Hammerhands?

[Dwarfurious]

It looks like Dwarves were the most recent race so im wondering if they're... unfinished? They have virtually no passive skills to speak of, while most other Elite units are much more interesting. And the Rune Golem/Rune Cannon too, they're consistently inferior to Arblasters or Hammerhands, especiall if you start throwing buffs around. Buffing single units is much less effective than buffing a stack of four (wow goblins are gonna be strong) and i find no practical reason to use them, at all. Even in sieges you have casters to break walls, assuming you ARNT an Earth magic focused dwarf.

[Karol13]

Hammerhands were the best units of Dwarves in MoM too. Golems were good mostly due their "construct" immunities, but in raw battle, Hammerhands were the true top notch.
Cannon was the best siege unit in MoM, but due their inability to engage in melee I avoided them as much as possible.
Apart of Cannon, Dwarves used to have no other shooting unit, so Arbalest are the new unit of WoM and tweaking them is then totally in hands of devs :)

Anyhow, if Hammerhands are the strongest of all Dwarven units, then everything is aligned quite properly in this universe after all.

BTW, I am actually eager to test both Golem and Cannon myself, but I never passed beyond turn 80 while playing for Dwarves yet. :( :( (yep, I am sending autosaves to womfiles ^_^ )

[Haldurson]

I'd like to see Golems getting a reach attack, but other than that, I think they don't need much adjusting. Giving Golems reach would give them a unique purpose on the battlefield, which I think they don't have right now.

[Dwarfurious]

But comparing them to the Faradrax and its just SILLY. They have more HP than Faradrax, thats it. They're slower with less damage output, less hit chance, less armor class, drastically worse saves, even though hammerhands are a level higher. Then Faradrax get a ton of flavor skills to make them even BETTER, + invisability. They have the same strength even! We're talking about DWARVES here Considering their Saves, AC, and Quick Reflexes, Faradrax probably come out tankier than hammerhands. That is CRIMINAL.

Every other unit of this tier has a lot of abilities, but im mostly only comparing it with the 4-squad Faradrax since they'll scale similarly with spells and levels.

[Haldurson]

Well they should get whatever constructs get. From the wiki, that is as follows: "Constructs are immune to poison, mind-effects (such as charm), Negative Energy, Positive Energy, critical hits, sneak attacks, death effects, and gaze attacks. ". Maybe throw in some mundane resistance as well. That should make them into ideal damage sponges.

[Troy]

Originally posted by Haldurson:

I'd like to see Golems getting a reach attack, but other than that, I think they don't need much adjusting. Giving Golems reach would give them a unique purpose on the battlefield, which I think they don't have right now.

Good suggestion.

[Karol13]

I have a hunch that Hammerhands would win against Faradrax... and I am gonna test in little bit in arena :)

That hunch was probably caused by MoM experience :)
As in Arena my Hammerhands lost 4 of 4 fights.. (btw, I would appreciate if Casting could be disabled as an option for Arena)
Faradrax did average damage of 20 (sometimes it was one-digit, but they deliver a lot of criticals... than it's 35+ damage)
Hammerhands miss a lot (AC of Faradrax is just higher compared to Hammerhands)

In MoM Hammerhands could bring down Stag Beatle, Pikeman (with their first strike and armor piercing were Pikemen venerable soldiers) and probably Paladins could cause a problem (as they also had armor piercing, but better attack and defense compared to Pikemen).
Actually Hammerhands did not have trouble with invisible units (Stalkers - mid unit of Dark Elves rarely damaged Hammerhands before they were smashed into invisible smithereens during counterattacks) also Air Elemental with it's mundane weapon immunity did not often win against HH.
Many liked shooting units, but when you stacked 8 HHs into a city, even army of nightmares, pegasi, and even air ships needed spell support to take such city. And with their exceptional resistance they could be compared to Paladins (who have true magic immunity)

What we should take in account is: that Dwarves in MoM were VIP race (one had to pay 3 picks from total of 11 to start on Myrran) and the specialty of Dwarves were melee units... (well, Beastmen had their Minotaurs and Trolls their War Mammoths ... true that, but HHs had 6 units in one stack, so each level their HP + DMG was multiplied by 6, not by 2, like in case of Minotaurs and War Mammoths, not to mention that the latter two had poor resistance and units like Demon Lord "ate" them alive first four rounds... while the same Demon Lord against Ultra-Elite HHs would end like: http://youtu.be/t3VUzXusOGQ (needless to say who would be who...)

