Balancing Vampire Counts

Kayosiv#7489

I will create this thread to talk about Vampire Counts and their issues with balancing. This will cover both campaign and multiplayer (in the sense of unit role and effectiveness against other armies and gold cost, not necessarily meta builds).

LORDS & HEROES:

Vampire Lords are better than Necromancer Lords in every way. They are basically just necromancer lords that also get a combat skill tree and better combat stats and have better mounts. The Necromancer character skill tree needs to be more varied and give more unique bonuses because they are the same cost as Vampire Lords and there is no reason to take them.

The banshee in multiplayer custom battles serves no purpose in combat. She is said to be a duelist, but fails at this role and is no more effective than a vampire hero but lacks useful magic. She has the slippery ability to get away, but this is less effective than just having a horse. As is, I see no reason to take her into battles because she doesn't excel at her only role, character assassination, and therefor has no purpose. Giving her a direct damage attack (death shriek) that has a short range and long cooldown will give her a purpose on the battlefield as the slippery character assassin she's meant to be.
EDIT: The banshee in the campaign map is fine, as she has access to skill points and magic items that can help her. This concern is only focused on the custom battles where she ironically, cannot be customized.

Kemmler has the same skill tree as regular Necromancer Lords and is extremely boring in that regard because he gains nothing apart from other vampire lords. His uniqueness comes from his magic items. The Chaos tomb blade is very cool and I like it. The other two are largely forgettable. The Cloak of mist and Shadows gives Kemmler the ability to FLY or the BE ETHEREAL in the tabletop. Both of those would be super cool and amazing and make Kemmler fun and unique. Instead we get a super lame 22% damage reduction ability with one of the longest cooldowns in the game. If Kemmler were a vampire his armor would reduce that much damage at all times. In short, nothing makes Kemmler stand out and if his unique magic items don't do it, his skill tree should. Lore Master Vampires: is a completely worthless 10% reduction on cooldowns. How pathetic can an ability be? 1 second off a 10 second cooldown? WHO CARES? This needs to lower the winds of magic cost of his spells or something that makes people excited to be playing the Liche Master!

UNITS:

Skeletons vs spear skeletons: In the tabletop, spear skeletons were good at receiving charging and had more offense while sword and shield skeletons were more resilient in long drawn out fights because they could parry. This gave both sets of skeletons a role. In Total War Warhammer, spear skeletons are the defensive ones and the sword and shield varrient have more melee attack. However since skeletons are so terrible in combat their additional attack is essentially meaningless. This means that spear skeletons have better defense, and VASTLY better attack against large, giving them a role. Regular skeletons have no role. "slightly more offensive skeletons" is not a role because ghouls and grave guard fill this role. I'd like a reason to take regular skeletons over spears.

Ethereal doesn't work. Giving a unit 75% damage resistance and then cutting it's hit points by 60% and then also removing all of its armor so it doesn't reduce that damage as well just means that ethereal does nothing. These units are overpriced for their ability to absorb and deal damage and while it is nice to have slightly faster infantry that causes terror, they are essentially bad grave guard or bad black knights because the former are more resilient even against armor piercing opponents. Increase the hit points to regular levels or increase the damage reduction to 90-95%. This will also help the banshee. Ethereal units should be extremely vulnerable to heroes, flank charge, and magic. Right now they are, but they are also vulnerable to everything that a normal unit would be vulnerable too with no real benefit.

Crypt Horrors vs Vargheists: Design mixed up the role of these units. Vargheists are supposed to be the ultra offensive glass cannons while Crypt Horrors have mediocre damage but are extremely resilient. Crypt horrors should NOT have armor piercing damage and vargheists should have it. Giving armor piercing to crypt horrors makes them too effective "good at everything" monstrous infantry.

Black Knights, barded and lances. There is NO WAY that the extra 30 armor and increase to charge bonus makes black knights with lances over 50% more expensive than those without. There needs to be either drastic re-balancing here or a price decrease.

