I couldn't interrupt iwth anyway. It's unstopable to stop the heal. You HAVE TO DO DAMAGE. As i've said before. YOU HAVE TO DO DAMAGE. Stun does absolutely nothing against HoL i've been stunned before by annother TB while using it and it did nothing.

That's funny because it kind of sounded that way when you said:

So you'll forgive me for replying to what you actually said rather than what you (possibly) meant in your head.

You make it out as though shield+HoL is a pain to counter, that it requires specific builds, reduced effectiveness, etc. Well, no, it doesn't. The counters/workarounds are easy (some already detailed in this thread). It is just not a big deal to fight against. It's not uber mode, it's comparable to many other tactics people employ. Nobody likes having to try to avoid mines constantly, nobody likes an enemy rook building up a tower farm in a good position, people hate spit, heal takes away your potential kills, erebus mists out of negative effects and the list goes on.

In fact, speaking of sedna's heal, it heals for 1500. HoL during shield heals 1800. That 4k item? Might as well have cast heal during shield. Priest idol minions by that point in the game are healing DGs on the order of 500-700 every 10 seconds. That's 1500-2100 every 30 seconds right there and it gets cast on everyone. All you need is a general on your team.

Perspective. Shield+HoL does not stand out. Pop a potion, use towers, spend 1 point so you can stun and run away, use your own team's healing which should be much more than 1800 per 30 seconds, etc. The only special thing about shield+HoL is that is stands out visually and conceptually. You see someone invulnerable and gain a large chunk of hp at the same time - it looks overpowered. The reality is people are being healed all the time by priests, regen, skills and other items. You just don't notice it much.

The healing component is comparable to other heals. There is no problem making this comparison. It just means that after the comparison, you have to remember it gives mana too. If you want we can always compare the mana component to regenerating mana in other ways, but it just doesn't seem that people are up in arms about the mana part, probably because it's easier to regain mana than health and while mana is the "using abilities" resource, health is more the "staying alive so I can actually use those abilities" resource which is important over everything else.

Not saying that the extra mana isn't good, just that it doesn't have as much an impact mid-fight the majority of the time.

1) All right what i meant is it isn't UNCOUNTERABLE but it's UNSTOPPABLE. You can counter it but you can't stop it form happening. NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO HE WILL STILL GET THE HEALTH WHICH IS MY POINT.
2) Sedna is made to heal it's a skill she sacrifices area damage and otehr burst JUST FOR IT. Plus she's a support demigod while Oak is not he isn't meant to have heaa.
3) True People hate spit and a rook building up tower farm. But at least you can stop those. If you're good get 3 people on you team to periodically wipe rook towers. If you have spit on you don't run if you die keep attacking maybe you could kill them before it kills you or better yet RUN EARLIER.
4) I agree people are always being healed but you can KILL priests you can NEGATE regen skills normally SACRIFICE damage and other items aren't REUSABLE. Potions still have a COOLDOWN so do TOWERS. No differance there. I'm not against heart of life it makes the game more interesting but using it IN battle is what annoys me.

Nothing stops shield or interrupts heart of life while in shield I'VE TESTED IT.

Totally true. Sedna doesn't fill mana. Sedna runs out of it. While heart of life COMPLETELY REJUVINATES a mid-level and can change the tides high level in a 1 on 1 and even 2 on 2 conflict.

O.k. getting a little offended here. I'm sorry if i didn't make myself clear. Kindly pointing it out would have been better. As said above i cleared that up. There are ways to drain mana ways to interupt a heal... Shield+HOL= INSTANT UNSTOPPABLE 1800 HEALTH and MANA plus whatever else he can milk out of it.

This is a completely wrong way of thinking. This isn't an MMO where you have to build yourself against a theoretically infinite array of differently capable opposition.  It's a 3v3 (most times) game where you have exactly 3 threats you need to deal with. Saying that you 'screw yourself over' to attempt to counter one of these 3 threats, or that it is a waste of time simply doesn't make sense.  What else are you doing?  Building up to defeat some theoretical enemy?  Persuing a strategy effective only against people you aren't playing against?

EVERY build is dependent on what forces you are up against.  All of them.  Ignoring it is the surest path to failure.

Have you ever tried using it yourself and finding how it interplays with Oak's performance? Have you played with and against it using various demigods? Have you both won and lost a high number of games with it in play?

The more vantage points to construct an idea of balance the better. All I see is "but oak isn't MEANT to do x" and "this is what happens when oak uses HoL". Except these situations you describe happening are not what actually goes on most of the time. Maybe they happened to you a few times. How HoL works out is a lot more complex than a couple of retreat scenarios you give. Further, your justification based on what demigods "should" do is worthless. "Oak is made for being pretty general"? Why? Who said that was the case? Who decided oak isn't allowed to heal? (certainly not whoever came up with priest idols) Who said sedna is for tanking? You are mixing up descriptions of how demigods tend to play with what they are "allowed" to do.

