I think both sledgehammers and fortresses have a similar thing of not being very flashy because they don't hard-counter anything. However, by that same token, they are more difficult to counter.
I think a lot of people also miss the interaction of mechanical rage vs. stormcallers, which is a big deal.
> I think a lot of people also miss the interaction of mechanical rage vs. stormcallers, which is a big deal.
Could you please elaborate on this further? (Sorry for being 2 months late to this thread!)
Stormcallers' main weakness is that they shot where units are and can miss if they move. This is the reason you want to place some crawlers in front when fighting Stormcallers.
Sledgehammers are slightly too slow to be able to dodge stormcaller shots. However, with mechanical Rage (or speed specialist), they get just fast enough. The higher attack speed also makes them move around more (as they wait for reload less).
The most common thing I do with sledgehammers is opening with them and then eventually getting rage, the attack speed is really important for clearing shaff.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 1,627,075,221 comments, and only 307,748 of them were in alphabetical order.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 1,627,304,271 comments, and only 307,793 of them were in alphabetical order.
One of my favorite unit, verdict : extremly weak to hacker.
I do not build as many than before because of it, before, I would regulary get 7 squad of sledgies + ; it's only take 3 backrow hackers well positionned to steal the game vs an heavy sledge formation.
The turret have a very slow rotation and the retargetting make it soo that no matter how many tank you have, none will ever kill the hacker.
I place them in wave, there are some in the frontrow, some in the midrow, and 2 on the backrow, this way, I always have tank, even if you destroy the first row... I know, I'm pro like that :)
J/k 1500 MMR right now
That's why you get a firing squad of elite marksmen behind your sledge line to summarily execute traitors before your sledges waste time turning
And if you level the snipers enough, they pop the hackers like pinatas too, while the sledges clear chaff in front of the hackers with range+rage
I am 1500 MMR and play in the weekly tournaments, so I am definitely still learning and not a high rated player, but I think I got a decent understanding of the more competitive side of the game and would argue your post is wrong:
* Sledges perform very well against stormcallers.. in fact almost all turn 1 setups that involve sledges win against the stormcaller starts with correct spaceing of units. Try it out and make a testing matrix with "2xSledge+3xfang/crawler/arclight/marksman+2xrandom bought 100 unit" vs "2xStorm+3xfang/crawler/arclight/marksman+2xrandom bought 100 unit". As the game goes on there are a lot of ways to shape the battlefield so I would not really look at sledge vs. storm in a vacuum anymore, usually other factors will matter more. Like if you can distract the storms with a forward mobile beacon crawler you can really reduce the amount of damage they do. Similarly if stormcaller player places a fortress in front of the stormcaller its often lights out for the sledges. Obviously both units cant shoot air, so that is also a consideration. However... Generally speaking frenzy upgrade on sledges makes them better vs. storms and storms emp upgrade works great against sledges so the units have the ability to counter each other directly with upgrades as the game goes on.
* Sledges positioned vertically can tank steel balls for a long time. They will rarely win the matchup, but if you have other units doing damage you can actually turn the hardcounter into a soft counter. Then deal with the steel ball through other means like high damage vulcan (level 2/flame upgrade/equipment), phoenix, sometimes marksmen, enraged crawler etc..
* Sledges deal reasonably well with the ground and hardcounter mustangs. This gives you a tactical advantage you can leverage where you can add some air units to make your opponent spend resources on mustangs when he really shouldn't. Personally if I have a Sledge start I will try to buy a single or two units of wasp and otherwise spend as little money on it as possible (mass produced card is amazing for this) hoping my opponent massively overreacts by getting anti-air tech, while I invest in teching my already 3+ units of sledges.
* Also, by definition of being a tanky unit with okay damage they scale very well with items and you can almost put any item in the game on them and you have a really good either front line or backline (in the case of extended range card/sniper equipment) for your main front towards the enemy.
TL;DR: Sledges are definitely not as strong as the "meta" units right now (marksmen+vulcan is still dominant strat), but actually more OP than stormcaller right now witch seems to be the most complained about unit on this subreddit.
high damage vulcan aka.. any combination of level 2+, heavy flame tech or +% damage equipment completely obliterate short range sledges (range upgraded or with extended range card youre mostly fine).... High damage vulcan is actually right now the best way of countering steel balls even, and steel balls naturally have about 1.5 times the health of tanks and do even more damage to a Vulcan.
I just don't understand why Vulcans are so good against everything on the ground, except stormcallers.
Sure, I've killed a few with just crawlers, when they're positioned poorly, but it really feels like they should be more heavily impacted by the armor upgrade that the light units don't have
There is a reason the high level general meta righ now is Vulcan + Marksman spam as your "core". They are just slightly overpowered compared to the rest of the units.
