Argents OP?

[stumpyfongo]

I know this topic isn't new. And, over the years the Argent has been nerfed several times. All I know is that on our private server Argents dominated the scene. There was very little point in using anything else especially at high levels, and when bred.

• High Health
• High Carry weight
• Ability to pick riders off mounts (which we decided to not do because it was too cheap and easy)
• Ability to pick up riders/creatures and bite them while carrying them.
• Massive damage. Some of the Argents had over 800% melee damage. Single argents could be used to take on alphas.
• Ability to flee if the fight went south, which was almost never.

We did a lot of testing, most of it without recording video. A top-tier shotgun, couldn't kill an argent after being picked before it could peck you to death in it's grasp. What about a top-tier assault rifle?
 

Supposedly Argents take more damage to the head from ranged weapons. What are we missing here? How are argents not OP?
 

[DarthaNyan]

Tamed dinos dont take damage through the walls even if part of them clips through - they are technically on the other side of the wall. They cant damage you as well.

Pump shotgun or fabricated sniper rifle deals with them just fine. Also they are SLOW.

[Demigod]

argents are not OP. they are very tanky and can carry a lot but they are by no means overpowered. 

it packs a decent punch, i’ll give it that. but other flyers outclass it. it’s speed really drags it down. the griffin is my go-to mount for quick assasinations and my wyvern is my go-to mount for meat runs. either of those could kill an argent of the same level, even imprinted with rider bonus. 

when you compare the argent to a human or a raptor or a carno then yeah, it’s pretty powerful. if wyverns and griffins could be bred then there would be very little PVP utility for an argent before the TLC drops.

an argent won’t pick you up and attack you in it’s claws unless it is mounted, meaning it would also have to have a saddle armor bonus. that, in that scenario, would make them significantly harder to kill. 

a few points regarding your video: an assault rifle is NOT ideal for killing dinos. i recall struggling to kill a beaver when i first found one in a drop, even being a journeyman. also, any creature in a large enough pack or flock or swarm will present a much greater challenge to kill, due to mate boost bonus and strength in numbers. i have personally watched a group of dimorphodons kill a pair of rexes.

with all that said, i love the argie. it serves its roll as a mid-class flyer very well. and i’m sure with hundreds of hours of breeding that it could be on par with some alpha predators...but so could most tames after many mutations.

[RedGypsy6]

I've done some thorough testing on my server.  I've let other tribes try to kill my argents.  The common claims out there are that a pike will kill an argent quickly if it picks you up.  Also an assault rifle, also a shotgun, also that if you hit them in the head they will take increased damage and go down in a second.  I've had all of these tried on me, none of them have worked. 

I let one guy unload his mastercraft assault rifle on my after i picked him up.  He went through 4 clips.  I had enough time to fly almost to the top of the map and drop him. On my server we reduced the damage resistance of argents because people were just breeding massive armies because they recognized how OP they were, myself included.  I think people get upset when someone mentions their OP'd because they rely so heavily on them.  Problem is they are too easy to tame.  I wouldn't mind if they were as difficult to tame as a quetzel.  Are their better fliers out there, sure, but they are harder to tame / find.  I dont know about sniper rifle, never had anyone try that on me where i couldnt shake the shots. 

They are way more powerful than their taming process would imply.  I also used an argent to farm alphas before we reduced their resistance.  Which again i think is a little crazy for how easy they are to come by. 

Reducing their resistance on our server has worked out well.  They are no longer good at everything.  They can't stand toe to toe with alphas anymore. 

Also the original poster may be on the island and not have griffins or wyverns.

[stumpyfongo]

@DarthaNyan I want to take your word for it, and that would make sense, but i'll have to do some testing. Seems too convenient that only wild dinos can take damage/do damage through walls. Why not make it so NO dinos take/do damage through walls.

@Demigod That all makes sense on a server that has Griffins and Wyverns. We were playing on the island. Without griffins and wyverns, argents seem to be the top of the food chain on the island. Especially given their mobility. Sure they are slow but they can still fly away if they are losing to a ground mount.

