Is it just me or do the Vasari suck?

are you playing online? or single player? or LAN against the AI or your friends?

He's online.

My opinion of Vasari is this. On maps that are loaded with neutrals (such as 4v4's, 5v5's), the Vasari rocks. They get so many neutrals that they win by shear amounts of income which translate into more ships.

On maps that don't have neutrals, you start to see the weaknesses of Vasari emerge. The fact that their units are overall somewhat weaker than all of their counterparts becomes apparent.

Not to mention the worst of the capital ships.

The best Vasari players understand that neutrals are their very essense. Find them. Even if they're on the other side of the map.

This is why I don't pick Vasari. They're a gambling pick. On a map with a ton of neutrals, Vasari should win, but on a map without them, good luck.

Which really, and I know you know, this certainly I have said enough, is a doggone shame.

I have to disagree with you, Vasari have amazing caps they just have very specialized rolls.

And vasari are very strong, they just play differently than other races, like amish said you need to grab the nutrals but you cant spam assilents, or any type of ship. Vasari more than any other race need to build a balanced fleet.

On maps without nutrals vasari are weaker than other races but they are not hopeless, they have some tricks up their sleeves.

Vasari are also the worst race to play if you are just starting off because they are more challenging to play.

Advent or TEC are better races to learn with than vasari.

_|~Uber

there is another thread about this...

herm... basicly... the mid-game vasari will hardly ever win a fair fight... so never give them a fair fight... and never fight fair.  Of all the races... the vasari are the only ones that can bypass shields... the only ones that can bypass PJIs... can sneak a starbase somewhere evil... (if only to distract the enemy from thier attacks on your territory... make the enemy use time to think (do i continue to attack? or do I lose the buildings on my homeworld/trade hub/whatever) if the enemy has anything less than 50 or so fleet supply on a neutral well... a vasari scout with antimatter will take that neutral before it dies... meaning he now has to take it again... and if the enemy has more than 50 fleet supply held up by nothing more than 3-9 fleet supply of scouts (one for each neutral)... well! i must say that thats a good deal.

be cunning... that is how you win.

So what you're saying is that to win, you need to be better in nothing that's based on the actual race. So if two players of equal value play, and one is a Vesari, you're screwed

That's not true, and I don't think anyone said that.  Certainly if there are no neutral extractors, Vasari is disadvantaged, but if there are lots of neutral extractors, you may even have an advantage.  Vasari's balance really comes down to the map's balance regarding neutral extractors.

I think it's already been stated that Vasari are weak in a straight fight, but are the best faction at fighting dirty.  Don't find yourself in an all-out field battle as Vasari, instead confound your opponent with a pressure game.  They are certainly the hardest race to play, but once you've got the hang of them they aren't weaker.

It's all about using them right. The only other race from another game that truely reminds me of them is the GLA from C&C generals. They had pathetic staying power, but they were fast, had the most stealth units, could strike decently hard, could sneak attack you virtually anywhere on the map, could hijack other players tanks etc. If you tried to play them the same way as the USA or the Chinese (that is in a more or less open strikes) you were destined to lose big time, but all of their strategic advantages and speed made them at least equal to the other two once you learned how to play them.

It's much the same story with the Vasari. Late game thanks to phase gates and Kosutras they can also get around the map quickly and launch sneak attacks. I have to say the egg is at least tied for the best capital ship in the game, add this to their scouts and they can have an amazing early game as well. You can argue that the Orky is best either in early or mid game, but on maps with very strategic planets or close to other players homeworlds, they can be used to devestating effect. I'm also loving the Kortul now that Disruptive strikes and power surge have been reworked.

Put simply, play the Vasari like the Advent or TEC and you will lose big time. Spend some time learning how to play thier unique style, even if it takes hours against the AI, and they are most certainly capable of winning.

I don't know if you feel I'm off in la la land with my opinion, but really, I feel that these sound remarkably close to excuses for why the Vasari aren't as good at TEC or Advent.

I'm not sure how you can say Vasari Caps are better than TEC or Advent caps in the grand scheme. The Egg is a great cap, No one will argue otherwise, and yes, the Kortul just got debugged so it's not a bad cap anymore. The desolator is my personal favorite cap for Vasari because of how much seiging damage it does.

But then you have the Skirantra and the Marauder. Saying the marauder has a specialty role is being generous. To be honest if it wasn't for phase out hull being the only counter Vasari has for Missile Barrage, I'd be calling the capital ship special as in "special olympics". And the Skirantra. I'm not sure how to voice my opinion on this ship. The level 6 is lackluster (aim it at seige frigs is ur best use), and scramble bombers is still arguably the worst ability on a cap. The heallth could is nice, but when you consider that it will only heal hull, not shields, that means the only units it will heal are either almost dead and on their way out or are taking slight damage from another vasari's phase missiles.

End of the day I don't like Vasari. JJ had a gift for making them seem amazing, but if you watched his play, you realized he was absolutely relentless in going after neutrals. JJ had the experience to still be amazing when there weren't neutrals, but he became a helluva lot easier to handle when he didn't have neutrals.

