support. on low levels the difference is not big as their heals arent either. but this changes.

and if you still worrie about the priests heal than kill them. at the level where one has 7000hp the preist die in a few seconds or in 2 if coused (one for each). respawn? kill again and the cd is quite long. have a rook? kill them all in a second, a reg? dito, a tb? an ub?

Yeah. And try not to die in the 10 seconds you're busy dealing with running priests amidst the enemy team.

Yes, another change i would like to see is that instead of all minions coming in groups of two, they have different numbers:

3 minotaurs

2 ranged

1 priest. 
AND you can take more of the same, so you could take 3 minotaur minions idols at the beginning giving you 9 minions+ your own. They would be weak and you would have no healing or survivability, but heh, lots of minions.

Obviously needs some balance. 

Make priests have the heal as a usable skill, and make priest have a mana pool.

if u dont wanna learn to micro u dont deserve to get free heals every 8-10 secs.

i want team fights to last 3-4 seconds, not 15-20, it gets too boring.

Getting them a mana pool would be the best option as I see it.

I agree. Giving priests a mana pool would encourage the use of other items, and more importantly not lead to a character with priests never returning to the crystal.

However, this might encourage the "sacrificing" and resummoning of priests, unless the mana bar was carried over to your next set.

I could be wrong, but I thought you could only be healed once by each type of priest/monk/high priest, once in a given time. 

I thought this time was longer than the cooldown of 10 second in between heals.  If it is not this may be a simpler solution. 

Say the cooldown for heals is 10 secs, make it so it cannot heal the same unit once casted on for 12.  This would cause that unit to wait another cycle before a possible heal.

Also who is healed is random or no?  What are the priorities for an idol or a regular priest.

I think they heal the lowest health Demigod in range first, then other Demigods, then reinforcements. I may be wrong here.

Giving preists a mana pool would require more UI and we all know theres no money left for UI stuff.

Giving priests a mana pool and making it an activated heal is silly. You would need to make major UI changes and it would encourage players to suicide their minions rather than take care of them. Suiciding minion swarms is one of the absolute worst parts of this game and it should be discouraged, not to mention Oculus would be at a disadvantage since he'll aim to maintain his monks.

I've been thinking this for a while as well.

The question is, what are monks 'designed' for?

I'd say out-of-combat healing. The reason monks are so abesolutely important is because they do heal in combat and enable you to push off anyone out of a lane.

So, this is what I think:

Create a new invisible debuff on demigods. 'In combat'. Everytime a demigod takes damage, they have this invisible debuff, and it lasts 1 second.

If you are out of combat, (don't have the debuff), priests heal just like they do now, perhaps even a little bit more. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with what they do out of combat and is really what monks are for.

If you are in combat, however, monks only heal 150 / 300 / 450 / 600 hp (Sedna's Wind II might increase this by 25 per tier, let's say). This isn't a 'huge drastic' nerf, but it's still going to be felt. (Level 1 Sedna I heal 160 without Blood, 240 with and the initial difference of 65 only gets larger as I buy items and gain levels).

I think that it's 'okay' for 150 to be greater than the 10% hp of a Level 1 Demigod such as Torchbearer (who is 1400 so the heal would throw up 140 out of combat and 150 in). This is such an insignificant difference that I don't think anyone cares. 

Monks would remain still very effective early game, but you would begin to feel a need to upgrade them to keep them effective (at least, in combat, assuming you consider 450 hp to be 'effective' compared to the ~800-900 with Sedna Wind you would get normally). Plus, this would shift the balance of things a little:

- Angels become better, as they would harrass enemy generals, keeping the 'in combat' debuff on them, esp if they are just chilling, farming a lane.

- Ranged demigods get a needed buff (Queen, TB, Reg) and makes kiting more effective, esp against generals, since you can't completely ignore the kiter and just farm away and let the monks heal you.

- Most assassins have a good way of dealing with monks. UB has Spit (guarenteed in-combat debuff as it lasts 10 seconds) and Plague, Reg can snipe or kite, Rook has towers or arrows, TB has a ton of ranged stuff

- Sedna gets a slight nerf as Counter Healing becomes less effective (since Counter Healing is only active when in combat and they aren't healing as much. By level 8, Monks typically throw up heals in the 500-600s. Tier 2 would now be about 300 so it's not quite as good, but still good). Alternatively, Counter Healing could be buffed make the in-combat debuff last longer (maybe 2 seconds), or gives a 'in-combat' aura to enemy units regardless if they are taking damage or not.

- Queen shield gets buffed, you aren't taking damage -> no in-combat debuff

- Using mana to AoE creeps becomes a little better, since creeps would activate in-combat

- Sedna-Beast can't wtfuberrape towers at level 2 and walk away with full hp since they would heal marginally less (more like 80% hp ). Towers would still go down by level 4 if you left two demigods alone, though.

In general, this seems to keep in-touch with what Monks were designed for, still remain very effective during the early game, while making them not having quite the same impact mid game.

I disagree - I think what they're designed for is clear: Support. They're designed to back you up with damage/healing, not act like a gimped health crystal or Heart of Life. I think Priests are fine, personally, although Monks definatly need some work - every game, every game, I pick them first. In terms of value or sheer usefullness, Monks are the best start up item - and we should never have a clear and definitive "best" item.
Adding an additional scale component that includes the level of the Demigod in question - increasing the effective % healing as the Demigod increases in level as well as HP - would remove this issue, while not completely killing Monk's usefullness. Treating the scenario as Monk's on a level 20 Demigod are 'balanced' and working backwards ensure that they are nerfed to a larger degree in the opening levels and they increase in effectivenes as you level, thus allowing other items to enter the startup field while also ensuring Monks maintain their effectiveness in the late game. Would this be an acceptable compromise?

well if you die in 10 sec then you don't have to bother with the preists healing anyway cause your opponent does not need them!

priests healing are only annoying in a longer fight, when they kick in more then twice. and in such a fight you can simply kill them quick!

don't tell me you find the preists already overpowered in a fight where they only heal once. then you must be very bad equiped probalby.

p.s. if you kill the preists once the sedna player needs time to respawn them in which she cannot attackt and this are arround 2-3 seconds although the summoning is instant. additionally in the heat of the battle usually you can't see it right away when they got killed.

CelMare, are you really telling us to try to kill both priests twice during a fight instead of attacking the enemy Demigods? And that it pays off because Sedna can't attack you while summoning them?

Killing them before the fight is wise, of course, but I do not think anybody thinks otherwise.

I've played health-stacking Rook (6900 health at lvl15; equip cost 7050; Erebus can get practically same amount of health) and the %-based heals I get from the priests (1000+) every 8 seconds are simply too much imho.

Luckily there is a game for you!

DotA on steroids

Well I really wasn't going to post because I'm biased when it comes to idols and minions. Anyways this could just be me, and correct me if I am wrong but if you go by what you just said than shouldn't items like teleport scroll, heart of life, BotS, and a few other nice little items also deserve to be nerfed as well? While you just said what you did, it has been said and repeated many times in guides and just on this forum that many items were completely useless while others were simply the best to get.

(Edit: I said correct me not flame me, cause I know someone will.)