2.4.2 Hotfix - No notes , but details included

[enasni127]

Angry injustice.

I explicitly said the old Rhino was OP, I do not want it back, please don't act like that's what I'm asking for. .

I did not say that in a single word. You said it should be given SHI Armor again and this is a no go for me, if you look at the damage modifiers for SHI armor and compare that with some of the races damage output vs SHI on t1 you will maybe understand why.

A small hint: each race which doesn't have strong AND VERY FAST power melee units on t1 is basically fucked. Suggest whatever you like and I might agree with many of your points, but 2 things are impossible for me: SHI Transport on T1 and Anti-everything Lascannon which melts full infantry squads in 2 or 3 blasts.

[Swift]

But that's where the health decrease comes into play.

[Cheekie Monkie]

A change back to SHI at a reduced health would make it even more vulnerable to melee. Unless the decrease in health was really drastic it'd still be better against ranged fire than it was in the last patch in T1, due to the fact that we now have warrior acolytes and ops smoke support. My main concern with it is that in between the rear armour hits, the lack of a-move and the forward facing storm bolter, the rhino is just very fiddly and punishes you hard for slight mistakes, either with a wipe or long repair times. The experienced sentinel and chimera driver might laugh at such noobish micro, but at least IG still has the insurance policy of quick repairs.

Unfortunately, due to ops having to fill the gap of both purgs and interceptors, the GK T1 build has become predictable, but that's just due to the race's status as a work in progress.

[Cyris]

I did not say that in a single word (angry injustice). You said it should be given SHI Armor again and this is a no go for me, if you look at the damage modifiers for SHI armor and compare that with some of the races damage output vs SHI on t1 you will maybe understand why.

...SHI Transport on T1 and Anti-everything Lascannon which melts full infantry squads in 2 or 3 blasts.

If paraphrasing your quote as "angry injustice" offended you, I am sorry. It seemed a reasonable summation, since you used lots of caps, curses, exclamation points and said "where is the justice". Please relax, I promise I'm no zealot, and prefer reasonable conversations! Point for point here then, I hope this diffuses and does not instigate:

"You said it should be given SHI Armor again" - I did not say it should get SHI. I suggested it as a number of possible changes (that I prefaced as "badly thought out"), more then half of which did not include SHI. The goal of SHI change would be to keep the effective health vs piercing damage the same, while decreasing IST repair time to keep map control from suffering as badly. Letting IST repair Rhinos at an increased rate (like sentinals) would have the similar results without the increased vulnerability to melee and plasma, but I felt it would be too similar to IG, so I didn't mention it.

"damage output vs SHI on t1 you will maybe understand why." - Edit - My maths failed! SHI health total should be more like 300 then 500. My bad!

"Anti-everything Lascannon which melts full infantry squads in 2 or 3 blasts." - For the 3rd time, that was OP, I don't want it back, and I didn't ask for it back. The lascannon was HEAVILY nerfed last patch to deal 15% damage to infantry. Once you factor in the accuracy and fall-off on the AOE damage, it's quite tame now. For maths, it's 140 * .15 = 21 damage per shot, which shoots once every 6 seconds for 3.4 dps. So, if a GM squad was all bunched up in a pile 1 meter wide(nearly impossible), and the las didn't miss a single shot (5% hit chance * 5 shots = 0.00003125% chance), it would take 5 shots to kill them (maybe 6 considering regeneration?) over 30 seconds, contrasted by the 1 shot it used to take. The old, OP predator lascannon on a T2 unit is gone, the las-Rhino is primarily AV now.

I hope that clears some things up!


Ok, that was enough typing for today! Cheekie I wanna respond to you, but I need to work now X.x In short, that's why one of my thoughts was increased acceleration / deceleration. And GK's T1 predictability is why I brought this topic up in general. I feel I have 1 and only 1 T1 build these days (2 ist, SS, ops, agies) for every single matchup :/

[Vapor]

Cyris if I am not mistaken your math is a bit off

to kill a 650 hp HI rhino you need 650/0.67 = 970 piercing damage

to kill a 500 hp SHI rhino you need 500/0.3 = 1667 piercing damage

[Cyris]

Fuck my maths.

