First Bomber Relevance and Lab Buff Revert Request

The most recent balance update that Jagged left up gave this absurd buff to T1 bombers where "first bomber" is relevant again after it was taken away some years ago due its feasibility being too valuable. For those who are playing as Cybran - in ladder especially - their t1 mobile aa is way too trash to hard counter it.

I know it is nice and fun to have "mass bombers" again, but the end effect has been early cheese in many ladder games, which makes the experience dull. This is really frustrating because sometimes the best response is to spam labs to target expanding engineers without land guards (since your opponent likely does not have a land factor), but in some cases it is utterly useless.

A couple weeks ago I watched a Jagged stream where he was shocked at how a flare fought off a Thaam and scout on its own... that just screams "imabalanced."

I appreciate everything Jagged has done over the past years, but I think this most recent change was poorly executed and more of a "I just feel like making t1 bombers very strong" rather an actual need.

That is all.

I don't find your argument about bombers : why is it dull ? Why is it frustrating ? Why do you find this option is too strong ? If the problem is the lack of counter for cybran, there is a buff incoming on MAA.

About the lab stuff : i can guarantee you that 1 flare winning against 1 thaam is less that 10% of the outcome ... It is possible to do (if the ennemy doesn't micro mostly) but very hard to do reliably. I'm not even sure i can find a replay of mine where i actually achieved that. So i would say : that one time it happened on stream is not very representative of most ladder games.

2 labs winning vs a tank is another story (and it was already possible before the patch by the way) ... There has been some discussion about this on aeolus. Tanks having trouble to defend engineers has been brought up as well ...
Overall i find the state of early game is quite fine, aggression is a lot more impactfull than before for sure, but i wouldn't say there is one unbeatable strategy that domiante the meta too hard. Most of the time, if you expect it, you have tool to defend just fine.

There definitely was a need, I remember Petric showing me an open palms game he played against Jagged before the patch. His bomber killed every single Jagged engie and he was still behind, going first bomber was just a meme unless the map was absurdly overtuned for it like White Fire.

The point here was to make early game have more game decisions rather than maximizing land facs through heavily specialized reclaim farming bos.

Also pretty sure there is a buff for cyb maa in the next balance patch according to the pinned forum thread.

I like early bomber, but I find it is quite disheartening for new players.

@Auricocorico made a topic on AA https://forum.faforever.com/topic/1491/few-thoughts-about-t1-aa-and-maa, I think that is relevant here.

I think that for beginning players the standard response to a bomber should be buffed.
At least for my friend, that standard response is static AA.

@ftxcommando said in First Bomber Relevance and Lab Buff Revert Request:

There definitely was a need, I remember Petric showing me an open palms game he played against Jagged before the patch. His bomber killed every single Jagged engie and he was still behind, going first bomber was just a meme unless the map was absurdly overtuned for it like White Fire.

The point here was to make early game have more game decisions rather than maximizing land facs through heavily specialized reclaim farming bos.

Also pretty sure there is a buff for cyb maa in the next balance patch according to the pinned forum thread.

I just do not get why anyone would want to have a game decided in less than 5 minutes; that is so boring and lame...

I think cheese like this is attractive to players who cannot win games by normal means.

Thing is you need cheese of some fashion in order to punish pure greed. The problem is when cheese itself becomes meta, just as greed is a problem when it becomes meta.

"Pure greed?" I had a t1 bomber attacking me while i was still making a hydro on open palms at 2:15. You want to tell me how what you are saying is relevant? I am talking about on 10x10s especially, you can pretty much get a bomber so early that there is no chance to even get units out. The only counter I thought of was to do first bomber yourself...

In fact, it was less then 2 minutes in:

https://i.imgur.com/O6tT6d3.jpg

That is just ridiculous.

Yes, and you generally need to kill 3 or 4 engies in order to make the early expenditure worth it. The exception are maps like White Fire where killing 1 engie could basically lose you the game.

When first bomber is so inefficient you can kill every engie and still be behind, it's not an option to consider. The only thing to be doing when you seriously want to win is land spam and then decide whether 3rd or 4th air is best for you. That is pure greed as the game devolved into who gets those land facs up faster.

The point is putting first bomber at a cost where it can throw your opponent off and result in a game loss when they are incapable of countering cheese while also existing in the head of people that are going for some sandboxed reclaim bo. It can't be so efficient that it pays off after 1 or 2 engie kills on every map, otherwise it becomes standard operating procedure to do it because there is really minimal opportunity cost loss.

Zock balanced it by making it so inefficient it is almost never a viable move, now it got moved to be between Zock change and 2013 first bomber.

Should also say I have no idea if first bomber needs slight adjustments one way or the other, but I definitely do thing it is much healthier for the game to be closer to where it is now than what it used to be post 2016.

The only problem with first bomber currently is cybran MAA which is fixed in beta. If you are any other faction + you split your engies during your BO so not more then 2 can get bombed at a time you should be fine. Just gotta react immediately with MAA + scout and then make labs or 2nd air and a bomber yourself.

Not to say that properly micro'ing your bomber while managing your base is much harder and APM intensive then defending vs first bomber by splitting engies and re-queueing orders.
I think that everything has been said, I am locking this for now as this is more so a rant then a serious thread about an imbalnce.