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Re-Balance Blitz Tank

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The blitz used to be a very powerful and sometimes "OP" unit but since the old days it has been nerfed to a shell of its former shell. Many people thought this was good because they were sick of the unit stunlocking everything however now many are coming to realize that the unit in its current state is almost not even viable in the majority of situations.

For starters the blitz currently costs 300 metal. That is a substantial amount, I believe most will agree on that and you would hope the unit would perform decently against units of similar cost. However this is not the case.

The blitz currently only does 180 damage per shot which does not one shot the majority of raiders even tho the unit is nearly x5 the value of many raiders,and a amazingly low 67 dps. For a 300 metal unit one would think it would pack a bigger punch comparable to other units.
One would hope the blitz would be able to take advantage of its stun gun however this fails to shine well as due to the cost of the blitz it quickly gets overwhelmed by superior numbers since for every 300 metal many enemy factories such as the popular light vehicles can unleash many more units compared to a group of blitz.


The current "argument" is that blitz are only good in groups and thus scale well when amassed. This might be true to a very small extent but it Is just that, a small extent. By the time a player amassed that many blitz the enemy will easily have made a counter. Several blitz are a gigantic metal sink and are not even guaranteed to perform in many engagements making the investment pointless.


Many players know this and thus avoid using blitz entirely except for perhaps a couple in the very early stages of a game where its speed is somewhat useful, this however quickly goes out the window when the game progresses and ogres and minotaurs are made instead. Nearly nobody bothers with adding blitzes to tank armies just due to the fact they die easily (1100 hp for a 300 metal tank does not last long at all in battles and thus it will only get 2-3 shots in most of the time) and do not have a chance to make use of their stun for long.


Thus I would like to propose some of the potential changes to the blitz in order to make it more viable for longer matches


- Metal Cost Lowered To 270

- Damage Per Shot Increased to 165

-Health Increased To 1250

These numbers are somewhat generalized and thus I would like other players to give heavy feedback on these suggestions
Notice I did not suggest anything related to the stun damage or stunning duration of the lightning gun it possesses because I feel that is a very touchy subject and no one likes stun locks however these other changes would atleast make the blitz more viable in larger engagements and increase the window of opportunity for its use.

I look forward to everyones thoughts on this matter




+2 / -1

5 years ago
I agree blitz need a change. But in current scheme, I don't agree with buffing damage output and hitpoints. May lower cost to 280, and raise stun time to 1.25s: it is a raider/support unit.

Bad bad tank factory lack of high dps/cost unit, so I'd like to have a blitz with higher dps 80/s and its lightning gun behave differently: 0.5 reload time with inaccuracy of 1 and small Aoe 16, cost remain 300. Is blitz the only lightning gun mount without inaccuracy?
+0 / -0


5 years ago
I think it was an engine limitation, that effects such as stun and other effects can't last half or quarter seconds, only full seconds.
+0 / -0


5 years ago
quote:
I think it was an engine limitation, that effects such as stun and other effects can't last half or quarter seconds, only full seconds.

The lowest possible time in Spring simulation is 33 milliseconds. Integer seconds are easy for humans to keep in mind, though.
+0 / -0


5 years ago
That Blitz sounds very OP. Do you have replays of attempts to use the current Blitz?
+1 / -0
5 years ago
What about only increasing the HP like 1400 or something like that? It would feel less "easy to kill" and will not be so OP
+1 / -0

5 years ago
Stun times have to be integers in spring. I am more comfortable with increasing the stun time to 2 seconds than the other changes.
+0 / -0

5 years ago
Doesn't Blitz do 180 damage?

I've used blitz lately in small teams games, and there's a specific way to use blitzes. They are much too expensive and do too little damage to be used like glaives, threading the gaps in defences and raiding mexes and whatever they can touch with little regard for their end state: death. 5 glaives to a much better job of raiding than 1 blitz. Blitz needs to be used in combination with a welder or 2 to make combat in a 0 loss game. Rely heavily on retreat and repair, to grow a slow attrition advantage, so then your low DPS high HP units eventually become an unstoppable force. Blitz as the tank raider feels very lackluster in this regard.

Blitz maneuvers 'poorly' in combat I would say. This is something true of many tanks, they have momentum to them(High turn radius), and they have massive frames/colvolumes. It's harder to get all your blitzes fireing at enemy units than say glaives, which turn on a dime and have a low fire rate. Fighting vehicles tends to be about taking advantage of the 'dance' between 2 players where they try to dive and try to evade enemy's fireing arcs, and when a vehicle is out of position and facing your forces, you know that they have to drive at least a little bit towards you to turn around, and you can capitalize more on an attack at that moment then rather if the vehicle was facing perpendicular or away from you and has an easier time accelerating away.

