Balancing: Ghost tank, Guard, Demon

[Althend]

Currently these are kinda less played and some way weaker. Here are my suggestions to balance it without making these tank unbalanced.


Ghost tank

Creating creep and being blocked by them is kinda lame. I suggest to make this tank flying. Currently its weakness is really annoying. Even as air, since its skill it would really not be imba.


Guard

Its lack of mobility is a real weakness that really limit its gameplay. The trents skill is kinda lame too, it gives such a feeling of "wasted skill point". I would make it linked/added to the regen skill. In order to correct its boredom I would add to this specific tank the ability to cancel enemy cp aura when root inside it. So this tank would gain an offensive value, push by making it root in enemy cp would be fun. 9 to balance it, when the gard is rooted in enemy cp his regen ability is reduced by an amount decreasing with the level of his "cp cancel aura".


Demon

Destined to low range due to its ultima the demon is less played than others. Low range without boost move stuff is lame;
I would like to add to its ulti a smass blink/telep/jump ability, something like 500-600. Its ulti low range damage would come after the jump.

The lava skill is a bit weak too. Why not make these creep being able to do also 1 damage to mana.



Tell me what you think about.

[Battlemaniac]

Guard tank is fine, you just need to unlock its secrets.

people that knows how to use that tank, can finish the game very quickly, and you don't even need speed on that tank

Ghost tank, just make those creeps transparent (walkthrough) and that solves your problem, it should not be an air tank, as the mana drain skill will be overpowered as a air tank

i dunno about you, but Demon tank is pretty damn powerful as well in the right hands, you just need to know what items to get to use its combo.

[Althend]

Your answer is " you dont know how to use it"

Have you ever played against me?


Mouhahahhaha Go to hell weakling

[Prog]

*Ghost Tank: I think this tank is fine as it is. Using troops/summons at the right time together with the defensive capacities of draining mana doesn't seem underpowered to me. The only problem is that to be playing offensively you need quite a lot of equipment which makes it rather hard to play in clangames. Still i don't think that's underpowered.

*Guard: At first: This tank doesn't lack as much mobility as often thought. Just root every 20 seconds and unroot right after that, so you spawn treants without losing too much mobility (If I remember it correctly you should root at ~x:17, ~x:37, ~x:57 to spawn treants at x:20, x:40 and x:00). 2nd: Hope I'm allowed to speak a bit about dev-internal discussions: We are allready discussing various possible changes to the guard, but it doesn't have the highest priority right now.

*Demon: Needs no chance as it is still a very strong tank and can be seen quite often.

[VuDu]

i play guardian almost all the time and i even posted a treat for it in suggestion forum and demon tank is good i've got killed by it many time it's like stun + ulty + weps but i've played ghost only 2 times and i dont really like it

[khEg]

Demon tank is totally fine i dont think its underpowered.

Ghost Tank is fine too as the drain skill is very good when used correctly. The only think that sounds fair to me is making the summons transparent. This is a minor improvement but sounds reasonable.

Guard: Per my opinion the guard is not weak BUT it is extremely hard to play when you dont have really teamplay. The problem is that youre slow and when enemies coming to your position and your team is dead or gone you have quite no chance to get away if you werent already way behind. If youre way behind your weapons are useless as they wont shoot ^^ and tbh i think the treants are a bit too weak to just control them in order to contribute to your team.
Prog: have you ever tried treant and root --> unroot --> root --> unroot ??? you only can do that like 2 or 3 times and then youre out of mana... guard is pretty slow .. do you really want to run back to cp in order to reg your mana every minute? .. sounds very lame :|
The advantage of the guard is that IF you have good teamplay you can make others healed without moving back and its quite good siege. Now here comes the point .. when the enemy team is weak you will win anyways, if your oppposing team is good then you wont have much advantage as you will have (lets say in middle) 3 enemies vs you and 2 teammates which means your teammates are basicly playing vs one more as you wont have much damage as the tank is not really strong in lategame and a bit too expensive for the start (buy tank, have no weapons :?)

I think it would be fine if you just reduce the tank costs to something like 3500.

