Army Non-Archetype Discussion: Ranged Destroy
Currently, Voidmage+++ is the best piece. Some would argue that Voidmage++ is superior, which makes them wrong.
The pieces under discussion in this thread will be Archer, Ranger, Fire Elemental, Poisonmage, Alchemist, Arachnid, Thundermage, Wrath, Firemage, Necromancer, and Voidmage, all pieces that can kill a piece 2 or more squares away without endangering themselves.
Most of these pieces are not build-arounds. They are "goodstuff" pieces that you can put in any army and get use out of.
While in a match, it is advisable to pay close attention to these pieces so that you do not lose pieces to them for no gain. Their capability of doing so does not mean that they are necessarily powerful pieces, but they are important nonetheless.
(Ranged/Magic) Destroy target.
- Archer
This minion has no attacks close to itself, making it bad. One can simply move their minions forward to counteract the threat of Archer killing one of their minions for free. Its upgrades do not improve its ability to kill things for free, making them pointless.
- Ranger
This piece is Archer's promotion. Ignore the fact that Archer has never been promoted in an actual game.
Ranger has the ability to realistically kill pieces for free, unlike Archer. It can easily pick off minions that have overextended, and if given the opportunity, it can fork multiple pieces, killing the weaker one for free.
Despite the large cost increase of ++ in exchange for orthogonal ranged destroy squares, it is generally agreed to be worth the cost, as it greatly improves its capability to kill pieces for free.
Ranger+ occupies an uneasy median between Lust+ and Lust+.
- Fire Elemental
Fire Elemental is very similar to Ranger. The destroy ability being unable to blocked is almost completely meaningless.
The upgrade from + to ++ is one of the most efficient upgrades in the game, doubling Fire Elemental's mobility for only 2 additional points. +++, much like several other pieces, gains the ability to Swap on its knight teleports for only 1 point. This is also an extremely efficient upgrade.
It is best to pretend that Fire Elemental has no passive. The two tiers it has can be conceptualized as Ranger++++ and Ranger+++++.
(Magic) Poison enemy unit, destroying it in 3 turns.
- Poisonmage
This piece has a garbage moveset. It is capable of consistently trading for two enemy minions at +. If Poisonmage+ recieves a cost reduction, it is likely worth consideration.
- Arachnid
This piece has nothing to do with killing pieces for free, and everything to do with being a Bishop with some additional ability to threaten the enemy King.
- Alchemist
This piece plays somewhat like Fire Elemental++. It can punish minions that have overextended or achieve a fork where it poisons a piece that costs more than it. The only tier worth consideration is base Alchemist.
Alchemist curing status effects is not a reason for it to be in your army.
(Magic) After 4 turns, any unit in the marked location is destroyed.
Unlike the previous types of killing-without-moving, this ability (Thunder) is much more important to build around.
- Thundermage
This piece completely screws over Lifestone.
Thundermage can generate value by Freezing the piece, then Thundering it, then Freezing it again. This takes several turns of doing nothing else and is easily disrupted by threatening the FrostMage.
With Comet, any champion is forced to immediately move after Thundermage uses its ability on it. Unfortunately, many armies have incidental ways to negate this, most frequently the ability to swap with the frozen piece.
Thundermage can also generate value with Petrify through Thunder immediately following the Petrify effect. Unfortunately, neither Medusa nor EarthElemental have versatile enough movesets to take full advantage of it.
Using Thunder on random enemies is not worth it.
- Wrath
This piece is garbage. The passive is nearly irrelevant due to how absurdly easy defending is. It has a significantly worse moveset than Thundermage and costs significantly more.
Unique Abilities
- Firemage
6 turns is too much.
- Necromancer
This piece utterly destroys Samurai.
If one takes the created Bone Pile with a minion, the Necromancer can simply use its ability again. Use a champion.
Despite the complexity of the ability, it is not very interesting and there is not much to discuss about it.
- Voidmage
Despite this piece's absurd overpoweredness, it possesses some interesting nuance.
It is the only instant-free-kill piece that blocks the space that it killed. This makes it extremely good at defending aggression towards it, as long-ranged pieces become blocked by their own allies when Voidmage kills. Conversely, the bodies left behind can be used to obstruct Voidmage's ability.
In conclusion, Swordflare.
-not main_gi
My reply to this article (as f3 wrote it :p):
ThunderMage screws over more than just LifeStone. In fact it probably screws over LifeStone the least (?) of all the immobile units. That is to say: Nexus, Fireball, Beacon exist, and swapping those out often ruins the planned layout of the army.
It does have interesting potential interactions when your opponent's options are limited. If you put a Banshee on a square that's about to have Thunder on it, whatever captures the ThunderMage must move (very good if this is the King).
You can also time Thunder right before a Butterfly+++ spawn, essentially preventing opponent plans of using a unit to telefrag it. (However, your opponent can time Thunder right AS Butterfly+++ would spawn, which is basically a hard-counter. Also Hostage on the square also hard-counters it.)
It's also a piece that can bother the enemy King like every 2 turns, which may be important if you want to get Patience or PhoenixEgg to trigger. However this may not be the best unit for that purpose (Angel and Demon++ do this too, and don't slowly [Pay 1] your morale).
FireMage: This unit does seem pretty crappy. Two ideas I had with it are some Bishop/Rook thing where you exert constant pins and use FireMage to push them out. Also FireMage can create a situation of multiple simultaneous actions. Someone has tried this with Fireball+'s. The problem is that all the pushed units will land on the same color of square, which is really bad for Fireball+ synergy.
