Melee vs Ranged Barracks!

[GregerMoek]

One thing that I personally have been thinking of a lot is the balance between ranged and melee barracks. Most people would say that it's close to never worth
attacking the ranged barracks unless the melee one is already down.

While I disagree with the above statement to an extent, I can agree with it in the sense that there are many drawbacks of attacking the ranged barracks, more so than melee barracks.


Things to keep in mind when attacking ranged rax:

Negatives from choosing the Ranged Barracks as first target:
- Ranged rax has higher regeneration, meaning you would have to kill it or else it'll regen up again rather quickly if you fail

Melee rax has around 2-3 hp/sec, ranged has past 20hp/sec meaning that if you bring down ranged rax to ~100 it takes roughly 70sec for it to be at full life again while melee rax takes about ten minutes (this based on experiments in practise mode)

- Ranged rax only upgrades one type of creeps currently
- Additional ranged creeps spawns less often than melee creeps

At 999, 1999, and 2999 seconds from mat initialization, one additional melee unit will begin to spawn
At 2699 seconds from map initialization, one additional ranged unit and siege unit will begin to spawn

- Melee creeps has more armour and more hitpoints (tanking towers easier)
- Melee creeps are worth more gold per kill, meaning you'll reduce the opponents' income from creeps more if you kill melee rax
- A lane with ranged rax down has many times less pushing power than a lane with melee rax down (based on observations in practise mode)


Positives from choosing the Ranged Barracks as first target:
- Ranged rax has less armour and is faster to kill unless you're using not fully upgraded Slither wards only
- Ranged creeps deal more damage and has a ranged attack meaning that they will often die after the ranged creeps if a lane pushes by itself
- One step closer to mega creeps

----


As the intelligent reader may realize, you basically never attack the ranged rax unless you have very limited time and know you will not touch the base again in 10minutes. The advantage is near nothing. If you push back a lane with ranged rax down as a defender, you'll not see the lane naturally pushed in again untill 4-5 minutes or so later while with a melee rax down you'll have to push it back within the minute again more often than not.


With above things in mind I could think of three possible adjustments
- Reduce ranged rax regeneration to match that of the melee rax
- Make ranged rax down upgrade siege units together with ranged units (currently the siege units are not even upgraded when 'mega creep status' is gained)
- Upgrade ranged units somehow (more damage/ spawn more often)


Hero balance in mind I would suggest to not bring up changes that adjusts creeps' hitpoints or effective hitpoints considering how nuke damage is often based on how fast a hero can clear a creepwave.


What are your thoughts about this Balance Forumgoers?
Is it a no-matter? Will changing this balance improve the game somehow or is it just another thing that is part of the game and that's that.
What kind of bad things could happen if this was to be changed somehow? (Parasite with upgraded Siege creeps? Ophelia with new OP ranged creeps?)



Personally, I think that changing this balance might give the player a choice when pushing a base with limited time (20sec before enemy respawn or such).
Currently you next always go for melee rax, as mentioned before. A problem some might feel we are experiencing at the moment is bases being just a tad too hard to break through against a stalling team. Changing how good it is to push down a ranged rax might ease this up a bit (Ranged rax are easier to "backdoor" quickly etc). Decisionmaking is cool.

[Ekamo]

Interesting thoughts and well put.

Approved.

[Mummpitz]

good to read, my idea whould be if u kill the "ranged rax" BEFORE the "melee rax" is down, then there will spawn 1-2 additional super-ranged creeps. when the melee rax is down spawns will normalize

[Skyve]

What are your thoughts about this Balance Forumgoers?

My first thought is where is this an actual "balance" problem. It seems more like a design choice to have melee barracks matter (much) more. Although I wouldn't mind seeing there being more of actual decision making when choosing one barracks over the other.

[GregerMoek]

However it will/might be a balance matter in case of change. For example if you draft to get a 15min rax. Currently there isn't much to this as your other lanes are gonna be 'lost' in some way. Overall strategy is part of balance, as I see it, and not only design.

You see it all the time, you push down a lane, get melee rax and then leave the lane in case opponents respawn soon. If we made ranged rax more powerful to take down we would in a way nerf stalling lineups.

