Scout: balancing

[kittyonmyfoot]

i guarantee u i will have a small or medium hull and two basic magics all upgraded. and i'll still be out farming u.

I'll take u up on that... I'll add you to friends and see if i can catch you on Az

[qweqqweq]

i'm her right now. let's do it!

[fido1]

frechhiet wrote:

I think Scout is balanced. Its have only 700 hp so its pretty easy to kill it.

So when Enemys play light tank its very hard for scout not to die.

lol. omg man, i can't believe you actually wrote that. if i start with 2 basic magics, upgrade them and then get a small or medium hull with the scout i can still outfarm you and not even come close to getting killed by anyone no matter what tank they got. even if there are 3 guys facing just me. and i'll still (i can almost guarantee it) kill you more than you can kill me).

I will put my money on frechheit that you wont kill him more than he kill you :lol:

before anyone else says the scout is not imba please do this first:
1. play a game with a scout and play defensively, just focus on killing creeps
2. get two basic magics
3. upgrade them both
4. get a light or a medium hull as soon as possible.
if you do that i think that you u are gonna be doing what is currently by far far far far the most imba strat u can do. if you dissagree please gimme something that's real proof that what you're saying has some merit. this is just silly the way people are arguing against its imbaness.

The best proof is real action. If you are so sure that this tactic of yours will surely win, lets arrange another match and of course put some league points on the line

[Tribulation]

It's not about which player can kill the other one more often, but about the fact that two or three Scouts in mid can dominate the game, making it highly dangerous to pick anything other than Scout once you see the enemy relies on it.

[Frechheit]

It's not about which player can kill the other one more often, but about the fact that two or three Scouts in mid can dominate the game, making it highly dangerous to pick anything other than Scout once you see the enemy relies on it.

Wrong.

Trust me i play everyday btanks on high level= means only pros . Only Pros u know QWEQQ?^^

Of course there are often Scouts in mid. And of course u can creep good with Scout.

But as a Enemy there are many ways to kill/stop the Scout.

Goblin Schredder

Antigrav

or pretty easy when Scout buy middle hull or small hull than the other Guy has a Advantage of 1250 gold or 2500 gold and can buy next tank faster.

[Tribulation]

I care little about how alleged "pro" games (there aren't any, professional gaming means earning money through it, all others are ambitious amateurs at best) go, because that has no relevance if Scout turns out to dominate the majority of pub games.
Sure, there's a gap of 1250/2500 gold, but: until the next tank can be bought, Scout becomes nearly invincible while the other play remains vulnerable.
I'll try some of the counters.

[Gammagulp]

I disagree Frechheit in this point. I also play some pro games - not much, but some. If u get just a light hull you have very good chances to get the new bigger tanks at the same time. WITH your hull. So you already outfarmed your enemy partly.

I only knew 1 Good strat, which is against scout - especially with long range.
You need a tank player and a tinker with Energytorpedo. If the tinker could manage to build up some towers with the energy torpede he will receive nearly as much creeping gold as the scout. But I dont like tinker so its not my strategy.

The demolisher is quiet good, but only if the mines are used wll in Artillerie combination. That means somehow to argue with 2vs1 situations, or focussing one player. But ! in every non real pro game (or better say even in pro games, where theres only 1 clan on one side and a mixture on the other) focussing is quiet difficult. (I have experienced it really often - and tried to combine attacks, but your teammate often didnt trust you enough to attack and let you run into death in 2vs 2 situations)

[steelix]

I'll just point out the main argument I posted in the other thread:

Scout is the only tank which can earn money AND play long range.

Long range usually means, you need to kill ppl to earn money, because you farm poorly. Now that playing scout with long range is so popular there are too many long range weapons in early game, which can result in an annoying and static game. The game becomes even more static if you got a scout with a mine laying device. Nobody moves and if you do, you're basically dead meat and you need to move, if you don't play long range youself.

In a nutshell, the gameplay changed a lot IMO since there is a scout available and IMO it didn't change in a good way.

[LuckyD0g]

Suggestion about scout.

Tower: less damage in one shot + longer reloading + less Hp. Random Module from tinker items.
Tank: less Hp for the tank.

