elves kiting to win, exhaustion bar

The most annoying defeats i ever had were against elven archers kiting all the way to win and kill of my li and hi, running the hole distance of the map not just once or twice, sometimes 3 or 4 times while i follow them and try to cut off their way with 2 or 3 units. I know i could bring cav, but bringing cav to pvp is still a huge risk and sometimes just a waste of an enormous amount of AP and one cav can be countered pretty easily.

I would like to see an exhaustion bar implemented for archer units to prevent those frustrating endings. Frustrating for the poor fellow who simply cant outrun elven archers and also frustrating for the guy who is doing that, cause he knows that he is annoying the crap out of his opponent and he feels like using a flaw in the mechanics to his advantage.

The exhaustion bar should allow all archer units to walk the hole distance of the map 1 and a half time after that, the archer unit will be either unable to move or slow down severely (cutting their speed in half), but their ability to shoot remains.

Claudandus wrote:

The most annoying defeats i ever had were against elven archers kiting all the way to win and kill of my li and hi, running the hole distance of the map not just once or twice, sometimes 3 or 4 times while i follow them and try to cut off their way with 2 or 3 units. I know i could bring cav, but bringing cav to pvp is still a huge risk and sometimes just a waste of an enormous amount of AP and one cav can be countered pretty easily.

I would like to see an exhaustion bar implemented for archer units to prevent those frustrating endings. Frustrating for the poor fellow who simply cant outrun elven archers and also frustrating for the guy who is doing that, cause he knows that he is annoying the crap out of his opponent and he feels like a little bit of using a flaw in the mechanics to his advantage.

The exhaustion bar should allow all archer units to walk the hole distance of the map 1 and a half time after that, the archer unit will be either unable to move or slow down severely (cutting their speed in half), but their ability to shoot remains.

As an elf I think it's bad form for my fellow elves to kite in PVP and it should be discouraged, but elven archers should not be universally punished because a few players take cheap shots. I think the solution should be: either stop pvping with those players who kite (maybe easier said than done), or implement a timeout/exhaustion function in pvp ONLY. Kiting should still be a viable strategy in PVE/COOP as speed is a key attribute of the elves.

You never hear of dwarven archers kiting because of their crappy movement... Anyway I would say try not to pvp elves who kite. I agree 100% that it is a cheap crappy way to win with no tactics and frustrating as all hell. So I would like it changed but don't see a clear viable solution for it. Maybe the exhaustion bar could work. Although I would prefer that their movement be completely moved to 0 if they get exhausted.

Avoiding them is indeed easier said than done. And for the record I encountered two elves today and both were doing it extensively. One match i could win cause i had 3 units left and I was able to trap the running archer with them.
The other 2 I lost cause i was left with only 2 units (one of them hi) and this time he had a movement banner on his surviving archer.

Claudandus wrote:

The most annoying defeats i ever had were against elven archers kiting all the way to win and kill of my li and hi, running the hole distance of the map not just once or twice, sometimes 3 or 4 times while i follow them and try to cut off their way with 2 or 3 units. I know i could bring cav, but bringing cav to pvp is still a huge risk and sometimes just a waste of an enormous amount of AP and one cav can be countered pretty easily.

I would like to see an exhaustion bar implemented for archer units to prevent those frustrating endings. Frustrating for the poor fellow who simply cant outrun elven archers and also frustrating for the guy who is doing that, cause he knows that he is annoying the crap out of his opponent and he feels like using a flaw in the mechanics to his advantage.

The exhaustion bar should allow all archer units to walk the hole distance of the map 1 and a half time after that, the archer unit will be either unable to move or slow down severely (cutting their speed in half), but their ability to shoot remains.

Tottaly agreed, really hate how enemy elf archers do kitting in pvps and I never reach they, is really hatefully how I send my best LIA with GL and epic items and get killed by fast foot elf archers who do kitting (kitting=shoot and run, then shoot again) specially now that high new base misile strenght of archers practically ignore endurance and armor and painfully lose 4 LIAs in a single shot every time, and talking about that strenght I was in a coop with a hight level player from erevos and 3 full elf archers units (of hight level and good items) 1 elf wounded archer unit and 1 arty unit
shoot at the same time to my HI with GL armor and lose 9 HI in a round 12 to 3 making my poor gray turtles flee and get hunted by the elf archers (gray turtle= bonecrushers)

I suggest too make longer first aiming time for all ranged units (when you target a enemy for first time your units take longer to shoot, is he keep shooting without stop it shoot in normal spèed) and is the archer unit target another enemy unit or move or stop firing and start shooting again the first shot will take a extra aiming delay time

Elves do have increased movement speed for a reason.