[T4M.Avatar]

I guess Ghost Tank is fine too.
Would he be an air Tank, he will be hardly imbalanced. Just fly easy and fast to a controle point, spawn all your shit and kill everything... lame...
He is slow and gets blocked by his own creeps, but without that he would be too imba in CP overtaking.

With the right gameplay, Demon Tank is fine too. Just play with low range and you will own em all! I bet the people cry, cause they use long range with this tank

And yea, my favorite tank is the Guard and i know how play him realy well.
For example, the spawning trees are very useful against everything! And far better with Troop Command.
About the healing skill... it heals not that much and i would love a little improvement of it. I doesn't mean the regeneration!
The passiv regen let you survive longer, useful too.
And the Tank Cannon... sucks. nonsense to skill it. I would love if he gains the Tank Cannon of the Scout to gain gold easier cause it isn't that easy to kill creeps if your mates are camping at you...
The Ultimate, the Root, are incredible useful for your whole team! High damage, good stun with roots and AOE! No improvement needed.

I guess he could need a little bit of improvement, but with a great team you shouldn't get problems with this tank. He usually sucks if your team doesn't know about him...

[Prog]

Prog: have you ever tried treant and root --> unroot --> root --> unroot ??? you only can do that like 2 or 3 times and then youre out of mana... guard is pretty slow .. do you really want to run back to cp in order to reg your mana every minute? .. sounds very lame :|

Depends on how much skillpoints you invest the root skill. For additional hitpoints via treants it's enough to skill it to 1 becouse the hp of treants don't increase, only the damage does, making root/unroot 5 mana each.

[khEg]

Prog: have you ever tried treant and root --> unroot --> root --> unroot ??? you only can do that like 2 or 3 times and then youre out of mana... guard is pretty slow .. do you really want to run back to cp in order to reg your mana every minute? .. sounds very lame :|

Depends on how much skillpoints you invest the root skill. For additional hitpoints via treants it's enough to skill it to 1 becouse the hp of treants don't increase, only the damage does, making root/unroot 5 mana each.

Well that is true
I thought about root "high skilled" for more reg to teammates ... this is quite impossible

[Althend]

Concerning the demon. I think it is lame that this tank is over dependant of teleport. Making this tank anti air with banish but obligatory low range because of his ulti is annoying. ^_^
(even the heavy ulti is much more better and does more damage with better range :o )
I dont like the fact this tank is condamned to be a low range tank because of his ulti only... (gob is enough i think :p )
With a few breaker we can easily screw demon/low range/ telep strat and I don't like it!



For the ghost, with equivalent amount of gold, I think that heavy or airship do always much better :p
(concerning the spawn troop on cp. isn't it the only advantage of this tank? spawn troop? I don't think it would be overpowered since all tiers 2 tank have aoe damage that can kill his spawn really fast) The problem is more the viability of this tank against tiers 3. Troop has good impact in the 25 first minutes but after? Really I have not seen any ghost tank since long time ago. I enjoy playing against this tank since it a sort of gold givers with his troop :p
I would really appreciate if one of you show me a nice play of ghost tank in intern. Each time they are kinda lame ^_^

If not making this tank, why not an aura that makes creeps around air? (it would be better than transparent since it would pissed off "ground weapons" :p )

For the guard. The teamplay is too much important and as said before, if we already have that kind of teamplay, it is much better to take another tank. (especially vs hunter) Going so much trouble when a cp is kinda enough is sad ^_^



For each of these tank, some item are almost a requirement in order to use them nicely. Teleport or troop that we can easily counter. Don't you think it is annoying?


You know you love me!

[khEg]

One can say that the game impact difference between lets say demon and frost robot is huge although the gold gap between those two is merely small.
Also your argument regarding the heavy .. i can agree with that .. the gold gap is pretty big but the damage difference isnt (both have long range stun, "high damage ulti" (where the heavy is almost as good as the demon because of his range))
The demon tank COULD be improved but there has to be a balanced solution for this as it would mess up pretty much if the demon becomes the new "imba" tier3 tank

regarding the ghost tanks creeps, yes all tier2 and upper have aoe damage to wipe creeps easy.
Maybe just improve the HP of the ghosts and treants? my first idea to encounter that .. and sounds fair .. you can even decrease the damage of the ghosts and stuff but HP like you need at least lvl 3 ulti of (lets say) air ship to onehit the ghosts (which would be around 1300 hp!?)

