Knowing when to run, is a skill Agent of Kharma (you should try it).

Fighting by your towers are a tactic, yes knowing when to let them have a flag to and denying a kill is skill.  Standing there fighting a battle that turns sour is just playing poorly.

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Favor items do set new players at a slight disadvantage.  I'd argue it's not as big of a disatantage as RainFall2112 or Agent of Kharma make it out to be.

15% speed increase favor item is very good, but guess what -- I've won the last 10+ games WITHOUT THEM.  They are not required.  In fact depending on which demigod you play it may not be the best choice.

Knowing which item to equip your demigod (i.e. itemization) is a skill.

I don't believe any favor item is that much better than another favor item.  They're all balanced around the fact that you can only have one.  Everyone starts with enough favor to purchase at least 1 item.

Sure getting EVERY favor item takes a long time, but you don't need every item to be competitive.  In fact all you need is 3-4 items imo (which at say 100 favor per game and average cost of say 400 = 1600 / 100 = 16).  So in 16 games you'll have a fair selection of items.

Now with that said I think favor items and gaining favor points should only be for Skirimish or Pantheon games.

Custom games should have EVERY FAVOR item avaliable -- in part because they can't control or stop the cheating in this mode so why not just have all of them avaliable.  This would also provide a place where you can test out and see which favor items are good, which ones work well for either your play style or your demigod of choice.

-Jara

PS: I personally like the concept of favor items and having something be persistent (I was a huge fan of Netstorm).  It does encourage you to keep playing and have something to work for.

I said:

You said:

I said that I bought the two armor upgrades available at the start of the game.  If you say he had an increasesed damage item then he should have had less armor and hit points than me.  Are you saying that increased damage items trump increased armor and hit points?  Can you prove this contention, or are you simply talking out of your ass?

What regen items are available as soon as the game begins?  And again I say that I had increased armor and hit points, and so if he  bought such an item then he did not have increased armor and hit points.  Do regen items (and I still want to know which regen items are available as soon as the game starts) trump armor and hit points?

Are you sure that potions work in the middle of a fight?  Don't you have to stop what you are doing and stand there for a second or two for a potion to work?  Well, that didn't happen in this fight.  We just stood there and traded blows.

How could he have had a higher armor factor than me when I bought all armor possible at the start of the game?  You either don't know anything about this game, or you don't know how to read.  Which one is it?

So what did he do differently? If it was a Favor item that put him over the top, you'll get yours soon enough. You lose a few unfair fights, by that time you have the favor to buy your own. OR you picked a favor item that didn't help you in that specific engagment.

I agree Favor items making it harder on the Newb up against the Veteran with almost all of them unlocked. But just think about it for a minute. Would favor items make much of a difference anyway? I mean it's a newb going up against a Veteran. I think that small bonus item will be overshadowed buy all the skill and experience he has anyways.

my god what a buncha babies.. no favor items.. seriously why dont you just complain that your co-worker shouldn't make more cuz he's worked there longer.. same noob crying about op heros because you can't understand that some heros have str's and weakness no favor items.. first off 3 games = 15% move speed.. if you bought this game and think that playing 3 games to get a special item is unfair.. your not only retarded, and a waste of life..but you must also enjoy self-mutilation because you buy games that you hate everything about then force yourself to play them and waste evenmore  time complaning about thier gameplay flaws.. go jump bud kthx

Potions are not instant.  He's either casting the potion, or he's fighting.  There's no doing both at the same time.  You'd know if he was using a potion.  I suspect something to this story is being left out if the guy not only beat you, but has half-health left after the battle.  Favor items alone would not be able to do this.

Also, Agent of Kharma, I think you're a dick and a troll.  If there's a way to effectively mute someone on the forums, I'd certainly like to know.  But none of that is neither here nor there, right?  So how about you knock it off with the personal attacks since they're not relevant to the discussion.  Try to be a bigger person than me, although I suspect you already feel that way about everyone anyway.

Piffle

L2P

Get an R2D2 droid to calm your nerves or kick in frustration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weGTZ5VXR4s&feature=related

Landed directly.

Nope.

I thought that was what we were trying to figure out.  That's been my operating assumption the entire time, unless someone can provide a better explanation (which hasn't been forthcoming).  If the explanation isn't "favor item," then the situation is probably worse.  I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to the game by assuming it was a favor item.

This is why I was asking about the mechanics of potion usage.  Based on what I thought I knew before, and based upon what people have said here about potions - no, there was no potion use.  We simply stood there and traded blows and hammer slams.

My point was, in this particular situation, in a mirror match where the conflict start within 15 or so seconds of game start (whatever time it took to buy my armor then run out to the first neutral flag), where we had identical hitpoints (I moused over him and checked)... there really aren't any number of things that could have happened.  I think there is only a limited number of things that could have happened.