I do think its a valid tactic, but perhaps should not be able to be done indefinitely.

Elven Archers do have the highest AP cost of any Archer unit.

Playing with/against archers is very rock/paper when it comes to using Cavalry as well.

If you're using archers vs Cavalry, your archers are going to be a significant AP sink, and you're not going to get alot of use out of them.
Alternatively they are going to be much more beneficial if your opponent doesn't have Cav. It balances out, and with the introduction of FoW, a 'balanced' army is more important that ever.

If you're min/maxing LIA & HI and complaining about being kited by archers, well... WTF do you expect? (Not directed at the OP)

Different army compositions are good against different things. Everyone has gotten so used to running HI/LIA (or LIA balls) as the most 'efficient' use of AP and became  complacent when noone used to use archers in PvP that they can't fathom that tactic may not be as overpowered as it used to be.

Archers now have a place in PvP, and I think people may need to adapt to this fact.

If you're going to slam your superior melee army face first into your opponent in an attempt to steam-roll his army, and decide to ignore the archers until later, do you seriously just expect them to sit in the mud and wait to die?

Note: I say all of this being an Elf who to my memory has never 'kited' using Archers in PvP.
However I wouldn't certainly not be opposed to doing this in PvP if it became necessary. Just as Dark players never had a problem sticking their god-damn artillery behind a terrain feature and camping it with HI and LIA, while you were forced to slowly advance under a hail of artillery fire.

I agree with X'V'iper.

Tho, was the opponents left with 1 archer unit or more?

Xviper wrote:

If you're going to slam your superior melee army face first into your opponent in an attempt to steam-roll his army, and decide to ignore the archers until later, do you seriously just expect them to sit in the mud and wait to die?

Claudandus, kiting is a tactic.

We all know how your and Kubas army are based on 'one less missile is 1 more melee, and you know that missile sucks!' Now that it's more balanced, archers do have the right to do that.

Xviper wrote:

Just as Dark players never had a problem sticking their god-damn artillery behind a terrain feature and camping it with HI and LIA, while you were forced to slowly advance under a hail of artillery fire.

You do know that artillery brought on both sides during PvP is a risk? It's not as if we're hailing Elven bolts or something, more like cottons that 2 - 4 human bodies lay dead from suffocation.

The enemy was left with one archer unit and was able to kite his way to the win. I have no problem with kiting in general, but with kiting to an tiresome extend where i try to trap the archer on a 6 minute men hunt running the map up and down 3-5 times.
Exhaustion bar is needed. Elves are a good enough race to begin with. The most versatile and frankly the most fun race to play with. I havent said kiting is bad in general, but kiting 6 minutes is just no fun at all and kiting is a tactic only available to elves, who dont need to kite to win.
I dont expect an elven archer to just stay there while my hi is approaching, but i was left with one or 2 li and one hi in all matches. And only with 3 units left i am able to trap an elven archer.

And Savvage just dont talk about things you know nothing about. I had 2 archer units myself in my setup and I always used arti in pvp.

Summary: Kiting is good but just to a certain extend --> exhaustion bar

then maybe after archers were buffed, speed movement could be reduced to all of them by 2 or 3?

yesterday on global with stachu and gash we thought about limiting shoots for archers to 24 ( two dozens ) or 30 arrows that will be enought to enter batle field and not enought for kiting

arty dont have to get a limitation they go so slow that that probably got a tone of bullits/harpoons

and to a exoustion bar that should be implemanted to all units and for exaple i think that a havie with all that armours should exoust more than a archer with bow and some arrows

Pyr wrote:

yesterday on global with stachu and gash we thought about limiting shoots for archers to 24 ( two dozens ) or 30 arrows that will be enought to enter batle field and not enought for kiting

arty dont have to get a limitation they go so slow that that probably got a tone of bullits/harpoons

and to a exoustion bar that should be implemanted to all units and for exaple i think that a havie with all that armours should exoust more than a archer with bow and some arrows

I like the idea of limited arrows (somewhere between 18 and 30 sounds good). The number would have to be shown somewhere obvious and the archer would have to show an icon when they shoot their last arrow to make things clear. As an alternative, elf archers to 15 speed would be acceptable to me as well, though I think elf archer AP should be reduced very slightly in that case.

