Will the footpad be nerfed in 1.10?

[peet]

I heard a rumor about this and wanted to check.

I personally like the stats of the footpad as-is, so if there is any nerfing going to happen I think I'd prefer the cost of the unit to increase, rather than having any of its combat stats going down.

Just my personal feeling.

[monochromatic]

The footpad has already been nerfed:

Decreased the melee and ranged attack of the Footpad from 5-2 to 4-2.

http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/w ... /changelog

[pinkdwarf]

Both ranged and melee going from 5-2 to 4-2 is a huge nerf actually: the pad will deal 20% less damage with both ranged and melee. It's like the difference of day and ..morning!

The nerf is happening because of the Footpad's power against UD, especially when combined with Ulf, right? If so, isn't there a way for either Footpad and/or Ulf to be slightly nerfed or some UD units slightly buffed without affecting balance with other factions too much? For example, smaller cold and/or arcane resistance for Footpad (helping ghosts and possibly adepts to beat footpad), smaller arcane (helping ghost to beat ulf) and/or blade resistance for Ulf (helping ghoul and skele to beat ulf), higher impact resistance for ghost or some other non-skele UD unit, or a weak melee attack for Dark Adept (like 2-2, helping adept to drain a small amount of hp from footie and especially ulf when defending). If one of these changes was made, it could affect the altered unit's price with +1 or -1, or some of its other stats could be slightly changed to compensate for weakening/strengthening vs other factions.

Footpad does not need this nerf against any other faction, does it? As far as I know, excluding huge maps, multiple footpads are a part of a good strategy only against UD and possibly another Knalgan player, but Knalgan mirror is boring anyway, mass Footpads or not.

[Velensk]

I lend my support to the idea that the K vs U match-up ought to be solved in some fashion other than making the footpad do less damage (or at least less damage with both of its attacks).

[pinkdwarf]

After thinking about this a bit more, I think the best and most simple solution might be to lower Footpad's cold resistance from +0% to -20% or -10% (in case 20 is over doing it, I haven't done the calculations), to make its ranged attack a little less powerful against Ghost and its staying power smaller against Dark Adepts.

Problems: 1) Footpad and thus the Knalgans as a faction would be weakened VS the Drake Faction (although Footpad is very weak against drakes already). 2) It would not be intuitive or make any sense thematically.

EDIT: A change that would make more sense thematically could be to drop Footpad's base hp to 24, so 2 hits from DA during night kills the Footpad, if it's either quick and strong or quick and intelligent. To compensate for this, blade, pierce and impact weaknesses could be nullified, that is, made +0%. Then the Footpad could take more blade damage, about the same amount of pierce and impact and 20% less damage of the arcane, fire and cold types. It could hold villages a bit better against weapon users, but worse against magical attacks and fire users.

[Kolbur]

Removing the negative physical resistances would make the footpad even better than it is now. I don't think that the resistances should be touched at all.
I suggest you read the old discussion about the footpad issue before you throw around so many different proposals. The problem with the footpad is in my opinion that he is too good vs skeletons because they can't really attack the blade weakness of the footpad without getting a lot of damage back. So changing the footpad damage is a good idea. In all other match ups the footpad is not really a combat unit anyway so the lower damage is not that bad overall.

[pinkdwarf]

Removing the negative physical resistances would make the footpad even better than it is now. I don't think that the resistances should be touched at all.

No, it would not. If its base hp would be dropped from 30 to 24 at the same time, it would die almost as easily to pierce and impact and would be a bit more durable against blade, but against arcane, fire and cold, it could take only 80% as much punishment as before. Poison would also be relatively more effective against it. Being a good dodger, it would become easier to kill, if anything.

I suggest you read the old discussion about the footpad issue before you throw around so many different proposals. The problem with the footpad is in my opinion that he is too good vs skeletons because they can't really attack the blade weakness of the footpad without getting a lot of damage back. So changing the footpad damage is a good idea. In all other match ups the footpad is not really a combat unit anyway so the lower damage is not that bad overall.

The problem seems to be more about Footpad not having a weakness against any UD unit, while it is strong against every one of them except adept, whom Ulf insta-kills without taking damage. With the damage nerfing, it still doesn't have a weakness against any UD unit, and it still is probably workable for the Footpad & Ulf strategy, but it also becomes quite useless against any other faction. Besides, why should the Footpad be weak against skeletons? Footpad is the Knalgans' anti-skeleton unit. Dwarf Fighters are about as good for skeleton countering as Elven Fighters are for countering Grunts. If Footpad really does become weak against skeletons, fighting mostly Skeleton armies with Knalgans becomes tough.

[tekelili]

I lend my support to the idea that the K vs U match-up ought to be solved in some fashion other than making the footpad do less damage (or at least less damage with both of its attacks).

I couldnt use better words. Totally agree with Velensk here

So changing the footpad damage is a good idea. In all other match ups the footpad is not really a combat unit anyway so the lower damage is not that bad overall.

I have my doubts here. I think knalgans needs footpads in almost every match up and map if want have some speed and maneuver chances, and they need footpads do spared damage. When I knew about 1.9 footpad nerf, I decided in all future games check all my kills (playing 1.8 ver) as kalgan player to see if they couldnt have happened with a nerf. I discovered lot of times I couldnt have killed units that were damaged by one of my footpads if they had 1 more hp. I am not kidding here, lot of asasins, clashers and cavs were killed with the very last strike of one dwarf, poacher or griff that made exact amount of damage to kill after that unit were damaged once or twice for one of my footpads

Edit: Not that my opinion matters, but just for not be accussed of point a "problem" without give a solution, I would go for increase ghost impact resistence to 60 or 70. This would also help UD in currently worst match up for him: elves (imho). That could be an alternative way to balance UD vs Knalgan without nerf footpad.

