The Undead Problem

After witnessing discussions all over the place regarding undead I noticed that everyone thinks that they are still too hard to fight. It's almost common knowledge by now that undead are the best race and people keep saying that all the time.

This does not bode well if the devs are going for balance which seems to be the case in light of the stat changes that took place a while ago. I don't think that anyone can argue that the current stats are unfair towards anyone so asking for another stat tweaking would be kind of useless or very difficult to rebalance in the least.

So I have been thinking of what could be done to remedy the situation and the message in the loading screen about how the undead never flee gave me an idea. What if the players that use the undead race could not force their units to flee manually? It would not hinder any stats of the undead so it wouldn't really be a nerf, however, it might provide some tactical advantages for people fighting undeads in pvp (where it really counts). As far as lore is concerned... not even the most powerful necromancers can reach their minions in the heat of battle and maybe in the future the undead will get necromancers or maybe some other new units which will not be mindless minions so they will be able to flee manually and/or they will not be unbreakable. Hope that this idea will help balance the races

ah have to say that fixes nothing. Not exactly a bad idea but the point of Unbreakable is they never flee. In PVP I have never seen a skelly manually flee their own unit. It makes no sense for them to do that. Adding in that they can't flee won't help anything. Only thing that it will hurt is that skelly units will lose their exp which already happens. But yes I do agree 100% that skellies need some more tweaking or changes. They have low ap,unbreakable,their LI have a great ability, their HI are good stats such as low reaction for all their units, their HI have unbreakable which makes their HI with more units meaning more HP their HI are extremely good. Their cav are pretty good. Those are the units that matter. If a skelly player uses LI,HI I think they would be way to hard to beat. Almost impossible unless in high tiers with them having bad equipment. I believe it was Bobba who said that he brought 2 HI and the skelly he was facing brought 3. That is 32 DL HI against 75 skelly HI. This has to be obvious how one sided this is. Not even counting that those 75 skelly HI have unbreakable. Ah well the two solutions I see to this is the devs so will probably/hopefully be Runeslayer who answers. But I would like to know why the Undead were made this way. That or you will look into Undead stats, abilities and ap.

Piktas wrote:

After witnessing discussions all over the place regarding undead I noticed that everyone thinks that they are still too hard to fight. It's almost common knowledge by now that undead are the best race and people keep saying that all the time.

This does not bode well if the devs are going for balance which seems to be the case in light of the stat changes that took place a while ago. I don't think that anyone can argue that the current stats are unfair towards anyone so asking for another stat tweaking would be kind of useless or very difficult to rebalance in the least.

So I have been thinking of what could be done to remedy the situation and the message in the loading screen about how the undead never flee gave me an idea. What if the players that use the undead race could not force their units to flee manually? It would not hinder any stats of the undead so it wouldn't really be a nerf, however, it might provide some tactical advantages for people fighting undeads in pvp (where it really counts). As far as lore is concerned... not even the most powerful necromancers can reach their minions in the heat of battle and maybe in the future the undead will get necromancers or maybe some other new units which will not be mindless minions so they will be able to flee manually and/or they will not be unbreakable. Hope that this idea will help balance the races

Yes, I agree that undead is quite undeniably overpowered. I don't think that preventing manual fleeing with undead units is a good solution to the problem though, and honestly just seems kind of limiting in the wrong kind of way. I didn't really want to bother devs much about this until GW2 was done, but I may as well put some stuff down since it's relevant to this topic. And before you get curious, yes I have pvped against undead. I have pvped three different undead players (PrinceofDark, Desrath, and Kubasaka), one of them much lower level than me. Out of about 5 pvps against undead, I won 1, by pure luck and bringing artillery, and I won by only a few hp worth of units left.

Undead has too many advantages:
1. Undead has unbreakable on every unit
2. Undead has larger numbers per unit in LI and HI. (25!)
3. Undead has less AP cost than any other race in the game per unit.
4. Undead has comparable stat caps to other races
5. Undead has some of the fastest reaction in the game, even more so than elves (7 on their LI!)
6. Undead LI has a great tanking ability

These points all combine to make undead far too powerful, sturdy, and difficult or even impossible to create tactics to defeat. The archers are also probably the best the dark side has, at any rate they seem to do the most damage to me on nightmares than any other archer in the game rivaling even elves, causing my cavalry to flee in only a few shots sometimes (and that's sturdy Dark Legion cavalry too). It feels like undead absorbed all dark side bonuses in one. Neither dark legion nor orc really has many particularly distinguishing qualites that make them better than other races (DL has slightly higher stats... really high AP and less units). I think the consequences of giving low AP and high AP to units was not completely thought about and it has resulted in OP undead and underpowered dark legion (HI anyways, though our LI kind of sucks for other reasons like 10 reaction).