I believe the effect also starts on your turn. You can use this to create instant attacks - like pushing an Angel up one with FireMage, even if "up one" is threatened by your opponent. But it's very telegraphed and probably unviable.
Arachnid (specifically +3) and VoidMage start out colorbound. You want to have multiple of these if you want to use their special abilities, or alternatively some swap.
Ranged Destroy has some synergy with "attack punishment" effects such as On Kill and Gnome's ability. Your opponent will likely try to attack Ranger and VoidMage with other cheap champions. A Minotaur behind it will severely punish that idea. (Yes it's two degenerate strategies in one.)
All of these pieces get worse as the game progresses. In endgame, VoidMage++ increasingly resembles a crappy Berserker, Ranger+++ a crappy Legionary, and so on. There is a point where you want to trade these away as their point value does not reflect their actual.
-main_gi
Yeah it would make a lot more sense intuitively if you didn't post on the same account.
I do agree that they get weaker as the game reaches the end.
In general, I think this type of ability is naturally too good against some types of pieces. Namely, ones that can't run away. Ranged Destroy/ Poison/ etc are the reason that a pawn wall and pushing e4 on your first move is usually a bad idea.
The pawn is just going to die, probably for free, and probably very soon if they have any of the above.
I think pieces like pyromancer and soulkeeper also fit into the category even though range 1 is not very long range, since they also destroy pieces without moving.
I think these pieces are problems too though much less obvious, in that people "pre-counter" this by using minions with all 3 front attacks. Lilith has this effect as well. These in particular horribly punish having any holes in your army. If a SoulKeeper gets on your row 3 uncontested and one of the Ghost attacks it can make can target the king, it can infinitely ghostify your row 2 unit over and over until checkmate is basically forced.
-main_gi
nah,
Archer+15
or something
Ranger and Pyromancer are not fun to play against, and Pyromancer is awkward to use. If we had a competition for the most unfun CEO piece Pyromancer wins because at least Ranger is fun to annihilate bots with.
on note of king-range magic units mentioned here (Pyro SK++ Lilith),
These are known hazards in the way they can create impassable area control that forces higher range, and in their often extreme synergy with enchantress, but not so much for their forcing of avoiding blindspots in army building, since many other units do this all the same. Anything landing in the middle of your army on a blindspot is probably going to turn into some kind of problem, but Lilith/SK can make it into a much larger problem than normal. I am undecided if Lilith/SK are too strong or too high on RPS, but they seem like relatively minor problems outside of enchantments.
Among these, I think pyro is actually underpowered, from a long-standing 'noob-friendly' nerf that has its cost artificially higher simply to match the kind of 'unbeatable' vibe it can create against certain armies. However, the same armies that find pyro to be 'unbeatable' are likely to find the same problem in many other cases as well, so the 10 value may no longer make sense in the context of the game, and despite being a little cancerous, I think it would be more balanced at slightly lower costs. That being said, if the update wasn't already so big I may attempt some redesign to pyro for creating counterplay mechanics while also buffing the cost to reflect that. As it stands, even while knowing it is too weak, I am very hesitant to buff it into a more balanced state.
Pyro was the first Magic user, and hasn't changed much since then.
So, it is probably long overdue for some type of recalibration.
SK isn't as unfun to play against as opposed to Pyromancer mainly because trading for Pyromancer is usually a bad move morale-wise
Buffing Pyromancer will only make the problem worse. Pyromancer needs a tier shift upward if it needs a buff, and it should get higher cost due to being able to defend like a King. Maybe the new Pyro+++ should get some tele-swap squares.
SK will probably get nerfed because SK++ has King defense, but SK++/SK+++ is a fun unit to use so I'm not putting it in the "delete this unit pls" box like Pyromancer.
I've never really seen a Lilith, but they are very cheap at providing an absolute defense at minions and serve mostly to discourage minion-heavy armies.
That is probably right, but nothing comes to mind right now.
I had only written -1 all tiers on pyro, but tier shift could be ideal.
Although, I actually don't like pyro+++ moveset much, so one higher... idk.
You make good points in favor of tier shifting pyro, but i feel like teleswap on pyro moveset would be erratic. The only unit that comes to mind which is intentionally erratic is Bat, for theme. I'll reconsider pyro change while leaving what I have currently on the notes, and I will be posting a full balance change preview here soon. (today/tomorrow, probably)
I think I agree in the general sense of 'blindspot' (like an enemy Pyromancer getting onto your 2nd row). Of course I think ranger/alchemist etc. are degenerate, but Pyromancer/Lilith/SK++/Salamander cause this too to a lesser degree by horribly punishing blindspots on specific minions like Pawn/Axeman/Spearman, basically pushing them completely out of play (this doesn't happen with Militia/Salamander because their 3 front squares force the Lilith/SK to be one entire row back). But of course you don't see that effect right now because Ranger/Alchemist do that even better.
And I think pretty much every experienced player sees Pyromancer as a noob unit, it's "10 cost and only has King attacks" basically. I do like the movement pattern of Pyromancer, I actually find it intuitive (as odd as it sounds).
-main_gi
in an ideal scenario, the minions with blindspots have larger champions backing them up, but then those same larger champions needing to trade for a lilith/pyro becomes a larger problem. I think the reason pyro was placed at 10 cost was to raise the threshold for number of units that can even contest it, and make trading something like berserker/legionary/warrior/knight favorable instead of roughly even. So, james is probably right that it needs a tier shift or moveset improvements rather than cost reduction.
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