The Black Coach SUCKS. It's ability to do damage is pathetic, Because it has horrendous melee defense almost every attack thrown at it hits it. Why does this thing have less melee defense than a steam tank!? It has a mediocre 50 armor (on the tabletop it has a 3+ armor save, which translates to around 100 armor in Total War Warhammer!) so it takes a lot of damage. It's leadership is poor at 40. It is a chariot, so it charges into a large block of infantry very deep into their formation (its unit card says anti-infantry). It immediately loses all leadership because it perceives itself as being flanked, taking lots of damage, and outnumbered. The wraith on top does very pathetic damage even with its impressive looking area of effect attacks. The only saving grace for this is that it causes terror, but so do similarly priced units like the varghulf. It loses to everything and has no purpose. Evocation of Death as far as I can tell also does nothing.
To fix the black coach, it needs more leadership, more melee defense, more armor, and evocation of death needs to do something. I suggest healing it or increasing its speed/attack the more models that die within a small radius around it. Even making it etheral if it gets enough souls/kills absorbed. In the tabletop, it is the most resilient chariot in the entire game, even giving the steam tank a run for its money in terms of durability. It deserves more.

Grave Guard with shields really deserve more armor than their great weapon wielding counterparts. This is more of game wide problem.


MAGIC & SPELLS:

Putting a second point in any spell is never worth it. -15% cooldown time is horrible and even if it was -99% cooldown time it would not be worth it because cooldowns are so short. Effectiveness or efficiency of the spell needs to be increased in some way.

Invocation of Nehek doesn't seem to scale with unit size. The heal is also very low, at about 600 health per cast. I would like this raised to heal about 25% of a unit's hit points on average, or around 1,500 health on the large setting. Casting it now feels very underwhelming. It should also be more effective on units (zombies, grave guard) than it is on single units such as characters or monsters. This is how it works on the table top and it makes sense balance wise. Double the healing on infantry, normal healing on large-class units, low healing on characters, monsters, and ethereal units.

Gaze of Nagash: Kind of a weak spell for the cost. I can't see every choosing to cast it for 7 winds of magic. If it was multiple missiles instead of one, had a larger explosion area, or did more damage I could see using it. It seems to hit for 300-500 damage at the moment, making it a waste.

Raise Dead: The cap of 2 on this spell is pointless. All magic is capped by the limited winds of magic reserve so why limit this one? While I appreciate the balancing decision to not allow a player to get 5x units of zombies before a battle starts, limiting the spell to a maximum of 2 (or even 1) units AT A TIME would solve this problem. I think the hard cap should be removed and the soft cap left at 1 or 2 units at once.

Curse of Years: This spell is decent and I respect the mirroring of Van Hel's Dance Macabre, but it needs to do damage. Not big damage, probably only maybe 1/10 of a units health, but it needs some oomph. It is a high tier spell, both on the tabletop and in Warhammer. It requires at least 6 points in the Lore of Vampires spell tree and costs 15 magic compared to the 6 of Van Hel's Dance Macabre. Why would I reduce the attack effectiveness of 1 enemy unit when I could increase the attack of TWO of my units and have some winds of magic change left over? This spell should do more or have its cost reduced dramatically. I would prefer if the spell was more effective.

Wind of Death: Incredibly mediocre for its high cost of 15. This spell also should be direct damage, it should ignore armor, and would be amazing if it created an undead unit based on kills.

Spirit Leach: This spell is entirely too effective. Killing lords in 2-4 casts, it is just plain unfair. In the tabletop, the effectiveness of this spell was based on the leadership rating of an opponent. Make this the case in Total War Warhammer. It should do minimal damage to high leadership opponents but should be devestating to those with low or routing leadership. That way, timing and casting it with skill and using it in combination terror and other spells like doom & darkness will be important. As it, it is a no brainer fire and forget spell that is too powerful and very boring.


SPECIAL ABILITIES:

Regeneration doesn't scale with unit size. It is always 2 HP per second. This makes it very strong on small and very weak on ultra for unit size settings. The regeneration should reflect the maximum HP of the unit.

The Hunger: See regeneration above. Increasing or decreasing maximum HP size should effect the amount healed.

Black Knights and anti-infantry. Grave Guard are anti-infantry and get a +10 damage against infantry units. Black knights also supposedly have this trait, but gain no bonus damage against infantry. Is this intended or a glitch? Black knights use the same wight blades that grave guard do, so it makes sense that they should both get the bonus.

The Curse of Undeath: This ability is pathetically weak. Like, it is so weak it is actaully insulting. The tooltips says, and I quote, "Greatly replenishes HP of combatants" while lore of vampire spells are being cast. I expected this to be a few hundred HP but instead it is literally only about a dozen. That's right, 12 HP give or take a few. This clearly needs a complete re-balance to actually be meaningful.

