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Skuttle fails. It usually gets uncloaked by Outlaws in midair and then killed by Felons. Hard, but not impossible to make cost. Almost as annoying as Anni sniping them midair. I don't have enough experience with other facs when it comes to countering really big shieldballs.
+0 / -0
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IMO shieldballs are easier to use and more difficult to counter than other styles. That says nothing about their balance at the highest levels of play, but I've recently won several games that I really shouldn't have just on the back of the sheer power of felon + shieldball. I'm not sure if I'm alone on that, but to me shieldball play is not very fun. I do it when I want to win, not when I wanna play a fun style. And I think the fun factor of a unit or composition could have some say in balance discussions. Let's take the LV factory for example - both ravagers and slashers are considered to be solid, strong units. Most people seem to be fine with the ravager being in that position due to them being quite fun to use. Meanwhile, slasher gets a lot more hate, which at least partly can be attributed to them being somewhat boring to use and play against. Also, about TheSponge's counter list, I'm pretty sure banishers don't counter shieldballs. They die almost instantly to felons without really accomplishing anything.
+3 / -0
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Srsly? quote:
Except shieldballs can be destroyed with crawling bombs among other things.
How to counter shieldballs:
LV: Domi + slasher
Shield: Roach
Cloaky: Tick
Tank: Reaper + banisher
Spider: Crabe + venom
Gunship: BDs maybe
Planes: Licho and/or stiletto
Jump: Sumo and/or skuttle
Countering shieldballs is not that hard if you are equal on eco and have not lost map control. |
SRSLY? All I know, shields are best coutners to slashers... Not other way. Reapers, banishers, BDs, Venoms, Crabes. All of those will get killed, before they even can shot, unless u have spent more metal in them, than shieldballer does on his SB. For every aspis in SB u need 2 Lichos, so pure Licho won't work either (Ye, I know, it's OP anyway) Sumo won't kill SB, unless it jumps on it. But Sumo is slower than shieldball, so it will fail too.
+0 / -0
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shield balls op now, after the licho nerf.Now you just need skittles to have a chance in killing it, or krows. Weird ...
+0 / -1
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@Lauri0 Yeah, I tried banishers vs shieldball in my last game. Felons devoured them. Also, shieldballs are surprisingly nimble, kiting them with the Banisher is *hard*. I assume the intent is that a Banisher can kill Thugs... which is fine, but the Banisher costs more than a Felon, so it's safe to assume you'll be facing felons unless it's the very first Banisher. I do wonder if the Outlaw isn't the real source of the problem. You could cloakwalk all kinds of terrifying hardware into point-blank range without it if not for the area-decloaking, and the prudent Cloaky player could be forced to manage Dirtbags to properly screen for cloaked attackers.
+0 / -0
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I think we need some kind of energy drainer. Lets say a building, looking similar to stationary shield, but let's say.. umm.. green instead of pink. It would connect to EVERY SINGLE shield in range (including friendly) and other friendly drainers, start draining power from enemys, and transforming it to energy for the player who's owning the ''vampire''(lol, that's a nice name for that kind of a unit), or charging friendly shields connected . It should have slightly bigger linking range than shield, and drain power 3x faster than single sheild is recharging. That means (I'm not sure, if those numbers are correct): If single aspis recharges at 12e/s, drainer connected to it would make it uncharge by 24e/s. But if connected to link of 3 shields, it would just stop them from recharging. Analogously, drainer connected to link of 4 shields, would make them recharge by 3e/s each (12e/s total). Dunno if this would work as a shieldball killer, but I think it's worth trying, isn't it?
+0 / -0
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Artillery drains shield energy for cost.
