Vehicle vs Tanks Saktoth vs Lauri

Panthers were viable before the two most recent buffs too. People just never built them because people. Anyway, I'm surprised you were surprised.

When and where did Panthers get buffed? By engine?

The panther file contains 1 reverted nerf.
Nothing is told in the changelog (Home).

Almost every zk unit is good if used correctly. Not every unit is the absolutely best choice for this situation. And not all units are countered by skilled players.

Panther cost went 350 -> 320 on 28/1/2011 and 320 -> 300 on 20/8/2013. I have not been paying attention to Panther as I thought it was a good enough unit before the cost decreases (the last one at least went unnoticed for me).

They are probably a little underpriced at the moment, but they are one of those units that exists on a knife edge of OP and useless due to the interacting mechanics of expensive, fast and EMP.

So, the question is what's the Panther's weakness? Besides being a generally weird unit that up until now has been tricky to use successfully I mean (I've never had luck with it).

It's a very generalist unit - a raider that doesn't fear the normal raider counters thanks to its beefy health. And as a stun-unit, it needs to work with other stun-units because a half-stunned target is a waste of firepower.

These are always the balance pain-point units - the generalists that show synergy with themselves. The Slasher, the Puppy, the Panther - these are the units that get stuck on the OP/UP roller-coaster.

They could have just slow instead of emp.

That may allow glaives, bandits, scorchers and venoms to retreat (<50% hp -> retreat point) and let their allies fight.

Tanks which debuff enemies are not tanks - they don't tank damage and do not synergies with tanks.
Slow movement create a synergy with other tanks and let the enemy still shot at it's armor.

Quote> AFAIK, the Panther is meant to be an anti-heavy/anti-defense unit and gutting its strength vs raiders would be consistent with that.

Wrong. You have reaper for that - and Banisher.

Quote> A disarm-based weapon would still have the "synergizes with itself" problem of all all-or-nothing special damages.

Wrong again. It is difficult to micro 10 Panther to disarm different things which can retreat with glaive-speed (more than panther)

Only synergies with itself as anti-heavy. And only to some extend, as disarm let mobiles still walk behind Stardusts and riots or to the scout-blob you move out of your defence line.

Guys, it's getting offtopic. It all started with Saktoth making a thread about mainly two replays that feature pantherspam being very effective. And now people are like "REWORK THE UNIT!"...

Latest balance changes shook up the metagame. Go play some 1v1s or low density teamgames with changed units, have fun and give feedback to devs. Right now we can only discuss how the unit seems based on either pre-patch games(which doesn't really matter as the patch shook the tanks vs vehicles matchup quite a bit) or the first few post-patch games.

Your first post was spot on [ISP]Lauri. I'm one of those people who loves tank openings too, and I've used Panther a lot with 0 success. I think it's harder to use it vs the lighter raiders like Glaive, because it misses them and the damages are out of sync (160 damage to the glaives 200 HP, wasting 120 damage). But it's just amazing vs Scorchers, they're the perfect weight (Panther 3-shots, wasting only 60 damage, and 1-shot stuns) and they rarely dodge the shots. Meanwhile Ravager, Slasher, Domi and Leveler are poor vs Panther (esp after nerfs).

The problem really is that the Panther is that it is the fastest land raider in the game (Behind Flea and Dart, which are scouts) and has more range than a Bandit. It can-out run anything, run rings around any kind of riot unit you use, and gain total map control. When it gains local net superiority due to its speed, it easily stun lock it's target and take little to no attrition, and can stutter-stun enemies when it retreats (even though they cannot catch it anyway!).

Kodachi is the perfect opener for the factory. All you need from a raider is to stop naked expand, force LLT's, and handle the enemies raiders. Koda does all of this. It also suits the 'keep your units alive' style of the factory, and the fire damage does not stack so you cannot spam it.

To be fair though, [ISP]Lauri played a very, very greedy game with his comm morph, early con and fairly unprotected base. He probably won these matches on economy, rather than on OP panther. However, the Panther, Koda and Welder (Which renders Darts useless) did allow him very strong map control and prevented me from raiding his aggressive expansion.

However, when I realised how greedy his strat was I beat him 2 times in a row with pure scorcher. So yeah, those games are important too: as is the last one, which shows how risky pure Scorcher is vs a different opening like Scrubbers.

It probably wasn't just Panther. But as I said in the replay and the other threads, this is exactly how I didn't want to see Panthers used: As a spam unit to replace the other options in the factory. They already have the strongest transition into midgame in Zero-K, your first Reaper or Banisher can end the game right there. The problem for Tank has always been surviving to that point. The Panther has actually been at 300 cost before, and was really problematic back then. This was years ago but I was aware of that when setting it to that cost level.

So while we definitely need more games, I'm open to people speculating on a re-role. It always takes weeks of discussion to get there anyway. Disarm sounds interesting but I think the problem is the range and speed. I'm partial to the idea of it as an anti-heavy that can stunlock enemies (As Shadowfury333 used it in this game: B214724 2 on Into Battle_v3).

I see the time Lauri put into becoming a tank specialist has really, really paid off :P

On topic of panther, i found dealing with them as LV very hard even before the buff, however small it was. They would just annihilate scorchers, run around levelers, dodge ravagers, and that's even before he escalates to banisher/reaper.

Darts weren't the answer really, since panthers typically can run back to cover before dying, killing most of the darts enroute, and then defenses to finish them. Very hard to do darts vs panther cost effectively.

One thing that seemed to work was to resort to unabridged agression, taking huge losses just to keep enemy units wounded and taking losses, hitting again before he repaired, so he couldn't lash back out while you gain superior eco.

Very much the all-or-nothing behaviour exhibited by domi and heavies, but on a raider.

I lurve the koda, though, even when playing against it. The hide-and-seek, and the choice of tactics are really interesting.