LoreMaster: Cooldowns are not important. This ability should actually do something cool.

Crumbling: The way undead route doesn't really work with the way morale is calculated in Total War games. Zombies would not care if their flanks were secure or that they are being blown apart by artillery. A new set of positives and penalties need to exist for the undead faction. Positives for characters being nearby needs to be increased while negatives to losing in combat or being flanked need to be increased as well. Negatives for damage sustained and being under enemy fire need to be decreased or even removed. Living things like ghouls and necromancers also should not crumble, but rather route like other living forces, likely vampires too should do this.

Fatigue: It is great and flavorful that the design team changed the name of being tired for undead units, but it is still silly. I can understand I guess that a zombie or skeleton might have the magic used to animate it expended for a time and need to be recharged. There is just flat out no reason that say, a ghost is going to get tired. I'd like to see more variance in how fatigue is applied to the army.

ON THE CAMPAIGN MAP:

Broken Auto resolve: I've had several battles where the balance bar was 75-90% in my opponents favor that made no sense. I'd look at the forces, and they looked rather even, so I played the battle. Sometimes I would win and sometimes I would lose, but the battle would often be very close, far more close than the balance bar would suggest. Also, monster units such as the varghulf, Lords and Heroes, and things with low HP like ethereal units, seem to take disproportionate damage from battles, even battles that have a very high auto resolve favor for the vampire counts.

Unfair Battle Conclusions: If a vampire counts player brings 2000 zombies, 200 wights, a terrorgheist, and a vampire lord to a battle against 500 elite dwarfs and wins with 100 zombies and 150 wights, a terrorgheist, and a vampire lord left, the vampire counts player came out on top. However, not according to the battle results. I constantly get Pyrrhic victories with my elite units unscathed but my fodder decimated. That's what fodder is for. It's right there in the tooltip for bats and zombies, they are expendable! However the victory results (which are tied to character experience gains) unfairly treat the loss of high volume of troops poorly. This needs a rethink with the way the faction is designed.

Raise Dead increased after big battles: I was very excited about the idea that I would have a reason as a vampire counts player in the campaign to go out to large battles fought across the old world for the benefit of scoring cheap troops. This sort of mini-quest oozed with flavor and faction uniqueness. In practice it is cool but seems a bit misguided. First off I have only ever seen these grave markers with battles that I personally have fought. That defeats the purpose of them in my opinion. They appear only where I have already been and already are. They also seem to be infinite. I had a battle in my campaign in my territory at Drakenhof castle on turn 10. It is now past turn 50 and I have recruited multiple full stack armies from this single battle and it has yet to be "used up." I"m not sure if it is infinite or just absurdly high but I don't like the idea that the battle generate an unending resource. It would be far better if the units were finite or smaller. There needs to be some benefit but not an endless one.

Attrition on non-corrupted lands: As vampires I might want to go a place. Maybe I'm at war with a far off faction or I have a quest to reach, or maybe I want to help out an ally somewhere. Well, I can't get there. The only way I can travel is if I'm raiding. I might not want to raid and **** off everyone on the way to my destination. Maybe I want to travel in secret? How can I do this if my army falls apart after 3-4 turns of travel off my lands? In the Warhammer lore, vampires travel under the protection of dark storm clouds. It would be nice if I could go to un-corrupted territory without having to raid, maybe with the use of a character skill point or embedded hero ability. No I am not talking bout that garbage -15% to attrition damage, I mean REAL freedom to go places without having to raid and move at a snails pace. Manfred von Carstein traveled the old world in search of ancient lore and magical artifacts of great power. He did this in secret. Do you think he did it in raiding stance?

CONCLUSION:

That's my list as it sits after 55 turns into a campaign and a few multiplayer battles. Feel free to debate my reasoning or make suggestions of your own. Please do not whine about weaknessess being bad or want all strengths increased. This isn't a thread about making Vampire Counts stronger or weaker. It is in the balance forum and that should be the ultimate goal. Balance within the Vampire Counts faction and in relation to the strengths and weaknesses of other factions.

