Balance demons

[naive shell]

pulsar forest still op

[civic quest]

I like spam pulsar keep me safe

[naive shell]

behemoths are funny lol, I am a huge behemoth fan

[zenith fjord]

"I'm going to kill you!
...eventually."

[naive shell]

i think behemoth should cost 50% more but have double hp and be 50% slower

[brazen heart]

Behemoth is insanely strong as you put a clock on enemy team

They need to react to it , so you need to prepare for that (do they have a a few commanders )? Do they have 1? They won’t try dgunning etc

Behemoth works way better with a forward t3 lab

[stray turret]

beat but they are slower and shoot very slowly, kill themselves to spam.. Shivas would deserve at least a speed buff and perhaps the missile improved

[brazen heart]

You just put shivas on hold fire and set target to the units you want them to fire

[civic quest]

They are balanced around their speed

[brazen heart]

You also want a the Can wall in front of them with your own grunt spam

[civic quest]

The only problem with shivas compared to razors is they perform poorly without support

Most people will just 1 click them into their deaths

[brazen heart]

And shivas are slow , razors are much faster if they leak behind enemy lines , shivas are the t3 thug , slow rezz push

[naive shell]

razors still op tho imo :/ should cost 5k. demon should cost like 7.5k (idk I don't really play with demons so not sure how op they are rn after nerfs)

[civic quest]

I haven’t played since tourney so I need to still test it out

[naive shell]

idk I think razors have been way out of line since the targeting update like a year ago

[brazen heart]

Shivas are a deathball slow push unit , like sniper , starlights etc

[naive shell]

maybe with snipers probably king of t2 again, razors won't be so obnoxious

[brazen heart]

Demons is slowly getting to the “balanced” territory, still a bit overturned , razor is also heading that direction but still op , razor is op because it can do everything

Both demons and razors are S tier units

[civic quest]

Snipers can only delay for so long before op vanguard comes

[spiral knot]

i think they'd probably be balance if the script was fixed to make them actually look at what they're shooting. The instant retargeting has a bug where it will cause them to start shooting at the new target while turning, meaning they will happily shoot lasers out of their ass instead of actually dealing with their turn speed

[naive shell]

snipers being the apex predator does wonders for the meta ecosystem imo, but yeah we'll have to see how the meta develops post mauser nerf

[brazen heart]

Vanguards are ok , imo too slow , you want op catapult

[naive shell]

making the opponent build arti slows down t3 tempo a lot, which i think should make razors and demons less op

[civic quest]

Need spybot nerf

[karmic yacht]

demons pre hp nerf would trade evenly with kargs. while being a lot faster

[brazen heart]

Spybot is totally oppressive and op unit

The fact that in lategame you have a t2 lab spamming spybots is disgusting

[civic quest]

Yeah I play against randy and he have 18 spybots hiding in lane

[karmic yacht]

seems like there is something wrong with the unit when in a 1v1 you have a constant chain of spybots
stunning t3 units

and random spybot stunning stout clumps too

[lavish haven]

Spybots are deceptively expensive, require more micro attention than pretty much any other unit. Are one of the few options available when playing from behind, are used defensively primarily, and are underused(or not used at all) by 99% of the playerbase. And have clear and very hard counters. They are not a problem.

[pine snow]

so far they're only abused by a few players yes, but when you see your 4 razors stunned for 30 sec by a single unit, it hurts the game. In the future, more people will master the spybot micro and then something will have to be done. Reducing the EMP time is a must imo

[drowsy minnow]

emp rework was partly done to help that, makes them a good pause button but not an infinite lockdown

current version still has too high an overall effect from most things emp, as it took quite a while for people to innately realise that the slowdown was also a powerful debuff

[lavish haven]

Spybots are not secret tech. They've been around in present state for awhile. And...yet...they're spammed by only a couple players, and even then probably in less than one game in ten by those few players. If they're so powerful, so op, they'd have been picked up by the playerbase at large a year ago, just like whistlers, or janus, or hounds. But it is relatively rare to see them, and even more rare to see more than one or two. All you have to do to convince me they're OP is explain why almost no one uses them.

[pine snow]

"If they're so powerful, so op, they'd have been picked up by the playerbase at large a year ago" no coz there's a flaw in that

spy bots require some skill, some micro. Players are lazy. Whistlers require very little skill. When you see Baron stopping razors, EMPing labs and shit, if everyone did this, it'd be nerfed pretty quickly

[karmic yacht]

whistlers require some positioning
empbot is just why it's nice to have an emp bot at this time, bop 25 sec stun

there's nothing that detects them except tracer and spam

[stray turret]

And here again, Arm in advantage as their spy bot is cheaper than Cor’s

[pine snow]

yeah 50% more energy required, all of this for 80 more HP points

[buoyant valve]

I've been told Core's is shorter so on extremely rare occasions a shot that would have hit an Arm one won't hit a core one, is that worth 30 M 3k E and 40 seconds of BP? 🤷‍♂️

[pine snow]

but Cortex botlab is much better than Armada botlab overall

[buoyant valve]

Oh yeah, gotta love the op core botlab opening animation. /s

[lavish haven]

But most players do not do this, and cannot do this. We want skill expression in the game, and spybots are perhaps the best example of this. When I get a clutch emp off I feel good. When an enemy does one to me I can appreciate the skill. Unlike with the boring micro(or lack of micro) of most other units. So again, when everyone is spamming spybots then it might be time to look at changing them. But, I highly suspect that moment will never come.

[stray turret]

I have checked though the “discover” circle around the Cor one is the same size so does not have benefit there either. The extra metal and energy cost is not justified at all..

[buoyant valve]

I don't believe it's the circle, it's the height of the model/hitbox, but i agree it's unjustified.

[pine snow]

there's plenty of tiny things like that in BAR

[drowsy minnow]

they're a differential balance unit, eg the more apm you have the more OP they are

[drowsy minnow]

given it's the only non-trivial emp core have it shouldn't cost more, the opposite if anything

[neon epoch]

Jeez topic still emp bot

Well at least emp sucks if its by itself, unlike demon /s. Emp bot demon new meta?

[stray turret]

Are you considering it for the Balance pack?

[drowsy minnow]

probably worth trying

[stray turret]

Yep.. perhaps also together with the arm cheaper wind issue

[drowsy minnow]

econ is a bigger issue

same reason I've not changed air properly, just too much to handle at once, even if it is holisitic it starts to lose meaning

can't be sure what results are from what or why

[jaunty talon]

Just because its not used doesnt mean its not op. Its just hard to utilize. Same with air emp- op if used but not always used because ppl are not rational

[drowsy minnow]

no air emp is very op

it's just lower skill floor so used more often

[glacial canyon]

T3 needs to be op imo. T3 is when the game should be ending if it gets there. I would love to see a buff to Lunkhead and Cataphract since they almost never see play. Also Core and Arm should have the same number of T3 units hopefully 10 each one day 😄 The 5v5 tournament actually made T3 look a little weaker considering teams needed to use things like Calamity to close things out.

[drowsy minnow]

t3 should be high value/high value within their specialism, and not hard countered by spam especially if cross terrain type (as it's basically unsupportable)

imo a lot of core stuff fails that competency test, and arm gets 2 very good antispam units, thor especially is basically everything in one

thor -should- be good, just core should have very good things too

[stray turret]

Yeah the Demon is a first one I consider rather good. I think this should happen to Cor T3 - improve Shiva (as in Balance pack), get T3 tank (as good as Thor), lower price and HP of Jug and make it faster (essentially it should sit between Demon and Beh, so practially on par with Titan). Then it I could consider it as good as Arm, but I would still miss a smaller fast raider T3 unit, perhaps with lasers to counter spam

[drowsy minnow]

imo that's why the demon is 'overused'

it's just the competent one :\

[buoyant valve]

I gotta disagree with that most players can not use spybots. There are no in game tooltips indicating that they have a emp explosion on self d. It'd be like adding the paratrooper property to idk, fatboys and laughing at noobs who don't know that they have this hidden mechanic. I'll admit it takes some micro but it's counter pretty hard by spam which doesn't take any skill at all, literally making a lab and setting some way points.

[jaunty talon]

Ive never seen demons get emped by spybots anyways, almost always like the stilleto/abductor, apparently demons got an hp nerf so i guess id say its balanced now

[karmic yacht]

adbuctor is global, spybot is not 😉

[buoyant valve]

The constant HP nerfs to the demon just make it more vulenerable to stunners

[drowsy minnow]

yup, it's all downsides tbh

razorbacks still better unless it's a golf course battle, and even then iffy

[neon epoch]

Razorback just got some minor nerfs

[stray turret]

I think Demon should be kept alone already.. Cor T3 will never be on par Arms if it gets keep being nerfed just because it is better than other Cor T3s. The reason it is used more is that the other Cor t3 are worse than Arm not because Demon is op

[neon epoch]

Cortex still has the best individual units in the game, albeit more expensive

[near osprey]

demons are getting an hp nerf so we are in the right direction

[drowsy minnow]

does it though? T3 arm are flat out better

and the demon is hard countered by long range high damage, or emp, and guess what arm has in spades

juggernauts are very bad value compared to titans

main use is usually brute force walking nuke tbh

[neon epoch]

How are you calculating value?

[drowsy minnow]

utility for metal, dps sometimes a factor in that

iirc clyret was convinced titans were best endgame t3

[neon epoch]

Im saying on a 1 vs 1 scenario cortex winning

[drowsy minnow]

razors cost less metal so in an afk fight should lose to demon

the problem is all these 'comparisions' are in the middle of a golf course with queensbury rules and a half time break

in a REAL BATTLE demon is mostly shat on from long range before it gets anywhere, and/or EMP'd

[neon epoch]

How does razorback avoid this any better?

[drowsy minnow]

if you do manage to get one through it's either a sole unit so dgunned, unlike a rauder scattering, or just zapped from air for free

[drowsy minnow]

more of them for metal, wider spread, much smaller hitboxes so pulsars miss in the fog/radar guessing

plus free exceptional AA because arm

[neon epoch]

aa on razer just got nerfed

[drowsy minnow]

also demon is much worse HP for metal than razorback, which it was already slightly under, and razors have always been thought of as glass for the metal

[neon epoch]

Can just send 2 razor worth of fiends for even better effect no?

[drowsy minnow]

usually not when you're using demons, no

sheep did a load of tests akin to those when I was dialing in the demon, and he found that -absolutely everything- trades well into demons

demons are 'overused' because the rest of core T3 is just pants

plus 'op rush value' can condense into making demons a power spike unit, same with razorbacks and dragons

and in those cases it's not the demon's fault tbh

[neon epoch]

Im convinced 99% of why ppl think cortex is trash is cuz of cost

Units themselves not bad

[drowsy minnow]

'pay more to arrive later to the battle, see less of it, be shot from long range or the sky, and do more damage in fewer shots so spam hard counters everything'

demon breaks some of that nonsense and therefore is competent/'op'

note that pro micro CAN get much better value from some units especially when rushed, and even moreso in 1v1

but FOR MOST PEOPLE, core is harder to use

and somehow everyone in loblob has forgotten this

[neon epoch]

Obv higher cost investment is higher risk

Its not even about micro, its about supporting your pushes

Arm is nice cuz u can spam same t3 it over and over until its massed since it cheaper but cor u make one op unit and send it with other stuffs

Ppl forget the 2nd part

[zenith fjord]

Man, if "pay more to arrive later" doesn't describe Cortex in general, I don't know what does.

