Suggestion: Storm Shield Ranged Stance

[Samaritan]

First off I want to give a shout out to the community and the mod team.
You are doing a great job in reigniting the passion for this game. Hopefully Elite Mod will continue growing!

Now to my suggestion:

As of now, the Storm Shield upgrade for the commander leaves him without a ranged weapon, pretty much restricting his role to close combat. However, the actual effects of the wargear are somewhat counterproductive to fighting in cc and, in concept, are not quite useful in my opinion.

- movement speed slow is counter productive in cc

- Defense drains energy constantly, so Iron halo is a bad complementary wargear, even though it is a go-to upgrade for cc-commanders

- The radius of Defense is relatively small, so that ranged troops will either have to get close to the enemy (where the commander will be hacking at things), or the commander has to stay back and deal 0 damage.

One way of efficienly using this wargear would be in conjunction with an ASM-Heavy build when playing against another build that focuses mainly on strong ranged blob.
But even in this scenario the enemy could just run away because of the movement speed slow that affects all units with the Defense-Buff.

My suggestion is to change the Chainsword + Storm Shield wargear into something like Plasma-Pistol + Storm Shield/ Storm Bolter + Stormshield. This way the commander could actually do some damage while standing still (or advancing slowly).
It would also give him a ranged option apart from the terminator armor.

Let me know what you think.

[Orkfaeller]

Welcome to ELITE :3
___________

Well, that would require doing all new animations for him;

unless you switch around the shield and put it in his sword hand, but then he would whack his enemies with the shield, not sure how great that would look either.

One way would be, giving him a Champion's duellist shield, that allows you to carry a pistol in the same hand.

That said, I think the FC's shield option is fine as it is right now.

[Samaritan]

I suppose you're right when you say that it's gonna be a whole lot of work when it comes to animating the whole thing, so let's talk about the concept instead.

Right now the Storm Shield is in a good spot, you say. How do you use it efficiently and under what circumstances? I've tried it out a few times, but there was always the dilemma I mentioned in the first post. Do people just keep the commander close to the main force and use him as a pure supporting unit, or do you use it in conjunction with
ASM-builds?

As you can probably tell, I'm not vers experieced in Elite Mod, so input is very much appreciated.

[Dark Riku]

Yes, you sit back and use it with 2 tacs. When a melee force tries to come in you smack em with your FC and preferably also have some shotgun scouts nearby.

Good to counter suppression teams or suppression on demand, like big shootas on Orks, without the need of spending resources on asm and sending them into the fray.
Which can be way riskier.

[Magus Magi]

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=316

Samaritan, needless to say, you got my vote.

[Samaritan]

http://dawnofwar.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=316

Samaritan, needless to say, you got my vote.

So I'm not crazy after all. Or maybe you are crazy, too.

Thanks for the input, Riku. Gonna try it out next time I'm facing a situation like the ones you mentioned. Do you think the wargear is fine right now and can you (or anyone for that matter) recommend any replays in which it has been used successfully?

[Asmon]

Check out Tex's replays on GR. I remember a few where he uses the shield with great efficiency. It will be on an older version of Elite (or even retail) though.

[Dark Riku]

My guess is that it's fine. I don't use it often myself though as I don't play the fc that much and when I do I prefer to be on the offensive. But I see other people use it to great effect. Note that it usually gets swapped out later in the game though.
I'll get it in teamgames vs turret plays.

[Magus Magi]

So I'm not crazy after all. Or maybe you are crazy, too.

Afraid I'm crazy too.

[crazyman64335]

none of you are crazy.................

[Torpid]

The sane are crazy in the eyes of the crazy.

[Orkfaeller]

I'm not crazy, my reality is just different than yours.

[ChrisNihilus]

"Sanity is for the weak"

[L0thar]

Interesting idea! I would love some ranged option for the FC, as it would bring out a whole new playstyle. I think it could synergize well with the added speed from armor of alacrity.

But...that being said, I actually like the storm shield as it is (a lot). I try to use it often, especially in team games, where there's usually more firepower. It works great there and one important thing is that the FC with its chainsword still acts like a good counterinitiative unit.

I'm afraid swapping the sword for the pistol would actually make this wargear more monotonic - you would rock in ranged fight, but would suffer greatly when something got too close. Currently its more balanced - you still got a great edge in range, but are not helpless in close combat.

I wouldn't mind trying some new stuff with the power sword, though...

[Samaritan]

I'm not suggesting to make the ranged weapon hilariously strong,
but something along the lines of 15-ish DPS with good accuracy while moving so he can actually do something while being in defense mode.

In close combat he could still whack things with his shield for the same 39 DPS.

[L0thar]

Ah, OK, I thought it should be closer to something like CL with combi-flamer.

I think its rather insignificant change. It most likely wouldn't imbalance the upgrade, but also wouldn't open a really new style of play.

Good thing is you could set him into ranged stance and keep him close to your troops more easily, but that's probably it.

I'm just afraid that the shield bash would look out of place...

[Cheekie Monkie]

Y'all be trippin' balls.

[Codex]

Imo the suppression immunity and defence from ranged damage in T1 needs a tradeoff, as T1 is supposed to be where suppression shines. As it stands the tradeoff is a FC which is less effective in combat than he could be (he's weaker than vanilla in terms of dps output, chainsword is the same, but no ranged attack, and no access to superior weapons while using this wargear). Sure, the energy drain is intensive but for what it does it's really nothing.

If you give him a ranged attack I'd want to see Defend made weaker.

[Nurland]

SS increases FC's melee damage to roughly 45 dps from the 39dps.

[Codex]

Codex you fool. Non-negligible dps increase then. Imo it's still fine then.

Carry on.

[Bahamut]

i think storm shield is fine as it is atm. Swapping the chainsword for a range weapon would be an awful downgrade

[Samaritan]

i think storm shield is fine as it is atm. Swapping the chainsword for a range weapon would be an awful downgrade

Because gaining the ability to shoot while having the same DPS in close combat is a downgrade?

[Bahamut]

If he has no chainsword, with what is the FC gonna fight in melee? with the shield itself?

[Samaritan]

If he has no chainsword, with what is the FC gonna fight in melee? with the shield itself?

Indeed

[Caeltos]

Captain Planet is awesome!

[crazyman64335]

i'm no superhero expert, but that looks like captain america to me

[Magus Magi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwJaELXadKo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL97QjGEx6s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bvz3FzBykQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyEz79jsKFw

Wait...

Caeltos could give the force commander the power to turn people into trees! Nothing could go wrong!

But seriously, I genuinely like the idea of turning the storm shield into a riot police style ranged setup. It's cool, and it would add that much more diversity to his kit. As has been previously said on here by Nurland, the storm shield ups his damage by 6 dps to 45. Assuming the ranged dps would need to be lower, there's a lot of room in there to find a nice balanced sweet spot for a ranged, piercing damage, attack.

Or the tree thing...there's always that.

[Broodwich]

Captain Planet is awesome!

Really hoping sarcasm

[appiah4]

SS is fine as is; although the ranged stance sounds interesting at first, the FC is probably one of the best tanky melee heroes in the game, not being able to use him to tie up/disrupt things would require a very strong ranged weapon to compensate (Combi-plasma, special ammo Boltgun etc.) and I really don't want that.

[Samaritan]

SS is fine as is; although the ranged stance sounds interesting at first, the FC is probably one of the best tanky melee heroes in the game, not being able to use him to tie up/disrupt things would require a very strong ranged weapon to compensate (Combi-plasma, special ammo Boltgun etc.) and I really don't want that.

Again, ideally he would still be able to do that, if a shield bash animation were to be implemented.