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Undead Army


DarcReaver

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Soo... why is it still possible to keep recasting the spell even without allied entities nearby?

Making 4x Skeletons worth 200 power with 40% more effective health than a Harvester (660x1,5x4= 3.960, Level 3 harvester has 2800) for 30 seconds and 100 power is pretty broken. The issue isn't the spell itself but the fact that you can keep re-using it over and over again. It doesn't fit the "risk" element of Shadow because once cast it can be recast regardless becuase the skeleton corpses leave enough to keep using it. AoE and CC help, but the skeletons last 20 seconds, and due to their massive health there are no t2 damage spells capable of killing them, even a Wildfire requires them to stand in the flames for like 10 seconds and you can't hit them all. Same with Lava field, which can't deal more than 2640 damage, so you need at least 240 power to kill the skeletons. for that price the spell can be recast a 2nd time. Overall the spell is abuse and has no counterplay.

Should be one of the first cards to be fixed.

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6 minutes ago, DarcReaver said:

 Overall the spell is abuse and has no counterplay.

Hurricane, oink, coldsnap, knight of chaos...it's only annoying for pure fire, maybe bandits - but not really because nobody above midranks really plays it, definetly a wasted deckslot unless you know you encounter a deck without crowd control.

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2 minutes ago, SunWu II. said:

Hurricane, oink, coldsnap, knight of chaos...it's only annoying for pure fire, maybe bandits - but not really because nobody above midranks really plays it, definetly a wasted deckslot unless you know you encounter a deck without crowd control.

Doesn't excuse a design issue of the card itself.

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1 minute ago, DarcReaver said:

Doesn't excuse a design issue of the card itself.

I don't know, it fits the shadow theme really well, i think. You got skeletons coming out of the earth surprisingly like in a zombie apocalypse...doesn't get more shadow than that. There's a little risk factor because the skeletons will definetly die, so you have to make use of them in a certain amount of time. I see it as a pve card, anyway, where it's useful and fun to use in my opinion. For example if your offense just failed you spawn the undead army as a shield before the enemy base overruns your own base. Or you keep ,,corpse presence'' to soak up for an arriving shadow phoenix...nothing OP in any way.

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14 minutes ago, SunWu II. said:

I don't know, it fits the shadow theme really well, i think. You got skeletons coming out of the earth surprisingly like in a zombie apocalypse...doesn't get more shadow than that. There's a little risk factor because the skeletons will definetly die, so you have to make use of them in a certain amount of time. I see it as a pve card, anyway, where it's useful and fun to use in my opinion. For example if your offense just failed you spawn the undead army as a shield before the enemy base overruns your own base. Or you keep ,,corpse presence'' to soak up for an arriving shadow phoenix...nothing OP in any way.

You never used it, right?

Right now it's like this:

step 1) You create some corpses near a Power Well/monument
step 2) you cast Undead Army
step 3) the Skeleton Warriors deal damage to a structure, or summoned units. Practically immune to all direct damage except for CC
step 4) the Skeleton Warriors die
step 5) the Skeleton Warriors can be revived a 2nd time without allied entities nearby (That means: even if there is no other shadow unit is present they will still revive)
step 6) the Skeletons die again
step 7) the Skeletons can be revived a 3rd time, same as step 5)

Step 4-7 can be redone until the card charges on Undead army are gone, because the skeletons last 30 secs and the card recharge is only 20 seconds. And usually 2 undead army casts are enough to destroy a monument + 2 powerwells. If CC is used this requires 3 repetitions. And using units to defend is not useful because Skeletons have 4k HP on Upgrade 3.


Of course you can use a CC on them but a) this will cost you card charges and b) allows shadow to create a 2nd attack somewhere else where they don't have to fear CC. Frenzy Forsaken + nc + shadow mages, or a harvy that can't be oinked... etc If youdon't permantly CC them they will eventually destroy the affected base.

So yes, this is a Problem. It's no risk at all. And it's abuseable in pvp. The issue isn't the effect of the Card (rise dead units) - that's fine. The issue is that this can be recast infinitely and independant of other nearby shadow units.
This is like Shadow could keep re-summoning a phoenix with full hp/damage out of its own corpse when hitting a building instead of enemy units.

Edited by DarcReaver
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I'm not stopping you from using it. You will face 75-80% of oponents who have either coldsnap + building repairs or oink and hurricane, though. Against those players you won't destroy anything by using undead army if you aren't playing tremendously better than them. Each time you use undead army and they counter it with one cc, they get a 30-50 power advantage...yeah you make some damage, but good players still keep an advantage by well timed repairs. The disadvantages stack up and you lose because of this card... And against pure fire and bandits you rather use harvy wich is much more reliable (and also useful against other decks unlike undead army).