Aoife

All of these things i agree with, i would also add that monsterous units of size 1 are godly amazing on small unit size and borderline meatshield/tarpit/useless on ultra, so thats out of wack too

Combat_Wombat

I can agree with a lot of this. However I simply can't agree with you on the banshee. Specifically her role on the campaign map which is far from useless or pointless.cod pics There are only a few rare times when she hasn't successfully assassinated one of my lords or agents and even fewer rare times where I haven't lost an agent I've sent after her. Ultimate sneaky killy stabby if ever there was one.

Kayosiv#7489

The banshee on the campaign map is fine. It is her lack of a role on the battlefield that I wanted to have a discussion on.

hazzaslagga

I agree with some of this stuff, particularly on necromancer/Kemmler redundancy and the black coach but the wind of death is the best goddamn spell in the game.

Kayosiv#7489

I haven't used it many times, but it seems to have a narrow attack range and not do impressive damage. I'd like to try it against a big clump of units or at the entrance to a broken castle gate to see how it fares though because it seems like it would shine the most in those situations.

I could certainly see myself taking it off the list.

Glythe

An excellent post about the Vampire Counts.

Key points:
1. Ethereal units are broken (read as do not use). Why cant Ethereal units walk freely through everything?
2. Barded knights cost are broken (do not use)
3. Grave guard+ Crypt Horrors are the only good infantry this faction has (please dont nerf Crypt Horrors)
4. Mannfred is without a doubt the LL you will always pick (never buy necromancer lords).
5. The black coach is laughably bad. Clickable abilities on shared cooldown timer makes it worthless.


I don't know how you're doing in your game but I found Vargheists to be good except in autoresolve. If you have 4 of these and the enemy has 4 archers you can swoop down on his units during a siege and obliterate them very quickly. Archers melt faster than these guys in combat (even when the enemy has units guarding the archers)The only annoying thing is that sometimes they take forever to get back in the air again (unlike bats).

I'm going to disagree about the Banshee in your armies. For one it pretty much 100% prevents agents from messing with you. Give the Banshee some rare items and they are insane in combat around level 15-20. They will get hurt eventually but units with a single model can be healed very easily. It can easily fend off pretty much any regular unit in the game that doesn't have magic damage. They are also necessary to stop the AI from doing cheese maneuvers as you can hinder/assassinate the enemy commander at will. Did you stack Melee attack/defense? Physical wards are also a really nice find for this unit as well. I'm guessing you didn't get one for 15% (talisman of endurance)?

Mannfred+Banshee makes for a very strong army. Have Mannfred lead the charge with your dragons as you go behind the lines to ****+escape annoying ranged units. Have the Banshee walk with the infantry.


Spirit leech is well balanced in total war considering the VC army melts if their leader dies. When playing against the VC you can't be close to his general/casters. The VC army dies when the lord dies so to balance that the VC have the ability to snipe enemy lords. This is no different from dwarf/goblin/empire/chaos non magic based units sniping the enemy commander with artillery.

Wind of Death is a joke compared to Burning Head.

Curse of years and Soulblight are semi redundant. Since you will always play as Mannfred you should give him soulblight considering spirit leech/life leech are very good as well.

Danse Macabre is a joke unless you overcast it.

Kayosiv#7489

I have not had experience with the banshee in the campaign battles past level 2 and so no, I did not get her any items. I imagine that with damage resistant equipment she really does become tanky so that is a good point.

I was specifically talking about my experience with a banshee in multiplayer battles where she seems useless. I imagine you can build her to be decent with skill points and items in the campaign map. I'll have to try that.

Does a banshee with a 25% physical resistance item make her immune to non-magical damage? That would be pretty crazy.

AggonyDuck

Ethereal units are great when you support them adequately with health regeneration spells/abilities. Their great advantage comes from the fact that any health they regenerate is effectively worth 4 times as much as regular health.

Wind of Death is a great spell, if you can cast it along the enemy infantry line. It does a lot of damage when the angle is right and you can hit several units in succession. It is far more reliable and effective than any other vortex thanks to its predictability.

Seswatha#7633

Agreed on most of the stuff, great post.

Being magic heavy faction, it also has to do with the state of magic in general.

-Heals/Damage abilities need to scale. Invocation of Nehek should be about as powerful as it is on Low atm. Spirit leech needs to do the % health damage it does on high or ultra, its broken on low.

-Vortex spells need some love

-Morale is kinda broken for VCs, they should not suffer morale loss from being flanked, makes no sense. Maybe make them take more morale damage when attacked to compensate.