So again. To sum it all up. Vasari are great if there are neutrals, suck if there aren't. I'd like a rebalancing of the neutrals and the Vasari reliance on them, but that's just me. I'm not god, never claimed to be, and accept that a lot of the ideas that run through my head probably won't make it into this game.

I'm not saying Vasari is hopeless, but let's say if I was off in some parallel universe where I could fight myself. Judging by how I play as Vasari and how I play when I'm Advent, I think the game would come down to how many neutrals the Vasari player could get his hands on. If that number is 0-2, then I believe the Vasari player is screwed.

This is why I was never happy with the neutral balance and still am not. I feel it makes Vasari a wildcard pick that can either smite or suck abysmally.

Maurader is not about phase out only dude. It has Distort Gravity, which makes ships immune to PJIs. It has Subversion, which STACKS btw, this is excellent when fighting at an enemy planet where he has factories, like his homeworld. Even with feed u cant build fast enough. And Stabilize Phasespace, which is also useful. All of these are pretty pimp.

Lol. I've tried to defend those abilities in the past. I have old posts where I felt that way.

Here's the best way for me to express my feelings for the Marauder. I pick the colonizing cap regardless of race (I would pick the akkan even before 1.04 came out to change it up sometimes). This means that if I'm bringing out a second cap I need something that will bring a decent role with it.

It's hard to quantify impact on the battlefield, but I truely have a hard time justifing picking a Marauder over another Egg, a Devastator, a Desolator, or even a Skirantra. This is because at least in online matches it's so rare for a game to reach a point where the Maruader is really all that useful.

Compared to the Dunov or the Rapture, I really struggle to see where the abilities on the Marauder bring more than an Egg or a Devastator. The only time I really feel the need for a Marauder is when I need to stop an enemy from using a channeling ability (best two examples are shield regeneration and missile barrage). Other than that, I'm just too hard pressed to justify actually gettin a marauder.

Yeah Vasari has it ruff these days now.

RA got mad nerf. I havent seen it used in over 400+ games. I was the one last to use it and that was just for fun.

The Kortul got buff but some changes like the Jam weapons seems like a good idea in paper, but in practice not useful due to the AM requirement and duration of ability. 20 secs = 2 past of sc at most. Plus the other guy can just dock his ships.

Sentinals also got nerfed.  Though Blair will deny it, charged missile used to affect both SC and regular ships. Replays prove this.  Was a good counter to lums.

Everyone seems to fight hard for neutrals these days so that advantage is out the window.  People are using SB's, HC and carriers to guard them now. Poor scouts cant take those on.

Vas have decent capital ship, but their counterparts are usually better.  I would rank their ships at 2nd or 3rd between the 3 races per each category capital ships.

Why play vas? Kostura Cannon, though it will cost you 100,000 to make them effective.  When u get 10 of them its fun shooting them to take out the other guys entire fleet.

I've mentioned this in another thread, but I always thought that Vasari were the best. Certainly they are the best defenders of the 3 with phase stabilizers and mobile starbases and whatever the ability is called that their hangers get that freezes all the strikecraft for a lengthy time. What do the other races have that comes close to comparing to phase stabilizers? And the bigger the solar system the more potentially effective they are.

I think their biggest weakness is the lack of any shield restoring abilities, with the exception of the Kortuls personal sheild restore. The Kortul is really amazing though, it has double and triple the fire power of any of the other vasari cap ships minus the abilities, and with its self healing ability it can end a fight against pirates in better shape then it was going into the fight, which is really awsome.

 Fully upgraded and researched I think the Kortul has about 180dps while the next best I think is the Desolator with no more then 90dps (minus abilities), the rest are all a fair bit lower then that still. So if the enemy has abilities to counter the use of your own cap ships abilities then your Kortul will easily be the equivelant of 2 or 3 cap ships by comparison.

Actually Vas is the worst at defending.  SB doesnt have area damage like the other two.  Repair is at a lack luster 15.  Phase hanger ability uses too much AM.  You either keep SC dock at all times, due to the fact that if you dont you wont be able to use ability because the hanger will run out of AM fast trying to make SC, or dont make them at all if you want to use the ability to phase sc which u cant attacked if phased.  So the ability only delays the destruction of your SB and structures.

Kortul is just a cap and like any cap will go down fast to a fleet of lums or lrms fast.

You didn't adress the major benefit of phase stabilizers for being able to always be within one phase jump of any planet that is being attacked. That alone is huge because you basicly make it so you have no back door for the enemy to attack from. And the mobile starbases means you don't have to wait for the enemy to come to you (or worse, attack you from a distance or with just strikecraft), because you can bring it to the enemy. And while you are bringing the starbase to the enemy you can negate their strike craft from bringing you down along the way with the hanger ability. And at this point in the fight you aren't producing SC because they are already built so there is no competing for AM at the hanger.