As for solutions... I think one solution would be narrowing the gap between unit AP's of the different races so that undead can't swarm quite as much. Alternatively, make them 20/20 for LI and HI but keep the low AP. It still fits lore because they still come in numbers. Just not quite as insane of numbers... Either way DL HI AP is too high considering dwarf HI eat them alive with their hands tied behind their backs. Or maybe dwarf/undead, sometimes even orc HI OPness have led me to believe that DL HI suck. It's worth noting though that someone told me undead seemed like the only "complete" race. So maybe it's not undead that need nerfed after all, but the other races which need "completing" (which would invariably need to involve some improving them of course)

There is one last thing I want to complain about although it's not really related to undead... Why must Dark Legion HI morale cap at 85 when our LI caps at 90!? It's so hard to find a good banner that doesn't waste a ton of morale on our HI, and not only that but they run so easily compared to light HI which have 100 morale. At the very least give our guys 90 max or 95 like orc. 85 is not enough. DL HI were supposed to be strong but at high gear they seem to be the laughingstock of all the races, running away from danger with their tail between their legs. I must admit that undead have a terrible problem about overcapping their morale as well, a solution to avoid morale banners would really help, especially when it seems like morale is the most common stat to find on banners... it causes good dark banners to be quite expensive to craft.

for anyone who is curious, I can't remember who compiled these (Hegorn maybe?) but this is the most recent stat caps found and seems to be mostly correct (I think elf artillery reaction is listed wrong though):
http://prntscr.com/1kexjf


ANYWAYS, all in good time of course. I don't anticipate any changes to this stuff until you complete GW layer 2. I've been holding all this stuff back for a while now already, so that's why there is so much... But it is clear that balance is not quite there yet. And I still have reason to believe those simulations used to balance the races were not quite accurate to real-gameplay, for several reasons... I also anticipate some new balance problems showing up when GW layer 2 shows up because of the new units, but I suppose we shall wait and deal with the punches as they are thrown.

Scaren wrote:

Bobba who said that he brought 2 HI and the skelly he was facing brought 3. That is 32 DL HI against 75 skelly HI.

Yup. It was against PrinceofDark who was much lower level than me and didn't flank me a single time (I flanked him several). He won. It was a tier 1 pvp and I brought all the HI I could, we matched at the exact same AP. But he had 1 more LI and one more HI, and more heroes than I did. If he had actually used good tactics in the battle he could have beat me with very few losses.

You guys are bringing up good points. I lack the perspective on fighting non-AI undeads so I guess I don't really see if stats still need tweaking. If that's the case then by all means the playing field needs to be leveled out and once the fight is more equal I think that undead users would start manually fleeing for tactical reasons and them not being able to do it would provide for more race based strategies all around. If undead would never flee (as the lore suggests) than their archers would need to be protected a lot more and their cavalries would be more vulnerable to being locked in place and then surrounded. All in all it's pretty clear that changes need to be made.

Piktas wrote:

You guys are bringing up good points. I lack the perspective on fighting non-AI undeads so I guess I don't really see if stats still need tweaking. If that's the case then by all means the playing field needs to be leveled out and once the fight is more equal I think that undead users would start manually fleeing for tactical reasons and them not being able to do it would provide for more race based strategies all around. If undead would never flee (as the lore suggests) than their archers would need to be protected a lot more and their cavalries would be more vulnerable to being locked in place and then surrounded. All in all it's pretty clear that changes need to be made.

if it is a smart skelly player they won't use archers. And I have to agree with Bobba the not being able to manually flee really won't change much. Skellies hardly ever flee in pvp. Only if their victory is assured and they don't want to lose exp.

It would change a lot if undeads didn't have their gross advantage. Repositioning for a flank can be a huge help and if they couldn't manually flee the undead cavalry would be very susceptible to being flanked. Sorry if you don't see it. In conclusion I personally would like to see their stats tweaked like you guys are saying and once the powers are equal I'd like to see their racial trait to actually do what it says it does. I don't like it that undeads can have their cake and eat it too. If they never flee then they should not be able flee under any circumstances even if that doesn't change a whole lot.

aw, undead OPness....

the long-known issue that has never been resolved, maybe it's considered payment for having to look at a ton of SKELETONS all day long.  