[Torpid]

Fuck my maths.

You said maths

[Cyris]

Yeah, it's the British way I hear, and this community is all international and shit

[Atlas]

Honestly, my wishlist would be to just send the Rhino to t2, give it vehicle armor by default and up the initial price to 280/60 to compensate, then switch the weaponry back to pure 110 req on top for either weapon.

This would leave an even bigger hole in GK T1, but filling that with any sort of anti-melee squad would work just fine imo. But I'm no game designer. I have faith in Caeltos' vision.

[ytimk]

I have faith in Caeltos' vision.

[Swift]

The Emperor requires no more than absolute, unquestioning faith.

But some donations for Caeltos might also boost your faith.

[Cyris]

Fak, wrote a post by internet ate it. The short:

I think we need more Ops nerfs still, but Rhino still needs buffs to make the T1 roster work. A 5th unit (Warrior Adept squad plz!) would work too.

I'm confused by Ops listed dps of 15, my maths say 20? .5s between shots with 3s reload every 6s is how to read the entry, correct? With 15 damage per shot, this looks like it should be 180 damage over 6s, then 3s of downtime, for 20 total dps (with 30dps for the first 6 seconds). Am I missing something?
http://www.dawnofwar.info/elite/weapon. ... ve_shotgun

More Dakka change is great! Chain KD is simply not handled by the engine (Retreat blocking). Let's remove it from Apo, WSE and WB too!

[Atlas]

More Dakka change is great! Chain KD is simply not handled by the engine (Retreat blocking). Let's remove it from Apo, WSE and WB too!

Amen. Been meaning to put up a chain knockback rant post.

[Vapor]

Those kb abilities should give you a single knockback. To compensate, drastically reduce the cooldown or increase the knockback strength

[Crewfinity]

Fak, wrote a post by internet ate it. The short:

I think we need more Ops nerfs still, but Rhino still needs buffs to make the T1 roster work. A 5th unit (Warrior Adept squad plz!) would work too.

I'm confused by Ops listed dps of 15, my maths say 20? .5s between shots with 3s reload every 6s is how to read the entry, correct? With 15 damage per shot, this looks like it should be 180 damage over 6s, then 3s of downtime, for 20 total dps (with 30dps for the first 6 seconds). Am I missing something?
http://www.dawnofwar.info/elite/weapon. ... ve_shotgun

More Dakka change is great! Chain KD is simply not handled by the engine (Retreat blocking). Let's remove it from Apo, WSE and WB too!

yeah....
My view on GK changes:
ops changes were good, I think they're more or less okay now. they're like GK version of shotgun scouts, just a little cheaper on req (250/30 versus 335/30) but thats okay because IST's tend to bleed more than the SM roster in T1.

I'm not really sure what the satchel charge is supposed to be used for... i guess bunkers and turrets? i really think GK could use some sort of vehicle snare in T2, especially with the las rhino nerfs. Their AV, especially their chasing potential AV, is pretty shitty.

On that note, I think the rhino got overnerfed. it has no support abilities besides the smoke bomb (which is okay, but not THAT great since it reduces outgoing damage as well), and while the heavy bolter version is fine, the las rhino misfires so often that its really not worth getting very often. any time you have to move it at all it prefers to shoot infantry, and any good player will ensure that you have to keep moving it.

I think that rhino could be moved to T2 and given some buffs, and purgation moved back to T1. reasons for this are: purgation in T2 dont fit super well. now that GK has so many light infantry squads, they bleed a lot more than they used to, so the 400 req price tag really makes them pretty undesirable. add to that the extra 100/30 to get them psycannons, which hurts a lot more since its basically part of the unit cost rather than a scaling upgrade, and its really tough to be able to afford them. additionally, the loss of purgations in T1 leaves GK really really vulnerable to melee, all they have is ops to control them, and thats really not enough a lot of the time. some form of suppression in T1 would be nice.

