Give Dox vision range back please

I feel like the nerf to Dox vision range was unnecessary. I don't think anyone understood that the introduction of the symmetrical maps would nerf the Dox as much as it did. These maps destroyed the unpredictability of the Dox. You now know exactly where the Dox are going to come from and are able to deal with them a lot easier. It's a lot harder to overwhelm your opponent with Dox.

With a vision range of 100 it means that the moment you see a tank blob you are already losing your Dox. Can Dox have either their old vision range of 150 back or at least 120 so that you can be able to pull your Dox back before you start losing them to tanks.

I personally never felt that Dox were overpowered. It was just that some maps favored them more often then not. As well as people didn't know how to use tanks to trade efficiently with them. You just micro your tanks backwards and you can destroy a ridiculous amount of incoming Dox.

Let me explain this in very, very, very concrete balance terms so I'm not misunderstood or misconstrued:

If a unit has too many assigned, perceived, or useful roles, it becomes more versatile to use as a one-shoe-fits-all unit.
The dox had the following roles before the vision nerf:

Scout
Raider
AA
Base Destroyer
Zerg unit
End-game swarm unit (death by lag/map saturation).

Now that Uber removed the vision, we removed the following roles:

Scout

The Dox is still Overpowered, imho. People use it to fill the holes in their strategies, just like air. The difference is air has a counter besides itself. Dox do not in many situations.

Now that the vision has been nerfed, however, more testing is needed before making any decisions about changes.

I believe a simple increase in cost and maybe build time, is all that is needed for the dox. This would make it harder to mass them into critical death balls. They should be a unit which you build to do specialist attack runs (raider). They can traverse water, so this in itself is a big advantage. They shouldn't be a unit that can attack a base head on.

Example.
In the early game you might get one person building dox only and another building tanks only.
The dox should be able to attack your outlying mex and try to stall your undefended economy structures. But they should be no match for tanks in a head on fight. Currently they are good at both.

A generalist unit such as the dox never excels at any of those fields, and in this case doesn't. It's AA for example is weak, potshot AA and a group can't trade shots with a bomber as the bomber can one hit them if they're not microed whatsoever. (And it's become a tad bit more difficult to micro said bots as the tracking bombs of the bombers can well... Track, to a degree.)

Generalist != Good in all roles. I believe even RCBM has very generalistic units in T1. (Please excuse my ignorance on that last sentence, that was just what I believe they've said was one of their goals.)

The problem is that it is comparable metal for metal in almost all of these roles. And, in some of them, definitely the best.

Then why did tank/air mix start to beat it?

That's not a specific unit in a specific role, bro.

Base Destroyer - All units that do damage could be classified as base destroyers
Zerg unit - Lets face it almost every combat unit in this game is a zerg unit. The more you have the better you do.
End-game swarm unit - Again this could apply to any unit.

I feel a better nerf to Dox would be to increase their metal cost from 45 to 60.

I suppose the only solution is to put a skidder into my dox as they probably won't change it for a while.

you already should. Or use hummingbirds. Or radar. All the nerf does is make dox alone suffer losses to other things when scouting. Still an effective early scout for bot factory.

its a pretty small nerf. Imagine getting a vision of 90 or 85? It could not micro well against tanks having no judgement of position or numbers. Or, imagine cost of 60. Or losing AA? Would be crazy eh?

or imagine buffing the grenadier with cost reduction, making numbers effective to tanks, then changing skitter to rapid fire buggy that's good vs dox, like a tank cost, 3x dox health, 2x damage, dox rof, 150 vision, 100 range? Then you would have a dox counter, the worse Nerf of all. That's what id rather see. Skitter would still be less spammable, maybe make -2 slower. But a real army versus another real army would benefit in variety suddenly. Big improvement. Grenadiers and tanks break skitters, grenadiers and dox Break tanks, skitters and tanks Break dox, dox and skitters break grenadiers.

grenadiers end up little ahead except lack of AA.

The current ranked maps are tiny and have no big expansion room.
Surprise! A fast weak raiding unit is unimportant!
scnr

*as important

I did manage to use them fairly effectively on the ice planet.

Yeah, the maps for 1v1 confuse me. Sure, they're 'balanced' and have some cool well-defended spawn points, but it effectively negates 90% of PA's gameplay by having a single planet and being so small that nobody has the breathing room to tech up.

Yeah... It's too easy to camp the exits to their major base while picking off their expanding fabbers. So you can expand without problem.

How about YOU adept instead? Put in 1-2 scout vehicles per Dox blob and you are settled.

In general I think we need to start playing more with custom maps before we decide the overall direction for balance. I was playing on a 2v2 arena map I made last night and it completely change the gameplay around. Dox were extremely weak as there were dedicate chokes you had to fight for and they were only good for slipping past those chokes and doing a bit of raiding. Also on the Fields of Isis map dox are really weak. Basically any map where you know where the bases are and has a lot of chokes, dox are going to be a much more specific use unit. I think any further nerf runs the risk of eliminating them entirely.

Right now they are okay I guess to be honest. Really, it is good they are bad at some things, being good at all things is obviously bad.

You can still ball them up and flank with them. You just can't ball them up and throw them head on and/or flank and/or line up for defense and/or dance around to occupy time and attention while multiple forces hit.

Basically, you can't scrub your armpits and then brush your teeth with them. Good riddance.

You can't tell me something that cheap/fast/effective can't be used for anything at all in a game with chokes and base-locations? You can still break open with tanks and stream them through tanks, which then makes the tanks feel loved too.

I don't have any problems with dox's new range.Its still nice and useful on any map.

Dox are still way too versatile.

Dox needed a little nerf. If you'd ask me, I'd say they needed price increase.

Increase Bolo velocity of projectile and this nerf dox.