[:1]I'm sure this has been around a few times, but I can't be bothered to go reading through old threads right now. Besides, it's not exactly as though this place were rife with activity.
How does one best use Torch Bearer effectively, without playing a "support character"? In the single player tournament, you can't simply rely on your allies for protection as Torch Bearer players typically do online, because in the Nightmare tournament your allies are idiotic. The foes are formidable, too.
I can't seem to triumph in the Nightmare tournament with Torch Bearer. Granted, I only tried once, and quit halfway through when it became clear that there was no way I was going to catch up with the number one (Unclean Beast, of course).
The way I see it, there are two major flaws with Torch Bearer. Firstly, because of the fire mode bug, he can't really make kills in fire mode unless there is an ally present. If Torch Bearer uses fireball first to weaken the enemy, then when the enemy begins to runs, fireball isn't charged and of course Torch Bearer can't chase down enemies in fire mode. If he uses normal attack to weaken the enemy, however, saving fireball for when the enemy runs ... well, that doesn't work. Most enemy demigods of the same level will kill Torch Bearer before he kills them if the latter uses only normal attack.
What about fire circle, you say? Well, getting close enough to catch the enemy in the middle of it involves taking so much damage (while, in the meantime, you're walking and not dealing damage back) that it's not worth it. And the enemy leaves the circle almost immediately and resumes peppering you from outside.
"Benny, you need to learn to use ice spells to complement your fire." Besides the second major flaw, the length of time it takes to switch between modes (time in which Torch Bearer loses too much ground), there is the problem of mana. At low levels, Torch Bearer can't afford both health and mana items, and he badly needs both. He's the most fragile demigod and he also has so little mana for how much he must use.
I don't have any difficulties playing most of the other demigods, but Torch Bearer is incredibly difficult. The only one who has given me nearly this much trouble to play was Queen of Thorns.|||Try TB Ice-only. You haven't mentioned a strat in which you went pure ice.|||DeadMG|||Get the 20% Cooldown reduction item.
Lvl1: Fireball1 or RainofIce1
Lvl2: The other one
Lvl3: Save point
Lvl4: Fireball2 and RainofIce2
Lvl5: Your choice: If you think, you've got enough mana, try Frostnova
Lvl6: Save point
Lvl7: Fireball3 and RainofIce3
...
Get the Ice damage combo and Fireball in order to get the ice/fire skill.
Playstyle:
Try to get the SwitchModusBoni as often as you can.
If you want to chase an enemy, be in Ice form (iirc, fire modus cannot attack while running)
Items should concentrate on Hp and Mana.
Helm+Armor is a decent start for TB imo.
Helm+Stone -->that thing you can throw for 650 damage is nice to get an early kill with fireball, switch modus damage bonus and stone
Due to the 20% Cooldown reduction, you can alston constantly cast magic, fireball, switch, icerain, modeswitch, fireball, attack, fireball, mode switch, icerain...
Later on, you can add Frostnova and the other ice skill into the mix for some control and damage.
If you want to, put a single point into Firenova to deal with minions.
I usually do not use the Auras in this build, but you might want to try to include them, since they can be very powerful..
gl hf|||DeadMG|||Ice-only TB is a surprisingly hard kill. The RoI is AoE and a great creep grinder, and works very well when paired with Fireball. He also has a lot of skills like Deep Freeze that can inconvenience your opponent, like a Sedna trying to heal. Ice-TB is much stronger than Fire-TB. The aura also really helps with the run speed.|||The only fire spell I've ever bought is fireball and maybe the RoF buff for creep farming.
Also: you get regen buffs for a couple seconds everytime you swap modes. When farming, as long as your mana isn't full, keep popping between both modes whenever the buff runs out, and be sure to pop between modes while fighting, too. Something along the lines of Fireball->ice mode->deep freeze->rain of ice->fire mode-> fireball->repeat.
Deep freeze is a life saver, and the passive aura in ice mode is amazing, too. The combined effects stack very well early on to make your opponent movements and attacks both very slow, giving you plenty of chance to deal damage and enough oppourtunity to make good an escape.|||Z32|||Interesting. I just won the Insane tournament with an ice-only Torch Bearer. That was indeed a good tip. I was pleasantly surprised at how well he played.
Now I'm in a tournament as Queen of Thorns, and I'm finding her even more difficult to play than Torch Bearer. After this, the only one left will be Lord Erebus, and I'm sure he'll be easy.|||Benny Moore|||Unfortunately, I can't seem to juggle the three. It's like trying to have and eat one's cake. If I use the spike circle and shamblers, then I can't afford the shambler upgrades and so they die like mosquitoes. If I buff the shamblers, then I can't have spike circle. Argh!|||Benny Moore|||Fire TB is great for doing a crapload of dmg in a short period of time, but really ice TB is the better char for pvp stuff, he just slows everyone down, if ur in a team he's great at keeping ppl from running away, but additionally he can take ppl on 1v1 at range, and keep them at range casting blizzard w/ the swift anklet, if ur patient he'll kill, but he's not an UB|||id stay away from queen of thorns if i were you benny.|||Yeah, she's a bad one. Seriously, though, I did manage to beat the tournament as her. Now I'm on Lord Erebus, the last one, whom I'm finding to be not as easy to play as I thought. He has no problem killing demigods at all, but he does have a problem levelling up as he has no way of simultaneously taking flags and killing grunts in large numbers.
