Thunderbird - Disarm and slow?

Best use-case I know of thunderbird is when there's an iris on the frontline and you can fly through it. Usually leads to a nearly-completely disarmed shield ball. But it's really hard to do right. Similar's possible with a snitch for much more effect and cheaper too, though.

One potential buff: tbird shouldn't harm allied units

There was a fairly long period where Thunderbird was a 1v1 to small teams game ender.

It might still be, despite its smaller area of effect.

i think it is fine in terms of damage. but its so easy to kill. current phoenix's survivability looks interesting, lets try a similar HP buff on thunderbird?

for slow damage, could be an interesting variant - lets try this!

Perhaps one could change how current EMP weapons (disarm and stun) work in general. The effects could be combined to make it possible to assign arbitrary duration values to either component. For example, maybe the Thunderbird could stun things for 2 seconds in addition to the current debuff. Furthermore, the latter doesn't have to be so similar to the former visually.

Felons are by far the biggest counter to air, however they are not op. Felons weakness is how they recharge their attack and and attack both air and ground. These means they they will lose if attack by air and ground at the same time. 1 felon is enough to kill tb.(about 2300 damage per charge) However if ground attacks first and weakens shields then tb survives and can disarm felon. I feel that felons do not need a nerf

Tb could easily do with an hp buff to prevent felons from tearing them down so fast or a speed buff(currently the same as likho) so that it can approach felons faster.

What makes tb strong is its shield damage. They can target aspis shield area, wear it down then likho kills undefended ball.


Vandals deserve a buff. They are extremely clumsy, weak with low dps and have to reload. They are much cheaper than other AA but have lowest dps. Felons are a much better choice as AA and all rounder. Vandals are the worst AA in the game and can do with range buff or reload buff

The Felon wiki page advises to send cheap but high health units at the Felon first to drain its shields. However, air has no such unit. The only things it has that don't evaporate to a roughly equal cost of Felon are Likhos, which are good at hitting Felons but not by draining their shields, and maybe an Odin that dumps shields while the Felons are trying to hit it. The Thunderbird's Felon problem isn't about Thunderbird in particular, it's about how Felons interact with a whole factory of fast but fragile units.

I am sure I will enjoy myself if Thunderbird is further buffed (recalling that it recently got a HP buff). But I don't think it needs one. Thunderbird is still quite capable of winning games in five seconds flat. In particular, pick the right early game fight to intercede in (think commanders and riots brawling on the front) and that ought to swing the game quite considerably.