PrinceCharming wrote:

Hisoka wrote:

PrinceCharming wrote:

Fire off is easily countered with black hole. Blasters lose this ability after getting stunned.
He hit my base because I have no good garrison, and dwarf suck in defense everyone knows it.
Especially when the attacker has EVASION RESEARCH, and your defense has AMMO CAPACITY.
These things are too obvious to explain, I am surprised that you are the one who I am telling it to lol

You cant label a bought hero as a counter when majority dont have it
So basically everyone without cleo = dead
Dwarf doesnt suck at defense
Mechs have the highest hp in the game and can end up being 6, snipers obliterate everything
The main issue with your garrison is you have so many rockets. You need snipers not rockets for garrison
Can your wall use blackhole? Never knew that was a feature lol

You didn't get the whole picture. I had 110 gold snipers of 12-13 tier. They did nothing to gold swords.
And only 24 gold blasters which are also useless ;D
Previously on S94 I was attacked with Bronze-Jac and still with that high amount of snipers and gold mech frontline each attack killed 2-3-4 gold mechs.
Since they are not repairable, you can see that dwarf garrison on high levels is a HONOR BANK. As soon as you get enough research on your human swords, you will understand it too.
Mechs can end up being 6 and give even more honor to those who siege you, or PVP you and have better heroes

Im sure your deadeyes killed some swords, but was just revived by virion after clearing the wall troops. I agree with the honor thingy, lots of complaint against dwarf but they dont know the pain of losing mech again and again.

To start off, i think the people defending Fire Off and dwarves have good points. However, I think they haven't seen the extent of abuse some players are using them for. The meta now is front line, gold swords (borrowed), full rockets, a gold turtle and all the heroes you can possibly fit. This combination I can say right now is impossible to beat. Hardcore Lich players who have the hero stats, gear and research at Kripps level are now switching to Dwarf because of this. The argument that Cleo's blackhole can make a difference sounds possible but it just doesn't work. Absolutely nothing works and all the high level fights (I've seen dozens) end up being incredibly one-sided. Even a full gold scorpion frontline with full gold spiders don't stand a chance.

It is a good tactic but, unfortunately, a game breaking one. I know this is an unpopular opinion and you might say I am crazy but really think this strategy and Fire Off ability should be studied by the devs for a possible nerf. It's more broken than Jacques.

beadmu wrote:

To start off, i think the people defending Fire Off and dwarves have good points. However, I think they haven't seen the extent of abuse some players are using them for. The meta now is front line, gold swords (borrowed), full rockets, a gold turtle and all the heroes you can possibly fit. This combination I can say right now is impossible to beat. Hardcore Lich players who have the hero stats, gear and research at Kripps level are now switching to Dwarf because of this. The argument that Cleo's blackhole can make a difference sounds possible but it just doesn't work. Absolutely nothing works and all the high level fights (I've seen dozens) end up being incredibly one-sided. Even a full gold scorpion frontline with full gold spiders don't stand a chance.

It is a good tactic but, unfortunately, a game breaking one. I know this is an unpopular opinion and you might say I am crazy but really think this strategy and Fire Off ability should be studied by the devs for a possible nerf. It's more broken than Jacques.

Not sure what server group you are on where this is the duel meta. You simply hold cleo ult until they fire-off. If they don't fire off they lose, if they do, you cleo ult it. Pretty straight forward.
Sorry to anyone who doesn't have cleo and wants to be a top dueler. But the current dueling requirement is 16 heroes and a ton of stat cards, so that's the least of your problems.

It's a powerful ability, mostly for attacking garrisons though. It wouldn't be unreasonable to adjust it if dwarf had a viable frontline vs garrisons, or a viable defense that doesn't perma die. You could just as easily say gold swordsmen w/ current virion are as equally inbalanced.
Using a turtle AND pure rockets means significantly less heroes than tank formations. That is not viable, you can't lose the stat battle and fight with rockets vs cleo on grassland or desert (majority of map), are you even on a merged server group?

Regarding people bringing up elixir costs: that is a (probably legitimate) quality of life issue for new players - to frame it as a balance issue is pretty telling of your position in the game.

There are a number of responses here that are a little bit off.

One thing to take into consideration when talking about Fire off is that it shares a cd with hero abilities. I'm not sure if people realise how annoying it is to basically have a fixed move set you have to use in all cases. For them to be viable you just have to use fire off immediately meaning you can't use Jacques abilities or any other for that matter. most of the time for me that also means using ammo reload the second it is available to avoid losing the fire off buff. That blocks off most of the duel already ability wise and other heroes with good abilities lose effectiveness just because you can't afford to use them. Part of the reason rakkan abilities are so good is that they are in a different timer from hero abilities so you can spam both at the same time and if I'm not mistaken Rakkan have a shorter cd. So you can both cc and use piercing arrows to destroy a troop while it's in cc. No one seems to even remotely consider this.