As most of us realize when reading the suggested things in the OP, the overall advantage of having a -set- of rax pushed down will -increase-. Denying that that is a balance matter is odd, to say the least.

[LordTroll]

Pfft. Not trying to be rude but was this really worthwhile?

Everybody knows it's a part of the game, and the pros and cons are obvious. If you were to somehow tweak with the creeps, the decision between going for Melee and Ranged could be deeper, but it feels fine at the moment and there is no reason to fiddle with something that appears balanced. AKA, doing so would probably create quite the messy situation and have a moderate impact on how powerful creeps are at pushing creeps and towers by themselves.

And if you simply make Ranged Rax benefits more outstanding it will always be a clear choice to destroy them when you're short on time. Unless, like I said, creeps were tweaked in various stats, and that sounds unnecessary.

[Wolfoy]

Pfft. Not trying to be rude but was this really worthwhile?

Everybody knows it's a part of the game, and the pros and cons are obvious. If you were to somehow tweak with the creeps, the decision between going for Melee and Ranged could be deeper, but it feels fine at the moment and there is no reason to fiddle with something that appears balanced. AKA, doing so would probably create quite the messy situation and have a moderate impact on how powerful creeps are at pushing creeps and towers by themselves.

And if you simply make Ranged Rax benefits more outstanding it will always be a clear choice to destroy them when you're short on time. Unless, like I said, creeps were tweaked in various stats, and that sounds unnecessary.

Everyone knows it's a part of the game? Meaning, everyone knows the ranged rax is useless in comparison to the melee rax? Okay and that somehow justifies not balancing it.

The "decision" between going for Melee and Ranged NEEDS to be deeper then "GO FOR MELEE RAX GOGOGO". It does not feel "fine" at the moment because in essence the ranged rax is just another meatball. In no way does it "appear balanced", either. Doing so would not create a messy situation at all...and of course it would have a moderate impact on how powerful creeps are at pushing by themselves, because that's kind of the POINT of raxing a lane...so it pushes without you. Ever notice how teams go for the 3 raxes instead of raxing 1 lane then pushing that lane again? It's because Super Creeps have insane pushing power.

I'm not even gonna respond to that last statement of yours...there's a heavy implication that all you do is rax melee then leave the ranged alone, which is exactly why the two barracks' are not balanced. The fact that you can leave one of them without it having a significant impact on the game is just...not fair.

IMO, the raxes SHOULD be more even in terms of destroying for reward. At the moment, destroying melee rax is a destruction that provides heavy reward while ranged rax provides a minimal reward (only affects the archers/warlocks, not catapults) and in a game where the melee creeps outnumber the ranged creeps 5:1 or something like that, the impact of having a super archer is minimal in comparison to having super knights.

[Antimodus]

If destroying ranged rax buffs siege units, it's going to increase the pushing power of a raxed lane, meaning it'll break the T4 towers in front of the throne easier if left unattended. This is a separate balance concern than the melee vs ranged rax importance thing.

The only buff I can think of that would not have this effect, is to only reduce the gold award on siege weapons (say by 50%) if the ranged rax is destroyed, but keeping their combat stats the same. That's a logical change I'm willing to support. It does have a balance concern in making raxed teams with hard carries have a harder time turning the game around, but I still think it's a reasonable change.

At least it would make the ranged barracks worth defending, in the event the melee barracks was already destroyed.

[changlingbob]

So my immediate reaction is that the rax stats are backwards: melee is easier to chip away at, but also provides the bigger advantage to take down. The melee rax does have more armour giving 2850 EHP, while the ranged has 1950; the 18hp/s the ranged has on the melee means that taking more than 50 seconds actually favours the melee rax to take down. Given 50 seconds to beat down on the rax generally means both are dead, but if you can't get up the hill for any length of time, that 50 time will start to bite you.

Should it be the other way around: if you can't just take out both rax, taking out the ranged should be easier, to give you marginal advantage, while taking out the melee rax requires a more risky direct investment to benefit from the larger advantage it gives.

[GregerMoek]

While I agree that they should be even in terms of reward, the rewards should have somewhat of a different impact on a lane, else it's not a choice more than cosmetic in the way that which you think looks best should go down first (thus making the enemy base uglier).

