Hail of bombs imbalanced

[griffin1987]

Hi there,

I think since the new version of the Heavy Tank his ulti has become really imbalanced. On one hand it's very hard to handly for newbie players, which just makes it extremely newbie unfriendly (I'm okay with having newbies using their skills tactical bad, like shooting a rocket at a tank with full hp), because of it's new straight line nature instead of the old aoe style version. On the other hand, it can do way more damage than is on the tooltip, because it does the damage, 800 for example, for EVERY hit on the enemy tank, and if the enemy tank is fleeing it can hit up to 3 or 4 times, and even without moving, it can hit at least 2 times.

Because of that with some hull it's almost always better than a frost robot, because you have a stun with way more range, the mortar teams which you can use to deflect some damage when being hunted, and the extremely strong hail of bombs - just picture 3 heavy trying to conquer vs 3 frost robots (doesnt happen often, but i think it's a good example) - if the 3 heavies all cast their hail of bombs and rockets, the frost robots are certainly dead. On the other hand, if a frost robot casts his ice rain, one heavy can just rocket stun him to stop the cast - on the other hand, if you stun a tank which is casting hail of bombs, it doesnt do anything (seen ppl trying to stop me with stun plenty of times, and they almost always die because of that advantage).

My suggestion would be making the hail of bombs so they always only hit an enemy tank once at most. To balance that a bit and take the tank back to being tank instead of Command and Conquer like rocket launcher, I'd make the armour skill being useful against tank weapons as well (I always thought it is, but just recently it came to me, that tank weapons are spell damage and as such armour which reduces physical damage does not affect them). This would be really cool, as it would make the choice between weapons more important, because reducing a weapon with fast fire rate but small damage will be way more effective, dann reducing the damage of a photon torpedo for example - which would make sense, as in reality you won't use a machine gun or some kind of "laser" against a tank, but rather some slow firing rocket launcher.

Thx & Best Regards

[khEg]

I'd make the armour skill being useful against tank weapons as well (I always thought it is, but just recently it came to me, that tank weapons are spell damage and as such armour which reduces physical damage does not affect them). This would be really cool, as it would make the choice between weapons more important, because reducing a weapon with fast fire rate but small damage will be way more effective, dann reducing the damage of a photon torpedo for example - which would make sense, as in reality you won't use a machine gun or some kind of "laser" against a tank, but rather some slow firing rocket launcher.

Thx & Best Regards

to make more ppl play long range energy torpedo? ^^
please not..


for the rest i agree ^^ HT ulti is too strong

[Saiyuki]

hail of bombs has been changed a long time ago. it's pretty hard to get more than 2 hits on the same target, as each projectile got a greater distance between the last one. so either you're sticking close to the enemy and using the skill, which would be really risky for yourself, or the enemy is closing in to you while you use the skill.
atm the skill is well balanced.

[eSVau]

atm the skill is well balanced.

I doubt that. Imho you will be hit at least by two cluster, but more likely by three. I often see heavy tanks killing air ships just using rocket+hail of bombs at lvl13 - 1200 dmg caused by aiming rocket + x* 1000dmg from hail of bombs. Air ship has 4500 HP, even a double rocket hail hit wouldn't kill an air ship, still you can easily kill a moving air ship - moving within clusters causes more hits and dieing that way means four hits.

Imho three (or even four) hits are not uncommon, so i would prefer a rework of that skill - btw, i've already talked about this with paladon

[Saiyuki]

well... combos are always more useful than one skill in itself. but we're talking about the skill in itself at the moment. i still think it's pretty hard to aim ( for casual players ) and thus the high damage per projectile is quite okey. btw, comparing tanks when talking about skills is always a bad idea. ^^

[khEg]

just too much damage

[Prog]

See the whole tank and not single skills alone. Heavy tank is way less mobile, creeps bad in comparison to air ship/thunder/..., is worse in attacking the lane cps from mid, doesn't do too well against air+troops on side lanes, can be countered with gobo really well,...