-Crypt horrors/Vargheist. Might be not a bad idea to transfer AP, but Crypts will need a big survivability buff in this case to be a tank elite (they are not atm)

-Ethereal units need a big buff

-Necromancers need some oomph to compete with Vampires. Maybe +x(?)% heal to invocation of Nehek and higher cap on raise dead?

PandaTheWarrior#8944

Etheral units are potent. Buff them too much and you get unkillable stuff since most rosters don't have acces to magic attacks.

thaflya

I have to fully agree to every point the TE stated. Good work on that list.

Pamina said:

Etheral units are potent. Buff them too much and you get unkillable stuff since most rosters don't have acces to magic attacks.

Talking about quickmatches and Battles: Nobody says they should be buffed "too much", that would be bad too ofc. But currently it feels like it makes ur army weaker when u choose them for a battle. I haven´t found a particular role for a Banshee yet, if u want a brawler hero just take the Wight King.

AggonyDuck

Ethereal units offer mobility, terror, armour piercing and benefit the most from Invocation of Nehek/Master of the Dead. I often use Cairn Wraiths backed up by Necromancers as the main line for my armies.

Glythe

I can tell you why crypt horrors have AP.

Look at the VC roster and the only units they have to counter large units are other large units.

In a sense crypt horrors are a cav unit with smaller model count with regen and AP. They are far weaker against archers than knights.


I think CA was worried that flying units with AP would be more ridiculous than a ground based unit. And I know you might cry heresy but not everything needs to be 100% accurate to the TT to make for a nice computer game. Is every unit for the greenskins/empire/dwarves/VC available? No. That translates to some holes in the roster here and there.

thaflya

AggonyDuck said:

Ethereal units offer mobility, terror, armour piercing and benefit the most from Invocation of Nehek/Master of the Dead. I often use Cairn Wraiths backed up by Necromancers as the main line for my armies.

Even in multiplayer custom battles? And u regulary win with them? When it works in campaign doesn´t mean it is balanced. Its no offense, i would be thankfull if someone shows me that those things are balanced.

Cervance

"Spirit Leach: This spell is entirely too effective. Killing lords in 2-4 casts, it is just plain unfair. In the tabletop, the effectiveness of this spell was based on the leadership rating of an opponent. Make this the case in Total War Warhammer. It should do minimal damage to high leadership opponents but should be devestating to those with low or routing leadership. That way, timing and casting it with skill and using it in combination terror and other spells like doom & darkness will be important. As it, it is a no brainer fire and forget spell that is too powerful and very boring."

Spot on analysis, couldn't have said it better myself.

"Spirit leech is well balanced in total war considering the VC army melts if their leader dies. When playing against the VC you can't be close to his general/casters. The VC army dies when the lord dies so to balance that the VC have the ability to snipe enemy lords. This is no different from dwarf/goblin/empire/chaos non magic based units sniping the enemy commander with artillery."

Spirit Leech is significantly better than any artillery or missile unit against lords. Particularly when Manfred is on his dragon, it becomes impossible to kill him unless the Vamp player misplays poorly. The biggest problem with Spirit Leech is the lack of interaction. There is no defense against it - Manfred just flies up to your army, casts it, and flies back. Rinse and repeat until the enemy lord is dead, and you have a massive advantage with no counterplay.

"Crumbling: The way undead route doesn't really work with the way morale is calculated in Total War games. Zombies would not care if their flanks were secure or that they are being blown apart by artillery. A new set of positives and penalties need to exist for the undead faction. Positives for characters being nearby needs to be increased while negatives to losing in combat or being flanked need to be increased as well. Negatives for damage sustained and being under enemy fire need to be decreased or even removed. Living things like ghouls and necromancers also should not crumble, but rather route like other living forces, likely vampires too should do this."

I respectfully disagree with changing the crumbling mechanics of undead units. I find it refreshing and interesting the way undead interact with other units. While I see where you're coming from, what you're basically asking for is a flat buff to the vampire count faction - since they can field more units than other factions, it's much harder to flank them.

thaflya

@Cervance
I agree about spirit leech, any spell/ability that cant be countered is bad mechanic.

