Dark Legion cavalry on PvE

So, I already said once that I really thinks the half-HP on DL's HI and cav is kinda un-needed or at least doesn't pay for the lower stats (comparing to undead, which has the same skills)... now that I have the cav unlocked too, I will talk about some of my experiences.
For all comments here, when I refer to "other cavs" I'm talking about every cavalry unit but DL's and dwarven. Also, note that it's for PvE ONLY. Didn't try them in PvP yet.

• Cavalry against Artillery: it's possible for your cav to die/flee before reaching artillery, when rushing for it, because of their squishy-ness. A single shot once killed two of my full health riders, making the other two flee instantly.
  
• Cavalry against Archers: you have the same risky as artillery, no kidding. Even tho my cav still low-level and low-gear, they fled before reaching an elven archer unit without much space to shoot (I used cover). They ran after two volleys.
  
• Cavalry against Cavalry: DL cavalry can't win fights against any Light cavalry. Dwarven for obvious reasons, and the Elven and Human because only the Impact ability is enough to kill them. I was chasing a Elven cavalry with 1 or 2HP left on a single chariot (VERY low HP) with my half health (2 full health riders). The chariot turned back, and killed both my riders with a single roll, before my rider could hit it.
  
• Cavalry against HI: for obvious reasons, the cavalry can't win any 1v1 fight here, despise costing more AP, but it's because of movement of course. Then you put your own HI to fight the enemy HI, and the cavalry to rear... you succeed at it, and the few rolls the enemy has before fleeing due to morale shock, is enough to kill 2-3 of your riders, rendering your cavalry useless for the rest of the battle.
  
• Cavalry against LI: even with their zero armor and our Dark Gift skill, my cavalry level 5 with some gear lost a 1v1 fight against AI elven assault units level 3. Conventional LI is way more of a trouble. So basically, its very hard to reach the enemy archers/artillery if the enemy puts some LI to chase you.
  
• Manually fleeing: it's usually the best way to use your cav. Rear/flank, try to proc a Dark Gift, then flee. But it still awful, because sometimes when full health and/or morale they still flee all the map instead of regrouping.
  

If I'm doing something wrong, can any higher level DL players give some advice? I'm using it because rearing is way too strong right now due to MoBa changes, and cavalry can really change the tides of a battle, plus you can put units without more heroes. But I'm not really sure they're really worth it... still need to test it with better gear (a rare armor and unc weapon made A LOT of difference... they probably scale better because of speed?)

From what I've seen, DL generally do much better once well geared/leveled up in PvE. There is a very noticeable stat plateau in PvE and DL hit that easier than other races. You pointed out that you noticed that with Rare gear.


About DL Cav vs Archers--
I run 4 elven archers in my primary army. I find that on completely open territory, cav from any of the dark races will reach my archers about 50% of the time. The other half, they will flee before reaching. I havent noticed DL being easier or harder to kill/rout compared to the other races (minus undead for not fleeing).

If they fled off 2 volleys from 1 archer, I think that was just unlucky rolls for you.


About Cav vs Cav--
Impact Damage does well against low geared / low armor/endu units. If your cav arent well geared, theyre in trouble if Impact Damage is off Cooldown. Against high geared units, the other cav abilities are much better (like Dark Pact). Dark Pact is more consistent, sustainable damage.

That said, the current meta for PvE favors using many units to force units to rout quickly, which would make sustained abilities feel less powerful.

Mephy wrote:

• Cavalry against LI: even with their zero armor and our Dark Gift skill, my cavalry level 5 with some gear lost a 1v1 fight against AI elven assault units level 3. Conventional LI is way more of a trouble. So basically, its very hard to reach the enemy archers/artillery if the enemy puts some LI to chase you.
  
• Manually fleeing: it's usually the best way to use your cav. Rear/flank, try to proc a Dark Gift, then flee. But it still awful, because sometimes when full health and/or morale they still flee all the map instead of regrouping.
  

I agree cav can flee off the map a bit too easily due to their speed. I would suggest shortening / normalizing the average time cav flee so that the distances of fleeing are similar to other units.


One other suggestion for balancing the lower HP is to adjust the AP cost of DL cav.

Hegorn wrote:

From what I've seen, DL generally do much better once well geared/leveled up in PvE. There is a very noticeable stat plateau in PvE and DL hit that easier than other races. You pointed out that you noticed that with Rare gear.

But technically, doesn't other cavs scale better because HP isn't obtainable from items?
Hypothetical numbers, two units have 2 and 4 of a non-raising stat, and the first has 40 of a raiseable-stat and the other has 30. While this can be balanced, a difference of 80 to 70 in the second stat would render the 4 much stronger.