IST's are awesome now. been playing around with double grenade launcher/warrior acolyte IST's, ops, and SS and its really tough for eldar or IG to answer that. I still think that the warrior acolyte could be buffed a little bit though. you really never want them in melee so the model doesnt do too much besides add a little durability, and 25% damage increase isnt that great when you look at an upgrade like toxin sacs, which gives a 50% damage buff, a counter melee ability, and is cheaper. IST sarge nade changes were much needed. i think if they didnt do friendly fire i would get them a lot more.

Bro cap changes were good, he has a lot more trouble soloing setup teams and HI squads now that he turns so much slower. (pro tip, rather than kiting away from him, people should just kite in circles around him so he has to constantly rotate. its super annoying to deal with as GK).

Paladin changes were good, i think the retreat timer is pretty good as it is now. they have to wait like 2 or 3 engagements before they can use it again usually.

TLDR moar counter melee in T1 and some sort of vehicle snare in T2 plz

[Lichtbringer]

Caeltos, I have a question^^
I don't want to complain or anything, I am just interested.
Actually I am happy you found a way to let Rangers keep their supression.

But, why did you put the price increase into the baseversion of the ranger, and didn't put it on the upgrade?
Is it because of the buffed Kineticpulse?


Also, I would like to add, that I feel a singleranger is not that strong with the supression, because it mostly takes 3 shots to apply it, and then the enemy is shortly unsupressed between shots. Is the price increase targeted at doubleranger, or did you also think a singleranger was to cheap with the new changes?

[Myrdal]

I'm confused by Ops listed dps of 15, my maths say 20? .5s between shots with 3s reload every 6s is how to read the entry, correct? With 15 damage per shot, this looks like it should be 180 damage over 6s, then 3s of downtime, for 20 total dps (with 30dps for the first 6 seconds). Am I missing something?

It's confusing because relic uses/used messed up terminology. Reload frequency here basically means magazine size, so operatives will fire 6 rounds over 3s followed by 3s reload which is 1 round/s on average or 15 dps.

More Dakka change is great! Chain KD is simply not handled by the engine (Retreat blocking). Let's remove it from Apo, WSE and WB too!

^

[Cyris]

Thankyou so much hakon! That makes a ton of sense then. So Ops fire 6 shots in 3 seconds, then reload for 3 seconds. Perfect!

[crazypeacocke]

Crewfinity wrote:
IST's are awesome now... I still think that the warrior acolyte could be buffed a little bit though. you really never want them in melee so the model doesnt do too much besides add a little durability, and 25% damage increase isnt that great when you look at an upgrade like toxin sacs, which gives a 50% damage buff, a counter melee ability, and is cheaper. IST sarge nade changes were much needed. i think if they didnt do friendly fire i would get them a lot more.

Have to disagree here man.

Toxin sacs and acolyte leader both cost 75/15. The upgrades are different, but both offer similar levels of strength. Bear in mind both squads have similar burst firing patterns.

Acolyte leader:

250hp die last model (squad from 500hp to 750hp, 50% increase)
25% damage increase (32dps to 40dps)
+0.25hp/s regen for all nearby models. Stacks.
34dps melee weapon - not a primary weapon, but offers great utility

Toxin sacs:

+10% health (600hp to 660hp)
45% damage increase (28.96dps to 41.99dps)
Crippling poison - 90% snare for 5secs

Crippling poison is powerful, but we can't forget to mention the added versatility of IST from their two weapon upgrades, and the detecting, grenade-toting sergeant upgrade. Add in endless swarm for gaunts, and it seems like fair tradeoffs.


On your last point, instant 80damage grenade that doesn't do friendly fire would be too powerful as an anti swarm tool, especially considering GK also have ops stun grenade.

[Crewfinity]

Have to disagree here man.

Toxin sacs and acolyte leader both cost 75/15. The upgrades are different, but both offer similar levels of strength. Bear in mind both squads have similar burst firing patterns.

