New Obelisk Locations

[DarnYak]

Can't believe there's no topic on this yet. How are you guys dealing with the change? Strats based around them/to fight against them? Or just being ignored once built?

DarnYak

[Tehw00tz]

General new tactic for north safe-ob is to grab some disease summons and have at it. Can't be defended against very much if you don't have dispel or it's early game, the skeletons (and probably some heroes) will tear you up.

[BustroQuick]

I dislike the north/south ones in particular because they're defenseless and can be stolen by the other team given they move quickly enough. It is difficult to lure troops up to the obelisk location and otherwise there isn't much you can do against the tower, particularly in the early game.

Granted, the towers can usually be taken down before level 20, but it's an advantage game-altering enough that I don't believe it should even be considered that early on.

[Luftwaffles]

Here's my take.

Pros:
- Encourages way more PvP and gets heroes fighting each other without creeps, making for interesting battles and getting heroes involved in the game more.
- Increased the value of summons by quite a bit simply because you need them to kill Obs now
- Makes lanes 1 and 5 slightly more valuable.
Cons:
- Leads to a really big rush at the beginning of the game to get both towers. If one side gets unlucky or another side gets heroes with increased move speed etc. you end up down potentially -2 for the first half of the game, which can be really frustrating (although they're not all that hard to take back).

ToX mentioned it to me and I'd thought about it, perhaps throwing down some neutral semi-weak creeps at the beginning would prevent an absurd rush, but would favor the patient player with the right timing to take it with summons/AoE.

[Perhaps]

I like the idea of the accessibility of putting them where army flows, however it would make it so buying mercs to just run it down would be better, at least that's how I see it. Perhaps have it send army in path of the forest every now and then? Or maybe even make use of the opened up area where the obelisks use to be, not necessarily have it be towns, but just a location you can build spawn towers at and it would spawn spawn tower units, and you could maybe perhaps control which lane they flow into? >_>

[Kalrithus]

I currently like them where they are at and feel it promotes more pvp action around them, although there is as was mentioned a mad dash to them in the beginning which can be annoying if you don't have speedy characters on your team.

[Casval]

I currently like them where they are at and feel it promotes more pvp action around them, although there is as was mentioned a mad dash to them in the beginning which can be annoying if you don't have speedy characters on your team.

This is a huge problem IMO. Players who are LVL2+, flying, or blinking heroes all have advantages in getting there first. Once it's up, unless you can summon your team, it's probably going to stay up until LVL20 or whenever you can start buying summons.
As it is right now, if a team grabs both N/S obelisks, they have a huge advantage, moreso than before.

Overall, there's also a general lack of crystal since you are no longer guaranteed 15 power. This makes crystal-dependent heroes (mainly PK'ers) significantly nerfed on the map.

[Kalrithus]

in the IH game the other day we managed to destroy top ob tower before i could finish building then planted ours there, its not only a race but it matters whether or not you defend them significantly. Also I've seen a computer rune Knight take down an ob tower before lvl 10 that was already built.

[mianmian]

No hero is crystal dependent. Not a single one.

I agree that if can lead to some pretty big imbalances if no one goes after them with summons. Ob towers are pretty fragile, anyone with a Wretched Skull or a bottle of slime should manage it easily.

[Rockness]

Personally, I liked it better the way it was before, although the best solution at this point to me would be to put the north & south obelisks in the lanes (like the rock, inn & middle) in between the front line outposts (possibly up a hill for defensive purposes).

If your opponent claims the south/north obelisk at present then guards it while it builds, you are left with three choices, get levels, slowly take the tower down (with highly probable enemy hero interference & loss of early experience) or ignore it. This makes it a real hassle if you lose the race at the start & in my opinion is way too big of a setback for having low move speed.

Also I think the lanes should be the focal point, not the hills, when a hero leaves his/her lane to deal with the obelisks they are not getting experience or gold which can be another pretty significant setback, which would be easily solved by putting the obelisks in the lane, furthermore this would provide protection & a way to assault them without having to get summons or auto-attack it for the duration of at least a couple creep waves.

[Casval]

No hero is crystal dependent. Not a single one.

I agree that if can lead to some pretty big imbalances if no one goes after them with summons. Ob towers are pretty fragile, anyone with a Wretched Skull or a bottle of slime should manage it easily.

You're right, no hero is crystal dependent, but some benefit from crystal much more than others =P
That's what I mean, anyway.

Also, the problem with summons, apart from dispel, is that slimes and skulls take a long time before they're first available. Haven't done any testing yet, but I'm fairly certain you can get a generator up by then, and you'll also get more cores up too. Either way, the problem remains the same: the amount of effort that goes into getting the OCT up in the first place is very disproportionate to the benefits if it stays up.