Hegorn wrote:

About DL Cav vs Archers--
I run 4 elven archers in my primary army. I find that on completely open territory, cav from any of the dark races will reach my archers about 50% of the time. The other half, they will flee before reaching. I havent noticed DL being easier or harder to kill/rout compared to the other races (minus undead for not fleeing).

If they fled off 2 volleys from 1 archer, I think that was just unlucky rolls for you.

Yeah, probably rolls, but still an extreme situation. Hitting 20 HP from a orc cavalry or 16 HP from undead is far easier than 8 HP from DL still.

Hegorn wrote:

I agree cav can flee off the map a bit too easily due to their speed. I would suggest shortening / normalizing the average time cav flee so that the distances of fleeing are similar to other units.


One other suggestion for balancing the lower HP is to adjust the AP cost of DL cav.

Or just changing the current "Retreat" button to "Leave Combat" to regroup it as soon as possible (measured in distance to the closest enemy, maybe?), and add the "Flee" button that already has been talking about, when the unit don't even try to regroup.

And I'd rather have a strong cavalry unit than a cheap cavalry unit.

About more options for fleeing/retreating - yes. I would like to see more tactical options for engaging/disengaging combat.

Mephy wrote:

Hegorn wrote:

From what I've seen, DL generally do much better once well geared/leveled up in PvE. There is a very noticeable stat plateau in PvE and DL hit that easier than other races. You pointed out that you noticed that with Rare gear.

But technically, doesn't other cavs scale better because HP isn't obtainable from items?
Hypothetical numbers, two units have 2 and 4 of a non-raising stat, and the first has 40 of a raiseable-stat and the other has 30. While this can be balanced, a difference of 80 to 70 in the second stat would render the 4 much stronger.

Strictly speaking, that is true. That said, if you can get defensive stats to the point that HP losses happen very infrequently, then how much HP you have has less and less value. At that point, all the other stats like sustained damage start to matter a lot more.

DL have the following advantages:

• They get to that point faster.
  
• They will always have higher stats than all other races with equal gear.
  
• Those stats matter more once you get to that point.
  

Survivability wise, it is like having a 99% dodge rogue with little HPs vs a 50% block warrior with lots of HP.

I'm not saying that the lower HP doesnt make them less survivable than other cav  - but at higher gear levels, it might be the difference between 1% chance to take damage and 2% chance. Sure thats a 100% survivability difference, but HP losses happen so infrequently for both units that all the other stats (which DL have an advantage in) become so much more important.

I used 1% and 2% to illustrate the point. I dont know what the real numbers are, but they are small in full Godlike gear. You already noticed a significant difference with rare items - the effect is more pronounced with even better gear/levels because I suspect survivability scales exponentially.

So overall, I think there is a solution to be found by re-evaluating the base AP values of the DL cav units since that is where the lower HP is a noticeable weakness.

Quote :

And I'd rather have a strong cavalry unit than a cheap cavalry unit.

Cheap/weak cav units are beneficial in the current meta because the number of flankers matters more than the quality of the flankers in many situations.

That said, stack items on the cav and I think you'll get exactly what you want.

There is a statistic hard cap that is the same for every cap unit, isn't it ? That alone make the 50 % less HP unbalanced, doesn't it?

Hegorn wrote:

About Cav vs Cav--
Impact Damage does well against low geared / low armor/endu units. If your cav arent well geared, theyre in trouble if Impact Damage is off Cooldown.

Off-topic : I think that devs should give us more informations without having to look in the wiki or the forum... I was wondering about impact damage to know if there is an ICD on this ability, because it doesn't always land on charge. Need to know if the + 60 strenght can raise the stat above its hard cap. A CD display on the ability button on the GUI would be good to know when you can land another charge.

TLDR:

• All stat caps cannot be realistically reached, so DL retain their stat advantage into the endgame. It may be possible for any race to reach 1-2 stat caps, but not all.
  
• Each +1 survival stat gives increasingly more marginal survivability.
• DL Cav have 25-45 extra stats over other races' cav (except Dwarves).
  
• So the problems talked about are almost certainly limited to newbie DL cav units that are under geared.
  

Details to backup these statements are below.

Latexlord wrote:

There is a statistic hard cap that is the same for every cap unit, isn't it ? That alone make the 50 % less HP unbalanced, doesn't it?

I wont say that it is balanced at low gear/XP levels. I will say that it could be very likely balanced at high gear/XP levels.

