"Mercies" are too good!

[Antoninus]

MonkeyFun, please explain this video then and tell me TA4Life's AA didn't deserve at least one kill: http://youtu.be/UWGwmKrTLwE

Actually in that video the aa killed one mercy. Thus, it DID save TA as even he says later on, one more mercy would have killed him. Therefore, if he had no aa, it would have been a successful snipe.

I did notice that the AA killed one mercy when the camera was zoomed out, but the AA still neglected to kill the other 7. Why was that? Would you and Uber and V and Exivo and every other mercy status quo supporter care to explain why the AA missed like 15 shots? Are you willing to say nothing is wrong with that AA performance? This is the point that has people upset, is that even when people do the right thing to counter mercies they still get through.

I would be happy to conclude that the mercy balance is fine if I knew my AA would kill them, but this video (among other posted evidence) shows that AA fails to do their job. Please stop constructing your arguments around the false notion that what is SUPPOSED to counter a mercy snipe actually does. Of course nothing is wrong with mercies when the game behaves the way it should, but we are saying the reality of gameplay is much different.

[-_V_-]

Honestly i don't want to go further into that "debate" since to me mercies are completely not OP, but I will reply since I saw my name quoted.
I don't see why static AA shouldn't miss. Its a SIM game, and those missiles arent guided if im not mistaken.
Since it's not 100% safe, I would use ints and that's what i also suggested. I never make t1 aa anyway, only ints :p

Anyway 1 aa versus 7 mercies. FORTUNATELY some mercies went through ... Would you expect 1 t3 aa to stop 10 strats from sniping you ? oh and BTW, for some faction those t3 aa have guided missile wont dont really miss. OP ?

Everything put in perspective.

*IMHO* people crying about mercies are just inefficient at scouting, lazy and playing super rambo with commanders.
I'm pretty sure i have NEVER seen any commander remotely "safe" getting sniped by mercies. Each time it happened, the player just pushed too far, messing around in other bases or just way too close of them.


I would only agree to mercies being OP if they had a lot more HP.

[Antoninus]

Honestly i don't want to go further into that "debate" since to me mercies are completely not OP, but I will reply since I saw my name quoted.
I don't see why static AA shouldn't miss. Its a SIM game, and those missiles arent guided if im not mistaken.
Since it's not 100% safe, I would use ints and that's what i also suggested. I never make t1 aa anyway, only ints :p

Anyway 1 aa versus 7 mercies. FORTUNATELY some mercies went through ... Would you expect 1 t3 aa to stop 10 strats from sniping you ? oh and BTW, for some faction those t3 aa have guided missile wont dont really miss. OP ?

Everything put in perspective.

*IMHO* people crying about mercies are just inefficient at scouting, lazy and playing super rambo with commanders.
I'm pretty sure i have NEVER seen any commander remotely "safe" getting sniped by mercies. Each time it happened, the player just pushed too far, messing around in other bases or just way too close of them.


I would only agree to mercies being OP if they had a lot more HP.

^^ Okay so V tacitly agrees that land-based AA is not always a reliably affective defense against mercies....and that's the point. land-based AA is not working reliably against mercies. If land-based AA doesn't always work against mercies in the way that mercy supporters are claiming they do, then let the balance conversation reflect that. That's all I am asking. V says inties are the only way to reliably defend against them. Fine. The balancing question then is if the community thinks such a defense is sufficient and fair. I don't think it is. Shields and stationary/mobile land-based AA should be enough.

I would be satisfied with a hitbox fix to this.

[MonkeyFun]

Heres a game with two solid examples of how to defend from mercies as a "land player".

First, around 11:50, someone attempts to snipe me when I am playing more defensively with my acu. Some stationary aa manages to shoot down the mercy snipe. There is also a single t2 fighter, which, for reference, is cheaper than a mercy.

Another attempt around 17:30 is on the more aggressive player on the other side. He was pushing with his acu and taking ground yet still managed to defend against a snipe. The mercies don't make it past his army with some t1 and t2 flak mixed in. Again there is a single t2 fighter.

Our "air guy" also sends a few mercies from time to time but there weren't enough at once to ever snipe an acu.

Neither of these situations caused us to fall behind in the land wars and both were mass effective. Our "air guy" spent significantly less defending us than was put into the snipes. I'm still not convinced mercies are OP.

[Evil_mind]

So now you do believe that mercies fly over flaks? That's a breakthrough.
I never disputed this claim.

I dispute the claim that mercies are a special case, and that they shouldn't require any of the following to defend against:

- Scouting, at all
- Any air, whatsoever
- Any amount of micro, whatsoever
- Any reasonable mass investment of the proper counters

So your whole idea revolves around having 100% scout information of the whole map ever 2-5 minutes, and you claim there's something wrong with my logic? Because even 5-15 t1 int or t1 scouts, they might not get the information you need. (do I need to state that we're nit talking about a game at the stage of t3 air factory?)

