I'll start by saying there has always been newish people who don't understand the game, and have complained about all races being too weak, including dwarves. I've been of the opinion that they were very strong until these last few patches, and the balance of Dwarves is precarious due to the permanent death mechanic of so many of their troops. A small change can turn "great" into "worthless".

In the current game, miners are not viable at lvl 13. They route, they are slow, their feature stun mechanic doesn't make a meaningful difference. They can't be res'd like swordsmen, they don't have self-heals, large bonus and elemental resistance like scorpions. Few people argue that these are an actual option for high end duels or garrison breaching, so let's just get that out of the way.

After a few consecutive patches making dwarf stronger, all the most recent changes in the game since have been net-buffs to humans, and some part lich. They include the following:

Dec 21 -Defensive mode for Avalon and Elena. Two critical human heroes who's continued survival benefits humans more than anyone else.
- Virion can no longer die before using Light's Safeguard. This added immensely to the consistency of swordsmen revives, and his humanoid buffs.
Particularly against deadeye crits.

Dec 6 -Greatly reduced the healing time of injured Gold-level troops. Reduced healing time for all troops at level 3 and above. A big change that effects everyone to a big degree, but Dwarves the least.

Nov 8 - Greatly increased the health and attack of Archers, Longbowmen, and Feathershots. Increased the flight speed of arrows.
-Greatly increased the health and amount healed by Priestesses, Abbesses, and Saints. Greatly increased the healing range.

- Greatly increased the health and attack of Acolytes, Occultists, and Warlocks. Increased the flight speed of basic magical attacks. Greatly increased the ranged attack range. Improved garrison troop attack logic such that multiple targets will be attacked at once.

-Greatly increased the health of Mummies, Conjurers, and Necrolytes. Increased the flight speed of basic magical attacks. Greatly increased the ranged attack range. Reduced the Resurrect time interval. Greatly reduced the training cost.

This patch was devestating for dwarves. You will note in Lilith's patch history, they rarely "greatly" increase anything. This essentially added a level to archers in terms of damage.

Oct 24 - Centurion**: Increased attack and HP; Slower Morale decrease; receive 30% less damage from Large Units.
- a "slight" increase in HP/attack to mechs in this same patch. Something, but totally irrelevant in the face of the later archer buff.


Previous to this, the introduction of Yip with 30% archer damage boost (also reduces dmg from enemy archers, but obviously a more human hero for the simultaneous buff) and lich having their garrison permanent death units revive.



So where we are left, I have a collection of half a dozen replays of full gold dwarf armies being blown away with disproportionate costs. Humans can throw silver armies at gold and eventually break through, and lose less than the cost of a single gold mech squad dying with 90% injury rating. Rocketeers are still strong, but totally ineffective against scorpions, but with no viable front-line for dwarves... When a dwarves garrison is attacked, he loses his career's worth of accumulated units to permanent death. Lvl 13 units who run out of ammo on the wall are still a joke compared to the "greatly" buffed archers.

Some of these changes were necessary and good ones, but it nonetheless has the effect of reducing the power of Dwarves.

edit** The map also works against dwarf. I understand there being less tundra due to the race distribution, but it is also remote and inaccessible to most factions (in the age of migration and sever merges, your hand is forced). So there often isn't even defensive recourse for dwarves, let alone good targets where they can utilize the offensive bonus.

Dwarf still has a place, but it's neither an autonomous or irreplaceable one. Anyone can kill walls fairly quickly with siege, and fielding 2k mithril worth of (superior) dwarf siege which can be killed to random targeting is rarely a good idea.
Even Dwarf whales fielding 16 heroes winning duels vs humans (never lich), are still losing immensely more resources than they kill with each battle, on friendly or enemy territory. This trend of patches is concerning, and you will witness a exodus when the race change patch is introduced, unless something changes.

I agree with most of your points above. The high risk high reward gameplay of dwarf doesn't scale to end game well at all, in large part due to the reasons you mentioned above.