I remember having a discussion with Yan early on about the lower hp of DL HINFs and Cav. We both thought it was odd and likely unfair. Since then, I've been surprised at how sturdy DL HINFs have been - they are very certainly not half as durable as other HINFs. An initial look at the stats would make it seem that way, but game experience has definitely proven otherwise.

That alone implicates a non-linear growth of survivability with stats - i.e. each +1 survival stat increases effective health more as that stat gets higher.

Without formulas, we cant know exactly where the inflection points are - but we can make generalized statements like "50% health could be balanced under certain circumstances."


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Comparing the extra stats that DLs get vs other races - they add up quickly:

• Armor - HINFs have 10to15 more. Cav have 10-15more (except Ironfort).
  
• Endu - HINFs have 5-15 more. Cav have 5-15 more (except Ironfort).
  
• Strength - HINFs have 10 more. Cav have 5-10 more.
  
• Melee - HINFs have 10-15 more. Cav have 5 more.
  

All together, thats a total of an extra 35-55 stats for HINFs. For Cav its a total of 25to45 extra stats. Thats about the same as getting a free epic-godlike item baked into the unit. If your unit had 8% chance to get hit vs other units having a 4% chance to get hit, would you be willing to give up half your HP per unit for an extra godlike item?

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About the Caps - they really only matter if they can be realistically reached. If not, then the extra stats will be a benefit that lasts into the endgame.

So below, I'll break down the very best possible scenario for stats and we'll see if we can hit the caps with DL cav. I'll use Cav since this thread is talking about them, but the same could be done for HINFs easily. If you dont want to read all of it - the conclusion is that stat caps are not realistically reachable for survival stats.

DLs can barely reach it with a full set of godlike items with perfect RNG. With "average" Godlike items, Legion Cav would not be able to hit all the stat caps for survival stats. No race can (except maybe dwarves).

So if stat caps cannot be realistically reached, then it diminishes as a counter-argument for DL's not having a benefit for their 50% HP that scales into the endgame.

Code:

Godlikes add up to 30 pts and an avg of 22.5 (23). Most stats can be found on 2, maybe 3 items (artifact is slot is split).
Using the stat caps from: http://goo.gl/EjepY

Now let's work backwards from the stat caps and subtract the bonuses from items to see where the new "stats only cap" is at.

Lets look at Weapon and Armor Slots first:
>>Strength(110 cap): Weapon Slot, so -30 to get a new cap of 80 with the godlike weapon.
>>Melee(110 cap): Weapon slot, so -30 again for 80 with the godlike weapon.
>>End(110 cap): Armor slot, so -30 to get 80 with the godlike.
>>Arm(90 cap): Armor slot, so -30 to get 60 with the godlike.


At this point, DL Cav have a gap of 35pts to makeup in Mel Str and End. Its a 15pt gap to hit the Armor cap. Between the Banner and Artifact slots, there is room for 3 stats.

On the banner, I've never seen a rare+ banner that had any Armor or Endu on it. Melee is only seen on the Gem purchasable banner (or is exceptionally rare as a drop). So lets say you get lucky and/or purchase the gem Banner and have +STR and +MEL. That leaves 5pts to hit the MEL and STR caps with level up stats. Thats doable and reduces the 27 total stats you earn from levelups to 17.

Now that leaves Arm/Endu on the Artifact slot. For Armor, the gap to hit the stat cap is only 15 pts and that is easy to hit with a Godlike item. The gap of 35 to hit the Endurance cap would leave you with 12pts of level-up stats leftover.

Thats 12 pts of leftover stats with perfect +30 godlike gear for all item slots (including the exceptionally rare or GEM only banner with +Melee on it). As I mentioned above, all other races have 25-45 stats less than DL cav. This means it would be truly exceptional for a DL cav to reach stat caps, and impossible for other races' cav to hit all the stat caps (possible exception being Dwarves).

As a side note to my long post above -- if any of you with a lot of Epic+ gear have banners with +Melee on it, please post so? Tell us if you got it as a drop / crafted item / gem purchase?

Latexlord wrote:

Off-topic : I think that devs should give us more informations without having to look in the wiki or the forum... I was wondering about impact damage to know if there is an ICD on this ability, because it doesn't always land on charge. Need to know if the + 60 strenght can raise the stat above its hard cap. A CD display on the ability button on the GUI would be good to know when you can land another charge.

I'm glad more people are speaking up about asking for more transparent mechanics. I've been an advocate for it pretty much since I started playing, but it has more value coming from multiple people. Thanks.