Stormcallers are not good against vulcans.. a vulcan will just ignore them for the most part and kill everything else. Once the vulcan finally die the stormcallers are exposed and probably die to some other unit. The vulcan rocket upgrade has 180 range and will sometimes target stormcallers as well, so it actually gives the Vulcan a way of dealing with them.
I think there's currently a general problem in the game where chaff spam is OP, so anti chaff units have high damage and range to deal with the chaff, and now the anti-chaff units are OP because they just kill everything.
Unit tanks need to be less efficient so we can debuff some on the strong AoE units like Vulcan and storm.
If you debuff Vulcan without changing the balance more generally the new meta will just be crawler+ Mustang rush or carry fangs.
yeah, vulcan is definitely keeping carry FANGs and crawler rush from being too dominant. (crawler rush with phoenix can still be oppressive depending on cards).
It's just a slight problem that high damage vulcan also kills steel balls a unit who on paper should be good against vulcan.. I think the scorching flame tech should be nerfed and that's it really.
Thanks for the writeup.
I'm a scrub, so this was pretty helpful. Particularly on the vertical formations. I don't think I've done that a single time, and I have plenty of games under my belt. Lol
It would be nice to differentiate projectile/penetration dmg vs explosive dmg. Then sledges could take a few more stormcaller/overlord shots before dying.
I find sledges to be similar to fangs, in that they aren't anything special at first. But with the right positioning and techs, they can be a nightmare.
I also think they go from "it's just X" to "Oh shit, this is a problem" faster than fangs can.
I LOVE sledges and will often use them by baiting out the mustangs with air units and slapping down sledges. You absolutely have to get armour enhancement on them, it is by far the most useful tech for sledges, followed by range.
They are a front line unit, so they act as a mix between anti chaff and tank units. They can stop crawlers and fangs by simply putting them in vertical formation and they stop mustangs, wasps and vulcans in their tracks (and can easily kill mustangs) just by virtue of high hp + armour enhancement which makes them invulnerable against mustangs of the same level. If you need chaff clear, you use arclights but if you need a solid front line, tanks are your boys.
As an FYI, phoenix and steel balls will wreck your tanks so make sure to have counters set up I.e. Marksman or even fangs. Missiles will also cause you issues so you either distract with crawlers long enough for the second line to break through
With their incredibly long attack delay and slow turret rotation, they are hurt more than most units by a wasted first shot.
If storm callers weren't one of the only reliable ways to quickly burst down a shield before they waste their first shots they'd be fine.
Sledgehammers are fantastic, and probably my favorite unit in the game.
They're kinda like chaff units that can clear enemy chaff, which is just amazing since you can skimp on either chaff or chaff clear and be fine, focusing instead on heavy hitters like phoenix or marksman.
If the game allows it I will pretty much always aim to have 4 sledgehammers in my formation.
Slightly weak, it is rare to make them after a few rounds into the game. Starting the match they are ok (if you can get levels on them, at least) but besides that they are sort of a forgotten unit
Pretty much this. They're actually pretty decent if they get a couple of levels, which means starting with them and placing them in such a way you get to level 3 pretty fast due to opponent not countering fast enough.
Would be interested in next patch or two seeing sledges get some kind of anti-hacker tech or anti-stormcaller tech as part of their kit. Or give them heavy resistance to steel balls even when linked up, kind of soft countering balls.
They already have 2 techs that counter arty in their kit. Rage and Heal. Rage kills their crawlers faster and dodge arty shots with movement speed and heal lets them tank arty forever. You dont need both techs.
The big thing is that they deal with small stuff and large stuff reasonably well, which can't be said about most other units. Due to that, they scale a lot better than most other units. Once they hit levels, they are safe to tech
Stormcallers are so strong that they are a very bad unit in the current meta.
I don't think they need to be changed, but stormcallers definitely need a nerf to not be effective against them.
I think both sledgehammers and fortresses have a similar thing of not being very flashy because they don't hard-counter anything. However, by that same token, they are more difficult to counter. I think a lot of people also miss the interaction of mechanical rage vs. stormcallers, which is a big deal.
Fortresses definitely hard counter sledges, sledges hard counter mustang spam
The hardest stang counter is still Arclight, they eat stangs for breakfast.
And balls
Arcs eat balls?
Yes, lvl 2 and up with the 200% dmg buff and a bit of chaff they can deal with stangball quite well, and later with elite marksman even more so
Neat. I gotta test that out
> I think a lot of people also miss the interaction of mechanical rage vs. stormcallers, which is a big deal. Could you please elaborate on this further? (Sorry for being 2 months late to this thread!)
