There used to be a movement for Queen to get re-worked so all her useless skill lines to be viable, but we've realized that never will happen.  Right now most of us are hoping to get a small boost in shield since it is not that good late game yet it's a part of the most of the few viable QoT builds there are.

I'd like to see her become a Tier 2 demigod so there is more variety in the teams you can pick.  Lifekatana thinks she already is on par with Sedna and Rook and he may be right... but most of my potential teamates in pug matches disagree.

Rachel Ray approves.

I don't have a lot of time due to RL but I'll try and show in my guide that shield+thorns is a very easy but not very effective build.

Again, she needs a lot of skill to be competetive as "the third teammate"/support demigod(like Thunder so beautifully outlined) but which she can be. In comparison with sedna -and lets not pretend, we're all comparing her with the other lady in town- she takes a lot more skill is more fragile and indeed harder to play. Playing sedna bad is almost impossible, playing her good involves the right build and two helms and health stack, and playing her great involves getting silence and timing it right to use as a second stun in the Golden Classic(erebus/UB/sedna, triple "stun", high damage good surviveability). Rook is much harder than sedna but still fairly straight forward since he has plenty of hp even if he's suspecble to ganks. 

In contrast the squishies -DA/reg/TB- have a very hard time to be the third teammate, not only because you lack staying power survivability, lack monks, lack real damage and again are easy prey for a good erebus. This makes the team with the squishie heavily handicapped in teamfights making them almost solely rely on ganks and/or mobility which is possible but hard to do. DA is of course a lethal ganker, and I have a feeling we'll soon see the potential of swap spamming, but the point remains: a team that has a squishie has problems winning the game even if they won most of the battles(ie deaths) while a queen may win battles later on by good teamwork in combination with spikes. Squishies are largely negated when the enemy plays in a group because most of their skills are aimed for ganks and sole kills and not for teamfights(with TB as an exception).

tl;dr Queen is a mediocre demigod that need some slight stat buffs and one or two skill changes(buffs) in combination with a downtuning of the Tier I. However she is much better than people make her out for, and certainly needs the buffs less than characters like TB or Reg. 

Off Topic: Someone just called in for tech support at work and her name was Sedna. She didnt sound as sexy as the REAL (but not so real) Sedna.

I'm coming around to Lifekatana's point of view... lemme see if I can sum it up real brief like:

Queen is crap when played alongside crap demigods but is less crappy than the other crappy demigods when played alongside the elite demigods.  She is deadly in the right hands when played by a very good player playing with other very good players on his team who are using top tier demigods by helping them hunt down crappy support demigods or swinging the tide during a 3v3 rumble with Ground Spikes.

So if they buffed the Queen they wouldn't be changing anything... except making things worse.  A well played Queen would still be an equivilent of a well played Rook or Sedna (or maybe better with a buff) when played with top tiers and would still be a liability when played with the squishies because she doesn't help a Reg or TB like she does one of the heavy hitters.

So the only real solution is to "downtune" The Golden Trio which I doubt will happen.

You win LK... but hope you sign my new thread "Petition: Have Them Slightly Nerf The Top Tier Demigods So We Can Actually Have Some Variety In The Teams Of High Skilled Games"

The title may need some editing...

This is sarcasm right?

Nope.

I think he's right... making a true support demigod like the Queen better will only help her when played with the tier one combos she already does pretty well with.

Even if they buff her up to be on par with the big three, it won't do much for me.  I can already play her well with elite demigods on my side and would like to be able to select her when I have a Reg/TB/DA on our side without really gimping my team too bad.

Though... maybe if they just buffed up the protection on the Bramble Bubble Bauble, the QoT could help keep TBs and Regs alive long enough to deliver their bursts more than once in a fight.  Seds Heal helps high armored DGs like the big three way more than the squishies... it would be nice if the lower HP demis had someone who could keep them in the fight as well.

Who knows...

it's always difficult to balance, especially when you set a standard such as the "big three." i played a game a while back, called warlords battlecry 3, and the gamers got ahold of development stuff and tried to balance it. they ended up getting it fairly decent, but at the same time completely convoluting the very idea of some of the races. i.e. wood elf went from archer-heavy to cavalry-heavy. sure, QoT could be made as strong as the 'big three' but would she have any semblence of the QoT we see today? when every character has such unique abilities, it's very difficult to balance them to any situation. and like thundercles hinted, some *can* play QoT to great effect, so any attempt to increase her power would be enough to push her power over the edge for skilled players, all for the sake of increasing the QoT crowd. besides, there is the whole bragging rights thing too. it's easy to play erebus, so a good erebus is meh. but a good QoT, that's another thing entirely.

(Read the following in a fake sounding nasally Kennedy accent)

We choose to balance the queen of thorns. We choose to balance the queen of thorns and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

 Splitshadow has it.

However I'd like to say that for one I don't agree with 90% of the changes suggested and also I believe most people that ask for changes aren't good enough with queen to really make an assesment of her power. If those people really understood balance they would first nerf tier I, then buff squishies and only then buff/change the queen.

nerf tier1! im with you!

Sorry mate, last time I heard Frogboy say anything about the issue, he stated that Erebus at least was fine... and since conventional wisdom states that Erebus >>> Oak > UB > The Others I would have to assume he believes Oak is fine as well.

He plays Erebus and Oak almost exclusively so I'll trust his opinion on the matter.