Addendum: I figured out the problem. The key to staying level with Lord Erebus is to refrain from indulging the temptation to slay every demigod I encounter. Instead, I must go out of my way to take flags and kill grunts with the normal attack. Killing demigods constantly is good for the purse but bad for levelling up, at least at higher levels. After level ten, Erebus starts to fall behind if he's been killing demigods exclusively.|||you really should just ditch SP and play online. yeah, you might get smashed for a while but its easier to learn when you have team mates to emulate.|||No, his problem is that the teammates don't keep up. Plus, he plays the autoattack Reg build, which gets him stomped in team games because he loses before he gets Ashkandor.|||Actually, I switched to the "normal" Regulus build for online play. I now only use my duelling build for offline play and duels. It works excellently in duels with certain demigods, as you discovered. It's even effective against a "normal" Regulus. But I can't seem to beat a well-played Lord Erebus with it. Due to his superior speed, he's always one step ahead of me and I can't ever engage him in combat or even go near him. He not only has the speed required to more effectively take flags and kill grunts, and the superior combat capability to hold flags and kill towers, but he also has better sustainability. He almost never has to return to base for health or mana. Though this is also true of my duelling Regulus build, Lord Erebus is even better at this.
When I play online, typically I win at least as often as I lose. When I lose, it's usually due to one of my teammates throwing gold at the enemy. Either that or my duelling mentality causing me to act too aggressivly. But I don't usually play online because I get dropped from about 75% of the games I play. I don't have any problems playing anybody I know, but for some reason trying to get into a game with six strangers and have good connections to all of them is very difficult. It's the same problem I had with Supreme Commander, in fact. Blame my router.|||Though I am very late to this topic and I know that the "problem" has been solved with an Ice-TB I want to add something to the original post:
Benny Moore|||I've been playing online quite a bit lately and I'm still having difficulties with Torch Bearer as I never had with Regulus. I play Torch Bearer exclusively now, but I'm not very good with him. Generally I deal a lot of damage and get quite a few assists, but few kills. That's not necessarily a problem, because Torch Bearer doesn't need gold as badly as the other demigods do. He doesn't profit as much from most of the items because most of his damage comes from spells, which are not affected by damage, attack speed, and critital bonuses.
However, I can't face any well-built Demigod of the same level alone for any reasonable amount of time. I don't mean a one-versus-one game, I mean a brief one-on-one combat within a team game. If I meet a demigod in open combat, the other invariably comes out on top. This is true even if the other demigod is another Torch Bearer, which indicates that I'm doing something wrong.
I use a mixed build which uses mostly fire spells, having Rain of Ice and Deep Freeze. On the fire side I use Fireball (obviously), Fire Aura, and Fire Nova. I buy items which provide health and mana bonuses only. I use the favor item which gives a 20% bonus to cooldowns.
I realize that I could be doing a little more damage by choosing to take more skills and level each one up less, but it seems to me that this would be shooting myself in the foot. Aside from the higher mana cost, resulting in more downtime, I would fall behind in the late-game as I am unable to deal as much damage with each spell and most of my opponents heal faster than it takes to cast all the spells.
I find Deep Freeze to be quite useless, although I always maximize it by level twenty to gain the bonus for Fireball. Deep freeze only does damage if you've already hit the target with two time-consuming spells (during which time the target has either run out of range or else healed). And all three must be done in a short period of time, removing options. Finally, Deep Freeze requires that you be a heavily ice-based build. Or if you try to diversify, you won't be able to max out all your spells, which means that each one does less damage. That means that, in the time it takes you to cast each one, the target will again either heal or move out of range. The lack of a normal fire attack while moving is the icing on the fail-cake.
The Demigod Wikia claims that deep freeze does 1350 damage on top of Deep Freeze and Ice Rain. I can't figure out how it could possibly do that much, given that it's only supposed to deal 325 for each of the two effects. Add an extra 100 for each if you have Fire and Ice, and you get 325 +325 +100 +100 = 850 damage.|||rain of ice at level 15 gives another efffect which can be consumed.|||Ah! Very good.|||Btw, I played a little bit more with queen. She's acutally pretty good, and I'm confident we could win our next game!:-)
On Torchbearer, I played fire both and ice, and now playing hybrid.
Firebearer: your fire aura is very very very important, in short it gives all teammates in range swiftanklet and half a mageslayer(oh yeah and you get weapon damage). For the rest, fire doesnt need a lot of mana so ussually one helm is enough. Getting swift allows you to break a few speed records, but getting BoF gives you health while still retaining speed. Remeber to switch when chasing, not only because of the bug; chaning to ice gives you 75 weapon damage.
Icebearer: Your aura is weaker than fire, but you get two interrupts and a stun, so heh. The big thing here, is that your abilities cost a heap amount of mana. The serpent blade is a very good pick, since one rain of fire will refill your entire pool. Another pick may be the poisoned blade for super slooow.
Hybrid, no aura get as much skills as you can and NUKE them. Currently I'm experimenting with this.'
For the rest: potions!|||Lifekatana|||the fire chasing bug or feature(depending how you look at it). It prevbents torchbearer to chase a fleeing demigod correctly while in fire mode.
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