I'm talking about PvE, and godlike gear doesn't really pay off, so let's stick with up to rare. I just had my cavalry with a rare armor +10 end +9 armor rushing to a dwarven artillery. Riding through covers, a gunsmith was able to shoot once, and decrease 1 HP. After getting a favorable position, I launched them to the cannon, with space for 1 shot only. The shot killed two horses, and they immediately fled.

If they have more chance to dodge and less HP, that means you are completely dependent on rolls. Yes, you have more chance to win the roll, but if a single roll can destroy my cavalry, it's very frustrating and can lead to your whole strategy falling due to a single case of bad luck.


edit - and yes, I completely agree with transparent mechanics.

Mephy wrote:

I'm talking about PvE, and godlike gear doesn't really pay off, so let's stick with up to rare.

PvE is exactly where gear makes the most difference. As far as I can tell, PvE opponents do not use gear. I want to say this was confirmed by a dev, but I cannot remember a source right now. In any case, this means godlike geared units win close to all of their combat rolls against their PvE enemies. Gear scales very well in PvE.

Do you mean the maintenance costs of it? Not the effectiveness of the gear?

Quote :

If they have more chance to dodge and less HP, that means you are completely dependent on rolls. Yes, you have more chance to win the roll, but if a single roll can destroy my cavalry, it's very frustrating and can lead to your whole strategy falling due to a single case of bad luck.

Fair enough. I really dislike relying on too much RNG too.

It does seem like your anecdotes are the result of too much variance in RNG because I have seen Legion Cav and especially Legion HINFs that are just as durable as their peers. These observations are mostly in PvE (no items, but much higher level opponents), so it makes me think there is something more here that is missing.

If I had to guess, the problem is the low levels on your cav mixed with too much RNG in some of the combat rolls.

You made this thread about Cav, so I imagine you have HINFs and have used them for a while? You did not notice the same problem with them?


--
About RNG --
In a counter-comp situation (cav vs Arty), I dont think there should be any RNG "surprises" more than about 5% of the time - if that.

5% is just a rough target. The "feel right" point could be lower or higher. It is a number that is widely used in science and in several game systems (natch 20s) as a number that human psychology accepts as unusual due to randomness.

If Legion cav are operated well (like how Mephy described) and die to PvE(AI) controlled arty more than 5% of the time, I find that to be eyebrow raising.

Hegorn wrote:

Do you mean the maintenance costs of it? Not the effectiveness of the gear?

Exactly. I prefer to only use gear up to rare, if any, in PvE. Maybe when I get richer I can change my mind

Hegorn wrote:

You made this thread about Cav, so I imagine you have HINFs and have used them for a while? You did not notice the same problem with them?

No, the HI is very tanky (just as undead, from my watching-experience, bit less than orcish). It probably has something to do with low health mixed with low unit count (and low stats, for that matter). Even when fully ungeared, the HI still can take a lot of hits... a volley does usually take 1 down, but still 15 marching. 2*4 = 8, 1*16 = 16.
Also, the HI ability helps them to get tankier... (and make your whole army tankier).

Hegorn wrote:

If Legion cav are operated well (like how Mephy described) and die to PvE(AI) controlled arty more than 5% of the time, I find that to be eyebrow raising.

With my low-gear low-rank cavalry, it's less than or about 5% they lose to artillery. But the problem isn't really losing, but being useless after winning due to high damage taken. Today I fought a single dwarven cannon with two cavalries at once, after taking the cannon down I lost half of the troops (probably would lose if I had only 1 cav unit). After that I could only use the cav to chase troops, as engaging it would be risky for its XP.

That meshes with my experience with undead/DL/Orc HINFs - theyre pretty close to equal survivability with slight differences in that order.

Fear is definitely an offensive and defensive ability - and 10-30% reduction of Melee is quite noticeable. That does support the idea that Stats can counter having half HP.

I generally dont want to see all units having the exact same stats with the exact same playstyle, with the exact same strategy for development. I think thats boring. I want to see different races needing to adapt in slightly different ways.

Thats why I'm trying to sift out: (1) the real cause of why your cav feel like theyre useless after one engagement, (2) if they will be that way with higher level XP/Gear and (3) if there is a way to balance that feeling through other means than stats (like AP costs).

Mephy wrote:

Hegorn wrote:

If Legion cav are operated well (like how Mephy described) and die to PvE(AI) controlled arty more than 5% of the time, I find that to be eyebrow raising.

With my low-gear low-rank cavalry, it's less than or about 5% they lose to artillery. But the problem isn't really losing, but being useless after winning due to high damage taken. Today I fought a single dwarven cannon with two cavalries at once, after taking the cannon down I lost half of the troops (probably would lose if I had only 1 cav unit). After that I could only use the cav to chase troops, as engaging it would be risky for its XP.

