Wail of the Sarifced Opinons?

from Sins Forums

Wail of the sacrificed is an ability for the Advent Rebel's temple of communion unlocked at tier 7. When activated at a temple of communion, it kills the planet's population, leaving an uncolonized planet. For this trade off however,  it deals out immediate damage to connected gravity wells, specifically 20 times the planets population. For example, if activated on a moon planet, it will deal 20*50=1000 damage to all connected gravity wells.

 

While it doesn't do much damage with asteroids/moon/volcano planets, ice/desert and terran planets, it's a different story.

Ice Planet Max Population: 160 

Damage done: 160*20=3200 damage

Desert Planet Max Population: 190

Damage done: 190*20=3800 damage

Terran Planet Max Population: 280

Damage done: 280*30=5600 damage.

Realize that this damage is done INSTANTLY, meaning that there is no way to avoid it if you are at a nearby planet. Because of this, it is possible to lose entire fleets in a matter of seconds. One second I had 700 supply worth of fleet, the next second it was decimated from wail of the sacrificed on a desert planet. While you may lose the planet, and the population has to regrow, is well worth if it means destroying the enemy's fleet.

This only gets worse when an enemy has multiple planets clustered together, making it nearly impossible to attack advent rebels late game, not without risking the loss of your entire fleet. The only things that can survive wail of the sacrificed from ice/desert/terran planets are titans and capital ships, which are easy prey once their supporting fleet is killed.

 

My question to you guys is: is wail of the sacrificed to good in the late game? If so, what should be done to balance it out?

24,516 views 13 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

I like the concept, but this ability is a beast, a little too beastly...I think Advent Rebels will be the new King of the Hill once the Vasari get the nerf hammer...

In my opinion, it should solely be a defensive option and affect only ships at the current gravity well (instead of neighboring wells)...still powerful, but not OP...

 

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Have you ever tried assaulting advent rebels planets in the late game? It ain't pretty.

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting M11xStryker, reply 2
Have you ever tried assaulting advent rebels planets in the late game? It ain't pretty.
End of M11xStryker's quote

Have you been assaulted by a fully leveled VR Star Base? It ain't pretty.

Have you been assaulted by a 2000+ fleet supply VL? It ain't pretty.

 

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Almost all the races have an end game tech that is very, VERY strong.

 

It is the end game..... So I don't see what the problem is.  If a player is turtled up, use superweapons.  I think the real problem is that superweapons have been nerfed too hard for some races.  The superweapon is the answer to many of these imbalances...

 

I think I need to make my own post for all this..... cause so many people are taking way to large of a NERF bat to this game's balance....

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Well it now kills the planet through enduring devotion so that was a decent nerf. It means its a one trick pony for the most part, since it will take a long time to set up wail again.

Realize that this damage is done INSTANTLY
End of quote

While I agree I wish there was some sort of warning (maybe 20 seconds) like a super weapon notification that at the least could let abilities like cease fire be used or a fleet at the edge of a gravity well jump, if you give it too much delay the ability will effectively be worthless.

meaning that there is no way to avoid it if you are at a nearby planet. Because of this, it is possible to lose entire fleets in a matter of seconds. One second I had 700 supply worth of fleet, the next second it was decimated from wail of the sacrificed on a desert planet. While you may lose the planet, and the population has to regrow, is well worth if it means destroying the enemy's fleet.

This only gets worse when an enemy has multiple planets clustered together, making it nearly impossible to attack advent rebels late game, not without risking the loss of your entire fleet. The only things that can survive wail of the sacrificed from ice/desert/terran planets are titans and capital ships, which are easy prey once their supporting fleet is killed.
End of quote

The key to dealing with wail is to not put all your forces at one planet. If you're attacking a planet in wail range just send what you can afford to lose. Because it takes a very long time to set up wail again an Advent player will be reluctant to use it on anything short of a crushing blow. If he uses wail, your opponent already lost a planet and you can jump in with the rest to finish off the one you were attacking. If he doesn't you'll be able to take the planet you attacked and have a shot to destroy the culture center on the other planet.

I agree having wail planets overlap each other or having a large fleet in the area makes this situation very hard to deal with. But its not impossible, just try to keep maneuvering with small forces that the Advent player won't want to waste wail on. At the least you'll be able to force him to split up his fleet as well.

Also, both the Novalith cannon and Kostura do pretty well against wail. The Novalith will obviously keep the wail planet population down substantially while the Kostura can be used to disable wail temporarily while you jump in for a direct assault on the culture center.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Wail might as well be a superweapon...one, ONE, bloody culture center can kill fleets...the OP kostura of old couldn't even do that...

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 6
The key to dealing with wail is to not put all your forces at one planet. If you're attacking a planet in wail range just send what you can afford to lose. Because it takes a very long time to set up wail again an Advent player will be reluctant to use it on anything short of a crushing blow. If he uses wail, your opponent already lost a planet and you can jump in with the rest to finish off the one you were attacking. If he doesn't you'll be able to take the planet you attacked and have a shot to destroy the culture center on the other planet.

I agree having wail planets overlap each other or having a large fleet in the area makes this situation very hard to deal with. But its not impossible, just try to keep maneuvering with small forces that the Advent player won't want to waste wail on. At the least you'll be able to force him to split up his fleet as well.

End of GoaFan77's quote

Goa, I'm sorry man but I just can't agree with you on this...having been on both sides of Wail, I find it is just too easy to use and too hard to counter...piddly things like splitting up your fleet or trying to find round about ways is just going waste time and get you walked over by an eradica with a handful of aeria's and guardians...