The Kortul being able to self repair and do so much more dps with out any need for AM reserves means even if it does go down as fast as any other cap, it will atleast be able to take out more before it dies.

The Kortul now is very good as it makes any enemy cap ship that it attacks useless.

Some of the Marauder's abilities need to be redone from scratch. There is no point in using POH as an interrupt because the Kortul gets a passive interrupt with its DS ability. There is no point in disabling your own cap ship to save it from focus-fire when you can save it from focus-fire with Overseers that don't disable your own ship. Maybe POH should be an ordinary disabling ability like Ion Bolt, but with a longer duration.

Replicate Forces could also get buffed and Scramble Bombers should be reworked. Maybe it should make all friendly bombers within range get replaced instantly when destroyed for a long duration.

Imo, the only (other) buffs that the Vasari really need are: DPS boost to skirmisher, DPS boost to enforcer, health boost to assailant and overall boost to the Charged Missiles upgrade. I don't think that Vasari scouts need a buff because they are the only ones with the ability to capture extractors.

Man, you guys are totally bumming me out about my preferred race. When I get a free weekend, I need to get online and see how badly I fail (and i will) to see what you are talking about. Compstomping is super easy with Vasari... and probably all of the races it seems.

I don't know.  I think some people have it all wrong.  They don't really know Vasari, when they bad mouth them.  Yeah, alot does revolve around neutrals, and they do play differently, but there are too many misconceptions IMO.

According to my testing, the Skirantra is now the second best level 1 Cap ship out of all of the races!.  And Scramble Bombers is now potentialy one of the most lethal early game abilities!   (It just takes a long time, and lots of antimatter, to all deploy).  Yeah, the Marauder is still weak, but it has its benefits.  Advent players just don't understand how lethal the Orky can be.  And on and on.

I never said people can't be good with Vasari. Assailants have always been my favorite frigate just because of how good they are at assassinating caps.

I think I have a good way to express my feelings towards vasari. Try playing Maelstrom, a fairly popular preset map. There are no neutrals on that map. Try playing against people of comparable skill and I think you'll see that Vasari gets hindered by not having neutrals?

Do I think Vasari can't win without neutrals? Not necessarily, but having the worst combat scout, worst light frig (yes even with reintegration), worst LRF (in terms of health these things are very weak, although DPS can be upped pretty early), worst flak (in terms of DPS yep, 1 advent flak frigate does more damage than one vasari frigate, and vasari flak takes up 1 more ship slot. WTF!), and a questionable HC. I have not done testing of the enforcer since the patch, so I can't comment on it.

In big 4v4//5v5 matches, yes, your team needs a vasari, at least one. You need to fight for the neutrals. But I wish it wasn't that way. I'd rather pick Vasari for badassery. Not to make a cocky statement, but I know the Vasari inside and out in terms of ship stats, techs, and abilities, but for strategy look to JJ. The fact that he agrees with me really should cement that something's up and needs a slight fixing.

herm... i have an idea on how to win with vasari on maelstorm... thats a fun map... herm...

One last thing while it's on my mind. I don't think the balance is off to far. It's not like Vasari completely sucks compared to TEC/Advent. I'd just put Advent/TEC one slight notch above Vasari.

Vasari are not that weak.  I don't like going against a vasari player more so than TEC.  I see a lot of skirantra being built now since carrier caps got buffed plus it is good for repair cloud.  Vasari already had the strongest strike craft.  Orkulus has had nothing done to it and was already somewhat OP in my opinion.  It is just too hard to take down and too quick being built in enemy wells.  Subverters were buffed and were already pretty damn strong to begin with.  They are neutral dependant and always have been but vasari do get neutrals a helluva lot easier and combined extraction research.  Vasari caps got lots of love with the patch.  They have phase missles which can skip shields on practically everything.    People still gripe about the RA nerf and it was hugely overpowered.  Just because you can't get FREE ships in unlimited amounts anymore in addition to phase jumping anywhere in your empire doesn't mean your race sucks.  No one forces you to play vasari if you think they suck so much(and they don't).  Quit bitching and moaning and just play the game.

[_]-Greyfox

I don't play Vasari for all of the reasons I've mentioned.  I'll just stress that this is my opinion. It's what experience has taught me. I'm well aware of people who will swear by the Vasari, and I do find the Vasari race to be interesting to play. I find the other two races to be overall more successsful, at least in terms of my play.

So again. It's just my opinion. You don't have to listen to me, but I've put my opinion out there.

Actually just had some luck with Subversion on the Marauder. I was playing a game where someone was attacking a teamate, but I really couldn't help in many ways because I was defending myself....but I didn't need my Marauder I made so I ran him over to the production planet of his foe.

Let's just say it reaaaaally pissed him off when I subverted 2 planets with 2 factories each

Granted, I likely would have lost if I fought him but it at least "played dirty" like you all suggested. I guess it plays well that Vasari do well if they're not directly attacked.

so maybe the take away point here is that Vasari are great at support. Is that a good thing? I dunno, but i'm probably not going to switch races at this point.