[Connect]

I absolutely love the idea of getting different rewards for your team, depending on the rax you may pick to destroy, but for now, all I hear is that it'll be much harder to turn around a game where the enemy has destroyed both of your rax in that lane. Simply cause the range rax got buffed.

But I'm all for the idea of making an actual choice between the melee and the range rax instead of just "MELEEE GO GO GO GET MEELEEEEE".

[changlingbob]

While I agree that they should be even in terms of reward, the rewards should have somewhat of a different impact on a lane, else it's not a choice more than cosmetic in the way that which you think looks best should go down first (thus making the enemy base uglier).
I mean, I'm suggesting that they shouldn't be even in terms of reward, but the one that gives lesser reward (currently ranged) should be the one you can invest less effort in taking down over time (currently melee).

[Connect]

How about some radical suggestion:

Grats everyone around the range rax 250 health and 100 mana upon destruction? This would be an actual strategic incentive to actually choose between the two rax.

Edit: And this wouldn't effect the existing balance in the game, when it comes to health, damage, mana of the creeps, as well as their amount.

[Spaghettix]

Buffing range barracks would mean buffing creeps as all. Stronger sieges means that towers that protect the ancient will fall a lot faster... Id say leave it as it is.

[Antimodus]

Again, what about making it cut the gold bounty on siege units by 50%? I'm pretty sure it will be worth killing and defending ranged rax then, even though melee rax would still be focused first always.

[Ekamo]

Again, what about making it cut the gold bounty on siege units by 50%? I'm pretty sure it will be worth killing and defending ranged rax then, even though melee rax would still be focused first always.
I do kinda like this idea, but I also am not completely opposed to creating an upgrade on siege units. I think that would promote many good things for the game, such as AOE nukers being slightly weaker at dealing with these types of waves, and really early raxing being more rewarding.

[Cori]

I was thinking more along the lines of noe supplying your creeps with their armor and one with their weapons. If you destroy the armor rax your creeps lose armor upon spawning, and if you destroy the weaponry rax then they do less damage upon spawning. They could both be about the same importance or even exactly the same importance so that getting a rax kill of any kind would be of even importance.

[DrPeckers]

The problem I see between the melee and ranged rax is that the risk is lower if you kill the melee rax before the ranged and the reward for killing the melee rax is much higher. As Gregoer stated the Ranged Rax has significantly higher regen, so attacking it first and failing to kill it means a failed push.

Considering this fact, what if the ranged rax's regen and the melee rax's regen were swapped, so that the ranged regenerated 2-3 hp a sec, while the melee regened 20+ hp (based on Gregor's numbers). This would greatly increase the risk of going for the melee first and failing to kill it, while lowering the risk of going for ranged first and failing to kill it. So, it will be better to go for the ranged rax first when the enemy is about to respawn creating better parity between the two types of rax.

[Dominare]

- Melee creeps are worth more gold per kill

I believe that this isn't true - gold bounties for melee and ranged creeps are both 35-50 AFAIK. Having said that, the fact that many more melee creeps spawn per wave than ranged means that the total potential gold per wave is impacted a great deal more by the death of the melee barracks, and perhaps that's what you meant.


what if the ranged rax's regen and the melee rax's regen were swapped

I support this proposal - the logic is sound. The greater reward should be associated with the greater risk (time investment).

[Skyve]

I support this proposal - the logic is sound. The greater reward should be associated with the greater risk (time investment).

That would effectively serve to prolong games, which is exactly the opposite of the supposed design goal for HoN (although that may have changed).

[Dominare]

That would effectively serve to prolong games

True, although applicable only in situations where a team wasn't able to achieve a decisive victory and thus take down both barracks unopposed. My personal opinion is that the (slightly!) greater tactical depth this would add to those uncommon situations outweighs the possibility of extending the game a little.

[Skyve]

Again, that's design, not balance as such.

[KawaiChan]

The problem I see between the melee and ranged rax is that the risk is lower if you kill the melee rax before the ranged and the reward for killing the melee rax is much higher. As Gregoer stated the Ranged Rax has significantly higher regen, so attacking it first and failing to kill it means a failed push.