[Great_Mage_Atari]

I don't necessarily agree with the nerfing (correct usage?) of the footpad's damage, nor changing it's resistances. Footpads are, sadly to say, extremely weak against other units of greater or equal attack, which is why its tile defense is so high, even on flat land. It's sort of like a power compromise. Now, it would make a huge difference if the attack was changed from 5-2 to 4-2, basically for the fact of night and day gains and losses.. But if you're like me, you really don't care because they are near useless as up-front attackers. Until they reach Lv.2, they are mostly a pure scouting unit, not really intended to hold back enemy lines, rather to get past them. As tekelili implied, they are mostly a 1-hit kill unit, as they can get behind enemies and attack them while weak. So, I suppose the footpad's nerfing isn't that big of a deal, as long as later levels don't get a downgrade because of it.

[powershot]

I love footpads, but mosttimes they are extremly weak. This is how I feel about nerfing: ...... .

P.S. That's my two cents.

[UngeheuerLich]

I also made some proposals to make UD better vs knalgan.
Not only the fottpad, but also the griffon are units that make UD very hard to play vs knalgan. The biggest problem are in fact, that the knalgan scout units do too much damage against the undead main fighting units. (IMHO)

The not so recent healthy trait addition and the not so recent strong trait removal for the adepts help undead mobilty quite a bit, so you may pick your fights more easily. But the main issue was still there: The footpad combined with the ulfserker form an army that are about equal in strength to an dark adept/skeleton line. With the speed advantage you usually go down as Undead.
(The horseman of the human fraction posed a similar problem.)

To the history of the footpad:
it used to have lower hp and 4-2 on both melee and ranged. IIRC first his melee was upgraded by 1 damage and then his ranged also. Making him much more durable and heavy hitting.

So I guess the reduction of his attacks seems quite ok, although I would have preferred only reducing the ranged attack and maybe some of the hp, as IMHO an evasive unit should be a bit lighter on hp.

On the other hand, your proposal of giving a small melee attack to the dark adept would be the best way of handling the situation:
The worst part of the matchup is the lost randomness of the ulfserker/DA. It is the only fight where the outcome is predertimined: a 1hp ulfserker (which you see surprisingly often) kills a full hp dark adept. So after an ulfserker is close to levelling up, no matter how damaged he was before, you can´t even hold a village with a full hp dark adept, as you are just overrun, healing and levelling up a unit, losing a vllage and losing the game.
1 or 2 dark adepts have a reasonable chance to miss a 1hp ulfserker, dying in the next round. flavour or not, a 1-1 sacrificial dagger piercing melee attack would go a long way to balance this matchup, without touching any other unit. The ulfserker should really be the only unit that even notices those attacks at all.

But there would be an even more preferrable method:
Berserking could both, attacking and defending unit lose 1 (or 2, 3 or even 4) hp each melee round after the first (making ulfserkers actually a bit stringer vs ghosts). This way, an ulfserker must be more careful to pick a target, but also would be more reliable in kicking targets out of villages.

[monochromatic]

To be honest, to balance this out I'd rather keep the footpad as it was before and simply removed the ulfserker. The Dwarvish scout could be rebalanced/weakened and placed in the faction in its stead. Makes more lore-wise as well, as ulfserkers seem to be a rarer group of dwarves. I'm not thinking too much right now, but the matchup that would probably be affected the most other than UD would be the elves.
It's just idea, so I am not going to push it or even backup my statement, but if someone else wants to, go ahead.

[Velensk]

I personally think that if you're going to lower the footpad damage you should only lower it for the melee attack. This way strong footpads would no longer retaliate 9-2 to skeletons at night (or hit archers for that much) which would help considerably in the skeleton vs footpad balance considerably without weakening a units harassing role in other match-ups overmuch. Footpads are not a main combat unit in any other match-up but that hardly means that they didn't manage to be useful or that decreasing their offensive power won't be a significant blow to them. In 1vs1 in particular, if knalgans don't have footpads they'd have a very hard time ever catching their enemy.

The other thing I'll put forward (yet again) is that I really don't see why skeletons need to cost more than spearmen, elvish fighters, or their own archer counterparts (who in my experience see a lot more play). Once you toss in the lack of traits and how every other faction will likely have some unit they are very vulnerable to they frequently come out as being both more fragile than other factions infantry and slower. This said, I haven't tested undead vs the new loyalist cavalry, maybe without cavalry resisting them quite so easily normal skeletons would see more play but I really don't see a good reason why they would need to cost more than skeleton archers. The other match-ups I see normal skeletons in are vs northerners (if enemy is grunt heavy), rebels (where I think that undead could use to be able to kill woses just a touch easier), and the mirror (which I don't think we have to worry about).

I would certainly not want to see the ulfserker removed from the knalgans in favor of the scout. Aside from the fact that they don't fill the same role, or anything even resembling it, the ulfserker is a more interesting unit, plays a major role in several match-ups, and is the only berserker in default.

[UngeheuerLich]

No, the ulfserker is no problem in general in this matchup. Just against a single unit.

[Dan-the-Terrible]

If the intent is to weaken the footpad vs undead, but not other factions, wouldn't it make more sense to change the footpad's damage type rather than amount? The impact damage is far less important against other factions than it is against undead. I would suggest keeping the ranged attack at 5-2 impact but changing the melee to 5-2 blade. For flavor purposes we could say the footpad is armed with a dagger instead of a club.