Dread Saurian Recs

ptavangar

The dread saurian is a tricky unit to balance, I admit. That being said, after some basic testing I feel that it is too much of a monster killer rather than an anti-infantry beast. It is one of those monsters (e.g., mammoths, giants, etc.) that really should be more specialized vs. infantry imo. I say this because of the type of monster that it is (e.g., its physiology, animations, etc.).

The reason why I say that it is a monster killer is because it has a ridiculously high WS (which is good vs. large targets naturally) but its anti-infantry capabilities are limited by its splash attack target max (SATM). That much WS seems like overkill for infantry and it does seem like the dread saurian one shots a lot of infantry with each attack because of the high WS. I think it might be more appropriate to have it hit more targets and have that damage spread out more. It just seems more realistic seeing as this is a massive monster that really should be damaging more combatants with each attack.

Even if you (Duck) do not want to risk doing this and possibly making the dread saurian too powerful, you could always have an increase in SATM accompanied by a commensurate decrease in WS to compensate a bit. Alternatively or additively, you could decrease its MA and give it a bonus vs. infantry (BvI). Just adding a BvI would help make it more of a niche anti-infantry monster like the mammoth.

Next, I've noticed the dread saurian's attack interval is very short. I would suggest increasing it a little bit.

The last thing is.... collision damage. Seeing as this is the most expensive monster in the game and seeing as it is incredibly massive, I think collision damage is indicated. Moreover, it would make the dread saurian unique since it would be the only LM monster that has a significant amount of collision damage. And I seriously doubt cycle charging would be an issue since it is fairly slow and its charge does not appear to be that powerful (although collision damage would help with that I assume).

To sum up: I suggest adding some modest amount of collision damage, decreasing WS, decreasing MA, adding a BvI, increasing the attack interval, and increasing SATM. If you disagree with every single one of these suggestions, please at least consider decreasing both dread saurian unit's cost. In particular, the howdah variant is perhaps a little overpriced at the moment.

P.S. - I haven't really noticed much of a charge animation on the dread saurian. Instead of increasing its speed and charging ahead, it kind of just continues to lumber forward and then attacks normally. Seems anti-climactic lol. If you could pass this along to your animators I would appreciate it. In the in-engine cinematic, the dread saurian charges forward running after the war wagon. THAT is what it should look like when it is charging imo.

Thanks for your time.


@CA_Duck

stuky95#5851

No. Dread Saurian just needs more survival.

c0rvus

Dread saurian resembles real life crocodilian animal by its look, so generally has short limps and huge jaw which is deadly for most animal that is about their size. Their stats distribution indicates that they are not specifically geared towards infantry slaughtering, and also being in that ballpark of price range means they have to stay alive long enough and kill at least 2 units of infantry to be worthy of its cost. Comparing to the difficultty of that I can think of way more combination to effectively bring dread saurian down using infantry that are much cheaper. So yeah, I don't know how much you have to change them before they does what OP want moreover I am inclined to think you misjudged their design, perhaps.

Deep_echo_sound#4293

So, now we come with campaign-only units?! Hah? When he is subject to tomb kings-like unit caps.

And dread saurian is anti monster fighter. Not anti-infantry!

He must be balanced through stats to be fine in multiplayer. Or we can make Lord Croak and many other units "campaign only". And buff them in the stratosphere! But C.A. only nerf for multiplayer.
Now, buff for multiplayer!
As I said. +4 attack and defense, and, may be +10% more hit points, together with +200 gold cost on feral variant.

Modern_Erasmus#3567

I did a round of testing using the feral and regular dread saurians versus most of the game's monsters, elite infantry, elite cav, and elite or anti large monstrous infantry.

Both variants do extremely well against cavalry. Grail Knights, Dragon ogres, and demigryphs all get slaughtered very quickly and the saurian doesn't take much damage in return. I think it's because with the way splash attacks work on the saurian very little damage is wasted while lots of models die each attack. The Fireborn, Altdorf Gryphites, and Blood knights all do decently against the feral Saurian while still losing pretty badle. The summoners of rage actually manage to beat it sometimes. When taking the howdah variant all of the harder matchups, including the summoners, get deleted. Overall, they're very cost effective versus cavalry.