Exhaustion bar on the other hand sounds overcomplicated and not so good. I think a lot of people would be confused what the bar is supposed to mean until they finally get exhausted, plus a whole bar just for ranged units just sounds confusing. A quiver system just sounds much more easy to understand at a glance (and probably easier to implement to).

But what's just as bad (if not worse) than kiting is how overpowered HI get around the 350-400 AP range. I won't go into detail here, but like XViper said... When my melee units are totally outclassed and only a few enemy units are left, why wouldn't I try to kite? Why wouldn't anyone, with the current way that the mechanics are designed? A limited arrow system might work... but I'm tired of HI Conquest just as much as Kite Conquest.

Kiting is crap so until they add an amount of arrows to the archers i'm not facing elves who kite. I don't blame them for doing it because I would do it myself but i'm not going to deal with it.

To sum it up, we have 2 things in the current pvp system that greatly annoy people, even leading to people not willing to pvp each other anymore.
An HI close to caps or even capped is a unit that has no natural rival in melee but its own kind. And elven archers who outrun and outshoot pretty much every other race. The outshooting is not that big of a deal on its own, but outshooting in combination with outrunning makes elves the worst pvp oppenent imaginable. It is just no fun for anybody involved and thats why something needs to be done about it.

I could live with a restricted number of shots as well, but all clever elves posting here are suggestin a rather large number 18 rounds of arrows can kill pretty much any army. And even when i run my solos using my cav as hi bait while letting my archers shoot every single hi down, i rarely fire more than 18 rounds. So the number needs to be smaller. Somewhere between 12 and 16.

Capped hi is an advantage that cant be overcome in melee if you dont have at least something that comes close to it. The issue isnt solved with the test server changes as well. A capped hi using 400 AP can easily beat 2 well geared hi's with something around 300 AP each.

Both things are causing a lot of frustration in pvp. And both things are making pvp a less enjoyable experience. That should be reason enough to do something about it, but i guess we will have to talk at least 4 more pages about it until we convinced the devs.

well overpowered hi is why elves kite the only way ti kill high class gear hi with mid class gear player is to kite (easy) or put so much rares in short time that more go low and hi will flee (thats dificult becuse opponent in pvp think not as in pve )


and well i dont klike kitting too but i consider it as a way to win game as i alwys say never surrender

Pyr wrote:

well overpowered hi is why elves kite the only way ti kill high class gear hi with mid class gear player is to kite (easy) or put so much rares in short time that more go low and hi will flee (thats dificult becuse opponent in pvp think not as in pve )


and well i dont klike kitting too but i consider it as a way to win game as i alwys say never surrender

About those OP HI I have figthed varius times with very powerful HI like Scaren HI with much better items than me, the only thing that you need to do is sacrifice 1 or 2 of your HI to distract enemy HI or try avoid the enemy HI a little and focus on kill enemy LI and LIA with your LI and LIA, is enemy lose their LI and LIA first is really easy to deal against HI is you flank they 3 times they can be killed and is 4 times they will lose enought morale and flee, sometimes I have killed HI first but my LI and HI get awakened enought and fall against enemy LI for that you must focus on kill the most dangerous enemies that are the flankers CAV/LIA/LI, and about those archers, they dont only do kitting when they lose their melee units, they do it all the time, they send their archers to explore and when they find you start shooting and retreating to their melee units and force you to rush with your aweakened infantry, I against ranged units got serius problems because I dont have unlocked CAV yet and would like someone share me how fight they now that I cant take cover anymore for volume, at the end I rather just reduce elf ranged speed to 15 and reduce their ap than adding so complicated sistems, why they need too many speed is they are ranged units and not flankers?

