That's actually another point I was going to make the Advent had Cleansing Briliance plus Malice which wasn't even as good as the current missile barrage. Not only that, but it was easier to interrupt with two ships required to use it. The nerf that they made to stop it was a target limit which has been suggested and seems to make sense.

Furthermore as the fact that missile barrage is easily countered, the point is it has to be countered or else. No other faction(or ship for that matter) has something that absolutely needs to be countered or you lose the game. Nobody else is punished so harshly for ignoring one factor.

i wasnt saying that it was, i was just wondering how their abilites compared in the views of other people

I would still pick Marza over Desolator at level 5.  Marza can do a lot of damage with incendiary shells and radiation bombs. 

However I think Advent and Vasari has better choice in cap ships.  For example Advent can choose just about any ship as second ship after Progenitor.  Their ships works very well together.  Therefore there is more reason for Marza to be dominating.  For Vasari I usually go with Jar, Skirantra, Kortul; only build Desolator when I want a fourth ship.

Missile Barrage has simply too much destructive potential, WAAAY more then any other cap ship ability in the game.

I suggest that Missile Barrage should have a channeling time and duration a quarter of what they are now, but it should do half as much damage. The cooldown time should also be 25% shorter. This way, Missile Barrage will be harder to counter and more efficient, but less powerful.

No-one responded the first time I posted this suggestion. Well, what do you think? its not exactly a nerf, its more a redisigning of the ability.

Yes, MB is powerful. But it's not the 'lone slayer of fleets, stalking the map at will, snuffing out the hopes and dreams of millions, against whom resistance useless' people are making it out to be.. Over-powered ? I don't think so.. for a few reasons.

First, it can be interrupted. It's not instant damage. It takes a while to do 'all that damage'. You can drain anti-matter, use an ability.. or <shock!> RETREAT YOUR SHIPS FOR 20 SECONDS ! The Marza doesn't move when using this ability. Yes it can kills hundreds of frigates ( the most nimble ships except scouts ), but they can also run the fastest.

Second, cruisers are not killed with MB. Hurt, yes. Not killed. You can retreat and repair them. Same for caps, but even more so. So, yeah, all your LRf's are toast if a Marza gets close. Not en entire fleet.

Third, the Marza is a game changer, but it works both ways. If a TEC players gets a Marza to lvl 6, it took a lot of work. Work that can be erased with a bomber swarm. Any idiot that COUNTS on the use of a single ability to win the game isn't any different than the idiot that spams LRF's, LC's, or HC's. So, if it's GG when TEC gets a lvl 6 Marza, does it work the other way when it goes 'boom' ?

Every race has some ability thats OP'd.. Want to talk total BS ? How about the Vasari ? With phase stabilizers they can concentrate their entire frickin fleet and have it ONE jump from ANYWHERE ! Add in a Kostura cannon, and they can bypass 100 choke points, my entire fleet and attack my homeworld in ONE jump ! Supply lines ? WTF is that to Vasari ? One planet ( or two ! ) with four or five frigate factories and they have 'insta-fleet' anywhere on the map. Advent ? Big deal if they loose a level 10 cap with all those synergistic abilities, they get an automatic 'do over' with the ressurection ability. It's worse than Jason in the Friday the 13th movies.. they just don't stay dead. Granted, these things ain't free, and they take some work, but so does getting a Marza to lvl 6 and keeping it alive.

It's a game changer. Dangerous, yes. Knife's Edge, I believe it was described as.. When I play, I damn sure keep an eye an a lvl 6+ enemy Marza. You have LOTS of options to counter it : AM drain, dis-abling abilities, tactics, retreating, kiting around the gravity well, burying it under a wave of bombers.. In ONE tactical situation ( the middle of a pack of frigates ), IF it has the AM, and IF it survives to get there, IF your opponent can't dis-able, IF the enemy fleet is staionary, and IF they don't run away, a Marza is death on a stick. So, if you insist on driving your fleet up next to one, parking it, and not paying attention, then yes, your'e dead. Other times, considerably less so.

