Thoughts regarding the Hound

[koh_earl]

Damn the Hound is the best addition to the game thus far.
I loved playing around with the 5 doggies

I do believe that moving forward, every single game (especially higher MMR ones) will incorporate the use of some hounds as chaff, making the chaff wars much more interesting.

Here is a short guide for the people in lobby complaining that the hound sucks

=======================

1) The hound is a bad carry unit
- Stacking mech rage + range on hound can work, but it will win you about as many games as going carry crawlers ( which is very few games indeed)
- Carry fangs work because their DPS is insane when levelled. Levelled fangs can chew through a fortress in seconds. A leveled hound will always have comparatively much lower DPS
- Just like all chaff, levelling them up is usually a mistake (with some exceptions that I will discuss later)

2) The hound is an awesome chaff unit
- Against flame units ( Vulcans/ fire badgers), hounds> fangs> crawler @ tanking.
- Against machine guns ( mustang/ typhoon) Hounds> crawler > fangs
- Against arclight, Hounds > fang > crawler in the early game,( Fangs > hound> crawler late game )

3) The hound is hard countered by tanks. Dont pick hounds as chaff if your opponent starts with tanks!

4) When facing lots of hard hitters like marksmen, Fangs and crawlers perform better than hounds
- Therefore, The hound should never be your only chaff unit.

5) Positioning the hound is key
- I admit that I havent got the hang of this even after hours of testing ( My MMR is only about 1.7K). However, here are some stuff that I found out

A) Hounds > arclights when defending deep crawler flanks. The arclights take way too long to get back to the frontline after dealing with the crawlers, while the hounds will always be useful as late arriving chaff

B) Hounds are better than crawlers at flanking in certain situations, While they take forever to take down even level 1 towers compared to crawlers, They are better than crawlers at being a distraction

- The most common units used to guard flanks are mustangs + crawlers + fangs ( at least at my MMR), which are units that hounds naturally counter. There are quite a few times that my opponents used a combination of these 3 units to counter the flank, only to be steamrolled by teching the armor upgrade

C)The most important tech for the hound is the Armor. If your enemy relies on mustangs/ vulcan as their only chaff clear, they are in for a rude surprise.

D) The second most important tech is range. Be careful when you tech range on your hounds . If they are standing behind your shortranged carry units, they are not doing their job.

- In general, DO NOT tech range if your enemies chaff clear is primarily mustangs / flamers ( because you want your hound to be in the thick of things, soaking up the damage)
- If your enemy has other chaff clear options ( sledges/ wraiths / tarantulas etc), tech range so that your crawlers and fangs go in front of your hounds. This gives time for your hounds to kill their crawlers/fangs, before becoming the second line of chaff.

- Try to position your hounds opposite to the carry units they counter ( flamers + mustangs)

- Vertical hounds are marginally better than horizontal hounds for the purposes of chaff tanking ( Although it looks real weird) unless you are against rockets

- You cant position your hounds in such a way that some hounds survives a sentry missle ( unlike crawlers)

- I havent found much success with the fire extinguisher tech unfortunately, i still keep it equipped though, because its cool as hell

[നരസിംഹം]

Thanks a lot for this great summary - I can completely confirm this so far.
GLHF to all!

[HolgFromHell]

I believe in combination with armor you need to level up hounds, don't you?

[Hotklou]

Originally posted by HolgFromHell:

I believe in combination with armor you need to level up hounds, don't you?

Yes. Currently though the hound levels way too fast. I expect it will get a nerf that will address this.

[Arti_Sel]

Originally posted by Hotklou:

Originally posted by HolgFromHell:

I believe in combination with armor you need to level up hounds, don't you?

Yes. Currently though the hound levels way too fast. I expect it will get a nerf that will address this.

They scale extremely poorly though. Idk if they perform cost-efficently vs anything other than chaff.

[Hotklou]

Originally posted by Arti_Sel:

Originally posted by Hotklou:

Yes. Currently though the hound levels way too fast. I expect it will get a nerf that will address this.

They scale extremely poorly though. Idk if they perform cost-efficently vs anything other than chaff.