The second point is that you are often complaining about a composition which demands three different races of troops. There is a reason why people use swordsmen and not mechs. They take the best troops from various armies to fit their needs. I see no one complaining that swords are extremely effective and you can res them easily at the end of the fight. I have seen duels with losses of 10-20 lvl 13 gold mechs... in the end game mechs die way to easily tbh and that is a permanent loss of resources. The high dps of fire off gives you a chance to kill enemies before they cause tens of thousands of rare resource losses. This risk does not apply to any other race.

@Beadmu If anything complain about there being no limit to troops you can borrow in duels and pve. Forcing people to use their race means the strengths and weaknesses sort of balance out. If you allow people to borrow 70% of their army from other races then I don't see what you are complaining about.... ofc it's strong lol, you get to take the best from everything.

I think you read my whole post but focused on the army combination i described. Again, what I'm trying to say is that using the strategy I am talking about, there is no other option but to use Fire Off first. It sharing cool down with other abilities is not an issue nor a disadvantage. I agree that picking the best troops from different races will result in a very strong army, obviously cant argue with that. I even said it is a good tactic. The only problem is that given how unstoppable it is, it is becoming a game breaking strategy.

I agree with what you mentioned about troop loaning. Maybe giving loaned troops a lower injury percentage rate would help?

Thanks for presenting a possible solution.

Most of what I wrote was not directed at you as I find what you wrote is correct. The strategy people are employing is indeed game breaking since 80% of high end duels feature this comp from what I can see, maybe more.

Here is the problem though, if you nerf the fire off mechanic to compensate for the comp being overpowered you will nerf players who use that comp. You will however nerf in to the ground any player who can't afford to borrow 5-6 gold troops on a permanent basis and that is probably 95% of the dwarf population. At the moment the glaring weakness in dwarf lineups is the fact that mechs die very easily, nerf the bombardiers and what is left to dwarf players who can't count on a permanently loaned front line? We are then stuck with ineffective bombardiers meaning the mechs will die in no time. So the only other solution I can see would be to Nerf the bombardiers slightly but also power up both mechs and hugely power up miners as they are a waste of a troop slot atm. Again though.. I feel like a lot of the time bombardiers being strong covers up some huge front line problems the dwarves have meaning they stay viable. If you nerf the only strong troop you are left with a bunch of units that are useless.

I do feel that the ability sharing cd with hero abilities is what keeps it viable. It means you have to go all out of offense completely discarding any defensive abilities.

I would however personally not mind if it was nerfed and removed from hero cd and given a higher cost like rakkan abilities. This would add a lot of versatility on what abilities to use which can only be good. But both mechs and miners would then need a good rework as miners at least are never even remotely used.

Honestly i feel like the best fix is to get rid of loaned troops. Disallow them completely, only then can you reasonably balance the races.

Or remove loan from PvP and siege, giving it up only for the rest of other game points (voids, contests, PvE etc).
It would ruin a lot of players' game play, because many of them developed several characters simultaneously, spent money and time on them, sometimes a lot. Just to have the option to get the whole battlefield of gold and easier way to replace lost troops.

And another off topic about what was said about miners: they are really useless.
I was really thinking of giving them a range attack ability (which could turn into melee when enemy reaches them closely, so the first line would turn into melee, but back line would still throw their hacks into enemy faces) - I seriously don't know how else can they make them more valuable .

About nerfing Fire Off ability. Maybe it is a little bit overpowered, however there are many things that we can complain about and that on our opinion should be nerfed.
Jacques, 30% HP Speed Damage boosts for army from hero stats, Fire Off, loaning ability, plenty of abused game options...
You can't fix it all.
If you claim that now the strongest layout is gold swords covered by gold bombardiers and a turtle - than your problem comes from THE LOANING ability which gives other players get these gold swords for front line and a turtle from some Rakkan player (or alter).
Not from the fire off itself, because if you play pure dwarf, as was already said many times - your front line is the worst in the game because of the perma death.

PrinceCharming wrote:

If you claim that now the strongest layout is gold swords covered by gold bombardiers and a turtle -

I've yet to hear what server group has this as the dominant dueling meta. I'm assuming unmerged servers with 20~ players who happen to not have cleo, or any players with enough heroes that a turtle is a waste of space?

Your assumption is inexact.
Currently on the 71+ merged server a number of players are using that formation both for duels and for siege with no or close to no losses.
The idea that 100% of players above 1 mil have Cleo is a little far fetched. I have seen many duels where she was not fielded so either they are choosing to not field a counter or they just don't have her which I find more likely.

If your assumption however is that all players at any remotely significant power have Cleo and Cleo does indeed counter fire off then this whole thread has no reason to exist.