[stumpyfongo]

Also, just because we got tired of using Argents all the time to attack our enemies... we tried using some ground mounts. I am partial to direbears and my tribemate was partial to the chalicotherium. We took a group of about 7 or so of each to go knock on the door of one of our more distant enemy's bases just for fun. You can argue about whether or not those particular tames was a good idea, not the point. The point is that it was the most stressful, frustrating, hair-pulling experience in Ark trying to herd a mid-sized group of land animals across the terrain. I can't even tell you how many times they got stuck on dang rocks or trees. It wasn't that they had to fight along the way, they did fine against anything they came in contact with, but they got stuck so often, by the time we actually got to the enemy base I didn't even care any more haha. I was done. It's like herding a bunch of cats with blindfolds on. Flyers don't have that problem. They can fly from point A to B with zero risk/difficulty. This experience dissuaded me from ever wanting to bring a massive force across land when I have access to Argents that can do it with ease. And, as I mentioned, the argents can disengage at any moment if they get overwhelmed. They are too versatile. They can pick up half of the creatures on the island at zero risk. They can carry large amounts of weight. They have enough stamina to fly across the map. A high level player-mounted argent can take on an Alpha Rex by itself. They need more limitations. As @RedGypsy6 mentioned, they are too easy to tame for how useful they are. I just want them to be balanced in such a way that they aren't the go-to tame for everything. And the Devs are talking about making them able to carry more creatures, and have a smithy saddle? Seriously? Again, I feel like I must be missing something.

[Demigod]

2 minutes ago, stumpyfongo said:

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@DarthaNyan I want to take your word for it, and that would make sense, but i'll have to do some testing. Seems to convenient that only wild dinos can take damage/do damage through walls. Why not make it so NO dinos take/do damage through walls.

@Demigod That all makes sense on a server that has Griffins and Wyverns. We were playing on the island. Without griffins and wyverns, argents seem to be the top of the food chain on the island. Especially given their mobility. Sure they are slow but they can still fly away if they are losing to a ground mount.

i would say that they exist in the wild as the dominant flying predator of the island, but it is absolutely dependent upon the rider when tamed and mounted. a tapy that is spec’d well enough and with a decent rider could just strafe out of the way from the argents attack and move in behind it. a ptera could spin attack, wait a second, spin attack again, etc until the argent is dead and it wouldn’t be able to land a single hit on it.

the only thing separating the argent from those two flyers is its naturally high health and weight. i can’t argue that it’s a threat against land-based creatures, and the argents serve a higher utility than the other flyers (can be bred to serve a variety of purposes), but i believe a fully imprinted and bred ptera could kill an imprinted and bred argie without taking a scratch. 

maneuverability is almost the most important aspect of a flyer, in terms of fighting. being tanky will only get you so far. i couldn’t imagine hunting for wyvern eggs without having a griffin, simply because of how fast it is and how maneuverable it is. 

 

tl;dr: the argent has high health and high damage, making it a formidable foe against mid to low-level land based tames. it can easily take on unmounted pteras and tapys without struggling too much, but it’s slow speed makes it vulerable to the higher class flyers on ragnarok. fully imprinted and mounted argent doesn’t have the maneuverability to make it stand a chance against other mounted flying tames, despite high health pool and damage output.

[DarthaNyan]

5 minutes ago, Demigod said:

tl;dr: the argent has high health and high damage, making it a formidable foe against mid to low-level land based tames. it can easily take on unmounted pteras and tapys without struggling too much, but it’s slow speed makes it vulerable to the higher class flyers on ragnarok. fully imprinted and mounted argent doesn’t have the maneuverability to make it stand a chance against other mounted flying tames, despite high health pool and damage output.

Also slow argie's flying speed and open rider's position makes very easy target for sniping.

[Demigod]

7 minutes ago, DarthaNyan said:

Also slow argie's flying speed and open rider's position makes very easy target for sniping.

argents and wyverns are target practice for snipers. wyverns because of their predictable movements and massive turning radius, argents because of their speed and lack of any mid-flight maneuverability. argies are very useful in a pack against a single person or maybe even two and useful for picking people off of tames (which you could just use a ptera for) but not much other PVP utility.

[RedGypsy6]

Yeah I think everything being taken in context to the gameplay is important.  After all thats what balancing is for.  If we're talking about reasonable  counters to the argent, my personal opinion is that it's a very short list.  Some people online say to counter being picked up, you can just load yourself with wood and stone.....hahaha, is that really a reasonable counter to that tactic?  Doesn't seem so to me.  Sure there are ways to counter an argent if the stars align and you have the perfect set of circumstances on your side.  I do like the Ptera's barrel roll.  Never thought of using it in an argent fight though because it eats so much stamina I'd think the argent could just wait it out then find where i land and finish me off. 

Fliers already have an edge of getting around the map safely, leaving a battle if things go south, picking up dinos and taking them safely to a taming pen.  Add to those skills tanky, high melee, high stamina.  There's a reason they are one of the first tames people run to.  And there's also a reason you find so many posts debating if they are OP.  I've never seen a post debating if the sarco is OP, just saying. 

Anywya, to original poster, we did nerf their damage resistance a bit on our server, we just felt that would help us stop eating, drinking, and sleeping argents.  Now we utilize other tames much more and we like it, may not work for everyone. 

