Are Snakes OP?

[Wolf66]

So I've played over 20 hours of this game, most of it in ranked matches. I believe that the only times I've gone up against snakes in an even matchup (usually 6-9 tier 1 units and two tier 2 units mirrored) and won was when I got the drop with chameleons. It is my experience that Snakes are overpowered and misused in their current iteration.

Snakes have venom, which does DOT (damage over time). Seems obvious, but bear with me. Unless I'm mistaken, they fire one shot every second that stacks on top of all previous shots compounded every second until that unit is out of combat for 5 seconds in its own territory. This means that after one second of shooting, they'll do two damage per second, after two seconds the target takes 4 totaling 6, after three it's 6 totaling 12, after four seconds it's 8 dps totaling 20, at 5 seconds it will be 10 dps with 30 total damage, and 6 seconds will kill any tier 2 unit with 12 dps totaling 42 damage. Even without compounding DOT, one shot into any tier1 other than moles will kill it regardless of territory. And to to top it all off, their venom can hit buildings and flying units so it has no weaknesses.

So let’s make a small chart for easy reference
1 sec= 2 dam
2 sec= 6 dam
3 sec= 12 dam
4 sec= 20 dam
5 sec= 30 dam
6 sec= 42 dam

Teeth collectors are also rather tanky. Coming in with 35 health, they are second only to Chameleons when it comes to taking damage at tier 2. It seems to me like a unit that does damage over time is meant to fill a hit and run role that requires intensive micro. However, it has a significant health pool that makes micro irrelevant because you can sit there and take significant punishment.

This gets further compounded by the fact that they have a respectable range. 4 tiles isn't a whole lot, but deviating from that range is noteworthy and what few units that do have trates to rebalance them. With the same basic range as everything else in the game and the ability to attack flying units, they rarely have to risk anything to pull out a win. What I mean is all you have to do is poke the snake into range for a fraction of a second then pop back out of their retaliation to do damage. Since the minimum damage you can do before poison stops is 10 (5 seconds out of combat in friendly territory at 2 dps) you’re taking a serious chunk out of any tier 2 units health with minimal risk when your micro is on point.

So let’s look at the snake against its piers shall we? And for the sake of brevity we’ll assume no micro on either side before the target is dead. Let’s start with its worst match, skunks. Skunks do area control really well, but only shine in large battles. The Glorious KSR will do a flat 3 DPS against snek due to the nature of their weapons and have 30 health. The Skunks will die after 5 seconds doing 15 damage, leaving the snake with 20 health left. One snake could kill two skunks back to back and still potentially walk away. Slither away, whatever.

Next up is the Ferret, which you could easily micro for no damage so we will assume fighting begins at 4 tiles with no movement. I understand their damage is somewhat inconsistent, so we’ll assume 10 damage every two seconds with their flat 25 health. In this admittedly contrived situation, the ferret kills the snake in 4 seconds but has already taken 20 damage and nothing will save him from the cold embrace of death one second later.

Third on the list is the Wing demons. Their SMGs do 6 DPS, they fly, and have the lowest defense of any tier 2 at 15 health. A snake will kill a falcon in under 4 seconds, while the falcon needs almost 6. If they came one at a time, one snake could kill two falcons with its poison before dying.

And saving the best for last is snake vs chameleon. The chameleon is a tank with the most defence of any tier 2, 40 health with 8 dps with clubs. This is compounded with the fact that they have stealth, so we’re going to go through two scenarios with the trench gang. The first will take away their stealth their stealth and make them walk. This is useful for a situation where one has to punk a squirrel or something similar before charging a snake because you’ve planned it out just right. While I can’t find an exact quote on movement speed, I believe it is about two tiles every one second. The snake needs about six seconds to kill a chameleon, and with the walk chameleons just can’t pull it off. Now, let’s get to the final tier 2 matchup, one chameleon with stealth versus one snake. Without the walk, it takes 4.5 seconds, 5 if it’s compounded once a second, for a chameleon to get the kill. This will have taken at least half his health and left him with at least 4 poison counters. 8 damage a second for at least 5 seconds, the chameleon will be dead in about 3.

All of those calculations assumed that snakes were used as frontline units trading blows evenly, but they can get even more powerful. Due to their DOT and range, if you pull back snakes and use them to hit and run. They don’t even have to risk themselves to do massive damage to their targets. So, with proper micro management, they can become about twice as powerful where other units gain a fraction the effectiveness for the same amount of effort. For example, 4 doses of venom is enough to kill a turret, so get a pair to spend two seconds attacking it and it’s done in exchange for 12 damage. There are all sorts of other situations you can get snakes into where they trade stupidly well without a single casualty due to their large health pools and good micro.