Blitz is expensive, and synergies with numbers. You start feeling this synergy at around 3 blitzes, and I feel super comfortable at 5 blitzes. That's 1,500 metal, and you can combat single riot units, or even 2 riot units and survive with all the blitzes. you can also comfortably skirmish other raiders for no attrition, with OK speed for raiders as well as EMPing every other raider they touch. That's a lot of metal to repeatedly counter smaller forces, though, and requires micro and you to spend EVEN MORE metal. you need some welders to be nearby to repair the blitzes, as well as bonus solar collectors for the e required to repair. so let's say 440m for cons and 280m for e, that's a bonus 720 metal for my 1500 raider force to feel comfortable. And I would not be so confident battling a force as large as 1500 metal from any other factory with just the 5 blitzes. But having advance welders near the front can help make up for that in repairs, radars, and light defenses.

Tank has always had problems in the raider phase. on top of that, the 2 light units in the factory are blitz and kodachi, which are always either OP or UP. koda had the time where it could fightmove against glaives and bandits, and blitz balance always dances around the OHK potential of glaives(200 damage). A stronger blitz can easily allow the factory to become too dominant in the raider phase and dominate the whole 1v1 scene, this has happened in the past.

Just to actually throw out a real suggestion instead of just summarizing what I think of blitz, I think the unwieldiness of vehicles is ok, and should be mitigated in other ways if possible. Keep damage as it is, give it a 5% speed decrease, and in change for that +25 or +30 range of the weapon. Longer range of the weapon mitigates that unwieldy feeling, and even though speed is decreased, it's a HUGE buff imo because chasing units get EMPed. I think this change would make blitz stronger for how I use it.
+3 / -0


5 years ago
What is exactly Blitz role supposed to begin with anyway? Like, what enemies blitz is supposed to be good to fight against?
Blitz is classified as raider/assault unit, and for a assault unit, it is extremely fast with 102 speed.

Regarding Blitz armanent: it has instantly hitting lightning attack that does 180 damage + 500 paralyze damage with stun time of 1second, however the fire rate is 1 shot every 2,7 seconds so the DPS is 67 +185(P) respectively. It also means that a total of 3 blitzes are needed to keep single target paralyzed, which amounts to metal investment of 900M.

If the Blitz is compared to Ravager, the results are following:
* Metal cost: 300 vs 250
* Health: 1100 vs 1850
* Speed: 102 vs 88
* DPS: 67 + 185(P) vs 105
* Range 245 vs 320
* Sight 450 vs 385
* Blitz hits instantly and has 1S stun time while Ravager doesn't hit instantly but also has small AoE of 16

By that comparison I would probably consider Ravager even better than Blitz even if they costed the same. There is also the question that does the Blitz even need Paralyze damage in the first place? Does it synergy somehow with with tank line up, because as far as I know, the Paralyze damage only helps with stack of other Blitzes. At least units like Venom and Gnats are able to keep singular units, or even multiple units in Venom's case stunlocked

if we start comparing Blitz to Knights, the Knights are twice as slow, but have over twice as much more health, 40 higher range and are much reliable at stun locking due to having 2,2 second reload time instead if 2,7. Arguably they aren't that popular unit either, but the lack of speed is easily overcame with Iris that escorts the Knights next to enemy lines.

I would say that slow damage would fit Blitz much more compared to Paralyze as slowing enemy by 50% rather than keeping stunned 1/3 of the time seems more reliable, but I am not sure if people want tank factory have two slow damage dealers with Blitz and Cyclops. Overrall I think that a fast moving slow damage dealer for tanks would be nice to allow tanks to chase enemy units.

Also, talking about Cyclops, I think Cyclops could use 1200 damage rather than 1000 so it would stand out more rather than just picking 3 Minotaurs instead of single Cyclops because Minotaur has more health (8 vs 5.45) and direct damage (0.19 vs 0.13) per metal compared to Cyclops although Cyclops has higher range and the slow beam. Overall, I don't think it is the best assault nor anti single target unit that tanks have to offer.
+2 / -0


5 years ago
Blitz and Cyclops both have role issues.
How are you supposed to use one?
In the case of Blitz I think it's supposed to be used on very large open maps as a heavy raider, avoiding the enemy army as much as possible using its high speed and stunning ability to leave them in the dust. In practice? It'll most often get encircled and killed and needs a lot of babysitting.

Note: Blitz has no vulnerability to riots (or indeed anything) so you don't have the flexibility when it comes to balance that you have with other raiders. I think this even-handed performance is its main issue. If it was very strong in combat vs X while very weak vs Y it would be much easier to balance...
+1 / -0
I think the only time I have ever had a blitz ball ever be viable is when I am fighting against brutal AI. The AI knows tanks are "weak" to jump bots. Thus they use placeholders and jacks to great effect. Blitzes counter jacks and other jumpers hard due to instant hits, and paralyze.
+0 / -0

5 years ago
blitz got a range-nerf because it was balling way too hard... cost-decrease sounds more logical...
+1 / -0

5 years ago
blitz needs to at least not be outranged by the cheaper raiders, namely scorcher (which has 270 range), but it needs to not outrange even the cheapest riots which are meant to counter it, namely reaver which has 270 range.