Edited by SunWu II.
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The spell costs 100 Power or 90 at U3. Skeleton Warriors last 20 seconds or 30 seconds on U2 and U3. Considering only 2 squads can attack a single building at any given time and with Skeleton Warriors dealing 660 damage per 20 seconds, and considering we have the spell upgraded to the max - with one cast they will deal up to 660*1.5*2=1980 damage (a bit less since their animation already takes Unholy Armour into account and will start ticking their life away) - which essentially means they CAN'T destroy a Well nor a Monument in one go. They can do substantial damage, but it's not a big problem - every normal PvP deck has a way of either slowing them down or CC'ing them completely and rendering them useless.

As said, Nature counters this fully and with a nice Power advantage too. What is more, Shadow players want to always apply presure - at least in most cases with standard decks - because defending as Shadow isn't very easy due to lack of CC, which means that either the attacker will send some units to accompany the Skeleton Warriors which inherently costs quite a lot of power and thus prevent further recasting of Undead Army, or will attack a different spot to split the pressure.

You can't, however, expect the enemy to just chill out and take it - 100 Power in PvP is a lot and any skilled player will attack you as soon as you cast, unless they focus on building up an army in which case your Skeleton Warriors won't do much damage either. Recasting 3 times is highly improbable since no senseful player will let you get away with it without applying pressure back or building such a defense force that your spell is useless and a waste of Power.

Imo the best use this card has is to finish off a damaged base after a failed attack. I don't think it's OP in any way except that it doesn't need allied ground presence, but it's by design one of its stronger sides.

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Sure, hurricane them or Coldsnap them - while doing that the Shadow can just send 2 night crawlers to another base and destroy a powerwell while the CC is on cooldown. And even then having to use Kobold Trick and Hurricane is 105 power while undead army costs 100. Not a big difference, but one player uses 2 card charges vs. one.

For Cold Snap + Kobold it's 130 vs. 100 power. So non-nature disadvantage is even higher.

The easiest fix to this is to not allow cards to be played next to the summoned Skeletons, just like any other card, i.e. Corsair summons or Harvester/Lost Reaver summons.
If you can counter the spell by killing all "real" units around the summoned army the card effect is fine, but like this it's just retarded.

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Coldsnap - 80
Oink - 55
Hurricane -70
Root - 60
Undead Army - 100
 

With a splitpush 2 Nightcrawlers that's another 120 Power at which point you can expect some measures to be taken, not considering the time it takes the Nightcrawlers to get anywhere, which is plenty to get some Power and make undazed units or recharge CC. Undead Army cost is simply too great to balance out its strengths

Edited by anonyme0273
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I would go more in detail about why all our calculations so far aren't on point, for example: a undead army player would usualy motivate one of them, buffing the other three.

But there's simply the fact that i've seen hundreds of pure shadow games of really, really good players. None of them used it and i think even them couldn't make regular use of it against a frost or nature splash.

Edited by SunWu II.
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25 minutes ago, SunWu II. said:

I would go more in detail about why all our calculations so far aren't on point, for example: a undead army player would usualy motivate one of them, buffing the other three.

But there's simply the fact that i've seen hundreds of pure shadow games of really, really good players. None of them used it and i think even them couldn't make regular use of it against a frost or nature splash.

and alright we can do a proper calculation based on your assumptions:

Shadow: Undead Army (100 power), motivate (25 power) for a +125% damage increase (-25% from 1 missing skeleton but the other 3 get +150%), roughly double damage
Nature/Frost: Kobold Trick (50 power), Cold Snap (75 power) = 125 power. So same power, and will remove half the damage (15 second freeze).

total damage on buildings: 600x 1,125 (50% of 2,25) = 675 damage on a well/monument. Since it'll be spread on multiple buiildings you need multiple kobolds to repair the building.

In total = 2 Kobold Card charges + cold snap charge - 50 more power spent than Shadow and 3 card charges for 1. Which already is 50% of the next Army. Depending on your void level or void manipulation for Shadow you can also do a lot of stuff to keep casting it aswell if you need to.
If there's CC involved I wouldn't apply motivate and save the 25 power though. Not worth it. Instead frost will have to repair/cc for more power than Shadow needs to summon the army.

But completely independant of numbers. It's just a stupid and broken mechanic.

It's just like you have a weapon in Counterstrike that can automatically aim for the head without the player need to aim - but deals lower damage than other guns with headshots. Nobody would argue that this is fine just because the AK 47 and M4 deal more damage with a headshot so pro's who hit with them will use them instead.

If this seems to be impractical for pro Shadow players doesn't bother me at all tbh. If there are unhealthy game mechanics this allows for abuse. all other summoned units cannot play out cards next to them either. And that's for a good reason to prevent this.

