Some balance feedback

Just my oppinions, ofc.

* The sumo is OP

The sumo is very flexible. It has massive DPS up close, moderate range and excellent anti swarm. It can jump to escape death, and this frequently bugs out and makes it immune to damage while EMP'd or jump while EMP'd. It can stand up to other heavies and massacre cloakes/shieldbots/light vehicles very cost effectively, especially the latter.

I would be in favor of taking a look at its heatrays and considering an alternative with less DPS and more AoE - even its jump alone is a strong asset, and combined with the DPS, resilience and jumping utility this is easily the strongest heavy right now.

* The tick is too cheap

The tick is AT LEAST as good as the roach, yet the roach costs 160m and the tick costs 100m. The roach can damage a group of incoming assault units -- the tick incapacitates them for 20 seconds. I dont even need to argue this point as so many players have agreed when this is issue is raised. It is the cheapest gameswinger in ZK. One tick can disable an entire shieldball, and turn a 1000m force into chaff instantly.. for 100m!

I would be strongly in favor of upping the cost of the tick so somthing closer to the roach - 140m perhaps.

* The banshee's strength against air encourages single unit spam.

Because the banshee can hit air, I see all the best players spam banshee non-stop when playing gunshit, regardless of enemy planes. Assuming both sides have an air player, banshees can attack planes sufficently to turn the battle. They are also the most effective gunship in air vs air. The banshee is already a very good unit vs land, and I like this - but I do think the role of the Banshee and rapier really REALLY needs looking at in the next patch.

Specifically, the banshee should be less effective against air, and the rapier should be more effective against or even specialized to only attack air.

* The Outlaw is too powerful in many situations.

I am guilty of abusing this mercilessly. The Outlaw is fairly insane in many situations, since its DPS stacks with the number of targets in range and ALWAYS hits at a fairly long range regardless of wrecks or terrain. It is even capable of catching Rockos and killing them en masse if the rocko controlling player is not careful. Against 10 ravagers in range, a single Outlaw puts out 880dps. Madness!

I would like to propose a minor range and damage nerf.

I agree with all of these comments. I haven't found outlaw to be drastically imba though.

On gunships:

1) With the addition of the AA vehicle, there's no more conceptual need to pretend that "flex AA" is a core thing. That ship has sailed. Give the gunship a pure-AA unit and keep the AA-capabilities of the other units as a situational thing.

Imho, I've always wanted to see the Banshee and the Gnat's weapons swapped, making the Gnat into a true raider (papery and painful) while the Banshee becomes a fast, tanky stunner that supports the other Gunships.

2) Sumo and Outlaw seem to be variations of the same problem - they just don't seem weak-enough against skirmishers that are supposed to make mincemeat out of them. ZK's skirmisher-game is probably what needs a closer look... how many Rocko swarms do you see these days? Or Rogues?

@Godde - if the Tick is essential to countering raider-swarms since Glaives are a bit scout-y, doesn't that imply a problem with the Warrior?

@1vory - when a unit has near-constant balance problems (banshee has ridden the OP/useless rollercoaster how many times?) maybe the role needs to be looked at, not the balance?

Anyhow, my comment to Godde is that maybe the reason he needs to use the Tick as a riot (or anti-assault when his raiders fail) is because of problems with other units. He's saying that Glaives are failing vs Ravagers and obviously, as you said, the Warrior just is too slow to use against Scorchers... maybe the problem is the glaive/ravager interaction and the warrior/scorcher one, and his need for OP ticks is masking that problem?

And you've suggested a new AA-only gunship yourself, and it would solve your problem there wouldn't it? No more shoehorning flex-AA onto the Banshee then?

i would propose to reduce stun duration or damage on ticks.

> I would like to increase EMP decay speed to add differentiation to EMP times...

Isn't that the same thing as reducing stun duration?

my point regarding banshees is that they are impossible to counter in the early game, given the team having the banshees also has a planes player to cover them. they are far to durable to fall victim to the amount of aa you can typically afford to make in early game, and for the same reason fighters are virtually useless against them, given the planes player brings his fighters to cover them. you would essentially need your whole team to just spam aa to counter just 2 guys on the enemy team, that cant be the way its intended.

the average amount of aa you would make to protect yourself against a planes player that made some napalms or prec bombers is not enough to stop a crowd of banshees. banshees can kill or just ignore any amount of aa that you can reasonably have at early game.

Agree on sumo, it is a highly mobile riot/assault. It has a perfectly accurate weapon with anti-heavy capacity, enough range + jump to take out skirmishers, an escape and the HP of an assault. I'd say give it just a lower damage accurate laser so it loses it's anti-heavy capacity at close range.

I think the jump factory may be too weak without it though- Or rather, relies entirely on Pyro. Jack is too situational and firewalker too easy to snipe: You don't have any other units really.

I think much of the problem with the tick is the increased clustering in the pathfinding. People love to stack their shieldballs all in one spot too, which is honestly not necessary. I DO however think the tick is exploity in other areas, particularly in how easy it is to use to stun a commander very early.

Agree on banshee, always said any minor buff was just going to put it back into the old role of go-to unit.

Outlaw needs to do more damage at max range less at min range, needs the wave to propogate a lot faster (The fact you cannot tell if you've really been hit or not is awful), and needs to primarily do slow damage. It should instantly slow raiders to a crawl the moment they enter it's radius and encourage anything else from trying to get under shields, but it should not be able to walk into a base and kill every building at once.

Stats show that tick PARALYZE less cost/cost than roaches *DAMAGE*.

So by objectively measured stats its not better than roach in real world games - even IF we consider paralyze to be equal to damage (which it isnt) and if we dont count roach impulse damage which isnt included in stats.

I think it has a lot to do with psychology where paralyzed units are highly visible and feel lost even if the actual damage done is negligible in the end.

I find it interesting how the Dante(3500) has only 200 more dps then sumo(2000) and has about 1200 LESS hp. On top of that the sumo has its jump letting it escape/attack freely. Op much?