The feral variant has a bit of a mixed matchup spread versus monsters. It butchers Hydras and beats the Kharibdyss, but loses to Hell Pits, Shaggoths, and Necro Sphinxs (though the latter two are pretty close). Kholek dumpsters it, kroq gar does decently well. Oddly, Hierotitans beat it very convincingly due to their high health and melee defence. They usually have 60% or more remaining. Taking the howdah variant turns almost everything here into a very cost effective slaughter for the Saurian, with only Kholek and the Sphinx of Usekph putting up half decent fights before going down. Honestly I was surprised the poison and blowpipe guns made as much a difference as they did. Overall, a mixed bag.

Against infantry the feral variant beats any non anti-large infantry with the exception of the Norgrimling's ironbreakers that beat it quite heavily due to their melee defence. Against AL infantry it beats Phoenix guard in a very cost inefficient, long, and atritious fight. Halberds cheaper than PG, with the exception of the Council Guard whose unbreakable trait lets them win, lost to it while the elite ror halbers at or above 1500 cost beat it. I didn't get around to testing the howdah version here. Against monstrous infantry it dumpsters pretty much all of them, though it takes around 3000 damage from Fimir with great weapons.

In a vacuum, these results seem pretty good. However, there's a big weakness that reveals itself when you normalize the costs by giving the cheaper monsters some chaff to fight alongside. Because of the way the Saurian's large hitbox and splash attacks work, it keeps turning to face infantry and getting staggered while very few of its attacks damage the SEM it's fighting. The Howdah Saurian butchers Hell pits, but it loses in a big way to one that's saturated with a stormvermin (despite that still being cheaper). That combined with the Saurian's absurdly large weakness to missiles make it an overall cost inefficient pick rn. Plus, despite the Howdah Saurian butchering all other monsters, for the price you can take two feral carnosaurs who can do the same when teaming up while being significantly less vulnerable to missiles and with the ability to split up to cover ground.

Some choice between or combination of cost decreases, missile resist buffs, targeting priority changes, and or stagger removal would be necessary to make the unit MP viable. A fairly big change to one of these or a selection of modest changes to 2-3 would probably be enough.

yst#1879

Deep_echo_sound said:

with +200 gold cost on feral variant.

Its not even worth $1900 now, much less any1 crazy enough to pay $2500 for it

All those things they can do, ancient steg can do it cheaper, better. Gonna test them more to determine how much they r truly worth, seems about just $1800-$1900 ish atm for feral. Normal ones wouldnt be too far off, prolly just $700 overpriced with the ror $1000 too much.

$3800 lulz.... like who even do these pricing. Its impossible to find any value from these guys when the ror costs more than 3 feral stegs lol....

Deep_echo_sound#4293

yst said:

Deep_echo_sound said:

with +200 gold cost on feral variant.

Its not even worth $1900 now, much less any1 crazy enough to pay $2500 for it

All those things they can do, ancient steg can do it cheaper, better. Gonna test them more to determine how much they r truly worth, seems about just $1800-$1900 ish atm for feral. Normal ones wouldnt be too far off, prolly just $700 overpriced with the ror $1000 too much.

$3800 lulz.... like who even do these pricing. Its impossible to find any value from these guys when the ror costs more than 3 feral stegs lol....

Dread saurian needs to be very strong, not cheap. If he will be cheap garbage, why that genius in C.A. made them has unit limit? At the same time star dragons and other monsters have no limits.

They need buffed stats. Rampage is too easy to remove, so feral version will be under costed.

C.A. just ignore reason. They were told, they must do it before release. No, they still released under powered units.

Ehecatl

If the Dread Saurian is under powered, and I'm not sure it is yet, I'm glad that were released under instead of over powered like every other DLC has been up to this point.

Lotus_Moon#2452

they need a massive nerf. Currently broken OP vs 8 facitons its silly

yst#1879

Ehecatl said:

If the Dread Saurian is under powered, and I'm not sure it is yet, I'm glad that were released under instead of over powered like every other DLC has been up to this point.