[neon epoch]

Cortex actually has the cheapest assault t3

Shiva not bad unit for that and armada only has expensive razorback with no aoe

U can rush shiva faster than razor so idk where that arguement comes from they trade fairly well too

[drowsy minnow]

ticks > shiva

to the point they will destroy your own front line

[neon epoch]

If u have t3 u should have juno

[drowsy minnow]

pawns do the same, and can't always juno when you're raiding with shiva

[neon epoch]

This comes back to where i was talking about supporting your pushes

Need some sumo or cans etc or shiva just good for holding other t3 with towers infront

Also in non 8v8 shiva even stronger

Also i like to seperate the spam issue from t3 balance

But generally shiva trade with other t3 very well. Also there are PUBLIC widgets that cause units like shiva to ignore spam

Making every "viable" unit anti spam non aoe since spam is an actual problem esp in 8v8 meta seems like poor solution imo

There needs to be alternativr solution to spam that doesnt require entire game rebalance

[drowsy minnow]

units in general need to be better at handling spam, it's the only long term fix. widgets shouldn't be a requirement like that for basic competency though

thing is shivas are meant to be amphib assault, which is not possible to support overmuch, salas are nice but also rapidly killed by shiva ff

[drowsy minnow]

you can't entirely when arm t3 is also some of the best antispam in the game

thor in particular has no right to be quite so 'fuck everything'

razorback shoots too well, but it makes sense it's good vs spam

thor needs to work out what it should specialise in, and yes I'm aware they see less use in loblobs, which should hopefully mean they don't care so much that I want to fix the OPness in mortal realms

[cosmic atlas]

How do you explain then the higher cor winrate

[stray turret]

Cor units are better individually but the value per money (metal) is favouring Arm.. Arm is apparently historically favoured due to reasons like they represented the “soviet”, they were the bad ones, they have scratched/rusty texture.. We are now trying to equalise it a bit and make the game more interesting by having actually balanced factions. We can discuss if Mammoth or Sharpshooter is better in T2, but T3? I don’t think there is any discussion on which is better tbh.. Cor needs improvement there and the economy (wind) to be considered on par. Otherwise we will just keep seeing Arm and Cor will be used only by top tier as they can prove they can win even with that

[drowsy minnow]

grunts

[cosmic atlas]

We should do something about this too then

Because the speed nerf wasnt enough to make them equal to pawns

[cosmic atlas]

Shive is very good for its cost imo like massing t3 thugs

[drowsy minnow]

grunts are -probably- okay, centurions need some work though

power flow from ticks > grunts > cents > fiends works well

grunts literally hold up all of core though, and nerfing them makes core t2 position really unsteady

[stray turret]

the speed diff of 6 is quite a lot now. Cor does not have a good fast scout in botlab.. Before Grunts were a lot better than Pawns, now I am not sure, guess it is ok now

But higher tier, Arm wins - hence it is so much used in larger team games

[austere turtle]

Bruh shivas may aswell not be amphibeos the only time when that is usefull is when youre navy and youre building an amphib lab for a land invasion

when youre sending shivas through an entire ocean the enemy will have enough time to scout it and even build enough pulsars to just kill them at the shore or send a titan or thor there

[jaunty talon]

there is the salamander

[austere turtle]

yeah but the shiva being amphib is not an argument

[jaunty talon]

?

i guess point is no reason give deamon amphib

[cosmic atlas]

Core grunts dominate t1 and then u have easy transition to sheldons who arw the most op unit in t2 and almost impossible to punish

[stray turret]

This is the firt time I hear someone talk about strong Sheldons.. I would exchange them for Hounds anytime.

And Shiva is really not good T3 imho, Rauders just dominate early T3

Cor just needs a bit of improvements including Eco to be equal to Arm

[cosmic atlas]

Sheldons demolish hounds and seem to outrange everything for very low cost

[stray turret]

Hound is faster, higher dps, higher hp and cost less metal. Can be switched to gaus cannon for frontline role. And Sharpshooter eats them for breakfast in range as well

[jaunty talon]

The units have their uses

[cosmic atlas]

Honestly sheldons range makes a bigger dif

[stray turret]

not if radar jammers are used.

I would argue Sheldon is worse than Hound which we could discuss forever, but no way Sheldon is OP imo

[cosmic atlas]

Op because for how versatile they are for their price

[drowsy minnow]

hounds literally have two firing modes, making them doubly versatile?

[cosmic atlas]

Yes one that can hit still target and one that can actually hit moving targets for less dmg

[drowsy minnow]

tbh hounds should probably be plasma only, and require a gunslinger escort or something

[stray turret]

exactly.. Hounds are better than Sheldon, but regardless, Sheldon is definitely not op imo

[near osprey]

sheldons absolutely destroy hounds

[drowsy minnow]

sheldons counter hounds, hounds counter basically anything T1

[near osprey]

anything t2 counters t1

[drowsy minnow]

hacksually, there's a good window where T1 > T2, as they're better value dps for the metal

hounds however can just kite that infinitely
so the crossover phase has minimal punishment time

[near osprey]

there is no such window

[cosmic atlas]

There is until you get 10 hounds

[near osprey]

more like 3 or 5

[cosmic atlas]

But if hounds beat t1 then sheldons shit t1 from the other side of earth

[drowsy minnow]

I seem to rarely fight sheldons tbh, but pretty sure a wide enough scattering of light T1 could enclose them much more easily than it could hounds

if they're poking and dancing from behind porc, it's a bit different

[near osprey]

this t1 would die to pyros or whatever

[drowsy minnow]

depends what they're with yes, I try to chuck some sumos in personally

[stray turret]

@cosmic atlas , @near osprey Guys what are you talking about? The Sheldon gets his ass beaten 1:1 or multiple v multiple

And the longer range of sheldon is less of an advantage than the extra speed of hounds

[near osprey]

no shit if they just stand there at hound's range

[civic quest]

lm ao

[stray turret]

Ok so Sheldon wins when they fight beyond the range of hound and the hounds must not move.. awesome. The 20 extra speed of Hounds is greater advantage imo

but saying Sheldon is OP is just ridiculous imo tbh

[near osprey]

hounds wont get close without being severely damaged or killed by pyros

[stray turret]

You are just bringing scenarios where Shledon winds.. I could do that for Hounds, it is pointless. I am not saying the Hound is always better (Though I do say I would preffer it to Sheldon), but I am saying the Sheldon is imo definitely not op

[near osprey]

i know of no scenarios where hounds win

[stray turret]

I just showed you 2

[near osprey]

these are completely unrealistic

[stray turret]

they can also just run around sheldons

[near osprey]

sheldons will always engage hounds at max range

[stray turret]

and I dont think it is so unrealistic.. hounds can avoid the sheldons shots, whereas when hound switches to gaus the other way impossible

[near osprey]

hound ball cant avoid shit

[stray turret]

no man, you won't convince me Sheldon is OP.. just because of extra range and being worse in everything else. I never heard anyone complaining about sheldon. What would you say about Starlight or Sharpshooter then?

[civic quest]

sheldon not op but they do beat hounds

like 90% of the time

[near osprey]

man you have like 6 games if you use the same nickname ingame, and you keep arguing with people way more experienced, including austin who is #1 team player on leaderboards atm?

[cosmic atlas]

Sheldons range is mode valuable in breaking frontlines than hounds speed

[cosmic atlas]

Huge dofference in cost and cant even function without energy

And as hornet said they can always run behind porc

Also imo their range makes reclaim easier if you lose them

The power of sheldons come from the fact they dont need to commit to anything just slowly making u bleed and forcing u to go juno

[jaunty talon]

This has nothing to do with demons bruh. I guess ur just mad at sheldons being decent

[stray turret]

I have this nickname for maybe 3 weeks and I play closed games with friends usually including AI so it doesn't count is that a problem for you? If you want only opinions of top 5 people then sure the rest of us can leave
All I am saying is Sheldon is not OP, not that it is always better than hounds.

[near osprey]

you can have an opinion, as well as i can disagree with it

[stray turret]

I am in no way saying you cannot 😉

[jaunty talon]

Well i take issue with ur name lol

[fair leaf]

sheldons win against demons. don't believe me? well, just think about it

[jaunty talon]

lol

[near osprey]

if you add 1 spybot, sure

[cloud fossil]

junos the shit

[sage flame]

do you know the conditions of these tests? experiences in game differ

[drowsy minnow]

they looked like golf course battles which in theory should favour demon far more than real game situations

[teal oak]

in my experience Core t3 does sorta feel dogshit

it badly needs a medium sort of bruiser that isn't moving at glacial speed, akin to Thor or Titan, seems so weird Arm gets a big heavy tank/mech and core has nothing medium sized at all

Also juggs are just bad, it costs more than 3 thors, is slower, does less comparitive DPS, less comparable health even (despite being a core unit wtf?) AND it doesn't get 3 sets of EMP missiles.

Core does do fine in general but T3 core just always feels to me like it's badly missing something similar to a thor

[drowsy minnow]

I have a T3 cor tank cooking but just don't have time to finish it atm

[austere turtle]

making mass shivas means you have a lot of rockets flying at any time that alone makes them kind of shit

arbiters are good early on but ones you get too many of them theyre bad for yourself and the shivas shoot even faster then arbiter

[austere turtle]

oh yeah allso arbiters are propably best used with manual targeting but i dont think anyone does that with shivas

[zenith fjord]

The problem with manually targeting shivas is they have two weapons with completely different characteristics and reload times.

[austere turtle]

yeah thats what i mean, if we had a dedicated brawling t3 cor unit then maybe people would just use the shiva in the back with manual targeting

rockets might need a buff for that tho

[stray turret]

Honestly if Cor had dedicated T3 brawling unit, people would just not use Shivas at all as they would just cause ff. I hear some people say they are not bad, for me they are the worst T3

[drowsy minnow]

I want people to have the choice

if you want to jockey shivas, great; if you want a tank line, great. just have the damn choice rather than a few tepid things that will probably mostly kill you instead

[sage flame]

sadge tests

[drowsy minnow]

and people wonder why I give up taking balance discussions seriously ¬_¬

[sage flame]

ask 10 ppl thoughts on balance, get 15 opinions

[drowsy minnow]

pretty much

semi autonomous demon balance being vastly worse than pro jockey'd demons is real though, and doubtless relates to the disparate feedback & reactions. boils down to core needing better afk fighters with lower micro potential

[wary turret]

well thats super unhelpful

[karmic yacht]

Citation needed moment

[tiny jolt]

I kind of like cor being the faction with big micro potential.

The drastic difference between well microed units and afk units is one of my favorite parts of this game.

That being said, Arm is advertised as the strategic faction (read careful attention to unit choice and control) with cor as the powerhouse faction (read, afk big fighters to win). So cortex being the heavy micro faction required faction seems a bit counterintuitive. It makes sense though if you consider big powerful guns and the need to avoid friendly fire.

[drowsy minnow]

problem is it just results in cor units being unbalanced for non micro usage

a lot of the balance disparity issues that exist in mortal realms would be greatly mitigated if that were more evened out

[tiny jolt]

True. As much as I love manual firing banishers vs balls of spam, it sucks having to do that 24/7 to be any amount of effective.

And that feeling goes for a lot of cortex units matchups vs most other things.

[austere turtle]

marauders are propably the unit that gets the most use out of micro and even without micro theyre good

[frail bramble]

Idk about most use out of micro, catapult/spy bot/tzar/gunslinger/liche/etc all benefit very heavily from it.

