The Vasari Loyalist titan's ability The Maw is too slow to catch moving frigates. It's been frustrating to micro-jump the titan in front of frigates racing to reform their fleet or jump out of a gravity well only to watch as the titan fails to activate its ability, needs to turn completely around, and then lets the enemy escape unharmed. I've seen the titan point straight at an oncoming or passing frigate only to not activate its ability and let the enemy move away because that position wasn't held long enough.
When The Maw is targeted against a specific ship it's actually possible to cause the AI to never activate the ability. If you have a fleet made up of very few frigates and can tell which one is being targeted you can actually tell that frigate to circle the titan endlessly and The Maw will never activate. The titan will just keep pivoting to try and point at that ship. The player will need to intervene to stop the circus show.
Please add some sort of tolerance to The Maw to prevent the need for perfect alignment. As it stands the ability is only effective against frigates that are relatively still.
The ability is fine as designed but i believe the instagib mechanic of it only lasts for the first few waves and afterwords just pulls frigates toward it. THIS needs to be fixed if anything.
I'm talking about getting it to actually activate against moving ships. I'm not talking about the functioning of the ability. There can be a dozen ships in front of the titan while it's instructed to use The Maw, but if those ships are moving the ability will commonly completely fail to activate. I can't tell you the number of times I've had at least a dozen frigates fly right by the titan while it was too busy trying to get absolute perfect alignment to use The Maw. As an area of effect ability it should not require perfect alignment with a single ship to activate.
Maybe both could be improved?
I agree, perfect alignment should not be required with slow moving Titans. It breaks the ability.
On other hand, it may be the only way to balance the ability, without nerfing it. But its true, it may be a pain to use against human opponent, who pays attention, because he may move around his frigate/cruisers constantly preventing you activating the ability at all, and even microjump maybe not much use to you in such case.
However, i see this as good opportunity for some nice microing, so perhaps it should stay, as it is - difficult to pull out, but if you manage to do it properly, it feels far more rewarding. I agree with Nichtganz, that proper functionality - not just pulling the frigates, but instagibbing them, is a must in such case.
I'd agree with this. As far as I'm concerned, anything that makes 'click to instantly ravage target fleet' abilities harder to use is welcome in my book.
Yes, and i prefer it definitely the way it currently works more, than if it was easier to do, but the instagib effect would be somehow capped to lets say 10 units top. Which i reckon would be the most obvious way of nerfing the ability.
However, i admit, i never used it against human opponent, just AI - so if it proves to be too difficult to use against people, it should be indeed slighlty eased.
The problem as is it that it needs to target a ship and then be in range of that ship to activate or close enough.
I think you should be able to simply activate it and any frigates in front of the ship get pulled up to it's listed range.
The ability to should be instant.
To compensate I tend to to mine phase jump in front of a target group and then activate it.
I actually uploaded a video displaying the problem, I didnt upload High resolution because of the slow upload speeds but it shows the problem i had mentioned previously. The way it instagibs frigates and cruisers is unreliable, it should instagib any ships it manages to pull.
Edit: Notice how during the first few waves it kills the ships but not for the full duration. Also notice the corvettes that were pulled in and not destroyed this ability needs alot of work.
Yes, that is indeed annoying and should be fixed.
Thanks for the info.
I noticed that too, but I thought it was some sort of intentional unit limit. In your video the ability works perfectly because the attacking fleet parks themselves right in front of your titan. If the opponent had ordered those frigates to move to the back side of the titan then you would have seen what I'm trying to point out. The titan would be constantly turning to try and get perfect alignment rather than triggering the ability. A group of frigates would rush right at it without the ability triggering. In this situation I have also tried the micro-phase jump. Even getting the titan into seemingly perfect alignment with moving frigates commonly still causes it to turn and lose the opportunity to activate the maw. Frigates must be sitting still for the maw to work.
I think it's fine, with the ability to teleport to catch up to the fleet and get pretty darn close to the right orientation in an instant, i find the ability a little overpowered myself and this is a good way to balance it a bit. I have turned back entire fleets by seeing them come in a planet away, drop a phase stabilizer with my titan, blink to the edge of the gravity well it's currently attacking, and go to the planet they are moving toward. From there, depending on time, I either move to the well they jumped to, or just sit and wait until they jump in to jump in line with their fleet, eat all their frigates and watch them run because all that's left is 1 or 2 capital ships.
One thing i noticed about both vasari titans is that frigates are worthless against them. The loyalist titan insta-gibs them and enough frigates to have half a chance to take down the rebel titan just ends up repairing it for way more than they could damage it when it uses it's first ability.
I can't tell from the video clip, but I believe that the ships that weren't destroyed were Iconuses (ie cruisers). In game, the Maw ability targets only frigates and corvettes. That might be the reason.
No. The Maw works on cruisers, try it in game.
That's interesting because I've watched The Maw work against Kodiak cruisers repeatedly. Maybe it only works against specific cruisers?
no it works against all of them, i have watched my Vorastra Maw up entire fleets of every type of sup cap ship in them many of times
I'm not sure if it's a behavoir with cruisers and distance or it's the wave account that affects the functionality of the ability but something makes it go amiss.
No "The Maw" works on every cruiser/frigate in the game if the cruiser is directly in front of the VL titan it will be consumed as had mentioned there's something wrong with ships that are farther away that or pulled or the wave count and the activation of the ability.
Ok I tried it in game:
http://i46.tinypic.com/2j0z2pz.jpg (I couldn't embed the image)
You can only activate the Maw on frigates and corvettes BUT when using the ability, it sucked in and destroyed Destras and Aria Drone Hosts (cruisers) along with other frigates. However, I also noticed that ships farther out got sucked in, but did not get destroyed. So I guess
is it.
PS: Love this titan because of Maw and teleportation, amazing
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