ANYWAY, I've seen lots of player, UD included manually flee. It's very advantageous to flee, cross right through the enemy lines (that was brought up in an old post, too) and then turn and rear the "shieldwall". this is especially advantageous when fighting against HI, with weaker, but plentiful, LI. if UD couldn't flee, they would never be able to do that, and putting (for example) 4 HI in an advantageous location on the map (between two large obstacles, for example) would prevent them from having their most infamous advantage, the ability to flank 3 or 4 different units at once.

SO, I like that as a starting point for the theoretical nerf.

Also, I wouldn't mind if they kept their low AP value, if their unit count was reduced; they would still (as the post said) retain their "numbers" but not quite as insanely. ALBEIT, maybe I would mind that...

I like the "numbers" of UD when in coop or PVE, since it would seem that there is no XP advantage based upon the race killed- I get a LOT more XP from a fight where I kill 300 UD, then I do from a fight at the same AP where I only kill 220 DL.

DL HI at high gear level seems to be the laughingstock of the game? are you kidding me? you must have never seen Fyrr's infamous tanking HI in action... that sucker can (and has) tanked 4-6 of my units, while being completely surrounded. Heck, it's even tanked 3 of my HIs simultaneously... AND, my almost-full GL (but only "normal" GLs... not SUPER-HIGH-QUALITY EXCLUSIVELY COMBAT ORIENTED) HI can't hardly dent it... Mind you, Fyrr seemingly runs away from Faerrolon's army in fear, even he has a 600 AP advantage... So, I'm guessing that an Elven HI with 4 Combat-oriented "perfect" GLs would crush his tank... but only a few players have that many, and good, GLs...

Realf Lantow wrote:

Mind you, Fyrr seemingly runs away from Faerrolon's army in fear, even he has a 600 AP advantage... So, I'm guessing that an Elven HI with 4 Combat-oriented "perfect" GLs would crush his tank... but only a few players have that many, and good, GLs...

Yes, this is what I'm talking about. And the laughingstock part was a joke based on their morale capping at 85. People point and laugh and our HI run in fear and embarrassment because their morale can't take it. And I thought they were supposed to instill fear in others!

Also, if you want to go the route of complaining about Fyrr's HI being undefeatable, I should point out I have at least as much trouble with other players' high level HI. Except that even if I make them flee they keep turning around almost immediately because of 100 morale. I made a super HI flee about 4 times in one battle with clever flank/rearing, and each time it turned right back around within only a few seconds (I think it was Faerrolon's, before he made it EVEN better). I had it's morale at practically 0 too. If you did that to a DL HI, you'd probably never see it again. To be fair, my gear is not great yet (only capped stats are armor and morale because they cap so darn easily) but even with melee and endurance around 90 my HI can hardly dent a near capped HI of elf or (gasp) dwarf before it runs or dies. I think as stats reach higher numbers, their importance gets higher and higher. It's like a 600 AP HI is 300% better than a 500 AP HI for only 20% more AP. Bad news: DL HI costs more AP in the first place in addition to it's lower unit count.

Realf Lantow wrote:

DL HI at high gear level seems to be the laughingstock of the game? are you kidding me? you must have never seen Fyrr's infamous tanking HI in action... that sucker can (and has) tanked 4-6 of my units, while being completely surrounded.  Heck, it's even tanked 3 of my HIs simultaneously...  AND, my almost-full GL (but only "normal" GLs... not SUPER-HIGH-QUALITY EXCLUSIVELY COMBAT ORIENTED) HI can't hardly dent it...  Mind you, Fyrr seemingly runs away from Faerrolon's army in fear, even he has a 600 AP advantage... So, I'm guessing that an Elven HI with 4 Combat-oriented "perfect" GLs would crush his tank... but only a few players have that many, and good, GLs...

Ok, that my Hi is nearly capped, missing only either 15ish str or 20 endu... So naturally it can hold vs epic units or such. Pvping other hi 1v1, even when i'm almost capped and they're not, usually ends up in me fleeing. In more tactical battles not even rearing is required to make DL hi flee, flank is usually enough. And well, starting units... Vs elves I have 8 hps less from the start, slow reaction can't hit enough times to rack up the kills (capped melee/str, mind you) and either dies or flees. Sometimes at even 14 units left... (out of 16). Maybe just low-geared human hi flee like this, so predictably.
Faer doesn't really even like to vs me anymore, my near-capped units aren't good enough to provide enough challenge... =p

And our AP per level... HAHAHA. High ap dwarves can bring 6 naked hi, i could, in theory, max 4... Naked dwarf vs DL is kind of predictable too (DL flees)..

