You got a point there. However at a high level there's always alot of potion/sigil use, even now. It is something new players neglect and therefore get killed when they think they have you. This can be used tactical and I don't think it's generally bad. One team having more money always puts them in a better position.

Anyway, i'm happy to accept other solutions to prevent health stacking from being the only viable strategy, because right now it basicly is.

My solution is to just add about 150-350 health to most of the existing gloves. Everyone needs health, damage in this game is really quite high and fights tend to be fairly short, that way you could give players the option to grab more DPS without falling below a critical amount of health.

As I previously stated, it makes much more sense to just boost all of the demigod's starting HP and nerf the HP items than to give every single equipment item an HP bonus.  You would end up with Demigods that have the same HP they currently have, but with more relative benefits from buying other equipment.

Having slightly less hp is in my opnion not necessarily a bad thing, ranged will benefit from a nerf since they can nuke from afar. Now ranged dies anyway when caught.

And once again making fights longer can be achieved by adding disables/invlnearbilties/magic immunity and heals.  Health is not the only way.

P.S. @Obscenitor, Levithian has 4 lanes which is drastically different than cataract, also she is much broader and the amount of ganking potential is much bigger on lev. More towers too.

Again. Why must fights be longer?

As I said, crystal to side is only about 2 seconds longer, side to side is virtually the same amount of time. If you don't like four lanes then so be it, but that has nothing to do with the size of the map. They could put eight lanes into Cataract without increasing the map size.

I personally like the strategic decisions it opens up, such as choosing to let the side portals stay neutral until you can down a tower and prevent double farming. I find Cataract matches extremely formulaic and they generally require very little decision making.

Also what exactly is the point to 'fixing' health stacking? Do you people want to see HP totals come down, or do you want to get more people to pick differnt items?

Because if it's just health pools being too large that's your problem, you could 'fix' health stacking by changing the fortitude flag on Cataract to a debilitating flag and then you wouldn't impact the larger matches where the high HP totals are needed and which generally do not take place on Cataract.

No unbreakable boots are fine as they are, while the hp and mana it gives may seem over powered with some demigods, with others it is a much needed boost. Nerfing this item will hurt demigods that are already in pain even more.

It feels to me everyone wants games to be determined by demigod kills and nukes instead of strategy in the overall benefit.

No, for one giant hp stacks that can be achieved by the melee demigods shouldn't be possible without a high cost. And non-hp items should be usefull, so both.

P.S. More lanes means its bigger...  Also, a good roaming team can mean that the other team is totally unable to do anything, since trying tot take map control is very had against a good ganking team.

Dropping health somewhat might make dps more interesting, if some items are boosted. The fights will get shorter though, so if this is unwanted there would have to be counter measure. But right now there's just one competitive game strategy, which is health stacking, and that is wrong.

Other strategies that should be viable would include...

+ mana stealing, draining

+ speed (this can already work)

+ xp / outleveling

+ high dps

+ reflect damage

+ dodge

+ minions (works for some, like erebus)

+ siege (also works for some. QOT could be better)

+ ...

I think this is a really over-simplified explanation of the way things are. People don't just health stack because it's mathematically superior to picking up DPS item, they do it because ability damage is so high than you can be killed very quickly if you don't do it. Look at Oak+Sedna at level 10, for example. Penitence+Pounce alone does 1960 damage. If oak follows up with Surge II that's a total of 2482 damage in literally about a second and a half.

If three players converge you can literally do 3.5k damage in a few seconds to another player. The health stacking isn't just numerically superior to damage, it's an absolute necessity.  If Sedna isn't there to heal, a player is only going to get a single priest heal before the next round of attacks comes, and that's why I say most people who want to nerf HP are hoping to turn this game into a quickdraw competition; whichever team fires their first volley soonest will also fire the second soonest, and it's unlikely that anyone could consistently survive a second round of attacks.

Also what you guys completely ignore is that pretty much every artifact is pretty badass and only one of them is purely or even primarily defensive. I would much rather see the artifacts emulated than the defensive items nerfed to entice people to get shitty DPS items.

