Schooled

keep in mind, his partner icenine and him are on voice. 

Two things:

First, if you want to counter what I'm doing, you have to be less predictable. The reason I can usually bully generals around early game is because I know almost precisely when you're going to stop and give up the chase (within 1-2 demigod lengths of tower firing range.) Because of how bad latency is in most demigod games, I have to issue the command to turn around and start firing way before I actually see your demigod turn around. If you stop chasing later than usual, you'll probably get a bite off. If you stop chasing earlier than usual, I won't have you in firing range the whole time. I will, of course, adapt if you pick one strategy or the other every time, but the general lack of predictability is what will save you.

I've also had a few erebus/oaks successfully hug towers and avoid getting killed or pushed out of a lane early, but that involves ceding the flag, and most people are loathe to do that nowadays.

Secondly:

Seriously Lethstang? We're playing a Torchbearer and a Regulus. Against Oaks and Erebus, when the game type has a 66% chance to seriously favor generals (Dominate or Fortress.) Anybody who's relatively decent should be able to beat us just because of the ridiculous disadvantage we're putting ourselves in. We've also seen nothing but 70%+ win rate people in pantheon lately, that's supposed to mean you're good, right? Maybe you're just too used to the overwhelming, artificial advantage you have on darkness this tournament?

i didnt mean to offend you irahi i was just letting him know

Play better is a partially useful suggestion.

If you would indicate what items / skills / favor you have noticed are useful against you early on, that would be appreciated. This is more of an experience factor for me since I don't run into this build often. eg: There is shock and indecision on what to do to handle such a high DPS, and it makes my performance worse as I make bad decisions in hindsight. Admittedly there was also to much chatty with my partner because he was begging me to "concade" before the 3 minute mark. I'm sure you'll find this funny. I tried to calm him with the "Speed builds are bad once we get swarm, and Reg is bad after level 7" pep talk. "Just don't die" I said! *snipe - rain of ice - I die* Do you know what kind of an ass that makes me look like when I'm typing?  

As for the "secondly" part... you choose to play TB and Reg and your Reg partner is not the best I've seen with mine usage. (I'm assuming this is why you came back into my lane after I kept him pushed to his tower). If he played a DG with a stronger end game to compliment your strong early game, you'd probably get more enjoyment. As I see it, your good early game obfuscates the fact that Reg gets significantly worse as levels and life go up, and Reg's stronger early game lets you dominate teams who are not going to be communicating live. I don't see how you are surprised that you can vaporize players in Pantheon doing this, especially when you drop if you don't have your partner.

No problem Lethstang, I just find it hilarious that we've basically gimped ourselves as much as you can possibly gimp yourself in this game, and yet it's still impossible to play any real games because of the bias the community has against playing with friends.

Indeed!  Don't suck and stop dying!  /win at advice.

I have issues in a few scenarios:

1)  If opponents are faster than I am, I have to adapt with extra speed items, which means I have to give up either precious HP or precious mana.

2)  Cloak of night seems to help early game for generals, instantly getting out of firing range means when you decide to retreat, you're actually retreating, rather than staying in combat and getting beat in the back of the head with snowballs.

3)  BotF doesn't seem to help much at level 1, but that combined with some extra armor a few levels down the road is an issue.  people with ~3k hp by level 4 and some armor are rough to chew through in a reasonable amount of time.

4)  I mentioned tower hugging before, but if you don't want to pick up specific counter items and want a stronger lategame, just sit at your tower and soak up xp for a few levels.  There's no shame in that.  Well, not much shame anyway.

We actually switched because that other guy on your team is absolutely awful (60 some odd games since the reset and 70%+ win too, I might add,) and cries a lot when I kill him.  He will seriously just stand there, eating damage, and eventually start to run at ~500 health.  I actually had to let him live at 150 hp early on, and it was then that I decided there might be fresher meat elsewhere

Also, Ice is just playing a regulus the way they always play regulus (with a pug or with me,) by hugging a tower and chaining snipes across the map early game so we end up with a level advantage (by denying XP from one lane.)  Doesn't really take a rocket scientist (or teamspeak!) To figure out that a 500 damage snipe is more valuable than a 300 damage mine.