If you had to put a % to how often they are minimized to being chasers/finishers after 1 engagement, what would it be?

I have lvl 8-9 Elven cav and I usually use a mix of rare/uncommon items. They only perform optimally when fighting in 1v1 counter-comp situations. They lose half their number fighting under archer fire or even under arty fire. I almost never send them against melee units alone - especially if I know they wont have Impact Damage - they will just get bogged down fighting that one unit for way too long and come out ragged enough that I often use them for chasing duty after that as well.

Your anecdotes do sound a bit more extreme than my experiences, but thats why I think it is something that may just be a scaling issue and RNG instead of some fundamental problem with less HP on DL Cav/Heavies.

I do think Cav baseAP costs are probably a bit high in general. Same with Arty, but thats a different thread.

About a third of time fighting artillery my cav becomes useless afterwards. But its totally random, it seems. Just went 2 cav against 3 cannons (even level 10 cannon) with low cover and won without a single casualty. Had other similar events today... maybe it's related to unlocking Dark Gift level 2? I'd say its around: 1/3 become useless, 1/3 can still (risky) fight, 1/6 loses, 1/6 can fully fight.

It seems cavalry is good at PvE, but its hell of a random/unreliable troop.

Mephy wrote:

About a third of time fighting artillery my cav becomes useless afterwards. But its totally random, it seems. Just went 2 cav against 3 cannons (even level 10 cannon) with low cover and won without a single casualty. Had other similar events today... maybe it's related to unlocking Dark Gift level 2? I'd say its around: 1/3 become useless, 1/3 can still (risky) fight, 1/6 loses, 1/6 can fully fight.

It seems cavalry is good at PvE, but its hell of a random/unreliable troop.

I've made the point in another thread that a lot of the very opposing viewpoints from players is possibly due to the amount of RNG in the game - I think it is too high in too many places and that is a major factor in the polarized viewpoints on the game's balance.

I think this thread adds to that list.


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Dark Gift triggers when your Cav misses an attack. So it certainly helps early on a lot against any target. As your cav gets more melee, they might not have to rely on Dark Pact vs arty/archers, but it will help them perform better vs other melee troops.

Does it have a CD from what youve seen?

Agreed, this game could remove some of the RNG changes without affecting the core strategy of the game (actually removing some problems like artillery).

The Dark Gift affects a lot against squishy units, you can basically insta-kill artillery and insta-flee archers if it procs reasonable fast. Didn't notice (or even paid attention to) CD, probably it has but its very short (can proc twice while killing a single group of archers. 5 sec?).

there is no need for RNG to apply to crafted items, a decent blacksmith can craft gears with selected attributes so it would be nice if we could choose the stats to apply on a crafted item, the more advanced researches on smithing the more stats we can put on an item. This could make payers and not payers alot happy without having the frustration to buy epic and godlike fragments and praying for a perfect craft and not wasting their money and time on a badluck crafted item

Using 2 cavs to rush 2 elven ballistas, no damage received from archers or other units. Is this right? They both were wearing rare armors.

It happens to human cav too. Sometimes. When I'm unlucky :DBut when I "loose" a cav as a human, it's more ofthen because they flee than because they die.

On a side note, rare armor doesn't necesarry mean it's a powerfull armor (but I agress it should help to prevent dying).

Mephy wrote:

Using 2 cavs to rush 2 elven ballistas, no damage received from archers or other units. Is this right? They both were wearing rare armors.

Isnt it odd that your cav have red HP bars that are not empty when you have 0 and 1 unit left?

Hegorn wrote:

Isnt it odd that your cav have red HP bars that are not empty when you have 0 and 1 unit left?

haha, didn't even noticed. Maybe it's a bug? One is dead with some HP and the other have 1/4 units with half HP.

Yea. I dont think I've seen that happen to me. I'm pretty sure I always lose 1 of my two chariots when HPs hit half.

May be a bug.

Hegorn wrote:

Isnt it odd that your cav have red HP bars that are not empty when you have 0 and 1 unit left?

Fixed for the next patch.

As for the damage from the artillery it's possible. Artillery fire is heavy if they do attack and attack accurately.

Yes, that bug happened to me too, my cavalry health bar was half with only 1 dark knight.
However those spreaded extra stats are nothing that pay off the lower health and lower numbers, I have included all my toughts here about dark legion survivability in battle

http://www.battleconforum.com/t496-dark-legion-heavy-infantry-and-cavalry-are-not-balanced-correctly