In summary, the snakes have the strengths of a unit designed to hit and run with the strengths of a tank. There is nothing short of tier 3 they can’t fight 1 on 1 and do well against and even give problems to the tier 3 units in mass. They have no weaknesses that aren’t tactics you could use against any other army and do well with. You can’t beat them unless you’ve got the economy in place to field a massively larger force to overwhelm them.

So let me re-ask the question, are snakes over powered?

[Artarian]

Honestly, I feel like snakes themselves are not overpowered, my issue with them is the fact that they can stack the poison on buildings which is basically gg since you can't even try save them with pidgeons. Plus, no cap on it either as far as i can tell makes them snowball way too hard imo (highest I've gotten is 17 stacks, literally no saving that Boar).

[ClassicMetal]

This was a quality assessment! Personally I've used snakes quite a bit recently, mostly because they're the only non-T3 units that can keep T3's in check, and they still seem like quite solid units generally too. I think without good micro snakes can take bad trades vs armies with lots of T1 though.

I haven't noticed concern for OP snakes before but after this writeup I'll hold an eye open. It seems quite possible for the meta to shift towards snakes. Now that the devs have separated the sp and mp unit stats balancing can possibly be made faster. So if larger problems arise nerfs/buffs can be made easily.

[shooflypi]

While I agree that snakes are a touch on the strong side, they aren't op. While you did a great job evaluating their strengths, you missed some of their weaknesses. As their damage is a ramping DoT, they have low alpha damage (burst). This is important because the faster you kill a unit, the sooner it stops doing damage to you. Their other weakness is they struggle more against large t1 balls as much of their damage is wasted by overstacking on t1s (this problem becomes even more apparent when you have multiple snake warrens). Yes you can try to micro your snakes to constantly be attacking different units but you can only do so much with that and requires constant attention- meaning you won't be able to micro anything else.

While snakes are probably the strongest t2, I am not sure if they need a nerf, or the other t2 need to be brought up to that level

[COMRADE]

Snakes are an incredibly strong unit for sure, but I’ve never really had much of a problem with them if I counter with a squirrel ball supported by winged demons. The snake venom is wasted on the squirrels while the massive demon dps shreds them.

[ANANA]

Originally posted by shooflypi:

While I agree that snakes are a touch on the strong side, they aren't op. While you did a great job evaluating their strengths, you missed some of their weaknesses. As their damage is a ramping DoT, they have low alpha damage (burst). This is important because the faster you kill a unit, the sooner it stops doing damage to you. Their other weakness is they struggle more against large t1 balls as much of their damage is wasted by overstacking on t1s (this problem becomes even more apparent when you have multiple snake warrens). Yes you can try to micro your snakes to constantly be attacking different units but you can only do so much with that and requires constant attention- meaning you won't be able to micro anything else.

While snakes are probably the strongest t2, I am not sure if they need a nerf, or the other t2 need to be brought up to that level

100% agree with that.

T2 units need to be buffed to the snake level imo. Just look at any top level player picks and you'll see most of them run 4-5 T1 in there deck and one or no T2 at all. T2 units just arent attractive enough atm. Of course we still have to wait for the patch to go live because the fox meta may have something to do with that.

[omnipotentantagonist]

My only complaint about snakes is their ability to death swarm buildings. I've absolutely nuked Gristmills with snakes. I think this could be solved with a counter limit for non-defensive structures. Just a thought.

[Chargle Frumtum]

Originally posted by shooflypi:

While I agree that snakes are a touch on the strong side, they aren't op. While you did a great job evaluating their strengths, you missed some of their weaknesses. As their damage is a ramping DoT, they have low alpha damage (burst). This is important because the faster you kill a unit, the sooner it stops doing damage to you. Their other weakness is they struggle more against large t1 balls as much of their damage is wasted by overstacking on t1s (this problem becomes even more apparent when you have multiple snake warrens). Yes you can try to micro your snakes to constantly be attacking different units but you can only do so much with that and requires constant attention- meaning you won't be able to micro anything else.

While snakes are probably the strongest t2, I am not sure if they need a nerf, or the other t2 need to be brought up to that level

Yes Yes Yes. I feel like chamelions are on par with snakes, if anything a tad bit weaker, but the other T2 units are just meh. Skunks are only really useful late game in big battles, and I feel like wing demons are to squishy and die too fast compared to snakes. Ferrets are a weird one because they fill a different role. Maybe increase the speed of their mortar shot so it lands faster?

[Retrolicious]

Man, is this the next unit getting demolished? Just look what u crazy folks did to kasha!

Rip Kasha 2016 - 2017

[pocico]

I haven't had trouble with snakes personally. You can target fire them and they move slowly, so an army with snakes will be less mobile.