1. Now there are two strategies available, you can buy them early, or you can save up and get everything in one swoop. You can continue to play the game exactly the same as you were before if you like, but now you have another option, how is that a bad thing?

2. When you buy reinforcements you are not expressing superiority, you are adding support firepower and possibly healing in order to help you fight. If you are losing badly enough that your opponent has enough for priests/angles and you dont - that's 5400 gold, maybe 6 kills-ish - then you are going to lose whether they put that cash into creeps or items.

The more likely situation is one team gets priests a minute or two before the other due to a cash advantage, or a need for some front line healing more than another item.

The team that is behind on reinforcements still gets more gold and XP from killing waves, its just not a farmable advantage anymore.

You just marked yourself as an inexperienced player. It is painfully obvious that assassins would get more gold/xp if this was changed.

If an 'upgrade' is, more often than not, a liability when purchased on its own (and the lower level minion upgrades are the only ones in the game fitting that description), then that suggests to me that the 'upgrade' isn't balanced at all.  That's exactly why it was changed. 

Every competent player was well aware of the strategy you're describing but really... if you're suggesting that that's how priests 'should' be used, then what's the point of having them as a separate upgrade at all?  That simply turns them into a newbie trap which, in many games, is exactly what they were.

The problem was not that priests were giving XP gold, they still are - but rather that thay were giving too much compared both to the previous reinforcements and to the timeframe in which they could come into play.  Compare this:

Pre 1.1:

• Normal wave - 5 soldiers, 2 archers: 231xp, 36 gold
• Priest wave - 5 soldiers, 2 archers, 3 priests: 381 xp, 135 gold

1.1:

• Priest wave: 291 xp, 81 gold

A priest wave still gives quite a bit more xp and gold, but it it's not a game breaking 4x gold any more.    Have in mind that, unlike DotA, you don't have to land the killing blow to get the gold and experience, so it's extremely easy to farm a full wave.

Also don't forget that priest damage was significantly increased in 1.1.  They are a force to be reckoned with now and left unattended will easily push towers on their own.

All these changes contributed to a much better game flow IMO.

Priest change was a positive change imo. It's not just a skip to cata's anymore, priests can actually be a choice without feeding the shit out of your enemy. It's not a must have omg right now upgrade like currency, you get it when you need it. Seriously, priests were a laughable upgrade at best prior to the change.

Looked through his stats, he4 asn't played since may 20th.  This really seems like a troll post now.

I think the same principle applies.  If you get priests too early and let the other team feed you're in trouble.  It's just not as extreme as it used to be.

As long as a demigod is around, it doesn't matter what kills reinforcements, they still give xp (and gold too as long as the demigod has dealt at least 25% damage to them).  Tower kills give xp and gold too as long as the requirements are met. Seems lots of players still don't understand how different the mechanics of xp/gold in Demigod are compared to DotA.  Maybe that is one of the reasons we see so many inexperienced players pushing too hard early.