Mercenaries

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Mercenaries

#1 Post by rinco »

mercenaries at the very start of the game tend to be a little hard, specially if the other team buys items or doesn't pool to summon their own, maybe make it so mercs can't be bought for first 2 minutes of the game.

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Re: Mercenaries

#2 Post by Discombobulator »

They're fine.


Your point is basically "they are too hard if I don't counter them right". So counter them the way you should (buy your own mercs), don't complain about them.
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Re: Mercenaries

#3 Post by rinco »

yes the counter to mercs is of course your own, but IF you bought an item you might not be able to get the mercs up in time before they destroy part of your base, or manage to get multiple levels up on you.

i am just suggesting that a 2 minute timer for mercenaries to become available (similar to how u can't buy sludge early) would be appropriate.

that should give heroes a fighting chance (around lvl 3-5) and not be killed outright and feed the other team crystal.

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Re: Mercenaries

#4 Post by jamn455 »

You can sell your item at full resale value at any of the town halls/trees/necropoli(?)/fortresses or any shops that you see on the battlefield.
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Re: Mercenaries

#5 Post by Lanthis »

Step 1: Sell 3 obs
Step 2: Pool
Step 3: Buy all castle and mid mercs
Step 4: GG in 5 minutes.

Edit:

And if any enemy heroes attempt to defend mid on 5 merc push, +10 crystal per...

Also, if you have an alter Lich championing the push, stopping it will be exponentially more difficult due to the quantity of creeps providing heals.
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Re: Mercenaries

#6 Post by Kalrithus »

Maybe if middle is totally undefended and every other lane is ignored, then when the push fails, which it will unless the other team is totally incompetent, it leaves your team at a disadvantage. This is assuming you time your merc spawns properly so they come as 1 big mass, because if they just trickle in they won't really do nearly as much. Middle's towers+ even 1 less spawn of creeps can defeat many many more troops because as long as they arn't focused on the towers they will take a lot more damage over time.

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Re: Mercenaries

#7 Post by DarnYak »

This is the kind of thing i've expected (and in fact, wanted to) nerf for quite a while. Not uncounterable, but nearly so if you're unprepared.

That said, nerfing it is a lot harder than it sounds.

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Re: Mercenaries

#8 Post by Twizzle89 »

IMO, thats just good teamwork. With any good bit of teamwork vs a team with none, the teamwork will wreak havoc

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Re: Mercenaries

#9 Post by Lanthis »

Kalrithus wrote:Maybe if middle is totally undefended and every other lane is ignored, then when the push fails, which it will unless the other team is totally incompetent, it leaves your team at a disadvantage. This is assuming you time your merc spawns properly so they come as 1 big mass, because if they just trickle in they won't really do nearly as much. Middle's towers+ even 1 less spawn of creeps can defeat many many more troops because as long as they arn't focused on the towers they will take a lot more damage over time.
Uh, no.

More detailed:

Assume top base.

Heroes: Lich, AM, Gravel, BP, Eidolon.

All heroes sell obs, 3 pool lich.
Buy all castle creeps immediately.
Lich, AM, Eidolon walk mid. Pick up slime and skeles.

Mid buys mid creeps as soon as castle creeps arrive. Push 1st wave over. Second wave should spawn shortly after mercs/wave are almost down hill to base. You should have lost 2-3 creeps if altering properly. Heroes should be level 4-7?

Gravel and BP go rock lane. Buy 1 order attack. Buy as many mercs as you can after buying mid mercs. After dropping first spawn, order attack on mid lane from rock lane. Walk heroes up to mid.

AM haunts 1 tower, Eidolon clouds the other 2. Drop slime and skeles near active towers. Drop alter in center of action and kill any creeps around. Any heroes around should already be dead, as they're between level 1 and 3 and probably will only have 1-3 people max on the lane. BP drops flame, gravel hotm. Continue haunting towers and kill 1 after the next, then drop base.

Done. I can't imagine anyone stopping that.

Order attack on Inn :-)

The only way I can see anyone stopping this is by getting a defense gen up, having mercs, and having all heroes defend mid immediately, which unless you're expecting it, won't happen, because everyone will be deploying their towers.
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Re: Mercenaries

#10 Post by Dekar »

You should have made a team for the tournament and used that strategy to win instead of posting it.
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Re: Mercenaries

#11 Post by Lanthis »

Why? It's no fun. The game would barely last till level 15 before the other team quit. Plus, hopefully it highlights that lich's alter is overpowered, because that's really the key to keeping your push alive long enough to drop the towers. Also, that pocket obs shouldn't be sellable and mercs should have a delay.
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Re: Mercenaries

#12 Post by DarnYak »

Twizzle89 wrote:IMO, thats just good teamwork. With any good bit of teamwork vs a team with none, the teamwork will wreak havoc
There's stuff that's a little too strong too early if concintrated. I don't really want to see every game want to turn into a giant merc push in center. Besides, for a long time I've wanted to convert mercs to being a limited resource that you can't just spam non stop. This would solve the problem.