On the other hand, I do enjoy the fact that there aren't as many obelisks to cap this early. That makes early-game strategies a lot more diverse. More heroes can sell their OCT and buy items or mercs now. Fun!

[mianmian]

If your selling your starting ob your wrong. Its ok though, I think everyone goes through a phase like that playing Eota.

True skellies and slimes take a while to pop however, if you've built gens you know that they 1. take a long ass time to build and 2. the different ones are limited by time.

Here's how I see it. You ether get an Attack gen or a Hero gen. One wipes out the spawns or wipes out the hero. Ether way the other one (see hero/spawns) will wtfpwn the gen asap.

Now if you build two.... I can see it being a little bit of a problem. But that's teamwork for ya

[Casval]

Well, I don't know. As it is, there's not enough obelisks for the taking early on. Basically, you're sitting with 500 gold that you're not making good use of. I think the best strat right now would be to have 3 players keep their ob and 2 sell. The guy that sells buys a worker and builds at guaranteed. Two obs then go to N/S. Rest of players pool money for mercs, then final ob goes to whatever lane the mercs are being pushed in.

On the other hand, if everyone keeps their ob, it's a lot of money just sitting there.

[Strychnyne]

I wonder, what actually prompted the move? As far as I can tell they were pretty useless, only falling late game for keeners of obelisk control. And, of course, to clever strategies because those safe ones make for quite a boost at the right time. The effects have been pretty well documented and the positive from the change is more PvP battles over obelisks, which is great. But something has to be done about grabbers at the very start of the game. Having that +2 is huge early game, though the resulting cores can't be used to fortify their hold which is great. If something can be done to stop the early advantage, I think it's definitely an improvement: less of a disadvantage comes from newbies who don't understand their tiny obelisks and a different way to fight for obelisks.

[DarnYak]

I wonder, what actually prompted the move? As far as I can tell they were pretty useless

You answered your own question

DarnYak

[mianmian]

Casval the ob tower items take 60 seconds to build, one built by a worker takes 90 seconds. Holding on to that little tower for a bit can really help in some situations.

[Reaper]

After a couple games, I think the new locations are pretty good. I didn't see much of a rush for getting them off the bat, so I don't know what that is like

[mianmian]

Atm, if one team manages to get both bottom and top obs off the start, they win. It takes too long to recover from this, and you only have +1 from Inn/Rock to counter it. Its too strong. Make another back ob or something.

[Reaper]

I've had at least one of the top/bottom obs go down within 10 minutes every game after capturing

although this is against pubs, which doesn't really portray balance

[SeasonsOfLove]

I absolutely hate them. In every game which I've played, they've been a huge factor. They're hard to take down without some skilled players, and skilled players can easily defend them for enough of the game to make a huge difference. It's a test of your starting hero's ability to either TP or go fast, which is just absurd to me in a game which is predicated on skill. By the time you can take one down, you're usually -1 for 10 minutes or more, which is very hard. The new positions are not good, Yak. Sorry.

[Discombobulator]

Yeah, the new position sucks. A huge factor in every game is decided by a pretty stupid and unimportant thing.

[Discombobulator]

I agree. A lot of games seem to be determined by whoever wins the obe race. Particularly if one team has speedy heroes and can get both- it gives them a core advantage that is very difficult to recover from. In the early game there is simply nothing a team can do against the obelisk towers.

It's not impossible, you can send summons or mercs or spawns using Tact/Rue/Battleplans, but it certainly requires a disproportionate amount of skill, effort, money and team coordination, compared to laying the obelisks first, or even defending them.



That said, I will state, in no uncertain terms, I am a very important person. People like me. When I talk, people listen. When I move, things get done. I'm tough as dirt, I'm mean as blood. Where I step the weeds die. I urinate gasoline and defecate vegetables. I'm certainly this forum's most valuable contributor and it's a sad oversight that I don't have posting rights to the aptly-named Conclave.

[Luftwaffles]

I think the problem with the new positions are that you're not guaranteed to be able to take them on any given team until you reach maybe Level 11-12, which is a core lost at least. It's not a guaranteed win if you get them but it is frustrating if you lose them, and you have to rely on creative quick solutions to nab other obs quickly <_>.

[Elreth]

I haven't really done much with them. Sure i've killed/taken them a few times but really not much more often than I did in their previous locations. A lot of times you can go whole games without them changing hands. That said, the race to place is p dumb. Maybe you could make the obs closer to your side build faster.