Basic Themes of Races?

[Hellstar]

Hi, new to the game. Love the lore, love all the different races, love everything really.

I'd like to know the basic "theme," if any, of the races, and what they are good at and/or bad at.

For instance (this is just my own stab at one I'm looking for, please correct me if I have any of this wrong): "The Eldar are the frail, high damage output, micro-intensive shooty race with good range, good spellcasting, specialists, blah blah [insert more stuff here]." Again, I don't know if that description is entirely accurate, it's just my take based on my limited experience.

I figure Space Marines are the tough, expensive, versatile race... but that's about all I've been able to surmise on them yet.

I would have thought Orks to be the toughest as far as durability, and best as far as melee, but I think I'm wrong in that?

I also would have thought Tyranids to be similar to Orks in toughness, but they seem to be the "overwhelm with weak units in numbers" race?

Anyway, if someone could provide a description of each race, it would be nice.

Thanks.

[egewithin]

SM ; Versitile as LEGO.

CSM ; Always good melee, tons of power melee and flame. Aaaaand autocannons! Autocannons...

Eldar ; Think them as Quicksilver. Unfairly fast but goes down by one bullet.

Orks ; There are 3 ways : Choppa, Dakka dakka dakka dakka, Stickbomma!

IG ; Hold the line 'till tanks comes out.

Nids ; If it can not be eaten, why it exists?

GK ; SM with shiny armor and easyer Termies.

[DarnedDragoon]

Yep you've got the basics, and might I add Welcome!

For Orks they are pretty versatile as well. They have pretty high range dps and good melee squads in tier one. Their basic theme is do a lot of damage and be able to take a lot of damage. They are given more models in place of armor. Generally they consist of mostly infantry and roam the map a little more than say space marines or Imperial Guard. Armored vehicles and abilities are more used in support of the infantry. This goes along with the theme that they love to fight up close and personal.

Imperial Guard are more about numbers, upgrades, artillery, and armored vehicles. They're really good at holding the line and can be hard to dislodge from points, they have the best tanks and artillery in the game.

Tyranids are about mass units and you're right they are similar to orks. They have synapses bonus when certain tyranid units are next to others, this represents their hive mind mentality. Come tier 3, Tyranid players usually go for giant tyranids and attack in mass. I'm sure others will be able to explain them better. Again welcome!

[Caeltos]

Space Marines
Space Marines are generally the most durable faction in the game, and are a very highly adapative faction, rather than try to force the hand of the opposing player. Players are dependant to think & react fast to threats, and figure out the best possible solution to tackling with what's thrown at them. Once you've master that aspect of the faction, which is a very tough curve to learn might I add, they're very very potent and powerful. They are considered quite the generalist faction due to their upgrades and wargears, coupled with their army composition potential.

Eldar
They are the most on-demand speed potent faction, capable of seizing ground fast, and reacting fast and have generally very map-control oriented abilities, units and abilities. They have relatively low healthpool units, so ensuring that you maintain a somewhat strong economy and quick reaction to ensure a swift blow, they are quite the nuissance. Their gameplay is generally very difficult to outmaneuver as a slow moving faction, which makes Eldar a very map oriented faction to fully optimize and utilize. The smaller the map, the generally worse Eldar can fare. The bigger, the better - that means you can rely on guerilla warfare and do alot of hit & runs to ensure YOU are the players that's in the driving seat.

Chaos
Chaos are all about delivering alot of high-on-demand damage output, alongside with having a very powerful counterattack potential that comes along through their heretics and army composition build-ups. Their commanders shift their on-approach gameplay, say - the Chaos Lord provides with good engagement potential, whereas the Chaos Sorcerer thrives on control and being abit more on the generalist side, whereas the Plague Champion thrives on NOT making the hasty actions, and being fully optimized for countering attacks thrown at him, and having good sustain potential. You want to make players hurt, both economically through their early-game agression, and then punish them when they engage you in the mid-late game through their units and abilities.

