@strife said in Mercy Change - Not ready yet:
- Catch some lonely T2 Mexes.
One Mercy is enough to kill a T2 Mex (except UEF). This is something Aeon can't do very well with T1 bombers and gunships, as they aren't mass efficient in one passing a single T2 Mex and it's simply too noticeable when multiple radar blobs appear. It would certainly deprive Aeon of an opportunity since they don't have a T2 Bomber alternative.
In the future there might be a change of the mex hp (Only an idea so far, tbd) so it's not that clear yet whether they're worth it. Especially because a t2 mex costs 900 mass and therefore you easily get value out of it. Besides that in teamgames it's highly uncommon that mercies take out mexes because you usually pay attention to your t2 mexes. In 1v1s or small teamgames gunships do the trick as well because the attention is limited there and so are your intis which are flying somewhere around the map.
- The desperate attempt to stop an experimental at the last moment.
Here I can also see a justified use case for the Mercy. The only real alternatives Aeon has in the early T3 phase are again T1 bombers and T2 gunships. Even if the gunship has an alpha strike, it must still shoot for at least 30 seconds to get the value of a mercy. Assuming you don't completely dominate Air to build 25+ Restorer or a CZAR, it could be a particularly awkward situation for Aeon to defend an Experimental just with T1 bombers and T2 gunships, since they are significantly more vulnerable to an even not too high number of Flak with shields compared to Corsair, Notha or Broadsword.
T1 bombers are still insanely effective against stuff like that. Ofc you can argue that flak will oneshot them - same for mercies though. Besides that you can produce t1 bombers much faster than mercies.
2. The new use case might be not so use full
So I see the new Mercy as a pure single use weapon for larger groups of T1 to T3 units, a bit like the Janus Bomber. However, the Janus is much better, as it is very good at flying into the opponent's base and taking out pgens, engis and other important things. Something that is unthinkable with Mercys.
Why should it be impossible to fly into your opponent's base? Flying around the map edge with one mercy is way saver than doing it with 5+ Gunships. And since most players build the PGs somewhat close together one mercy is able to kill 15+ PGs in one shot - same with random engies being around while e.g. supporting a navy or air HQ.
Especially in teamgames when rushing t2 air because <1700 ranked games tend to underbuild intis anyway, so there's nothing really to stop 1-2 mercies completely raping your base.
And even against units themselves, I would always prefer the Janus, since it can bombard the units again and again and not just once creating one AoE from which the units could simply run out.
Well yeah, but that's because Janus are simply insanely strong in general. For me there's no point in defending the mercy simply because there's another broken unit ingame.
Also, it doesn't seem a good idea to me at all to use Mercys against units since they usually have AA with them and the Mercy may not even fire ones.
That's why Aeon has e.g. Gunships to simply snipe the AA. Or one swiftie to distract them. Or even a torp bomber due to target priority. Also the mercy does have more hp and iirc it even survives one flak volley. Not to mention Cybran t1 is fucked anyway due to the mobile t1 AA and currently is the faction where you stay on t1 the longers.
3. It's Buggy
When I tested the new Mercy, I noticed that in some cases the damage goes under the shield and can damage units below. I especially noticed that with the Fatboy who gets direct damage despite having shields on and dies with an active shield! in fact, 10 mercys can be enough to kill a Fatboy which is ridiculous.
Those are things which have to be fixed of course, however it's not really a reason against changing the mercies, if that's what you intented. If you simply wanted to mention it, then nvm
So what would I do differently now?
Basically I see two ways how the mercy cloud be changed.
- The simple solution.
Halve or third the damage a ACU gets from the Mercy, so that it's no more difficult to snipe a ACU with Corsairs than with Mercies. Since ASF are now also getting reduced CZAR laser damge, I assume that the change also could done relatively easily with the Mercy and ACU. The Mercy would still have the use cases described above.
Nerfing it into oblivion like the Jester is one thing I'd simply approve. Not because it's balanced, but simply cuz I hate the unit enough to remove it from the game. However the question here is why Aeon needs 2 single-target units anyway since the Gunships are the strongest anyway already.
Completely agree with the visual effect though ofc.