you are right on everything except minions being too weak - play around with them more and you will notice that sooner or later. Their AI and pathfinding isn't exactly smart but if you micro them well they can become very nasty.

I'm not sure what the point of this thread is. I think op is saying if you think the game game is unbalanced, you suck, play better.

When you have a game where there are different abilities that do different things, its almost impossible to get a perfect balance. Demigod is hard because you have 8 different characters, all with different abilities. It has nothing to do with your tricks and tactics you listed above, its a math issue. Sometimes abilities are just simply better then others, and through play testing, you try to make them as equal as possible by adjusting cost/damage etc. One metric you can tell if something is unbalanced is looking at the overall win % stats for the demigods. I think Reg. has something like 61% vs Qot's 48%. Granted there are less Qot players, but this data tells you alot. Reg probably is a little more powerful then some of the other classes, and there are plenty of threads on the forums outlining this.

Give SD time. As the game gets flushed out they will balance things that need to be balanced. There will always be complainers because it's the internet. Enjoy the game for what it is. 

The game does not have an "I win button" that is for sure. Little things could use some tweaks however. Reference the comment on minions.. they are NOT weak.  One of my highest DPS builds involves minions. However, I do feel that some skills need to be sacrificed to have an effective minion build. If you are going minion, go ALL Minion. Just my opinion from my experiences with the game thus far.

If you want evidence of balance, look at the spread on the pantheon page - no demigod has higher than a 53% win/loss ratio.  That's pretty well balanced.

Certain demigods are unquestionably better at certain tasks - UB isn't going to hold a lane as well as Rook, and Rook isn't going to hunt demigods as well as UB - but every demigod offers something valuable to their team, and no demigod is so essential that their absence will result in a garunteed loss.

i agree with Miya. 

specifically i think at the moment, given the absence of good performance based statistics for games played (the Pantheon stats are not reliable measures right now), the best option available is quantitative analysis of certain skills compared with the closest available skill on another DG. 

i disagree with the OP's notion that complaining about balance issues is inherently linked to being bad, or losing, or not knowing how to play. certain imbalances are very real and do need to be addressed. Bite was unbalanced and has already been addressed by adjusting it downwards. other abilities are too weak and probably need to be adjusted upwards. Uproot for QoT is at the top of my list for adjusting upward at the moment. 

i think we'd get alot further as a community if we tried to be objective in our assessments of game balance. the OP's attitude is very much a reflexive reaction of distaste to what he perceives as "whining". people don't just whine because they suck. making that assumption about other players is really condescending. alot of people have legitimate concerns. all complaints should be evaluated objectively to see if they are indeed just "bad player whines" or if there's something legitimate going on.

What the OP (me) was trying to say, is that some people are not aware of certain, BASIC (imho) strategies that are overlooked. They come from all kinds of games where they think that 1v1 means that you should always have a fair chance of beating the opposing demigod.

The opposite is correct. This is due to many factors in this game such as skill builds, cash flow, teamworking and so forth. I have never felt that any demigod was too powerful because I have seen the same builds in different games - in some games they thrive and in some they fail. What I was pointing out to people is that if you get whooped by Erebus (for instance) in 5 games straight then maybe (just maybe) you are making the same mistake over and over again. Maybe your team isn't helping you out. Maybe the demigods that are participating in the game don't mesh as well with other demigods.

There are so many options in this game that to say it is unbalanced is to not understand the possibilities that you have.

I actually disagree with the "all stick together" cheat. I just played a 4v4 with decent players, though they beat us up on kills roaming around the map in a pack of 4, we managed to hold most of the flags and gained a large war rank lead on them. We then proceeded to upgrade like crazy. We ended up winning.

The other team was at least 3 levels higher across the board and they had more kills, but map management and creep upgrades can out war rank such a strategy. We had war rank 10 and they were still on 6...

It's funny you say Exile...cause that's the map it was on. I'm just trying to say not to over do it. Certainly bringing in surprise reinforcements nets you extra kills and gold and gives a decided advantage. I just don't people creating a noob train that follows one DG around and does nothing else. You still can lose in that scenario to a well coordinated team. That's all I'm saying.

The interesting thing about Demigod is that, unlike a lot of RTS games or DotA, there doesn't seem to be one single build or item setup for each character that you can just always play and do well at. What I'm enjoying about the game so far (when it doesn't take down my internet) is that the best players are the ones who can take a look at the opponents their facing and switch to a completely different build and item setup than the one they normally play as. It's all about seeing what you're up against and making appropriate choices.

There's nothing I love more as a Sedna player than going up against Unclean Beasts who blow all their points in Venom Spit, only for me to heal it off instantly.