At one point Frogboy did say that Erebus was a "little" stronger. Anyway, a LOT of people said they would be angry if they nerfed tier 1. I agree with nerfing tier 1 slightly, as well as improving the end-game (most of them are fine early game) of most of the non-tier 1 characters is what would work out the best. Sadly, I don't think that'll happen. I dunno though, maybe Queen's Shamblers will get 5 more whole dps each! That's crazy talk!

Frogboy has no clue about game design or balance. He's a fine guy and business man and his AI code is great but game design... 

I'd say erebus/oak/UB are on par. Yes noobs are a lot more scared of erebus because he is impossible to kill and always kills their nonhealth stacking builds or pushes them out with nightcrawlers but I assure you that a good oak will push the erebus out and a good UB will do so much damage that he can beat erebus in teamgames.

Yeah, I was being a sarcastic troll, and I'm sorry for the way I am.  I like the guy a lot, but its frustrating that he is the aparrently the only influence for balancing decisions in this game.  Pacov seems to think there is a balance team at GPG who decides what needs changing but I believe from what I've read on this forum that he is mistaken on what they do.  I believe from what Sorian and Frogboy have posted, that they just work on any changes that Stardock requests.  Stardock = Frogboy.  Frogboy, great guy and I'm truly glad someone out there gives a shit but he doesn't seem to play the game enough to realize how narrow the builds, item selection, team makeup, etc etc get at the higher levels of competition.

As far as Erebus, I'm probably giving him a big edge on the other two cause of the DGs I tend to play.  Say I'm battling it out with a UB as Queen, I just start booking and can usually get away when I see his showerbuddy Oak show up before I get ganked... but I'll usually only see Erebus sneeking up when its too late.

They should give LE an Inglourius Basterds Brad Pitt voice, and have him say "My bidness is a' Killin squishy demigods... and bidness is goood!"

because mist is the best counter against ubs spit ub wont win against ereb until mid-lategame when the aa comes into play!

Sadly any dg can escape a queen who doesn't go swift nklet.

That's not entirely true as shown by the excellent balance(relative to other games, this is the most balanced game at release I've yet to play). There is/was a balance team but I indeed fear that Frogboy has way too much influence in game design as shown by the wouldbe favor items. Seriously just buff the best favor item just a little bit more:O. He talks a lot about how GPG and SD work together so well but in my opinion it's more Brad messing with game design that should be left to Mike and his team.

I think that without Brads harrassment GPG would feel free to completely forget demigod ever existed.

To them Demigod is a failed experiment in multiplayer-centric gaming thats caused them more of a headache than they ever dreamed possible.  I'm sure they would leave their prom night mistake baby in a dumpster if Old Mother Frogboy would let them so I think its great that he makes things happen... even if they're not always the ideal changes.

I could be wrong though.

The baby comment MIGHT of gotten close to offending me if I didnt just die laughing.

Ah, I'm just a bit more sure of me being a bad person today. Thanks, lol.

Why would GPG want to do that? They love their game just as much if not more than we do. I don't understand why people see GPG as an heartless company that cares only for your purses. GPG is a rather small developer that always tries to innovate.

LK:  Why do you think they love their game as much or more than we do?  Do you know anyone who actually still plays the game who works for GPG?  Sorian stopped by these forums every once in a while before, but I haven't seen him lately and I haven't ever seen any other GPG employees on here ever.  People in this community have come up with solutions to bugs in their game a LONG time ago that STILL haven't been patched in while incredibly simple fixes (Sedna High Priest) took them how long to get around to taking care of?

They would rather forget Demigod ever existed but can't because they're contractually obligated to the publisher to support it.  I may sound bitter, but I don't blame them at all.  I'm sure they had visions of endless 5v5 battle royales, glowing reviews in PC Gamer magazine, being praised for the innovative, beautiful game they developed... but it just didn't turn out that way and they're over it.

The AI they worked hard to develop can only be described as Full Retard.  After countless hours working on the networking (was this Stardock or GPG or both?) they have got the game to a point where I can play about 3/4 of the games I start without someone DCing... probably not their goal.  They also probably hoped that people would end up playing more than just one of the lovely maps they worked hard making... but who knows.

Teseer:  Thought I had gone a little too far with the comedy, but at least when I go to hell you'll be there to keep me company!

You know of course that GPG does not post on forums with a reason right? They did that in the supreme commander days and it didn't work out too well(I still think they should do it) since it became an endless rain of moanings and complaints where nothing could really be achieved. Yes these are incredibly easy fixes, but that's not it. Updates costs money time, and need to be Q&A'd, better to do them in one fell swoop then in small snippets. The reason that PC gamer didn't praise them is solely Connection(which got largely fixed but is still camping with non-network related problems: lobby crashes). It would be awesome if we had these 5vs5 battle royales indeed=). People dropping yes... not a lot the netcode is able to do. I got the problem myself and it's either wireless or a bad ISP. P2P suffers from this and because demigod is a high player game that problem is augmented. Maybe they should have chosen another system than p2p, but the engine was build around it and it works for every RTS out there.

I would describe this AI as very normal, I've never seen a large scale modern RTS with a good AI. Sins AI sucked(even worse I would say, since the game is way way easier since it's only about choke points and rock paper scissors), Supcom's ai sucked, demigods ai sucked. 

The Warcraft III AI is above the average player on the highest settings IMO.  Has the AI gotten any updating? If they tell the AI what the best items are and at what health to trigger a fight or flight response, it seems the AI could beat some noobs.

At least it'll be warm! Florida is DAMN cold! (Well, for Florida)