Considering this fact, what if the ranged rax's regen and the melee rax's regen were swapped, so that the ranged regenerated 2-3 hp a sec, while the melee regened 20+ hp (based on Gregor's numbers). This would greatly increase the risk of going for the melee first and failing to kill it, while lowering the risk of going for ranged first and failing to kill it. So, it will be better to go for the ranged rax first when the enemy is about to respawn creating better parity between the two types of rax.

Hmmm...interesting but then it's a no brainer that people will always to try going for the ranged rax first. To balance this out the ranged rax should be relocate behind the melee rax, away from the ramp which will force the enemy team go further into the enemy base.

[LordTroll]

Hmmm...interesting but then it's a no brainer that people will always to try going for the ranged rax first. To balance this out the ranged rax should be relocate behind the melee rax, away from the ramp which will force the enemy team go further into the enemy base.

It would be no such no brainer... Going for melee first allows you for many more stronger pushing creeps, that give less gold to the enemy.
Placing the ranged rax behind the melee would beat the whole point of his suggestion.

[KillBei]

I like the simplicity of the choice as it is:

1) You have limited time. Get the ranged rax and get out ASAP for a minor advantage.

2) You have more time. Get the melee rax and get out for a bigger advantage.

3) You have loads of time. Get both rax and start pushing other lanes.

I don't think the raxes should be even (i.e. buffing siege creeps or ranged creeps) because of this element of choice.

Having read your OP, I would even suggest that the melee rax should have higher regen than it already does! I feel both rax should 'reset' in about 2 minutes so that if a team chooses wrongly (i.e. goes for melee rax but fails) they are punished and have to start over the next time. As it is, if you choose wrongly but get a second shot at it in the next 5 minutes it becomes a no brainer -- melee rax every time because it's still half-dead.

[changlingbob]

Again, that's design, not balance as such.
I hate when people say this. Design and balance are inexorably intertwined; saying something is one and not the other is saying 'you may be right, but I don't want to listen because I am more important'.

[changlingbob]

I like the simplicity of the choice as it is:

1) You have limited time. Get the ranged rax and get out ASAP for a minor advantage.

2) You have more time. Get the melee rax and get out for a bigger advantage.

3) You have loads of time. Get both rax and start pushing other lanes.

I don't think the raxes should be even (i.e. buffing siege creeps or ranged creeps) because of this element of choice.

Having read your OP, I would even suggest that the melee rax should have higher regen than it already does! I feel both rax should 'reset' in about 2 minutes so that if a team chooses wrongly (i.e. goes for melee rax but fails) they are punished and have to start over the next time. As it is, if you choose wrongly but get a second shot at it in the next 5 minutes it becomes a no brainer -- melee rax every time because it's still half-dead.

The time period for 1 never exists. You always chip away some damage at the melee so you can come back in a couple of minutes to finish it, given how slowly it regenerates.

[Skyve]

I hate when people say this. Design and balance are inexorably intertwined; saying something is one and not the other is saying 'you may be right, but I don't want to listen because I am more important'.

I just think this is not exactly the place to discuss such a thing. The fact that noone even bothers to highlight any balance implications would support that, making this look more like asking for a change for the sake of changing something.

[Fen__]

I dont like the fact that getting range rax is almost worthless as well.

I belive that a good idea could be adding mechanics that influence both mele and range creeps no matter which baracks you kill.

My idea:

Killing Range Baracks:
- increase dmg of mele and range creeps
- increase hp of range creeps

Killing Mele Baracks
- increase dmg of mele and range creeps
- increase hp of mele creeps


Small balance information which i want to explain:

I belive that in current meta game push strats or just some pushing heroes are a tad bit to strong. There are some heroes who when focusing racks can take them down with ease even tho enemies attack them. I belive that the fact that Poly + some minion pusher (keeper/balpha) can target their skills at racks and get them no matter if they won or lost teamfight is a bit unfair when looking at defenders who could play flawless but still got a huge blow to their strategic position

With the change of racks mechanics actions like that would be a lot harder and less beneficial since 1 rack wouldnt get you as big of a advantage as it is now when you kill only mele rack.