You can't even defend your own damn planets because of this ability...I station my fleet on a frontier world and boom, it goes blooey because of a nearby AR planet?  The loss of a planet is nothing, nothing compared to the loss of a fleet when you have an Eradica barreling down on you...in order to avoid wail, you have to leave your frontline defenseless and are extremely limited in your offensive options...not even RB does that, and it requires an SB...

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Seleuceia, reply 7
Wail might as well be a superweapon...one, ONE, bloody culture center can kill fleets...the OP kostura of old couldn't even do that...
End of Seleuceia's quote

 

Except that the Kostura can DISABLE those pesky broadcast centers from ever casting that ability....  And the Tec cannon can negate the damage to 0.  

 

Now if only the Advent would get one, just ONE upgrade to there race.... they are simply the weakest now (when it comes to end game)  There synergies are still boss :)

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting SivCorp, reply 8
Except that the Kostura can DISABLE those pesky broadcast centers from ever casting that ability.... And the Tec cannon can negate the damage to 0.
End of SivCorp's quote

How many kosturas or novaliths do you have?  1?  2?  4 at most...they are expensive and in TEC's case require a lot of technological investment...

But I can put a cheap culture center on every single one of my planets with ease, and even get away with one on every other planet (something you may end up doing anyway for allegiance purposes)...

So you disable one planet's culture centers with a kostura for three minutes (your cooldown time is longer than that, mind you)...big deal, cause I have 2 more planets with culture centers just waiting to wail your fleet to death...a novalith may be marginally better simply because it can wipe out a planet for longer than 3 minutes...bottom line, your one superweapon at best is going to be limiting one planet's ability to use wail while the rest of the empire can wail all they want...

I'm advocating wail to only be at the planet the culture center is at...as it is now, it's like RB on crack bought with a coupon....

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

@GoaFan77

Fair enough.
However, the advent rebel player would also have a fleet of his own ready. Since wail of the sacrificed only requires a temple of communion, the advent rebel will also have a sizable, and probably comparable, fleet of his own. If I split up my fleet amongst multiple fronts, he can split up his fleet and fend off my attacks. Plus since I am on the offensive, he will have the advantage of being able to replace his fleet. Anyway I look at this, the advent rebel has home field advantage.

Furthermore, while super weapons may help, they are vastly, vastly more expensive than a temple of communion and run on a long cooldown.

Don't mean to sound disrespectful here, but I really don't see an effective counter to wail of the sacrificed.

 

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Seleuceia, reply 7
Goa, I'm sorry man but I just can't agree with you on this...having been on both sides of Wail, I find it is just too easy to use and too hard to counter...piddly things like splitting up your fleet or trying to find round about ways is just going waste time and get you walked over by an eradica with a handful of aeria's and guardians...
End of Seleuceia's quote

Look I'm not saying Wail isn't incredibly powerful and that dealing with it isn't a pain. I would totally support reducing its damage per pop to 15 or set it up so that the player can target just one adjacent planet. I'm saying there are things you can do about it if you're more skilled than your opponent. If your opponent's fleet is keeping up with you and he gets wail yeah its going to be hard to deal with. Same with Jumping Orkies. But I've lost with wail a couple of times to the very tactics I talked about, even with an Eradica to try and finish up deal.

Quoting Seleuceia, reply 9
So you disable one planet's culture centers with a kostura for three minutes (your cooldown time is longer than that, mind you)...big deal, cause I have 2 more planets with culture centers just waiting to wail your fleet to death...a novalith may be marginally better simply because it can wipe out a planet for longer than 3 minutes...bottom line, your one superweapon at best is going to be limiting one planet's ability to use wail while the rest of the empire can wail all they want...
End of Seleuceia's quote

I agree that overlapping wails defending each other is a thorny problem to deal with. I was with everyone else when it came out saying it was the most OP thing ever because of this reason. However now that we have the Vasari, considering this is the equivalent the Advent gets to striping and phase jumping starbases I'm not sure if its as bad. The Devs will probably adjust them all somewhat but I think these very strong techs are designed to herald the end game one way or another. Of course they're going to be extremely hard to deal with.

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 11

... I think these very strong techs are designed to herald the end game one way or another. Of course they're going to be extremely hard to deal with.
End of GoaFan77's quote

 

And here is my argument for most of the balance issues right now.  Its all END GAME tech.  The only problems I have with some of the races techs is they are not set into the tech tree right.  

 

Wail is such a situational weapon, what if you would lose your planet that is wailed, and it did something similar to the Tec's radiation bombs.... and you couldn't recolonize for 3-5 minutes?

 

 

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting SivCorp, reply 12
Its all END GAME tech. The only problems I have with some of the races techs is they are not set into the tech tree right.
End of SivCorp's quote

The bigger problem is that certainly the Advent Loyalists and to an extent both TEC factions don't have game ending late game techs like the other 3. As far as I see it all of them should have techs either as powerful as wail is now or the TEC loyalists Twin Fortresses (probably the weakest end game tech). Of course since these techs work in radically different ways that maybe impossible to determine, but I think they should at least to try and reduce the gaps in this direction.

Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top

I used wail yesterday in a game.The guy lost entire fleet i had just jumped in the gravity well so all caps and titan got 4 levels instanly and only thing left is his titan.The planet was  terran and the asteroid the fleet was, in a choke point so i cant see how he could pass without losing fleet.Now if is going to be game end ability is ok but i agree with GoaFan that the Both tec and AL need such abilities.