[Sharpshot879]

The last time a thread like this was created Griffins were nerfed into the ground, stop whilst everyone’s ahead

[Demerus]

1 hour ago, stumpyfongo said:

I know this topic isn't new. And, over the years the Argent has been nerfed several times. All I know is that on our private server ......................

 

You lost me at: "Private Server"

What settings does it have?

[Demigod]

15 minutes ago, RedGypsy6 said:

Yeah I think everything being taken in context to the gameplay is important.  After all thats what balancing is for.  If we're talking about reasonable  counters to the argent, my personal opinion is that it's a very short list.  Some people online say to counter being picked up, you can just load yourself with wood and stone.....hahaha, is that really a reasonable counter to that tactic?  Doesn't seem so to me.  Sure there are ways to counter an argent if the stars align and you have the perfect set of circumstances on your side.  I do like the Ptera's barrel roll.  Never thought of using it in an argent fight though because it eats so much stamina I'd think the argent could just wait it out then find where i land and finish me off. 

Fliers already have an edge of getting around the map safely, leaving a battle if things go south, picking up dinos and taking them safely to a taming pen.  Add to those skills tanky, high melee, high stamina.  There's a reason they are one of the first tames people run to.  And there's also a reason you find so many posts debating if they are OP.  I've never seen a post debating if the sarco is OP, just saying. 

sarcos are on the lower end of the food chain in comparison to argies... i never see anyone saying that carnos and sabertooths are OP either. argies are to the flying tames as allos are to the land tames. 

the only point the argent has going for it in what you mentioned is the fact that it can run away, when nearly every other flyer is faster and would have no trouble catching up to it. a ptera with good stam and melee would have no trouble making several spins before landing, and by the time the argie catches up to it then the ptera would have already fully regained stam. i’ve killed alpha carnos and raptors with a ptera so it isnt impossible.

ive never heard of a person staying fully stacked with wood to avoid being picked up, seems like a very inconvenient tactic. i’d rather keep a parachute plus a flamethrower or high level sword or MC shottie on me. that argie would have to have every point put into health to withstand blows like that. 

this is all sole PVP utility also. creatures can’t be picked up by flyers in PVE so a large chuck of what makes the argent useful is gone in that particular game mode. 

[DarthaNyan]

12 minutes ago, RedGypsy6 said:

If we're talking about reasonable  counters to the argent, my personal opinion is that it's a very short list.

grapple hook is a reasonable counter if you are on foot. Parachutes in case you are dropped from height.

Focal Chili and several points into speed and you can easily outrun them making you a very hard or impossible target to pick up/attack.

And any other flying mount (except moth, quetz and maybe pelagornis) will outmaneuver Argie in an air battle meaning that argie's pilot will either be killed or dismounted and dropped.

If we take DLCs into account there are: whips, flamethrowers, stun seeds, glider suits to help with aerial threat.

[RedGypsy6]

8 minutes ago, Demigod said:

ive never heard of a person staying fully stacked with wood to avoid being picked up, seems like a very inconvenient tactic. i’d rather keep a parachute plus a flamethrower or high level sword or MC shottie on me. that argie would have to have every point put into health to withstand blows like that. 

 

I've seen this suggestion multiple places (over encumbering yourself to avoid pick up) and i agree, inconvenient.  As for the MC shottie, this is one of the tests i've allowed to be done to me, shotgun with 192 percent damage.  I was expecting to lose my argent in the test, but I think he shot 4 times (maybe 6 cant remember, it was the double barrel) and i was still fine, didnt see the need to drop hiim, then I killed him with two scratches.  Never tested sword, just pike.  I'll try that.  My issue has always been that I've never found anyone equipped with anything that could persuade me to let them go if I pick them up. 

[RedGypsy6]

14 minutes ago, Demigod said:

sarcos are on the lower end of the food chain in comparison to argies... i never see anyone saying that carnos and sabertooths are OP either. argies are to the flying tames as allos are to the land tames. 

 

This is a good point, but it's also kind of part of my point = an argent is as easy to tame as a sarco, but way more powerful

[DarthaNyan]

8 minutes ago, RedGypsy6 said:

I've seen this suggestion multiple places (over encumbering yourself to avoid pick up) and i agree, inconvenient. 

In the early days of ARK when difficulty was 1-2 (max wild dino level 30-60) it was a viable tactic, but then power creep happened. After Flyers Change making oneself heavy works pretty well against most attempts of picking you up with pteras, but its better to make it a useful load: meds, foods, ammo, explosives, extra sets of armors etc.

