Blegh Scalpels

A week away from ZK and came back to some wonderful surprises... and a few poorly founded ones. Namely: Scalpel still hasn't been addressed.

Scalpels are disgusting in their current implementation. Not only are they perfectly accurate, but also high damage AND with high AOE. Can anyone tell me what's wrong with this?

As a Skirmisher/Riot/Anti-Heavy, the scalpel has very few, if any, natural enemies. It is disgustingly safe to spam, often making cost even against RAIDERS. Aren't raiders supposed to be the counter to scalpels?

Please consider one of the following nerfs:

- HP nerf. So that it one shots itself. This means it will lose to faster things when they get up into the ball.
- Removal of the AOE. It's perfectly accurate, no need for it. This would cause it to be purely Anti-heavy and lose to raiders.
- Removal of tracking. This will define its role as purely skirmisher/antiheavy.
- Taken off the anti-heavy role (this overlaps with penetrator) and given regular skirmisher traits. (Does Hover Lab really need 2 anti-heavies?)

TL;DR: They really need their roles defined better. If it lost any of these traits, it would probably be far better and encourage more unit diversity.

Scalpel feels quite strong but Hover as a factory doesn't seem to be overpowering the metagame. A nerf to Scalpel without further adjustment probably kills the fac outside of switches for Penetrator (or occasionally claymore/halberd).

In general the Hover units are flimsy and rely on high damage (high alpha in the case of Dagger/Scalpel/Penetrator, high single-target damage at reasonable range in the case of Mace). The exceptions are Halberd, with high HP but an attack rather ineffective against mobiles, and the Claymore in a derpy class of its own.

It seems very easy for these units to get out of control; Dagger, Scalpel and Mace have all been very strong in the recent past. Getting the first hit is inherently pretty good, even if your unit is quite weak in other aspects.

Fully agree they are horrible at the moment. I'd drop their damage, that way they remain disgusting vs raiders (important for the matchup at present) but lose some of their teeth vs assaults and other high hp units.

@_Shaman

3 riots. Claymore exists too.

I would rather remove its AOE and/or nerf missile tracking so that raiders can counter it, but not nerf its anti-heavy ability.
Scalpel is unique medium range non-cloaking anti-heavy that very few units are similar to, imho we should leave this part as it is.

Just remove its AOE, there is no reason for a TRACKING missile skirm to have that.

Eh...I wouldnt go overboard, OGS. If you observe closely you will see that it is mostly AOE that is responsible for decimating raider groups; the missiles themselves are too few to counter raiders of equal cost.

Scissor AoE nerf would also make the cratering not reach ground when hitting large targets. Perhaps that's good because being stuck in the muck is reliant on map hardness which is bad (hardness very unstandarized).

Yes...making holes for no reason is more annoying than anything else. I would not miss it for a second.

INB4 "but quants rule" - variety does not add anything to the game if it is annoying and pointless - random holes qualify.

quote: If Scalpel loses AoE, having the depthcharge hover have a land weapon with AoE might be good.

I hope this won't be the new scalpel.