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Re: Mercenaries

#13 Post by mianmian »

Selling obs is a terrible strategy.

Now lets say your playing VS some people who wont LEAVE. Then their up like 3-4 obs. They drop some spawn towers and come back and win. GG

This shit happens all the time in Kedge/Candle and it always does the same thing, fuck all.
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Re: Mercenaries

#14 Post by Kalrithus »

Lets break this down
Lich, AM, Eidolon walk mid. Pick up slime and skeles.
First of all, slime and skeles are not available off the bat (skeles are quick to pop I believe but 90% sure they have a delay of ~a minute if that so you could possibly get them, slimes definitely not) So that removes some troops from the equation.
Gravel and BP go rock lane. Buy 1 order attack. Buy as many mercs as you can after buying mid mercs. After dropping first spawn, order attack on mid lane from rock lane. Walk heroes up to mid.
This is getting rather ambitious, good chance of reward but requires a highly organized team of people, and if it fails the xp loss by stacking so many heroes in a row could be a drawback later, not to mention you will likely lose in ob control.
Running cost of mercs: 350+500+650+350+500+350(assuming 1 wave of mercs sent with order attack. 2700 gold in mercs alone with no guarantee your Battleplans will hit every merc that you spawned at the 2ndary base. Assuming 3 people sell their obs that's 2400g between the 3 of them, I guess if a fourth person pools the 300g he starts off with you'll have just enough money for all that.Oh not to mention the 290g for the skeles(almost forgot) Again it puts you in a bad position if it fails.
AM haunts 1 tower, Eidolon clouds the other 2. Drop slime and skeles near active towers. Drop alter in center of action and kill any creeps around. Any heroes around should already be dead, as they're between level 1 and 3 and probably will only have 1-3 people max on the lane. BP drops flame, gravel hotm. Continue haunting towers and kill 1 after the next, then drop base.
First, no slimes so scratch that, second AM's haunt and Eido's spore cloud will be at max lvl 2 at this time. Haunt doesn't last very long at level 2 and has a cooldown almost double its duration iirc. Point is its not going to stop the tower for very long. After the nerf to Eido, sporecloud's miss chance has been diminished so even at lvl 2 its not causing much in the way of misses, though every bit helps. As to "Any heroes around should already be dead" Maybe if they are TERRIBAD, you know generally you run from the crapton of units streaming towards your base. Assuming there is a dispeller among the enemy heroes, which considering your allstar lineup there should be, you've lost all your spell advantages as every spell you listed is counterable by dispells and and rather easily at that. You wouldn't even need more than 3 heroes in that row or even more than 2 waves of counter mercs to turn the tide, or at the very list prevent the destruction of your base.

Which leaves 2 heroes floating around to gather more xp/gold and to push other rows capitalizing on the lack of opposition.
Its a good strat if the other team is uncoordinated or stupid though :twisted:

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Re: Mercenaries

#15 Post by Dark_Nemesis »

I have used and seen early game pushes (first 4-7 min) work devastatingly well, namely in the middle path. However, if that push fails your team is in serious trouble. As you've just blown 2k gold for no other reason then to feed the units to awaiting AoE heros and such. :?

On the subject of allotting a 2 min CD to mercs/whatnot, I am moderately against the idea. While I can see how mass hiring can seem unfair and downright boring, I don't want to enforce more and more regulations on EotA. With horrible ideas popping up, (such as having arts drop upon death or only rewarding half gold/crystal at certain hero kill circumstances) I see the game heading into a socialized, everyone-is-equal-and-anything-beyond-is-unfair idealism. Continuously adding regulations only saps away the thought for creativity and diversity, one of the really great things about EotA. With that much said, If I were to see considerable evidence to suggest otherwise, I think the 2min CD would be appropriate, but until then, and as it stands, this is just another detour that could eventually prevent newcomers from playing. Why? Because no one wants to play a game that is bogged down with rule after rule after rule. It's confusing, it's confining, and it's simply no fun. My 2 cents.
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Re: Mercenaries

#16 Post by Dekar »

Killing mid is quite easy with BP and Incarnation, but you need a full team to back you up.
The cost for a successful mid post is T1+2+3 mercs, nothing more. I think about 300+300+500+500= 1500 gold and 100 left for battle plans.

