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stranger
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OP
stranger
Joined: Aug 2013
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Anty-air units don't work against Dragon. Rockets are too slow to hurt the dragon, they can reach him only when he fight with another dragon. Only Imps fighters can fast take down enemy dragon, but Dragon may at any time morph out and avoid dmg. Dragons too easily do destruction greater than their cost, The dragon with the right skills can easily destroy units with a value greater than 60.
Solution: Increase the speed of missile and block the dragon morph for 10 seconds, after taking damage, and set 2s cooldown on dodge, and increase dragon cost and respawn time after dragon dead.
The dragon is a very powerful unit and should therefore be used with prudence.
I apologize in advance for mistakes, English is not my native language. I thought that this section will be adequate (There is no the separate space for discussion on balance, if a post is in the wrong place, please move it)
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2009
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Certainly, if you're skilled enough, you can dodge most anti-air fire. However, if you're concentrating on dodging, you're probably not doing that well at attacking or using your skills. Managing your army is completely out. If you get careless or distracted, your Dragon will get shot down.
A 2 second cooldown per use of dodge is really excessive and would make Dodge pretty worthless to use, an a Dragon that can't dodge is very dead very fast. Having to wait 10 seconds to leave Dragon form is also pretty long.
A Dragon with skills that can easily destroy units with a value of 60 likely spent at least 60 Research points on those skills. No, it's practically guaranteed that they spent more than 60 RP.
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apprentice
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apprentice
Joined: Aug 2013
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A dragon doesn't need to get into a protracted firefight to do the kind of damage Remik describes Stabbey. Especially not in Skirmish mode. And to hell with research points on skirmish and bigger campaigns. Those 60 research points will help the dragon to often do far more than 60 recruits of damage, over and over and over and over and over. Pop up > Jetpack into the middle of a Land-based army > Fearlock everything with roar > Dodge the few missiles they manage to put up > Pillar of Flame > Run away! Price of summoning dragon: 20 recruits. Free if it survived. Possible every minute. Results: 600 recruits worth of damage if player produced a lot of AA. AA units are usually the most fragile and targeted ones. Groups of hunters and grenadiers go bye bye in a patriarch strike. Damages will take 4 minutes to rebuild with a single factory. The strike itself however, takes about 4 second, which is quicker than what it costs for most AA missiles to even reach you. In multiplayer, the dragon in the hands of capable players, does completely dominate the battlefield regardless of your RTS abilities. My counter strategy is this: http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=472730#Post472730Neither Patriarch nor pillar, work on sky units and as you said, imp fighters are the best AA. If they want to dragon attack my Sky-based army, they need to content with the fighters. Just be sure to spread them out so they don't get feared. I propose putting the one-hit abilities on a far larger cooldown to get what you want Remik. Patriarch and Pillar, should take at least 5 minutes to recharge. When that happens, these skills become panic buttons only and we'll see a more prudent use of the dragon. Stabbey's dreamworld will happen, where dragons are forced to fight normally, get distracted and AA works again. I'm also accepting of making the dragon more expensive, the skills costing recruits, or making the dragon and its innate attacks stronger at the cost of nerfing its skills.
Last edited by Skirlasvoud; 17/08/13 10:23 AM.
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stranger
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OP
stranger
Joined: Aug 2013
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What about 0.5 sec cooldown on dogge? (2 sec cooldown with faster rockets that would make dragon unless) and a 3s seconds delay upon contact with the enemy.
The dragon dies only for a few seconds, then immediately return to the game, for 20 recruits. Many dragons avoid the die by morpht out.
Light units like grenadiers or warlocks will die per 3 fire balls, dragon with acid blast or fire breath can easliy destroy group this unit, anyway dragon with blood leach can out healing aa units. Dragon pushes light units out of the game.
Great groups aa units should easy take out dragon, not be taked by dragon.
For 60 RP dragon may acquire "the eye of the patriarch" or "pillar of fire" and "terrifying roar", it allows him to safely destroy the groups of units in 3 seconds, this dragon can do so easily destroy more than 100 recruits. This is parody, it is like free nuke.
The only effective form of defense against the dragon, is another dragon or imps fighters.
Edit Someone knows what I mean.
Last edited by Remik; 17/08/13 04:42 PM.
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journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Jan 2010
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A dragon doesn't need to get into a protracted firefight to do the kind of damage Remik describes Stabbey. Especially not in Skirmish mode. And to hell with research points on skirmish and bigger campaigns. Those 60 research points will help the dragon to often do far more than 60 recruits of damage, over and over and over and over and over. Pop up > Jetpack into the middle of a Land-based army > Fearlock everything with roar > Dodge the few missiles they manage to put up > Pillar of Flame > Run away! Price of summoning dragon: 20 recruits. Free if it survived. Possible every minute. Results: 600 recruits worth of damage if player produced a lot of AA. AA units are usually the most fragile and targeted ones. Groups of hunters and grenadiers go bye bye in a patriarch strike. Damages will take 4 minutes to rebuild with a single factory. The strike itself however, takes about 4 second, which is quicker than what it costs for most AA missiles to even reach you. In multiplayer, the dragon in the hands of capable players, does completely dominate the battlefield regardless of your RTS abilities. My counter strategy is this: http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=472730#Post472730Neither Patriarch nor pillar, work on sky units and as you said, imp fighters are the best AA. If they want to dragon attack my Sky-based army, they need to content with the fighters. Just be sure to spread them out so they don't get feared. I propose putting the one-hit abilities on a far larger cooldown to get what you want Remik. Patriarch and Pillar, should take at least 5 minutes to recharge. When that happens, these skills become panic buttons only and we'll see a more prudent use of the dragon. Stabbey's dreamworld will happen, where dragons are forced to fight normally, get distracted and AA works again. I'm also accepting of making the dragon more expensive, the skills costing recruits, or making the dragon and its innate attacks stronger at the cost of nerfing its skills. I just checked and the eye of the patriarch DOES work on air units, pillar of flame does not. Imp fighters with war of attrition can slow down the dragon and when it does it will die very quickly. Pillar of flame does do considerable damage but pillar of healing heals faster then the pillar of flames can damage. When your army gets feared use the cleansing charge and it will un fear all your units immediately. There are ALOT more counters to the dragon, I may make a full guide on doing so, but perhaps the anti air projectiles moving SLIGHTLY faster would help with the balance.