[purjo]

I do think that they should improve the benefits of killing the range raz, maybe upgrading the catapults is enough, I don't know, depends on how they do it, maybe make a dead ranged rax increase the spawn rate of the catapults which means that killing ranged rax would increase the damage done to the shrine towers. I like when a choice matters and at the moment there is usually only one choice, unless you're short on time you go for melee rax but even when you're short on time you usually take a chance and go for the melee rax instead since the bonus from the ranged rax is so minimal. An idea I had is to make the ranged rax decrease the gold gain from all creeps whereas killing the melee rax will not, then you have to think about whether you want to decrease the enemies farm or go for an earlier win, could make it interesting when the other team has a hard carry.

[Farosarg]

The main disparity comes from the amount of creeps of each type. Spawning more ranged creeps would make lanes push incredibly fast and reducing the amount of melee creeps wouldn't really work either. Heck I'd be completely satisfied with the 50% bounty from siege units from that point on and maybe an extra siege unit to boot.

[GregerMoek]

I just think this is not exactly the place to discuss such a thing. The fact that noone even bothers to highlight any balance implications would support that, making this look more like asking for a change for the sake of changing something.

What is balance to you then? You mean that strategy-balance or tactical balance is only "Design" while hero balance is "real balance"?

More options to a push-strategy or the increased power of pushing down rax early is definitely gonna put pushing down a set of rax in a better position than now, some heroes may or may not get better because of this, thinking obviously about heroes such as Balph, Keeper, Polly, War Beast, Wildsoul, Defiler, Torturer (...). Some heroes which does/may not need buffs. The important point to notice however is that they are rarely drafted into lineups that are all about push, mostly it is about having some push potential to a solid laning team with decent to solid synergy in fights and farm priority. This would perhaps shift the power so that an all-push team might or might not have greater advantages than the current.


Maybe this is design in the way that "what do we want to be effective in the game?" but I still find it hard to see how it's completely off the hero balance and base balance. Remember when the entrances to bases were made bigger? Was that just a design change and not a balance change?

Moreover, not only pushers but also stallers would be affected by a change that might or might not change the power of pushed down rax or half pushed down rax.


The main point was and is that melee rax down has like 95% of the push per minute that both rax down has. Ranged barracks is close to just another meatball that stands in the way.

[CobaltBlue]

Here's something of an novel solution...

Most of the suggestions I've seen end-up making the ranged rax more comparable to the melee rax, which really doesn't fix the problem. Making the ranged rax and the melee rax of equal value just shifts the decision from being obvious to being pointless.

A real choice would be something like "destroying the melee rax will help push-in this lane, but destroying the range rax will help push-in the other lanes." Consider the scenario where each ranged rax killed incrementally decreased tower damage by some small amount. The amount would be a balance issue, but for the sake of example, let's say each destroyed ranged rax dropped tower damage by 15%. In that scenario you could imagine situations where the ranged rax would have importance: a keeper might choose to BD a ranged rax over a melee rax to help his pushing in other lanes, or a team would make sure they finished-off the ranged raxes before trying to make their final push into a base, etc.

Granted, tower damage changing as a result of a ranged barrack being destroyed doesn't make much story sense, but YOUR team getting stronger creeps when you destroy an enemy barracks doesn't make much story sense either.

[_Ricochet_]

I'm all for making the game faster paced, and I'm sure the majority are as well. With that said I think that spawning an extra siege unit for your team after destroying the enemy ranged barracks is one way to go. Either that or increase the power of the siege units on your team.

EDIT: To throw some other ideas out there:

Making one barracks for ranged + melee and a secondary barracks for armor/regen for creeps

Making one barracks for ranged + melee and a secondary for siege units (provided that the siege units get a pretty good boost once that barracks is destroyed)

[GregerMoek]

Here's something of an novel solution...

Most of the suggestions I've seen end-up making the ranged rax more comparable to the melee rax, which really doesn't fix the problem. Making the ranged rax and the melee rax of equal value just shifts the decision from being obvious to being pointless.