Micro is in general very good but there are some units that are next to useless without micro and I'd say they benefit more than marauder by far (worse than useless due to friendly fire in many situations)

[pine snow]

or they just get killed having accomplished nothing, like gunslingers

[gleaming meteor]

wait, why do you need to micro marauders

[jaunty talon]

Is there any unit you dont need to micro?

[karmic yacht]

llt 🙂

[austere turtle]

marauder without micro is 1 dead eco, with micro its multiple dead if you prevent them from dying in afus blast

its the most common game ender wich is why i say its the one that benefits the most from it. Having to micro a unit like the arbiter or catapult just to deal normal damage istn a huge benefit in my opinion

[frail bramble]

You still need to control it and it benefits from some set target but behemoth probably least micro intensive moving unit :p

still need to micro it's support forces though.

[austere turtle]

yeah grunt spam and behemoth is afk strategy for when youre on 10fps

[fierce delta]

It's really not that hard to understand that lasers attacks are balanced around distance and it makes for a more interesting gameplay allowing to micro the unit depending if you want more dps or stay long range for safety or whatever.
Demon is a flat dmg with same range as Razors, nothing unique is added to gameplay, just a buggy long range fire attack, so it has 1,7x dmg per metal than Razors at max range and it doesn't allow for any interesting micro or gameplay.
The 10% nerf to HP did help to negate no brain 1 click tho.

[drowsy minnow]

further it is the more it will miss though, and it does friendly fire damage

you get much better aoe vs spam with manual control vs fight-move also

[teal oak]

I just think core t3 needs a bruiser type unit badly

Similar weight class to thor, and has to be just as good, not half speed and emp target for no particular reason

[jaunty talon]

dude

[teal oak]

Like I have no idea why jugg is such a fuckin meme unit compared to arm t3

[summer oriole]

jugg is bit too slow mostly and hand cannon spreads bullets too much for mid range but its still pretty strong if you dont get it out of position

cause titan has speed so it can run away if you miss position it

[lavish haven]

the various stats of jugg and behe are kind of irrelevant in your typical 8v8. All that matters is that the price is too high relative to lolcannon value. Play without lolcannon, and magically cortex t3 is much more valuable.

[jaunty talon]

a good strat is get jug/behe then make it a puish by spamming behind it- stonk if no dgun

to be fair jug is like a glorified catapult lol

[fierce delta]

Jugg you need a lot of micro to not lose it to commander and you gotta have air scout spam for radar plus grunt spam and juno to remove jammer. It's a lot harder to do than spamming demon at 20 mins and hope 1 get through and win the game.
There is a reason you only very rarely seen Jugg rush win games and when it does it's by an op player.

[teal oak]

3 thors are better than jugg in every way, cheaper, faster, more dps application, emp missiles, more health, 3 dgun targets imstead of 1

Jugg is a fuckin joke

Anyone who builds one is trolling

[jaunty talon]

bruh

[regal mantle]

I mean he's not wrong, there is a reason every eco position goes armada

[teal oak]

I am a core main yet somehow have more arm games than core because I main eco, 5d chess

[fossil peak]

I am feeling this lately. I've tried core eco a bunch lately but the t3 lab still just feels lackluster and the demon feels a tad too squishy for cost to me.

I've gone back to shiva and catapult spam

[teal oak]

just make Arm lab

how to best play core, ask for a t2 arm con > op

[drowsy minnow]

it really is, demons are even softer than razorbacks for the metal cost

'just get an arm con' shouldn't be the solution to 90% of the balance issues

[naive shell]

yeah demons feel kinda underwhelming now that snipers and spybots are good again imo, catas and shivas op

[drowsy minnow]

problem is a proper solution to this is a recalibration of the core T3 lab as a whole,which A: takes mad time, and B: will probably be too large a change at once to get approved

shivas being faster in water is one step, demons having more HP now they're not amphib, and a solid core T3 brawler tank as a meatshield / shove unit that won't be freely popped by snipers constantly

[fossil peak]

Core t3 could still be made better with some buffs

[drowsy minnow]

it could, but the issue is more lacking roles than dps efficiency

karg in particular is hard to buff as it's all terrain

[fossil peak]

I'm aware, but I would like the lab to be less than useless and numbers can still help

[drowsy minnow]

understandable entirely yes

have you played my balance pack? it helps a bit there

[fossil peak]

I have not. I prefer to play core experience most of the time in the time I have available to play

[drowsy minnow]

fair enough, it might help see how things could be improved via numbers though

[spiral knot]

third party balance tweaks are difficult to assess, because they're not played widely enough to develop a meta, and the specific modifications are often difficult to track down, especially when they change

Things that play better in a smaller pool of players who are often flying pretty blind with what the changes are are going to play quite a bit different in an official balance patch

[drowsy minnow]

can be yes, it's why I keep changes infrequent, but people are used to the pack now as it's been around a while

mostly it's rounding off rough edges anyway, removal of 'core tax'es, etc

[brazen heart]

Demon still super strong unit

[teal oak]

I think demon is ok, I think the friendly fire nature of them isn't mentioned or recognised enough

I see all the time people killing their own demons with demons slightly behind

[drowsy minnow]

it also never shows up in the 'I put X units in a golf course and demon killed them' tests, which is literally ideal case for demons

[teal oak]

I still think the larger issue is the rest of core t3 as a whole

it's really badly missing a unit in the thor/titan weight class

and jugg is undertuned quite severely imo

[karmic yacht]

Jugg sucks for cost yeah

[fierce delta]

With the mausers fix, you pretty much need both factions now for mid game no matter which one you start with
If you start armada sheldons/fiends and afus are very nice to have and if you start core you need ticks, sniper/starlight, annihilator, emp launcher ect
Same for t3, each faction have tools that are exclusive to them, that's what make the game fun to play.
It's probably going to be more standard to play both kinda quickly depending on the map and playstyle (air players sharing t2 cons will most likely happen a lot more on macro maps).
I don't think with demon t3 core has anything lacking now against t3 armada, only titans/thors are better but those come late game, t3 core is better for midgame and late game the lolcannon end the game, titans are very rarely winning games in a high level match

[drowsy minnow]

juggs are very bad value for their dps output & speed, and considering they're a dgun target, objectively worse than multiple thors aside from being a walking nuke

titans I see people praising all the time tbh, including (and especially) high level players, iirc clyret was saying they're best T3 unit

[spiral knot]

Most games end before late t3 is very viable, including titans. They're strong in numbers but there's never a reason to make numbers when you can just make a lolcannon instead, unless you're playing FFA

[fierce delta]

Yeah i agree but Jugg plays like a Tzar, you rush one super fast and you try keep it alive with support and if you can dodge the dgun kill most ennemy commanders with it and push far enough to do big dmg you won the game. It's not meant to be spammed like titans.
Same as a tzar you make one super fast while other team is on lower tech than you. It's basically the same concept but for t3.

So if you buff it, you make it super strong, just like the people saying tzar should be buffed, coz they think it's a fighting unit like the others.

[drowsy minnow]

so basically 'if you already won, then it's something you can maybe win with'? compared to the supposed 'game ender' value of a thor, it's pretty poor?

maybe core needs less power density in units, so the 'but what if it's rushed' argument preventing general competence crops up less

[spiral knot]

Tech rushes like that are not something you do when you're ahead, they're a big gamble because you put yourself at a big unit disadvantage and open yourself up to a game-ending dgun

[fierce delta]

it's more a gamble play, you hope to not take dmg before you finish it and then you hope to be able to do huge dmg with it.
Usually when it comes out the other team doesn't know it so they aren't prepared for it, then just slowly push foward and nothing other than dgun can stop you in time.
You definitly not winning before it, it's kinda like any other rush play, instead of building afus you decide to do all in on a Jugg.

[fierce delta]

Yes they are but that phase of the game we very rarely play, coz we have a super cheap full auto berthas with longer range, that's there to end the game but sadly it comes at around 35 mins so the Titans only have time to walk and shot a few times before the game ends in 98% of the time

[drowsy minnow]

so they're intended to be units to be rushed at disadvantage and gambled with then, OR you have to be massively econ ahead to do so? I can see the odd unit having that intentional balance but it is completely backwards if many units are hamstrung by the logic, whatever it is

it's almost irrelevant as to the why really, the result is a lot of units in one faction that are much harder to safely use, in terms of cost, utility, micro needed, friendly fire, lacking antispam capability, compared to the other

I am constantly purplexed how people just cannot see it aside from 'well that's how it's always been'

outlier units like gunslingers in an otherwise rounded lab are fine, they work as they're outliers, if all arm bots were gunslingers things would be a bit rum

[spiral knot]

That's not the argument at all. It's that these units have a powerful niche that many players don't get, but if you give them a general stat buff that niche becomes extremely overpowered. Like if you give the tzar lasers like you've often suggested, as a rushed unit it will literally be unstoppable by t1 and all early t2, making a dgun the only possible solution. Understanding these kinds of niches is vital to making balancing decisions, because if you just go "people don't make this enough, lets buff it" you open up tons of broken loopholes.

[drowsy minnow]

niche units are fine in a niche as long as rest of roles are covered by alternatives

tzar sponsons are to let it fire at far targets preferentially with main gun, as they can handle closer units. it would still need support but it would be a lot better at not shooting your own units

but in the situations where it's rushed and microed by a top tier player, that extra dps won't help it much nor change anything significant

[spiral knot]

Right, but as a rushed unit spam is its only weakness (besides dgun). If you mitigate that weakness then it no longer has any. You're approaching balancing it as if it's a main fighting unit, when that's not its actual role, and if you give it tools to perform in that role without vastly changing its stats to take it out of the tech rush role, then it will be broken.

[drowsy minnow]

it would have a cost increase too most likely, but if that is the sole intended role, then why is the parrow also given high cost to prevent a similar rush? it leaves the only main tank as the tiger which is weaker than bulls in groups / less aoe

(tigers being a bit faster and in small amounts having better trades with bulls is useful, not saying tigers always bad)

[spiral knot]

poison arrow is a very different unit and IMO it sucks ass, not going to make arguments in its defense

[drowsy minnow]

you then also have the banisher with high cost and poor 'unit IQ', and then that's half the core veh roster hamstrung one way or another

how would you suggest buffing parrows to competency then, without the 'but what if it's rushed' argument biting it in the rump?

turret speed is my main gripe with the damn things, they can't shoot to save their lives

[spiral knot]

i would just delete it, it's a completely redundant unit with salamanders which are better in every conceivable way. Otherwise completely redesign it

[fossil peak]

I'll agree with hobo. Sponsons on tzar would be insane

[drowsy minnow]

admittedly that did predate salamanders, so core veh had no good antispam option to try to escort it with

[spiral knot]

It's really weird for 1 lab to have two amphibious assault units that basically serve the same role, no other lab has that. Anyway it's kind of besides the point, I agree that core has lots of unfilled roles, but the solution isn't to arbitrarily buff units that already have a strong role, like tzar/demon/shiva etc. It's to add new units or redesign existing redundant ones (like parrow)

And half of t3 balance problems, especially late t3, all come down to the fact that lolcannons are way, way too cheap.

