Possible balance problem – Wraith

[UngeheuerLich]

the holy damage on ghost is not that bad, so impact on dark adept would not help counter ghosts...

I still think a holy resistant bat, maybe neutral could be a nice counter to prevent ghosts from grabbing villages....

then you counter mobility with greater mobility...

[Wintermute]

@ UngeheuerLich

All your posts keep talking about "holy" damage, which is in 1.3.1 but not 1.3.2... so have you played the latest version? It is hard to tell from your posts I think.

[thissneppah]

Here is my idea for “Spam Ghost Problem”:

Give Ghost a much smaller resistance to cold (around +20%) so Dark Adapts will be a good counter to them. Then you would need to bring Skeletons to fight the Dark Adapts which you could counter with Ghosts or Walking Courses. Not perfect but does allows some variation on the theme. One other concern is that Ghosts will be more venerable to Drake faction with their Saurian Augur so maybe a very small Hp increase (+1)?

Well that’s my though on it any way.

[UngeheuerLich]

@ UngeheuerLich

All your posts keep talking about "holy" damage, which is in 1.3.1 but not 1.3.2... so have you played the latest version? It is hard to tell from your posts I think.

on german its still "heilig" in 1.3.2 and i played the 1.3.2. version explicitely to test ghosts in UD vs UD...

and i already used arcane in my posts

[TL]

Here is my idea for “Spam Ghost Problem”:

Give Ghost a much smaller resistance to cold (around +20%) so Dark Adapts will be a good counter to them.

If their resistance was around 20%, dark adepts wouldn't be a "good" counter, they would be a tremendously powerful counter. At nighttime a single DA would have a 49% chance to kill a ghost in one attack, which is just insane. Even 50% resistance would mean two DAs would have a reasonable chance of killing a ghost in one turn at night, a lot faster than ghosts could hope to kill DAs (and DAs are already cheaper anyhow).

I still remain skeptical that there actually exists a "spam ghost problem". Spamming a 20 gold unit is never going to be a good idea unless it is absolutely and overwhelmingly more powerful than the opposition, which ghosts simply aren't. At nighttime, ghosts kill skeletons in 5 hits and skeletons kill ghosts in 5 hits. Ghosts have mobility which helps, but when you're paying 5 more gold per ghost you're going to run into problems. A balanced army with a couple skeletons, archers, ghosts, WCs, and maybe an adept or two is not going to have much difficulty vs. ghost spam.

Now once one of those ghosts advances into a wraith then you have problems, but trying to use ghosts as fodder isn't going to help your chances of advancing any.

[thissneppah]

If their resistance was around 20%, dark adepts wouldn't be a "good" counter, they would be a tremendously powerful counter.

Fair point, something of an overestimate on my behalf resistance at around 40 – 50 % is my guess then (pretty much what you said form the stat). I’m in an agreement though that cold resistance should be lowered.

I still remain skeptical that there actually exists a "spam ghost problem".

I’m going on what UngeheuerLich said and what I hear is the general agreement with the devs. I however haven’t seen this done so if you feel like giving me a game to test this out I’m more then glad to do so at a reasonable time for both of us.

[TL]

I still remain skeptical that there actually exists a "spam ghost problem".

I’m going on what UngeheuerLich said and what I hear is the general agreement with the devs. I however haven’t seen this done so if you feel like giving me a game to test this out I’m more then glad to do so at a reasonable time for both of us.[/quote]

I suspect UngeheuerLich might have been talking about ghosts vs. skeletons in a 1v1 or equal-numbers situation. A ghost vs. a skeleton (either type) is a fairly even match, and if the ghosts use their superior maneuverability they can get an advantage, but superior numbers of less expensive units will tend to win out anyhow.

Also, it's not a matter of "ghosts vs. skeletons", it's a matter of "ghost vs. everything (except maybe ghouls, which are still useless in UD vs. UD)". Ghosts are a hugely important part of UD vs. UD setups, but over-relying on them often won't get very far.

I've never tried a true "all ghosts" (or even mostly ghosts) vs. mixed undead fight but I have had a few UD vs. UD fights and found that ghosts are definitely NOT all-purpose undead destroyers in my experience. If you're around on the MP dev server in about 8 to 10 hours from now I'd be happy to test it out though.

[UngeheuerLich]

I still remain skeptical that there actually exists a "spam ghost problem". Spamming a 20 gold unit is never going to be a good idea unless it is absolutely and overwhelmingly more powerful than the opposition, which ghosts simply aren't. At nighttime, ghosts kill skeletons in 5 hits and skeletons kill ghosts in 5 hits. Ghosts have mobility which helps, but when you're paying 5 more gold per ghost you're going to run into problems. A balanced army with a couple skeletons, archers, ghosts, WCs, and maybe an adept or two is not going to have much difficulty vs. ghost spam.

Ok i´ll point out the key problems:

Ghosts have doubled healing rate on villages, whereas Skellis have only 66% if you consider their effective hp.

Ghost are more mobile than any other undead units (besides bats, which are now a complete waste of money vs undead)

Ghost don´t need that much xp to level up, considering their chanes to kill an enemy unit, and then they are monsters, which kill a skelli in 3 hits...

