Forum Rated Raiders

Rate land-raiders ordinally. Give reasoning if you've got it.

1) - Duck
Wet map domination. Raider standoff domination vs. so much. Good vs. any air that happens to slow down around them. A bit bi-modal in performance, but when it's good it's great, and when it's bad you build something else.

2) - Scorcher
Scorchers exert the most raider pressure in the game. Defines flat maps meta.

3) - Glaive
Possibly highest skill cap raider. Enormous unconditional damage. Best all-round unit at raider role, but HP weighting gives a larger number of hard counters than normal (200dmg bursters). Utility scales well with player skill.

4) - Flea
Best ultra-light unit. Feels more like a factory mechanic that disallows opponent from having unguarded territory. Would be OP in a number of other factories.

5) - Bandit
Straight up weaker than glaive, but is far less punishable. Is worse at raider role, but better against everything that counters raiders. Greater raider to learn with as is forgiving.

6) - Pyro
Very powerful role combination of riot/raider. Is basically immortal vs. most facs assuming micro godhood. Falls short due to poor followup from JJ factory, and it being difficult to get repair happening in the early game when your economy is somewhat skeletal. Another high skill-cap raider.

7) - Scythe
Conditionally enormously powerful, but those conditions are difficult to predict. Is weak to raiders in general, but is brutal in their absence.

8) - Kodachi
Good at making cost, but not that great at map control. Expensive and unreactive. Treads on panther's toes by lighting it on fire.

9) - Panther
Good at making cost, but applies very little pressure for cost. Treads on kodachi's toes by chain exploding.

10) - Dagger
Very fast and bursty, but cedes raider superiority almost automatically. Just too weak for cost.

11) - Puppy
Can negate incoming forces pretty well. Can grey goo to deny metal. But not great at having a positive impact on the game.

12) - Dart
Really just a bad weight. Has good LOS, but is almost strictly worse than flea. Rarely useful outside of the first batch of units produced.

Thoughts?

Interest and fostering community cohesion through discussion. Is there a reason this sort of thread shouldn't happen?

dammit.

I pretty much agree with your list except I'd put ducks down below scythe. Ducks are so overrated.

quote: 3) - Glaive Possibly highest skill cap raider. Enormous unconditional damage. Best all-round unit at raider role, but HP weighting gives a larger number of hard counters than normal (200dmg bursters). Utility scales well with player skill.

This is a perfect description. With good micro and positioning glaives win against almost any other raider for cost. They force the enemy to defend every mex and make it difficult to field riots against them on open maps because of their high speed and low weight. Their DPS ensures that they remain useful throughout the game and regeneration gives them survivability to offset their low health. The best unit in the game without question.

Shadowfury333
Tier list is a better idea. Good thinking.

[Fx]Drone
I'm particularly interested in why you think ducks are bad (genuine curiosity, you'd know better than I). I do find they under-perform at times, but always attributed it to poor micro on my part.

Anarchid
Any way I can get my mits on upcoming changes?

If anyone wants to leave any specifics about raiders and raider interaction in general, that's fine too.

S: Glaive
A: Flea, Duck, Bandit, Scorcher
B: Kodachi, Panther, Pyro
C: Dagger
F: Dart

Tier lists are fun, so here's mine

S:
A: Glaive, Bandit, Scorcher, Duck, Pyro
B: Flea, Kodachi, Puppy
C: Dagger, Banshee
D: Dart, Panther
F:

It looks quite similar to Shadowfury's with the biggest differences being that I rate Panther much lower and don't see much point in differentiating between well microed and badly microed Glaives.

Every raider is immensely better with micro, some much more noticeably so than Glaives. For example, while badly microed Glaives can still do stuff, badly microed Panthers or Daggers often end up being literal metal donations without any kind of upside. Well microed both of those units can still be somewhat effective though.

Overall I feel like there aren't any truly horrible or blatantly overpowered raiders, so I didn't put anything in S or F.

They were super nerfed. Old multihit Dagger was really op, not sure why people didn't try to abuse it more.

It's funny though, when I realised how crazy good they were and started abusing them more or less every game, they got nerfed in a matter of ~4 days. I guess the realisation came that it wasn't just Godde's super skill that made him dominate with Daggers, but that they were actually also blatantly overpowered.

Current Daggers are not even shadows of their former self, but with good micro and careful play they can still do OK. Really depends on the map and how porcy the other guy is playing.

I think they are weak because their use cases are overly limited for their very low cost. They are good for certain things, but you'll still be investing way (way way way) more into Scorchers in almost any game.

Puppy and Pyro are in a better place IMO, where both can be used in significant quantities to great effect instead of one doing all the heavy lifting and the other one being a very niche unit you usually only need ~100m worth of on the battlefield.