Edited by DarcReaver
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It's not totally out of nowhere that these units spawn - as long as you are playing against a Shadow player you have to mind the corpses around the map, either for Corpse Explosions or Undead Army, or Shadow Phoenixes etc. It's not like a SHadow user can just spawm units around the map as they please. Also, dead bodies last ~20 seconds iirc, so in that timeframe just be careful, after that you can rest easy.

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1 minute ago, anonyme0273 said:

It's not totally out of nowhere that these units spawn - as long as you are playing against a Shadow player you have to mind the corpses around the map, either for Corpse Explosions or Undead Army, or Shadow Phoenixes etc. It's not like a SHadow user can just spawm units around the map as they please. Also, dead bodies last ~20 seconds iirc, so in that timeframe just be careful, after that you can rest easy.

So how exactly do you mind or avoid corpses next to your base momuments or power wells?
I guess I just should move the monuments away from the corpses to avoid Undead Army to be cast, right?

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I see you like CSGO, but no need to get salty here.

IF you fight next to your monument and the opponent has enough Power to cast Undead Army then you probably have the means to reply instantly by having a sudden 100 extra Power. IF the fight has finished, then you probably still have some units at your base while all his units are dead. In the second case, there are still corpses, so just don't move your army away and be way. Not a big deal or anything complex. Does it make sense to you? Some kind of awareness and expecting the next move? If you keep up your garbage attitude I ain't gonna bother with this shit.

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27 minutes ago, anonyme0273 said:

I see you like CSGO, but no need to get salty here.

IF you fight next to your monument and the opponent has enough Power to cast Undead Army then you probably have the means to reply instantly by having a sudden 100 extra Power. IF the fight has finished, then you probably still have some units at your base while all his units are dead. In the second case, there are still corpses, so just don't move your army away and be way. Not a big deal or anything complex. Does it make sense to you? Some kind of awareness and expecting the next move? If you keep up your garbage attitude I ain't gonna bother with this shit.

I don't like CSGO at all, just applying the weird logic applied by other people than me in this thread.

Furthermore I just asked a legit question how to move my buildings away to prevent undead army to affect my buildings. I'm not salty in the slightest.

So, according to your answer I am doomed to wait for 20 seconds until the corpses disappear, while the enemy can use the time and attack another powerwell while I'm waiting for the bone recycling: round two. Even if this does not happen I waste time to apply counter pressure. And if I use my units away for a counter attack he can re-use the ability without another shadow unit nearby.

And even then, how does a combination of, let's say 2 master archers (100 power) help against 4k skeleton hitpoints? Ofc you can use master archer + Frost mage, or 2 frost mages, but this is more power for you than for Shadow, on the other hand at least one Frost Mage will eventually die from the Skeleton M damage. Most units that are good at defending/have CC or knockback suck at attacking (i.e. Spirit Hunters, Defenders, Frost Mages, Firesworn, Dryads etc.), so counter attacks are hard to do with units like that, making your spent power useless to apply pressure.

In the worst case I loose a Frost mage, the master archer and have to repair a well with a Kobold trick, which is 160 power in total. 1 free night crawler for shadow to go hunt another powerwell.

Once again I'm questioning the game mechanic of summoning units out of nowhere next to an enemy base.
If this is fine then why isn't it allowed for i.e. flying units to spawn ground units or use CC spells? It's essentially a similar context, so why do you keep arguing that undead army is intended and fine to be this way and not a bug or oversight by the dev team that wasn't fixed in the past?

Edited by DarcReaver
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If you have Kobold's Trick you probably have Coldsnap too - in that case it's better to Coldsnap the Skeleton Army and fix your well, you get 100% of the power spent on repairs into your Void Pool rather than 90% when using spells or units. This means you can then get two Frost Mages which, when placed correctly, should delay the Skeleton Army for long enough that they die on their own. Of course you can expect a split push after this in which case you either rush to attack yourself or get 1 War Eagle as Pure Frost, an Enforcer as Fire, Forsaken, Nox Trooper or another Nightcrawler as Shadow or the T2 spearman thingy as Nature. Every deck can handle a bunch of small units in T2 even if it's just one L unit plowing through them to stall for time, CC'ing them or trying to kill them. As  @SunWu II. said though, not many people play this, if any at all, and after a long stretched fight hardly anyone will have the Power to cast a 100 Power spell AND summon 2 Nightcrawlers. As a defender, you are in a good spot in all cases no matter with what deck, unless you are really behind with Power wells, in which case you'd probably lose the game against a good player anyway.

Mind that it's the only card that uses this mechanic and it's not even that popular, going into such depths as we are here is imo unnecessary, but I think there is no need to rework the card, as it's not that strong as it seems.