[TL]

Ghost don´t need that much xp to level up, considering their chanes to kill an enemy unit, and then they are monsters, which kill a skelli in 3 hits...

This is the big issue and is why I say ghosts are so very important in UD vs. UD. The whole point of the thread is that wraiths are way powerful, which I agree with, and I'm glad to hear that there's a good chance they'll be toned down in the next version.

BUT! Spamming ghosts is not going to help you get wraiths. Lone ghosts die very easily and they are way too expensive and fragile to be good fodder, they're good when you send them in for the kill but they can't take attacks. Skeleton archers can soften enemies up more efficiently than ghosts, then you you make the kill with a ghost, then you bring in skeletons to block for your experienced ghost. Using ghosts instead of archers to soften up enemies (especially other ghosts) just means you take a lot of retaliation damage for an expensive unit, and trying to use extra ghosts as shields instead of skeletons means you have fewer shields and they die faster. Maybe all ghosts does beat all skeletons, but it's better to use ghosts AND skeletons.

Ghosts are probably your most important units in UD vs. UD (except your leader of course) but that doesn't mean they're the best at everything or you should buy more of them than anything else. If you don't use them very carefully they're just going to get killed without any hope of advancement.

[Chris Byler]

Here is my idea for “Spam Ghost Problem”:

Give Ghost a much smaller resistance to cold (around +20%) so Dark Adapts will be a good counter to them.

If their resistance was around 20%, dark adepts wouldn't be a "good" counter, they would be a tremendously powerful counter. At nighttime a single DA would have a 49% chance to kill a ghost in one attack, which is just insane.

Doesn't the mage already have over 75% chance to kill a ghost in one attack in day (and about 1/3 chance in twilight, too)? If that's not too high, I don't see why 49% is (sure the DA is cheaper, but not that much cheaper).

The ghost would remain indispensable in the undead vs. undead matchup no matter how vulnerable to the DA it is: it's the only alternative to hacking away at your opponent's skeletons with more skeletons. Making the ghost too weak to DAs is better than not making it weak enough, because it's still worth trying to keep and protect a few ghosts (while if the DA can't beat ghosts it can't beat anything but WC, so it basically drops out of UvU altogether).

Even 50% resistance would mean two DAs would have a reasonable chance of killing a ghost in one turn at night, a lot faster than ghosts could hope to kill DAs (and DAs are already cheaper anyhow).

True, but the undead *faction* has many other units that can easily kill the DA. Allowing the DA to counter the ghost would put the match into rock-paper-scissors, away from spamming any one particular unit. I think that would be an improvement.

20% might be too low because of the ghost's low HP, but 40-50% would allow DAs to be a possible response to ghosts that, although drainable, is at least not weak to arcane. The only other line in default to use cold is the augur; improving the augur vs. ghost wouldn't matter much, I think.

It's not just about bringing down the ghost, but also about giving the dark adept a use in UvU.


I also agree with lowering the bat to 12 gold, or even 11, but that has less to do with UvU specifically and more with how the bat is too high a price for too little unit in any matchup. It can go anywhere and die instantly when it gets there. That's fine for a cheap unit that can be worthwhile just stealing a couple villages, annoying the opponent and wasting the time of more valuable enemy units; but the bat at its current price is a little too costly to be used as expendable.

P.S. Whoever suggested that +1 hp to ghosts would be a minor change: The 18 hp ghost dies exactly from two hits from a thunderer (or one hit each from two thunderers). Knalgans struggle enough against ghosts without taking that away from them.

[TL]

Ghosts are very slightly fire resistant, so mages need to land 3 hits whether it's day or twilight.

I admit that maybe it wouldn't be so terrible to drop cold resistance even lower than 50%, but the issue here seems to be about wraiths more than it is ghosts so I'm not really sure why ghosts need to be penalized so hard. 40-50% cold resist would be more than enough to make DAs effective vs. ghosts.

[UngeheuerLich]

We tested: spamming ghost can work... and your chances of winning, if the enemy is too aggressive with not enough ghosts, because you can hold your villages too easily especially at day...

and enemies never get a chance to hold all of their villages...



p.s.: the adition of some WC´s or archers can help... but ghosts should be more than 50% of you army, and you should hope that you are more lucky than your enemy...

[Noy]

Can we have your "proof" here please? I'd like to see some replays.

We just rebalanced it for 1.3.3 to make the ghost less vulnerable to arcane, and we're happy with the solution. Its not going to change unless we see some pretty substantial evidence otherwise.

[Chris Byler]

If you're happy with the solution, then... what IS the solution? If you are player 2 in a no-fog UvU on Blitz and you see your opponent recruit five ghosts, what do you recruit and how do you plan to use it?

I'm assuming the answer is not "recruit five ghosts of your own" because I don't see how anyone could be happy with that - it is, if anything, worse than 1.2 UvU balance (and UvU has been a sore spot since forever).

Until 1.3.3 is actually released, I can't really ask for replays, but at least some idea of what the devs are thinking would be nice.

Frankly, I can't see any reason *not* to lower the ghost's cold resistance at least to 50%. Do you think it's going to make the adept too strong in UvU? It would still lose, badly, to every other undead unit except the WC.

[Doc Paterson]

If you are player 2 in a no-fog on Blitz