And its now "proper counters" eh? I'm sorry, I thought AA stands for anti-air, which is interceptors AND flaks (if we're talking about t3 air, its t3 AA). If a huge portion of AA doesn't work as it should, that is, protecting from air attacks, then probably something requires a minor adjustment.

Precisely the same amount necessary to defend against a mercy snipe.

Is it? I though you need unreal amount of scouting, shields next to acu, microing air and flaks, constantly keeping eye on you acu and so on.

Wait. So, sandbox tests only count when they're from you?

Shouldn't I require a "real game, because a real game is totally different than a sandbox" right about now? :p

If you had invested in the proper counters (shields, INTS, any scouting at all, a tiny bit of micro) you would have survived, even with flak being perhaps the worst counter for mercy snipes.

You're the one who asked for proof, that ACU can get killed behind alot of flaks, and I did. Now you're claiming that flaks were never supposed a counter mercies? Have you already forgot your "150 mass countering 1800 mercies, but mercies are imba"? I've shown you 1800-3000 mass NOT countering mercies. And you still refuse to believe that something is wrong here, flaks supposed to counter AIR, but they dont counter mercies.

Its like you're running out of ideas to defend your point of view, you're not being real anymore. Have 100% of the map scouted, instead of just admitting that flaks are not working as they should, now you call them "not proper counters". Even if you get sniped 10 times out of 10, you'll say "I didn't scout properly", "I was careless with acu", "My air was somewhere else", basically you will attempt to find something you didn't (like not having 100% of the map scouted or not sending scout in the direction of incoming mercies, or something ridiculous like that) but wont admit that there's probably something wrong with mercies.

Mercies should not fly over their direct counter.

[Treble]

I don't understand why the mercy "conservatives" are so adamantly and viciously against a range reduction. They admit that mercy snipes happen when an ACU is not "safe", Rambo-ing too far up front without scouting. In these situations, how does the range reduction which has been mentioned change anything? He still dies just as quickly if he is truly inefficient at scouting, lazy and playing super rambo.

[pip]

Indeed, Treble : why are a few players so adamantly against a small range nerf on a unit that causes so much bad feeling for a lot of players? Nobody wants to nerf the mercy to the point of uselessness.

I have the impression that if the Firebeetle, which is definitely less easy to use than the mercy, was buffed, the same conservative players who currently defend the mercy with all their strentgh, would totally be against any buff to the firebeetle, just for the sake of being conservative. In my opinion, this kind of super conservative thinking slows down the improvement of the game.

If it requires so much energy to get a single unit tweaked like that, when there are so many players complaining about it, I seriously doubt the balancing process of this game will be done before 10 years. I know this is FA forever, but this doesn't make me want to invest time into playing this game again compared to playing other games.

[-_V_-]

Cause it's already not so easy to snipe a commander with mercies ? You have to be damn sure you won't waste your main gamble considering the ressources and time u wasted building them.
Nerfing the range has a too higher risk of rendering the mercies close to being useless. The smaller the range will be, the higher risk of losing the gamble will be.

Change perspective for one sec.

If it's so easy to win with mercies. Do it each time, always, always. Become #1 by owning better players

[Evil_mind]

Cause it's already not so easy to snipe a commander with mercies ? You have to be damn sure you won't waste your main gamble considering the ressources and time u wasted building them.
Nerfing the range has a too higher risk of rendering the mercies close to being useless. The smaller the range will be, the higher risk of losing the gamble will be.

Change perspective for one sec.

If it's so easy to win with mercies. Do it each time, always, always. Become #1 by owning better players

Mercies are not imbalanced to the point of giving 100% win rate. The problem is that they're too good, they're flying over flaks and killing acu's that are safe behind tons of flaks. Nerfing range would never make them useless, careless acu's will still die, probably even flaks BEHIND acu would not save from mercy snipe. But flaks in front of him should do what they're supposed to

[-_V_-]

^^ Okay so V tacitly agrees that land-based AA is not always a reliably affective defense against mercies....and that's the point. land-based AA is not working reliably against mercies. If land-based AA doesn't always work against mercies in the way that mercy supporters are claiming they do, then let the balance conversation reflect that. That's all I am asking. V says inties are the only way to reliably defend against them. Fine. The balancing question then is if the community thinks such a defense is sufficient and fair. I don't think it is. Shields and stationary/mobile land-based AA should be enough.

I would be satisfied with a hitbox fix to this.

No it's not 100% safe, but it's not like it's open freeway also. I'm just not willing to try my luch and play safe with ints. Why take any chance when you can avoid for sure for a very cost ?

That being said, I'm sure the mercies wouldn't go through 10 t1 aa, 280 mass .