+2 / -0
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That list sounds like early game thuglaw type shieldball counters. For lategame aspis it's best to hit them with Tremor, Racketeer, Merl, Catapault etc so that they can never get close without becoming completely drained. Of course you can always just drain the felons directly using things like closed DDM's/Anni's, dirtbags, closed halberds, etc (Or just like reaper/ravager early on). Licho never countered lategame aspis shieldballs anyway, it did 2500 damage to the shields 3600 power. You have to drain the ball first which is still true, nothing in the shieldfac has over 2k HP, it's just that you have to get the sheildball to below 2k shield power now, instead of below 2.5k, for the Licho shot to pass through. Stiletto is still the best option to do this and will prettymuch run any shield dry.
+1 / -0
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But arty isn't as epic as energy drainer :D Also arty drains attention. They may be bombed/sniped/roached/whatever before shieldball advance, becasue enemy propably knows u got it. Also artilerry won't charge ur own shields lol.
+0 / -0
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Mechanics should interact organically with the rest of the game. Shields do this by interacting with damage from every weapon. If we wanted an 'anti-shield unit' we'd have kept the pitbull how it was... I do think that shields deserve a bit of a nerf after losing their vulnerability to piercing weapons and Stiletto being nerfed. But I don't think they're that OP. Felons drain 75 shield power per 100 damage dealt. Ravagers/Reapers have about the same HP/cost as a shield or thug has shields/cost, so you can almost drain it dry without firing a shot. Not even counting the energy spent by the shield player to charge it. Try a unit like a Goliath that you can just repeat to repair if the felons ever get it low, and he'll be spending way more to keep his shields charge than you will on repairs (Ignoring the 1k damage per shot on the Goliath).
+2 / -0
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My counter list is for normal shield balls. 5 thugs, a felon, a few outlaws maybe and some rouges. Of course it will not counter a mega sized shield ball costing the same as a detriment. @Lauri0 I put banishers there for DPS once the reapers have tanked the damage and let the shields drain from the felon firing.
+0 / -0
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Oh I've noticed a long term trend in balance changes, most of them buffed shieldballs one way or another: 1) Skuttle decloak range was increased. 2) Stiletto was changed to disarm damage. 3) Fire and Gauss don't pierce shields anymore. 4) Dgun more expensive, higher cooldown. 5) Licho got less aoe and less damage. 6) Nuke silo more expensive. The only buff to counters that I can think of is the "dive to bomb" change for precision bombers, but the decrease in weight might've made up for that.
+2 / -0
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Skasi - iirc the justification on the gauss change was "if it makes shieldballs OP then we should balance the actual shieldballs instead of just giving them obscure hardcounters".
+1 / -0
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I still don`t undestand why shields need outlaw in the fist place, the bandit is quite good against other raiders and later on the felon uterrly smashes light units that come in range and against really big swarms there is still the roach, Pehaps moving the outlaw somewhere else might be worth considering...
+1 / -1
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sheildballs are super duper vunerable to crawling bombs they are also crushed by reapers for cost area cloaker of cloakbots allows easy counter with ticks the stiletto disarm still hurts shields the same iirc, just no emp shields can hurt other sheilds using racketeer jumpies rely on skuttle or situational sumo/jacks jump its not infallable by any means, and it can disarm itself on a closed razorkiss very easily. once the ball is huge, you should also have access to all the relatively cheap counters, like stilettos, cloaked ticks, mass reapers etc
+1 / -0
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Don't let the shieldball become so big in the first place :S Those things are immobile as hell. in the worst case, use a sniper and glaive/warrior to take out aspis/felon. Before the shieldball has become unstopable. Also, minefield of ticks/roach works miracles.
+1 / -0
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quote:
Don't let the shieldball become so big in the first place :S |
I dont think you can use that argument, snowballing mechanics should always be expected to snowball where fallible humans are concerned
+4 / -0
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Coz I like spiders: quote:
Spider: Crabe + venom |
Not a shitshow. Venom is toast before it can get close enough. Crabes? Ah, no. You want Recluse. You get 5 (and a bit) Recluses for the cost of 1 Crabe for 3.6x of shieldball-sapping artillery. You get slightly less range, but they're quicker, so they can keep out of the way or scatter when they need too. Support them with something to mop up the mess, maybe a couple of infiltrators to zap the felons.
+1 / -0
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