Questions about the role of the Fang

[RabidHobbit]

I'm a new player, btw, so I don't claim to have a useful opinion; just a lot of learning to do. I'm more asking than trying to say I'm right.

I know it's a chaff unit, but in all the match-ups I've run in the testing grounds, Crawlers perform better. More on this later.

I know that it can attack air units, which Crawler cannot do, so that is one role.

I know that it can get a shield buff that allows it to survive things like nukes. I have yet to make use of that, but I can see how it can be good. So this is a second role. Otherwise, it doesn't seem to be as good as burrowing is for Crawlers, in terms of general tankability / survivability.

Are those pretty much the two roles that I would want to use it for?

Ok, as a general chaff unit, here's why I am thinking that Crawlers are better, and right now would always choose them unless I need those 2 roles filled. They survive longer in any ground match-up, even Mustangs. They can counter Storm Callers, while Fangs are countered by them. They can hurt Steel Balls pretty badly, but Fangs cannot. They are faster flankers. Being faster, anything they counter (like marksman) they do so faster than Fangs do.

Is that a pretty good analysis or is it missing some things?

[Beta_Krogoth]

Fangs shield tech is really good, its not just for nukes. Doubles the amount of time it takes for a lot of heavy hitters to kill them, making them really strong. Think marksmen, pheonixs, scorpions, fortresses- anything that fires in single shots, the shield tech *doubles* the time to kill on them. Also, I think fangs scale harder with tech and can contribute more to fights on account of them being ranged. Fangs with upgraded range and damage techs like mech rage can put out a surprising amount of damage for a chaff unit, i've seen packs of upgraded fangs take apart medium units and even giants. Like crawlers, they do get countered pretty hard by certain units, but never discredit them. I've won games based on introducing fangs at the right time.

Also, the fact they are slower means it takes them longer to reach the front line, important for chaff timing. I like to think of fangs as "bodyguard" units, whilst crawlers are "aggressive chaff" if that makes sense?

[Polar Test 53]

yeah pretty much only thing i would mention is that they are slower so more useful for protecting your slow heavy hitters.
and the shield tech is very valuable since it will make fangs always take 2 hits from anything so you dont need to upgrade them and give out free xp to your opponent cuz we all know pretty much every fang is gonna die anyway.

and this is kind of a rare case but if neither side gets fangs and a lvl 5-7 fang squad drops as a unit card and you happen to have a 200% damage or 300% armour you can make a pretty silly fang carry lol

[Bilbeman]

A lot of this discussion is focused on late game (tech choices etc), but even early game fangs are an important difference maker. Crawlers are much, much worse into starting sledgehammers or arclights than fangs, and you still need chaff in the early game, so it's often correct to place fangs for the first couple rounds into those comps.

A general rule of thumb is to avoid major commitments until you see the first unit card, and while placing a lot of crawlers might not *seem* like a big play, if you commit super hard into them and the opponent gets a hard counter, you will be in a much worse position than you would have been with fangs or mixed chaff.

Another important note is that "late chaff" is often a game deciding factor when your carry units are set up adequately. Heavily leveled units tend to make placing additional level 1 units of that type superfluous; you just want the ones you have to live longer. In this case placing backline fangs is often an important way to cement your position in the endgame; you want a continuous trickle of chaff preventing the enemy's damage dealers from connecting with your carry units.

It's also possible, although uncommon, to use fangs as a substitute for other light damage units. This pretty much requires you to have placed fangs as your starting chaff (though as noted above, this is sometimes the correct play to begin with) and to have switched into fortresses (doing this is strong enough it's been getting fortresses nerfed the last few patches). But if those two things are true, getting range/mech rage on fangs allows you to more efficiently deal with things like carry phoenixes than a switch to mustangs, since you already have lots of fangs on the field and they all benefit from the upgrades. This is extremely dependent on the opponent's composition, but it's worth being aware of, since a lot of Mechabellum comes down to knowing how to gracefully pivot into a strong comp quickly.

[RabidHobbit]

Ok, after reading this thread, I was paying more attention to back line crawlers, and I can see that they still come out pretty fast. So I can definitely see how I can improve my game by also using mid or back line fangs to arrive even later in the round.

Thanks for the ideas, there is more for me to try out from all this.