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[Killer344]

You've been using them for half a year and you realized this just..... now?

It seems odd, that's all.

[TheWindCriesMary]

You've been using them for half a year and you realized this just..... now?

It seems odd, that's all.

I've been using them for about a month. Up until then, I hadn't used an AVRE in my company at any point in my EiR career.

[pqumsieh]

Here is the nerf (from back in October, earlier than I realized).

Nerf its modifer vs suppressed/pinned units (Uh...why?)
Nerf its medium range damage to AVRE's (uh...why?)
Increase its accuracy (uh...why?)
Increase its pool (to stop how completely [never] often this AVRE is spammed?)

Wind, you really don't know what your talking about to be honest. Please don't post on these boards unless you have your facts straight.

Nerf its modifer vs suppressed/pinned units (Uh...why?)

- Are you sure thats what happened? Do you want to double check that? I'm pretty sure it received a major buff vs. suppressed and pinned targets. Please check your facts next time.

Nerf its medium range damage to AVRE's (uh...why?)

- If we didn't reduce the medium splash, this unit would be one of those 'over powered' units you mentioned. By lowering the medium splash, we preserve one of our design principles which is centered around unit preservation and persistency.

Increase its accuracy (uh...why?)

- This is an issue of usability, we want the unit to be more reliable rather than random. If you shoot at something, it shouldn't magically dodge it.

Increase its pool (to stop how completely [never] often this AVRE is spammed?)

- This brings it in line with other units. Also keep in mind your using it against doctrine buffed units, the new RE will enhance the AVRE quite a bit making it a lot more viable vs. those enhanced targets. I don't expect you to have this kind of foresight which is why I point it out.

Overall, the unit actually received a major buff, but that might be difficult for you to see if you don't have your facts laid out correctly.

PQ

[Bolt]

I stopped using my AVRE'S due to the fact,  that it does indeed take way more micro then the unit should to begin with, on top of this micro intensive unit this unit also has to be sink pop for 90s?(Not sure) Folding it's laundry in the back.


There have been time when i have used the AVRE directly on a Anti-TankGun and only killed 1 man, and not even kill the gun itself.  You Have to aim it perfectly to get the kill you want.

[TheWindCriesMary]

In terms of the damage vs supressed/pinned infantry, was the previous value lower than 1? If it was then I am mistaken on this count.

- If we didn't reduce the medium splash, this unit would be one of those 'over powered' units you mentioned.

At no point in the history of EiR has the AVRE been an "over powered" unit. There is a reason they are not widely used in EiR (both now and before this nerf to their medium range damage) and let me tell you it's not because of how "over powered" they were.

Overpowered units in EiR get spammed and once the word gets out they show up in practically every game, every company and in droves. This has never happened with the AVRE.

The avre is a relatively expensive, doctrine-unlock only unit that gets to fire every few minutes. It is also very micro intensive. It rightfully needs to be able to inflict it's default damage to mid-range targets because other wise it becomes even more of a difficult unit to earn cost back with.

This change was completely uncalled for and unjustified. It was made with little or no experience actually using the unit in question and with little or no consideration to how infrequently the unit itself already shows up in games.

By hurting it's damage potential and requiring even greater aim to be effective, you have effectively taken this unit out of the mod as far as an effective and efficient resource spend goes. You've got to work your ass off if you're a good player to get 8+ kills with an avre. If you're not a good player, good luck. (though you'll get rid of it after one game anyway)

And if your design principle is "survivability and persistence" then lets see you nerf the medium range damage of artillery shells and goliaths. Just watch the shitstorm of protest that comes about when you try to nerf a unit that people love and use widely just because it can annihilate squads in a single volley.

Increase its accuracy (uh...why?)

- This is an issue of usability, we want the unit to be more reliable rather than random. If you shoot at something, it shouldn't magically dodge it.

You have made it considerably less reliable by putting in this tiny buff next to several nerfs (pop and mid range damage). The AVRE needs it's AOE more than anything else because it is almost always going to be relying on that AOE to damage units it wants to target.

Think for a second about what the AVRE is meant to counter: infantry and support weapons. Then think about how slow it moves, how slow its turret turns and how slow it aims. Rarely is the target an AVRE shoots at (unless the opposing player makes a mistake or fails to notice) still in the same spot as where you fired when the round hits. In order to not completely waste your shot (that won't recharge for minutes), you have to hope your large AOE is going to catch some or all of your target.

