Too OP for a flying unit?

[Lord Aiden]

I was designing a flying unit for a campaign, and after going back and forth between the drawingboard and the editor several times I had a excellent idea: creating a phoenix with an ability very similar to a demolisher's burning oil, that is every time the phoenix attacks a ground enemy (or the ground if its "weapon type" is set to artillery) the ground will be set on fire and any units as well as structures in the vicinity will take damage. However this makes the phoenix unit pretty OP as it can destroy a relatively large number of ground units quickly, now I know there are ways to balance this, but what do you guys think about this particular concept? @Shar Dundred your thoughts would be greatly appreciated because of your vast experience and knowledge due to the balancing you do in your awesome campaign, any input here is welcome.

 

[cleavinghammer]

If it attacks as fast as a standard phoenix, it does sound pretty OP. Maybe slow it down and reduce the burning damage.

 

[Daffa]

Another way is to rise the consumption of food to like 3x normal troops of these types. Oh, and high cost too.

 

[Shar Dundred]

It depends on what role the Phoenix should play in the unit roster.
If it is an elite unit, do what Daffa said.
If it should be flying artillery, give it long range, slow but high dmg, but make it easier to kill.
If it should be a regular air unit, do what cleavinghammer said.

 

[Rem]

if the unit is op give it a large food cost or lower its hp or attack

a 1000hp pheonx that costs 8 food will not likely be spammed

also a 500 hp pheonix that costs less food will be much more likely to be taken down and wont present a problem

personally I think u should go with the stronger pheonix

 

[Banelingline]

Pheonix with Burning Oil instead of it's current AoE method would be only slightly different. The damage is a heck of a lot more spread out, but also significantly lower per-target. I think it's perfectly fine as a Frost Wyrm analogue, with a similar cost. Instead of breaking unguarded bases extremely casually by shutting down all the defenses, its role in a siege scenario is to go after enemy units, especially workers. It does nothing to prevent resistance, nor can it shut down bases, so it's more or less a side-grade to Frost Wyrm, with much more damage but no shutdown. Of course, this is contingent on the Burning Oil AoE being a research option. Which it should be, as all such abilities are currently.

 

[Lord Aiden]

One particular problem I've encountered with this btw is that the phoenix can only be set to attack ground units, because using it on air units also causes the ground underneath them to be set alight,

So its either an air unit which can only attack ground units in an OP manner or the whole concept does work, so frost worm is technically and practically much better than this

However I've come up with a slightly different idea: a Chimaera that uses the plague ward ability to create an invisible (short lived) ward while attacking the ground or ground units. The ward in turn generates an unholy aura which is set to take away 1hp/sec from structures in a small vicinity, this chimaera can also attack air units so it can rival the frost worm

Im thinking that with a good amount of hp and a food cost of 8 this unit should be very effective and yet unspammable

 

[Banelingline]

One particular problem I've encountered with this btw is that the phoenix can only be set to attack ground units, because using it on air units also causes the ground underneath them to be set alight,

I... Fail to see the problem with this, actually. The flames scattering below to the ground and setting alight air units in a significant radius alongside the larger ground unit radius makes perfect sense to me. The fluff's not actually a problem, here.

 

[Lord Aiden]

With the phoenix projectile and all it just doesn't look right if you attack an air unit and suddenly the ground below it is set alight

 

[Banelingline]

With the phoenix projectile and all it just doesn't look right if you attack an air unit and suddenly the ground below it is set alight

Find someone over in Resources to make a particle effect that makes a more lasting splash downwards and going further out, then you can use that for the projectile instead. You could also have it be a more conventional active ability or somehow attached to some kind of ground-only on attack effect.

 

[apsyll]

You could give the phoenix the phoenix fire ability with air as only target and a cooldown of your normal attacks or less and don't allow the phoenix to attack air units. This could also crate an interesting aspect in direction where to position the units.

 

[Lord Aiden]

I've actually already done what you've recommended with adding phoenix fire with air only as targets, what happens it basically the pheonix gets 2 attacks that are independent of eachother, you also gotta understand the mechanics of pheonix fire; its an automatic attack that happens once per cooldown period (I think its 0.5seconds but you can change that) also it has a buff (which causes the unit to take damage per second for several seconds) as long as the target unit has the buff it wont be attacked by pheonix fire again until the buff expires, so you got a ton of balancing to do, plus the unit does not end up being what you wanted

 

[Banelingline]

you also gotta understand the mechanics of pheonix fire; its an automatic attack that happens once per cooldown period

Hello third attack!