[Demigod]

10 minutes ago, RedGypsy6 said:

I've seen this suggestion multiple places (over encumbering yourself to avoid pick up) and i agree, inconvenient.  As for the MC shottie, this is one of the tests i've allowed to be done to me, shotgun with 192 percent damage.  I was expecting to lose my argent in the test, but I think he shot 4 times (maybe 6 cant remember, it was the double barrel) and i was still fine, didnt see the need to drop hiim, then I killed him with two scratches.  Never tested sword, just pike.  I'll try that.  My issue has always been that I've never found anyone equipped with anything that could persuade me to let them go if I pick them up. 

then the person you picked up did not have the necessary armor to be PVPing to begin with. i never leave the house without at least a full set of journeyman flak. a 100 alpha carno was able to get less than 30 damage per bite on me with my armor on, and i have close to 300 health. i’m sure the case would have been drastically different if i was not wearing armor or was wearing lower tier armor. 

[DarthaNyan]

3 minutes ago, Demigod said:

then the person you picked up did not have the necessary armor to be PVPing to begin with. i never leave the house without at least a full set of journeyman flak. a 100 alpha carno was able to get less than 30 damage per bite on me with my armor on, and i have close to 300 health. i’m sure the case would have been drastically different if i was not wearing armor or was wearing lower tier armor. 

also with high grade armor and hp (and food/beer buffs) picked up person can just C4 the argent and possibly kill the rider.

[Orion]

If you think Argies are OP now, you've got another thing coming once their TLC buffs happen.

[Ryuk]

...No?

[ForzaProiettile]

Sorry but I laughed pretty hard when I saw you attempting to shoot them through the wall. With that kind of video you are basically marking yourself as a beginner and reducing the credibility of anything you have posted in relation to this. 

It's very rare to see anyone complain about Argents being OP. They are a rather rare sight in PVP these days but back in the early days of ARK in 2015 they were the best air dino of that time.

[Orgnolf]

10 hours ago, Orion said:

If you think Argies are OP now, you've got another thing coming once their TLC buffs happen.

What TLC buffs?

I haven't seen any plans to buff Argentavis's.

[GP]

13 minutes ago, Orgnolf said:

What TLC buffs?

I haven't seen any plans to buff Argentavis's.

 

[iAmE]

14 hours ago, stumpyfongo said:

I know this topic isn't new. And, over the years the Argent has been nerfed several times. All I know is that on our private server Argents dominated the scene. There was very little point in using anything else especially at high levels, and when bred.

• High Health
• High Carry weight
• Ability to pick riders off mounts (which we decided to not do because it was too cheap and easy)
• Ability to pick up riders/creatures and bite them while carrying them.
• Massive damage. Some of the Argents had over 800% melee damage. Single argents could be used to take on alphas.
• Ability to flee if the fight went south, which was almost never.

We did a lot of testing, most of it without recording video. A top-tier shotgun, couldn't kill an argent after being picked before it could peck you to death in it's grasp. What about a top-tier assault rifle?

 

1: Their health isn't high unless specifically pumped for it. Unfortunetly, there is basically nothing else worth pumping in an Argey, so most argeys you find will be fairly tanky. 

2: This is their only other draw, but multiple fliers have higher carry weight. The higher carry weight is nice in PvP for Pick+drop, but most of the time against proper opponents, picking and dropping is more dangerous for you then it is for them.

3: Picking/Dropping is easily prevented by half a dozen easily and cheaply available tactics. It isn't cheap.

4: Their damage is pitiful. Even an 800% damage argey will be outdamaged by any normal combat dino, and usually that dino will have far higher health.

5: The ability to flee doesn't mean much when the dino is dismounted, or instantly dead. Which is the normal outcome in most pvp fights where you bring Argents.

A mid level Rex alone could have eaten that whole swarm of Argeys, and probably not even lost much health while he was at it. A Giga would have likely two shot them. All of them at once.

Things to keep in mind;

You are not supposed to outfight a dino trained for combat on foot (Let alone what appears to be dozens of them). In some cases (Yes, like Argeys) you can. The keys to doing so are Compound Bows with Metal Arrows and high movement speed. Argents are naturally fairly slow creatures. A high movement speed creature or person can easily outrun them. Headshots against an Argent do 300% damage. Flyers, like Argents (But not Wyverns or Griffins) take 150% extra damage (Multiplicative) from non-bullet projectiles. Metal Arrows ignore Armor. This adds up to a Metal Arrow doing around 300 damage when fired from a primitive bow. Bows can go up to about 300% damage, and can momentarily reach over 500% damage until caps come into play on server restarts. This means each arrow you fire could potentially be doing 300-900 damage per headshot. 

 

Also, many of the island weapons particularly are very bad against Dinos, but good against people. Had you a good flamethrower and sufficient ammo, those Argeys would have died in probably under 10 seconds. 

In reality though, your video isn't a showcase of anything being overpowered. It was you coming woefully underprepared to a fight. Any comparable mob of dinos that size, and saddled, would have done much the same. In many cases, they would have done it much better and much faster.