I think the problem is more on the Felon, as it is the Ultimate Riot/Skirmisher/AA, which effectively means it counters everything. Of course Felon can't beat every match up and unsupported felon is very vulnerable against extremely durable units, but with some extra shields from allies it will cook even minotaurs.

Overrall shields scale really well in numbers compared to other factories, till mass wipe attacks such as stun rockets manage to land on shield ball. Of course with the new even stronger outlaw common anti shield strategies such as using imp or snitch to blow stacked unit balls is much harder, if not impossible to pull off.

Casted on YouTube

I think a nerf to how long the stun lasts could still be justified. I realize the Felon killed the Tbird here, but the Phoenix followup also took a bizarrely long time after the TB strike.

yes the felon buffs effectively make it uncounterable,at the very least it should be countered by skirmishers and tb

snipers dont work anymore either

I think it because people are getting worse countering shield balls, or the shieldball's owners are getting better at controlling them.

quote: I think it because people are getting worse countering shield balls, or the shieldball's owners are getting better at controlling them.

Outlaw's recent +50% damage buff may have something to do with this.

Especially on top of Felon's late shield strength and range buffs.

Thanks for the comment.

Follow up question:
Is the above an example of "walking into a projectile"? To me it looks like shooting in the back.

Could projectile speed be increased so that it would be faster than phantoms bumping into each other?

And/or make phantoms stop briefly to fire to prevent bumping?

And/or make line of fire check (for phantom) slightly more stringent, as in not firing when there is something (movable unit) in certain (small) distance of line of fire?

Frames are discrete so there is no speed that stops Phantoms catching up to projectiles. A short halt to fire for Phantom could mitigate some issues. Adding width to the line of fire check would be an engine request and sounds difficult.

I see the discussion has moved on somewhat, but this morning I was thinking that the Thunderbird could regain its hell to shieldball (if I'm doing air, I rarely bother with them in a lobster pot) capability by projecting its lightning somewhat ahead of itself. Essentially, the leading edge of the disarm wave hits the ball long before Thunderbird ends up in felon range. I wonder if it might also benefit from Phoenix like banking and bombing behaviour so it doesn't overfly into hostile AA infested territory quite so often (so instead of a line of disarm, it makes an arc).

All other stats remain the same, just the behaviour changes.