A Problem no one's Talking About

[SomeDudeOnTheForums]

Bugs, OP Dinos, Excessive Nerfs, Unneeded Nerfs, No boost Reset, Constant Powercreep, Bad Pvp, Horribly long and Annoying Raids, all of these issues have been discussed and everyone knows most of them by now. However, I feel there’s a problem that keeps getting glossed over every Update, but constantly gets worse: The overabundance of Strong Cunnings

Back in 2.7

Since 2.7, there have been 4 Updates that have dropped. All four of which, along with 2.7, have gotten mostly Cunning, or Part Cunning Creatures in them, and they’re oppressing the Fierce dinos, which are the least represented and the worst of the three Main Classes. Here are a couple of screen shots indicating which dinos are Cunning, and which ones aren’t. Those who are Part Cunning, Cunning, or have Cunning features will be marked with a Red Checkmark.

See the issue here? So many dinos with Cunning in them, yet so little representation of the other classes. Plus, a lot of these Cunnings marked are quite good, and some are viable in the meta. There are so few dinos that are of Pure Resilient or Fierce. Phorex? Fierce CUNNING. Parasauthops? Resilient CUNNING. (Though it should be a Wildcard) Rinchicyon? Fierce CUNNING. ALL of 2.9? CUNNING. With so many Cunnings and few Pure Fierce, the Fierce getting pushed out of the Meta, leaving only Cunnings, Resilients, and Wildcards to dominate. Plus, not only that, but most Fierce are pretty underwhelming unless they are part of another Class. AND there are so few options to resort to when it comes to Chompers. Only Thor and Mortem work as Big Damage Dealers. (Indot is also a Big Damage Dealer, but relies on the Counter and Cloak, so not just pure damage.) We need more Fierce to be introduced, strong and BALANCED PURE FIERCE to help diverse the meta and help represent the Fierce Class. Please.

[VeteranSen]

True. Yes, something has to be done about the poor Fierce class.
The thing is, they have low versatility compared to Cunnings and Resilients. Cunnings can dodge, distract, increase speed, nullify and auto-swap. They contain flocks with Absorb mechanic.
Resilients can slow, cleanse, Precise( a few cunnings also have this), vulner, shield, heal and also speed increase.
Fierces on the on the other hand, can break shiels, bypass armor, cleanse vulner, increase/damage and crit chance not to forget rend and DoT.
Allo G2/Acro have an all-cleanse move, while Alberto has an instant shield-breaking move. They form the minority of viable true fierces.
Dimetrodon-rig fierces are sorta better equipped to fight cunnings, but still stand little chance against them - basically, an Edapho outclasses a T-Rex.
Baryonyx-rigs can increase attack/crit, both of which can be cancelled by a nullifying/cunning strike. They’re faster than most resilients, but slower than the slowest cunnings.
And I haven’t even got to resistances. Long story short, pure fierces are almost never resistant to their own effects. None to few pure fierces have DoT and rend resistance, let alone 100% immunity to bleed.
Even though Dimetro-rigs have rend/bleed resistance, they cannot replicate the effects. Bleed and Rend do little harm to Cunnings anyway (except flocks, which can also cleanse+rally).

Counting Hybrids in, Allosino has a Stun move but since it is a secondary fierce move, it is a pure Fierce. It also has a bit of armor, but no resistances.
Tryostronix is basically Bary-type attack increaser with a lot of useful resistances + a speed-up+heal move to out-speed some cunnings! Surprising but welcome.
Indominus couple heavily rely on cloak to deal damage, something which gives it a part-cunning aspect.
Dracocerat is a rend-swapper, which can save your skin in the nick of time. However, if you do your math wrong, things can turn south pretty quick. It also has a Stun and a Cleanse move.
Can’t give my view on Apex Cunnings, I don’t have any from that class.

I know cunnings are supposed to counter Fierces, but they’re not supposed to absolutely destroy them! Some of the best creatures are always part-cunning. (Look at Skoona, Alloraptor, Monolo and Magnapy to name a few)
Maybe a new mechanic/effect can bring Fierces back to glory? 25% damage reduce resist? Instant moves? Better resistances?

[TheAngrySuchomimus]

I think making fierce resistant to distraction isn’t the way to go. Just look at indom that demolishes most legendary cunning except phosphora and gryleken. Also the pure cunning aren’t that much of a problem. It’s the cunning + other class that are problematic. Scorp, Prex and Skoona are such creatures. When it comes to pure cunning being problematic it’s flocks that are concerned and the only reason they are op beside achy’s hybrid is a lack of creatures with group moves. The way to improve fierce should be to give them on escape moves.

[Average_Spinosaurid]

I just remembered when before Compsocaulus everybody was complaining about how bad the cunning class was, and now that they’ve got a chance to be stellars, people hate it

[Mudkipz]

Almost like changing the entire resilient class was a bad idea.

[Mudkipz]

Yeah. People were always complaining about how bad cunnings were - so the devs nerfed the resilient class, and tried their best to introduce a bunch of strong cunnings, which probably ended up being an overcorrection. Ludia has been introducing tons of cunnings even before 2.7, arguably going all the way back to 2.0. But you can’t say that we as a community didn’t ask for something like this to happen.