Reach attack: many mediocre units have reach attack.. even pointy sticks, and tier 1 spearmen...huge Golem should have... if nothing else, the golem can take one spearmen in each arm and that would technically make him reach-weapon-positive.

[Graye]

Originally posted by Troy_Costisick:

Originally posted by Haldurson:

I'd like to see Golems getting a reach attack, but other than that, I think they don't need much adjusting. Giving Golems reach would give them a unique purpose on the battlefield, which I think they don't have right now.

Good suggestion.

Aye. The golem would be quite good with the ability to attack flying units. coupled with the lack of ranged dwarf units.. it wouldn't OP them, and would give additional utility.

[Dwarfurious]

Originally posted by Karol13:

I have a hunch that Hammerhands would win against Faradrax... and I am gonna test in little bit in arena :)

I tried but the AI just cast spells, cant disable them to find out straight up. Statistically the Faradrax probably wins, better chance to hit, harder ot hit, higher crit chance. Even still, hes got so much useful stuff that i assume they forgot to give hammerhands their Perks.

As for the Construct, what if he could throw units? Throw friendly units into battle, throw enemy units away.

[Aaron Ethridge]

This is a good post. Thanks for starting it Dwarfurious. :)

Needless to say we're still balancing and we need as much feedback as we can get. Can you give us a rundown (including what you've already mentioned) on what you think of each of the dwarvish units. What do you feel can/should be done to beef them up.

Obviously guys, the more opinions we get the better. So, please, feel free to jump in. Personally I'm going to start a dwarf focused game (not running around grabbing as many races as possible, as I usually do) and see how I feel they stack up at the moment.

Not everything can be tested head to head in the arena, but hammerhands loosing to Faradrax four out of four times merits a look.

Thanks again for starting this post. We need feedback like this.

One other thing: We have a Race & Unit balance thread on the WI forums. You guys may want to weigh in there as well. You can find it here:

http://forum.wastelands-interactive.com/showthread.php?11365-Race-amp-Unit-Balance-Thread

[Dwarfurious]

Before i do, i'd like to point out that i've been know to be 'bias' towards Dwarves
I havnt finished a game, i keep starting over and trying things but i havnt played as elves so far, however at a quick glance..
Elves get Druids very early on, who have ACID ARROW, that spell is so powerful, easily the best Arrow spell. I usually roll earth magic so when im starting out i go into combat and just acid arrow stuff to death, druids can do that on their own and thats insane.

Secondly, Dwarves start the game with an engineer and a defender, that means only one combat unit and they're both slow.I dont like starting with an engineer before i even have a city to build roads too. So they start with a real weak army thats also slow, bad for scouting or taking an early town (which i find to be important)

Third... Orcs have it pretty good, the Raider's double attack early game makes battles much easier and usually requires less healing. Perfect for taking early towns.

Again i only specifically brought up Hammerhands because they seem to be the only advance unit with NOTHING special about them, no unique perks! And THEN because the Faradrax seemed statistically better and they're the only other four figure unit in that range. I feel like Hammerhands atm would lose to any of the other units.

Playing as Dwarves, i felt very range-centric. Warpriests zapping or blessing my arbalasters for sniping, and my runecasters with flame arrows, it was a lot of range.

Hammerhands, as Dwarves, could probably use some will/fortitude buffs, natural magic immunity, or armor piercing since they're using hammers. Cant really find an Earth spell they might be able to cast that wouldnt be OP or is already done. Ironskin too strong. Merge sounds like a cool ability, a Dwarven teleport. If they're gonna be 2 speed with no magic, they should at least beat up whatever they find :P

[Haldurson]

Originally posted by Dwarfurious:

Before i do, i'd like to point out that i've been know to be 'bias' towards Dwarves :andmyaxe:

Well your secret is safe with me lol. I actually also favor dwarves a bit -- my Steam name stems from my very first Everquest character to get up in levels, way back when Kunark launched. He was a dwarven cleric named Haldur, and his name was supposed to be something remeniscent of Balder. At some point I found out that Haldur is a real German name (I really didn't know that when I picked it) and when choosing Haldur as a username, I discovered that I was beaten to it in places. So it evolved into Haldurson.