 

[Lord Aiden]

Yes, essentially. A long while ago I was working on this project and we've created this heavy bomber unit that had 3 attacks:

1) It could attack up to 9 or so air units at the same time, this was done giving it the barrage ability

2) it had an attack it could attack ground units with

3) It had a pheonix fire attack it could attack ground structures with, from what I can recall they had to be either directly below it or within a very small radious (250 range in the editor or so)

So ye, its a third attack, but it doesnt show up in the gui, it always does the same amount of damage (unlike regular attacks) plus it can bestow a negative buff on the unit that works similarly to envenomed weapons

 

[Banelingline]

Looking at Barrage itself, it looks to be a multiattack ability, allowing extra attacks to be made if certain targetting and range requirements are met. The listed AoE is how far enemies can be before the Barrage no longer targets them, basically being the range entry for the added attacks. The damage field is a dummy field, probably carried over from Pheonix Fire or something. Other on attack abilities only apply to the primary target, so adding Burning Oil, as the example I tested, only makes the fires bathe the primary target, which can be useful to balance out some uses of the ability, but is problematic for depriving us of the wonders of having every enemy unit on screen be hit with Burning Oil.

 

[Lord Aiden]

Looking at Barrage itself, it looks to be a multiattack ability, allowing extra attacks to be made if certain targetting and range requirements are met. The listed AoE is how far enemies can be before the Barrage no longer targets them, basically being the range entry for the added attacks.

Yes, that is correct

The damage field is a dummy field, probably carried over from Pheonix Fire or something.

I don't know whether this is true

Other on attack abilities only apply to the primary target, so adding Burning Oil, as the example I tested, only makes the fires bathe the primary target, which can be useful to balance out some uses of the ability, but is problematic for depriving us of the wonders of having every enemy unit on screen be hit with Burning Oil.

Yes, don't put too many abilities on or it might crash the game, I've had to learn this the not so easy way

 

[ArchDuke]

Honestly from what you're stating on here a 1,000 hp phoenix with only a powerful ground attack costing 6 food would be more or less balanced.

A 800 hp phoenix costing 5 food and having less attack damage and such would probably be a better idea though, at least from my point of view.

A flying unit with no anti-air attack easily falls prey to flying anti air units like gargoyles, hippographs, wind riders, flying machines etc. So if such a unit is spammed, it needs to be spammed together with flying anti air units, meaning you will have a few of these anti ground unit combined with at least 5 or so flying anti air units, so these anti ground units should not have an extremely high food cost.

 

[Lord Aiden]

What makes you so sure that these units will be balanced? Or that they will be so easily defeated by aerial anti-air units? I mean just 5 or so of these 1,000hp phoenixes could devastate a base within minutes, I dont think they would be taken down in that time by a few aerial attackers.

 

[ArchDuke]

At one point long ago I was working on creating a campaign, there was supposed to be this battle between the two sides in one of the later missions, one side had these units called azure dragons, these heavy flying units with 1150hp, two ground attacks; a magic attack dealing heavy damage against ground units and a siege attack that easily shook structures, but the dragon had no air attack of its own and was defenseless against air units. These dragons cost 6 food if that’s relevant. Now the other side in this battle had three defenses against these :guard towers which would easily get demolished by the dragons, archers which wouldn’t do too well against them, and finally air units, in this case it was a wyvern unit that was given a piercing attack, had 600hp I believe and cost 3 food, these wyvern units were a perfect counter for the dragons, just about 10 of them would destroy any amount of the dragons as long as they focused fire, also if the dragons had escorts with anti air attacks a large massing of wyvern would beat them also.



Here’s what I learned:

Medium air unit with good anti air attack = perfect counter for heavy bomber type units with no air attacks.

 

[Lord Aiden]

Ok, definitely giving my heavy bombers some sort of anti-air attack now, don't want them hard countered with aerial unit spamming.

 

[nedio95]

@Lord Aiden I will backtrack a bit into "balancing" it. Apologies, if somebody has mentioned this, skipped the last 3-4 comments.
I would like to suggest balancing it by adding extra mechanic rather than flat-out nerfing it.

If it is a phoenix, as Kael ult that burns down into an egg, why not make this passive into a auto-cast, like searing arrow, that can be turned on/off, and when it is used it takes down the HP of the phoenix itself by some amount?

So, basically, make it damage itself when attacking.

Cool tooltip description: "This mighty bird takes chunks of its soul to breath fire and fury with each attack setting part of the world ablaze."