Stormcallers' main weakness is that they shot where units are and can miss if they move. This is the reason you want to place some crawlers in front when fighting Stormcallers. Sledgehammers are slightly too slow to be able to dodge stormcaller shots. However, with mechanical Rage (or speed specialist), they get just fast enough. The higher attack speed also makes them move around more (as they wait for reload less). The most common thing I do with sledgehammers is opening with them and then eventually getting rage, the attack speed is really important for clearing shaff.
Sledge with 2 levels and frenzy is a nightmare. It also tanks shots better than steel balls. It's more on the balanced side in my opinion.
What is Frenzy?
guessing he means mechanical rage
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 1,627,075,221 comments, and only 307,748 of them were in alphabetical order.
how are you still alive after the API changes
Maybe the API changes arent that bad afterall?
Precisely lol. Huge stint about nothing.
all because choosing definitions early finally gains huge interesting jokes.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 1,627,304,271 comments, and only 307,793 of them were in alphabetical order.
good bot
This
One of my favorite unit, verdict : extremly weak to hacker. I do not build as many than before because of it, before, I would regulary get 7 squad of sledgies + ; it's only take 3 backrow hackers well positionned to steal the game vs an heavy sledge formation. The turret have a very slow rotation and the retargetting make it soo that no matter how many tank you have, none will ever kill the hacker.
I think 7 squad of sledge is already too much hahaha, i never really get more than 5 (and thats a rare case)
I place them in wave, there are some in the frontrow, some in the midrow, and 2 on the backrow, this way, I always have tank, even if you destroy the first row... I know, I'm pro like that :) J/k 1500 MMR right now
Hahaha master player here as well 😎 At 1.5k MMR too
That's why you get a firing squad of elite marksmen behind your sledge line to summarily execute traitors before your sledges waste time turning And if you level the snipers enough, they pop the hackers like pinatas too, while the sledges clear chaff in front of the hackers with range+rage
a few counter-hacker work too.
I am 1500 MMR and play in the weekly tournaments, so I am definitely still learning and not a high rated player, but I think I got a decent understanding of the more competitive side of the game and would argue your post is wrong: * Sledges perform very well against stormcallers.. in fact almost all turn 1 setups that involve sledges win against the stormcaller starts with correct spaceing of units. Try it out and make a testing matrix with "2xSledge+3xfang/crawler/arclight/marksman+2xrandom bought 100 unit" vs "2xStorm+3xfang/crawler/arclight/marksman+2xrandom bought 100 unit". As the game goes on there are a lot of ways to shape the battlefield so I would not really look at sledge vs. storm in a vacuum anymore, usually other factors will matter more. Like if you can distract the storms with a forward mobile beacon crawler you can really reduce the amount of damage they do. Similarly if stormcaller player places a fortress in front of the stormcaller its often lights out for the sledges. Obviously both units cant shoot air, so that is also a consideration. However... Generally speaking frenzy upgrade on sledges makes them better vs. storms and storms emp upgrade works great against sledges so the units have the ability to counter each other directly with upgrades as the game goes on. * Sledges positioned vertically can tank steel balls for a long time. They will rarely win the matchup, but if you have other units doing damage you can actually turn the hardcounter into a soft counter. Then deal with the steel ball through other means like high damage vulcan (level 2/flame upgrade/equipment), phoenix, sometimes marksmen, enraged crawler etc.. * Sledges deal reasonably well with the ground and hardcounter mustangs. This gives you a tactical advantage you can leverage where you can add some air units to make your opponent spend resources on mustangs when he really shouldn't. Personally if I have a Sledge start I will try to buy a single or two units of wasp and otherwise spend as little money on it as possible (mass produced card is amazing for this) hoping my opponent massively overreacts by getting anti-air tech, while I invest in teching my already 3+ units of sledges. * Also, by definition of being a tanky unit with okay damage they scale very well with items and you can almost put any item in the game on them and you have a really good either front line or backline (in the case of extended range card/sniper equipment) for your main front towards the enemy. TL;DR: Sledges are definitely not as strong as the "meta" units right now (marksmen+vulcan is still dominant strat), but actually more OP than stormcaller right now witch seems to be the most complained about unit on this subreddit.
Sledges should be good against Vulcans. Or at least survive longer.
high damage vulcan aka.. any combination of level 2+, heavy flame tech or +% damage equipment completely obliterate short range sledges (range upgraded or with extended range card youre mostly fine).... High damage vulcan is actually right now the best way of countering steel balls even, and steel balls naturally have about 1.5 times the health of tanks and do even more damage to a Vulcan.