Originally posted by Dwarfurious:

Secondly, Dwarves start the game with an engineer and a defender, that means only one combat unit and they're both slow.

My first action as dwarves, after moving the units out of the city (Because it's difficult to do while they are in the city) is to delete the engineer unit. He costs more than he's worth, imho.

Originally posted by Dwarfurious:

Again i only specifically brought up Hammerhands because they seem to be the only advance unit with NOTHING special about them, no unique perks!

I haven't done an actual comparison of them to other units, but they do decent damage. That said, because of their speed, they should have something different going for them. (Dwarves are supposed to have strong, if slow units, based on their description, after all). They should be superior to equivalent ranked units for races that are not described as having strong military units. Slow is bad, so they should have something to make up for that on that basis alone, and then something on top of that because they are dwarves. Even an increase in hp and/or damage would be nice.

[Troy]

This is really good feedback, Dwarfurious.

[Dwarfurious]

I go with Dwarfurious since it relays that i am a DWARF, i am ANGRY, dwarves are AWESOME, and its never taken.
I try to use the engineer to scout, find some of those unguarded camps. Its kind of op that you can find an unguarded camp with prisoners who are sometimes Settlers. Its like finding a free city.

The actual comparison is depressing. The hammerhands have 1 fortitude higher and like 40~ hp more, and worse in everything else. Karol13 tested them in arena and hammerhands lost 4/4 fights against Faradrax.

I think the core of the Dwarven strategy is to turtle up. Powerful ranged units that force the enemy to come to us, into our heavy infantry. Hammerhands could use natural mundane-resistance/elemental resistance. Dwarves are often resistant to cold/fire, its basically canon.

That give me an idea! Rune Canon, give it an Elemental Resistance Aura. Its a siege weapon that projects a protective field for allies, it'd give it much more purpose. Also to give it more of a Siege Weapon feel, its attack should be an AoE (explosion) but it attacks a RANDOM enemy (its like a mortar)

I would also suggest... removing Shooting Stars from warpriests. We have enough ranged, let the runecaster do his nuke. Warpriest is heal/buffer/warrior.

[Karol13]

I believe that considering that Dwarves are one of the most slowly growing (population growth) races, despite their production bonuses they really have trouble to build their best units. What is actually ok, even Unhallowed even with best efforts can train first Death Guard around turn 200+. Still, the dwarves gives away that "we have time" feel and "we do not give a nick nolte" way of life.
This kind of "sturdy" but somehow laid back way of existence calls for really fortified elite units. Units, that would underline their fortitude. Their meaty and muscle-like champions.
Lower AC, lower reflexes: OK. But their stubborn minds should also bring exceptionally high mind resistance. Their Fortitude should also be exceptional.
Normally I would think that 40HP bonus compared to other elite units would be enough, but when I think about the fact that Vitality slash Hit Points should the THE strong attribute of their best warriors, they could actually have 150% more HP. (Paladins have healing, Death Guards cast Fireball, Doom Drakes fly and breath fire, if all these bonuses should transpose into HP bonus of Dwarven champions, 40 HP (what is somehow 40% compared to other same tier units... maybe less as most of the others have 120+ HP, only Pharadrax have less than 100) it would not suffice.

So either we make Hammerhands immune to criticals, what could be somehow good start, or we add to their 145HP another 100... with so much of HP, they could then truly overcome hailstorms of arrows, spells, breath weapons, critical hits, backstabs from invisible enemies and whatnot.. they will get hit (low AC is OK IMO) but they will just go on and hammer enemies into the dusty battlefield.

[Dwarfurious]

Dwarves are usually resistant to magic. This is sort of acknowledged in that they have no "spellcasters, so they use runes". But we get a building that gives +8 spell resistance to units already.
It kind of makes me wish we had researches or building upgrades for specific units. Right now it feels like just filling out a city, nothing unique about them except placement on the map.
I think they'd lose against paladins and death guards and doom drakes BUT having four in a group really scales them with levels/buffs so im okay with that since having 1 or 2 or 4 units in a squad can have so much impact depending on so many things.