Faraday is strong

raised faraday is even better vs air =P .. the main strength vs air is its aoe as bombers converge to a tightness to hit targets.
even if newton also had a defence mode it would be worse then a faraday because i agree faraday is op vs allot of targets. 2 raised faraday traps a litcho and 3 raised faraday is a litcho nightmare but is expencive.

i used to place them behind walls then i learned..
sink the faraday -2 levels down and it cant even be targeted by 90% of the units in-game until it pops up and starts to stun you

if faraday was allot weaker you might see them as often as frontline newtons

What would happen if you kept its stats the same, but you doubled the price?

For me the problem of faraday is the unit design itself.

Faraday is probably the defense that better scales. Its main desvantages are managable:

- Range: Not so much a big problem because of armored state. Making repairs quite viable.

- Not effective imediatly: More faradays reduces this.

- Engagement from multiple sides: More faradays reduce this.

- Can be hit by art while firing: Micro can keep the unit shut (And ready for ambush)

- Can be burst damage killed: Wait... faraday is burst too! O_O

- Doesn't kill by itself: When you see it alone? Also lock time is big enough to bring some raiders

Plus this is the fact that you can stunlock stuff with 2~3 turrets and you have probably the most OP stuff in the game.

For me rework possibilities are:

1) Buff HP but remove the armor, so that is range vulnerable AND gives gauss it's niche back (really? Why it has this?)
2) Convert to slow damage to reduce it's scaling (and making it a little easier to balance, as it won't work as a binary)
3) Buff it but send it to 800 metal-cost, so it can't be massed easily, but also to make repair harder.
4) Convert it from area damage to a single target in rapid-fire


Off: Hum... building faradays with wielders looks like a good strategy... faraday buys time for wielders to kill. And combos with blitz.

quote: 4) Convert it from area damage to a single target in rapid-fire

finally.

the Faraday is good so how he is!
please dont touch it and "update" its to broken!

Here's my read on why Faraday is currently in vogue.

Pros:
- High alpha and dps
- High aoe
- Perfect accuracy
- Good range
- Arty resistant

Cons:
- Doesn't kill anything on its own
- Low stun time

These combine into a tool that is a perfect fall-back position for an army build where your main source of damage is anti-unit artillery and skirms.

High alpha, range, perfect aim -> defeat bombers, then your army finishes them.
High aoe, perfect aim -> defeat raiders, then artyskirms kill them
Arty resilient -> enemy artyskirm can't just siege them
Good dps -> works vs assaults as well (and then artyskirms kill them)
Low stun time -> This only matters vs assaults, but just build two and you're okay.

If you compare Faraday with Stinger, the differences are that
+ Stinger actually kills stuff
+ Stinger has better range

- Stinger is less than perfectly accurate
- Stinger has no AoE
- Stinger is not arty-resistant

Under conditions where your main investment is your treasured mob of artyskirms and your enemy is mainly artyskirms, Faraday successfully fulfills more roles.

Faraday-protected bases camped with mobile units are extremely resistant to artilery as long as the dps-source mobiles can avoid being hit directly:
- Shooting the faraday with arty does nothing
- Shooting the mobiles causes misses
- Assaulting directly gets your force stunned and killed by their mobiles.

TL:DR IF you want to make Faraday less cancerous, just remove the armor. If it actually dies to artillery like porc should*, it stops being the ultimate word in artyporc meta.

The alternative of turning it into a single-target stun laser rebrands it as antiheavy and gives it stunlock. I'm not sure that you really want that.

IMO Faraday is the only good point defense AA vs bombers and therefore its not reasonable to nerf it vs air unless you also nerf Likho and Raven,or buff hacksaw to the point that hacksaw can reliably stop bomber spam from destroying a singu/nuke etc.

If you nerf it vs ground units then you need to nerf scythe.

The idea of removing the armour seems good though means its still good at defending bases vs bombers scythes etc but cant just sit in arty fire forever.

Tbh after looking up the turret's recent history, i think that it could just have its health reduced somewhat.

Two latest changes to Faraday's balance were (NB, "latest" here means "two years ago" for the first change!)

1: Aug 16, 2017

• Cost 200 -> 250
• Health 1000 -> 2200 (It is supposedly beefy)
• Damage 1000 -> 1200
• Reload time 2.8 -> 2.4.

2: Mar 11, 2018

• Reload time 2.4 -> 2.6 (pre-buff was 2.8)

Reducing its health somewhere lower than the 2x hp/cost buff would greatly increase its killability IMO.

would this be bad?

"hold off big shield balls" is pretty much only possible with ddm anyway.