I was going to make another thread on Wagner, but instead I'll necro this one. I feel like Wagner is still in a bad spot, at least in casts I watch I never, ever, ever see it built. I'm not sure why and don't have a coherent case against Wagner as it is now, but I want to loosely summarize my thoughts on Wagner so we can figure it out.
First, raw stats, taking each T2 tank as reference:
- Versus Blazes: Wagner is 65% more expensive, has 10% more health, twice the DPS, 0.6 less speed and 2 less range. Compared to 2 blazes, Wagner is 20% cheaper, has 55% of their combined health, same DPS.
- Versus Yenzynes: Wagner is 35% more expensive, has 10% less health, 66% more damage, 2 more range and 0.3 less speed.
- Versus Riptides: Wagner is 8% cheaper, has 33% less Hp, 5-10% more DPS, 4 more range and same speed.
Just like OP post wrote, when looking at pure numbers Wagners are the worst tanks in terms of sqrt(DPS * health)/mass ratio by some margin, especially against Blazes. It's not a huge difference, so why are they not being built? I think the answer lies in the fact in them not being good in many scenarios where other hover tanks are.
- First obvious scenario is fighting navy. All other tanks can do that, Wagner cannot. That covers maybe three quarters of all hover tank usage.
- Second scenario is crossing water to get to another landmass and do major raids, e.g. kill a bunch of factories or a smaller land force. Obviously Aeon is strictly best here (hover flak + shields) followed by Seraphim (hover flak), but even between UEF and Cybran Wagner is at a disadvantage, because of worst DPS * health/mass ratio but especially because of abysmal HP making them very vulnerable to air.
- Third scenario is small raids across water, e.g. sending a few Wagners on Roanoke to kill a few mexes. Wagners are good at it and were nerfed specifically to not be OP doing this. This one is an unknown to me. Does anyone build Wagners for this still? How does this compare to Zthuee spam on maps like pizza?
I feel like there is a problem, but don't know what it is. Maybe Wagners are overspecialized and therefore almost never worth building? Maybe it's okay for them to be really, really good for some things, uniquely so, just like Zthuees, Auroras or Ilshavohs, and a nerf was an overreaction? Or is it a case of FAF community not understanding that Wagners are still good and it will eventually rediscover the unit?