The Zeus is very, very unimpressive against anything except army blobs without excessive AA. At least in my experience. Anyone seeing anything different? The AOE it has is quite powerful against air, but it doesnt fire fast enough to kill off air. It'll kill the first five fighters, then die before it reloads to kill the next ten that just murder it. Against AA it's quite good, however.
:3 I kid. Hmm perhaps it is designed with that niche in mind? An air based titan, I can't imagine it not being the case that you need to baby-sit it with air support like you would need to do for land based titans.
The Titans are better when given some support. Adding even a few T2 fighters or a screen of bombers is a great way to prolong their survival long enough to punch the needed holes in an army blob rather than dying instantly. Hit-and-run attacks are also valuable with something that's both super-mobile and has sufficient HP to benefit from repairs rather than waiting for replacement units.
My experience with the Zeus is that if you have significantly more fighters then your opponent, to defend it from air attacks, it is extremely difficult to stop before it wrecks their base/kills commander.
I haven't seen any sensible usage of Zeus, but I did see this in 1vs1 uber player's replay. He built 3 Zeus and drop them over the enemy commander. It is more like playing the enemy rather than defeating.
and i find it good for that ... you have otherwise a moving wmd in the form of the atlas ... you have a bulletspongehoverarty in the form of the ares .. so the zeus takes the role of army cleansing ... just give it some aa and it's good actualy ... i would argue it's a bastard between soulripper and ahwassa or how the seraphim tx bomber is called
I've discovered that the Zeus is FAR more powerful than I originally assumed. In my previous tests, I didn't have much energy. Once I figured that part out, the rest was cake. The Zeus fires so fast it's close to impossible to shoot down without copious amounts of AA (as in a hundred or so) or stupid amounts of fighters (assuming the enemy brought a half decent fighter escort). However, it is weak against T2 fighters. So there's that. Zeus FTW.
In my opinion, Zeus is still very easy to get overwhelmed by T1 fighter. I think there is no need to use T2 fighter against it. But it is near impossible to kill Zeus by land-to-air units, such as Spinner and Storm.
The Zeus is true to his name- he is the titan slayer. Package him with an angel or two, a few gunships, a few phoenixes, and you have a very mobile, very high damage and very hard to kill deathball that excels at killing other titans while taking no losses. The angel's anti-missile laser is extremely effective. The repair is nice, but that LAMS... Most everything else in the deathball has too much health to be bothered by flak. Challenge- Find a way to kill a Zeus, 2 angels, 5 gunships, and 5 phoenixes for less than 48k mass. (That's not something from orbit or a nuke. You get the idea)
They still get overwhelmed by fighters. The Angle gets shot down first, if your enemy knows to control the fighter. Consider the price of Angle, it require 5500 metal. And 5500 metal is near the price of 25 Hummingbirds which can take out the Angle very quickly. Though the Zeus can do area of effect, but Zeus is still not cost effectively against fighters.
How they work together though is what makes the combination so overwhelmingly powerful. If you bring in a few fighters at a time or in a line to avoid the Zeus splash (which usually works), you don't have enough missiles at once to overwhelm the angels, not to mention the Zeus's small fighter escort. You bring in a larger group, and the Zeus pops them all instantly. I don't think its OP, I just think that it is a very cost effective way to project air power. Seriously, try it. The only thing that I have found to work is an enormous amount of phoenixes coming from several directions simultaneously. They bring enough missiles in to kill the fighters + angels yet not die from splash. Hummingbirds in near unlimited quantities get blasted. I tried well over 200 of them, and they all died instantly to the Zeus before they could do any damage. Ill try other combinations once my wife gets home with her laptop. I bet another Zeus with ~20 phoenixes and nothing else will beat it.
I had about 150 T1 fighters and 40 T2 Fighters with one Angel next to a zeus in a recent FFA. Utter domination. I stopped a massive (300 units) T2 incursion into my base with just a Zeus and the fighter group. I didn't really need the angel to finish the rest - I'd completely wrecked all enemy air power.
I think a good balance / nerf for the zeus would be to leave it as it is but remove its insane ability to attack air.. that aoe is enough to shred any air force engaging it, as well as if you have your own fighters backing it up as the enemy cant order their fighters to effectively ignore the other fighters and target the zeus they loose that required opportunity to get a round of missiles off before being vaporised out of existance.
I think if you split that mass allowance into dox and t1 fighters, you could do it. The zeus prioritizes ground, so swarm/patrol the dox under it, then attack with the t1 fighters. Haven't actually tried it, but I think it would do the trick. It prioritizes ground, so if you attack with ground force at the same time, it is super vulnerable to air.
I think the theory of that plan is a solid one... how ever i suspect getting your army of dox underneath it swarming in time for your air to come to the rescue, when the zeus can come from literally any direction, is asking a bit much for most players
You could bait the enemy Zeus into your army (which is hopefully large enough to survive a few shots), then jump it with air. That plan falls apart, though, if you don't have air superiority. Of course, if you have T2 air, you could let him just run rampant with his air force while you kill his unsuspecting commander.
Tier 2 naval AA shreds the Zeus, btw. Of course that assumes you can get your ships in position, but they have the health, DPS and range to take care of it.
