Thanks for 2.3.1 its great but patch the damn Tdread Launchr

[Cheah18]

How is it not imba? The splash, the damage over time, the suppression, and the outright damage vs vehicles. Chaos does not need this weapon this good.

[Ven]

errrr....

you need to elaborate here. i see no problems with the TDread.

Chaos dread has less health than pretty much any other walker unless you consider deff dread a walker, and frenzied barrage is its ONLY AI ability, once its used its pretty much doing zilch damage to infantry.

Tdread does not have melee resistance, snare it with something like a lascannon and send in a heavy melee squad or something. if you see a Tdread on the field getting a squishy vehicle like a transport shouldnt be on your priority list. however typically chaos players get dreads for two things, counter to mass melee (Mark of Khorne) or some AV (Mark of Tzzetch) however chaos already has so many other options for AV in T2, and cheaper ones. Tdread is VERY expensive for only 1000 HP of vehicle armor on a slow walker.

usually myself i get a dread to take advantage of a lack of AV, i personally hate the BC. if i dont see a vehicle pop up i either keep it in its default state or give it MoK depending on what im up against. MoT is reserved for if i see a vehicle hit the field such as a melee dreadnought or a transport. combined with khorne worship/snare it can be very powerful, HOWEVER like i said earlier it only has 1000 HP, its very much a glass cannon, snare it and focus it down. and dont buy a squishy vehicle if you see a Tzzetch dread. thats just silly. buying a vehicle when they have AV already on the field is playing in to their hands, take advantage of his mistake.

also, frenzied barrage has a long cooldown its almost always used for the suppression, its damage isnt great and the dot is mainly area denial at best. it does very little damage. for example if you have double GM squads, fully upgraded, if they do take significant damage from the frenzied barrage to the point of them having to retreat then you kept them there for too long, the supression doesnt last very long. move your units out of the effected area, and dont blob them up so not all are effected and you'll be fine. just how you would deal with a suppression team in a building, sorta. spread out your forces so it doesnt effect all your army.

[Cheah18]

I had some discussions with Torpid about this and we agree on most if not all. What you've done is list the counters against it, but I'm not saying it is entirely unbeatable. Rather that it is just too good and too many things.

The thing is, it actually does pretty good damage vs infantry. Not pretty much zilch. Its actually a noteworthy amount. The suppression lasts for ages. And even if it were its 'only' AI, why does it have an AI ability in the first place when you're going for (what should be) a dedicated AV upgrade? Especially as the Autocannon is by default AI. And it does SO MUCH DAMAGE and suppresses, it should be one or the other AT MOST.

All the proposed tactics you've suggested are all ideal scenarios and in isolation for the most part. Lascannon is less than ideal given the tics, CL, NoiseM you've been trying to control with your set up team. Tdread, for all intents and purposes, after the upgrade, becomes less a walker and more a long range support unit, with HUGE AV which can solo pretty much any tank (cite: Torpid) and HUGE AI damage and suppression with the ability. Not to mention some AI damage too. So its not as glass cannon as it would be were it to behave like a 'typical' walker, because it no longer is one. In a similar fashion to plasma dread for GK.

A suppression team in a building in T1 is one thing: an ability like that (what is ,frankly, very high damage, long suppression, and high DoT - I will just maintain that here and you can disagree) combined with this player's whole chaos army which will tear you to pieces when you try to spread out. Not to mention worship (Sorc and CL are relevant, PC less so) which will infiltrate this infernal machine or speed it up. How am I getting my heavy melee through an infiltrated or coked up chaos army?

I can't see how my lascannon and heavy melee will help when he has havocs or a CL/sorc ready to control said heavy melee, and tics and hero to hassle the lascannon, or any number of other units to handle mine while his Tdread is putting every unit MU in his favour. My units are running to escape his Tdread ability? That's no good when they are also being done by havocs and csm and his tics are making for my set-up team. Or his doomblast suppresses me first before the super damaging ability sets in. Vehicle play is out of the question already...

Compared to a melta dread (short range, expensive), which has higher damage potential but is less versatile in that it has to get close to the enemy, this thing is the superior AV unit. It can also suppress and do high AI damage/DoT.

Also, don't forget that you buy the dread, use it for all its worth with the autocannon,, and wait to see which counter the oppo brings out. Then you upgrade it and counter (hard) it, while the rest of your army runs rampant on their army while they're trying to stop this OP AV/AI+suppression) weapon (assuming the case where they get Tdread).

[Nurland]

Mmmm. The Tdread barrage is maybe a bit too damaging. Suppose it could be reverted back to retail values and/or get the duration of DoT + suppression shortened for starters.

Regarding SM/GK Dread comparisons, they have some weird things there. Melta Dread is not really expensive compared to Tdread (it is 40req more overall). It is also not less versatile but riskier. Also being immobile while upgrading is a serious downside.

Uhh... So SM cannot use the melee dread for all its worth and see what counters the enemy brings? AC Dread is a harder counter for infantry based ranged counters anyway.

And yes, Tdread probably soloes all vanilla tanks apart from BB and LRP. Then again upgraded Preds and Lemans should kill it fairly easily.

Correct me if I am wrong but these complainments are mostly from IG perspective no?

[Ven]

if it is from an IG perspective then yes the frenzied barrage could be considered powerful as the flame damage would be doing full damage to your infantry. but again, don't blob up, chaos has a lot of aoes anyway; you wony be "torn to pieces" if you spread out, infact quite the oposite as there is less aoe potential for the chaos, blobing up is never a good idea anyway as it just screams "PLEASE NUKE ME!"

