Lord of Verminion - Penalty for Excessive Minion Stacking?

So after my first day of LoV tournament matches I can say I'm completely disgusted at how singular strategy is at the moment in the game. Each of my games today I have run across people spawning 16-24 of the same minion (Kidragora, Wolf Pup, Succubus) and spamming their special powers to stack attack (briefly) to upwards of 180 per unit which completely disintegrates anything in their path. Sometimes I've managed to eek out a win, other times not but it just feels so soul draining to face the same zerg rush time after time.

I'm not going to claim to have the best strategy but I work with numerous types of minions in 4-6 unit parties, each with a specific task. It feels like while I'm trying to carefully paint a portrait to victory while my opponent is grabbing paint cans and hurling them at a canvas and comes out with the masterpiece somehow. It just doesn't feel right.

Without making such a penalty too excessive, maybe put in some limiter if more than 8 or 12 of a unit is on the field? Kind of like how in parties you're discouraged to stack classes.

Stacking weak units should be easy to beat. You can either play to their types weakness since they are so invested in a hord of the same type, use a trap/bomb unit to destroy their low hp comp, use abilities that raise your defense/heal/make you immune so that their LBs are wasted, or use expensive units that have high HP/Atk with hard hitting abilities to burst down so they don't have groups of four and to survive their LBs. Alternatively, just rush them with a few big units so they can't establish the swarm in the first place.

If all else fails, just use their strategy against them. If you win, then it's all good. If you lose, analyse how did they counter their own strategy to learn what you could do to counter theirs.

These spamming minions strategies are simply a result of economies of scale, in particular the fact that ATK buffs like the ones the Wolf Pup provides don't have a target cap, so activating them in a cluster of units provides a disproportionate amount of utility. Simplistic as it might be, those people should be rewarded for identifying that benefit - there's generally a good reason behind dominant strategies, and it never tends to be just 'grabbing paint cans'.

The correct way to nerf strategies like that, if SE were so inclined, would be to put target caps on buffs/debuffs or something of the sort, and see if that causes such strategies to fade away. Putting an artificial limiter on what compositions you can create runs against the spirit of fair competitive experimentation.

This is actually a very easy strategy to counter, there are several methods but you do need to prep them before hand, once they have the big blob rolling its generally too late, some minions like the fawn have a make pty invulnerable to monster type skill, there are others for immunity to critters or poppets. use this to get free hits in.

The best skills though are trap skills, the black chocobo chick courier for example has a great 280 dmg trap, send a few minions with aoe attacks against the blob to dmg it a little, place your trap on one of your stones when the damaged blob arrives set off the trap, this should wipe out most of them in one go, have your minions nearby and send them in to finish off the weakened group.

with all their minions in one spot they will usually lose them all at the same time, allowing you free reign to terrorise the map until they can spawn their entire force again.

I find the low cost minion zerging tactic to be a gamble.

But as Vitriol18 said, use trap minions and additionally, mix in opposite type minions. Your opponent's attention is usually focused on trying to zerg your crystals, so send one or 2 gate-crasher minions (Raptor, Dust bunny), and block off the two other gates, then pop their shield and then send those units out to chip away at his crystals. In my experience so far, they will likely try to maintain pressure with mass spam, so you just keep using traps.

It works very effectively for countering, and they will have great difficulty recovering.

The problem is if you lose / can't handle their hyper aggressive opening then it's really hard to claw things back. They will have a huge advantage in numbers which makes the 3-way strength chart meaningless, and most of the best counters don't leave you with much to work with even if you do push them back. Plus in the time it takes you to assemble something that can walk into the hoard and survive you've lost 1.5 arcana stones.

I'm having a lot of fun with my adorable kitty zerg, personally. And yes, there are counters to it.

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Originally Posted by Zeifer

So after my first day of LoV tournament matches I can say I'm completely disgusted at how singular strategy is at the moment in the game. Each of my games today I have run across people spawning 16-24 of the same minion (Kidragora, Wolf Pup, Succubus) and spamming their special powers to stack attack (briefly) to upwards of 180 per unit which completely disintegrates anything in their path. Sometimes I've managed to eek out a win, other times not but it just feels so soul draining to face the same zerg rush time after time.

I'm not going to claim to have the best strategy but I work with numerous types of minions in 4-6 unit parties, each with a specific task. It feels like while I'm trying to carefully paint a portrait to victory while my opponent is grabbing paint cans and hurling them at a canvas and comes out with the masterpiece somehow. It just doesn't feel right.

Without making such a penalty too excessive, maybe put in some limiter if more than 8 or 12 of a unit is on the field? Kind of like how in parties you're discouraged to stack classes.

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If you can't beat 'em, join em, or adapt. There are counters to every strategy.

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Originally Posted by Aeliott

The problem is if you lose / can't handle their hyper aggressive opening then it's really hard to claw things back. They will have a huge advantage in numbers which makes the 3-way strength chart meaningless, and most of the best counters don't leave you with much to work with even if you do push them back. Plus in the time it takes you to assemble something that can walk into the hoard and survive you've lost 1.5 arcana stones.

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So, therefore it's an effective strategy? I'm not sure why "It makes it really hard to win if I can't handle it" is a reason to nerf it, aside from sour grapes.

Yes, it's effective, and it's also over-centralising. It's not about not being able to "handle it" if your initial selections aren't effective against theirs which you can't rectify until they're already on a rampage, the game revolves around like....5 minions, and every tourney game plays out exactly the same way. Everyone who wants to have a shot in the tourney NEEDS to identify if the enemy is using this strategy as soon as possible because it's TOO efficient and prevalent. I'm not saying it's impossible to fight back against but literally EVERY tournament match I've seen is just either the low cost attack buffing zergfest, or a defensive one designed SOLELY for the purpose of countering the zergfest....before turning into the zergfest. A game with so much potential depth has immediately devolved into a game revolving around a small handful of minions and their equally small number of counters, and it's equal parts dull and irritating. If wanting more from the game than that makes me a sour grape, so be it.

It isn't the low-cost minion zerg rush that discouraged me for this last tournament, it's high cost high power minions that did it for me.

Specifically, Hildibrand. Even attempting units that should, in theory, counter him didn't matter. In the time of one of his buffs I lost my Search Eye and one or two of my gates in all matches I played. The rest of the player's team then mopped up my defenders when I went for a counter and the last gate was wrecked leaving me with literally nothing on the field while the other player mopped up.

Going after gates and eyes with Hildy is a fairly popular strategy, since he has 4 speed to get where he needs quickly and has amazing stats (he costs 30 after all). Generally you want to intercept him with 3 or 4 critters per Hildy, and remember you have the advantage here because he has to walk all the way across the map to your base while you spawn right next to the things he's going after.

In many ways a lot of RTS best practices come into play. If your opponent is hitting you all over the map you need the APM to respond in kind. I'm actually fairly satisfied with how high the skill ceiling is for a humble minigame.