[drowsy minnow]

if parrow could be reworked into a better generic non-stupid non-nanny-required MBT then that would also work to solve the issue

[wispy kelp]

bUt GamEs nEed tO enD aT 60 mInutEs

[spiral knot]

i mean they do, but lolcannon is easy to build well before 40m even without a dedicated tech rush for it

[drowsy minnow]

lolcannon being costlier makes more sense, I've always agreed that to be the case

[wispy kelp]

im stating the reason why some people dont want to see LOLcannon buffed
thats litterally it btw

one thing i will point out is that in ashes of the singularity
multiweapon cruisers were a pain to rebalance

[spiral knot]

there were tweaks floating around for a while to triple its cost, I'm not sure why that never gained traction, seemed like an unambiguous positive to me. lolcannon costs less than 2 juggs lol

and its infinitely better at doing damage than 2 juggs

[wispy kelp]

litteral months and it was done for making sure the cruisers didnt lose too baddly to frigate spam

its way to much to ask zecrus to constantly balance IMO for multi weapon based units
as changing the secondary weapon leads to a bunch of mess and confusion later

it took me and resopmok a few months of testing things
at one of the released tests assualt cruisers which are not meant to handle frigates were practically anti everything

if there is one faction identity that core follows
its that their units facade in their usefulness more than arms
they tend to do something even if they lose

[fossil peak]

I have a lot of opinions on core units as of late.

[drowsy minnow]

which made a lot of sense in TA days when only core had rezbots

'disposable and rezzable to do it again'

[wispy kelp]

TA also had a command system so bad that it actually hurts to play TA now that spring came along

[drowsy minnow]

perspectives always useful, especially if you were arm main before

seems people main arm and dip into core for a few bits, unless they 1v1 in which case all hail grunts and fiends

[wispy kelp]

sheldons dont work in 1v1

[drowsy minnow]

1v1 I get good milage from sumos
(slow milage, but they get there)

[wispy kelp]

its actually the core med tank that core does best

[drowsy minnow]

a ball of stouts is hard to argue with either, iirc hobo joe was carried into the loblob on a raft of the things

[wispy kelp]

he got into that discord because i invited him
as he was doing gridmenu stuff

[spiral knot]

stouts go brrrrr

[drowsy minnow]

I didn't mean quite that literally

[spiral knot]

i'm not that good im only 30os, i've just played this game for like 15 years so fundamentals are pretty intuitive

i just abuse basic macro competancy to get away with doing well with extremely simple unit comps because i'm actually very bad at changing up my strategy midgame

[fierce delta]

why would you want to change Tzar, it's a unique unit that's super fun to play, high skill ceiling and perfectly well balanced already. One of the few things that's viable to do on core t2 veh.

[wispy kelp]

its a really good generalist unit on move orders alone

and its not bad to put into armies
it has HP to tank and a big gun to splash light turrets

[drowsy minnow]

because you usually only get good value as a top percentile player, mortals usually don't, it dies to trivial things, usually tickspam which is 0apm to set up and core are very bad at countering. putting a tzar on the front usually results in it blasting your own front away unless you watch it constantly

[wispy kelp]

on dsdr i remember getting a tzar out in 8 minutes
and it was really domminant but it needs a transition after that which is tigers or banisher or eco

tick spam is extremely counterable by grunts alone
grunts beat on cost without micro

[drowsy minnow]

I should try tzars more now salas are mainline though, it might be a little different

but I still think at the least they need better aiming skills, better target preferences

the sponsons were to enable that primarily

[spiral knot]

some units take more skill to use well, that's not a weakness but a strength. So long as it's not UX obfuscation like the old liche was

[wispy kelp]

im aware of a case where tzars fire when it shouldnt
that is a case of unit script being wrong

[drowsy minnow]

sure, as long as there's good alternatives. as I say gunslingers are a nice option to have, as you also have welders

and when core does have a micro heavy unit specifically, eg the commando, it's really poor in most cases (glass jaw to emp)

[drowsy minnow]

will discuss that with you then, might be able to fix it

[spiral knot]

You keep doing that, suggesting buffing already strong units because of some hole in cores roster. I agree there's holes in cores roster, but the solution isn't to make existing units broken, it's to add or rework units to properly fill that hole

[fierce delta]

tzar you pretty much want to use on hold fire with set target and you have ur commander behind it for protection and repair

[spiral knot]

tzars don't need to be changed. Core just needs other weak vehicles to change

[drowsy minnow]

that would be fine too as I say. the sponsons were an idea that predated salamanders

[fossil peak]

If you wanted what I'd touch as a core main without touching arm. Sumos should be a tad faster, theyre abysmally slow. They could gain 5 points of speed to be more wieldy and still be slower than zeus and the sheldons they protect.

Demon feels a tad squishy to me, id give it a little health.

Idk why the behemoth needs to be slower than a mammoth. Core has so many abysmally slow units that it locks them out of really seeing much play considering these units are also expensive.

Behemoth could gain 5 speed, a near 30% increase, and still be slower than the mammoth.

[drowsy minnow]

would it be considerably broken though if the tzar were just -not stupid- by default, eg preferring distant targets, and trying to waste barrel travel time less?

[drowsy minnow]

the general core ethos seems "late to the war for more cost, only to overkill more and probably your own units into the bargain"

[fossil peak]

It's a bad ethos and doesnt function. Being late is dead

[drowsy minnow]

sumos also cost a relatively high amount to fire per shot, for unclear reasons

[fossil peak]

These units rarely see play

[wispy kelp]

they are a t2 unit
they require fusion already to even be made or advance geo

[spiral knot]

If the targeting for the tzar were to change it'd need to be part of a larger target priority rework, having one unit have special rules like that would be very bad. And a larger target priority rework would completely upend half the balance of the game

[fierce delta]

no i don't think it would make it broken, i think same as shivas, if shivas wouldn't even want to fire at ticks and just ignore them it would change a lot and improve things imo

[wispy kelp]

thats how you should look at unit firing costs

they are meant to tax you on making the next unit if you are engaging

snipers make that fundamentally clear in ways that people tend to miss

[drowsy minnow]

makes sense, but why is welder half the price to fire per shot?

[zenith fjord]

A complete target priority pass would make the game so much better though.

[drowsy minnow]

it would also help solve the spam problem properly

people have to use widgets for destupiding units and that's just far more broken imo

[wispy kelp]

sumo has ~3x the dps

and competantly can take on welders if need be

[spiral knot]

I don't disagree really, but doing so would require heavily rebalancing dozens or hundreds of units, and the pace of balancing in BAR atm is not up to that task

[fossil peak]

Sumo trades well into a lot of units. IMO only thing sumo needs is to be a tiny bit faster

[wispy kelp]

bar doesnt do this completely
and trust me
this is a can of worms that becomes its own mess

far worse than you can imagine
just trying to do things in ashes with targeting priority was painful
as it has to be very intentional to the balance

[fierce delta]

yeah i think only tzar and shivas should ignore ticks imo, coz of the friendly fire issue, you can't have units trying to clear spam in front of them, they just die to friendly fire, it's kinda dumb how strong tick spam is against shivas coz of that, if there we not10 iq and would not fire at ticks it would buff shivas massively i think

[drowsy minnow]

has dropoff though, and doesn't have the magic burst + chaining that lightening weapons have

[wispy kelp]

its worth noting that FF protection only by drawing a line simulating the arc of the shot

even at max range welders still lose to cans

[drowsy minnow]

a lot of what I'm usually arguing for is not so much artificial intelligence with unit aiming, but less artificial stupidity. it also means less advantage gained with 'cheat widgets'

baseline unit handling experience should not be utter frustration

[drowsy minnow]

banishers have this problem too, they waste all their dps on ticks / shoot whatever is guarding them

note I want to buff arm units too where needed, eg centurion aiming is sub par

just happens that units that do more damage in fewer shots, eg core, are hard hamstrung

[zenith fjord]

Next you'll be saying that forgetting to put a catapult on hold fire shouldn't wipe your front line. Crazy talk.

[drowsy minnow]

they're intentionally mass aoe unit and as a T3 outlier micro is less onerous

[fierce delta]

yeah i agree if the game wants to be "mainstream" on steam or whatever it doesn't look good how it is right now
but it's hard work to change that and keep balance

[zenith fjord]

Nah, all it'd actually need is to be forced to command-attack only. Making it not shoot would be a buff, lol.

[drowsy minnow]

I mean they could be hold fire default, by default

[drowsy minnow]

maybe not so much as you think, as a lot of the balance is done by how it plays in loblobs, and the de facto there is OCD micro. this just lowers the skill floor for getting sane value

[fierce delta]

If i knew how to code i would just do a widget to be able to add some units to a "blacklist" that a unit just ignore with some parameters

[zenith fjord]

Said widget already exists.

[drowsy minnow]

it already exists, that's the problem

so people with cheat widgets get better game value than defaulters, which is wrong

[zenith fjord]

People whine about it, when all it really does is make units less stupid.

[drowsy minnow]

and imo that should be game baseline anyway

[fierce delta]

ive never noticed it in a game

[drowsy minnow]

you'd just assume it was manual set targetting probably

[zenith fjord]

You wouldn't, because it'll just look like somebody microing their units competently.

[fierce delta]

snipers/sheldons/shivas ignoring ticks i think is very noticable and must be super weird, coz it's part of core gameplay

[spiral knot]

not really high alpha shots, but slow moving projectiles with large aoe. Like ticks fuck with snipers and starlights, but they aren't going to make snipers and starlights kill each other

[drowsy minnow]

it's both really, but they make it worse yes. banishers especially as they literally change missile course after firing, can steer it right into your units

[zenith fjord]

The game does have some target priority built-in too, a sniper will prefer high-value targets if there are any in range. But it'll waste that first shot on a tick if there aren't.

[drowsy minnow]

and banishers will too, but they all shoot the -same- tick (if you're lucky, otherwise the rockets just went in to the arse of your tanks)

[zenith fjord]

And this assumes you aren't using a fight command, which overrides target priority. Don't use fight commands.

[fierce delta]

yeah sure but if you are getting tick spammed you usually have issue getting los on the good units, just ignoring the tick completly on the units you want to would change fighting in a very big way

[spiral knot]

When does fight command change target priority?

[fierce delta]

it become closest unit or something like that i think, over high value units

[drowsy minnow]

nearest first

[spiral knot]

huh, well i'm glad i never use fight command lol

[drowsy minnow]

talking of target priority, has anyone else noticed the AA doesn't seem to be too fussed about fighters vs bombers any more?

[zenith fjord]

From the talk earlier, apparently it prefers units that "drop bombs"
Meaning bombers that aren't the liche.

[drowsy minnow]

no, it has an exception for liches
hardcoded armpidr weapon ID case

[zenith fjord]

Does it? That's good then, I must have missed that part of the conversation.

[drowsy minnow]

point is the whole thing seems to be not working, from a completely non scientific set of observations

[spiral knot]

it's unchanged, AA will just continue firing at its first acquired target until that target dies or goes out of range, then when it retargets bombers will be at the top of the list

It is still working, I did a code dive and several tests when someone brought it up the other day

[drowsy minnow]

that might explain some of what I saw then

ah okay, thanks, I'd missed that. how much is hardcoded vs automatic, eg do we need to wire legion in specifically?

[spiral knot]

its based on weapon type, any aircraft that has AircraftBomb or TorpedoLauncher as a weapon gets top priority

And the hardcoded liche weapon, as you mentioned

[drowsy minnow]

trying to find the file again, one sec

[spiral knot]

unit_aa_targeting_priority

[drowsy minnow]

10 points to calvin, thx

if weapons[i].onlyTargets.vtol

[fierce delta]

liche is higher priority then bombers i guess?

