Ironhide vs. Gob-o-bots

[need.more.brain]

Ok, so what's the point of Gob-o-bots? I don't really see their role in this game. Orks or Ironhides are nice melee tanks. Why would I add in Gob-o-bots? Ironhides just do an awesome job of blocking away enemy melee troops. I combine these with imps as damage dealers for focus fire. Plus, Ironhide tech is right on the road with training hall and ogre tech while gob-o-bot tech is a dead end. So if anyone could explain me what unit combinations gob-o-bots are synergizing with I'd be thankful.

[The_Technomancer]

Gob-o-bots have AoE attacks, they're my main frontline clearers.

[Ydyp]

Originally posted by The_Technomancer:

Gob-o-bots have AoE attacks, they're my main frontline clearers.

With the exception you want to have at least 1-2 ironhides there as well, the Gob-o-bots is a bit more fragile but as you said great aoe dps.

[Tenshin51]

I prefer Gob-o-bots for damage or even the normal goblins. Thalya can tank on her own w/ few Naga healing her. Especially when I unlock Titans Steel hides are useless due to low damage.

[SnugSnug]

Gobo bots, can be healed by naga and do superior damage compared to Ork/ironhide. When they die, they revert to normal goblins that don't attact aggro unless alone and continue to deal damage well, but are vunerable to aoe nuke attacks (mages) and again can be healed by naga which keeps them in the fight longer.

They also move alot faster than ork/ironhide making them good for trap building as they complete their needs faster so spend more time working without player intervention.

I tend to run a couple of gobos in support of either ork/ironhide/spiderdeamon from the beginning of most maps, and upgrade to gobobots when the ai starts using higher ranked mages. The net upgrade is often overlooked, given the need for other higher priority research.

[need.more.brain]

Thank you for your replies. I experimented myself on that and they also seem to synergize perfectly with mana shield, making them more beefy. So they unite the tankinessof orcs with insane damage output. Only letdown is the 20 second cd on mana shield. Both techs (mana shield and gob-o-bots) are reasonably cheap and can be achieved well within the first 10 minutes of a game.

[Katitoff]

Originally posted by Ydyp:

Originally posted by The_Technomancer:

Gob-o-bots have AoE attacks, they're my main frontline clearers.

With the exception you want to have at least 1-2 ironhides there as well, the Gob-o-bots is a bit more fragile but as you said great aoe dps.

Mana shield fixes that easily.

[Mike]

Problem with the gobobots (and all kind of meele dps) is that they are way to fragile vs short range aoe dmg most meelemobs/strikes make - Making them far less effective at doing their role vs ranged. Take a cannon tower - Run in an ironhide that takes the dmg while beeing healed and have ranged do it or try the same with an ironhide + meele dps and see the insane difference in heal needs meaning 1/2 the dps needs to be replaced towards healers just to keep the rest alive netting a way big loss in total dps.

Same goesa for the cannons the bombards etc make, way to much aoe to make the meeleranged dps viable!

If the gobobots (+ chamed rogues and to a big degree banshees) would be able to avoid part of the dmg from indirect (when they arent main target) AoE by say 50-75% or around there they would still be able to do their role without becoming completely overpaced by ranged dps.

[Blake Walsh]

I'm off the opinion that Gobobots are an inferior choice for adding damage compared with liches and imps. This is partly because early on Goblins are simply inferior to Orcs for overworld fight, when used before a fight Rage is insanely good as it lets orcs run past armored heroes to kill the squishies (with +50% attack speed) and Orcs do a much better job against pesky Stone Guards and Veterans, a Vet will have a much easier time defeating 2 gobos and 2 orcs, than 4 orcs. Mass orcs always work, mixing in goblins may or may not. Not getting goblins then leads to not having high level goblins to upgrade to gobobots. Given the choice of a lvl1 gobobot or a lvl1 lich, then the lich is a no-brainer, debuffing the enemy with -50% attack speed and dealing crazy good damage once levelled up, in fact that debuff is so good you pretty much want a lich, period.

Gobs also don't seem to do that well against bosses unless extremely well levelled - to be fair there are a lot of creatures that don't including liches - but if the goal is to win a skirmish game this is a point not in favor of gobos. Imps can stay out of range of most bosses attacks and Vampires can heal crazy fast (most bosses are unarmored) and they would be my two units of choice for bulking up my army in anticipation of slaying a boss (that is, if I didn't go mass Arachnid to begin with).

And then, gobos die like nobody's business to area damage, sure, you can add more nagas, but that effectively halves the dps you're getting per population point. Gobs deal good damage, but there are units that deal nearly as much damage and can look after themselves like imps, liches and vampires.

Gobobots can be made to work, but they never feel like they work better than alternatives and the influence cost is really hard to justify relative to alternatives - like it's hard to get Gobobot in favor of Lich which demolishes heroes, and then it's hard to get Gobobot in favor of Vampire which demolishes bosses, and then there are some really nice scrolls for 250 or 350 influence, like upgrade to imp, naga, lich or vampire which will actually make the boss battle easier while gobobot is fairly irrelevant vs bosses, probably the boss will either be one that wrecks both the gobobot and the goblin with aoe, or doesn't target the gobobot at all and the bots aoe damage isn irrelevant against 3 out of 4 bosses: so you may as well leave goblins as goblins vs the boss.

[need.more.brain]

I ditched robos now completely. As Blake Walsh states, Imps and Orks work the best for me. Just pile up a wall of 3-4 orks, maybe add a naga and snipe the soft targets with Imps and Liches... Lichs... (?) from the back. Also mana shield is a must have. Sometimes I tend to get one or two goblins as workers to spam trap construction as they can help keep those pesky heroes away while running on the overworld.. most of the times I just go for Town Portal...