Ulises21 wrote:

Pyr wrote:

well overpowered hi is why elves kite the only way ti kill high class gear hi with mid class gear player is to kite (easy) or put so much rares in short time that more go low and hi will flee (thats dificult becuse opponent in pvp think not as in pve )


and well i dont klike kitting too but i consider it as a way to win game as i alwys say never surrender

About those OP HI I have figthed varius times with very powerful HI like Scaren HI with much better items than me, the only thing that you need to do is sacrifice 1 or 2 of your HI to distract enemy HI or try avoid the enemy HI a little and focus on kill enemy LI and LIA with your LI and LIA, is enemy lose their LI and LIA first is really easy to deal against HI is you flank they 3 times they can be killed and is 4 times they will lose enought morale and flee, sometimes I have killed HI first but my LI and HI get awakened enought and fall against enemy LI for that you must focus on kill the most dangerous enemies that are the flankers CAV/LIA/LI, and about those archers, they dont only do kitting when they lose their melee units, they do it all the time, they send their archers to explore and when they find you start shooting and retreating to their melee units and force you to rush with your aweakened infantry, I against ranged units got serius problems because I dont have unlocked CAV yet and would like someone share me how fight they now that I cant take cover anymore for volume, at the end I rather just reduce elf ranged speed to 15 and reduce their ap than adding so complicated sistems, why they need too many speed is they are ranged units and not flankers?

Except when I use my 300 AP HI to hold the strongest t3 HI, they die in seconds. My LI aren't even done fighting by the time my HI are smashed... there's not anything I can do to counter that except kite. HI take way too much AP to throw them away for stalling that doesn't even last long enough for me to properly flank or do hardly any damage at all. And even kiting only really works when it's not super fast dwarf HI and very few to none LI are left, or when you have a ton of archers (which is bound to fail for other reasons). In other words, I think OP HI is just as bad if not worse than kiting. And just as unfun to play. Just as Scaren refuses to fight kiting elves; I refuse to fight HI that are that OP until changes are made. It's just not remotely fun.

As for archers, I think much less than 18 shots would be too much of a detriment in extended combat. 16 would probably be okay. I don't mind elf archers getting the speed nerf and slight AP reduction though as an alternative, 5 or so AP (still leaves them higher AP than other archers by a bit). That would make it easier for HI and LI to reach the archers and corner them and make kiting less effective for elf.

Just brainstorming here:

How about a set number of range attack cancellations for archers? That is, what if a player was limited on how many times he could manually stop shooting or cancel the ranged attack order?

(Note that this would not limit continuous fire, it also does not count if a unit goes out of attack range or if the player stops firing because the unit was killed.)

Bobba you may be Soloman now but please try to remember when you were a DL player. You didn't like kiting then because it was crap and made matches unfun. Now that you are the one kiting you find it okay.

Scaren wrote:

Bobba you may be Soloman now but please try to remember when you were a DL player. You didn't like kiting then because it was crap and made matches unfun. Now that you are the one kiting you find it okay.

... I haven't said that I like kiting. In fact I proposed two different possible nerfs to archers/ elf archers. It's boring to kite, and it's annoying to be kited. It's not fun on either side. I'm just saying I think OP capped HI is just as bad. And that's not something I thought any differently about as DL, by the way, especially considering how craptastic DL HI are (and when they had 1 hp... Dark God's help them...).

Bobba wrote:

Scaren wrote:

Bobba you may be Soloman now but please try to remember when you were a DL player. You didn't like kiting then because it was crap and made matches unfun. Now that you are the one kiting you find it okay.

... I haven't said that I like kiting. In fact I proposed two different possible nerfs to archers/ elf archers. It's boring to kite, and it's annoying to be kited. It's not fun on either side. I'm just saying I think OP capped HI is just as bad. And that's not something I thought any differently about as DL, by the way, especially considering how craptastic DL HI are (and when they had 1 hp... Dark God's help them...).

With your HI being level 8 and not having the GS to get their own gls yes your HI should lose to capped HI. Faer's HI are similar levels to mine in t4 and either of our HI can win at times. Get higher levels and more gear for your HI and I think you will be quite pleased with them.

