Tensei

I enjoy the length of the dungeons to be honest, though maybe I'm a masochist. I spent about 3-4 hours in Deep Roads the first time and about the same amount on my current playthrough (because I was playing on Hard), and though the battles with darkspawn were becoming a bit repetitive, it still had some epic moments (like fighting your way across the bridge and the guy from the legion of the dead coming up and congratulating you for breaching what is basically the frontline of the main darkspawn army)

Well maybe I should stoop down to the level of instead then! (Don't watch if you haven't done the redcliffe castle quest yet)Also, I found out it's literally impossible for me to have Alistair in my party. I just can't stand him at all for some reason! He's a decently fleshed out character and he's not completely lawful stupid like Anomen in Baldur's Gate 2 was, but god, something about him just makes me want to punch his prettyboy face in. I can't quite put my finger on it though.

They should just say "ENCHANTMENT? ENCHANTMENT!" instead

God, on my second playthrough now, and this game is still as fun as ever. Some of the dialogue options are just too much and I can't help cracking up at how much of an arrogant douchebag you can be in this game. "I want my face on one of those big statues"...seriously?

You can fix the issue with Leliana by either taking her melee weapons off her or possibly by altering her tactics (there might be a command line that tells her to switch to melee at certain points.) And yes, I felt like such a badass when I went from scrawny mage to a tanking machine. Arcane Warrior/Blood Mage is definitely one of the best class combo's for mages. Edit: I really need to start writing down Oghren's pickup lines.

Even if you're eventually going to go for either of those items, it's still very much debatable whether you actually NEED HotBL early on over, say, faster Steamboots, Power Supply, Bottle or whatever a core item on your hero is. If you're going for HotBL, you should ALWAYS rush it imo, because, like I said earlier, it's effectiveness declines really quickly as the game progresses. Remember that HotBL costs about the same as 2x Bracers, Marchers and a Bottle/Power Supply. Now, about hero roles. Taken to it's logical conclusion, you could argue that you're getting pigeonholed into doing several 'arbitrary' things in this game, like laning, ganking and pushing. There are no set rules that FORCE you to play like that, but the way the game is set up, it turns out it is the most effective way to play. Similarly, if you take a look at Kraken, his second, third and fourth skills all synergize with each other, and looking at their effects, they IMPLY, if nothing else, that Kraken is 'meant' to be played as an initiator, first and foremost. Now, were this a singleplayer game, there would of course be no problem with not playing by the 'rules'. However, as it stands, this is a team-based multiplayer game where everyone is expected to at least pull their own weight, so in my opinion, not attempting to play to your full potential every game means you are actively dicking over the rest of your team. If you want complete freedom in how you play the game, pick up a nice open singleplayer RPG like Oblivion, Fallout 3 or Dragon Age: Origins, but don't confuse the way these games work with Heroes of Newerth.

It's alright, Luke, I don't mind playing with you.

There's a few spells that lower magic resistance which should more or less function the same way breach and pierce magic did in Baldur's Gate (Vulnerability Hex and it's upgrades.). There's also the hilariously overpowered Mana Clash spell that basically instagibs any Mage. And there's also Cone of Cold which for some reason just fucking freezes everything.

" Maybe she's crying because the mall is closed" - Nick, after seeing a Witch in front of the Mall. Classy.

God, the Landsmeet dialogue/cutscene was awesome, I made sure to try out all the possible outcomes of it and finally went with *spoiler* keeping Loghain alive, which resulted in Alistair fucking off (Good riddance, dumbfuck), and a very awkward sex scene between Loghain and Morrigan that makes me want to burn my eyes out.

Oghren is basically made out of paper compared to my Arcane Warrior/Blood Mage. He does hit pretty hard and his banter is better than Sten's so I'll keep using him. The best part of my main heroes Class combo is that I use Leliana (who's a Duelist/Ranger in my current game) to summon bears that I can use to fill up my health with the second blood mage skill. Turning on Blood Magic also allows you to cast all the mana hungry spells while having all the defensive upkeep spells of the Arcane Warrior up because the upkeep will still be taken from your mana pool even with Blood Magic turned on. I have literally not died a single time with my main hero since I got Arcane Warrior and at this point I'm pretty sure I could solo the entire game with her.

True bullshit tactics are when you cast all your AoE damage over time-spells before initiating conversations with plot bosses (cyclone, blizzard, inferno they're called iirc) so they immediately start taking damage once you start the battle. Also Cone of Cold is hilarious (that's how I did the ogre fight by the way) in that it freezes EVERYTHING, from ogres to High Dragons. I've rarely seen it get resisted. I thought the Redcliffe defense/battle was bullshit so when I reloaded I just promised the guy I'd help with the defense and then I went for a stroll and some sidequesting so I came back to a genocided village. Apart from a few conversations ("I'm a grey warden, I have more important matters to attend to") it seemed it literally did NOT make a difference for the quest at all, except you get to fight the villagers' corpses in the castle as well (which is easy anyway). I still struck a deal with the demon to teach me blood magic. After killing Wynne because I'm playing an evil bitch, I decided to respec Morrigan as a Spirit Healer and all the battles have become ridiculously easy. My player hero tanks retarded amounts of damage as an Arcane Warrior with the full Juggernaut armor and the healing/CC from Morrigan while Leliana deals some sick DPS (Arrow of Slaying hitting for 250), and Sten...just sort of hangs around and dies a lot.