[eSVau]

I would increase the damage of hail of bombs but let them only hit once! Multiple hits are the only problem i do have with that skill. Tripple hits, which i believe are not uncommon, do 2400, 3000, 3600, etc. damage in sum. But besides whether it's common or not to do tripple hits, it's possible which imho shouldn't be possible at all.

With a fast tank you can easily be hit more than twice which is too much damage for that level. Even if Sai dont like comparison with other tank/skills, titans hailfire for example does 1000, 2000, 3000, etc. damage (+stun) and is imho just a bit easier to handle as hail of bombs :roll:

And yes, combos are meant to be strong, i dont have any problem with aiming rocket to stun and locking your target for hail of bombs. But heavy's stun wont last that long, so you can move just the moment hail of bombs starting to hit, which i would mind if hail ob bombs couldn't hit more than once.
So i repeat myself, it should not make multiple hits.

[Saiyuki]

ok, at max you could be hit 4 times i guess. on the other hand you could jump out of line and receive no damage. in average the ultimate would do about ( [3200 + 0]/2 ) 1600 damage ( +400 per level up of the ultimate ) per cast at max. if you got yourself an air ship, the opponent a heavy tank, you have a difference of 1.ooo Gold to spend on a hull upgrade or other things, such as a hull.

comparing hail of rockets with hailfire is quite hard, as you're able to target hellfire directly to an area, while with the heavy tank, you need to face the line where the projectiles would hit the ground. i expect hail of rockets to miss the targeted area where the player meant to target way more often that hailfire does.
further more, moving out of the line is especially easier as you may take advantage of the terrain with an air tank.

[Paladon]

ok, at max you could be hit 4 times

Impossible. 2 are possible, 3 if you are moving really fast away.

[Saiyuki]

ok, at max you could be hit 4 times

Impossible. 2 are possible, 3 if you are moving really fast away.

ty for the constructive post. ^^

ok, then my calculations were off by 400. ;D

[Paladon]

ty for the constructive post. ^^

No, it actually makes a difference concerning the way to be balanced.
In the current way, we cannot simply "deactivate" bomb overlapping since Wc3 target areas are circles.

[eSVau]

As far as i know the damange area of hail of bombs looks like this:[attachment=0]

The orange stars marks the center of an heavy tank, Exodus told me that the radius is 400u (units, whatever a wc3 unit ishock:) every 400u. Three intersections of three clusters. I guess something about 200milliseconds per cluster which would give an Air Ship with asumed 400 speed (jet populsion lvl3) something about 80 range to cross such an intersection.

Combines with aiming rocket you are close to the center line which makes a double hit for sure and a little bit less than 20% chance that it will be a tripple hit on a moving air ship. Using hail of bombs without aiming rocket i would call wasted :lol:
Seeing those number i must be very unlucky with tripple hitshock:

I still don't like the fact that hail of bombs can hit more than once even if i overestimated the probabilities

[khEg]

the skill could stay as it is with the change that it would deal less damage per hit OR the skill could be changed to improve the damage slightly but remove double(/triple) hits

for sure the way it is now it is a bit too powerful .. of course it is a bit difficult to aim but thats no excuse per my viewpoint

[Prog]

Seriously, whoever gets hit 3 times by such an ultimate frequently does something wrong. It's so easy to see when someone uses this ultimate and to dodge it at least partially (completly if you are air or have porter) if you are not really close to him. Even if he uses it right (first ultimate, then rocket) it's by far less powerfull as you think it is. I really like the way that this ultimate refers directly to the skill of the target by making multiple hits possible. If the player notices it early and reacts well (moving to sides/porting) he recieves low/no damage ("double hit for sure" is just nonsense against experienced players), but if he moves along with the direction of the ultimate he gets 'heavily' damaged. This wouldn't be possible in the same gradual way without multiple hits.

Adding to that the the heavy tank has huge disadvantages coming from the worse mobility as I allready mentioned. It's a fact that air ship is played way more frequently in clangames just becouse of the mobility (->creeping capacity,... Playing the heavy tank in an air ship/air ship/heavy team in mid is like sacrificeing oneself becouse you'll creep so bad).