If we were both level 7 or whatever, and 20 minutes into the game, I'd say you are right, and that there are too many variables to analyze.  As it stands, I think this is a perfect case for analysis.  A favor item put him way over the top, and I only have access to one sucky favor item - the first one on the list.

This isn't a question of whether he used smarts or skill and picked a better item than me.  It's a question of what each of us has access to, what each of us has an opportunity to equip.  It is impossible for me to equip anything but the lowliest, suckiest favor item there is.  I'm guessing he could pick whatever he wanted, and it put him way over the top.  If we both had access to the same stuff, and he picked one thing and I picked another - fine, your contention holds.  As it stands, I agree with the OP.

Well, in the example I gave, it was enough of a disadvantage for him to win and for me to lose, even though I was ahead in hammer slams, got the first strike in, etc.

Accepted.  You have my apologies as well.

That is the problem with your whole resoning. You are GUESSING. All this based on a guess. You have no real facts, other than you had the same hitpoint. So you have no real clue whatsoever of what was going on. Chanses are that he had bought other items, or the same, but one extra, especially the seccond time you met him. So basically, you don't have a real argument, just a bunch of whine and insults.

Oh, and by the way. Just to test, i played a couple of games without buying any favor items, and several of them was against pretty good player. I won them all, so favor items it not that powerful if you play well.

The fact that he had a favor item that benefited him more than you doesn't mean his favor item is overpowered.  It just means it's more useful in a fight against another Demigod 2 minutes into the game.

Here's an example.  Say you took the XP item (+10% XP, 250 favor) and he took Mard's Hammer (+40 attack damage, +5% speed, 950 favor).  Right at the beginning of the game he'd have a major advantage over you in a 1v1 beat-down.  But if you played smart and didn't let him get free kills off of you, you'd level significantly faster, especially if you spent any gold you got on the +XP citadel upgrades to nail down your advantage.  So about 10-15 minutes into the game you'd be high enough level compared to him that you could just shrug off that extra 40 damage per hit and maybe even steamroll him.

A lot of the strategy in Demigod is about identifying what about the particular game you're playing right now is stacked in your favor and what's stacked in your opponent's favor, and making sure to mitigate as much of the latter as possible while taking full advantage of the former.  In the example above, the other guy has an advantage in a straight fight, but time is not on his side because your XP advantage means you'll eventually become more powerful than him (assuming he can't chase you away from where his creeps are dying).  Of course, your opponent will be doing the same thing: for instance, he might try to capture and hold the +XP flag -- but usually you can't actually get XP while defending that flag, so your counter-strategy is to grab it whenever he leaves and maybe even flag-lock it, except maybe he thought the same thing and locked it himself, but if you see him doing that he doesn't have as much gold, so you can buy items he doesn't have access to and catch up with his advantage that way, etc, etc, etc...  and if you're playing on Pantheon, my experience so far is that most teams and players aren't coordinated enough to actually carry out strategies that are that complicated, anyway.  (that includes me. )

I didn't cover the case of not having a favor item because it's not really interesting.  You can get a nice +HP boost in your first game, and a few more games should get you the +XP item and a few other nice general buffs.  We could have a long discussion about whether they're really as good as some other items, but I believe that they're close enough that you'd never notice the difference except at a level of play much higher than what either of us can manage.

(you might ask: how do you know what favor item he has?  You don't -- but knowing that he's beating you in a 1v1 fight should be enough information to adjust your strategy; the same goes on his side for your XP advantage)

Actually, I don't like the concept of favor items.  I just find the ones in Demigod to be below my annoyance threshold, because none of them are especially overpowering and they're easy to get (except for the huge bug in the favor system right now).

Also... personally I don't think getting both armors is the best move. 

Assuming the wiki page prices are correct (I think some things are, some might not be).

http://demigod.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_items

While I think the Scale Mail is totally worth it:

Scalemail (400 gold)

+600 armor.

Banded Armor (550 gold)

+400 Health, +5 health per second.

I'm not sure Banded Armor is wroth it. 

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Consider the small combat health potions run (275 gold) each, but give 750 health.

So for the same price as your armor you could of had x2 Combat Health Potions for an extra 1500 health.

Yes, they have a small cast time 0.5 seconds, but that's so quick that it's very very hard for other players to stop (I have in fact never had it stopped, but with Sedina's a silent debuff).

While in the long run after you use both potions you'll be left with nothing but we're talking about playing for the short term! Going this route would more than likely have guaranteed you won that first fight.

The only thing wrong with favor items is that my favor is stuck at -340.