What I mean by that is that artifacts tend to have life steal, health, or health per second. When you get an artifact you don't just increase your damage, you also increase your survivability, which is why I've said over and over that the current DPS items just need 150-300 HP (substitute lifesteal or HP/S to your preference) to make builds other than pure health stacking viable.

Yes, DPS items should be buffed. Another thing you're entirely missing that these "alpha strike" combos are from the OP melee demigods. Ranged has a lot less, a combo of reg+ TB who both have quite some damage skills can do a lot of damage but its much harder to get that one burst; a properly healthstacked UB can usually endure multiple attack rounds. Once again, I understand your problem but health isn't required to be attached to items: base hp could go up too. In Dota it works, in HoN it works; although they suffer a bit from the alpha strike problem you described they're still (sort of) balanced. 

P.S. Well it wasen't a generalisation, but its playfield is bigger, coz more lanes take up more space. 

Demigod does not need a major balance overhaul.

It could use some tweaks.

Although I don't neccerarily agree with a start small approach, aren't we doing that here Polynominal?

P.S. You basically conceded your point: the void in the middle means its bigger right?

What I'm saying is what is so wrong with the current balance that you feel the need to make a big "balance" mod?

HP stack, melee superiority, locks being way too good, ports overused(debatable), certain groups of OP chars.

80% of the items being useless or very bad.

Just on top of my head.

finally i can fully agree with polynomial.

and i like to qote ovscenitor for this very true phrase:

"People don't just health stack because it's mathematically superior to picking up DPS item, they do it because ability damage is so high than you can be killed very quickly if you don't do it."

In your opinion.

HP is part of the game. You cannot nerf HP. See Obscenitor.

Melee is not superior. Regulus and TB will do the most damage per game.

If you want to do something interesting, just remove capture locks.

Teleportation scrolls are part of the game and necessary for the larger maps.

Item tweaking is where your focus should be. Not nerfing items, but buffing sucky items. I could go on and on about item buffing.

Ok.

I can say now i totaly agree with obscenitor and polynomial too, but also lifecatana is right what he said in reply #45.

Let's not nerf, let's buff!

I shall continue on obscenitor idea

by saying that not just that is enough. Have you notice how most of items are stupidly made (and part of that is why most of the suck)? Why all helmets only give mana bonus? why cant they give also armor!? or health? They are helmets for god sake! They keep you alive! They should add armor & health too (but ofc not every one of them nor in the same way). Some of them could also give bonus dmg! Why not?! Or bonus att speed! Also very normal.

Next, the boots are also stupid. Only 2 give bonus speed (i would really like to see Assassins Footguards to give +5% mov speed a top of the att speed & dodge), and half of them give a weak health/mana boost (except Unbr. Boots), and none of them armor!!! Cmon, boots should give armor too! At least half of them! (i don't count Ironwalkers, they are shit - who takes them?)

Some gloves should also give small health bonus and armor bonus (some either health or armor, some both, some none.)

And lastly, armor/torso items; they are also very limited. They should ALL give some armor (ranged from 150 to 1200, except banded - its good already) And those minion boost should be bigger, they are too weak. Only godplate and expensive artifacts have really good minions health/armor/dmg boosts.  Also, i think that even some of (torso)armors should give some mana bonus. I don't see why none of them should.

There, my opinion. Which i think everybody should agree with. I'm serious, those items are joke.

I want talk about trinkets here, i think you got the point.

Edit: guys, you could have told me i made mistake with Platemail of Crusader, i totaly missed it.  

I just edited.  Lol at myself

You basically repeated my words then gave it a whole different sway.

YES, we should BUFF items maybe more than nerfing some but we agreed on "tweaking" didn't we? Also, did you read anything I wrote? If you nerf hp items off course we buff base hp. 

P.S. Scrolls are a part of the game, but my suggestion of lowering the amount you can stack would mean they and locks won't be overused while still holding they're usefullness.

P.P.S. I know you play bigger maps, but you can't seriously tell me ranged characters are competive or do more damage than melee.

I can seriously tell you. I even still have proof

I've always said there's no better TB player than Falcon505 was. I also have some nice Regulus numbers. Here's 3v3s, 4v4s, 5v5s. Torchbearer does the most damage per game consistently. Period. Notice the long game where he hits 811000 =P