What you have done with this terribly misguided nerf is make an already very difficult to use unit considerably harder. The accuracy buff does very, very little to countermand that.

- This brings it in line with other units.

What other units? What units are like the Avre aside from the sturmpanzer (which is even less popular)? How can you bring a unit that has a completely different functionality than anything else in the game "in line" with other units? And if you see that a unit like the Avre is widely unpopular and almost universally shunned, what in your right mind makes you think "better raise the pool value"?

Also keep in mind your using it against doctrine buffed units, the new RE will enhance the AVRE quite a bit making it a lot more viable vs. those enhanced targets. I don't expect you to have this kind of foresight which is why I point it out.

This is an example of very, very bad balance logic. Do not balance units or justify changes based on what future patches and changes might do to it.

I don't care if, in 2 months, AVRE's will be given jetpacks and shoot goliaths out of their exhaust pipes at 5 second intervals -- it doesn't change the fact that 4 months ago a poor change was made to it.

Overall, the unit actually received a major buff, but that might be difficult for you to see if you don't have your facts laid out correctly.

It did not receive a major buff. That is a statement that could not be less logical or more directly contradictory to anyone who actually plays with AVRE's or who plays this mod on a semi-regular basis.

You increased its accuracy and, if I was wrong about the suppressed/pin thing, improved its abillity to damage troops already under fire. You then decreased one of the most important components of an AVRE and made it MORE difficult for people to have multiple AVRE's in their company when there are already <2 people in the game who use more than one to begin with.


It's just so insane it boggles the mind.

[TheWindCriesMary]

There have been time when i have used the AVRE directly on a Anti-TankGun and only killed 1 man, and not even kill the gun itself.  You Have to aim it perfectly to get the kill you want.

I've had the exact same experience. Waiting for minutes with an AVRE on the back line just so it can take out 3 guys manning a pak, and rolling it up, taking decent amounts of damage, firing it in the heat of battle, only to see it often-times fail to kill the crew. Great, now you've wasted 9 pop for a few minutes (and will have to keep wasting it for more while you wait for a recharge) just so you could kill 0-3 men off an atg that can be recrewed right away.

Good thing this OP beast was nerfed before everyone found out!


/sarcasm

 This is why the BT's completely inane nerf of the AVRE's medium range damage is so incredibly bad of an idea. You've got this unit that has so much going against it (slow recharge, slow speed, slow turn rate, slow turret turn rate, slow aim time, slow projectile speed) and now you're requiring the player to ALSO have to get a near perfect shot off just to kill its target or else it will fail in its task.

Give me a break with that kind of illogical thinking.

[LeoPhone]

Yes wind, removing the 25% chance to miss the units in your medium range AOE and 50% chance to miss in long range AOE is a very tiny buff.
While after the aoe dmg nerf the AVRE is still able to one shot support weapon crews, pios and volks just fine in its medium range AOE (75dmg). And no, there was no pop nerf.

[TheWindCriesMary]

Yes wind, removing the 25% chance to miss the units in your medium range AOE and 50% chance to miss in long range AOE is a very tiny buff.

It is a very tiny buff because of the massive damage reduction that came at the same time. Add in things like cover, doctrine buffs (eg. -10% recieved damage to infantry) etc. and this accuracy buff means very little. Why? Because the AVRE has ONE chance to kill something. It doesn't matter if it hits them and only damages them moderately. You get one chance to kill with an AVRE every few minutes, so if you don't then the scout car, medkit etc. is going to undo everything you've done just by hitting them but doing reduced damage. This means your unit that shoots every few minutes, is really hard to use, costs a decent amount AND needs 9 pop and a doctrine unlock now will frequently not kill that one pak's crew/gren squad etc. when you need it to.

And that's if you're good enough with your micro to get the shot off in the first place before your target moves away. If you're playing against a good player, you would be crazy to bring the unit in the first place.

And no, there was no pop nerf.

I didn't say there was I don't think. (unless one of the 20 times I've spoken about pool I said pop instead, but context would make that pretty clear as a small typo).



Basically it comes down to this: you don't use AVRE's. Nobody uses AVRE's really. Why? Because they are extremely hard to use well and don't reliably earn their cost. You can talk all day about why you don't think this change is "that big a deal" because its a unit that already no one uses... least of all you.