[drowsy minnow]

that's what I was looking for, so hopefully it is automagic then, and what we were seeing was latching onto a fighter etc first

[spiral knot]

game-side priority has them at the same priority, I'm not sure how engine priority works. Some mix of proximity and total cost, so liches probably get natural priority just because of how expensive they are

[karmic yacht]

speed is the universal omega op stat

[celest aurora]

Marauders should also be slower than T2 tanks, else nothing can catch them. Currently, they are faster than everything except flashes, which they destroy easily

[vestal tide]

there is a faster tier 2 tank, the jaguar, and it has aa also. but it is arm 😛

[celest aurora]

Just move Thor to the Core lab. It fits much better with the Core ethos. There is a reason the biggest tank in TA was a Core one, not an arm one. Arm is supposed to be for fast, light, stealthy units. At the moment, it has those, higher dps and range, and also the biggest tank in the Thor.

Should be tactical nuke blasts. The Juggernaut is currently very underwhelming for supposedly the best unit in the game, it even gets stomped on by Thors!

Core is supposed to be slow, but easy to use and with overwhelming firepower. Currently, it is slow, hard to use and with UP firepower.

[teal oak]

sigh, everything is Arm 😦

[celest aurora]

Marauders are speed 95, jaguars speed 90. Marauders are the exception to the rule that tanks are faster than bots, and higher tech levels are slowere than lowre tech levels. For some reason...

[cosmic atlas]

I think all their labs are better other than t3 and veh

[austere turtle]

armada has janus wich makes their t1 vehicles better and they have sharpshooters and hounds wich makes their t2 bots better

t1 bots are definetly better for cor but with t2 vehicles im not so sure the salamander is kindof carriying that lab for cortex but everything else isnt really better

I enjoy tigers but i know alot of players think theyre shit

i just like them because they play exactly like stouts and brutes

[stray turret]

after the grunt nerf its no longer the case really - cor id missing tick like unit

[stray turret]

because compared to bulls they are shit

[austere turtle]

yeah but the tigers are easier to pump out in numbers early on

after that they are pretty bad

[drowsy minnow]

I'd like the parrow to be the core MBT, with the tiger the medium raider/early tank. but it needs a lot more competency for that

[austere turtle]

when i have all of my brutes from early on left i like to complements them with tigers for an early rush

[stray turret]

Isn’t arrow too slow and overall “worse” than it could be, because it’s amphibious? The Salamander is as fast as Tiger - it takes the raider unit well and Tiger could be improved&slowed to be better MBT perhaps. Truth is Cor does not actually have a fast raider like the Jag

[drowsy minnow]

yes, so the solution is make parrow land only, but a solid brawler, with faster aiming, OR make it a better amphib assault tank but tzar actually a competant heavy frontline tank, as well as being a rushable

depends if tzar is locked into role of 'rush one or don't bother'

[karmic yacht]

a lot of units are rush them or don't bother

[fierce delta]

Why is demon so low on energy with 90k? It's well below other t3 units, it should be around 110-120k by looking at other t3 metal to energy ratio

[drowsy minnow]

it's buildpower heavier though

[fierce delta]

BP not as much an issue as energy to get, making if at least the same as other t3 would help, core t3 lab is demon on repeat for the most part
and it still has the most dps of any units without any bad side to counter that, why should it get an E discount
the unit was cracked when it was released with super low bp, high hp, amphi ect... It should also lose the E discount imo

[karmic yacht]

thor gets the metal discount xD

[fierce delta]

thors is only really good on strait when you make a ball and push with 10+, it's never played like that in other maps, thors is very rarely made and almost never wins games. Currently it's demon on repeat for every t3 core labs, i hope it won't take 3 or 4 months to get another change

[drowsy minnow]

demons are good, but partly the issue is just rest of core T3 is bad, it's the competent one / less likely to kill your own units

make the rest better options and suddenly less mono demon

[fierce delta]

demon are better than any other t3 units currently, even with the multiple nerf it got;
They are both the best fighting unit and raider unit combined in 1
Rosetta is good map to see how good units are

[rapid vault]

I dissagree, they have low hp so cant really fight snipers or push into defences. I haven't really fought demons except when it was just a means to ending us due to eco advantage.

[fierce delta]

It used to have almost the same hp/metal than razors before the 10% nerf, now it's little worse but they still do a lot more dmg per metal, so overall they take less dmg coz they kill much faster

[rapid vault]

I should clarify, they arent great at frontline duty and pushing into defences, but are very good at raiding.

[karmic yacht]

snipers in transports 😎

yeah as mobile raiders with medium armor they are crazy. force projection

[rapid vault]

Or just use the transport if your arm t2 air

[karmic yacht]

god the abductor...

[rapid vault]

bring a decoy com and a few webbers along in the transport as well

[fierce delta]

yeah, ticks kill all the demon coz they friendly fire and suicide right

[drowsy minnow]

it was always worse than razors

[cosmic atlas]

Bigger units always have less hp per metal to account for aoe immunity and and more stable dps

[fierce delta]

it used to only be something like 5% less before the hp nerf, now it's a lot better

[celest aurora]

However, big units that cost more metal are vulnerable to being surrounded by smaller units that cost the same metal, which are almost always faster and can get a flanking bonus for much higher damage

[cosmic atlas]

But a demon an 10% hp deals the same dps while small units lose

[visual falcon]

reading some of the recent conversations about balance.
it seems every Core which is individually a powerful unit .. moves slowly.

if the mammoth moved to t3 gantry could it be faster ?

or what would the cost be for mounting mammoth laser on a something with good health ?
i really liked the demon when amphib.
i'd love to see something around the demon cost that has dual mammoth lazers instead of the flame

needs to be something in between shiva and juggernaut that actually makes it to the fight.
titans are the best anti-naval in shallow water. that's another consideration for t3 units to balance against. fighting that pesky lasor of de000000m

[fierce delta]

this is almost all the games in op lobby btw, unless it's a heavy wind map
if you do razors you trolling 90% of the time

[drowsy minnow]

short of making the demon objectively worse for cost in basically all ways than razorbacks, and therefore not helping solve the T3 lab disparity issue, I'm unsure how to change that. the demon used in more open battles lacks some of the downsides from the AoE weapon, so with OP micro it is potent, but is still even weaker for cost than razors. The unit is doing what it should be, it's just that loblobs swap cons pathologically so can cherrypick the optimal units for their use case from each lab.

I saw a razorback rush on rosetta yesterday, with rauders as a chaser, at a princely timing of 7 minutes (with 6 probably possible)

lobsters gonna lobster, in short, and will always optimise the fun out of a game

[fierce delta]

Yeah it's not an ez problem to solve, razors are still good if you rush them very fast with coop coz there is no demon on the fields yet but demon is the best unit in the game currently for sure, it demands very little micro, the dmg is really insane and it has long range.
I think a good model is the pyros, super high dmg but low hp and short range and you actually want to come close to units and not stay at range in 95% of cases. That's an unique way of playing the unit and it even has a selfD mechanic to make it really fun to play and be balanced.
The main issue with demon is that the weapon is constant dmg no matter the range and it has huge range with best dps by far in the game, it's literally not respecting fundamental unit balance imo and it offers no unique mechanic or fun gameplay.

Like if you think about it, every t3 unit in the game have a unique way of playing them, each one of them is difference on both labs and that's what makes them balanced. Razors is cracked but it has laser attack and only 550 dps at max range.

I think something is still missing to the Demon that would allow it to be interesting to play and unique, currently it's just a Razor with constant insane damage and razors already wasn't the most demanding unit to micro but demon is by far the most 1 click factory on repeat unit in the game.

Idk, as an example, maybe instead of a beam flame thrower it could have more of a cone to it and less range, melting huge zone in front of it, making it super good to kill many units at once but poor at killing big t3 units. Then you add something like emp missile from the thors but instead it throws fire bombs napalm, making a pretty big AEO on the ground, stopping units from entering it, that way you can temporarely block flow of enemy units.

It's just some ideas coz i really dislike the units currently but im sure many people do like it, coz it's very strong and very ez to build and use. Perfect unit for every skill level.

[drowsy minnow]

cone damage isn't a thing that exists, and scattering too much really breaks the flame visuals. the demon would also miss small targets -more- if it did that, and hit large ones with most of the DPS. if/when volumetric damage natively exists, then yes it would be ideal, but until then the demon is actually best thought of as a T3 pawn, and in a way, a razorback a T3 grunt (with magic arse-shooting abilities).

note though, that as such the demon -can- miss at range, and it has wild friendly fire problems so you have to use them carefully. there is also skill in micro with them, which oddly I rarely see in loblob land, which is force firing the flame streams before a spam stream/well within max range. you then get a wall of fire along the ground that will not miss spam that enters it (this is how they're meant to be safely used as line holders)

I'd argue that razors are easier than demons, and vastly safer. demons will happily kill your afus if ticks camp it, whereas a razorback will surgically (and magically, tbh) remove the whole lot near instantly and with no friendly fire damage at all

the demon being shorter ranged isn't possible, as arm have obscene long range DPS, and by the time the demon is in range it would be dead. it'd also imply it has to be even faster to catch up with razorbacks & zone rauders, which becomes power creep. I did want to give it a self-D blast that leaves a fire puddle, but that'd make it higher skill use so require a nerf in cases it's useful for in mortal realms, and it's already holding up core T3 on its own as is.

[fierce delta]

Okay then if engine can't do it's sad but it is what it is 😦
Idk in high ts lobby we don't use demon to kill spam or to defend afus and kill it by friendly fire, ive almost never seen demon do friendly fire but in some rare cases i noticed it made a difference but it doesn't looked to be controlled by any of the players to do that, it's kinda random where the fire goes.
It's hard to tell at long range if fire is half missing the target or not coz unlike the pawn attack we can't tell where the fire is really hitting and micro against it; something that's possible to do against pawn.

Anyways thx for the replies, ill keep watching demon run around quietly now. 🫣

[drowsy minnow]

there is a feature request for volumetric damage, in part specifically because I need it for real fire, and if/when it's in engine then I'll test an alternate demon that does fire cones. it might make it too much of a friendly fire liability though, as it would by nature fail the line of fire checks, which is Bad Form for units. will have to see how it goes at the time, and to what extent it's possible

[fierce delta]

that's really cool, i think if it has a unique attack it would make it be very interesting and much easier to balance, coz it would not be competing against razor but just be its own unit, with new strength/mechanic that you can tweak without being tied to another unit

[fierce delta]

Here is a very cringe replay, 18 mins demon rush on flat, with no chocke points so you literally can't stop them with the few tools available

very bad gameplay, add nothing to the game, only a big waste of time and showing how bad the direction on the game is going
(salamander and dragon also have huge issue)

[drowsy minnow]

vast open field maps will favour some units more than others, naturally

[karmic yacht]

Is it more op than jags and pawn/grunt/ticks on flat tho?

Can technically def it with sniper + trans, emp bot, abductor?

[fierce delta]

how about watch replay

[fierce delta]

yeah flats probably the best map for demon, coz it's super huge, high metal, high energy and 0 terrain
if you are laning versus a clueless dude you can print demon starting at 18-20 mins because as you said it you want them to be a counter to marauders
while it's not even the same class of unit

aka, marauders dies to a lot of units and defence, even t1 units and t1 popup are a counter to marauders
so you can for example quickly build like 8 t1 popup and it will defend against marauders
meanwhile to defend against a demon you have like 3 options and all of them are nearly impossible to have that fast

[hazy urchin]

focus on your game plz

[drowsy minnow]

it's something that can catch or zone them more than a direct counter/counterpart, esp without the amphib. on maps like flats, rauders can poke anywhere and you can't have a wall of maws along the whole map just in case rauders want to walk into them
the main parallel is the razorback, which itself is reasonable at zoning rauders (except with a lot less friendly fire and the ability to have more/them out sooner)

[gleaming meteor]

demons is empable as fuck

[zenith fjord]

So what were you doing while they stuffed 14k metal into this project?