Grey Knights
Grey Knights are designed to be very ability-oriented faction, thriving on support and synergy between units, coupled with a progressive scaling. You will ineveitably have to toss out some units in order to call in the big guns. They are not as reactive potent as the Space Marines, but they can really get into the thick of things fast, and once they're in the fight - they hurt. They do not have any sort of tanks by any means, such as Predators, or Fire Prism / or Leman/Looted. But they do have very beefy melee-oriented composition potential, and their abilities. Maintaing and building your commander to build up your gameplay is the 101 basics of Grey Knights.

Orks
Orks really really like to do ALOT of damage, they aren't as dependant to utilize their abilities. But you NEED TO KNOW when to pick your waagh. Commiting to a losing fight is generally considered a bad idea, since that's going to hurt your economy. However, if you do fight, you'll get some waagh in the process, so that's good - since Orks is the ONLY faction in the game that gets progressive free red generation, meaning that orks are generally the first faction to use a ROKZ global, that is absolutely devastating against most targets. Seeing several of those in games, is not a rare commodity, so you need to be weary of timings. If you're the orks, apply the pressure - don't let loose, you want to kill off squads. They're all about the economical damage!

Tyranids
Tyranids are very much a non-stop pressure faction. They will progressively tyrannform the planet through their potential "Infestation Pillar", global that enhances the combat stats and speed of your Tyranids. It's become a norm to place out the Infestation Pillars in a line from your base, to the enemies, which allows you to slingshot your army back to the fray. They're very relentless, but you'll probably end up loosing alot of fights, and unit models in the process - but it's all about the long-term goal, so plan ahead and make adjustments to your timing assaults.

Imperial Guard
I don't think it goes without saying, but Imperial Guard is all about holding the line until the tanks & artillery arrives. The early-game consists primarily of control and units that are capable of being in the frontline. However, their damage output is pretty much close to minimal unless they're very numbered, but if that's the case - you're going to lose out on the timing in your transitional T2/T3 units. So maintain your economy, keep your map and bring out the best tanks in the game and then go on the offensive. Don't immediately hit the retreat button, learning the art of kiting, prolonged fights to prevent a genbash and timing for reinforcement is essential to become a better Imperial Guard player.

[Hellstar]

...

Thanks, this is *exactly* what I was looking for.

As far as the look of the faction, the voice-overs, the lore, the sci-fi/fantasy element, the units, etc. I like Eldar and have been playing them. However, as far as your descriptions of how the races play, they probably aren't for me if I'm looking to optimize my game-play, vs. just have some fun.

Space marines or another faction might suit my play style much better (I tend to think reactively when I play other strategy games), however I find their theme (humans with bolters) boring, haha.

Anyway, we'll see what happens. Thanks.

[Cheekie Monkie]

Caeltos, can I rip that post, edit it a bit and repost it on our modb page?

It'll really help new players as well as clarifying what the overall design of each race is.

[Caeltos]

Sure, go right ahead.

I actually had a longer draft, but that is more the jest of what I was going for. For an ex. you could go further in-depth about the statistics of the faction abilities. For an ex. Warlock has abilities that primarily enhances his troops, or setups for fights that can be in their favor. Channeling Runes, Shrouding, Warp Throw, or Heart of Darkness (whatever that new ability is called ~~; ) or classic Farseer, which has low-on demand damage, but is generally more debuff/support heavy.

Again, most abilities are designed to fall-in line with the general thematic sense of the faction, that seperates and makes them more unique. Grey Knights for an ex. is a massive hybrid of all faction in terms of abilitiy augementation through their commander wargear loadouts.

[Hellstar]

I actually had a longer draft, but that is more the jest of what I was going for.

Hell, post that too if you still have it.

EDIT: If you don't mind, could you or someone else go into things like which races depend on heavy armor or not, high model counts vs some other mechanic, general melee skill of races, etc. and what advantage/disadvantage any of these things give the faction?

For example (I'm somewhat pulling this out of my ass, as I heard orks have high model-count vs. armor) "...the orks rely more on high model counts vs having heavy armor. One advantage of this is that a snipe of a model hurts less than, say, space marines. On the other hand...."

[Cyris]

Fantastic writ up Caeltos! Would very much like to see any more writings you have along these lines.

Unsurprisingly, I'm especialy interested in the Grey Knights these days The one thing you said that I don't understand on them is "progressive scaling". Could you elaborate on this? It's not a term I understand in the context of DoW.