If we wanted to play something stronger, we could certainly just run around and bend people over with the *completely balanced* UB, but there's something to be said for a strategy that requires finesse.

EDIT:  I didn't really seem to touch on this, though it's probably the most critical thing.  The main advantage ice TB has is that it's very difficult to know when you pass the point of no return in an encounter.  For most demigods, you can rest assured that if you run at X amount of health (usually the mid hundreds on the low end) that you'll survive your trip to base.  Against an effective ice TB, depending on where you are at on the map, you might have to run at thousands of HP to be gauranteed safety.  At level one, against an unarmored DG, I'll hit for ~200-250 per swing, and I can easily get six hits in if I've been chased to my tower on cataract before ever getting to the opposing tower.  This means that you have to run at ~1300 (+whatever rank ROI I happen to have) health in order to live, even more if I have enough HP on hand to chase you a bit into your tower.

Safety can be an illusion, is what I'm saying.

Hmm i would think that a HoB tower hugging anything (oak/ereb) would give you trouble

Depends on the player, I've been stalemated by extremely cautious HoB generals, but if they leave the safety of their tower early game, it's usually a death for them.  an erebus with HoB and idols has what, 1600 hp?  It takes very little autoattack to drive them out of a lane, and clever use of creeps allows a TB to push past a tower for a few seconds at a time.  I do usually take more damage from a minion focused build than I do an assassin style build before things go south though, which forces me back to the crystal occasionally since I have all the durability of a wet sheet of toilet paper.  The only reason it is not extremely effective, is that with swift anklet I'm faster than the minions, which makes it easy to get to a tower to AE them down.

I had this game where I slipped and took the Manhammer (Mard's) instead of Renewal. I was a reg. I got 2 kills for my team by the time I hit lvl 3.

When I played AF-based reg builds, almost every game would start with me getting a first kill (lvl 2 with maim, AF 1, and mards for 180 dps).

Too bad those damage amplifiers lose some thunder the moment the enemy gets armor.

Good to hear they're still some brave TB's out there Irahi!

Btw, how do you prevent a good general from just waltzing your tower down with minions and then (maybe) kill you?

ice tb autoattack build gets pwnd as you level up, as his stat gain (even if he takes stats in his build) is rubbish.

it is a fairly strong build early game.
it is very weak lvl 10+ vs hp stackers (ice dmg buff wears off too fast and less stats).

Without a doubt, you're going to lose ground in the midgame.  That situation is prevented early game (before batswarm) by putting loads of pressure on the general and forcing them to run or die.  Once level 4 comes about, RoI rank 2 plus a little splash from towers prevents the majority of tower damage, at least long enough to delay the first tower death.  But once you get to level 6-8 and don't yet have enough mana for chaining nova and RoI on creeps, towers will die.

I will also generally pick up one rank of fortified structures and one rank of tower damage for increased splash radius very early if I see more than one minion DG in the game.

I don't play an "autoattack build."  The strength of TB's autoattack lies entirely in the static bonus you get from swapping forms.  I'm under no illusion that that bonus is any good as the game goes on.  Once out of the super early game (around level 5,) TB relies on getting and maintaining an obscene level advantage to stay competitive.  Fortunately, anklet+RoI makes it extremely easy to maintain creep XP flow, especially on maps where there are neutral portals double portal farming is like crack for a torchbearer.

If I don't have at least a level or two advantage by the time endgame rolls around (endgame being level 12-14) then the game is almost certainly lost.

The actual build I play is generally a control build:  Frost aura, frost nova, one rank of deep freeze, and RoI up to 10, then I start taking circle of fire past that for beefier DPS.

Going vs PRE with a random team mate is like playing the lottery. Pantheon is FAIL bc it should be totally random, so you can't groupgank. Ofc that is still lottery, but all have the same chances...