[drowsy minnow]

typing on discord apparently

[zenith fjord]

haha

[naive shell]

because of how difficult scouting is and how hard aggression that doesn't outright win the game is punished via reclaim, optimal play even on open lane maps often devolves into heavily defensive eco play where both opponents have to guess whether the other is building defenses, eco, or army

in this situation, investing in eco/tech is usually optimal

It is being argued that demons are by far the best unit to "win the game via aggression" , which I don't really agree with, but it is not inconsistent with "optimal" strategy and usually gameplay flow

[fierce delta]

it's really pointless, as the stats shows there is like 1% of players capable of playing op lobby, so it makes sense no one understand when good players try to argue in here and it also makes sense you don't care about balancing the game for people that can actually play it
i will let volshok try his best to argue

[drowsy minnow]

I'm not disagreeing there are outlier cases where pros can get high value from demons, but they're a top level unit and that -should- be the case. as they could with razorbacks before. demons have a lot of downsides, and yes those feature less in open maps like flats

if you can think of a way that demons could be less potent at top level while also not completely sabotaging core T3 for the rest of the playerbase, I'd be interested in suggestions

but the full solution is as I keep saying, a T3 rework, and that isn't a light undertaking

[naive shell]

To an extent, I agree with raikoh that demons are too similar in theme to razors, because well, they are very similar. But also there are a lot of similar units between factions, and I don't think demons and razors are more similar than like, pawns vs grunts, or mauser vs quaker, or even like, sniper vs sheldon

tbh I think the rest of the playerbase needs to just figure out how to use shivas and catapults, and then demon can be made ~50-100% more expensive with more power budget for hp, range, etc and be made more of a thor counterpart, and have more options for messing with where and why it's powerful without being such a strong tempo pusher

[teal oak]

I'd rather they just give core a non shit thor/titan counterpart that isn't flame weapon

[gleaming meteor]

everything except for catapults are pussy units

I do not believe I need further elaboration

[drowsy minnow]

the other other problem, is lobsters don't like change, or relearning their responses, so can resist anything new even if it's needed for the game balance.

you shouldn't need to 'figure out' how to stop most of a lab from killing your own units. the lab has to have easy apm options too. A higher demon wouldn't be a thor counterpart, it'd be more a titan, and it'd lose the mobility it needs.

the crux of it seems to be 'demons can kite razors like grunts can pawns'. suggestions actively requested for how to adjust that matchup, without overpowering razorback further, or slowing demon into uselessness

[drowsy minnow]

I have a tank cooking for this reason
but demon will still be required as antispam or a rauder/razor zoning unit, even if it has less dps or something

[teal oak]

I am not sure why Razor needs to counter Demon honestly? entire Arm lab counters rest of core lab, so

[drowsy minnow]

because lobsters hate change

[naive shell]

shivas counter all of arm t3 lab except titans

[teal oak]

htf is shiva ever gonna catch marauders or thor?

[naive shell]

if you're leaking you already lost

[drowsy minnow]

but more seriously, there is a valid case that it can trade too well with razors on open fields, yes ... but that is also more common itself in loblobs as they seem to love open lane maps, and will micro the feck out of units constantly

[teal oak]

I am not sure it matters, loads of units can counter loads of other units nearly perfectly if microd under perfect conditions

[drowsy minnow]

I agree but it seems high drama in lobster town. IMO the solution isn't so much demons too good as rest of core T3 usually too bad, or slow

[naive shell]

one of the big things I have noticed is that the aoe and dps of demons makes them uniquely nearly impossible to spybot

[drowsy minnow]

it's why I recommend abductors yes, even shuriken can still work

[teal oak]

they can be countered by shuris and those T2 emp transports

[drowsy minnow]

yeah, easily. complete glass jaw, razors hold them off far better

pulsars, snipers, same heavy air response as you'd have to give a thor (and that's the only non-arm counter to thors...)

[teal oak]

I feel like the game needs to be balanced regardless of Arm lobsters honestly, cos it will be a shitshow when 50k steam players join otherwise

[naive shell]

speaking of, just as it is nearly impossible to spybot, it is nearly impossible to dgun

[teal oak]

thor is impossible to EMP, so

[drowsy minnow]

reduced commander damage -might- be a possible thing. IMO that's skill issue, draw the demon fire one direction if you're trying to sneak dgun it

[naive shell]

the thing is that demons won't miss a radar dot, while razors will

[drowsy minnow]

petes/jammers required, yes

or wait until it's out of radar coverage, but hard to guess that one

[naive shell]

You can't put jammers all over on lane maps and hope to have com in position in time

[drowsy minnow]

it's trickier yes. but that same wide dps spread that is useful to demon here, is same reason demons are bad at defending vs spam leaks
whereas razors are godlike

people seem to tunnel vision on the best case scenarios for the unit and disregard the downsides

[naive shell]

Ok but top level players generally don't leak spam

And leaks usually signal the end of the game regardless

[drowsy minnow]

or small chaff in your other units. ticks into your main army is a problem for demons unless micro'd, but noted yes, relatively rarely top level

as I say, it's as if the game is different depending on map/os/teamsize

genuine differential balance suggestions welcome, but mostly the thread just devolves into circular noise

[naive shell]

my balance suggestion is here ^

but I'm not really an op player these days, just a strategy enjoyer

[celest aurora]

How about we have a Lobster Mode where all decent Core units need to have the bollox microed off them, as at present, and a regular game mode for normal people, where the factions are balanced?

[fierce delta]

if you take the T1 exemple as you did
it would be in fact pawns having more range than grunts and no laser drop off
so it would make pawns super unbalanced
if you want to keep the same balance
make demons faster than razors with less range and the units would then be balanced just like t1 pawns/grunts are

[drowsy minnow]

without the range, arm long range everything is a compounding threat, and the backlash from faster demons would be ... quite something, however I might well try it in a test game to see how bad it is in reality. the range also helps offset the lack of hitscan

[fierce delta]

yeah im not saying it would be better overall, they are already pretty fast (but maybe already faster than razor?)
but it since Demon is a pawn essentially and razors a grunt, i think for that matchup to be balanced it would make sense for it to follow the same principle as t1 grunts/pawns, or it's always gonna be 1 sided for demon, just like it would be if pawns had more range than grunts

[drowsy minnow]

demons cost more so should be better, but some sort of zone where razors can poke briefly might be worth trying. would probably mean modifying razor speed as much as demon though

[tiny jolt]

Isn't razor having better surgical spam removal and AA while being cheaper while demon costs more but has more raw power (which comes with friendly fire risk) intended?

Demons should eat razors since they cost more and are more "specialized" for raw kill ground stuff potential.

If razors were a reasonable response to demons, why would you build anything else? Arm should use snipers/starlights, or emp, or bombers to stop demons effectively. I don't think razorback should be the answer to a demon.

Cortex players being able to invest more metal into a demon to catch the incoming razorback should be rewarded with a nice flaming pile of razorback wreckage ripe for reclaiming.

[drowsy minnow]

I think the kickback is coming from there being zero razorback counterplay with OP micro, and they're used to packs of wild razorbacks roaming the land

if I can find some zone where demons still where they need to be in normal lobbies, but loblobs can still bot jockey micro them a bit, that might be worthwhile testing

razors will still trade badly, but they should be maybe be something a demon has to consider, rather than free kill

[tiny jolt]

Could two razors split and kill a demon? Or do demons still win 2v1?

[drowsy minnow]

the problem is the pulsar though, as this means the demons will have to chase the razorback to get in the killing zone, and any razor with a pulsar behind it could bully a demon all week

[fierce delta]

it's not only about 6k metal and 3.8k metal
it's about dps/metal, at max range demon has 1.71x more dps than razors
just like pawns have more dps than grunt
only problem is the range

[tiny jolt]

That makes sense though right? The pulsar has that effect on the demon like it should?

Replace the razorback with anything. It's the pulsar zoning out the demon, not necessarily the razorback doing anything special.

Cortex has answers to the pulsar, and that answer shouldn't be just more demons imo.

[drowsy minnow]

balance isn't a vacuum, if it's set so the matchup is pawn v grunt level 3, demons will lose badly in reality

[spiral knot]

the point is that there are two fast mid-t3 units that are glass cannons, the razorback which is notoriously always on the edge of being too OP, and then there is the demon which has 1.7x more DPS and much higher range

when you look at it in that way it becomes easier to see why it dominates high os lobbies

[drowsy minnow]

but the tradeoff for that is some inaccuracy, no hitscan so wasted dps, and massive friendly fire hazard
I could try some variations on demons, but I'm unsure if a good place can be reached without removing some key aspects

[spiral knot]

friendly fire is a complete non issue with a little micro, hitscan is also not really a big loss either because it has lots of aoe and defeats streams of units without it

[drowsy minnow]

I've seen demons delete bases chasing ticks many times
loblob level, I daresay less of a concern, indeed

[spiral knot]

anything big enough to survive more than like 1 second of sustained fire is probably t3, and so has a big enough hitbox that all the flame will hit regardless

[spiral knot]

that's just full on noob mistake, thats like saying dgun is weak because it destroys your own units

[fierce delta]

those trade off aren't real in our lobby, the real trade off is that it's a bigger unit, so dgun punish it more and emp also
but those counters alone aren't enough to have good gameplay
Razors were a pain in the ass, when i see razors now it's nice that it's not demon

[drowsy minnow]

I do suspect any 'solution' to demons also requires altering their mirror, eg the razorback

but I'll see if I can cook something without it, initially at least

[gleaming meteor]

on a related note, I feel like abductors are going to need a nerf

[drowsy minnow]

have you considered our lord and saviour emp rework?

[gleaming meteor]

Even so

[spiral knot]

i like how everyone predicted that EMP would become broken and unbalanceable once we had the playerbase to optimize the meta for years

[drowsy minnow]

try the emp rework ones, let me know what outliers you found

[spiral knot]

and now we are finally here

[gleaming meteor]

You can prevent an adductor rush by keeping your fighters directly over the battle space, or with like ten+ truck flak, but it is incredibly powerful for how cheap it is

[drowsy minnow]

no disagreement here

[gleaming meteor]

The change to make abductor continuous beam so far seems to be a serious and possibly unintended buff

It's still about the same against large targets like the demons, but it is now significantly more effective against streams

And is even reasonably capable against emp resistant units like salamanders

[drowsy minnow]

it does need tuning down yes, that change was recent & experimental. it needs a reload time between the beam still, and/or lower dps

[gleaming meteor]

I was kinda okay with how incredibly powerful old abductor was, because it was mostly anti large

But at present it's just general CAS that stops almost everything

[drowsy minnow]

it was too good against crowds still, as it could strafe

and vs smaller things it sometimes struggled to hit at all, therefore couldn't 'abduct'

[gleaming meteor]

Under the current condition of abductors being incredibly broken, demons aren't op at all, I would say

But that's a rather abnormal interaction

[spiral knot]

t2 arm air also isn't a given by the time demons show up

[gleaming meteor]

That's basically a massive skill issue

Rapid eco or geo pivot into abductors is highly meta in straits lobbies

[spiral knot]

That's a thing the meta can adapt for, but having required hard counters like that sucks, if you can't deal with a ground unit with similar costs in ground units then it's probably overtuned

[spiral knot]

yeah and those always have a dedicated air player, not every map does

anyone can pivot in any game, but it's significantly harder to do in a lane map with early t3 timings

[drowsy minnow]

if there's no air player a liche rush would have been decisive a heck of a lot sooner

[spiral knot]

not really, in lane maps without dedicated air there are not enough valuable targets for liche rush

[gleaming meteor]

It shouldn't be a dedicated air player that goes abductors in response to an early t3

[spiral knot]

and by the time there are valuable targets, there will be fighters up

[gleaming meteor]

If we're talking early, any dedicated air player is still core

[spiral knot]

it's ditto for tech players in a lane map

[gleaming meteor]

You will have to lose space to buy time to get a t2 arma air lab up and abductors

So demons aren't completely useless. But getting that demon up in the first place took 14k metal investment in a gantry and construction. The abductor response takes about a third of the resources and BP.