If your team does not get obes, you are in a very serious disadvantage, even if you get mid.
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Re: Mercenaries

#17 Post by Discombobulator »

ChrisLambert tried this strategy and found that he likes it.

The ob disadvantage only lasts for a minute or two as you can pretty quickly take the two middle obs.
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Re: Mercenaries

#18 Post by Lanthis »

Dekar's push was a significantly less coordinated/merc'd mid push than I described and it easily dropped mid. Had they had attack papers, they could have easily dropped the rock lane too.

What you're not understanding Kalrithus is that if 1 team plans to completely focus on mid or mid and rock/inn, it's impossible to stop if the other team plans to play a 5 lane game, even if they're skilled.

If your team plans to go out, drop obs, build gens, buy pots, by the time they know what's going on in the middle, they'll have already spent their gold and be too far away to mount a concentrated effort.

As far as hero selection goes, the only hero that is essential is lich. You could use AA, AM, Treant, BP, Gravel, Eidolon, Infiltrator, Tyrant, Garg, FM, Tact or many others.
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Re: Mercenaries

#19 Post by Kalrithus »

Again, it works when your opponents are too static/inept to adapt to the enemies tactics, consumables and other items can be sold back at full price up until the point they are used. The defending team does not need nearly as much gold to defend the massive siege as the sieging team spends to attack. I acknowledged it can work but it is not something that will become commonplace except in pub stomps and theres no way to balance those anyways besides shuffling teams.

This is does not seem to be a real balance issue is my point, mercs are another facet of the game and placing a timer on them in the beginning is not productive...IMO

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Re: Mercenaries

#20 Post by coramoor2 »

times like these i wish i kept all my replays. had a team pool their resources and dump all mercs on mid. my team were pubs, but two of them knew what an obelisk was and the other two could read, all i did was ping the hell out of middle and tell them to get their ass over here, we defeated them at our towers by rationing out our mercs only when they were about to start hitting towers, caught a few of their heroes and used the gold to merc back, destroying the obs they had already set up on what they assumed was a guaranteed lane victory. after that the game was over in a short amount of time due to our ob advantage and ever widening lvl advantage.

also, i think you underestimate the utter rape you are bending over for if they happen to have an inf who mined the hell out of mid. he gets all your heroes killed as well as devastating your giant army.

in theory, the team that mercs second has a hefty advantage of having towers on their side when the giant armies clash. but yeah, if the counter to something is to mirror it, its a pretty dumb counter. making a two or three minute rule would be good enough to prevent this from being guaranteed, as it would give the other team enough time to get a couple of AoEs, and then the whole thing becomes a wash if the teams are equal, as the towers +pulsing merc waves is a pretty solid army killer, especially if there are some AoEs hitting that army (could be as simple as buying the blizzard consumable).

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Re: Mercenaries

#21 Post by Lanthis »

I agree that if the other team is actually slowed down and drawn into a long battle in the middle, you can counter it. I just did it with Moononite and we were knocking on their base when the 3rd wave of creeps was spawning. It was too quick to react. Also, why Lich is critical is that even if you get baby mercs, they are healing our creeps whenever they die. Unless you get someone on that lane who picked dispel very early, they may not have gained any levels before the mercs hit their base. This could all be solved by altering the healing properties of the alter, making pocket obs unsellable, and giving mercs a timer.
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Re: Mercenaries

#22 Post by DarnYak »

There's no real dispute that its counterable. I myself was on a pug team vs Thermie who managed to get his team to help him with the strat, yet i was able to hold them off almost by myself untill they switched lanes. That's not to say it was the best rush ever - you can certainly pour all the mercs and 5 heroes specifically built for this strat into one lane. A counter point is also that by doing this, you can end up sacrificing one or more alternate lanes once they see your strat, while they can possibly hold theirs.

That said, I do feel its current incarnation is a little too much. I don't want it to go away to any extent, just to get toned down a bit.

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Re: Mercenaries

#23 Post by Dark_Nemesis »

You played with Thermie?!

Awesome.
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Re: Mercenaries

#24 Post by mianmian »

Yak played a pub!?

If anything, I would make t3 mercs have a 3-4 minute cool down. 1-2 should be fine off the bat. T3 is only bad cause you can triple merc.
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Re: Mercenaries

#25 Post by Dark_Nemesis »

And they are magic immune. :(
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