You follow by mentioning that they need to toss out old units to bring out "the big guns". While this is a common tactic in team games, I don't see it working in 1v1 with GK's roster. Unless I'm crushing my opponent, losing non-IST squads generally means I'm going to lose the game (much like SM) unless my opponent has been forced to take exceptional losses to secure this kill. I believe this is because GK have high initial purchase costs, high upgrade costs and population, making filling your army back up to fighting strength expensive and slow. In addition, keeping 2 IST on the field feels nearly mandatory (capping + repair), meaning you never really transition out from needing them, even at T3 if LRC is purchased.

I can think of a few interesting ways to emphasis this theme more, so I'm curious how it pans out over time. Perhaps the Operatives will really push this, since they appear to be crazy strong in T1 (tac dps for 225 req? ok!) but scale poorly (short range, fragile, no melee) and require too much micro on a race that is so ability focused come T2. As of now, I think nids and Orks work the most like this (but again, mainly in team games). Come T3 with nids, I slowly transition out of swarmy play into a small number of single entity powerhouses, and for orks every T1 squad has a T3 analog that replaces it (with the exception of repair). IG get an honorable mention until the karshin pop changes

Edit:
Also for the initial summary, it's worth calling out GK's early focus on kiting play. While they can transition into a crushing amount of melee, it's not until T2.5 with well supported Purifiers, or more commonly T3. For the beginning phases of the game, they are very kite focused, especially in the new patch when interceptors go away. Utilizing Rhino re-positioning and stutter-stepping you IST is vital.

[Caeltos]

Unsurprisingly, I'm especialy interested in the Grey Knights these days The one thing you said that I don't understand on them is "progressive scaling". Could you elaborate on this? It's not a term I understand in the context of DoW.

I've been using this term mostly just for myself in order to set a goal for certain things. So, I'll try to best explain it to my abilities.

Tactical Space Marines, is not neccassarily a squad that has a progressive scaling, since they have a peak performance at the T2 stages of the game, where they have full-access to everything. Most squads in the game has this sense of progress, whereas Commanders are an excluding factor that are more a defined "progressive-scaling" unit, you just need to furthermore dump investments onto them. The Warboss, say with 'Eavy Armor, is a potent progressive-scaling commander if you choose to opt for that route, whilst making purchases along T1 into T2, then finish up with T3.

With the goal in mind, is that the Grey Knight is to be a universal faction with an army composition that boils down to progressive scaling. I've been hard at work to try to accomplish this, and it's still not really finalized, since I'd preferably want to take some babysteps, rather than try to make a major rework and make things right again.

Strike Squads is a unit, for say - that should be a progressive scaling unit. (People have mentioned that they have a faltering performance rate as the game progresses) and it's a legitimate complain, and that's partially the fault of the weapon mechanics, since Psycanons are a sustain dps weapon, but would very much suit into a stronger-purchase with a better aligned price tag in T3 upgrade instead. So, you have the default performance at T1, then you have the augmentation upgrades in T2, then the specialized upgrade in T3 (weapons). The unit has value to preserve, but it is ill-advised, purely economically to en-masse them, which is the goal to branch out and make the unit diverse in it's overall role.

Grey Knight units so far in my design intention is to be progressive-scaling, whereas the INQUISITIOR units, are not - which elevates the lack of a "peak" performance during the critical moments of the game. However, you can dimnish the reduced performance through buffs and debuffs etc.

[Cyris]

Hey, thanks a ton for the quick replay! I hope I'm not becoming a bother on the GK I think that made sense, so let me try to repeat it back:

"Progressive Scaling" is more drawn out then normal scaling. It's the idea of a unit you field early, and have great incentive to keep around through every phase of the game, slowly upgrading them. Raptors and ASM are great examples here also. Gaunts maybe in some ways, if you consider the Swarm Lord as a T3 upgrade for them

I was confused especially by you saying "You will inevitably have to toss out some units in order to call in the big guns". This seems to be the opposite of "progressive scaling" - it is unit replacement. It all made sense at the end though: "Grey Knight units so far in my design intention is to be progressive-scaling, whereas the INQUISITIOR units, are not". So the way you see it, there are two factions in this race: GK units that scale through all tiers, and inquisitorial units that generally over-preform, but do not scale through he tiers.