[GTA]

IMO it’s fun to play a Cunning or Resilient because of the different mechanics. A Fierce is just there to chomp it’s way through shields and armor and has no real technical skill to it (think Thor for instance). While I don’t agree that the Fierce class should be left in the dark, the current meta is strongly geared toward Cunnings and then Resilients.

Now, I think we can all mostly agree that Flocks are a much bigger headache than the Cunning class. I hate those things.

[Delta]

I still think the problem here is that too much attention was given to resilient dinos back in the day. It was like they spent so much time focusing on them, that both cunnings and fierce were left in the dust. Now, they’ve corrected the problem with (recent) cunning dinos, but have still ultimately left fierce dinos behind.

If a cunning can destroy a fierce, and a resilient can destroy a cunning, then it makes sense that a fierce should be able to destroy a resilient, yet that still isn’t happening. My Hadros still takes out any lonely Thor she finds in Gyrosphere. This, however, is down to resilients still being too much (most have high health + high armor + high attack and even a good crit chance). Some resilients need an attack nerf in order for the fierce to counter them.

Also, Devastation should have been a fierce move from day one, change my mind.

[Banarel]

People were asking for better-quality tennis balls to play in the tennis matches and got basketballs instead.

[vineshjaguar]

Yes @SomeDudeOnTheForums, I agree. We have too many cunning creatures being added every update. We NEED more creatures from the other classes.

[Colin]

its a pretty big problem, i know resilient used to outnumber everyone by a crazy amount but they weren’t crazy annoying like cunning, just op. cunning is annoying cuz only flocks are used and they can heal now. who gave the idea to make it so cunning could heal, flock is cool idea since smaller dinos attacked in packs usually, but its just annoying to be able to distract, take crit chance, dodge, only kill one and heal them. there need to be more fierce creatures, group attacks and buffs in everything except flocks. I hope in the heal mechanism on some of the alert, they nerf the heal down to when only one flock creature is left instead of 2.

resilient: 86
fierce resilient: 21
cunning resilient: 9
cunning: 72
cunning fierce: 21
fierce: 51
wildcard: 20
Resilient have 116 dinos to do with resilient, cunning have 102, fierce has 93, but only cuz it has a lot of mix hybrids, most pure fierce are weak

[Raptor_R]

Well that’s because Ludia is making up to use by giving us more viable cunnings. After they’ve been shafted by resilients for so long.

[Colin]

yes, but it left fierce weak and im not sure they can make it super strong like those. at this rate, everything gona become more and more op like in some shows, leaving once okay ones behind

[Mudkipz]

One thing about fierce is its difficult to come up with new fierce ideas given how limited the class abilities are. They can break shields, inflict DoT, increase their attack, or swap prevent. There’s not a long of creative space there compared to the plethora of resilient abilities or the endless new varieties of Sidestep - at least not without substantial overlap. Ludia has been getting more creative recently: lethal Rampage and run, killer Instinct, and Stunning Obstruction come to mind. But there just isn’t a lot there for a pure fierce to work with - hence why very few “pure” fierce exist.

[arugono]

Pure fierce move. Hungry Bite: damages 1.5x and heals .5x of damage stat.

[Overkill_999]

Something needs to be added to the fierce class as a whole. I’m not sure what that could be but they just seem so bad campared to the rest of the meta. We have so many cunning’s and resilients that are meta relevant. The only pure fierce that I can think of that are actually meta relevant are mortem and indotarus. Compared to cunning’s and resilient the fierce creatures really lack good resistances. I think we need a fierce class reset/change. Needing the cunning’s would make resilients top tier again and needing the resilients would just make cunning’s the best class. We just need a complete fierce class overhaul.

[Mudkipz]

@Overkill_999

Compared to cunning’s and resilient the fierce creatures really lack good resistances.

Not only that, but they seem to lack any kind of damage mitigation. This is probably by design, but it makes every pure fierce play like a glass cannon, limiting how they can be used. Cunnings have distraction and dodge. Resilients have shields and often have armor. What do fierce have?

I don’t think the class needs a full rework. If anything, the resilient rework has shown that trying to solve these kinds of problems by painting with broad strokes often isn’t the best solution. But I do think they need more variety in their playstyle through different abilities. Maybe they could get some kind of “intimidate” ability (not to be confused with Intimidating Impact, though that could be changed to something like Shattering Vulnerability Impact), which could act like a 25% distraction, only since it doesn’t count as distraction Resilients couldn’t cleanse it (and maybe cunnings could/would resist it). Just a little something to give members of the fierce class a little more staying power.

[ScorpiosrexG3]

How about lets create a team of custom Fierce? Damage must not exeed 2000, Health not more than 5800?

[ScorpiosrexG3]

Compsocaulus should be legendary rarity as it is only a hybrid, not a super hybrid. To me, all uniques should be super hybrid.

[SomeDudeOnTheForums]

This doesn’t really help the situation at all. Putting Fierce Creature concepts in this thread won’t make it better. Ludia doesn’t listen, or even notices creature concepts of the community, so in all likelihood, shoving creature concepts here isn’t going to do much.