Irrelevant Mercs

[Hakuna]

So not that I would expect this to be a high priority update but I thought I'd at least get the ball rolling with a discussion on a few of the Mercenaries.

Warriors. The aggro wave 1 send. The only time warriors seem to have any relevance is in waves 1-3, whereas bowmen and militia stay relevant the whole game as mass units, and ghouls occasionally as well. Ghouls also are a core part of the cross meta on 10. Warriors don't seem to belong anywhere except waves 1-3 which to me seem unfortunate. Perhaps if they cost 50 or 45 lumber instead of 60, it wouldn't be so discouraging to get so little income for so much lumber spent. (Though they would obviously need rebalancing in this case)

Whelps. The classic noob send for round 1. This is literally the only time I regularly see it, aside from sporadic noob sends on other rounds. No decent player that I've ever seen will send whelps.

Dinos. The send for income send. While this does occasionally play a role in the send meta, which I acknowledge and so don't fully hate the merc, I still think it's kinda undervalued due to this. It's never a strategic send, only a "we need the game to go late" or "we really need as much value as we can squeeze out of the waves before they send" kind of send. In my opinion, a bit of a waste.

Chariots. The worse Ballista. Basically the only point to the Chariot is when you are sending Ballistas and you don't have enough at 0 seconds left to send anything better. Kind of a waste, again. I don't think it's valuable at all and would not be missed if it was replaced.

Frost Wolf. What even. I never have any desire to send this merc, because a movespeed slow is completely pointless to the king (unless it affects turn rate also?) and I don't really know what waves it would be of any point during the wave. Like, maybe on 12/16 to keep blasters from getting between Sirens as quickly? But wouldn't it die so fast it would be even less useful than a captain? The merc just confuses me with its existence.

Ice Troll. The worse Warlock. I do enjoy sending Ice Trolls and watching them get ignored by the king controller, but I kinda think they should have a bigger impact so that they are taken a bit more seriously. I get that they aren't very expensive, so like a 10% attack slow would be pretty broken for the cost, but at the same time, whatever amount it is, guessing like 4% or something, just doesn't seem to matter hardly at all. What even if it stacked? Maybe a limited number of times, like say, 4% each troll attacking the target up to 16% with four trolls?

Pandaren. A bigger blood orc? I don't even know what Pandas are supposed to be, in the meta. I did a calculation once and realized they had better dps/lumber than gargs, but then, they are melee and ground, which sucks so much they can't ever be better. Also, it's often difficult to send all the gargs on a send wave, so pandas would be even worse for that. I just don't think they have a single niche and without an aura seem pretty pointless.

Shamans. I really enjoy this merc and often like sending it on round 20 sends, but for the most part it seems to have a pretty irrelevant role in the meta which disappoints me. You could easily play 100 games straight without seeing a single Shaman.

Pudges. Very misunderstood aura. I just want to know, is there a good reason why the King is a structure and therefore can't be life-stealed off? I don't get why it's this way. It seems to be that Pudge would immediately garnish respect if units would lifesteal off fighting the king. Also that income/lumber is atrocious.

Infernal. Broken ability just makes this a sad hollow shell of a merc. Perhaps it's a merc like the pudge where its aura and bash just don't work on the king, but to my knowledge, it's just broken. I don't think it belongs in the game in its current state.



What we are missing:

Attack Speed Aura (not counting shaman)

Move Speed Aura (other than demon)

Damage debuff (I know armor boost is essentially the same thing, but for towers we have mermaid/goliath/parasite as well as zombie/apparition)

Cleave damage (Legion TD 2 introduced a centaur merc which cleaves, seems to me like an interesting idea. Helps clear out stuff like the zergling summons from Hades)

Rupture-on-death (maybe not a good idea, but kind of like the malformation/tok)

Significant magic dps merc (best options seem to be Shaman and Warlock, I'd advocate replacing Infernal or Panda with a magic damage merc)

[broud3r]

Reworked some mercs for the next version. gonna be announced when ever its done.

Maybe you are aware of this in the meantime but some comments on those:

Frost Wolf. What even. I never have any desire to send this merc, because a movespeed slow is completely pointless to the king (unless it affects turn rate also?)

Frost Wolf slows the movement AND attackspeed by 10% in 300 range.

Ice Troll. The worse Warlock. I do enjoy sending Ice Trolls and watching them get ignored by the king controller, but I kinda think they should have a bigger impact so that they are taken a bit more seriously. I get that they aren't very expensive, so like a 10% attack slow would be pretty broken for the cost

It actually slows move and attackspeed by 10%

Infernal. Broken ability just makes this a sad hollow shell of a merc. Perhaps it's a merc like the pudge where its aura and bash just don't work on the king, but to my knowledge, it's just broken. I don't think it belongs in the game in its current state.

Bash on king would be pretty broken as seen on the beta versions some years ago.
Due to its immolation ability which is great vs massed/small units its imo more than suitable in its current state.

Pudges. Very misunderstood aura. I just want to know, is there a good reason why the King is a structure and therefore can't be life-stealed off? I don't get why it's this way. It seems to be that Pudge would immediately garnish respect if units would lifesteal off fighting the king. Also that income/lumber is atrocious.

Its been intended viewtopic.php?f=295&t=109037