Increasing their speed and decreasing their health sort of defeats the purpose. The point of increasing speed it to be able to challenge wings and it will help do that.

Their melee attack is very powerful. As it stands, however it can be rendered essentially useless. After giving more thought it would make sense to increase speed since they can only melee they should be very fast.

As tornado requires research, it should be more powerful. If it was a natural spell (not necessary to research) it's current effect would make sense. You are probably right about not needing a damage buff if the preceding points were true.

Yeah I agree with you on protect. Was thinking the same while typing that last post. If they get buffed in other areas self-protect will be less of an issue anyways as they will almost always be protecting other units.

I was only wondering, I don't think it really is that great of an idea anyway. What you said about tornado is kind of true though, I don't really understand why tornado would require research when it's main use is to stun.

The spell itself isn't weak but when you have to research it for a higher cost than electric wall (which clearly is better than tornado) one would expect it to be more powerful. Which is why we're suggesting an increase in stun or something. Either that or change the cost or research time of the ability.

Yeah like we said before, imagine how powerful one water can be - it can be the difference between winning and losing a game (freezing a magikill) not to mention mass heal (also can be way more powerful than a cycloid on its own), and scorch. With that said, we have to combine a water AND an air (20 second spawn) for a cycloid?

... cycloids are the key to balancing the turtle problem. Another bar of hp, 20% faster and make tornado a natural spell or increase its damage to 2-hit archers.

Edit: Why not add a 10-second freeze spell or something that will help immensely with dealing with magikill-spamming+shinobi in the end game? The charrog has a temporary burn spell being half-fire why wouldn't the cycloid have a temporary freeze spell?

You're going way overboard with ideas, stop it. 5 bars of health and buffing tornado that much will only make the cycloid op. Tornado already two hits archers anyway. There is no turtle problem, utilizing infernos and cycloids to protect it from shinobi will shut down most turtles. Trees or charrogs is your choice. Anyways, I'm quite done with this discussion, you can have your last word.

We have several things to consider

The 'fast', hunter style cycloid that DAZ mentioned
The 'tanky', slow style cycloid + air buffs/upgrades that I mentioned
and avoiding ele getting so much power on cycloids that cycloids completely take over the meta like trees did.

Having read the fast, huntery suggestion I think that would be best for opening up micro in the ele late game, much more fun than my tank idea, but what sort of implications would this have for airs? They would be even harder to shield for than they are now.

Maybe nerf cycloid hp and stop cycloids casting protect on themeslves so they can't be immortal when diving wings, but go with the speed buffs and range/dmg buffs. The protect nerf would make cycloids vulnurable to medusas, but it would also mean cycloids have to act as support for other units like airs and charrogs, and with cycloids capable in the air ele might have the gold to counter medusa with vs, especially with cycloid protect to put on the v. I think this group of changes would add in the most micro and give everything counters.

i think hash attempted a tree mass on me and i eventually broke it by using a shadowrath a magikill 2 merics and archers

@ nutso You are right adding all those suggestions will probably make cycloids OP - was just suggesting a bunch of options to consider.

I stand by the suggestion to add a temporary freeze spell (15sec?) like charrog burn spell. It only makes sense given they are half water and water are so powerful on their own let alone combined with an air. Won't this alone essentially balance everything?

Freezing a couple of wings can be deadly for them and magikill behind walls during turtle.

I don't even think other buffs are necessary. Their health is fine, protect is great, tornado is ok as long as it 2 hits archers (is it true? Will have to take your word) even speed is pretty good as it is and their melee is very powerful.

I am all for letting cycloids have an ability that lets them catch up.
But they would have to to make it fair
Or a spell that lets cycloid go faster and stun air opponent(s) in front of them
They can't have a freeze spell as that would unfairly affect ground units

The hunter cycloid thing sounded nice.
the shield thing removed id have to say no.

I don't see why a freeze spell wouldn't solve this. It is the most sensible, easiest and most fair way to balance loids. Why?

Easy. The duration can always be changed (and/or cooldown time).

If it's too powerful, reduce duration by a second or two and vice-versa.

Charrog's are half earth half fire = burn + burrow spells

Cycloids are half water half air = freeze + protect + research tornado (to damage ground units +stun)

Sorry, it seems to depend on the user whether they want to hold their higher rank against us in these forums - so it is just to add credibility but with that said i'll stop that if it annoys you.

The reason why it's a pet peeve is because rating inflates, deflates, boosting, going offline to avoid ranking vs good players, differentiation between tournament, prep and serious match results vs rank + practice (ladder metagame is different also), etc.

Also, most of the people talking here are, or have been say, 2300+, 2400+ (Classic obviously). Classic is the tournament competitive matchup for a reason, because people classic explores the game and gives a stronger understanding of game. A lot of pure-DM players don't have that same gamesense.

Case in point, Champ344 (in Classic, he is god in DM)

I know I'm rambling a bit here, and I'm being a bit harsh (I'm sure you're a cool guy), but rating as consolidation of "logic" always irks me when it's unreliable.

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For the hunter one, I actually just had an interesting thought: do we want cycloid to be anti-air with some support potential, or it to be a support unit with some anti-air potential?

Because depending on what we want, we could remove protect and make it an increase in speed for cycloid, say 1.5x for 2 seconds with a short cooldown like 6-8 seconds (these are numbers thought purely through instinct/feel of game).

(Speed up would use the same animation as protect for decrease in dev work).

So basically, this gives cycloid the ability to catch and retreat more effectively, but loses its ability to give a protect to (mainly) spellcasters/itself.

You are giving a double standard imo if I was ranked #1 you would be on my balls responding to my posts. Rank does matter to you because I've given the clearest, best solution to this and it's automatically been written off by some individuals like yourself.

Cycloids have protect and are very fast - can easily catch up to wings and while it might be true that they are still UP, a freeze spell which only makes sense that they would have anyway, will completely solve this.

But you want to take away protect and add a speed spell? Lmao, yeah that's a lot more sensible alright (sarcasm).

Funny, because I've disagreed with WyzDM in scenarios. I've disagreed with other top players in balance as well.

Anyhow, if you want to talk more about this, Rain and I are in #team-zenith at teamzenith.com/irc cause forums is harder to communicate over.

I don't see you online there and teamzenith.com domain is expired.

teamzenithtemp.enjin.com sorry