But I dont agree about the crumbling, try playing VC by yourself, its always hard to judge from another factions point of view. Its ok that crumbling exists, but the way it is implemented is wrong and needs a bit of fixing. Its ok that VC troops lose morale from attacks in the flank or in the back, but why do they lose morale from shooting attacks. That was one of the main unique abilitys of VC in the TT, they dont care about ranged fire moralwise. And the crumble in this game starts way too quick, often troops start to crumble after 2 seconds in melee while the unit still have ~80% hp. Undead means morale stable troops compared to regular troops, but here it just means your basic troops fall into bits when they touch an enemy unit, and thats too much.

Belialxv

I dont think that crumble needs a rework.

Its good enough that your units dont rout.

Not to mention that the said units that crumble fast are normally extremely cheap like zombies or fell bats.

ITA_Vae_Victis#3647

To OP: I agree with everything you wrote, except for the following points:

- The Banshee is really, really good. It is by far the best VC agent on the map (thanks to the multi-point upgrade in assassination and ability to severely hinder all enemy agents actions), and at high level it can tarpit pretty much anything short of elite anti-infantry units completely on its own. I have a level 25 Banshee, and I use her to take down Giants pretty much on her own. If anything, it's the other hero types that would need some reworking to be more reliable and useful in the late game.

- I get what you mean on crumbling, and I agree on a logical level, but I think gameplay-wise the actual system is absolutely fine.

- Invocation of Nehek is not exceptionally powerful, and whay you say about it not scaling very well with different units is true, but the upgraded version is quite good if you have all your units blobbed in a single fight (which can be the case, if both you and your enemy have loads of infantry). More to the point, if your own wizard is inside the AoE he will automatically recover any potential wound suffered because of the miscast.


The only thing I really want to point out is how insanely effective are instant, unavoidable damage spells (mainly Spirit leech and Fate of Bjuna). Seriously, nerf those by a solid 33-66%, and the we can start talking about some VC overall magic balancing.

Glythe

There certainly are defenses against Mannfred flying up to your army.

Dwarves have protective runes. Enemy VC armies can snare him or cast the same spell back. The empire has root so you can kill him when hes over extended. Goblins can snare him as well but they will have the weakest chance of killing him.


Fate of Bjuna was already massively nerfed pre-release. I'm guessing you are using small unit models if you find it overpowering. On ultra unit sizes it never does more than 30% damage to a single unit.

MoGuy

I am 290 turns into my campaign with the Vamps. And I agree with everything said here.

1.) Ethereal units are extremely bad. It costs a lot of time and dark magic to actually unlock them and then they just suck. Don't get me wrong, my Cairn Wraiths do good damage. But so do my Grave Guards w/ Twohanded Swords. Grave Guards are cheaper, can be recruited in one turn, do just as much damage, are more resilient and cost less. There is literally no reason other than "it looks cool" to ever take ethereal units.

2.) The Black Coach is almost insultingly bad! It cost 25K just to build the Vampire Crypts PLUS the money one has to invest into leveling up the city. I was very excited when I finally unlocked the Coach because it seemed like a very powerful unit. But it just sucks. I am using two Coaches atm because one alone will just crumble if it charges into anything. The Choach is pretty slow and as far as I can tell has no mechanic that actually makes it stronger the more magic is used or the more units die. It needs to be way, WAY more potent. Like a Mini-Terrorgheist.

3.) Every single spell or passive ability that heals our units is worthless. From the tooltip it sounds like those abilities could stabilise a unit that takes damage or is crumbling. Regeneration is also very underpowered. The Terrorgheist regenerating 2 hp per second is just nonsense. It may as well not regenerate health at all!

4.) Necromancers have no purpose. I have never taken a single one since they have literally no advantage over the Vampire Lord. I wouldn't even take them if they cost only 300 gold because they are just too fragile. If they at least could get the Hell Steed so that they could fly above the battlefield. Necromancers need another new "path" in their skill tree that actually distinguishes them from the Vampire Lords. They should have good buffs for their units etc.

Einarial

Good analysis, on my phone at the moment so I'll disagree with 1 point.

Crumbling.

All VC units should suffer crumbling. None should rout, even the 'living' undead.

Flanking should cause morale damage, as it does on TT.

