Ancient Sentry Rework

[inland vine]

Hey, if you're already reworking promos into boss drops, why not this guy too?
Ancient Sentinel has some really rare and meta-defining drops, which is good and all, but it also doesn't really have anything more common that the majority of players can serve to benefit from. So, Ancient Sentry!
I propose a 6% droprate compared to the weapon frags' 3%, to ensure it's not too hard to get, but you also don't get too many of them, either.

• Now only has 6 ranks (1-3 are removed).
• Now has a deploy limit of 1.

Base HP: 250 > 395
Base Armor: 120 > 180

Laser Blast is unchanged.
Laser Burst now works just like Ancient Sentinel's Nuclear Ray, burning anything it hits for 3 turns. The critical rate is also increased to 10% base, with a 20% chance instead on soldiers and tanks.
Sentry Shielding is offensively unchanged, but the stun chance is raised to 70% on the tile in front of it. This allows it to effectively stun the tiles in front of it, and stall for its' new attack...
Immobilize, the dreaded attack itself. It hits the entire field for 90-131 damage at max rank, with a 30% chance to stun. It cannot crit at all, and its armor piercing is 50%. This attack has an extensive prep time of 5 turns, a long reload of 6 turns, and its' 1 attack range forces the Ancient Sentry to be on the front row for it to be used. In PVP, this means the attack can be stopped by disposing of the Ancient Sentry early in the match, but clever players can place it in the back to 'cook' the attack for when the frontline falls, if the need arises. This all serves to balance the attack in the hands of a player, and more importantly, stop it from becoming absolutely insane in Boss Strike (like Plasma Artillery).
The goal of this design was a strong support unit which specializes in the frontrow, but who can be used as a backup tank and win condition as well if the frontline breaks. Obviously, this isn't a perfect idea, but it'd be cool, I think!

[rare reef]

As long as its pretty good at lvl 60 im fine with this

[inland vine]

support units generally fall off less, i did wanna give it a unique chance to be used as a wincon in pvp though since if you soften up the enemy army your tanks dying would let immobilize do some serious numbers

you would have to be really mindful though since the other player could just not kill your frontrow to keep the attack gone so you'd have to put them in a lose/lose position

[misty bobcat]

so 14% to get a drop from AS?
The richer gets richer and the poor gets poorer. Nice! I like the idea.

[inland vine]

yeah i wanted to make the boss overall likely to drop a unit when killed instead of making you go on a 20 kill drystreak. if it was possible i'd guarentee it on the first kill but i don't think it is doable sadly

14% is within the reasonable realm where it's the most likely of any boss to drop SOMETHING really useful when you kill it

[grim notch]

cool suggestion!

i think its worth dropping the wiki link on the page

https://battlenations.miraheze.org/wiki/Ancient_Sentry

[inland vine]

i would've but there's sadly no room in the post

[grim notch]

so people can easily compare your version to the old one

[inland vine]

LMAO

[grim notch]

DAMN

fr?

[inland vine]

so i just included the attacks i changed

as images

• ancient sentinel's immobilize

[grim notch]

that stinks

[inland vine]

textlimit sucks

i'm a YAPPER, i got more to say

[grim notch]

right?

should

laser burst be specifically crit on soldiers?

lemme keep reading first

okay

scratch that

[inland vine]

it's because of ancient sentinel's checker, which it's based on

[grim notch]

possibly reducing the range on concealed lasers and sentry shielding

because i see this unit just sitting in the backfield

[inland vine]

they already have 1 range

[grim notch]

1-5

[inland vine]

concealed la-

okay

yeah fair point

sentry shielding is 1 though

[grim notch]

sorry

then just concealed

cuz i feel like if ur gonna sit him in the back, he should be useless basically

considering how tanky it is

[inland vine]

tbf it wouldn't be that crazy

the attack isn't THAT strong

[grim notch]

its just a lot of RNG

and i feel like this is designed with pvp in mind

which is gonna get annoying asf to some people

[inland vine]

oh wait hell i didn't include concealed laser in the

uh, that attack can't stun

it's burn

[grim notch]

immobilize?

[native jackal]

I love this idea/concept

[grim notch]

thats what i mean

[inland vine]

immobilize can, but it has 1 range

[grim notch]

OHHH

[inland vine]

it HAS to be on the frontrow to use it

[grim notch]

i thought it hit the whole board?

[inland vine]

it does, but the attack can only initiate if ancient sentry is in front

like melee frag being able to hit past row 1 with vehicle crush but HAVING to be in front to actually use the attack

[grim notch]

i seee

okay

that makes sense

nevermind i like it all

lol

[misty bobcat]

All the stats look great but I’d like to make it 3% instead. 14% is high to call a drop imo

[grim notch]

i guess i completely missed the line where you put "its' 1 attack range forces the Ancient Sentry to be on the front row for it to be used."