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Like I said before, the card effect itself is fine and you can handle it with CC, but that doesn't make the spell less lame from a gameplay mechanic. Bone recycling without any limit or counterplay is lame. The absolute strength of this card is secondary.

Aside, I doubt that a single Enforce will destroy 3-4 S/M units with ~3.2-4k hp and 1.4k damage, within a 30sec time frame. And even a War eagle will not even kill 1 Skeleton with the screech, and maybe kill 1 skeleton squad during hte ability duration. Out of your other mentions only Forsaken and Ghostspears are proper counters. But even then. Ghost speards deal ~1.250 dmg against S units for 80 power. So a single ghost spear won't kill more than 1 skeleton warrior during its duration of 30 seconds. But this doesn't really matter that much because the issue is the recasting without requirements, not the strength of the Skeleton Warriors.

 

Edited by DarcReaver
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Undead Army isn't really worth the slot for the reasons already stated above. In a lot of matchups it will almost always be wasted power. Corpse Explosion would be a much better use of a deckslot if you can afford one in a pure shadow deck.

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7 minutes ago, Navarr said:

Undead Army isn't really worth the slot for the reasons already stated above. In a lot of matchups it will almost always be wasted power. Corpse Explosion would be a much better use of a deckslot if you can afford one in a pure shadow deck.

Quit this "the card isn't worth a deckslot" nonsense. I already stated multiple times that it's not about the absolute stats strength of the card.

It's about the fact that it can be recast without nearby allied entities/ground units.

Leading to annoying, permanent skeletons throughout the game at one of your bases without any way to stop it from recasting because there is no recast requirement except for power. And you can't tell me it's not possible to get 100 power from void+ 5 or 6 powerwells to keep casting it after the 6th or 7th game minute.

Just fix the card by not allowing a recast without a ground unit nearby and it's fine.

Edited by DarcReaver
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31 minutes ago, Navarr said:

You have a lot of options to prevent your opponent from wasting power, if that's what you want to do. You can for example attack him so he needs to spend power on defending. 

Ah fuck it, I'm giving up. It's just a waste of time to argue here. the card is perfectly fine, although it breaks the fact that Spells can only be cast nearby allied ground entities. But it's np since the card is weak anyways. It's always good to know it's better to have broken abilities and units available for usage if you need them! :kappa:

I really hope your car sales dealer will advise you the same when you tell him to fix your car's broken engine. "dude where is the problem? Just start driving a Porsche instead, it's engine is way better. Why would you want to keep driving a Chrysler? It sucks anyways, has bad handling and looks ugly. Only thing that it behaves better on crashes,But no decent driver does crashes anyways so there's no point to keep it for that reason". Or "no dude, if your car is broken just use the bus instead, it's better anyways." I'd be eager to watch how that discussion would turn out. 

Edited by DarcReaver
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I think the main reason why you can cast undead army without ground units is because it is supposed to be played after a fight. You pay an amount of energy and be able to keep up the pressure with it. There's also the fact that those skeletons don't count as ground presents. Some other units like the treespirit of Viridya or the twilight crawlers of this one t2 twilight tower gives ground presents.

Another interesting point is that you can motivate the skeletons without having ground units nearby but on the other hand you can't nasty them. So I guess this shows that motivate could also be played everywhere on the map without a ground unit nearby (if it would be possible to play that card without a unit :D) just like undead army.

Difficult to say if it's a bug but I don't think so because it's intention is to play that card after a fight. Though you could say the same about corpse explosion... However I actually think it would have been fixed if it wasn't intended. After all the mentioned strategy was well known and also a pain for fire and shadow players back then.

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38 minutes ago, Chibiterasu said:

Difficult to say if it's a bug but I don't think so because it's intention is to play that card after a fight.

They labeled it as ,,arcane'' so i guess it was supposed to be that way. Wasn't there only one card that broke the arcane/spell rule (arcanes being usable without ground presence)? I don't remember wich it was.

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15 hours ago, SunWu II. said:

They labeled it as ,,arcane'' so i guess it was supposed to be that way. Wasn't there only one card that broke the arcane/spell rule (arcanes being usable without ground presence)? I don't remember wich it was.

Nether Warp is arcane but can only be played with ground units nearby. Maybe that's the card you had in mind.

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On 10/17/2018 at 4:43 AM, SunWu II. said:

They labeled it as ,,arcane'' so i guess it was supposed to be that way. Wasn't there only one card that broke the arcane/spell rule (arcanes being usable without ground presence)? I don't remember wich it was.

Well even if it's intended to be used anywhere on the map, I doubt that the "corpse recycling" is intended (re-use the corpses of the 'dead' skeletons over and over again). Like stated before the effect itself is fine, but the way it is is just annoying, lame, unfun. I can't imagine the card is meant to be used on the same area with the same corpses dying and raising again and again.

Edited by DarcReaver
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