My point was, you WON'T always need 300 extra HP at the start and the EHP from the blocking, and you will still have a lot of item slots open, so 240 HP from 2x fortified bracers is a viable alternative in the majority of the cases. It's just situational imo. I rarely play lego, but I'm quite sure that jungling is possible to do without farming up HotBL first and going straight for your portal key instead. However, I can see getting HotBL when your team is pushing early/getting pushed early and needs you to join early teambattles. By the way, IMO HotBL is even less useful on Zephyr than on Sandwraith/Disciple as I've never had trouble jungling with just a buckler and 2x trinket of health. Also, Dhsu, you have to be very careful when quoting Glorify's guides, seeing as he writes from an EXCLUSIVELY competitive perspective. So while his ideas definitely apply to competitive matches, at our level of play Hood won't always be necessary since it's not a guarantee that the enemy team will have 1-2 strong nukers, nor is HotBL always a bad idea to get because the chance of getting an early gold advantage for that beastheart is much higher here than at the competitive level, where player skill should be mostly equal.

HotBL is not outright bad, it's just terribly terribly situational. It's only core on Legionnaire imo. As a rule of thumb you should either get it if you're farming extremely well earlygame and are able to get it before the ten minute mark (and only on heroes that make good use of it like Armadon, Disciple and Sandwraith) so you can dominate earlygame with towerdives and ganks. The alternative is if you're getting your ass kicked so thoroughly that 'rushing' bigger items like Mock of Brilliance isn't realistic and you desperately need survivability (talking about the absolute worst case scenario, where you're already losing your outer towers +/- 15 minutes in). I find that in the vast majority of situations, 2x Fortified Bracers are a better alternative. Keep in mind that those few extra HP and the blocking will become negligible about 30 minutes in, so it's truly an earlygame item, and spending 2k+ gold on an earlygame item usually isn't a good investment.

Okay so I played through Dead Center and thought it was pretty damn well designed (section with the burning building was sweet), definitely better than all the L4D campaigns. Of course, then I played Dark Carnival...holy shit, Valve, you've done it again.

Attempted a solo runthrough of the first campaign on Advanced. It's HARD AS BALLS, especially the (what I assume is the final) crescendo event where you need to collect the eight gas cans. The first tank was doable, the second tank spawned along with his buddies Boomer, Jockey and Hunter, and that's where I said screw it. Can't wait to get some multiplayer going.

Also, the 'dying' and getting up after a battle is such a pussy way of handling it, along with the super-fast mana/health regen outside of battles. Back in my day we had permadeaths and we had to find spots to rest to recover health! You won't feel true pain until you've had to leave your petrified party member behind because you had no scrolls of Stone to Flesh left, effectively permanently removing him from the game.

It was an example, I didn't actually think anyone would know about that. D:

Bought this game yesterday, and I'm quite enjoying it. The game world and characters are all done quite well and make for an involving experience. My main issue is with the Class/Race/Combat/Magic systems. It all feels extremely simplified and 'console'-like compared to the infinity-based RPGs (Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment). Combat right now feels mostly to me as "Sit back and quaff a health/mana potion whenever needed and also maybe position my mage so that cone of cold hits as many enemies without hitting allies" I understand this is done to appeal to a broader audience, but I'll still miss being able to multiclass my half-orc into a fighter/mage/thief and nerding out with mass instant-death spells, contingency spells and spell sequencers. RPG's will never be like that again I guess

Demented Shaman is probably the "Best" hero in HoN currently. There's really no reason to NOT pick him whenever you have the chance (unless you don't feel like playing him), because he's just THAT good.

The one time I near singlehandedly manage to stomp a pub and get a ridiculous 20/1/11 score...I happen to be playing on my alt account

Awesome helpful vids for new players, great TF2 references as well.

Yes, thanks for that incredibly patronizing and smug post. Seems you have a bit of trouble differentiating between these things called 'opinions' and 'facts'. If I say a game is terrible, then to me, yes, it's terrible. You seem to enjoy the game so hey, good for you, go make a seperate thread about it.

Tried LoL, it's pretty terrible. Your 'account' levels up and becomes progressively better so someone who plays a lot and has a high level account has an inherently better chance of winning than someone who's just starting out despite the skill difference. Graphics and the style is plain terrible, I'll take the 'realistic' HoN graphics over faux-anime cellshading any day. Also, no denying? Sure, let's make the laning phase even more boring!

I share zircon's sentiment about this, the games in Outpicked were the first in a long time where I could say that a lot of the participants were just plain better at the game than me, which is something I haven't experienced in quite a while. It usually feels to me that a loss is primarily caused by my team, which ends up being frustrating.