[Prog]

It's wrong to compare 1 skill of 1 tank with 1 skill of 1 other tank. Tank balance has to be seen holisticly, while the ultimate of tank x might be stronger than that of tank y it does not imply that there should be anything changed, becouse there might be synergys, different usages in different gamestages, etc which have huge impacts on overall balance of one tank. Even small differences in gold cost can make huge overall balance changes, like the mentioned demon-frost comparison. It is so much easier to play start tank->demon than start tank->frost, making the effective cost of the frost way higher than just those 3k more. In this time span you either die more often, creep worse, get less kills, or you need to buy additional hulls etc. It's not as simple as take tank x with full equipment and tank y with same equipment and compare them without thinking of their position in the game, possible strategies within those tanks play certain roles, etc.

Regarding ghost tanks creeps and aoe ultis: If you use the skills well it can work out that way for example (in 1on1 play on lane): leech mana first -> spawn creeps when opponent can't cast aoe spells. That makes your opponent having to use his spells really early before you leech the mana, giving you the chance to wait with creeps until he used his aoe spells. Of course the opponent can still play very defensivly and regenerate mana all the time, but that should be ok with you, as you might be able to save for a stronger tank with less equipment that way.

[muhaha96]

@prog you can´t leech mana and than spawn because he will be already too far away.

do you know why those three tanks are played so rare?? because they are too weak!

ghost tank is good in early game but later he is weak; his heal skill does only little heal and with 1 upped gold hull it those few hp make no difference. so maby make it heal him a percentage of his life.

btw earth tank is not that good, too(not much played)

[Prog]

@prog you can´t leech mana and than spawn because he will be already too far away.

How should he ever attack you then? He has to either use his spells before he gets close to you/you use your spawns, or stay completly on the defensive side (to stay away from you). Both is good for you in my opinion (not "game-winning good" alone, but good).

[T4M.Avatar]

(not much played)

do you think every not often played tank need an improvement cause they are rarely seen?
I guess the people got their own favorite tanks and the named tanks aren't in their favorites. I guess that lies to their spells and tactic, how to play that tank.

Earth Robot is still very good for his price.

[muhaha96]

but people don´t take those tanks because they miss sth when they play them so they might need some improvements

[IlPalazzo]

@prog you can´t leech mana and than spawn because he will be already too far away.

How should he ever attack you then? He has to either use his spells before he gets close to you/you use your spawns, or stay completly on the defensive side (to stay away from you). Both is good for you in my opinion (not "game-winning good" alone, but good).

You don't have to avoid a Ghost Tank. If you have a Goblin Tank, Goblin Shredder, Demon Tank, Heavy Tank, Thunder Tank, Helicopter, Hunter, etc. you have a stun to break the channeling from the Mana/Health Drain. When they spawn units, you can follow up with your AoE spell and get rid of them (or damage them heavily).

The Ghost Tank is pretty gimpy 1v1, considering a majority of tanks have some form of stun to counteract the life-mana steal and some form of AoE to get rid of creeps. I rarely have any problems dealing with a Ghost Tank, especially if I have a tier two tank. After burning his skills, the Ghost Tank is left a few thousand HP down and has little to show for it.

[Prog]

You say "you have to stun to break the channeling". I say "The ghost waits with the channeling until stun is used". Same goes for aoe spells and creeps. Ghost tank can make other playes stop using their abilities, because they have to wait until the ghost tank used his. That makes him quite a good defensive tank. (Of course, not against all tanks in every stage of the game, but it's quite a safe tank in midgame)

[IlPalazzo]

Not quite, putting t3 and t4 tanks aside - if I'm using a Goblin Tank or Heavy Tank, I'm very comfortable burning off my cooldowns when the enemy Ghost Tank reaches about 3500-5000 HP, which isn't too long of a wait considering a Ghost Tank has a 4500 HP base. The immediate direct damage from my abilities coupled with the stun duration will assure he won't have the luxury of spamming his abilities once he comes out of it.

[Althend]

@prog

I have never seen you play ghost. Would you mind playing it against me? Really I have never seen a good ghost
I know you are good player but I can't be convinced without seeing it ^_^