Even though the "faction war" makes it difficult to see this, I always get the feeling that UD is not necessarily a competitive faction. I'm prone to believe the reason UD is second to SL is simply because it's way less crappy than SP (which I have yet to see the day they do fill their bar up to the middle) and FW (I got told they can only play decently if they pack up all the exos or above they can in their bgs. Like, selling a liver or something comes into mind. My main worry has alwats been the problem with faction flavour. The game advertises factions in an unrealistic way once you get to the game. UD is my best example, as I have found my single-faction bonus easily surpassed by abbility combinations amongst many other factions. This coupled with the fact several factions are more oriented DEF/Resistance/DMG reduction, or healing/high HP. As I see it, UD's weaknesses (low HP, lack of general healing, strong reliance on melee, limited DMG types) should be balanced through an aggressive gameplay, and above average DMG. This is not what it looks like when you play, many times I see champions from other factions (even those which aren't damage-oriented) have more damage than many avialable champions at our reach. Even one of the strenghts which are supposed to be part of the UD faction, range-resistance, is not quite visible but only in a bunch of not so effective champions and runes, plus a couple of actually strong ones. More over, in recent year (I blame SOE's incompetent card game management), UD's been switched towards a more ranged style of gameplay. I used to play back in the days of Octopi, and back then, if you played a ranged unit, and you opponent was UD, you were going to have a hard time. Right now, if you see a couple of ranged units, you better rush and pray for at least a couple of beaters to reach the target in working condition. Then keep praying for that player to not have enough DEF/Res to counter a melee barrage. If you are lucky, there won't be that many figures with absurd DMG output to fight back. My biggest suggestion is to strengthen the Melee capacity of the average UD champ. There are plenty of Melee abbilities which can do a lot of damage. They just need to be seen more often. If our champs have low-HP, and lack DMG reduction/resistance, then there's no problem. They can be killed off easily. Who cares if they can boast quite a beating before they go down. Another thing which is downplayed is the "unit sacrifice" aspect. There are plenty of runes featuring some sort of "Destroy friendly champ" effect, but when your champs are generally better alive, and taking some beat, it's not very wise to start killing them yourself. At least, if there was some sort of additional benefit to just "blew them up to make some damage", we could afford to sacrifice the more so often. Again, with Range-resistance, I don't see a lot of it. I see lots of spells and abbilities to make >15 DMG, but very few runes which grants some sort of additional resistance to it. If a melee beater can't dispatch an annoying summon, or a meat shield quickly, then it's pretty much at the whims of any ranged champ. As I said, we suffer from relying a lot on physical DMG (which seemingly have LOTS of counters), and from meat shields with plenty of HP, and even some bruisers with LOTS of DMG (and AP to make use of it. Still, if any UD bg have to rely on more than 4 marks-whatevertheyare's, then why not simply remove the "melee profiency" from any and all texts related. Certainly, there's no need for bulkier stats, or brand new, and situational abbilities/game effects. It's just a matter of sticking to the faction flavour, and allowing it to make for a great part of the rune design. Seriously, no more ****** ranged units.