A real choice would be something like "destroying the melee rax will help push-in this lane, but destroying the range rax will help push-in the other lanes." Consider the scenario where each ranged rax killed incrementally decreased tower damage by some small amount. The amount would be a balance issue, but for the sake of example, let's say each destroyed ranged rax dropped tower damage by 15%. In that scenario you could imagine situations where the ranged rax would have importance: a keeper might choose to BD a ranged rax over a melee rax to help his pushing in other lanes, or a team would make sure they finished-off the ranged raxes before trying to make their final push into a base, etc.

Granted, tower damage changing as a result of a ranged barrack being destroyed doesn't make much story sense, but YOUR team getting stronger creeps when you destroy an enemy barracks doesn't make much story sense either.

Well, what would make most sense would be that if you destroyed an opponent's barracks they'd not spawn any more units in that lane, so "making sense" isn't a complete must in this situation.

I kind of like your approach to a possible solution though, while Ranged Rax is weak currently, it could sometimes be worth thinking about taking Ranged rax if it gave some kind of advantage to all lanes (although still as small as current). One simple way would be to make one additional (upgraded) archer spawn in the lane where the rax got destroyed every wave while in the other two lanes one additional (upgraded) archer spawned every second waves or so. Or even every wave if we wanna go wild, but I think that the lane that got rax'd should get the best advantage.


While it is already more or less concluded that ranged rax down only don't do much for the average pushing power of a lane, thus making this change next to "pointless" because the effect would be minor if not neglible in other lanes as well. The waves would still push a slight bit better everywhere, if you take down multiple ranged raxes you'd get two lanes with +1.5 ranged creeps per wave and one lane with +1 ranged creep per wave. If you bring down all three ranged it's 2+ ranged creeps per wave in all lanes. The drawback with a change like this would be that you might actually just give your opponents more gold to harvest instead of harming them.

Maybe this was a suggestion overload, for that I am deeply sorry. While I agree that some pushing heroes are very strong currently I don't think that complete pushing strategies are the strongest of strategies. It is usualy some sort of split-pushing/protect carry mix that is drafted these days as far as I've seen. Ophelia pushes strongly sure, and while that is the main part of a hero as well as ganking lanes I don't think that complete pushing strategies/drafts are ever successful. By that I mean all-in pushing, pushing without too much minion reliance and things like that. Sure we do have some drafts nowadays with 3 labeled "push" heroes these days, but the point of the strategy is almost never "push else lose". It's more "push to feed/protect carry" or "let carry push while we stall a push" rather than "RALLY TO ME MINIONZ AND HEROES, RAZE THEIR BUILDINGS TO THE GROUND!". A push currently is often because of advantage or won team fight rather than having the better pushing power. Push heroes are attached to these kinds of lineups to be able to take advantage of any kind of hero death on the other team, most of these said push heroes also has other brilliant features when it comes to laning and synergy (Tempest ultimate being one of the best in the game for example).

[Mojache]

I'm not sure if someones brought this up but I'm in class and can't read through the whole thread.

A con to attacking the ranged rax first is that it pushes your creeps up further to the opponents base. This isn't really a problem with the melee rax since the upgraded creeps give less gold than normal but, if you attack the ranged creeps then only 1 of the 4 creeps give less gold while giving the opposition lane control

[CobaltBlue]

... what would make most sense would be that if you destroyed an opponent's barracks they'd not spawn any more units in that lane ... One simple way would be to make one additional (upgraded) archer spawn in the lane where the rax got destroyed every wave while in the other two lanes one additional (upgraded) archer spawned every second waves or so. Or even every wave if we wanna go wild, but I think that the lane that got rax'd should get the best advantage...

You wouldn't want destruction of a rax to give your team more units, because that could be beneficial to the enemy in the form of more gold/exp from farming lanes. The very reason destroying an enemy rax doesn't just make their creeps stop spawning.