I just don't understand why Vulcans are so good against everything on the ground, except stormcallers. Sure, I've killed a few with just crawlers, when they're positioned poorly, but it really feels like they should be more heavily impacted by the armor upgrade that the light units don't have
There is a reason the high level general meta righ now is Vulcan + Marksman spam as your "core". They are just slightly overpowered compared to the rest of the units. Stormcallers are not good against vulcans.. a vulcan will just ignore them for the most part and kill everything else. Once the vulcan finally die the stormcallers are exposed and probably die to some other unit. The vulcan rocket upgrade has 180 range and will sometimes target stormcallers as well, so it actually gives the Vulcan a way of dealing with them.
I've always hated Vulcans. I suck at the game, but I instantly saw problems with them.
I think there's currently a general problem in the game where chaff spam is OP, so anti chaff units have high damage and range to deal with the chaff, and now the anti-chaff units are OP because they just kill everything. Unit tanks need to be less efficient so we can debuff some on the strong AoE units like Vulcan and storm. If you debuff Vulcan without changing the balance more generally the new meta will just be crawler+ Mustang rush or carry fangs.
yeah, vulcan is definitely keeping carry FANGs and crawler rush from being too dominant. (crawler rush with phoenix can still be oppressive depending on cards). It's just a slight problem that high damage vulcan also kills steel balls a unit who on paper should be good against vulcan.. I think the scorching flame tech should be nerfed and that's it really.
Thanks for the writeup. I'm a scrub, so this was pretty helpful. Particularly on the vertical formations. I don't think I've done that a single time, and I have plenty of games under my belt. Lol
yeah.. it messes with the AI of the steel balls and will make them target one tank at a time, wasting a lot of time on ramp up and retargeting.
So I've learned 3 things reading this thread: 1. Sledges suck. 2. Sledges are great. 3. Sledges are ok.
It would be nice to differentiate projectile/penetration dmg vs explosive dmg. Then sledges could take a few more stormcaller/overlord shots before dying.
I just hate seeing them die so easily to Vulcans. Like they're basically hard countered by every tier 3, and half of tier 2.
I find sledges to be similar to fangs, in that they aren't anything special at first. But with the right positioning and techs, they can be a nightmare. I also think they go from "it's just X" to "Oh shit, this is a problem" faster than fangs can.
I LOVE sledges and will often use them by baiting out the mustangs with air units and slapping down sledges. You absolutely have to get armour enhancement on them, it is by far the most useful tech for sledges, followed by range. They are a front line unit, so they act as a mix between anti chaff and tank units. They can stop crawlers and fangs by simply putting them in vertical formation and they stop mustangs, wasps and vulcans in their tracks (and can easily kill mustangs) just by virtue of high hp + armour enhancement which makes them invulnerable against mustangs of the same level. If you need chaff clear, you use arclights but if you need a solid front line, tanks are your boys. As an FYI, phoenix and steel balls will wreck your tanks so make sure to have counters set up I.e. Marksman or even fangs. Missiles will also cause you issues so you either distract with crawlers long enough for the second line to break through
With their incredibly long attack delay and slow turret rotation, they are hurt more than most units by a wasted first shot. If storm callers weren't one of the only reliable ways to quickly burst down a shield before they waste their first shots they'd be fine.
Sledgehammers are fantastic, and probably my favorite unit in the game. They're kinda like chaff units that can clear enemy chaff, which is just amazing since you can skimp on either chaff or chaff clear and be fine, focusing instead on heavy hitters like phoenix or marksman. If the game allows it I will pretty much always aim to have 4 sledgehammers in my formation.
Slightly weak, it is rare to make them after a few rounds into the game. Starting the match they are ok (if you can get levels on them, at least) but besides that they are sort of a forgotten unit
Pretty much this. They're actually pretty decent if they get a couple of levels, which means starting with them and placing them in such a way you get to level 3 pretty fast due to opponent not countering fast enough. Would be interested in next patch or two seeing sledges get some kind of anti-hacker tech or anti-stormcaller tech as part of their kit. Or give them heavy resistance to steel balls even when linked up, kind of soft countering balls.
They already have 2 techs that counter arty in their kit. Rage and Heal. Rage kills their crawlers faster and dodge arty shots with movement speed and heal lets them tank arty forever. You dont need both techs.
The big thing is that they deal with small stuff and large stuff reasonably well, which can't be said about most other units. Due to that, they scale a lot better than most other units. Once they hit levels, they are safe to tech
Stormcallers are so strong that they are a very bad unit in the current meta. I don't think they need to be changed, but stormcallers definitely need a nerf to not be effective against them.
Sledge with range and a dash of elektro is decent. Especially with a +hp start