Uber Creature balance [Freeplay]

[Rayalot72]

Some quick criticism of the current state of uber creatures.

They currently have their maximum ants harvesting set to be whatever the creature has normally (3 for crab, beach tiger beetle, and beach wolf spider, and 2 for devil's coach horse beetle), making them really hard to harvest before they despawn (although you don't typically need the food at that point).

Due to a lack of self heal, most of them besides the wolf spider and crab to some extent, will end up dying or getting to very low health purely from fighting other creatures, making the player contribution underwhelming.

Due to the crab ability being a relatively weak regen, the crab is unusually easy to kill compared to the fairly dangerous long term stun, confuse, and poison damage that the beetles have access to. It would be nice if the crab could do something else, like maybe summoning allies that it can AoE heal with its regen, instead of just itself.

Due to the wolf spider having a low CD on its devour ability, and a fairly large AoE OHKO, it's extremely difficult to kill in comparison to the other ubers, requiring multiple waves of ants and a wide spread of DPS in a circle around the spider to actually widdle it down. Considering I like the difficulty, I would actually not mind if the regen from devour was only slightly lowered, while the other ubers could get buffs that allow them to have about as much sustain.

 

[Rayalot72]

I actually retract the comment on the crab. It seems to be fairly strong if you can't get reinforcements quickly, as it has enough beef to gradually decline your total firepower until it has the upper hand. It could still use AoE though, as it becomes fairly weak once you've produced an immense enough quantity of ants that it can't take down fast enough.

 

[JohnSlugDisco]

Some very good points. What do you think about Ubers being allied with all other creatures on the map? This way only the player will do damage to them.

Alternatively they could regenerate health when out of combat. I will put some more thought into this but interested to hear what you think.

 

[Rayalot72]

I might opt for regerating health out of combat, as that will both ensure the player has to kill them and that they can't just send successive waves to widdle it down (they have to get it in one go). I feel like that would make them more interesting to fight in general, as the wolf spider is the only truly difficult one to kill atm (devil's coach horse in particular would require you to have two waves since its spray kills everything nearby, which would require a lot more thought than letting everything die and then coming back later to finish it).

So, the regen out of combat would be perfect for keeping each uber creature sufficiently difficult.

Make sure you nerf the wolf spider to some extent if you do go through with that, however, otherwise it won't actually be killable (using an additional 37 rapid fire with 7 more melee to bait out its pounce it seems that it needs to be at least at half HP before it's possible to kill, primarily because its devour heal mitigates your DPS so well).

 

[Rayalot72]

Really enjoying fighting ubers in the wave defense, seems to make them much stronger when they have allies and other ubers.

Still a little salty that I died to 3 uber wolf spiders though. Got them each to about half health before I finally got overwhelmed.