Scaren wrote:

Bobba wrote:

Scaren wrote:

Bobba you may be Soloman now but please try to remember when you were a DL player. You didn't like kiting then because it was crap and made matches unfun. Now that you are the one kiting you find it okay.

... I haven't said that I like kiting. In fact I proposed two different possible nerfs to archers/ elf archers. It's boring to kite, and it's annoying to be kited. It's not fun on either side. I'm just saying I think OP capped HI is just as bad. And that's not something I thought any differently about as DL, by the way, especially considering how craptastic DL HI are (and when they had 1 hp... Dark God's help them...).

With your HI being level 8 and not having the GS to get their own gls yes your HI should lose to capped HI. Faer's HI are similar levels to mine in t4 and either of our HI can win at times. Get higher levels and more gear for your HI and I think you will be quite pleased with them.

I have the gear... just not the time to grind tens of thousands of experience... I agree my HI should lose in battle to yours, that isn't the debate. I just don't think they should lose doing so pathetically little damage and dying so fast that they are practically fodder. Paper being sliced through by sharpened scissors when they should at least be performing like dull scissors against sharpened scissors. Maybe when LI AP is slightly lowered it will make up for this but for now it's really irritating, and I think I have very good reason not to want to battle anyone with HI as strong as yours, considering it's not even a close to fair match, considering even with kiting my chances to win are pathetic.

And I do use godlikes. As many as I can equip which is unfortunately not a lot since my HI are only level 8. Many would say I have quite a good selection of equipment but it's still pathetic in t3 because of my unit levels. How many months is a new player expected to play, and how many lucky godlikes are they expected to craft before they can do a pvp without losing 99% of the time against a player like you Scaren? The fact that it takes perfection on HI with many godlikes simply to be able to compete in t3 is utterly stupid and pretty much the largest flaw in pvp right now, even more so than undead still being too strong in the highest tiers. This is why I can't help but call the game HI and Kiting Conquest right now. Even t2 has problems with HI having too much influence, but t3 is just stupid bad with how much balance is thrown onto the HI and gear. It is literally killing the joy of the game and pvp for me...

To win pvp you must have expensive gear.

The best way to get expensive gear is winning pvp.

Do you see the problem in this? The difference between a player in godlikes and a player in epics should not be so freaking large that the player in epics can almost NEVER win. They should be disadvantaged, but not CRIPPLED as they are now! Otherwise how is someone possibly expected to build themselves up at a decent rate or to have fun for that matter?

As unrealistic as it is, I'm still completely in favour of an idea I suggested awhile ago, which was remove GL's from PvP entirely. (or have it as some kind of optional tickbox that allows\approves their use).

I made the suggestion long before I had any decent GL's of my own, and that I have a whole heap, I still think its true.

I actually quite enjoy naked PvP. You also get to bring alot more units

XViper wrote:

As unrealistic as it is, I'm still completely in favour of an idea I suggested awhile ago, which was remove GL's from PvP entirely. (or have it as some kind of optional tickbox that allows\approves their use).

I made the suggestion long before I had any decent GL's of my own, and that I have a whole heap, I still think its true.

I actually quite enjoy naked PvP. You also get to bring alot more units

naked pvps is where range and skellies will win so not in favor of naked pvps as a dwarf. I'm entirely okay with a gl optional or something like that. But my point remains the same that capped units are supposed to be strongest in the game and godlikes are supposed to be godlike.

XViper wrote:

As unrealistic as it is, I'm still completely in favour of an idea I suggested awhile ago, which was remove GL's from PvP entirely. (or have it as some kind of optional tickbox that allows\approves their use).

I made the suggestion long before I had any decent GL's of my own, and that I have a whole heap, I still think its true.

I actually quite enjoy naked PvP. You also get to bring alot more units

After people have spent so much time getting used to using them in pvps, removing them is like removing candy from the candy store. It's just a recipe for disaster.

I do agree that naked pvp's can be very fun though. In fact... strangely they usually are more fun and balanced than real pvps... funny.

But... there is some serious balance issues that really need to be sorted out BIG TIME. And it really needs to be taken to the test server before being thrust into the live game... because the best solution is really uncertain right now.