This whole discussion reminds me of the lrf in 1.05 and the latest with carriers. My bro tried to win over me with these spams. I brought in counter and kicked his butt. This is the same thing. Some people just can't handle a powerful unit. SO LETS NERF IT TO DEATH! Whatever.

Marza's missle barrage is definatly a game-buster   i've wiped out 58 enemy kanrak assailants with that ability,  whilst my own fleet was composed of 12 lrf's 1 marza lvl 6 and 1 akkan lvl 2

i do believe missle barrage should be nerfed,  an ability shouldnt be able do to such amounts of damage to all targets within range, even for an ultimate ability  either damage should be lowered or a maximum amount of targets picked

Advent battleship's ultimate ability.. wich targets 1 unit (and everything caught in the beam) should do more damage becuase it has limited range and doesnt attack all targets within that radius

you cannot compare missle barrage to the Evacuator,  evacuator does high damage to any single unit and lowers armor of a lvl 2 nanite strike can take out any LRF

whilst missle barrage can take out any lrf within range, if not stunned or shields being restored

I don't think there is any unit in chess that can be compared to a Marza with MB.  Nor do I think Progenitor or Jarrasul can be compared to Marza.  You can wipe out a fleet with two level 6 Marza and minimal support.  You can't do that with any other cap ships.

How so?  100 dps to x number of targets for 30 seconds hardly sounds poor to me.  Not even x number of extra cap ships are likely to that much dps.  Phase missile swarm does 700 (or so) damage shared between 5 targets (if I recall) a shot.  That's a far cry from the Missile Barrage.

If the 3000 damage is shared then things are a little different, as it's then 100/x dps for 30 seconds but that doesn't seem to be the case if the ability is wiping out large fleets of frigates with ease as has been reported.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind having powerful abilities in the game.  But it should be fairly equal across all factions and right now no other faction has an ability that does THAT much raw damage to an entire fleet that quickly.

Just because you might be able to poke the guy with the machine gun in the eye before he riddles you full of holes doesn't mean it's a fair fight.  Which is essentially what the "it can be interupted" argument is asserting.

-dolynick

Doesn't mean he doesn't have an overwhelming advantage over your bare hands and poking ability (in the analogy above).  Also doesn't mean he can't do serious, unmatched damage before you do manage to put him down.

Besides, the same can be said of any capship, overpowered ability or not.  They all tend to commonly get focus fired first so it's kind of irrelevant.

-dolynick

it needs to be said again because some of you aren't getting it.

re-balancing doesn't mean nerfing to uselessness. it just means making the game more fair. nobody can refute the overpoweredness of Missile Barrage and still be taken seriously around here. we all know what the truth of the situation is. the only question ought to be what to do and when, not whether to do it or not.

a rebalanced version of Missile Barrage should still be useful. you could easily change this ability in any number of ways and still have a very powerful and desirable ability. target caps seem to be the most popular and reasonable proposal so far. i'll get on board with that idea as well.

Dolynick has made the most compelling argument so far. there's no legitimacy to the argument that says "everything is balanced automatically because Ignite Antimatter exists in the game." come on, would you even take that seriously if someone was trying to argue it to you?

even worse

nukes have how big of an explosion radius???

back on topic

How long, at the point in the game where u have a lvl 6 maz, does it take to destroy a cap ship?? certianly much less if ur facing a compentant player, esp if they r advent

i want some honest opinions. for those of you defending the status quo of the ability, how would you feel about the ability if it was target capped to 16 targets?

meaning, it would deal 150 damage per wave to 16 targets within its radius on each wave. it would automatically acquire new targets if one of its current targets was destroyed, so no waves would be lost. 

16*150 = 2400 damage per wave.

20 waves is 48000 damage. the ability channels for 25 seconds so it would be 1920 DPS while channeling. 

to put that in perspective, it would require 106 Kodiaks firing simultaneously to output 1920 DPS.

is this an unacceptable level of nerf to you?