EDIT// Oh, OH ! How about the following?

Instead of spawning an egg(unit) and reviving it in a few sec. It spawns an egg(item) on death and it can be picked up by a hero(both enemy, friendly, any!) and planted as an egg(unit) that revives the bird in it's full glory again for the player who picked & planted the egg.
This is even more of a double-edged sword. Watch out where you lose your stuff

 

[Lord Aiden]

The phoenix I'm creating does not have the whole egg respawn thing, its a regular flying unit like any other, the only thing is because of the mechanics of burning oil it can only attack ground units...

 

[nedio95]

Oh, well, there goes the egg... The burning-oil-damage-to-self is still feasible...

Ned out!

 

[Lord Aiden]

The egg thing would just make the gameplay weird, I've tried it before

 

[DevZ]

You could give the phoenix the phoenix fire ability with air as only target and a cooldown of your normal attacks or less and don't allow the phoenix to attack air units. This could also crate an interesting aspect in direction where to position the units.

this^

 

[nedio95]

Eeeeh, but that would allow the phoenix to perform both attacks at the same time...

 

[Banelingline]

Honestly from what you're stating on here a 1,000 hp phoenix with only a powerful ground attack costing 6 food would be more or less balanced.

Okay, let me point at the sort of unit you're making with this. Namely, the Frost Wyrm:

1350 HP
104 average ground attack damage (with two-thirds attack range being covered by splash to apply slow), 89 average air attack damage (no splash), 3 second cooldown.
1 armor, +2 per upgrade

You know what this costs? 7 food, 385 gold and 120 wood, taking 65 seconds per Wyrm. And the upgrade for attacks to shut down buildings on attack takes 60 seconds and costs 150 gold and 275 wood. A Pheonix would have to have an obscene ground attack to actually be worth it in comparison to the similar cost Frost Wyrm.

Ok, definitely giving my heavy bombers some sort of anti-air attack now, don't want them hard countered with aerial unit spamming.

Ideally, you want either Barrage, for mass attacks of finite number to make the needed spam problematic but retain some counter by delaying the bombing, or you want Pheonix Fire to attack air units while ground units are under attack. Or both, so that a full aerial combat situation has them murdering enemies as effectively as they murder buildings and slow ground units.

 

[Lord Aiden]

What exactly do you have in mind?

 

[Lord Aiden]

Well after some tweaks I came up with this: a Chimaera that can attack up to 3 ground units at once with barrage, has over 1500 hp, and can attack air units so it wont get hard countered by aerial attackers. What do you guys think?

 

[ArchDuke]

You're scrapping your earlier idea with the ward with the negative aura for buildings ?

 

[Lord Aiden]

Yes, I feel like this would be much better option, since its a completely novel idea, plus I feel like that idea would make the unit way too OP against buildings, also there might be glitches with using the ward.

Anyway I feel like this new idea will make a much more balanced heavy unit that can both attack ground units as well as defend itself from aerial units.

 

[ArchDuke]

Might wanna carefully consider attack types:

A magic ground attack will devastate most ground unit but will not to be too effective against structures

A siege ground attack will easily demolish structures but will not be so effective against units

 

[Lord Aiden]

Any idea how to make the ground attack effective against both units and structures while being original? I was thinking of adding a special attack ability that only targets buildings

 

[ArchDuke]

You could give your chimera a siege attack that is only used against buildings and air units

experiment with this and barrage: I wonder how barrage would react if it was able to target ground units, structures, etc. except for air units and you have one attack which is magic that targets ground units and another which is siege that targets structures and air

 

[disruptive_]

Any idea how to make the ground attack effective against both units and structures while being original? I was thinking of adding a special attack ability that only targets buildings

With orb effects (specially the fully customizable Orb of Slow) you can achieve some original effects.
I suggest using a modified Acid Bomb or Drunken Haze orb effect (ie. an attack that slows and silences units in a small/medium/large area).

 

[Banelingline]

Any idea how to make the ground attack effective against both units and structures while being original? I was thinking of adding a special attack ability that only targets buildings

Well, a lazy method is to use Destroyer with a low multiplier value to boost the damage up to where it works properly. Combining with splash could make it a high strength anti-mass unit that breaks concentrated buildings to pieces with a ratio damage bonus that slightly-more-than negates the damage type penalty against buildings.

Actually... After a quick editor check, Orb of Corruption does not apply on splash (nor does type-selected Cleaving Attack go by ), so the idea I initially had is off the table. Having the on-hit effect of Orb of Corruption only apply to structures would still be an unconventional damage increase, as it scales based on the armor the building has to begin with.

