Why exactly do Seraphim suck?

[Mel_Gibson]

I see all the time that Seraphim are garbage with keywords like chicken and Othuum being banded around a lot. I play Setons. And on Setons i love seraphim. Downlords stats might not be accurate but they say my highest win % is with seraphim, and i feel that is the case too. I love their navy (read hover), and the Asswasher used effectively can be better than any 200k mass game ender. I'd love to hear the thoughts of some high ranked non setons players on seraphim, are they really that bad across the board or is it just when people are trying to ram Othuums and chickens into GCs and Percies on 10x10 land maps? And if they aren't bad across the board, is that not some quite good diversity and balance?

I can't understand this. Please, enlighten me.

[lextoc]

I'm not a stats-expert or whatever but to me they feel slow (last time I played them is ~1.5 years ago).

[ZLO_RD]

No labs
Thaam is weak against labs for some reason (combination of missing shots and high damage per shot)
arty is great but it is still pretty expencive (50% more mass cost)
Selen used to be nice in early game, now it became much easyer to use, but for the cost of -5 power? meh
no ghettos (one less snipe possibility)
t2 bots are now much more "balanced" and they often lose some of their DPS due to slow turret turn speed, also they are generaly slow and that makes it harder to play against t3 rush on 10 km. their range is good, but not enought to reliable kite unapgraided ACU and ACU still can OC those bots (and that hurts cause they cost like 360 mass each)
t2 hover is kinda nice and fast but it does have trouble fightin even against t1, i like how t2 hover tank have exactly enought HP to max out regen that 1rst area regen upgraide gives.. but that is just a fancy thingy, not a strong tactic.
t2 mml sucks ass 600 damage per shot but 10 reload time is horrible.
no t2 shields. t3 shields are nice, but often you want them more and earlyer, rather than better and stronger (they die to one OC anyway, and die pretty quick against t1 arty fire)
othum got some minor buffs, but it not always can keepup with harbs, and harbs have shields and can reclaim
snipers are annoying cause when they shoot while move they miss all shots and when you stop them and actually want to shoot they will just stand still reloading. (tbh after having one bad expecience i stopped useing them completely, but it might be that they are not so bad)
also since sniper damage got decresed and fire rate incresed it defeats the purpose of having a unit with big frontloaded damage, also damage used to be 2800 so you could load 4 snipers in t2 trans, drop them close enought to enemy acu and one-shot him if he has less than 11 000 hp, now damage is more like 2000 and that trick is less effective (nobody used it anyway, but i am just saying)
t2 gunships for sera are "OK" but afaik they are worse than other gunships (at least by HP)
t2 bombers are weird, very good damage, but not good for sniping ACU (splash is pretty small)
t1 air scout have unique ability to give vision radius in are after its death, but it lacks what other scouts have - ability to scout with its wreck. this sera feature is cool, and sometimes helps against stealth, but this only provides vision, and it looks like it does it in area that is smaller than vision radius of scout, while other scouts wrecks give good vision radis and radar as well (btw it is bit bugged, it gives vision, and reveals units, but it all "looks" like it is still under the fog of war)
t4 chicken used to be pretty shitty, you needed your opponent to screwup micro if you want to win with it, also if you attack with multiple of them, if opponent snipes one, it may damage your own army.
t4 bomber is nice but it also does cost 50k mass and requires some good micro and you kinda even need to avoid height chages while approaching target, or it might just not drop the bomb.
no more combat experimentals...
t2 destros lose to subs (t2 subs) (bad torp defence)
t1 subs lose in 1v1 to t1 subs of other factions, but they cost same amount, their antitorp ability that recharged every 20 seconds does not scale well at all with higher number of subs, it actually makes it more useless cause torp defence starts to overkill torpedos, and shooting round of 3 torpedos in clumbet up subs will make them all to use their torp defence on 1rst two torpedos and then 3rd one will most likely hit.

ok i was talking only about bad parts, i have no time left, maybe i could tell couple more disadvantages of this faction. but it is certanly playeable and not really that much worse than other factions

[Morax]

From a 1v1 perspective, unless you are incredibly good, you need to kill your opponent at t2 phase most of the time as their t3 will lose in almost all situations. It attempts to make up for Othuum's poor performance with the t3 mobile shield, but it's quite cumbersome to deploy when other t2 units are either very fast (loyal+harb), or just outright insanely powerful (Percy range+dmg)

[PhilipJFry]

A lack of unit variety compared to other factions is something that annoys me a decent bit about seraphim.
ZLO gave a lot of good examples but imho it comes down to below average t1 and t3 land combat units that gives them a hard time on a lot of maps.

[Mel_Gibson]

So they aren't the best on 10x10 land maps. I get that. I guess a lack of sniping options doesn't help either. But what about on maps like tag craftious, crossfire, ETOS etc, do people find they still suffer as much on these maps?

[PhilipJFry]

Any map with water between you and your opponent favors sera/aeon more than others because of the t1 hover. Playing against hover arty on high noon is just a nightmare.

[TheKoopa]

Thaams are ass but the fobos more than makes up for it.
The main problem for sera is that they can't do t3 at all, meanwhile every other faction can rush it with great results (except titans, but then percy are still extremely strong).

Cybran is strong because if they indeed do get backed up into a losing situation they have about 383394030292828833 options to snipe other player (part of the flexibility of the faction)

Aeon has mercies which is quite strong and also swiftwinds

UEF has no t2 snipe option other than fast t2 ghetto or mass t2 gunships, both which get countered by 2 flaks

And sera doesn't even have a ghetto to snipe with

[Sovietpride]

Go nano gun com.
PRetend youre the UEF
Walk into enemy base.

Laugh as you cant be killed and win.

Cry as you're killed and lose.



Or be Adjux and say .!. you plebs i own whomever is against me

[Nepty]

Remember Seraphim was designed to suck. It's why people who only bought Supcom FA was stuck with that faction in multiplayer. Yeah, you couldn't use UEF, Cybran, or Aeon if you didn't own the original Supcom...

Oddly enough it was the only faction that I could kill Cybran without a problem in Ver 3599 (GPG). T2 assault bot was epic in 3599. Fast, powerful, and countered an entire armada of mantis bots. I think it was nerfed too hard currently. There's a reason they were fighting Titans in the FA intro.

I like the faction. Thaam buff please. (Oh Spectra Cannon needs higher RoF or faster turret turn rate)