[NoobStrike]

1 of the issues the game has today is the following:

That you have a 1,000 gold tank or a 10,000 gold tank, their basic cannon does the same damage. So, for early game, the cheaper the tank, the more DPS you will get. If you do not die too often, you will farm better then your opponent.

So far, no biggy. But, investing in a demolisher automatically means sacrificing quite a bit of damage to gain more HP meaning slower farming. When we push that to the scout extreme, we get to the point where we have a tank costing 500 and have a CREEP only cannon. That is opening the door all wide for pure farming. Worst, we give that creep only weapon a 1,300 range. So, the low hp easy to kill tank now has a 1,300 range allowing him to survive.

Possible solutions are there: Raise the price of scout QUITE a bit. I'd say having scouts costing 1,200, having more hp and rest of the skills being similar would be to weak. It would lose a lot of synergy and possibilities. 1,000 still allows for the 1,300 range weapons... but you cannot storm mid no more (costing 3,000 total puts you at 0 to tp), puts you further away in getting that first bombard upgraded. Would that be enough? I don't know.

An other possible solution is: in the damage done by a tank, there should be a gold cost of the tank ratio. Nothing big... just something that would make the scout's cannon much weaker then the light tank normal cannon and would give a boost to the demolisher's... This would have to fade out beyond these tanks to prevent having a demontank rush being able to farm too well or a shredder farming too well

[Gammagulp]

Hmmmm, i thought we are talking about scout balancing and not changing all other tanks so the scout gets bad in comparison ^^.
The demolisher with multibow (before the nerf of the anti creep weapons) was a real hard creeper with much HP, so I dont think you can creep not that good with tanks, who cost more at beginning.

But I want to ask the others, what to do for changing the scout abilities. I know we can discuss its imba or not, o which strat is the best or most common - difficult to counter strat. - my sugestion was for example to raise the costs by 50gold, only to counter instant bombarding+update or minelayer, or you have to wait in your base and give the othzer 40 seconds creeping advantage. To Raise the scouts costs to 800 or 1000 would not change the possibility of taking long range weapons as already said before, but wouldnt let the scout be as a cheap little vehicle, as it was the idea before.

[DerSatan]

i really like the scout costs 500 gold, starting options like troop command or mines really expand the game's overall diversity.


what about replacing the creep/tank cannon with another (useful) skill. the scout is small and nimble, so its easy to understand. and of course: the cheaper the tank, the greater the advantage of this cannon, as the dps is calculated equally for every tank.

additionally, the scout already has an anti-creep skill (towers).


at the moment i have no idea what this skill could be. but what about it in general?

[Carcharoth2]

First:
The Scout is maybe a bit to strong but not totally imba.

2 Solving strategies

a)
Scout with long range creeps a bit better then most other tanks and can harras/kill enemys.
This is because of his fast moving speed and his creep cannon.
You never must be frightened that your enemy comes nearer then 1100 because you can escape with your faster tank.

Maybe a solution: Make him slower!! Not too much, maybe still bit faster then normal tanks..
Effect: Creeping would become harder and killing enemys is not that easy anymore.
Most important the tank becomes more fragile for killing of other tanks.

b)
The Scout can be sometimes a real HP Powerhorse with push abilitys. .
In the few cases you come near to the scout he has his ability iron hull^^ his imba tower.
Attackers which want to kill Scout often fight against Scout and Tower, and suddenly Scout has more HP then you

The damage of the tower isn´t that great the best effect is its HP.
I like the tower, gives many strategie possbilities. But a bit to strong.
Especially the bonus HP each lvl is too high i think.

Solution: Give the towers less HP. maybe the lvl 1 only a very small nerf, but lvl 2 and so on i think at the moment i think it doubles HP with each lvl (that is too much). The damage of the weapons of the other tank doesn´t double that fast
Of course for creeping the tower becomes weaker, but tower never creep that much


Extra for nooby pub games:

Scout with mines:
Really anoying, most tanks die without hull, and you have to camp.
In public it is sometimes gg when your mates run every 30 seconds into mine and make imba feeding.
Especially for noobs it is totally imbalanced. The scout often can go into your CP or something like that, without getting killed (he is too fast) and then players portal there and die.
Dont know what to do. Maybe increase the range of the mine defuse kit, but in noob games most guys dont know this item
Make the mines bit more expensive (maybe a bit more dmg in addition)? dont like the idea make scout more expensive. because he would loose his diversity.