After another, separate, editor check... I cannot identify what the heck Orb of Slow's ability actually does, other than let you turn some preexisting abilities into on-hit effects. A funky use for it I found is that Acid Bomb actually has fields for attack and movement speed reduction, but they actually are bonus values and can't be set to negative values. So you can use it for an AoE Unholy Frenzy effect, in other situations.

 

[Lord Aiden]

With orb effects (specially the fully customizable Orb of Slow) you can achieve some original effects.
I suggest using a modified Acid Bomb or Drunken Haze orb effect (ie. an attack that slows and silences units in a small/medium/large area).

I'm not really following, can you explain? Last time I checked the orb thing where you inserted an ability into didn't work for some reason unless a damage detection system was in place, or so I was told

Well, a lazy method is to use Destroyer with a low multiplier value to boost the damage up to where it works properly. Combining with splash could make it a high strength anti-mass unit that breaks concentrated buildings to pieces with a ratio damage bonus that slightly-more-than negates the damage type penalty against buildings.

You mean demolition?

Actually... After a quick editor check, Orb of Corruption does not apply on splash (nor does type-selected Cleaving Attack go by ), so the idea I initially had is off the table. Having the on-hit effect of Orb of Corruption only apply to structures would still be an unconventional damage increase, as it scales based on the armor the building has to begin with.

It works but only if it reduces the armor by at least 6 points or so

After another, separate, editor check... I cannot identify what the heck Orb of Slow's ability actually does, other than let you turn some preexisting abilities into on-hit effects. A funky use for it I found is that Acid Bomb actually has fields for attack and movement speed reduction, but they actually are bonus values and can't be set to negative values. So you can use it for an AoE Unholy Frenzy effect, in other situations.

Interesting find for acid bomb

 

[Banelingline]

You mean demolition?

Yes, that, my memory isn't the best.

t works but only if it reduces the armor by at least 6 points or so

Not... really. -5 armor is 27% damage boosting, with -3 armor still being 17% damage increasing. Small amounts of negative armor give surprisingly large damage bonuses. Given that 2 armor is 11% damage reduction, you're looking at -3 armor being plenty enough to cause serious damage increases.

 

[Lord Aiden]

Honestly I was considering giving the chimaera a magic attack, but I realized that it would make certain units a hard counter to it because they either have magic immunity or magic resistance ....gonna have to probably go with giving it a siege attack

 

[disruptive_]

I'm pretty sure there is a tutorial regarding the use of the Orb of Slow effects.
Maps like the old Dota used this in the Weaver's Germinate Attack (its a custom Searing Arrows).
An attack with a modified Orb of Slow (or Lightning) with an Acid Bomb or Drunken Haze (just like a said already) based spell instead of the default Slow could create the fiction of an AoE based effect on Hit. To Make an AoE base attack you can use Missile Splash.

So step by step:
1. Search the Orb of Slow ITEM ABILITY (Special/Items) and create a custom version of it.
2. Set the fields of these abilities accordingly (100% chances; and modify the Targets Allowed field to suit you)
3. Lets say we will be using Acid Bomb as the bonus on hit ability, so search it and create a custom version.
4. Common misteps: make the modified Acid Bomb ability a Unit ability; with 0 mana cost; with 0 cooldown; no missile art; 2000 missile speed; and modify the Targets Allowed field accordingly. Also the unit that is going to use this ability should have Normal/Instant/Missile/Missile (Splash) Weapon Type (excludes Missile (Line), i didn't test this enought tho).
5. Then add the modified Orb of Slow ability to the unit LOL.
6. To hide the ability (it will appear a DISBTN icon of the Acid Bomb) use the spellbook disable trick or the 0,-11 trick (which don't work in 1.28 i think), or the new 1.29 native that does exactly this (forgot it's name)

I have just did this, so try it if you are going for this idea.

 

[Banelingline]

4. Common misteps: make the modified Acid Bomb ability a Unit ability; with 0 mana cost; with 0 cooldown; no missile art; 2000 missile speed; and modify the Targets Allowed field accordingly. Also the unit that is going to use this ability should have Normal/Instant/Missile/Missile (Splash) Weapon Type (excludes Missile (Line), i didn't test this enought tho).

I'll note that this is not required, I removed the cooldown and mana cost and it worked when applied to a Rifleman. The projectile had to land before the effect went off, but it's important to be clear that it's not actually needed in any way. It just disguises what you've done to get the effect, and you may find the missile effect useful as confirmation of function and signaling that the on-hit effect went off.