But there were 2 people in this mod over the past month who have made an earnest effort to try and use them, even when there were so many better ways to spend those same resources, and for those people the change is a disaster. The AVRE can be a fun unit that performs a very niche task and it's a shame that poor balance decisions have senselessly taken it out of the game.

That makes it really, really dumb to have nerfed them.

[LeoPhone]

The AVRE has no dmg modifiers to units in any type of cover.
You will need vet 1 + a 15% rec. dmg buff before your support weapons start surviving the avre M range AOE dmg. I can't name the doctrines that do this out of the top of my head, but I don't think it are too many.

[Unkn0wn]

I think it's time to rethink the BT.

I find this hilarious given that you were one of the people crying the loudest for a balance team to be installed instead of balance being done by one or more SDT members.

I'm not defending the change mind you, it may very well be overdone and there's always going to be some mistakes taking place whichever way we go about balancing the game, but you are overdramatising things like usual.

[TheWindCriesMary]

You will need vet 1 + a 15% rec. dmg buff before your support weapons start surviving the avre M range AOE dmg. I can't name the doctrines that do this out of the top of my head, but I don't think it are too many.

Watch that replay I posted and you'll see exactly one of the circumstances where a blob of pgrens shrugs off a direct AVRE round like it's a joke.

You can cite numbers all day about a unit you don't use or play with, but what matters is what actually happens in game.

There are some basic facts that cannot be contested about the AVRE:

1. It is a severely underrepresented unit in the current (and past) EiR Metagame
2. There are currently fewer than 2 players in the mod who regularly use 2 or more of them in their companies (3+ games a week).
3. They are a distinctly difficult unit to use and extremely micro intensive and there are dramatically more cost-effective, less-difficult units that fulfill its exact role (killing infantry and support weapons). There is nothing an AVRE can do (kills, etc.) in the course of a 50 minute game that an equally well-used staghound (for a fraction of everything) can't do more easily and better.

[TheWindCriesMary]

I find this hilarious given that you were one of the people crying the loudest for a balance team to be installed instead of balance being done by one or more SDT members.

I'm not defending the change mind, it may very well be overdone and there's always going to be some mistakes taking place, but you are overdramatising things like usual.

What I argued for is nothing like the joke of a BT we've had the past year. Have you seen who is on the BT? When this iteration was first announced back in the day people thought it was a joke. Now, many months later, we can add inactivity (in playing the actual game, they seem content to keep meddling with the balance all the same for some bizarre reason) to the litany of complaints against it.

I also argued for a BT that was highly conservative with ANY changes and strictly regulated. I proposed that players (and especially the leader) either had to play regularly or be removed from the team when they became inactive (as soon as 2 weeks even).  I also argued that BT members could not instigate or vote on changes (good or bad) of any kind to a unit without first playing 15 games with that unit to prevent this kind of nonsense from taking place. I argued that a balance team that made little to no changes because of the demanding nature of these requirements was better than one who made changes haphazardly and based on whim.

So while you did implement a BT, you implemented a BT that is the laughing stock of the community. Lead by inactive players and nerfing/buffing units seemingly at random without putting in place any of the proper controls against bias or carelessness.

With Skaffa we at least had a solid player leading up the team who was active. He might have overseen some changes I didn't agree with, but at least the community knew he had the current meta-game experience (and abillity) to make informed and intelligent choices.

[LeoPhone]

Watch that replay I posted and you'll see exactly one of the circumstances where a blob of pgrens shrugs off a direct AVRE round like it's a joke.

I was talking about support weapon crews, not pgrens. AVRE underperforming vs pgrens might be a problem. I don't know.

[TheWindCriesMary]

It generally underperforms against everything is the point I'm trying to make.

There is a reason why nobody uses AVRE's (like I said, unless someone has been sneaking on and contradicting this... fewer than 2 people in the entire mod use 1 or more of them in more than 2 games a week):

They are very difficult to use (and you have to be a good player to get any kind of value out of them)
They have significant weaknesses: slow speed, slow turn rate, slow projectile, slow aim time, long recharge
They are not cheap and require a doctrine unlock
They are unreliable
They are not as cost effective vs their intended targets (inf, support weapons) than significantly easier and cheaper alternatives (staghouns, cromwells etc.)

This is why, at worst the AVRE should have been left alone and, at best, should have been slightly buffed to encourage people to actually consider using them.