Everything you say just seems to show lack of time spent in matches with shield+HoL in play, or at least a one-sided experience.

As far as I've tested, that's right - shield doesn't prevent stuns or interrupts but HoL keeps on going.

What does interrupt it is healing, but not every kind. All active heals like sedna heal, divine justice from a killing blow, a potion, priests, etc stop the HoL effect on anyone. Health regen and lifesteal doesn't stop it.

So to anyone who doesn't know why HoL is randomly dropping, it's because of those healing abilities. Priest minions are the annoying ones. You have ot watch for when they heal you and use HoL in between, and that goes for anyone.

Actually to tell you all the truth I've lost about 2 games against an HOL oak and won about 10. But thats lack of experience on their behalf. It's pretty basic on the forums. It's that one in every 10 people that worry me. The people who ACTUALLY use it well instead of some of these new players who just go on the forums and look for strategies.

I don't think enough credit is being given to how powerful this combination is, and it is primarily because of the mana returned (total of 2700) and not the health regained.

Since you will rarely ever need more mana than your opponent has health, Oak using sheild+heart of life is able to completely ignore his mana pool and focus instead of health items, since he can regenerate (and cast) all his mana while doing this trick. In effect oak is capable of obtaining a bonus +600 or so health from the slot he saved on not using a mana item on top of his already high health, then an additional +1800 from the heart of life, and a mana pool that will always be large enough to defeat his opponent.

Mid game when health totals are 3-4k that extra 2400hp is enough to win any 1v1 combat. However, this isn't taking into consideration the 6 seconds of invincibility that saves him approximately 600-1200 health from autodamage (more if against multiple foes) and completely prevents any spike damage. What this means is that oak can often engage 2v1, defeat an opponent and then escape.

That doesn't mean there aren't counters to this. Ironically you mentioned that you were playing torch bearer, which is one of the banes to this strategy. Deep freeze increases cooldowns by approximately 130%-220% for 5-8 seconds depending on it's rank. The increase to cooldown is caculated on the 'base' and not 'current' ammount. In other words.. if sheild has a 30 second recharge, and he used sheild 45 seconds ago, casting deep freeze (even rank 1) will stop him from using it again for the duration of deep freeze. Even if oak manages to activate sheild, you can still use this on him to shutdown his ability to use the heart of life.

TLDR all ur walls of text

is a very cheap spell.

Agreed. And if your gonna Nerf the heart then somethings gotta be done about the invincible Unclean beast that can solo towers and kill 1 demigod wile holding 2 others at bay or what about that Rook that just wont die!!. Fact is Iv seen this Oak build get owned by Unclean beast, Torchbearer, Vampire lord and the Queen of thorns. Good timing is the key. Its no more overpowered then any other. Just keep practicing and one day you'll be good enough to take Oak out too.

Yeah but people still complain   Actually I don't think any of the above spells is realy cheap.

Example, I tought spit is extremely OP early for chasing you out of a lane and giving UB such an advantage that it was impossible to contend.  Seems I just needed to learn to work against it... pretty much like with everything else.

No, sedna's heal is not throttled by mana. The point where someone can afford a HoL? Well, minutes before that was the point nobody should be ever having mana troubles. If you buy a plenor and HoL as sedna you are doing it wrong. All she needs is a decent  mana pool (vlemish+boots) and robust mana potions are the end to mana problems. It's much cheaper to spend the money on mana potions than anything past the first crown. You will actually have more gold and more mana for at minimum 15 minutes.

The mana component of the HoL is nice for oak but that's all it is. A nifty bonus. If the HoL is overpowered then it's overpowered to "casual" players only.

Ok, you know what? Let's just put the effect of shield+HoL into perspective here. At the stage of the game where you can buy a HoL (all of these are in-combat abilities):

Shield+HoL - 1800 hp/mana per 35 seconds

20 hp/s from standard gear and passive - 700 hp per 35s

Any general's priests - ~2100 hp per 35s

Any general's priests with sedna aura - ~3100 hp per 35s

High priests with sedna aura (bug) - ~4200 per 35s

Sedna's healing wind - 840 hp per person per 35s (and this is from *really* early on)

Sedna's heal - 7500 hp per 35s

Erebus' bite - 3875 hp per 35s

QoT Shield - 7250 shield per 35s

Shield+HoL just isn't very spectacular. Sedna alone can pump out 10k-15k healing per 35 seconds without breaking a sweat. The only reason I can see people think it's overpowered is because of its visibility and obviousness of it happening.