[spiral knot]

yes, I'm aware of the tradeoffs, abductors are the standard counter on all maps. My point is that that forced response to a very specific tech for a very specific unit to counter one unit is breaking the design rule to make this less of a rock paper scissors game

[gleaming meteor]

Ye

But my general point is that razor vs demon balance is actually probably less important than demon vs emp balance

[summer oriole]

if we rly want to balance it to be pretty same strenght as razorback we reduce cost and nerf stats acording how much cost was nerffed if demon started to cost less metal it would also have less hp and dmg and it would be balanced

[spiral knot]

yeah i agree, i think the conversation got a bit stuck on razors since they're the closest counterpart, with the current balance you should not be making razors into demons, they just get chewed to pieces

you should make emp and t2 and thors

[zenith fjord]

My opinion remains that gantries and lolcannons are too cheap. Change that, and the issues with either being rushed go away.

[gleaming meteor]

...why should razors be able to fight demons, anyways? Given the sheer number of other tools that arm has against them.

[fierce delta]

i posted a replay, people know you need AA with demon as the only ez counter is to make a lot of shuriken

[drowsy minnow]

trying to mitigate 'demons everywhere' by having razors at least somewhat viable also, even if not trading well

[tiny jolt]

I'd rather see karganeth balanced vs razors as the mirror.

Karg is just a slower, all terrain-tax-paying, less accurate version of a razor.

Razor is a swiss army knife that should be a jack of all trades, master of none. Demon is raw dps on a stick.

If loblobs have optimized the game down to where raw dps on a stick is the only important thing, that's a sign of a problem. Maybe demon is overturned and the DPS just is waaaay too much. Or maybe there's just not good answers to neutralize the DPS stick (or the DPS stick is too resistant to those answers).

[drowsy minnow]

that's the thing, it's worse hp/metal than razorback, not better, and always was. but people insist on trying to bash them into each other, and there's objection that it 'too dps' without nuance. I mean for core T3 a walking flamethrower is pretty on brand tbh

[drowsy minnow]

I'd love kargs to do more, they're too situational, and usually too slow

[tiny jolt]

Would upping the spread on the demon flamethrower do anything meaningful?

Aesthetically an unwieldy weapon spewing fire everywhere could be on brand for the demon right?

More spread might be a buff vs small spam, extra friendly fire risk, and at max range maybe some t3 threats can dodge a few so effective DPS is a bit lower? But if you let the demon get close, you're really cooked?

[drowsy minnow]

yes, it means it would never hit anything small ever, and still do more vs large units

[wanton cradle]

@brazen heart Titans can Kite behe, in an GIGA endgame scenario 15 Titans will kill all tue behe u will ne able to produce

[drowsy minnow]

slowing the fire would give some dodging ability to OP players, but also risk making demon again unable to hit spam, and maybe enable infinitely trading razorbacks potentially

[civic quest]

So when demon buff?

[frail bramble]

It almost feels like Demon would be better as a Shiva level unit with less health and maybe amphib to fit into that rauder/razor early t3 skirmisher/raider role which would allow Shiva to be scaled up into something rivaling Thor in power/tankiness while losing it's own amphib.

This is a whole can of worms as everyone keeps saying though and there are no easy answers (since it's difficult to even get concensus on if things are really an issue and if they are what the issue is)

[drowsy minnow]

'rest of core T3 too bad' and 'demon as generalist damage dealer is better than razorback as generalist damage dealer therefore too common'

[hazy urchin]

As a small side note, it is pretty funny that this thread is named "balance demon" with 27 votes. Everyone wants a balanced demon! Unfortunately nobody can agree on how that looks like...

[drowsy minnow]

it used to be 'buff demon' after the amphib was removed
then got a whole load of yes votes, then it was renamed

[fierce delta]

yeah, i think there is probably 0.01% of people thinking demon is op
the units always has been defended, even tho it used to be so cracked before and even after the many nerf it got, i think it's still very strong
but honestly many players like having an ez unit to use and win games with, including many of the 40+ ts
so they will tell you it's not OP so they can continue abusing the unit and have fun winning games in 20 minutes with demon
But at this rate i don't think many people care about balance, it's not looking good for the video game, the unit could stay at it is, no one would care

[summer oriole]

i personally dont think theres something wrong with demon i think it does its job pretty well considering its price but for some ppl its seems to look too op so i dont think they are going to be happy without cost reducing and with that hp and damage

[drowsy minnow]

they seem to want it to be direct mirror of razorback rather than 1.5 razorbacks. I have something that might be viable as a basis though

[fierce delta]

We all agree demon isn't op on a closed map and Strait is the opposite of Flats, so yes it means if you think demon is not particularly strong on Strait
you are kinda saying it's op on other maps implicitly but how would you know how the game actually plays on others map

[drowsy minnow]

lobsters prefer wide open maps, demons do really well there.

however, observe ^

that's a 'golf course battle' test and in reality I expect demons to trade somewhat to much worse. they probably need some EMP resistance too

[summer oriole]

yes i think its strong but not op

[drowsy minnow]

mashed together, demons beat razors with about 40% hp left
afk demon, the razor can actually kite infinitely due to aiming lag. might be able to hack around it a little.
with micro eg demon moving into razor, the demon trades well again
BUT. arm units have a lot of long ranged dps, and the demon will probably die to 1000 cuts while trying this, so it might end up with demons being freely bullyable

demons have less dps and range, and a bit more health

razorback speed reduced a touch, and demon speed increased a touch

I'll test it more later, but seems possible potential for something there, if the afk demon can be made to still chase the razor properly

it also makes the demon less able to wall off spam, as it's lost some range

[fierce delta]

yeah but you saying that they are strong on the map they are the weakest on, implies they are op on map that don't have a single lane

I think demon are especially an issue on lanes map and Flats is the worst example of that coz there is 0 terrain to create choke points.
I don't know how you balance 20 minutes Demon on a lane map, only emp and commanders can counter it

On maps with techers, like koom and such i don't think they are an issue, coz many choke points and a dedicated techer/air player that can react to them

[drowsy minnow]

when rushed a demon is a power spike unit, as is a razorback, or a tzar, or batch of mausers. what you're fighting is as much that whole strategy as the unit itself

[celest aurora]

How the tables have turned....

[zenith fjord]

7 snipers instagib it.

[drowsy minnow]

arguably razors should do a bit more to them though, yes, and I appreciate lobsters want something to micro aside from plain 'dps unit'

[summer oriole]

sorry i think i worded it bad i think in general they are strong with amphib nerf they are weak in strait

[drowsy minnow]

I'm not convinced demons are at fault as such, they're what the lab needs for overall balance atm, but it might be possible to find a better profile for the unit that works better for lobsters while also not removing the needs of the rest of the game. will poke at it more another time.

[fierce delta]

yeah very cool but 1 you will very rarely see snipers that fast in the game and even if you counter them yourself with snipers coz you know they are coming, it doesn't change anything coz they will just go to the many others lanes where the slow ass snipers aren't, so that solution doesn't work in most maps in the game.

[zenith fjord]

You never did answer my question of what you were doing on this very open map while they were stuffing 14k metal into this project.

[frail bramble]

If one side has a demon the other side should be able to field some snipers...

[fierce delta]

I was dguning demon with my transport while doing abductors but they aren't noob and it's meta to have many players spam figs to counter

[zenith fjord]

Nah, before that.

[fierce delta]

If you see an ally rush demon, you make t1 air lab and spam figs to cover, so the other side has no counter

[fierce delta]

do you even play Flats? what's ur ingame name, mine is Raikoh

[drowsy minnow]

I mean, you can also use the abductor to move snipers around

even normal transports, if you're feeling hipster

[zenith fjord]

Nah, I create far more than I play. I'm asking what you did with 14k metal.

I can't watch the replay, currently, or I'd satisfy my own curiosity.

[fierce delta]

doesn't work to transport shit around when you have very little time to react react and you need many snipers at the same spot for them not to just die
but the easier way would be to transport spy bots and spam tick/pawns to kill them once emp
it's very hard to do but can be done

[drowsy minnow]

snipers still deal damage to it even without critical mass of them to one-shot

[frail bramble]

Don't forget even if demon kills some stuff before it dies on your side that's a free demon/pile of metal for you to rebuild.

[drowsy minnow]

demon rush is an all in timing attack in that regard, can easily be OP feed

[zenith fjord]

You still haven't answered the question. What did you do with that 14k metal? They successfully did a T3 rush on you. How?

[fierce delta]

i mean there should be grunts spam with the demon, so snipers isn't very good, starlight much better with the firerate
but you can dodge the grunts with spy and hope to get a good hit and then yes maybe if the demon is alone you can kill it and eat or rezz
but usually demon are spammed very fast and there is another one behind it to cover the first one that got emped

[frail bramble]

Well if they're spammed it's not being rushed though? Totally different scenarios

[drowsy minnow]

if they're demon spamming then that's a different situation to one being rushed

[frail bramble]

XD I win this time on typing speed Hornet

[zenith fjord]

Yeah, if they're spamming demons at 18 minutes, that implies some things about your own team's gameplay.

[fierce delta]

well yes when you build demon you have the lab on repeat, you build like 2 and you start going

[civic quest]

spamming demon not hard just eat reclaim

[celest aurora]

Marauders are giant pawns

[fierce delta]

it's a spammable unit

[naive shell]

once you blow one base up just start eating and then you can spam

[zenith fjord]

He still hasn't answered the question.

[frail bramble]

Okay but that's every unit lol? Any unit is spammable with enough reclaim especially if you take out a base and get to eat it all.

[fierce delta]

idk, just watch any replay of rosetta from op lobby to see demon on repeat, i think it's probably about 1 every 40 second or so starting at 20 mins

[naive shell]

I would argue that demon is practically uniquely low counterplay because of the flame mechanics (hard to dgun, hard to spybot, fast and has aa) and that is why it is dominant iat high level

[zenith fjord]

But we aren't talking about rosetta, we're talking about flats

rosetta is well-known for being techrush central

[naive shell]

flats has even more metal than rosetta i think

[civic quest]

and better energy

[zenith fjord]

but it doesn't have that absurd mex

[fierce delta]

Idk maybe play the video game

[zenith fjord]

Maybe answer the question

[naive shell]

was probably nuke rushing

[frail bramble]

Yeah Rosetta is the the 12 minute razorback map too and has enough choke areas to play totally different to flats. It's hard to have a player go hard eco to t3 on flats without really good coordination.