[khEg]

Seriously, whoever gets hit 3 times by such an ultimate frequently does something wrong. It's so easy to see when someone uses this ultimate and to dodge it at least partially (completly if you are air or have porter) if you are not really close to him. Even if he uses it right (first ultimate, then rocket) it's by far less powerfull as you think it is. I really like the way that this ultimate refers directly to the skill of the target by making multiple hits possible. If the player notices it early and reacts well (moving to sides/porting) he recieves low/no damage ("double hit for sure" is just nonsense against experienced players), but if he moves along with the direction of the ultimate he gets 'heavily' damaged. This wouldn't be possible in the same gradual way without multiple hits.

Adding to that the the heavy tank has huge disadvantages coming from the worse mobility as I allready mentioned. It's a fact that air ship is played way more frequently in clangames just becouse of the mobility (->creeping capacity,... Playing the heavy tank in an air ship/air ship/heavy team in mid is like sacrificeing oneself becouse you'll creep so bad).

Youre right with that point. For sure every at least advanced player knows how to evade HT ulti skill BUT here comes a contradiction that we face: newbies DONT know that so they will get more damage more often. And isnt it the fact that we try to make the game playable for everyone, also new ppl? isnt that also a reason why HB was removed? You could improve HT in other ways so it fits into the game again but the ulti is just too strong.

And one more example for this: lets say you get pushed back into your cp and you DONT have air ship or another air tank. The enemies now have 1 or 2 HTs which just activate their skill .. how do you wanna evade this? impossible..... and thats just how you loose that point because you cant stand this "uber damage"

[Prog]

Making a game playable for everyone doesn't imply making it as easy as possible or without any room to get better. I think it's extremly important for the long term motivation to have potential to get better in the action/reaction with/to such spells.

And one more example for this: lets say you get pushed back into your cp and you DONT have air ship or another air tank. The enemies now have 1 or 2 HTs which just activate their skill .. how do you wanna evade this? impossible..... and thats just how you loose that point because you cant stand this "uber damage"

I'd say you made previous mistakes which made you come into such a situation and for making those mistakes you deserve to die there/lose the game. When this happens once or twice you'll learn that you need to evade to get into those situations. Maybe you'll just play earlier hull or porter or an air tank next time playing against 2 heavy tanks or you won't move to the cp but closer to your main instead, waiting for an ally to support you from the cp flanking the heavys. It's just the same as you learned to get more than 1k hp when there is a heavy tank lvl 10 around.

[eSVau]

explain me how to evade aiming rocket + rocket hail without porter

[Saiyuki]

explain me how to evade aiming rocket + rocket hail without porter

and here again you start discussing about combos. if the topic ( about hail or rockets ) is cleared, we could close the topic then, i guess. if not, get back to the topic and stay away from the combos, even if it includes the mentioned skill.

[Prog]

explain me how to evade aiming rocket + rocket hail without porter

At max range heavy ulti needs around 2 seconds to hit and ~1.5 seconds at half range. Even if the target is right before you it takes about 0.8 seconds. When aimed straight to the target (which is nearly impossible, normaly you will allways aim at least 30-50u next to the target, on average it's even worse if you use rocket first as the target has more time to react) the target needs to move ~180-250u (becouse of unitsize) 90 degrees from the direction of the ultimate to get not hit at all. As you can see in your picture to get hit only once you need to move between ~1/4 to ~3/4 of the max (~250) (=~63-~188) to get only hit once. Air Tanks move ~290-310u per second without speed skilled. Stun durations with each lvl should be known by everyone. Just do the maths and you'll see that it's nearly impossible to hit twice if the target is not right in front of you and hitting once isn't so easy as well as in ideal (for heavy tank and the target) circumstances the target needs on average only ~0.4 seconds to escape from double hit area and ~0.75 seconds to escape from dmg area. Of course it's easier to hit ground tanks more often as they often can't move to the sides, but that goes for all aoe spells which have to be aimed manually (and is one of the reasons why ground tanks have more hp).

Note: All numbers are approximated but they should be near the real values.