The spike damage it has also makes groups too effective at doing hit-n-runs as they nearly instantly stunlock smaller groups of riots, but small numbers too vulnerable to low weight raiders like glaives. It should be the other way around.

suggestions:
- increase range from 245 to 270 (about +10%).
- halve the reload time and damage per shot
+1 / -0

5 years ago
I don't have an issue with changing Blitz weapon from Lighting to Disrupter. Slow is supposed to be Diet EMP.

There is a issue with any kind of stunning is that it makes a unit more rioty. Maybe this is a good chance to experiment with playing with the weapon class. Maybe change the damage to some kind of impulse like a damaging newton push gun.
+0 / -0
http://zero-k.info/Forum/Post/199408#199408


Note these are just some possible changes, apologies if it came off as it needs all these specific changes. I was just trying to start a discussion and it has to start somewhere.

And by the looks of the thread it seems that everyone is in agreement with the blitz being very lackluster in its current state.
+0 / -0

5 years ago
USrankUltraGodzilla I didn't understand your first post.

You meant a ~10% cost decrease and a 10% hp increase and an increase in damage per shot to 165? it deals 180 already.
+0 / -0
5 years ago
Lightning gun stun is janky because of the short stun time - if multiple units are attacking at the same time, they overkill stun time and thus fail to completely stunlock units that they possibly could. Increasing the stun time on knight and blitz to 2 seconds would be worth a try, or at least make a widget that prevents overkilling stun time.
+1 / -0
Remember Disarm is also an option. Currently we have nothing that deals real damage + disarm, but it could act as a less severe EMP while still having the "need full bar" properties that slow doesn't have, and indeed NOT slowing things running away.

Edit: You could also give it a longer disarm time, maybe 2 or even 3 seconds, since it's so much less disabling.
+0 / -0


5 years ago
Whole blitz concept is honestly very bad, it will always hover between op and useless.

A high weight, fast unit that accurately stuns other units, synergising best with ever greater numbers of itself?

It sits outside the counter structure in its current manifestation.

Needs a do over

+2 / -0
I want to like the slow suggestion for Blitz, but I think it would end up dominating early game at least as much as the old stunlocking Blitz did. I think it could beat equal metal of raiders from all other facs without breaking a sweat so it might as well be a riot.

The disarm option is intriguing though. With the right numbers, the Blitz would become a meatier, punchier Cutter (which I like the concept of, even if I find them too weak for practical use) and there isn't really anything in the land lineup that does the same thing. I don't think disarm is quite as threatening in the early game raider clashes as slow because the Blitz will only be able to keep 1 opponent from shooting at worst.

Disarm doesn't snowball as badly as EMP. It takes 3 Racketeers to silence a Minotaur in 1 volley (cost 1050 metal vs 850). To be sure it stays quiet permanently, at least two of them will need to devote their attention to it. They can't stop things running away so the outcomes are less binary than EMP.

Blitz with a moderate amount of disarm (maybe no more than the 500 stun power it already has and the 3 second duration of the cutter's missiles, though they might be attractive even with 2 second disarm and no rate of fire change) seems like something that would have utility throughout the game without dominating any phase by themselves. Early, a Blitz really would be a raider/assault with the ability to dispose of light defences and then the eco they were protecting (much as now and it's better than EMP with minimal stun time). Mixed Koda/Blitz usage might also be well rewarded with the Koda hitting undefended targets and deterring light raiders, while the Blitz cracks tougher targets.

In the midgame, it could be particularly formidable even by raider standards for hunting packs of skirmishers (moderator aside perhaps), utilising speed and resilience to get close and ruin their day, even with light riot cover. Although low density encounters between skirmishers and raiders favour the raiders, I find that when the densities get higher, raiders turn from isolated small targets into a mob where a skirmisher missing its intended target is still likely to hit another for the same effect. The Blitz's resilience coupled with its speed makes it better able to close. X metal of blitzes will also never be as dense a target field as X metal of other raiders.

As it stands, tank has to leap across a gulf from its raider game to its mid-late mainstays of Emissary, Ogre and Minotaur which in other factories is filled with skirmishers. Blitz could fill that gap, but in a unique way.

In the late game, it could mob heavies, disarming some light weight striders and certainly things like grizzlies or hostile Cyclops, becoming a handy sidekick for heavier tanks instead of a liability, minimising the damage they take and allowing them to keep going. With the right micro (not letting the Blitzes rush ahead to die unsupported), they could minimise the damage suffered in an advance.

Throughout, it would remain vulnerable to heavier riots, massed light raiders or fleas/darts which it would overkill in a big way.
+2 / -0
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