[Martym]

Considering this fact, what if the ranged rax's regen and the melee rax's regen were swapped, so that the ranged regenerated 2-3 hp a sec, while the melee regened 20+ hp (based on Gregor's numbers). This would greatly increase the risk of going for the melee first and failing to kill it, while lowering the risk of going for ranged first and failing to kill it. So, it will be better to go for the ranged rax first when the enemy is about to respawn creating better parity between the two types of rax.
I thought that a good idea, but then I realized why the melee rax has a lower regeneration:
In the current state, if left alone a lane with one rax down will soon be two rax down. If you increase the melee rax regen, I'm not sure if the enhanced ranged creeps would have enough power the get this rax. And ofc it also means that once the melee rax is dead, the other one will die much faster.


Destroying the range rax should reduce ballista xp and gold

[Killroy]

Hmmm,

I like the idea of destroying the ranged racks and giving all ranged units an upgrade (so in every lane). Normally destroying the ranged rax will give the ranged unit in this lane +20 dam and some hp or so. What if each rax gave all ranged creatures +7 damage. This will increase the push on the other lanes while if you destroy the melee rax it will increase the push on that lane alone. Different roles but both important.

[SmurfinBird]

Negatives from choosing the Ranged Barracks as first target:

- Melee creeps are worth more gold per kill, meaning you'll reduce the opponents' income from creeps more if you kill melee rax


Incorrect, Melee and Ranged creeps both grant 38-47 gold per kill. Siege grants 56-80 gold. Melee also grant 62 EXP whilst Ranged grant 41 EXP, Siege grants 88 EXP.

[Reldnahc]

Incorrect, Melee and Ranged creeps both grant 38-47 gold per kill. Siege grants 56-80 gold. Melee also grant 62 EXP whilst Ranged grant 41 EXP, Siege grants 88 EXP.
You reduce the gold bounty of more creeps is the point he was making.

[ShAdOw_LaNcE]

Either super/mega range creeps need to deal more damage, or the rax need to be re-worked.

For example, what if the rax were armor and weapon storehouses? Kill the opponents, and you plunder them to make your guys stronger (makes more sense too XD).

Armor rax would increase the HP and armor of the creeps, and the Weapon rax would increase the damage of the creeps. It gives you a harder decision if the numbers are done right, as you either can take towers down faster, or make it harder for the other team to farm the wave (higher HP and armor would also obviously push because the creeps would be tankier), and hell the armor could give a little bit of damage too, while the weapons also give a little HP and armor.

Overall I don't see why there's this line drawn between melee and range creeps, they should all just be buffed together.

[SmurfinBird]

You reduce the gold bounty of more creeps is the point he was making.

Sorry, but no. The quote states: "Melee creeps are worth more gold per kill"

Edit: To reply more on topic, the "Armour" rax would make more sense to increase magic armour, making it harder to push back with AoE heroes. That would at least force more of a decision, though overall I'm not in favour of the suggested change, not that this is a suggestion subforum.

[Example27]

As it is now, it's totally useless to destroy the Ranged rax before the Melee ones and everyone knows that. It's isn't really a balance problem as neither side suffers from it staying that way.

But as far as strategies go, changing the Ranged rax effects on the creeps could potentially bring more depth to the game. For example the enemy team has very good AoE damage dealers and thus, proposed, magic armor increase could be quite beneficial for pushing the lane, but if the enemy team has a lot of physical damage then it would be quite useless to destroy the Ranged rax.

Only item, currently available, that increases magical protection is Barrier Idol and that only last for a short amount of time while the physical armor increases are many and they even stack. But considering that Mana is a precious resource while the auto attacks cost "only" time and become really effective only during later stages of midgame and in late game.

So I would support the magic armor increase reward for destroying Ranged rax because a team would favor that if they are facing a lot of magical aoe damage, but magic armor increase should not be huge as not to totally make those spells useless, it should just prevent the one shooting of the creep wave.

[Stehlampe]

Just came up with an idea, which needs to be discussed and balanced a lot to not make pushing strats OP.

The basic idea behind this is the following:
Why do you push raxes?
1. So you can attack the World Tree or the other thing from the Hellbourne :P (of course)
2. To get a lane pushed by itself.
3. To deny gold and XP.

But lets take a closer look at the last point. Is it really like that? In my opinion you are denying yourself just as much XP and gold as the opposing team, when destroying rax.
Why? Because your lane gets automaticly pushed and you have no way of static farming the lane anymore. Especially if you have a pushing team with one hard-carry this will hurt him a lot.