The biggest reason why you want to level them is for their armor. They can tank mustangs, wasps, typhoons, fire badgers and vulcans if they got levels and armor. And it's cheap to put down a lot of them scattered across the board, and cheap to level them all.

[Arti_Sel]

Originally posted by Hotklou:

Originally posted by Arti_Sel:

They scale extremely poorly though. Idk if they perform cost-efficently vs anything other than chaff.

The biggest reason why you want to level them is for their armor. They can tank mustangs, wasps, typhoons, fire badgers and vulcans if they got levels and armor. And it's cheap to put down a lot of them scattered across the board, and cheap to level them all.

What tech do you remove for armor? Range?

[Hotklou]

Originally posted by Arti_Sel:

Originally posted by Hotklou:

The biggest reason why you want to level them is for their armor. They can tank mustangs, wasps, typhoons, fire badgers and vulcans if they got levels and armor. And it's cheap to put down a lot of them scattered across the board, and cheap to level them all.

What tech do you remove for armor? Range?

I've lately been playing around with making hounds my 100-200 supply ground unit for armor so that most of my other 100-200 supply ground units can focus on other stuff. I advise you not to take sprinklers with range since the range makes the hounds stand too far back to effectively clean up fire. Personally, I got one build that uses sprinklers, armor, missile and mech rage, and another that uses range in the place of the sprinklers. Though maybe you could just not use the missile and take all the other techs so that you are prepared for either offense or defense.

[Sonnenbank]

Well for me since i dont use any hounds anymore at all... i have only been winning ;)
i got back to the army core unit that brought me above 1400mmr for the first time more than 8 month ago

making many many mustangs the core of your army
and it still works in february 2025.

[Polar Test 53]

they feel not very great to use.
but ive found some success in spamming early and unlocking fire missile tech and armour if they decide to use chaff. i think making use of the fire tech asap is the way to go.
and pair it with some high single target damage units.

but overall they seem like not a great unit. they could use personal shield tech or have their numbers upped to 7 or 9. to make them more in line with other chaff units. unfortunalty the missile tech makes that a rough option so i think just giving them a cheaper personal shield would help them out.

Originally posted by Arti_Sel:

What tech do you remove for armor? Range?

range makes sense since they are chaff. but i took off mech rage cause im not really using the units main attack to clear chaff they are more of my secondary option. that and i dont usually want them to end up shooting something they cant kill and mostly relying on the first maybe second waves of fire to deal with most of the chaff.
and with the armour they can tank against other chaff pretty well and at lvl 3 come out to be costing around the cost of lvl1 tanks but with a better lvl of armour.

[boon2537]

Originally posted by koh_earl:

A) Hounds > arclights when defending deep crawler flanks. The arclights take way too long to get back to the frontline after dealing with the crawlers, while the hounds will always be useful as late arriving chaff

That's the only time I unlock the hound and deploy it lol. Also, I'll need to remember to deploy a hound a round before a 2nd unit drop when I'm going vulcan/mustang to deny the high level hound option.

[Hotklou]

Originally posted by Sonnenbank:

making many many mustangs the core of your army
and it still works in february 2025.

Doesn't work against my level 5 armored hounds. :P

[xylose]

Some interactions I've noticed: their fire tech can be intercepted by anti-missile, and a few mustangs can & will comically shut it down.

The Sabertooth sponsons tech, while I still feel is underwhelming, does a surprisingly good job of chaff clearing the dogs; the saber will clear them slightly faster than an unupgraded arclight would.

Overall I really love the unit, which means I get to seem them in action a lot. I personally don't see much use for mech rage as they'll never threaten anything other than chaff and the missiles are better at that, and similarly I never buy range as they're perfectly capable of taking hits yet still clearing chaff at half-strength.

[Sonnenbank]

Originally posted by Hotklou:

Originally posted by Sonnenbank:

making many many mustangs the core of your army
and it still works in february 2025.

Doesn't work against my level 5 armored hounds. :P

if you get a chaff unit to level 5 in 1v1 ranked something went completely wrong in my early game and i somehow never buld a unit to kill your hounds and keep mindlessly feeding xp to it