[naive shell]

it's actually not that hard

[naive shell]

^

[fierce delta]

Anyways, the good thing about Demon is that Razors not op anymore 🙂
Good direction

[civic quest]

Most maps you can 16 minute t3 demon or razorback

[fierce delta]

wasn't fun with Razors but made the issue 5x worse with Demon
but it makes sense since Hornet wanted a counter to Razors
it's not surprising that it only replace Razors and made the issue worse

[drowsy minnow]

you can do it in 5/6 on rosetta

[frail bramble]

Yeah with the mid mex trade + double ageo probably?

[drowsy minnow]

I reworked the unit to fit the needed role, it did it well. the mechanics do make it harder for counterplay vs precision shooting though, and the disadvantages are less present in loblob

as I've said I'll see if something more differential is possible

[naive shell]

I think a mini rework would be good, I'm not personally convinced they're mega op (more than razors anyway) but the unit concept itself is wicked cool and imo is a little too close in actual gameplay to just being 1.5 razors stuck together

[drowsy minnow]

unfortunately the latter is what the balance needs

core t3 -has- to have at least one fast thing, ideally moreso unless it's all you want to see on the field

[naive shell]

that's why i suggested make it more of a thor counterpart than razor - rushing a 10k ish unit gives way more counterplay leniency and makes counterplay more punishing, makes the speed less meaningful, and allows for power budget to be distributed differently

but idk, that's just a random thought

[drowsy minnow]

wouldn't be able to react to marauder nonsense if it were that late to appear

[civic quest]

are you actually using demons to counter marauders tho

[naive shell]

frankly it shouldn't be a good marauder counter regardless, it costs 6k metal and comes from a t3 lab, if you're relying on it to reflexively counter one of the fastest raiders in the game, that's no good

and if it's powerful enough to succeed at that, that's no good either

[gleaming meteor]

... actually, what is the core answer to marauders

[drowsy minnow]

depends at what point in game. they're good to zone them with, and they can both chase them down and kill them if they run through a line breach

[drowsy minnow]

traditionally, an afus explosion

[naive shell]

dllts kill marauders ez lmao

[civic quest]

drop down 5 air labs and spam shuriken

[fierce delta]

yeah but having a fast units being also the stronger just breaks the game imo
marauders are fast but weak to most units and defence and seek to avoids fighting as mush as possible in orders to sneak in and get to the eco
razors were already considered very strong and were already meta and done almost every games

but if you want t3 cortex unit to counter marauders/razors i don't think it can be done at the 6k metal range
coz then the unit needs to be fast and very good damage to kill a razor but also to have enough HP to not just not die to them, so practically you have made the best unit in the game

[drowsy minnow]

a mass of cheap porc can work if you know where they're going, but as for a unit that can catch them, not possible. mass shuri pre-split about the only sane prayer

a lot of wasps worked too, iirc

[drowsy minnow]

rauders actually beat a demon equal metal in fight

[naive shell]

the defender wins in the end tho

[frail bramble]

Is it possible to make demon a stockpile unit? So it can stockpile 500/1000 shots (made up numbers no clue on actual numbers) with a reload speed on shots that allows them to still fire when depleted but not at max rpm? Could open up opportunities for counterplay when ammo is depleted (say the guns are overheating or smth) and also add some micro ability for good players to deal damage then retreat and stockpile for another round.

[drowsy minnow]

...technically
unsure it'd be good convention to do so

[fierce delta]

in a real game they don't tho maybe in a test situation
the demon players will kill a few marauders, then when demon gets to low, it backs it and the next demon comes and it's gg for you

[naive shell]

That's a cool idea but i think I would actually find it very frustrating

[frail bramble]

It's totally different than any other stockpile unit as it wouldn't be a hard block due to quick reloading but would give them a bit of ebb/flow in dps

[gleaming meteor]

clearly the solution is to make demons unable to aim down, so they can only fire at air units or units taller than itself

gotta give the razor a chance

[drowsy minnow]

not realistic in most situations you're fighting/zoning/chasing marauders

as for 'game vs test', the 'test' cases seem to be the basis of most anti demon arguments, which comparatively rarely occur in game.

[frail bramble]

Lol yeah it's an out there idea and probably not the right direction but tbh kinda feels like it needs some new balance lever to make everyone happy without neutering the unit.

[fierce delta]

ofc when the next demon comes the marauders have to back and then you lost the reclaim fields and you didn't kill any demon and even if you did kill the first one you lost the metal and another one will replace it 40sec later for half the price

[gleaming meteor]

I feel like that might fit Legion, but it's very mechanically odd for core

[drowsy minnow]

something like this has potential, with more tuning
but it does mean the demon needs more HP for its cost again

[drowsy minnow]

none of that relevant if you're trying to zone the rauders out of your econ. and if they get near enough to it then you just kill your econ instead of the rauders

[frail bramble]

In my head it was depleting the fuel used to produce flames and needed more time to reproduce it than it takes to fire it. But yeah maybe something to keep in mind for future legion stuff.

[drowsy minnow]

it's an interesting idea, I did similar with a banisher prototype a while ago

[gleaming meteor]

what if the demon has to squat down to lay an egg after doing too much damage, leaving it vulnerable to attack while giving birth

however, if the egg survives, it hatches a brand new demon

[frail bramble]

100%, ladies and gentleman the balance issues have been solved

[gleaming meteor]

so true

[drowsy minnow]

after every 5 kills the demon stops to lay a fiend

[gleaming meteor]

I...was joking, but now I do want to see a unit like that

[frail bramble]

The infestor (I think that's the name) is kinda sorta similar in how it can replicate itself. Haven't used it much but I love the idea.

[drowsy minnow]

should do, it's a good mechanic

obv I'd say that as I invented it but yes, works well in game

[frail bramble]

So far I've only used it when so far ahead it didn't matter but I imagine being able to rebuild a raid from one leftover unit hidden in the hills is incredibly powerful.

[gleaming meteor]

I kinda want some units that reward you for keeping them alive and killing more dudes with them. Gunslinger is kinda a nice gimmick but generally not practical.

I am kinda taking things on a tangent though, because the demon is vaguely a raider unit. Not nearly as disposable as a marauder, but also not the kind of unit that you need to incentize keeping alive forever.

[drowsy minnow]

can be, can also be a good way to funnel your econ into their backline accidentally though, and they're not that strong as fighters

[gleaming meteor]

I haven't really figured out a personal use case for them

[drowsy minnow]

there's a few tbh, some map dependant, but we're off track

[fierce delta]

Just for info, im watching rosetta op lobby right now, the build is 15 mins demon printing at 40sec each

[drowsy minnow]

rosetta enables rushes like that pretty hard though

does seem something a meta adaptation could counter tbh, but on a metal rich open bot map, unsure what else you'd expect to be built. maybe kargs?

[fierce delta]

yeah for sure, it's probably the fastest map but flats is pretty fast too, on bismuth demon come later if the game ever goes to t3
it's not all the maps that allow the skip t2 to do directly t3

[celest aurora]

Rascal scout vehicles. They're the only Core units that are faster than Marauders, any other units, once the marauders are past your front line, they only have to worry about what you can build in the 15 seconds before they reach your base!

[fierce delta]

defence against marauders is nanos turret and turrets, t1 popup are very good but t2 just delete them

[drowsy minnow]

problem is, basically no other units hard require premade static to stop, you cannot know they're coming, nor where, and even if you do porc like a loon, they can just go somewhere else

[celest aurora]

It's kind of expensive and takes a long time to cover all of your bases with static defence, takes longer to build all this that the marauders, and most of it will never be used

[fierce delta]

yeah you just defend the zone where you have ur nanos but at least you do not die, save most of the valuable stuff, then you reclaim the marauders wrecks and ur static defence that you do not need anymore

[drowsy minnow]

I mean that's sometimes viable for an eco player to pull off reactively, rare most others would have enough income and BP to dump enough to stop them in time

even then the number of times rauders delete strait ecos should show you how hard that is to do reliably

and that's when they're expected, and you know exactly where they're going

[karmic yacht]

Marauders are ez just t2 wall

If they got through u didn't build enough t2 wall (depends on map)

[fierce delta]

Yeah i don't like marauders very much and especially on strait even if you do everything right to try stop them, when a huge ball of marauders comes from the lost sea it's very hard to stop.
Meta was to have emp bombers waiting for them and enough figs to kill the incoming figs trying to kill ur emp bombers.
Or many razors already in position waiting for them.

[celest aurora]

You want units to be counterable with other units, not just static defences. It makes the game boring if you are forced to build a bunch of statics, just to defend against a marauder rush taht might or might not come. At least Marauders aren't EMP immune! Did the devs consider that? Personally, I think all Arm T3 should be EMP immune, the Thor isn;t enough

[karmic yacht]

Okay okay calm down xD

Scouting is important but like who skips marauders honestly. Walls are cheap

You scout then when you see them coming make mass ticks and razors. Or abductor for smaller amounts

[drowsy minnow]

part of the issue is scouting info very hard to get, best you can usually know is 'they're already coming'

[celest aurora]

By the time you've made a single razorback, they've already arrived in your base. And are ticks actually an effective counter? I thought marauders are very good against spam.

[drowsy minnow]

ticks are reasonable as the rauders have mostly single target focussed damage, so if they avoid the splash can still surround

needless to say, the core rascals aren't anywhere near as good at it as ticks are

[fierce delta]

ticks are amazing against marauders but the issue on strait is that just like mines they die to juno
any decent player will have 1 juno charged to kill the mines fields and ticks when he starts the attack
so you can't use those

[celest aurora]

Oh right, I thought their weapon was like th riot tank one, but twice as quick firing

[zenith fjord]

Yeah, marauder vs ticks is very much a "we have reserves" situation.

https://tenor.com/view/zergling-starcraft-zerg-zerg-rush-zerglings-gif-18845749

[celest aurora]

So basically, every game, we need to construct walls across our entire bases, and have a reserve force of 500 ticks in case of marauder attack? Would be easier just to nerf Marauders' speed to 60 or so, even that is too fast for a T3 unit!

[zenith fjord]

Eh, walls are good against more than just Marauders.

[drowsy minnow]

walls underused in general tbh, BUT that doesn't excuse the pile of everything that is marauders

[celest aurora]

i use walls a lot but generally speaking walls will just never get used by players simply because the way the community is. Just as the same way emp invisible bots will not be used regularly even when its just a net good to use them just as walls or even jammers.
I dont see players make enough use of these units even though they are just absolute net goods in a battle.

[celest aurora]

True, I'm gonna build a big, beautiful wall in my next game. And, I'm going to make the enemy pay for it! Back to balancing demons, they seem to fail pretty hard against my Thors in most games; could they be given EMP immunity or something, to make them more balanced versus Arm units?

[fierce delta]

yes emp immune would be so nice to have, like you make 6k metal units and it just gets emp to shuriken spybots or thors missile and then it just dies
complete waste of metal

[regal mantle]

This is how I feel when I build static flak everywhere and the bombing run never comes

[celest aurora]

Much easier though as it's just a couple of flakkers in your base next to your nanos. Building a bunch of popups are walls all over the place is much more of a headache

[ruby holly]

try just making units, and using them on the enemy, so they can't mass a bunch of marauders to surprise you with.
if he has spent the time building gantry and and 10k of marauders, and snuck them where they need to be, why would you expect to beat this 20k metal investment on reaction?

Marauders are strong, but not the be all end all on the one map that is basically perfectly designed to make them as useful as possible. If someone spends 9k metal on a gantry instead of making another afus, damn right they should be rewarded by making useful units.

[spring dock]

I know this is a late reposne, but I wonder what the terrain looked like for their test. If it was filled with wreckage then the Razors would not be able to shoot over the bodies.