Is Horselord Finnulfr op?

yes it it, ban for racism, trend lock

 

No /thread

 

Despite being incredibly Pop efficient, Zerks just tend to be better 8 outta 9 times in most cases even if you don't use the paltry 10% damage boost advisor.

The real crime is that Celtic Horsemen can't compete with Norse Horse

 

he s strong but only if you can use the numbers, also you need double the resources to get the full pop so it takes a while

 

Its a Great advisor, which made Norse horseman playable and brought more variety to Norse... I don't think its more op than Esfandiyar, Khepri, Brennos or any other Good viable leg advisor... individually Norse horses still weak (if not in high numbers), also it takes much resources and time to make them... (dont see it necessary but if u still think they are op, HP bonus can be reduced to 20% from 35%...)

P.S

how many leg quests u did with Finnulfr and which ones?

 

So, as someone who has Horselord Finnulfr, it does seem pretty good at first glance. At 1 pop, Horsemen have far more HP per pop then Berserkers - nearly twice as much with Finnulfr to be exact. Horsemen are also Cavalry, which can quickly get from place to place allowing you to potential zerg an AI before it ages up. If you look at their DPS only, they actually have somewhat higher damage per pop as well.

Unfortunately though, Berserker's have Area Damage.

Area Damage is just gargantuan. Most of the difficulty in AoEO comes from dealing with large groups of enemy elites. While Horseman do have slightly higher damage per pop in comparision to Berserkers, Berserker's actual raw preformance just blows Horsemen right out of the water when Berserkers can hit 4-8 targets with each hit, depending on how clumped up the AI is. Even hitting 2 targets with Berserkers means that you are dealing double the damage output of Horsemen. Then you take into account that while you can have 2x the number of Horsemen compared to Berserkers, you may not be able to effectively use that number of Horsemen - Only so many units can occupy any one space, so if half of your Horsemen are just sitting around waiting for other Horsemen to die so they can take their place, you are doing far less damage per pop then what you could be for Berserkers. There's the additional QoL part with the Chief - Chief's easily keep up with Berserkers, having the same speed and all, but they'll lag far behind Horsemen, so you can't benefit from one of the Norse's greatest strengths using Horseman.

With all that said though, Horselord Finnulfr IS incredibly strong - it's just that massing Horsemen isn't anywhere near as good as just massing Berserkers.

Fortunately though, Berserker's don't actually have a strong Age 4 advisor - Theode only provides 10% damage. So you can feel free to pick up Finnulfr (Or Beorix, Venhuver, or even some other A4 advisor instead of Theode) and use them to more easily take down the bosses for the map - Berserker's are far worse then Horsemen when up against Cavalry bosses (And far worse then Skirmirshers/Ulfs when up against Ranged bosses, as well as a decent amount worse then Bowman/Harjar's when up against Infantry bosses).

So, yea - Norse are in a fairly unique position in which their best unit is FAR beyond all others in terms of power, BUT they don't have any good advisors for that unit, so they can actually pick and choose supporting advisors for what Berserker's aren't so good at, or just use other QoL Advisors.

 

Don't get upset man, they are joking. I'm pretty sure FFNEZ intended the joke as "ban Finnulfr for racism".
Anyway, finnulfr is indeed one of the strongest advisors imo. But overpoweredness is a hardly tangible concept in a game where you aren't competing against other human players, but rather against an AI, which is why i don't think it deserves to be nerfed at this point. As pharos said, you could just decrease the HP buff to 20-25% if anything. It's still nice to have this option and an extra viable unit, as long as every unit still has a role in some quests.
I'm more "worried" about other advisors that seem underpowered.

 

He is not overpowered, no. Frog.poison laid it out pretty eloquently; it would take a fundamental shift in Norse design for anything to outclass Berserkers in PvE. Finnulfar just brings Horseman up to parity, that’s all. He’s fun, and he is powerful, but he’s not over the line.

 

So, Critical thing here - You should not EVER compare Horselord Finnulfr to War Chief Comontorious - Or to ANY advisor that Norse can't use. Sure, it's easy to draw comparisions between the two of them, but Horselord Finnulfr does NOT compete against War Chief Comontorious - He competes against Neutral and Norse A4 advisors, such as Boudicca, Theode, Beorix, ect.

The only reason to nerf Finnulfr would be if, as Norse, Horseman builds suddenly dominated the meta - No other unit could come close in comparision. This is the main reason why Brann was nerfed for Celts - He made Woads too tanky for their extreme damage output, meaning that any other Celt build was essentially inferior to just spaming Woads. The amount that Finnulfr buffs Nordic Horseman has absolutely NO effect, nor any standing, nor any relation to how much War Chief Comontorious buffs Horseman and Carpetoms.

While Norse does have a bit of a PvE unit balancing issue, with Berserker's likely being too strong in comparision to other Norse units, Norse as a civ isn't dominating the PvE meta.

Finally, War Chief Comontorious is actually quite strong - Keep in mind that Woads have the top damage for a PvE unit in the entire game due to their AoE charge and high baseline damage - It's so high, in fact, that the second highest damage output unit isn't anywhere near close to the burst Woads can do. However, Woads are a glass cannon - If you are a player who prefers a tankier playstyle, or a frontline/backline playstyle, then you use War Chief Comontorious - Carpetoms deal a signifcant amount of damage for their pop, especially when you consider they also have splash, and the buffed Horseman make for a fairly tanky frontline combined with the Celtic Horseman's increased pierce armor. Keep in mind that Comontorious tends to sell for quite a bit more then Brann (And much more then Brennos), the other two Celtic advisors it competes with.

 

Horselord Finnulfr is also much slower than Berserkers at getting through walls/buildings, largely due to the area dmg on Berserkers.

Norse is my main civ and I've enjoyed Finnulfr as it gives viable alterative to berserkers, don't feel its overpowered as Berserkers still work better in most quests. I try to use Finnulfr where there is a lot of map to move around, like one of the Haloween ones, can't think of the name right now. If map isn't very long then Berserkers are default for me.

 

I use Finnulfr for quests where I am not allowed to build infantry, like Ice King Mountain, but most of the time I still wish I have berserkers. The horses die surprisingly fast for some reason, so you need more vills + caravans to support continuously replacing them, lowering the max population you can use.

 

Do you have Chimera's Leather Hide or Minotaur's Golden Hide on them?

Bonus Damage protection makes a significant difference on Cavalry.

Of course, there's also the fact that the damage output of Horseman is far below that of Berserkers, and their individual tankiness isn't that much higher then a Berserker, meaning that Berserkers take overall less damage since they kill things quicker.