Hunter's Plague Skill is Still too Over Powered

[Prog]

It is more that you don't see players going from airship to sky tank because the difference is still too weak. Increasing price and power of sky tank would make it much more interesting. Don't you think so? Losing 2.250 gold by selling airship to get the sky tank that is 3500 gold higher is not that interesting. It is my opinion.

I do see players going from airship to sky tank, but of course less often. I'll try to explain some reasons:

*Sky tank is really good against ground, but it is in terms of skills worse against air than air ship. A change from air ship to sky tank is only viable if most opponents play ground tanks, otherwise the Air Ship + Gold Hull is stronger.
*Sky tank can be reached without getting any early midgame tank. If you can get sky tank without losing any gold, why should you get an air ship just to lose money and reach the sky tank later?

The most often used air tank strategies from my experience in intern games are like this:

Code:

starting tank -> zep -> frost -> Titan
starting tank -> zep -> sky fort/inf -> Titan
starting tank -> zep -> demon -> sky fort/inf -> Titan
starting tank -> zep -> sky tank -> sky fort/inf -> Titan
starting tank -> zep -> hunter (-> Titan)
starting tank -> sky tank -> sky fort/inf -> Titan
(Helicopter -> sky fort/inf -> Titan) - has nothing to do with zep/sky tank so i'll ignore it for the rest of this post

with these two

Code:

starting tank -> zep -> demon -> sky fort/inf -> Titan
starting tank -> zep -> sky tank -> sky fort/inf -> Titan

being the least often used ones.

You see another reason why zep -> sky tank isn't often played if you compare the strats often used and less often used. The two strategies change tanks more often than any of the other ones -> they lose more gold to tank changes. So this disadvantage which makes the build less often played does apply to demon as well, not a sky tank issue per se. Why does this occur?

I'll try to explain it (It's just an attempt, I don't think it will be completly correct in one try). Let's take at first the air ship and sky tank, later focus on the demon tank.

The most common strategies play x -> zep or sky tank -> y. It looks to me as the air ship and sky tank play both a similar role, as a midgame tank (one at the early mid, the other at the late mid). Sky Tank isn't used as a lategame tank, it is a late midgame tank which can be used as a midgame tank, similar as the Goblin is a late midgame tank in comparison to the thunder being an early midgame tank. Now the question comes into my mind: Why don't you say "Goblin should be changed becouse you just lose gold going from thunder to goblin"?. I assume (correct me if i'm wrong) it's becouse you don't see the goblin as a late game tank, but somehow you see the sky tank as one, tho it isn't. You mistake the sky tank to be in the same class of tanks as hunter and frost, but it might actually be in the class of goblin, earth. Late midgame tanks can, like most other midgame tanks, play in the lategame quite well if equiped with any hull(s), but can't play well in the endgame (sky forts, infs, titans). Of course they can also take the role of a normal midgame tank. An air ship->sky tank change is now an 'early midgame -> late midgame' change.

We can explain the demon tank analogue. The demon tank is mostly used in x -> demon tank -> y or x -> thunder -> demon -> y. For the x -> demon tank -> y case it is obvious the demon tank in the midgame tank role and for the x->thunder->demon->y case we got again the 'early midgame -> late midgame' change.

As you might have seen i use "midgame", "lategame" etc in a way which refers to their actual use and no static classes. In my opinion The terms should be constructed by the number of tanks used in a whole game (tho i keep on falling into old habits sometimes). For example: 'tinker -> titan' would mean 2 stages: 'early- and endgame'. 'Starting tank -> zep -> frost -> Titan' brings us to the "standard" of 'early-, mid-, late-, endgame'. 'Starting tank -> zep -> demon -> sky fort/inf -> Titan' implies 5 stages: 'early-, earlymid-, latemid-, late-, endgame'. Having more stages implies an additional loss of gold. Every 5 stage strategy has the additional loss, regardless if it is 'Starting tank -> zep -> sky tank -> sky fort/inf -> Titan' or 'Starting tank -> zep -> Frost -> sky fort/inf -> Titan' . None of those strategies are often played, it has nothing to do with the sky tank itself. 5 Stage strategies need to compensate the goldloss somehow, so it is only efficient if the additional tankchange gives any advantage, like the zep->sky tank might against 5 ground tanks, or scout->demolisher against 3 scouts in mid.


What really is interesting if we analyse that way is (which brings me directly to the topic):

Code:

starting tank -> zep -> hunter (-> Titan)

Hunter plays the role of a lategame tank.

Code:

starting tank -> zep -> demon -> sky fort/inf -> Titan

Demon tank plays the role of a late midgame tank.

Just 2 examples, but as far as i know the demon tank is not able to play the role of a lategame tank as often as the hunter can (if ever), even tho it costs more gold than a hunter. The hunter nearly allways is in the function of a lategame tank. It is obvious that this is an imbalance if analysed in this way, tho the way might have flaws. I'll suggest to replace the percentual damage to a fixed value.

(I hope someone understands this, it's written so bad~~)