When do these changes go live?
yes i would also love to know when this is going to happen, as we know, these patches for balance could literally come out evert single week.. arty too strong, hang on let me change a number in a spread sheet.. 500kb patch inbound.. ah over nerf on the annihilator.. 500kb patch inbound..
on punisher vs hades.. broooooo!! u know urself PHC cant rush air! and u know how risky it is... also.. can a hades kite ANYTHING?? ive never ever seen a hades rush, but how easy is it to rush a punisher? and if the rush fails, u still have a fully functional factory.. unlike a failed hades rush (still laugh at the idea) u now have a air factory that isnt going to do much vs the prepared opponent who survived ur rush (yes i know its minor res differences, but they exist)
all in all im actually worried this patch is an over nerf on PHC.. already the 2 sides are quite balanced (even if there are UP or OP units) we need to see how the actually working caregiver now works in armies.. and thats double the rads on an athena!! double! almost double the price on those drone bays.. double!! imagine fighting half of what u have been fighting.. thats huge! and the medic is weaker.. and the arty is even worse at killing armies.. people are already complaining PHC is too weak, arty is useless etc imagine how they will feel when these take effect..
also those tech walls wont come out soon (i guess) due to the required AI update..
I agree balance change iterations need to be closer, once a month feels to long for when things are obviously broken.
PHC can rush an early fury to snipe extractors/constructors just fine. The Fury is after all comparable to a dominator per my conversation with GG on discord. We're not talking hades vs punisher, punisher is already tech walled behind quantem archive, now we're moving dominator to quantum archive and punisher to gateway, while fury/hades have no tech wall and the explanation given is, PHC can't stop early air effectively enough and if they decide to go early air against SS, well they give up ground expo so if SS survives PHC air, there will be less ground resistance. That's a pretty big "if"
If SS goes early dominator, they too will be behind on their tech and ground expo. But that isn't enough for PHC players to make up with their easier to obtain early t2(not in mass granted)?
But for the sake of argument, how quick can PHC get an athena if they rushed it off the bat? Not accounting for resources| :30 second for factory, :32 for amory :44 for athena. Total time 1:46 SS mauler time| :32 for assembly, 1:00 for qa, :50 for mauler 2:22
so delaying the QA for mauler for an early dominator sets back everything. It's a risk.
now lets do it for fury vs dominator with new changes. Dominator| :32 for assembly, 1:00 for QA 1:00 dominator total time 2:32
for phc fury| :30 for air factory, 1:00 for fury, 1:30 total time. that's a 1 minute window of difference. doesn't seem like much, but it makes a world of difference.
a one minute difference in the early game makes strategies/tactics/build orders busts or fails. And your defense of this is "lulz bro, punisher > hades" that's hardly the matter at hand.
So what this effectively does is limit SS strats early game. All we have left to do is expand, PHC can go air or expand, meaning SS still has to worry about both. Building AA at every region is a given, but the timing is important, do it now or wait? for PHC, after the changes, they'll be able to wait longer.