In this context, Operatives make a TON of sense now! Moving some SS upgrades to T3 would be very in line as well. In general, I think you could nail this theme by introducing more T3 upgrades for GK units, perhaps while removing one of the terminator variants from the roster. I believe this aspect of the design would be enhanced by something like:
- Reduce GK Terminator stats by ~30%
- Allow them to level
- SS gains "Terminator Honors" upgrade at T3 - transforms them into GK Terminators at their current level
This wold keep the number of GK units on the field a bit lower, give massive incentives to keeping squads around all tiers, and even make the GK terminators themselves progressively scaling by keeping them alive.

By contrast, moving INT to T3 feels against this design. Leaving them at T1 and adding a T3 upgrade for the psy-cannons would be amazingly in this theme - especially if they somehow needed a bigger energy pool in T3 to be effective, rewarding players who leveled them up though the tiers. My understanding is that you felt there was too much GK in T1 though, so that's fair. Maybe T2 instead?

Edit:
Crazy idea: A Grey Knight Techmarine as a T3 commander unit would be sweet. I currently feel that keeping 2 IST in your army is necessary at every tier, since Dreads, rhinos and LRC need them to operate. A GK unit that repairs that appears at later teirs would allow transitioning away from IST.

[Caeltos]

Some of the things you propose are not completely far-fetched and are things I have considered.

The Interceptor change does go against the principal of the theme philosophy for the faction. However, I'd rather much treat them as a "mini-terminator" luxuries unit instead. They are aimed to be extremely versatile and flexible in what they can do. You'll just need an army composition to support them, or leave them to an ego-centric playstyle and operate on their own, since they have mobility advantage.

The most important thing is to know weither or not we will have the implementation of the Dreadknight, which will be a T3 unit once it comes along. Depending on it's finalization, means a major changes for the Grey Knight mid to late-game transitional builds, as well as their replacement possibilities in their army. Much alike how Operatives are intended to change the early-mid game gameplay for the Grey Knights.

The Dreadknight being a possible T3 unit, then I will probably look into making Interceptors a pure progressive scaling unit, and once we add in acoloytes (which are pretty much finished) means we can add in another non-progressive scaling unit. Then it becomes a matter of finding out the right approach angle to the implemntations, but I believe Interceptor into progressive-role would be most beneficial, T2 to T3 seems fair, since I want to try to deviate abit the jump-troop T1 aspect, since it might be abit of a redundant in T1.

[Atlas]

Ok wait are acolytes going to be the new GK T1 unit or was it supposed to be Crusaders? I thought Acolytes were gonna be a different GK hero call in or something. I'm a little confused

[Caeltos]

Ok wait are acolytes going to be the new GK T1 unit or was it supposed to be Crusaders? I thought Acolytes were gonna be a different GK hero call in or something. I'm a little confused

Since nobody has taken the initiatve to work on the Crusaders, they are not planned anymore. They were purely presented as a concept unit. Acolytes on the other hand, have been developed furthermore. Whereas if they are an call-in unit, or not is undecided for the time being.

[Cyris]

While the INT in T3 seems against the design, they are exactly what GK lack to be seriously competitive in T3: a cost effective answer to battle tanks. They alone will make me want to go T3 in 1v1s. Being able to teleport behind and do dps while I charge my army forward is going to be so important. Right now, I have to super over commit to T1 and T2 against evenly skilled opponents, because I know for a stone cold fact that if they get T3 and put a tank out, I lose. Paladins are simply not good tank counters, even with the slow field (which all told cost double a tank). They oh so politely split and allow the tank to reverse past them if I teleport behind it

It super depends on what set of upgrades and abilities the INT are left with tbh... I honestly hope for them to be balanced as more tank hunters then generalist units, but we'll see.

[ytimk]

Dammit Caeltos, I scourer the balance forum almost exclusively looking for your design direction ideas/philosophy and hear I have some nice insightful posts.

Hmm, bit intrigued about GK revolving so much around their hero (he is sooooo fatttt) *warps into the balance forum*