[inland vine]

it's 8% to drop

14% is together with the other frags

[grim notch]

i think they mean like

yea

[inland vine]

my logic for the rate being high is because ancient sentinel is an awful terrible rng check the way he currently is where the units are super impactful but you might never get them

so i wanted to make one which helps equalize a bit

[grim notch]

my god this thing is gonna be beefy

[inland vine]

the main issue with this thing is it just implodes to AP, so i made it a midgame unit

armor piercing units start to die when the battle progresses

so it's easier to maintain the sentry

[grim notch]

yea

i wish they balanced indirect with less AP

or like falloff AP

like the tile you select has your maximum amount of AP, and then additional tiles have less

it would make it so tanks needed more dedicated fire to kill them

rather than "oh i'm going to hit the tank + 3 other important units"

maybe just damage falloff

[inland vine]

it would be kind of awkward to use this but i'd imagine ancient sentry builds would be pretty good if you designed your army to remove its counters

[grim notch]

yeah

like removing their AP as soon as u can

its really hard to find a consistent methodolgy to what r1->r6 HP scaling looks like

sometimes its a 66% increase

sometimes its 70

sometimes its 40%

armor has been pretty consistently 66% over a couple units now

wait that math is wrong

i think

[inland vine]

shame zoey's treb is such a huge problem in pvp, ancient sentry probably really struggles with that one

[grim notch]

they were actually just talking about

balancing huge damage dealers with prep time

like zoeys in specific

[inland vine]

oh thank god

[grim notch]

glad they are thinking of the big issues

rough max HP: 580
rough max armor: 270

balancing stuff is really hard with the frags in the game LOL

[inland vine]

frags being treated like pokemon legendaries in restricted vgc is the perfect sweetspot for them without requiring excessive nerfs

[grim notch]

yeah

thats true

needs to be a cap on them

would you say its

closest to maybe a

converted garbage truck or a mega tank

in terms of ideal HP

or something else

i feel like functionally its closer to CGT

cuz of the armor to HP thing

[inland vine]

for sentry?

[grim notch]

ye

at max rank

[inland vine]

probably something like cgt, yeah

i think truck is a good benchmark since it is meant to be row 2

& you're meant to AP it down

[rare reef]

Pokemon pvp tiers already solves this. No need to adjust how people pvp

People wanna cheese in pvp they go to the unrestricted tier. People want a more grounded pvp with no cheese units they go to a lower tier

But thats another discussion

[inland vine]

ubers would be a nice fix for people wanting to use frags more generally

[grim notch]

yeah

i just dont see them implementing that

we can use it for community based rules

but implementing a usage rate and tiers and everything would be a lot to do for them i feel

and i'm a very big usage rate enjoyer

i just don't see it shipping to the main game

[rare reef]

It aint hard at all. They could start out with one tier that doesnt have said balance changes, and another that does

Forcing one side or another to abide by the other isn't the way to go. But this is a sentry rework suggestion so I wont say anymore

Would we say a buff to the sentry if using 1 of each sentinel frag would be an interesting idea?

[grim notch]

i think that moves into like "sets bonuses" territory

which i do think is a good idea

im just not sure if they need a buff

like you could argue using a bunch of different frontier units/silverwolf units could give a buff, cuz they really need it

[rare reef]

Fair

[grim notch]

it would be cool if they maybe had different noises though

like it used the AS sounds

if they were all together, as a little easter egg

[inland vine]

ranged frag uses its boss sounds, if the new melee frag anim uses its sounds too then the ancient sentry is the only one that has to be tweaked

[storm flower]

I like the idea, but as someone who doesn’t have any frags, I’d be a little disappointed if I got this over a ranged or melee first time. If I already had frags this would be cool tho

[inland vine]

tbf it isn't like the drop is exclusive with them

it's just more loot

rollling an ancient sentry doesn't make rolling a frag that fight less likely

[storm flower]

Yeah I get that, I would just have mixed emotions getting it vs a ranged or melee lol

I think it’s health and armor should be bumped up to levels comparable to the both of the other frags

If it’s intended to be a support troop, it’ll need to be more tanky

[inland vine]

it's important to note i listed the base health

as in, rank 1

[storm flower]

What would decide for the max rank stats

[inland vine]

1.4x the base stats, give or take
so 490/250

it's VERY important to note that the ancient sentry's armor borders on invincible

[storm flower]

Yeah, that still feels low

[inland vine]

that's intentional, considering the armor only takes 20% from all sources

it needs a bit of meat on it for AP, but generally armor piercing is intended to be its weakness

[storm flower]

Would say, 600-700hp be too much, keep the shield the same

[inland vine]

600 would be too much- 550 might be better?

which would make its profile look like this

updated bulk accordingly

[rare reef]

Looks solid especially since its not meant to be as good as the frags

[inland vine]

it's meant to be useful but not gamewarping like frags

yea

[grim notch]

i'm glad its stronger than CGT

but not by a gargantuan amount like frags

[rare forge]

I think 8% is too high relative to other boss drops. I don’t think there’s anything that’s close to it other than maybe spiderwasp egg? (Which is a bit undertuned)
I would hope that’s it’s more in line with the other drop rates, either 8% being lowered to ~6%, other boss drops get pulled up a bit, or even a soft pity system of sorts to raise the effective drop%; however, all of that is just arguing specifics rather than the underlying philosophy, all of which are great ideas!

[grim notch]

I think it’s a good % but lower it if they add a pity system for sure

[inland vine]

i might need to buff immobilize tbh

[storm flower]

Thoughts on possibly increasing the units range?

Would letting this troop sit in the 2nd or 3rd rank be op?

[crude pendant]

a ancient sentry would be nice as a boss drop form the sentinel

[timid bronze]

I never connected the dots that the sentry was the head of the as tbh . This would be a cool addition

[crude pendant]

lets commission it to be a drop from the AS, either 6% or 3%

[inland vine]

for every attack EXCEPT immobilize, i'm fine with that

but that one would be way too good with upped range

that attack is meant to be a win condition

[inland vine]

increased immobilize AP back to 50%