Move out of the dot area. like a setup team its area denial, like the tic grenade barrage its an easy to spot incoming disruption of some kind, i treat a Tdread in the same way as i would any one of those.

the Tdread, outside of its ability does infact do zilch damage, just like lascannons and such it very rarely hits infatry. and just like a lascannon if you are unlucky enough to get hit then RNG is RNG, simple as. also im curious as to why you control a chaos army with supression, the sorc and CL both have very good ways of countering setup teams, even by themselves, and chaos overall has raptors, or hell, counter it with havocs and run in noise marines.

you really need something other than supression to contol chaos in T1 such as good catachan/sent micro. the only time ive ever had a problem in T1 as chaos lord vs setup teams, is if there is two of them, just like how the hive tyrant can counter one of them, you need to use 2. also this way come T2 once can be lascannon and one can keep its heavy bolter, the chaos lord/raptors/sorc would be forced to go after the lascannon as it was a threat to the Tdread, which leaves your heavy bolter HWT untouched. all the while this is happening get some infiltrated storm troopers with meltas up close to the Tdread and wreck it, then the chaos player would be torn between saving his dread or pushing you off, naturally they would save their dread. all this time your GM have been pew pewing at all his infantry and voila, a won engagement for you, if you were lucky you took out the dread, if not you can still push power etc.

[Nurland]

The barrage catches 2-3 squads quite often even if you don't blob up since it covers quite a large area.

The Tdread missiles do some damage to infantry since the Tdread fires multiple missiles with a decent spread and they have a good splash pattern so some of them hit something surprisingly often against swarmy races.

[Dark Riku]

The Tdread missiles do some damage to infantry since the Tdread fires multiple missiles with a decent spread and they have a good splash pattern so some of them hit something surprisingly often against swarmy races.

^This.
The Tzeenchdread is very scary versus all targets. (Even more scary versus the poor medium sized tyranids warriors :/)

[Sub_Zero]

I've always considered that walker OP. And only because of its AV-damage. Its ability has always seemed more or less balanced because of the fact that it can be dodged. Now when the melee walkers became melee monsters they can easily walk up to a tdread and smack it to death. I remember a comparison between tdreads and venom cannon carnifexes. If I recall correctly tdreads deal just a bit less damage than venom cannon carnifexes. And the funny thing about that is the costs and tier position. That testifies about tdreads' overpowered av-damage. Sometimes these tdreads even hit infantry (they launch a lot of rockets, some of them hit infantry despite poor accuracy)

[Ven]

i think if it was to be balanced in anyway way, it would either be a cost increase or give the frenzied barrage less damage. perhaps even change the damage type so it does less damage, but its something like plasma damage so it pretty much does equal damage to all races, kinda making it in to a ranged doomblast perhaps (ie it does full damage to infantry, extra to HI but HI usually has less models so it balances out that way, just like doomblast). im pretty sure most people use it for the on damage suppression anyway.

arguable the suppression COULD be removed with a slight damage buff/cost reduction. chaos already have raptors/havocs AND doomblast to suppress, im personally fine with the Tdread right now, but i might be bias as i play chaos.
i think that if it got a damage nerf it would end up being useless for its cost.

[Cheah18]

I've always considered that walker OP. And only because of its AV-damage.

I'm inclined to agree. And this is what leads to my 'too good at too much' complaint. Why does an already very potent AV weapon have AI and suppressio ncapabilities too.

And I want to echo what Nurland said about the launcher doing notable AI damage due to the spread and stuff. Its much more than a lascannon.

@Ven, what you say about spreading out being a good idea vs chaos is true... UNTIL you add the dread into the equation which is requiring so much to counter already it allows the caos army to exploit the fact your units are all reacting to the one Tdread.

Also, in terms of damage nerf, if I were to concede the AV damage is fine, why not just reduce it to one missile that does the same damage as the current burst of missiles? So as to reduce Infantry hit %

[Ven]

Also, in terms of damage nerf, if I were to concede the AV damage is fine, why not just reduce it to one missile that does the same damage as the current burst of missiles? So as to reduce Infantry hit %

if anything that would be a damage buff, the one missile would almost always hit vehicles. with its current damage values (i think it fires 5 missles at a time?) then that one missile would do 300 damage, that will pretty much 1-2 shot anything that isnt a walker in T2, and anything that isnt a walker you could also oneshot with a rear armor hit.

the only reason the Tdread isnt as effective as it might be vs vehicles is because its multiple rockets, vs a moving target maybe only one of those missiles will hit, so thats its weakness in terms of AV, moving targets; as it has travel time. if it was one missile it would do ludicrous amount of damage, and it would pretty much oneshot tactical marine models if RNGesus smiles upon you.

i think the way to deal with it is just to lower the damage on frenzied barrage. you rarely see complaints about lascannon rhinos in T2 being OP so i think its just the frenzied barrage ability that we really need to talk about here.

[Nurland]

Well then if it would hit infantry it would probably instagib stuff. I suppose it could take some nerfs. Nothing too drastic though imho. Maybe nerf the ability, the overall dps or the splash pattern?

[Ven]

Well then if it would hit infantry it would probably instagib stuff. I suppose it could take some nerfs. Nothing too drastic though imho. Maybe nerf the ability, the overall dps or the splash pattern?

that would probably be a step in the right direction, as i said i think that we need to look at the ability itself, reduce its damage and maybe make the radius slightly smaller. thats what i would recommend.

[Cheah18]

Yeah that would be my first choice in courses of action: tackle the frenzied barrage. Then go from there and see but I can imagine it would be pretty balanced.