They will never ever be useful, slayers took 2 yrs just to finally be viable. Without any mega buffs it will just remain a trash tier unit sitting at the roster together with garbage of sotek. With limit cap its pretty much, NEVER.

JDog91

Lotus_Moon said:

they need a massive nerf. Currently broken OP vs 8 facitons its silly

No. They need to be removed from multiplayer.

Nerfing fun units is proving unpopular. They're capped in singleplayer because CA know they're ridiculous, so putting them in multiplayer in the first place was a stupid idea. They should be in custom games, but not ladder.

Trotrorigolo

Lotus_Moon said:

they need a massive nerf. Currently broken OP vs 8 facitons its silly

you are maybe the only one in this game saying that...
I've seen how you hate lizerdmen already, you can stop now
the DS is not op at all, it's quite terribly bad actually

Lotus_Moon#2452

Trotrorigolo said:

Lotus_Moon said:

they need a massive nerf. Currently broken OP vs 8 facitons its silly

you are maybe the only one in this game saying that...
I've seen how you hate lizerdmen already, you can stop now
the DS is not op at all, it's quite terribly bad actually

Hate LZM? Lulwhat....i only hate norsca and coast because they are not a table top faction. LzM are one of my favorite factions, i know it can be fun using broken units but i care about balance and lzm are quite too good currently.

We could have a game if you feel the sourian is UP, please teach me how to counter it with some factions.

Lotus_Moon#2452

Quite terribly bad....the feral is most definitely OP the other two perhaps only need slight nerfs.

dge1

Post containing personal remarks deleted.

Trotrorigolo

Lotus_Moon said:

Quite terribly bad....the feral is most definitely OP the other two perhaps only need slight nerfs.

yeah no mate, it's easly counter and cost too much, stop with your BS and go read South comment

Lotus_Moon#2452

Trotrorigolo said:

Lotus_Moon said:

Quite terribly bad....the feral is most definitely OP the other two perhaps only need slight nerfs.

yeah no mate, it's easly counter and cost too much, stop with your BS and go read South comment

I did and i dont agree with his assessment of the unit. Thought i fo not think the ROR or non feral are OP anymore just feral one.

Trotrorigolo

Lotus_Moon said:

Trotrorigolo said:

Lotus_Moon said:

Quite terribly bad....the feral is most definitely OP the other two perhaps only need slight nerfs.

yeah no mate, it's easly counter and cost too much, stop with your BS and go read South comment

I did and i dont agree with his assessment of the unit. Thought i fo not think the ROR or non feral are OP anymore just feral one.

no it is not, easly counter and cost way to much for what it do, i've tried to make it work numerous times, I was better not taking it at all

Lotus_Moon#2452

Trotrorigolo said:

Lotus_Moon said:

Trotrorigolo said:

Lotus_Moon said:

Quite terribly bad....the feral is most definitely OP the other two perhaps only need slight nerfs.

yeah no mate, it's easly counter and cost too much, stop with your BS and go read South comment

I did and i dont agree with his assessment of the unit. Thought i fo not think the ROR or non feral are OP anymore just feral one.

no it is not, easly counter and cost way to much for what it do, i've tried to make it work numerous times, I was better not taking it at all

like i said i had opposite experience, i have not once lost a game with him in my army, it absolutely smashes cav and demis it can 2 hit whole unit of demis.

I'm still under the impression that feral one might need a nerf but not sure about the scale of the nerf to it yet.

yst#1879

Not much u can do with the worst unit in game apart from giving them about the most ridiculous buffs possible. So massively underpowered ud be looking at buffs that surpass the $1000 granted to luminark. Im afraid ppl just have to wait couple of years for saurian, if ever, to be viable.

The ror atm holds the crown to the worst ror ever made in game. Not only that, the other 2 varaints also top the chart to the worst nit of their category. The feral ones r pathetically bad lol, $2300 for 60 ld, its beyond unviable, their hitbox is pretty much i would say about 400%+ of star dragon. Every single engagement u get hit from rear lol, never in game has something so expensive being that bad.