So right, our hi have MAYBE ok stats, but AP cost and the running away makes them funny. Lately I run 1 cav 1 hi, and cav sometimes tanks enemy hi more than my hi does (less units in cav, so enemy can't gain morale that easily).

so... DL and UD are kind of out of balance both ways...
-Fleeing (DL too much, esp. li and hi, UD not enough)
-AP cost (DL wayyy too high, comparable to dwarf cav in a way, totally WTF, UD wayyyy too low)
-Unit numbers (16 hi??? The ONLY race with 16 units..)
-reaction (DL li - 10. useful only vs elves due to ability... They can kill elven li, just that. Hero/hi/cav - anything more serious, and LI scurries away. I had NO battle with maxed morale where my LI DIDN'T flee. With such reaction it can't score kills quick enough...)

If I win fights with good lighties, it's mostly when I have 20+ points advantage in gear (per unit...)

Team pvps! DL+DL - almost guaranteed loss even if lighties are significantly weaker
DL+ork works better (DL providing cav, ork HI and LI)
DL+skellies.. beautiful. Provided skellie does majority of work and DL just runs around flanking... We can damage alright, but have no tank units to actually hold the enemy long enough...

so it needs attention, after gw2 or whatever... But soon. We'll start bugging you more and more I think.

i love it how any topic about undead turns to me and DLs...

Don't forgot Fyrr how your HI have 16 and the undead HI have let me count them off. Unbreakable the only HI to have that in the game. Low AP which can really make differences in higher ap battles. Allows them to bring even more HI. They have 25 units. That is huge. Yes people will say their stats are a bit lower than other races. Their reaction more than makes up for those stats. Now besides that I love my 2v2 with me and Des. We are 13-1 and the only loss was before tiers against Dak's godlike army. Always fun battles. Maybe it is not even Undead being to powerful. Maybe it is all other races need the tweaking. Either way I would like to see a change. Or at least Rune please tell us how all of this was given to the Undead?

Scaren wrote:

Maybe it is all other races need the tweaking. Either way I would like to see a change.

I think we need the abilities filled in. The reason why Undead is soo strong is because they have at LEAST 2 abilities per unit. Everyone else only has 2 abilities when it comes to LIA. So to make it more fair, begin implementing other races second abilities.

Fyrr missing 15 or 20 points is not nearly capped

Kuba, ask anyone with a few godlikes or less... They'll say missing even 30 pts is nearly capped!

My point is when you cap all stats for yours HI it will have very similar power to elfs HI. You cannot compare units where one is cap or almost cap (missing few points) with yours where you miss 15 or 20 points.

Fyrr wrote:

Realf Lantow wrote:

DL HI at high gear level seems to be the laughingstock of the game? are you kidding me? you must have never seen Fyrr's infamous tanking HI in action... that sucker can (and has) tanked 4-6 of my units, while being completely surrounded.  Heck, it's even tanked 3 of my HIs simultaneously...  AND, my almost-full GL (but only "normal" GLs... not SUPER-HIGH-QUALITY EXCLUSIVELY COMBAT ORIENTED) HI can't hardly dent it...  Mind you, Fyrr seemingly runs away from Faerrolon's army in fear, even he has a 600 AP advantage... So, I'm guessing that an Elven HI with 4 Combat-oriented "perfect" GLs would crush his tank... but only a few players have that many, and good, GLs...

Ok, that my Hi is nearly capped, missing only either 15ish str or 20 endu... So naturally it can hold vs epic units or such. Pvping other hi 1v1, even when i'm almost capped and they're not, usually ends up in me fleeing. In more tactical battles not even rearing is required to make DL hi flee, flank is usually enough. And well, starting units... Vs elves I have 8 hps less from the start, slow reaction can't hit enough times to rack up the kills (capped melee/str, mind you) and either dies or flees. Sometimes at even 14 units left... (out of 16). Maybe just low-geared human hi flee like this, so predictably.
Faer doesn't really even like to vs me anymore, my near-capped units aren't good enough to provide enough challenge... =p

And our AP per level... HAHAHA. High ap dwarves can bring 6 naked hi, i could, in theory, max 4... Naked dwarf vs DL is kind of predictable too (DL flees)..

