Why Ram is underrepresented

As a loyal ram player which managed to test every unit in the different beta phases i see how the latest patches weakened us to the point that only one player as of today is in the top 20 and a mere 4 is in the top 30. Lion and Wolf are dominating the scene right now. Why?

i came to the following conclusions after having played some extra open beta games and MANY closed beta ones:

-Necromancers, the pillar of the Ram armies cost too much for what they provide. I'm referring especially to low level necros which cost a whopping 65 AP...comparing them to the wolven lonewolf is almost a joke. I fear the biggest issue for ram is having a weak expensive mage in their ranks. I would love a decreased AP cost for it especially for the first levels.

- Ferocious got nerfed : 6 minimum damage while not bad in general is not as good as accuracy (which is reflected by the AP, of course). I would like to have the skill AP increased in exchange of the minimum damage increased to 8 (10 was too much).

- Priest of saluel: one of the units that i loved the most is now quite pricy to use and aura of crepuscular princes / occult erosion are still not worh it . The first is not particularly strong (undead units either fear often or not at all...+2 is not very influencial and given its faith cost i would always use bad omen or spiritual aggression). Making it last more than 1 turn might be cool or simply making all enemy units within the area suffer a fear test of 12. Occult erosion while a good skill is useless on a priest simply because it does not hold vs spiritual aggression and casters in general are a rare breed in the open beta - probably due to their high AP cost.

these are my conclusions...why do you think they are underrepresented?

I would like to test more the balance before take some conclusion but... in general my feeling (i'm not new, i play like 230h of closed beta) is that :

1) Mage cost increase a lot and without any reason. In the actual situation they're not cost efficient and compared to the warrior priest and warrior monk from wolfen that is simply ridicolous. they get 2 attack, better move, stats and cost less.
The key here is to understand that a pure mage is strong as much as his spell are strong. Necromancer don't have any overpowered spell compared to the all usefull spell from the alhan caster.
Also the +10 AP for lv5 i think are too much. I like (because i ask for it at first in beta) the presence of a cost for getting lvup for mage power, but +5 at lv3 and +5 at lv5 is ok imo. That's come also after the base cost increase and it's really too much.

2) I feel that Ferocious is very good as it is... it's purpouse is to don't allow an always bonus to dmg, but just when enemy have great resistance, so the price and the dmg of 6 i think it's ok. It takes 7 hit from ferocious unit to kill a 40hp unit, with 8dmg output it would take just 5 hit... a drastic decrease vs the 7 needed right now and just 1 more hit vs the closed beta. (where ferocious hit for 10 and thus it's just 4 hit to kill a unit, really too strong)

3) About Priest of Saluelh i could say the same point that i said for Mage in general, but here imo we have a different problem with the mechanics of the iconoclast unit. In the miniture game every priest generate a small amount of faith point and in general the radious of the iconoclast priest are bigger compared to the one of a same level normal priest. That's granted because is surely more difficult to get enemy in your faith zone compared to get friendly. So my suggestion here is to :
a) Give 1-2 Faith point generated by priest themself.
b) Increase the base radius of faith aura vs the normal aura of non-iconoclast priest. +50% would be ok.
Edit : i would not change occult erosion for the moment and about the aura... uhm something could change here...

That's just some consideration about undead army to answer deep blue point. But i'll bring more detailed feedback in 1-2 week when i hope to get a clear opinion about the state of the game.

IMO Ram is underrepresented not becouse being weaker but becouse two other factions are easier to start with...

Lions have propably best starter, while Wolfens have PoB that considered to be OP by newbies...
Simply new players choose factions that looks strong for them... and while none of us plays Acheron there are 3 players less to show what undada are capable of

1) Mage cost increase a lot and without any reason. In the actual situation they're not cost efficient and compared to the warrior priest and warrior monk from wolfen that is simply ridicolous. they get 2 attack, better move, stats and cost less.
The key here is to understand that a pure mage is strong as much as his spell are strong. Necromancer don't have any overpowered spell compared to the all usefull spell from the alhan caster.

IMO not exacly - 0.10 necros with packs of 2-3 gave almost full map controll and it was wrong and powerfull as hell. Now they are OK but not exacly on 200 ap when you ned also a Crane Warrior to counter wolfens and Knight... while Knight can be countered by Ferocious archers - Wolfens with their DOD - unfortunatly can't. And of coruse 200 ap is not the limit for playing with Puterfacion or Death Wave

IMO Ram is underrepresented not becouse being weaker but becouse two other factions are easier to start with...

You don't really know what you're talking about?

Pick undead army and go out there.

i have a small RAM band but acheron is borring for me

maybe ferocious 8 is too much altough 7 might be the right number...

@dragon warrior: altough i didn't have time to play the open beta these day i've my acheron warband with a score of 8-0 meaning is not something unplayble. Reality is that the more you will face experienced players the more certain units will severly underperfom, such as the necro for its cost.

mayby pasive bonus for toughness cause if y always losing iniciative test + y have lowest range of move. Its hard to do something cause bifore RAM start to do something half army comeback to garveyard pernamently

I have to agree on the priest of Salauël. Right know he does not really feel like a worthy member of any Ram company, for many reasons.

-Out of the box he is pretty weak. A single spell that he can barely cast because of Iconoclast restrictions. He has to put himself in danger to get his faith, but must rely entirely on the rest of the company to protect him.

-He does not really bring anything worthwhile to the table until rank 4. Aura of the crepuscular princes is not that great and better used by black paladins anyway As for the swaping miracle it is really baffling on a devout with troubles casting in melee. Its obvious use is to get out of danger before it reach you, but then you won't get faith because Iconoclast... It's just to complicated and risky to be an efficient choice.

-Poor synergy with the rest of the army: Mostly because of Iconoclast. The only units that can help your priest are lvl 3 skeleton warriors with Martyr, and Loyal black paladins. Martyr skeletons are ok I guess if a bit pricey and requiering lvl3, but I'm no really sure you want to take Loyal on black paladins instead of Exalted because Black Pals have the miracles with the highest difficulty out of all the warrior-monks.

All in all the problem with the priest of Salauël to me, is that you have to put a lot of effort into leveling him up and giving him the proper escort to make him work at an "ok" level. Not great, not even good, just "ok". And by that time he is an expensive unit in AP, while still being incredibly vulnerable. The necromancer has this same issue but he is at least capable of protecting himself a bit with puppets and respite of the deads.

Making his early miracles a bit more efficients and maybe giving the others members of the army an easier acces to skills like Loyal and Martyr would be nice things to be explored in the future.

just adding that transfer is awesome as you can use it on enemy units as well, thus using it "offensively" by putting an enemy unit in a bad position.

just adding that transfer is awesome as you can use it on enemy units as well, thus using it "offensively" by putting an enemy unit in a bad position.

Wow ! I didn't know that. But it's still an extremely risky spell, that doesn't really fit on a pure caster who hate being anywhere close to melee. On a warrior-monk however...