Engineers are the worst unit in the game and they are not viable as a frontline, forcing anyone who wants to participate in PvP to field silver mechs or default lose, unless there is just a massive stat disadvantage. I can think of very few scenarios where I would risk fielding 5k mithril worth of perma death units over a cart, or even to experiment with my latest tweak to my fielded army.

Dwarf, essentially, disincentivizes participation in normal game activities because the loss almost always outweighs the gain. There is nothing fun about losing a bunch of mechs while your opponent spends a day in the hospital. And I understand this is a recycled conversation, but it exacerbates at end game as the RSS cost goes up, and the survivability doesn't scale in a manner that makes the cost vs. risk of loss ratio palatable.

And I agree on garrisons. Lich can perma farm rank XIII golds during events and their undead will rezz back on the wall with a decent revive chance, human units all revive, rakan units all revive, but one stack of dead gold mechs will run you 6k+ mithril. One dead tank is 4.2k blood diamonds. The time required to rebuild these is days if not weeks, and all the while you are vulnerable to attack. The permanent loss was manageable when we felt secure that the edge these units gave us would serve as a worthy investment into our defenses, but we know that other races can slowly destroy high end dwarf garrisons with silver units, and suffer less losses than the one stack of gold mechs costs.

I wholeheartedly agree that Dwarves need a second look, and that needs to include a discussion about revamping several units mechanics as a whole. If that means certain units aren't as effective but don't die permanently then I think we can all live with that. Engineers have needed a rework for a very long time. If there isn't some change I will definitely be switching.

+1

I very much agree with everything said here.

Not sure what the fix should be - there are many possible options. Personally i would like it if they kept the permadeath of mechs and in some other way buffed them - i like that they are a very risky unit to run. Honestly i would be fine if they did something like buffed Gafgars temporary repair a lot - it would make duels and sige more viable but dwarves would still have a weak garrison so they can be fought.

Another thing worth mentioning is something that has been mentioned in other threads - humans super unit is legit ridiculas compared to every other races super unit. Also Viron is the best front line support hero in the game - his resurrection > gafgars heal anyday.

The other way mechs could be potentially buffed is by the new research options that will appear when they up the castle level to 50. We will have to wait and see what that does though.

not like mechs arent broken already
nerf them to the ground and make them repairable
the angel seems quite offtopic when there are other threads for that , either way most humans avoid using it since its still bad

Dwarves however is good choice for alts to clear daily quest nice and easy

Jokes aside you are right to everything you said, IMO they should remake them and as many have suggested to nerf them and make them repairable.

iphit wrote:

not like mechs arent broken already
nerf them to the ground and make them repairable
the angel seems quite offtopic when there are other threads for that , either way most humans avoid using it since its still bad

I think it is fair in a thread about the end game balance of one race to at least mention that another race has an equivilant unit which is far more powerful.

Also i would personally not like mechs to be nerfed but made repairable. Yes they are very strong but they can also be hard countered - i would like their unique mechanic kept personally.

iphit wrote:

not like mechs arent broken already
nerf them to the ground and make them repairable
the angel seems quite offtopic when there are other threads for that , either way most humans avoid using it since its still bad

I think this will be the direction they get huge nerf and repair , will only create more whinging but there needs to be some give and take when it comes to the races pros and cons...

Just spitballin ideas to make dwarves a bit more balanced, obviously not all of these:
give mechs a "salvage" ability. At the end of a battle, you can salvage some of the materials your mechs lost, like 10%
Make technicians have a small aura that repairs mechs slightly while they are in it (replace the extra 1 second stun in acadamy)
increase mech and tank walk speed
Need a counter for lich (spiders or scorpions). Trample damage for mech/tanks could also be viable, and makes sense.

Something else not discussed - one of the recent patches changed it so you earn much more honor for killing rather then injuring units - again a nerf to dwarf.

If dwarf would be in a bad spot, why are 90% of the players on new servers including chinese dwarf? I agree that they have a problem with mechs, but looking to how tanky they are as the most tanky unit in the game, that is the price you pay. So i'd say for mechs either keep it or nerf them and make it salvagable or repairable idk.