Just beat nightmare, so here is my balance feedback

[Auron]

I havent extensively used or tested each and every unit and ability so I'll mark the stuff that I havent used enough.

Also I'm not an expert at this game. Like not even close. so take this with a grain a salt.

Units:
Soldier: Its pretty good now after the buff. really strong in the early game but definitely not broken.

Cultist: I get these are supposed to be zerglings, but they seem a bit overcosted. Lower the population cost to 0.5 per cultist and maybe a slight resource cost reduction.

Archer: No changes. Maybe a *slight* range increase?

Pikemen: L nerfs in the recent patch. Just unnerf them. Its not like they were actually busted before. Or at the very least revert the stat changes and keep the food cost.

Healer Lady: increase its range a bit to keep it a safer distance away from the enemy.

Rogue: L nerfs in the recent patch. Give them most of their damage back please.

Sentinel: idk seems fine?

Arbalest: Fine. its good

Hunter: Good, no changes

Order Knight: Seems ok, I honestly havent used them enough to get a good enough feel for them. But they suffer the same problem as all other melee units in this game: The damn Banelings.

Flamer Siege Weapon: I dont use these enough to have an opinion

Impaler: This thing is hype

Catapult: This thing is not hype. Increase its shred. BY A LOT.

Skill Tree

Melee Horror Resistance: why tf would I take this... melee units usually arent your main dps. so honestly i dont care if they are horrified. Also being emboldened makes units resist horror anyways so.... Am I missing something here???

Instead of horror resistance, why not make it so that if a unit would be horrified (even if they are emboldened or already horrified) they have a chance of going into an adrenaline rush and gain increased move speed and attack speed for 2-3s?

Melee DPS: this is fine

Melee HP: Maybe give the units a flat bonus to armor as well? would provide a nice boost for melee units without armor like cultists and rogues.

Melee Dash (capstone): (I havent used this before btw). Most enemies are melee or are fairly short range. I dont think it really matters that my units can close the distance faster.
Also, I'd rather have my melee guys stick a bit closer to my rangers anyways to better act as body guards.
What if the dash gave the unit a small chance to apply a stun on the first few attack after the dash?

Melee Ignores Damage (capstone): 20% chance to ignore damage is pretty nice. but pretty boring for a capstone ngl. Also doesnt really solve the issue of the banelings. since I dont think explosions are melee.

Melee Horror Capstone: (never used this) just make all melee guys immune to the negative effects if horror. and maybe make it so that they get an adrenaline rush if they get a kill while horrified.



Ranged Eyesight: I think the DPS skill is always better since faster kills = faster map clearing. I can see a reason why this skill exists, since you can stack more ranged units on defense since more of them can shoot. But you hardly ever have so many units that this is a real issue I think. Maybe make the bonus much larger so it feels more impactful on death nights.

Ranged DPS: No changes

Ranged Emboldenment: (Never used this one btw) why? Pretty sure the dps skill provides more damage than being emboldened, garrisoned units dont care about horror, and melee untis should be the ones soaking all the horror anyways.

What if the skill also granted additional shred to emboldened ranged units?

Ranged Tower DPS (Capstone): pretty nice. No changes.

Ranged fire arrows(capstone): idk how large the aoe of this is. but if its a decent aoe I guess its fine? I usually use bellow towers to deal with the swarms on death nights so dont think this really provides enough value.

Invisible ranged units(capstone): no idea. never used it



Siege movement speed: (never used it) I can see this being usefull if you want to use siege weapons to help clear the map, but its just not that good compared to increased AOE. and when you are defending the death nights, guess what? you siege units are probably standing still, so you arent getting any value.

Siege knockback: well crushers seem to ignore all knockback so this is trash by default. if siege weapons could actually knock back crushers meaningfully then this would be pretty decent I think.

Siege AOE: basically just more DPS since more AOE = more DPS. the only viable skill for siege imo

Siege martydom (capstone): (never used it) why tf would I use this. Siege units are hella expensive and the last thing I want is for them to die. And you're telling me they need to die for this to happen? Nah.