However, they should be immune to non-melee morale hits. Zombies don't care if they're getting blown apart. Vampires don't care if their undead hordes get crippled by artillery. Just raise more!

thaflya

[ITA]Vae_Victis said:

To OP: I agree with everything you wrote, except for the following points:

- The Banshee is really, really good. It is by far the best VC agent on the map (thanks to the multi-point upgrade in assassination and ability to severely hinder all enemy agents actions), and at high level it can tarpit pretty much anything short of elite anti-infantry units completely on its own. I have a level 25 Banshee, and I use her to take down Giants pretty much on her own. If anything, it's the other hero types that would need some reworking to be more reliable and useful in the late game.

No one argued about the Campaign Banshee, she is fine, the problem is the 950$ custom battle banshee.

AggonyDuck

The selling point for Necromancers is Master of the Dead. Regenerating 4 hp per second for units inside 30m aura might might not sound like much, but if you have units that already regenerate themselves or have considerable damage resistance, that passive health regen starts to pay dividends when combined with Invocation of Nehek. The difference between a Grave Guard with Great Weapons and a Cairn Wraith is that a well-supported Cairn Wraith can emerge from a melee against elite infantry with full health and no losses. You won't get that from a Grave Guard, no matter how many times you cast Invocation of Nehek on them.

Seswatha#7633

4 hp regen is only noticeable on low unit size. It should be 4/8/12/16. Ethereal units have 0 armour so all the damage resist they is kinda wasted becasue of that, they still take a lot of damage with a small hp pool. Maybe they'll be better if healing is buffed on higher unit sizes as they have some synergy with it. I can also see them as anti AP unit as AP is wasted on them. But imo at least heals buffs need to happen to make them viable.

AggonyDuck

With Ethereal units it is noticeable even on large unit size. As they only have slightly under 3000 health, with Master of the Dead they are regenerating 8% of their health pool every 60 seconds. Add some Invocations of Neheks that regenerate around 20% of their health per casting and you can keep them in battle for ages. ¨

EDIT: Actually they only have 2400 health on Large, so master of the dead will give them 10% of health back per 60 seconds and Nehek is closer to 25%.

Seswatha#7633

Given that melee battles can last like 3 minutes until one side is broken I don't find it making enough difference given their poor stats.

PandaTheWarrior#8944

Those units can be extremly beneficial of the meta and the way people build armies around each faction, buff them now is too early since the unit has a lot of hidden potential. It's not like a normal unit where u test it then it can be good or bad that's it. They already are one of the only units being able to face off Demi chickens, this alone show their strengh.

Seswatha#7633

Actually I would like to see some tests of them pefrorming against a similarily priced setups. Then this discussion would be a lot more productive.

MoGuy

As they only have slightly under 3000 health, with Master of the Dead they are regenerating 8% of their health pool every 60 seconds.

And how much health do you think they lose in those 60 seconds? The Vampire Lord also has the Invocation and on higher levels can get a Zombie Dragon. Sending him into combat along with the Cairn Wraiths will help them out much more than the Necromancer ever could. The regeneration the Necromancer offers is just too insignificant when compared to the things the Vampire Lord offers.

I"m not sure if it is infinite or just absurdly high but I don't like the idea that the battle generate an unending resource. It would be far better if the units were finite or smaller. There needs to be some benefit but not an endless one.

Keep in mind that we don't have global recruiting and that battleside markers don't spawn very often. Especially in the late game when every army has elite troops which are less in numbers compared to the early game troops the battleside markers are pretty hard to generate. If CA would change them to make the recruitable numbers finite then they should give it another benefit. For example make fleeing units count as casualties. Every manual battle I play I win not because the enemy is dead but because they flee in terror, resulting in just a few hundred casualties which doesn't spawn a battleside marker.

Piohrun

Spot on OP! I agree with everything you said.

What I would like to see is:

-Decrease in the headcount of Cairn Wraiths / Hexwraiths units combined with significant buff to their dmg resistance. Those guys should, in my opinion, be virtually unkillable 1v1 by non-magical attacks, but get destoyed by magic easily.

- Necromancers should give a significant morale buff within their close vicinity (aura) (to prevent units from crumbling when next to a necro) + their healing spells should be cheaper and more powerfull - the idea is that destroying completely a couple of units of skeletons should be very difficult without killing the necro first. On that note I also think that Zombies should get better at being a cannon fodder / meat wall - they should have more HP, better morale and be easier to raise back again.

If necros could use their healing / resurrecting spells on units that have been wiped out completely, their sorry little fragile asses would actually have a solid role in Vampire army.