So what if we go away from this "Melee and Ranged - Rax" thing and talk about a completely new idea:

"Push-Rax" (instead of melee rax):

-By destroying them you get Super Creeps with normal gold and XP award (talking balance: Maybe more Gold and XP for the enemy?)

"Gold - Rax" (instead of Ranged Rax):

-By destroying them your Creeps give way less gold and XP to the enemy.

Taking both rax should end up with creeps like they are now when getting both rax.

Since the Melee rax at their current stage give both advantages i guess this change would make getting only one barracks less attractive.
Also it would bring More Strategical Depth into the discussion which rax to take.

You could also make a fusion between how it is now and my idea, by simply nerfing the gold and XP loss when taking melee rax and severely buffing the gold and xp loss by takign ranged baracks.

[Antimodus]

I like this idea.
Though destroying the push-rax would cause the lane to break the gold-rax by iteself, which makes them similar to the dynamic of melee/ranged rax of today.

But at least pushing the lane and killing only the gold-rax would become a legitimate strategy. In the current system, killing only the ranged rax and leaving the melee intact is actually worse than not killing any rax.

[GregerMoek]

Sorry, but no. The quote states: "Melee creeps are worth more gold per kill"

Edit: To reply more on topic, the "Armour" rax would make more sense to increase magic armour, making it harder to push back with AoE heroes. That would at least force more of a decision, though overall I'm not in favour of the suggested change, not that this is a suggestion subforum.

Having a fact wrong and making a point is different, sorry.

-My point was that enemy income is decreased more from melee rax dead instead of ranged rax dead.
-I simply made it sound even worse when I said that melee creeps are worth more per kill, which you so brilliantly showed was wrong.

Wrong by me to assume this melee rax advantage was bigger than it actually is, point still made.

[EmptyOne]

If the siege units would be boosted, think what would happend if parasite took controll over it. ggwp

[mazoomy]

I like the idea of push/gold rax because it adds more strategy to taking out rax's. In its current form, the rax's feel like very "un-fleshed-out" aspects of the game which have the potential for so much more. When you push the rax's it is always melee first while ranged is a luxury, making it brainless due to the overpowered nature of the melee rax when compared to the ranged rax.

Now it doesn't necessarily have to be push/gold rax's, but some kind of change to introduce real decision making when time allows only a single rax would be great. What I find appealing about the push/gold rax idea is having an indirect (reducing enemy gold income) and direct (passive lane pushing) reward for each rax, each with its own drawbacks; no pushing power or creep survivability from the gold rax, creating a free farming lane for the enemy due to passive pushing and no gold reduction from push rax. It would also encourage the pushing team to destroy one over the other based on how fast they feel they will push again or how far into the game the push occurs because the gold rax would be the better choice in a post-genocide push fairly early in an even game, and the push rax would be superior if the team plans to keep on pushing immediately after.

Something I came up with that would be in this vein of thought without being a suggestion would be for the ranged rax to increase your lanes pushing power more than the melee rax. What this would mean is that when the lane is left alone by both sides, a ranged rax lane would push into the enemy base faster than a melee rax lane, but at the same time the ranged rax lane would be far more susceptible to quickly being pushed back then the melee rax. The benefits of the melee rax would have to be reduced to make this happen, I would believe, but I think the idea here is better than what it currently is. In terms of the gold gained from creeps, I think the best way to handle this would be to just impose half the current total (both rax's destroyed) gold reduction for each rax on all creeps, meaning that a single rax would reduce the gold rewarded per creep to ~75% while both rax's would reduce it to ~50% (I'm not exactly sure what the current numbers are).

A change that may make this happen would be to give the ranged creeps splash damage or a bouncing attack so that they can hit the entire, or at least most of the, creep wave with each attack. If this would prove to be insufficient in testing then the damage, % splash, and number of ranged creeps could be tinkered with to achieve the desired effect. They could then push the lane very fast but would provide no survivability benefits to the creeps meaning they'd be burst down just as fast as before.

[Gorb]

People were invested in this topic, but the connotations are far-reaching and are unlikely to reach consensus (to the point where S2 can collate feedback). Archived.