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apprentice
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apprentice
Joined: Aug 2013
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I just checked and the eye of the patriarch DOES work on air units, pillar of flame does not. Really? 0.o Dammit! Never seen them do it though. Maybe if we just keep quiet. I swear, if people start patriarching even my sky fleet, than I'll flee multiplayer. That skill is WAAAYYYY overpowered. I'm not even that much into the dragon stuff. I like commanding armies, but that thing just completely ruins it! There's just no place for me on the ladders if they can nuke me every minute. There's just no dealing with that, no matter how good you are. -.-
When your army gets feared use the cleansing charge and it will un fear all your units immediately.
And if I have my back turned, or are not already in dragon form, they'll be dead and patriarched before I can cleanse them. There are ALOT more counters to the dragon, I may make a full guide on doing so, but perhaps the anti air projectiles moving SLIGHTLY faster would help with the balance. Don't bother. Hunter + bird in the hand: Too slow and hunters too fragile. Grenadier: WAY too fragile. Both these land-based AA missiles are too slow to catch a hit and run dragon, or one that knows how to dodge. You could try to spread them out to prevent them from getting patriarched and make their fire harder to avoid, but it puts you at a disadvantage when you actually need to concentrate firepower against enemy armies. They're dead and useless when the enemy dragon operates together with a land force. Transports / Ironclads: Decent and can survive the dragon long enough to drive it away. Problem here is that shamans can be targeted, your fleets healing deprived, after which they can contineusly hit and run your fleet. Also, the missiles are still way too slow. Imp Fighters / Juggernaught's cover ability: Only decent defence, especially with war of attrition.
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2009
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The support Dragon hasn't got any skill that can match Eye of the Patriarch, no. I think if the Support Dragon got a Mass Shield skill that reduced damage (but did NOT remove debuffs), that could help.
EDIT: Well, I suppose Mass Restoration counts a bit, but if you're hit with an Eye of the Patriarch, how many units can survive to be restored?
Last edited by Stabbey; 21/08/13 05:34 PM. Reason: mass restoration
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Aug 2013
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Certainly, if you're skilled enough, you can dodge most anti-air fire. However, if you're concentrating on dodging, you're probably not doing that well at attacking or using your skills. Managing your army is completely out. If you get careless or distracted, your Dragon will get shot down. That's really not true. Having gotten tired of the skin-deep RTS (which dreams about being a MOBA every night), I started concentrating exclusively on the dragon. Providing you come in with enough units, even on harder AI difficulties it's possible to use the shield, healing, the correct passives, and things like the Eye of the Patriarch to decimate the AI forces, then the AI stronghold. This is the only way I've really had fun with it. The lack of formations, strategy, and the way the AI uses giant blobs of cheap units on predefined paths? I just can't try and lie about it being an RTS any more. So I just treat it as much like a MOBA as I can, and it's a more enjoyable game. And yeah, if you're clever and skilful enough, you can definitely keep attacking and dodging. But I suspect that it's a matter of different skillsets. I hope Larian doesn't decide to nerf the dragon, though, as that'd kill the last semblance of fun that I've managed to glean from Dragon Commander. As I've pointed out elsewhere, considering the original pictures of Dragon Commander (on the right) and how they depict a more airborne MOBA style of game... well, that's what I was hoping for. So, yeah. It's definitely playable that way, and I hope Larian won't change that. I just cannot have fun with the RTS, I'm sorry. It doesn't feel like na RTS to me. Dawn of War is an RTS. Total War is an RTS. Dragon Commander is a MOBA in an RTS Halloween costume. I'd honestly recommend more people try playing with the dragon against harder AI difficulties and not relying on the RTS side so much, it's way, way more fun. So, yeah, I'm definitely against dragon nerfs. Unless Larian wants to completely kill the game.
Last edited by WearyWolf; 21/08/13 07:01 PM.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jul 2013
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I found Imp Fighters extremely effective against dragons.
Ground units are not that dangerous with hit&run tactics (although there seems to be a bug that makes attacks from ground units follow me across the entire map), but Imp Fighters can kill me quickly.
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2009
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I would normally suggest that wolf increase the difficulty and play a custom campaign with double the recruit cost, and then see if he finds that better, but I don't think he'll try. He seems to have unshakably made up his mind.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jul 2013
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Probably. Well, I somewhat understand if not all like the RTS part, although I also think that it improves a lot when you unlock more options through research.
I'm going to experiment a bit with the different settings, should I ever get my hands on the latest patches (GOG version here)...
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