 

[disruptive_]

After another, separate, editor check... I cannot identify what the heck Orb of Slow's ability actually does, other than let you turn some preexisting abilities into on-hit effects. A funky use for it I found is that Acid Bomb actually has fields for attack and movement speed reduction, but they actually are bonus values and can't be set to negative values. So you can use it for an AoE Unholy Frenzy effect, in other situations.

You can set almost any field value into a negative one by pressing Shift while you are double clicking the respective field. With this "trick" you can also set a value higher than the default cap, ie. base health of a unit in the editor has a default cap of 500.000 (not exaclty sure, also don't try to set a base hp as negative value).
Some abilities will bug, but i have just tested Acid Bomb and you can, as logical, give bonus armor to attacked units.

 

[Banelingline]

You can set the value into a negative one by pressing Shift while you are double clicking the respective field.
Some abilities will bug, but i have just tested Acid Bomb and you can, as logical, give bonus armor to attacked units.

Well that's awfully useful. And it looks like a general restriction removal on values input, with some fun effects like Mana Shield increasing mana when damage is taken.

 

[Lord Aiden]

I'm pretty sure there is a tutorial regarding the use of the Orb of Slow effects.
Maps like the old Dota used this in the Weaver's Germinate Attack (its a custom Searing Arrows).
An attack with a modified Orb of Slow (or Lightning) with an Acid Bomb or Drunken Haze (just like a said already) based spell instead of the default Slow could create the fiction of an AoE based effect on Hit. To Make an AoE base attack you can use Missile Splash.

So step by step:
1. Search the Orb of Slow ITEM ABILITY (Special/Items) and create a custom version of it.
2. Set the fields of these abilities accordingly (100% chances; and modify the Targets Allowed field to suit you)
3. Lets say we will be using Acid Bomb as the bonus on hit ability, so search it and create a custom version.
4. Common misteps: make the modified Acid Bomb ability a Unit ability; with 0 mana cost; with 0 cooldown; no missile art; 2000 missile speed; and modify the Targets Allowed field accordingly. Also the unit that is going to use this ability should have Normal/Instant/Missile/Missile (Splash) Weapon Type (excludes Missile (Line), i didn't test this enought tho).
5. Then add the modified Orb of Slow ability to the unit LOL.
6. To hide the ability (it will appear a DISBTN icon of the Acid Bomb) use the spellbook disable trick or the 0,-11 trick (which don't work in 1.28 i think), or the new 1.29 native that does exactly this (forgot it's name)

I have just did this, so try it if you are going for this idea.

This doesn't work unless you force the hero to attack the other unit, at least not from my experience in version 1.27

 

[Lord Aiden]

-Update-

If you have 2 attacks 1 that whose type is magic and which targets ground units, items, wards, debris, and another attack which is siege that targets air and structures then the attack type of your attack depends on the primary target (while the missile will always be the one specified in the barrage ability); if the primary target is a structure the attack type will be siege so all others units hit by the attack will take siege damage as well, if the primary target is a unit then the attack type will be magic hence other units hit by it will take magic damage

 

[ArchDuke]

Honestly I was considering giving the chimaera a magic attack, but I realized that it would make certain units a hard counter to it because they either have magic immunity or magic resistance ....gonna have to probably go with giving it a siege attack

This is a very valid concern. It works both ways however

1) it can be used to your advantage by making sure that air units arent spammed for an easy victory by making certain units or structures having m-immunity

2) it can mess things up because it basically allows units like dryads, magic destroyers, etc. to be perfect counters for air units

I would suggest either going with a piercing attack or a siege attack depending on what exactly you want

piercing will obviously make the attack super effective against other air units but really bad against buildings

siege on the other hand is the opposite, so id suggest using it

 

[ArchDuke]

@Lord Aiden Figured it out yet?

 

[Lord Aiden]

I think I'm gonna go with a siege attack for ground and structures and a piercing one for air units, I know this will make the unit much less effective against ground units, but it'll make it a behemoth against air units and buildings

 

[ArchDuke]

One bit of advice: Modify the demolish ability such that it multiples the damage against ground units by a factor of 1.5 or 1.6, or even 2, that way it'll be very effective against ground units, make sure the target field of the demolish ability only has ground and enemy boxes clicked.

 

[Lord Aiden]

Thanks man, that's a great idea. I'll definitely tinker with this