Pyro and Jumpfac

Right now, Jumpfac revolves entirely around Pyro until late game, when you can start to field sumo/firewalker.

Pyro is a great, interesting, high-micro unit. But it is very monoculture-like. Moderator is exclusively a support (and only on flats), and Jack lacks the versatility to be used for much more than clearing an area for Pyros to rush through. Puppy is only good situationally and fairly easily countered, it has little synergy with Pyro.

Pyro is also too strong in some circumstances. Jumping up cliffs and getting behind a factory often spells the doom for a player, they cannot build while the pyro is attacking it, and the Pyro can often hit the commander (or anything he tries to make) through the factory, killing both Comm and fac. Experienced players can often prevent this, but the potential for taking out a whole player with a single pyro is there.

The hole in the jump factories lineup is a proper riot unit. The Pyro has to be good against raiders for this reason, and it's last few rounds of buffs were focused in this direction to make Jumpfac start-viable.

Thus I'd like to suggest that the Pyro be split into two units. One is an AoE fire unit with a leveler-like weapon with a DoT on it, which explodes (as the old pyro did, which was cool) into a fireball on death. I'd also like it's jets to leave behind a trail of persistent fireballs when it jumps, creating linear zones of area control, so that the jump can be used to gain rage, advance or for cliff mobility, but also be used to seal off chokes and create walls of fire if jumped laterally. Unlike most riots, the upfront damage on this unit would be fairly low: it relies entirely on AoE and DoT. One problem with the design is that on-the-ground fire DoT's are inherently good vs buildings, but the damage can probably be low enough here. The cost range would be similiar to the Pyro to synergize. The speed would be slightly slower, but still fast for a riot.

The Pyro would then be an anti-building and anti-heavy focused raider. It can have an inaccurate flame weapon (like the gnat) or a slower moving projectile (If we put in the noexplode-only-damages-once thing). This means a Pyro rush can be countered more easily by raiders, and a proper jumpfac rush requires you to build both units.

Anyway, just a concept I've been toying with. I'll probably make the unit and stick it in game for people to /give and see if it's any good.

exploding into fireball on death, leaves behind a trail of fireballs when jumping. I support this unit :).

Puppies are actually pretty good. They trade cost efficiently against almost all early game units.

>The Pyro would then be an anti-building and anti-heavy focused raider.

One idea I think this version of the Pyro could use is a weapon that gains power the longer it fires. In Starcraft 2 there is a unit called Void Ray that has two power levels. At first the power is lower, then after a short period of time (7.2 seconds) it gains 33% more DPS. Since units in Starcraft cannot move and attack at the same time, if you want to move the Void Ray to avoid damage, you have to sacrifice the beam's charge and lose a lot of DPS.

Here's a game that was cast last night in which WhiteRa uses a ton of Void Rays.
Here's a link to the stats for the Weapon

So what if the new Pyro had a flame that does more damage as it fires? A visual indicator could be added as well, such as the flame growing larger and possibly changing color (Near the bottom of the page there is a picture showing the difference in beam intensity). Rather than only have a range of 100-130% damage like the Void Ray, I would give it a HUGE range, maybe from 10%-100%. That way, it can't kite and shoot stuff forever, but still keeps its role as anti-building and anti-heavy. It would also retain a large portion of micro-intensity since you would have to be constantly assessing when to run, when to stay, like the Slasher.

quote: Puppies are actually pretty good. They trade cost efficiently against almost all early game units.

Puppies are so good that, while being a raider, can easily pwn a warrior while making cost. And then eat the wreckage.

The only real solution to puppies in, say, cloaklab is just to tank it with zeus, which is really crazybad.

Persistent fireball trail on a jumping unit sounds rather useless though, unless fireballs fall to the ground, which would look bad. If it blazed across landscape instead though, that'd be neat. Though still too dgunny for a low-tier unit.

On making pyro anti-building and anti-heavy (though why would you need that in lab that has scuttle is beyond me): just give it a heatray!

lol when puppies are attaking... they cannot be emped

quote: but you'll probably trick the puppies into wastefully overkilling the glaives

Nope, puppies that miss become alive again, just a bit hurt. You can use that to jump with them. So first pup kills the glaive, the rest hit ground and devour the wreck.

If you nerf pyro (it charging up it's weapon is a good idea, for visuals use the ones for pyro and pyro2 in the mission editor), make jack a bit stronger to compensate. Give it a bit more HP or DPS or something like that.

quote: requires lots of micro to make cost

Jump, click on commander. Cost made threefold.

quote: Fleas and LLT's hardcounter puppies.

So do darts on plains and dirtboxes, i hear. But for the rest, it's rather grim :P