So right, our hi have MAYBE ok stats, but AP cost and the running away makes them funny. Lately I run 1 cav 1 hi, and cav sometimes tanks enemy hi more than my hi does (less units in cav, so enemy can't gain morale that easily).

so... DL and UD are kind of out of balance both ways...
-Fleeing (DL too much, esp. li and hi, UD not enough)
-AP cost (DL wayyy too high, comparable to dwarf cav in a way, totally WTF, UD wayyyy too low)
-Unit numbers (16 hi??? The ONLY race with 16 units..)
-reaction (DL li - 10. useful only vs elves due to ability... They can kill elven li, just that. Hero/hi/cav - anything more serious, and LI scurries away. I had NO battle with maxed morale where my LI DIDN'T flee. With such reaction it can't score kills quick enough...)

If I win fights with good lighties, it's mostly when I have 20+ points advantage in gear (per unit...)

Team pvps! DL+DL - almost guaranteed loss even if lighties are significantly weaker
DL+ork works better (DL providing cav, ork HI and LI)
DL+skellies.. beautiful. Provided skellie does majority of work and DL just runs around flanking... We can damage alright, but have no tank units to actually hold the enemy long enough...

so it needs attention, after gw2 or whatever... But soon. We'll start bugging you more and more I think.

i love it how any topic about undead turns to me and DLs...

nice post!

nathor wrote:

Fyrr wrote:

...

nice post!

agreed!

kuba_ wrote:

My point is when you cap all stats for yours HI it will have very similar power to elfs HI. You cannot compare units where one is cap or almost cap (missing few points) with yours where you miss 15 or 20 points.

I can compare just fine =p Yes, cap hi vs mine is entirely different! And I totally agree with you, except my initial point was that elves have LESS stats.

Fyrr wrote:

Ok, that my Hi is nearly capped, missing only either 15ish str or 20 endu... So naturally it can hold vs epic units or such. Pvping other hi 1v1, even when i'm almost capped and they're not

I meant their all stats can be lower than mine, and they still win... Might be lucky rolls or whatever... Oh and my such hi is sometimes weaker than almost capped cav vs the same elven hi. That's the issue... I can bring either hi or cav vs elf hi and have the same chance to lose =p
Anyway, that's just details.


And DLs agree with me =)

This is about the skelly problem. If you all want to talk about Dark Legion make another post. As for the skelly problem i'm getting pissed that any dev isn't responding. I mean come on. Enough players have talked on this post that it should be obvious people want answers!!!!! Now it will probably be Rune who answers this considering he is the only talkative dev. I can understand how you are having to deal with AI difficulty and the Gear Score. But this is to unbalanced to be ignored. I would very much like to know why Undead were made this way. I hope i'm not the only one mad about this being ignored.

Scaren wrote:

This is about the skelly problem. If you all want to talk about Dark Legion make another post. As for the skelly problem i'm getting pissed that any dev isn't responding. I mean come on. Enough players have talked on this post that it should be obvious people want answers!!!!! Now it will probably be Rune who answers this considering he is the only talkative dev. I can understand how you are having to deal with AI difficulty and the Gear Score. But this is to unbalanced to be ignored. I would very much like to know why Undead were made this way. I hope i'm not the only one mad about this being ignored.

I think fixing balance is very important, but I think GW layer 2 should take priority. More people are waiting for GW2 than for more balance. And if they get it done in a week like they say then they could move on to this next. I do think right after GW2 this should be dealt with though, it's pretty serious...

Bobba wrote:

Scaren wrote:

I think fixing balance is very important, but I think GW layer 2 should take priority. More people are waiting for GW2 than for more balance. And if they get it done in a week like they say then they could move on to this next. I do think right after GW2 this should be dealt with though, it's pretty serious...

When has GW2 been a priority? Noobswarm came first. Now the new AI difficulty which I like but it went way to far. I believe that this is very bad for the new players. GW2 was supposed to be a week after the first layer.

Scaren wrote:

Bobba wrote:

Scaren wrote:

I think fixing balance is very important, but I think GW layer 2 should take priority. More people are waiting for GW2 than for more balance. And if they get it done in a week like they say then they could move on to this next. I do think right after GW2 this should be dealt with though, it's pretty serious...

When has GW2 been a priority? Noobswarm came first. Now the new AI difficulty which I like but it went way to far. I believe that this is very bad for the new players. GW2 was supposed to be a week after the first layer.

This is exactly why it needs to be focused on now. (after fixing the difficulty mess up for easy/normal/hard/coop). Fixing balance between races will take much more time than they can put inbetween a week while still getting GW2 done on time.