Would be cool if it also provided "Immortality Protocol" from starcraft 2. Where you can pay a small fee to rebuild the siege weapon in the battlefield after it is destroyed.

Siege Stun (capstone): NOW THIS IS A CAPSTONE. THIS IS POWER. THIS IS GAS. plz dont nerf. it would make me the big sad :(((

Siege speed booster: (never used this) why tf would I take this over stun? Why is it an activated ability? why is this the capstone? just why. Would be funny if it was a super dash that knocked nightmares away that are caught in the path.


side note: I would like a nightmare-lite mode. One that lets me pause and revive my hero. I want the enemy density of nightmare, while having the more chill laid back experience by not needing to worry about APM.

[Trevor Drakenor]

agree with most of this, melee is kinda my main dps in most game though, not the kind to hide behind walls, we fight to be worthy of Valhalla!

But truth be told, if a large part of your blessing is not great, then the emboldening on a new day is more than enough. especially when you play order. Horror resist is.... yeah its not great. Not very good even if you dont have embolden either since if you have nightmare fuel, unit with horror resist just cant be healed.

I think I know why they make siege martyrdom and speed booster a thing. This is mostly for people who wants to go flamethrower more than impaler or catapult. Though siege martyrdom feels like you want to flex just how wealthy you are on them nightmares. Speed booster though.... think it is made with the idea that you want to move your entire siege forces from one spot to another. But ehhh... not that great yeah.

I have seen people picking speed up into stun for flame throwers, the APM required to pull what they did is beyond my capabilities. But the result is, the waves can't even move at all, and I'm pretty sure it kept stun locking the waves of giant that spawned. Its powerful, but I could never pull that off. Sure made it easy for my knights to massacre giants though.

[AlexPlaySide]

Massive congrats on beating Nightmare, that's a very legitimate achievement.

We really appreciate you taking the time to write this all out. It's incredibly thorough and I think there's some really good stuff in here.

I'll send this through to the devs and I know there'll love the ideation.

[Hurricane]

Overall we need more skills and skills per unit not unit type...

Game is fun but everyone knows ballista spam is just the most efficient way to play all the factions!

Arb in towers are miles better than the advanced ballista tower too it's way too expensive.

So yeah half the units are redundant same with the buildings.

Changes need to be made but overall the game is solid bar coop being too rushed and short.

[TheSuit]

Flamer siege is just bad

Its range is so short and HP is so small and speed is so slow it makes no sense why they exist.

They need a 2X range increase to compensate a windup time to shoot
And slight speed increase on movement.

Same for catapults, they should work like siege tanks from SC2.
Fast movement but needs to be deployed

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by TheSuit:

Flamer siege is just bad

Its range is so short and HP is so small and speed is so slow it makes no sense why they exist.

They need a 2X range increase to compensate a windup time to shoot
And slight speed increase on movement.

Same for catapults, they should work like siege tanks from SC2.
Fast movement but needs to be deployed

No... they are not attack units they are defense units... so nah... they do well shooting through and over walls.

[Misunderstood Everything Killer]

Everything you said is basically on point. I have so many issues with this game and one of them is a skill tree. I would like to see a changes primarily on siege AoE and Knockback.

I would say right now, siege movespeed is really the only talent you should be picking. Impalers and flamers are amazing at clearing out the map because of the stun with almost 0 threat of losing units (except for the flamers). What 100 arbalest can do, 10 impalers can do it better and move faster with a lot of AoE clearing. Rushing impalers with max movespeed has been a game changer and has helped me complete the 6 million score achievement.

Also flamers are amazing if you are doing a one layer of wall strategy. Flamers plus impalers can permastun Crushers which is very broken. They have a wide aoe cone which means they also kill everything around the target, stunning them in the process. I have seen a 10 flamers + 10 impalers +40 arbalest hold one fissure in the final Stand on the hardest difficulty and max hardships.

On another note, I really do think this game lacks towers and tower importance. They unfortunately just suck. Only good one is probably Bellow tower and you need around 4-5 to be able to get nightmares off your walls. Some buffs to ballista and grand ballista would be great because they are really not worth their value. Maybe make them very expensive but worth the money sink.