Venom counters Ronin, nice

quote: Venom counters all of cloaky, except for Knight, nice

ftfy

quote: Venom counters Ronin, nice

Venom is a riot raider, which means it's a riot and a raider. Raider > Skirmisher, this is like abc of zk

Venom costs more than three Glaives. I want that theoretical widget that tells people the cost of their selection and the cost of nearby enemy units, and warns them when taking bad fights.

For example look at 3:48. Ten Glaives (650 metal) vs. five Venom (1000 metal). None of the Venom die and only three Glaives survive. Glaives are faster so it is suitable that they are less powerful for their cost, so this was always going to be a very uneven engagement. Their speed also lets the Glaives not take such a poor fight.

At 4:28 the Venoms are moving towards the cloaky factory. They are a bit damaged but still cost 1000 metal. Over the course of their advance they are opposed by 540 metal of Ronin and 260 metal of Glaive. The cloakbots attack piecemeal while the Venoms move as a unit.

One Venom has died to a Glaive by the time it reaches the base. Other cloakbots have been distracted by incoming Venoms. It is about 335 metal of cloakbots vs 800 metal of spiders by 4:46.

By 5:05 270 metal of Ronin are fighting 1200 metal of Venom (more have come in as reinforcements) in the cloaky base with no defenses.

Some of the Venom have been killed by 5:25 and a few more Ronin have arrived. The remaining 600 metal of Venom kill the cloakbot factory while being shot at by 450 metal in Ronin.

I'm a bit worried about the Ronin-Venom interaction myself, and I see how Ronin looks useless here, but I don't think this game in particular has very much to say about it. Most skirmishers are going to lose a fight like this against twice their value in most raiders. The base needed turrets or a more concentrated defense consisting of different units if it was to survive.

Replace Ronin with Recluse or Rogue, or Venom with Glaive or Bandit. 1000 metal of Glaives is a lot of Glaives. I am convinced that a lot of the meming around riot-raiders is to do with units that cost 3x more than a Glaive not really feeling, at a deep level, like they cost that much. That isn't to say that riot-raiders are actually fine (they are relatively new after all), but I think they generally feel worse balanced than they 'actually' are.

Try spawning equal cost armies of raiders and comparing. Venom isn't all that good against armies of equal cost, although it still mostly comes out ahead (which makes sense, since it is slow). Try the same for Bolas. You could even try the same for Archer, although expect it to win almost like a riot, since it has the speed of one.

It is fairly easy to dodge Ronin shots. Don't expect Ronins to stop fast units alone. They will mostly just slow down the enemy by forcing them to dodge.
Combine that with some reliable DPS from Lotus turrets for example, and that time spent dodging means more damage dealt to the enemy while the Ronins stay alive.
A line of Ronins supported by Glaives is hard to deal with for spiders. If they try to chase down individual Ronins, they will take damage as they get close to the Ronins, and if the Venoms are too far apart, they can get overrun by Glaives.
Venoms struggle against defenses. 2 or 3 lotus turrets spread out in your base, would probably have been enough to kill the enemy Venoms while they were skirting around your buildings trying to avoid stunning eachother.