[Smokaz]

Call me a simple cowboy but I've come to realize that confronting how the dev teams do things and mixing this with balance complaints just ain't a nice homely way to go about doing things. It never produces any constructive response. In fact if you rummage through the recent months you find that they don't like being complained about that much at all and it makes them lose spirit.  I'm surprised you haven't scrounged together enough grey matter in that chatbox you call a brain to realize that, Wind. It's better to focus on why a unit is over- or underperforming and leave it at that in a balance thread. It's really everything a player can do, try to point out stuff about the unit that maybe has been overlooked or downplayed.

OT:

My issue with the Avre has always been cooldown time. If people can't pick the AVRE without getting vet 3 or a doctrine ability, it needs to be lower at vet 0 without no tricks.

Okay so EIRR made a round less powerful.

It's still a skill shot, you could even reduce it more with lower cooldown between it: makes using the AVRE less frustrating thru lower "MAX" dmg potential with more tries than having it having to be this perfect moment where time slows down and the avre magically makes the best possible roll.

I see the AVRE's role as a big ass mortar round that evaporates soft targets. 75 dmg sounds like it won't kill KCH or stormies, which to me don't make much sense. These guys survive enough already, why should they survive a big bada boom from a avre which then has to rest a long time in game terms after trying to kill them if a direct hit won't even kill em. So a direct short range hit should definitely ensure any soft target's destruction.

They are not hard to use. You move up a unit with good health and armor vs its intended targets. But the round it fires arguably is easy to avoid/predict. Project travel time could therefore do a lot for this unit, but also make it too good. Something between what it is now and "too good" sounds like a improvement.

Range increase could also help alleviate it being too easy to avoid.

[tank130]

Call me a simple cowboy but I've come to realize that confronting how the dev teams do things and mixing this with balance complaints just ain't a nice homely way to go about doing things.

Wiser words were never spoken.

I can also add that having to wade through walls of text laden with sarcasm and useless drivel results in getting yourself ignored.
If you want to get heard Wind, try posting some SHORT concise posts.

You may have some really valid points, but no one is listening anymore.

[TheWindCriesMary]

If you want to get heard Wind, try posting some SHORT concise posts.

This isn't justified advice. The first dozen or so posts I've made in this thread are all nice and short. That's where someone casually interested in the topic at hand would go to find out what I'm saying.

The ones later in the thread get longer as certain people wrote posts that necessitated longer, more thorough answers.

[TheWindCriesMary]

They are not hard to use. You move up a unit with good health and armor vs it's intended targets. But the round it fires arguably is easy to avoid/predict. Project travel time could therefore do a lot for this unit, but also make it too good. Something between what it is now and "too good" sounds like a improvement.

It just needs to be returned to the way it was at default. The changes to the AVRE had no proper catalyst. At no point in EIR's history has the AVRE ever been overpowered or has it been widely used by a good portion of the playerbase. That should tell us something: it has either been underpowered, or just too balanced to become popular in EiR's "get the best combo and get lots of it".

When you nerf a unit that is already unpopular and widely shunned, you are effectively removing it even further from the meta-game. You're punishing the small handful of clowns foolish enough to bother filling that role in their army with anything less than the infinitely more cost-effective/user friendly staghound/stuart/cromwell.

[Smokaz]

You say nerf, they can say redesign. They redesigned the flammenwerfer so it actually damaged infantry, or did they just buff it? At any rate they are aiming to improve it with patches. They probably don't want the unit to be underused anymore than you do.

You describe it as underused, yet want to return it this state? I'm not following.

[TheWindCriesMary]

At any rate they are aiming to improve it with patches. They probably don't want the unit to be underused anymore than you do.

From what I've gathered, they're aiming for some future doctrine redesign (really, another one?!) to make the AVRE better. That should have no bearing on current balance patches (or indeed balance patches made back in October).

Imagine the outcry if they changed a popular unit in a way that made it less effective just because some "future" doctrine update that was likely months away (optimistically) was going to make that unit stronger? That's really nonsensical.

You describe it as underused, yet want to return it this state? I'm not following.

At the absolute least it needs to go back to the way it was before this change. History has already shown that EiR's playerbase won't use it even then, but at least the 2 guys who do use it regularily won't have to get punished for willingly choosing the AVRE over a unit they know could do way more (for way less investment) each game. Why do we do it anyway? Because no game needs to have more highly survivable, meanueverable lv's running around.

What needs to happen is the end of nonsensical changes that only further encourage homogenization of EiR's meta game towards units which are clearly more optimal and cost-effective.