Overall I would say the game is in a decent place.
General Overview:
Shields are Strong
Bandit is a generally good early-game raider. Thug-balls are the best assaults in the game for approaching defenses, the factory only needs to worry about being super-skirmed as things scale into the late game. If angles are confined, it can be hard for even those to tear apart the shield ball.
Recommendations: Nerf thug HP somewhat, perhaps by 10%, to help highlight their weakness when shields are down.
Cloaky is Strong
Glaive can do its job early game, although it often loses slightly to most early raiders. The factory is propped up on the strength of slings as the final step in the super-skirm war, Knights with strong generalist capabilities, and good access to cloak that can frankly be almost impossible for some factories to deal with (especially with its units that combo well i.e. Knight).
Recommendations: Knight might deserve a slight nerf, maybe hammer too. With a less strong knight, reaver being useful will be more important, as diversity will be more required. Likely should reduce HP/Damage/Cost of reaver by 10-20% to allow it to be in more places at once, while retaining its approximate strength.
Spider is Strong
Flea forces more defenses, venom is good against them for a raider, and is the 2nd best raider-riot. As game scales, recluse balls become powerful, making the factories concerns mostly about factories that can deal with them, because spider units rarely can engage well on anything long range enough to skirm recluse. Still, with new venom its in a better place there than it used to be.
Recommendations: Recluse is often being bombarded by things at long range, and is most scary at fairly large unit densities. I would increase the model size 10-20%, in order to make it easier to hit and less good at clumping. Maybe increase hermit speed slightly, so they have a different unit better able to pressure those balls a bit better, so they have a wider variety of valid options, and have to rely less on recluse.
Amph is Strong
Archer is the best raider-riot early-game, and grizzly is the most generally useful semi-strider. Lobster enables dynamic plays outside of the box, and the factory can generally deal with anything.
Recommendations: Nerf archer range by 5, making it a bit worse vs venom mostly. Reduce Grizzly health to 7800, enough for a widow to one-shot, reduce its cost to 1900 keeping its rough total power in line, but making it weaker not efficiently attacking (raider attacks, bombers, and widow). Buff duck very slightly, not sure how. Its missile accuracy is so bad at the moment, and archer is strong enough that its place is tenuous.
Hover is Decent
Bolas is a good generalist raider-riot that scales decently into the game. Lance is a powerful artillery anti-heavy combo. Daggers are in a weak spot, I would rate this as the only "problem" with hover.
Recommendations: Dagger +10% speed, putting it above or equal to dart. The unit has the same dps as a dart without a slow, it should be improved to better perform the role of scouting and decloaking.
LV is Decent
Scorcher could be qualified as the worst raider-riot. It has a very delicate balance (always has really), and recently the factory has mostly relied on a good generalist unit that negates light defense (fencer) as its backbone, with on occasional ripper as a powerful proper riot. Matchups where fencer is solidly defeated, especially below 700, are problematic for the factory, doubly if the scorcher loses. I am very interested in what people have to say about its matchups here, because my wisdom would put Spider, Shield, and Hover as all solidly advantageous against it.
Recommendations: None, it is in an odd place. Ravager is potentially fantastic, everything about it screams to me that the factory is problematically powerful, but the numbers just don't seem to work that way in practice. Am quite interested how people feel about it.
HT is decent
I feel it relies on Emissary a lot to deal with skirmishers, but perhaps that is fine. Kodachi is a decent raider with light riot prosperities, and has at least an ok matchup against everything in that tier. Ogre and Minotaur both are solid manifestations of their unit type, with AoE to pierce shields and sufficient health to reliably get back to heal. Much like how jacks are ok vs recluse, the heavy tanks just have enough hp and speed in a small enough area that they are able to deal with the super-skirms, its just normal skirmisher that begin becoming an issue.
Recommendations: None. At most increasing blitz's speed.
JJ is chaotic
JJ units often are extremes, and either win or lose extremely hard. Puppy might lose 10 to 1 on metal spent, then win 1 to 3 with a cloak. Pyros often with on razor margins then need to repair, and are good at getting to critical places but weak unless they do, Jacks try to replace the need for raiders with good dps for an assault, but then are very fragile to their counters, and are such a huge investment that they cannot efficiently deal with light porc. Firewalker is often powerful because of its safety and ability to do
something at long range, but that something is often very slow and comes with friendly fire. Moderators shut down some units but are glass to super skirms, the current most late-game meta unit type.
Recommendations: Massive. Placeholder gets super-skirm range, but must be constantly attacking to maintain blackhole (with a target locked burst). Jack becomes faster, with an 800-1000 damage melee attack that freezes walking movement entirely during its 4 second reload (charge in, clear turrets, Jump away to safety, or the reverse - faster and more dangerous). Add a relatively normal raider while slightly nerfing Pyro speed.
In my opinion, 3 facs are a hair too good, deserving of minor nerfs, 3 facs are a hair weak deserving of minor buffs, 1 is about right, and 1 is kinda all over the place.