[Gammagulp]

Good ideas i think - as you mentioned the anti creep cannon I asked myself, why he dont the tank cannon like all other tanks - but maybe I get some answeres too.

I make the new sugestions:

- replace anti creep canon buy usual tank cannon and let the tower as it is
or
- as I wrote before some versions, when we discussed about the tower - make the tower "indestructible" --> means, not targetable, no collision size, lower time to stay, so you cannot place two at once

- lower speed by 10


Additionally to underline the scout is even in progames usual. I played a 5vs5 game with clan players and in mid where.
2scouts+1demo on 1st side vs 2scouts + 1light with 2 basic magic on the 2nd side.
the usual problem occured; that after all creeps are dead the scout fires his long range only at enemy tanks; and the creeps where that fast dead ... :mrgreen:

the light tank and the demo got lesser money ^^

[TKF]

What if make the tower to target everything and make it do 40 dmg pr level? Thus less effective against creeps.

[Carcharoth2]

@Gammagulp:
Dont like the idea of no collision for tower, it makes really fun to use towers in the right moment as damage blockers.
Towers only for damage without HP would be boring.
Lower the HP

@ TKF
I think the HP is imba of the tower, not the dmaage and extra creeping abilties. But maybe a trie.

[kittyonmyfoot]

I don't like balancing just for pubbies since there's a lot of morons out there. If you were to do that then you should nerf the exploder and all landmines ;p

If 3 ranged scouts went mid I'd just put 2 peeps in the mid lane and double up on a side lane and take it out from under them. Range is horrible for defending. You take the tower... kill the guard then each buy reinforcements at the cp you're taking. Drop the creeps as soon as the ranged attackers appear.

Or

you ping the cp and then run into your creep lane... the ranged weaps will draw the lane and you run in for the kill.

Edit: I wouldn't be opposed to a reduction in speed... the scout never reached it's other goal of being a trader hunter anyways. Rather than making the towers out and out invul... they could give it a phase shift or shifting invis. You can have it pop out a stationary creep and call it a camo'd sniper and he's invis until he shoots. It'll eliminate the tanking feature on the tower.

[Gammagulp]

@Carcharoth2
You hit the point. So many people are used to taking the scout. Using tower. Block damage, creeps killing, and maybe even overwhelm a tank who cost more just by click n drop extra HP tower.

I play the scout too and I know its hard for people, who play it to say - y, let us make the scout comparable to light tank, heli or antigrav in playability.

Not seldom I saw people with gold hull , 2 rocket hail, and energy torpedo rule.
If two scouts can plant two 2.200 HP towers at once - you cannot overrun them - even at their CP so easy.

The next point is some guys start with scout and longe - range and later change to a big tank with short range by selling the long range weapon.

--> what are you doing now as you tried to counter long range --> you will lose (often) - sry to say that.

So I think we now are at the piont, that the tower is the real problem of the scout, as every weapon except long range attacks it, and after lvl 1 the hp are that big, that you need with a 200damage starting weapon more than 5 seconds for killing a 1100Hp tower at level 2. - and for a lvl 1 tower you only get 5 GOld - thats nothing

[Exodus]

Ok, after reading all your suggestions, I think I could change the following things:

• reduce the Scout's HP by 50
  
• reduce the speed by 10
  
• reduce the HP of the Watch Towers a little bit
  
• instead of building them instantly, it'll take ~5 seconds before they are ready or a constant build rate which will naturally take longer, the more HP the tower has
  
• if thats not enough, I could also change the duration and cooldown of the Tower skill, so that you can only have one tower at a time

[Tribulation]

That sounds good, lets try it.

I often hear that the Defensive Systems skill is now ridiculous, but is it really? Nobody chooses the rune manipulation, so Defensive Systems naturally is chosen sooner or later, and I believe that the heal is quite effective: a Light Tanks attacks a Scout in mid, amidst a creep wave, both are down to a third of their hp, and retreat - but the Scout can actually stay most of the time, his long-range weapons still hit creeps while he safely continues farming and, due to his low overall hp, regenerates relatively fast, while the Light Tank (unless he chose the healing skill) has to retreat to the cp and loses valuable time at the front. I don't whether or not this is as significant as it appears, it seems worth discussing though.