Acolyte leader:

250hp die last model (squad from 500hp to 750hp, 50% increase)
25% damage increase (32dps to 40dps)
+0.25hp/s regen for all nearby models. Stacks.
34dps melee weapon - not a primary weapon, but offers great utility

Toxin sacs:

+10% health (600hp to 660hp)
45% damage increase (28.96dps to 41.99dps)
Crippling poison - 90% snare for 5secs

Crippling poison is powerful, but we can't forget to mention the added versatility of IST from their two weapon upgrades, and the detecting, grenade-toting sergeant upgrade. Add in endless swarm for gaunts, and it seems like fair tradeoffs.


On your last point, instant 80damage grenade that doesn't do friendly fire would be too powerful as an anti swarm tool, especially considering GK also have ops stun grenade.

for some reason i thought crippling poison was 65

as far as the acolyte goes, he does add some health, but the model itself is fairly useless. the regen amounts to barely anything, even with two squads bunched up, and you really never want them in melee with anything. even trying to tie up other ranged squads isnt useful because they have to leave cover and approach, taking fire, rather than backing off, turning and firing, and repeating. definitely nowhere near as good as a control ability like crippling poison.

As far as the IST sarge nade, you're still paying 25 power for a model that is fairly useless (around 7 ranged dps, 15 melee dps but you dont utilize that for the reasons above) and gives you a lackluster grenade. the grenade is easy to dodge, and does nowhere near the damage of the scout sergeants one. additionally, you have to be fairly close to use it, so you run into the same problems i mentioned. yeah you can combo it with ops stun grenades but there you have the risk of either missing, stunning/knocking back your own units due to the short ranges, and it also costs 45 power to get that combo onto the field... one that still really doesnt do much vs swarms. GK is really lacking in counter melee right now in T1, both against swarms and jump troops. simply not enough control, the only tools in the GK arsenal right now are stun grenades (45 power), IST sarge nades (25 power, still kinda useless), IST grenade launchers (20 power, better used against setup teams since there isnt a hard counter for them anymore), and kiting. lots of kiting.

[crazypeacocke]

for some reason i thought crippling poison was 65

as far as the acolyte goes, he does add some health, but the model itself is fairly useless

Haha fair enough
50% is a big chunk of health to add. Sure you can get unlucky and lose the other models fairly quickly still, but the flipside to that is when the acolyte is the main target there will be zero bleed for the squad. Toxin sacs is only a 10% hp increase, but the greater relative damage increase compensates for this. The dps values of the squads are almost identical after these upgrades anyway, with gaunts having only 2dps more. And sure the eviscerator is very situational, but can be that difference between getting a retreat wipe and not, especially if the strikes can get a knockdown on sluggas/horms/tics.

As far as the IST sarge nade, you're still paying 25 power for a model that is fairly useless (around 7 ranged dps, 15 melee dps but you dont utilize that for the reasons above) and gives you a lackluster grenade. the grenade is easy to dodge, and does nowhere near the damage of the scout sergeants one. additionally, you have to be fairly close to use it, so you run into the same problems i mentioned. yeah you can combo it with ops stun grenades but there you have the risk of either missing, stunning/knocking back your own units due to the short ranges, and it also costs 45 power to get that combo onto the field... one that still really doesnt do much vs swarms. GK is really lacking in counter melee right now in T1, both against swarms and jump troops. simply not enough control, the only tools in the GK arsenal right now are stun grenades (45 power), IST sarge nades (25 power, still kinda useless), IST grenade launchers (20 power, better used against setup teams since there isnt a hard counter for them anymore), and kiting. lots of kiting.

Yeah I can see the sarge being a bit expensive if you're only getting it for the grenade, but that's just the nature of the detection he offers too I guess. Unless detection was going to be offered as an upgrade only available once you get the sergeant (say 50/15 for sarge, then 25/10 for detection), I can't really see a way to solve this. The grenade is the least easy to dodge though - it has no countdown and hits instantly. Hurts the swarmy armies hard too, even if the damage isn't super high against low model squads.

Ah ok, didn't realise stun nade had been moved to the upgrade for ops.

GK definitely have ample control come T2, with the purgation and especially Libby's Sanctuary. Sure it could all be solved by moving purgation back to T1, but doubt that will happen.

You had much luck with the rhino? Gives an easy way to hide and back off I guess, even if it isn't control as such. The acolyte hp regen must help with that hit and run a bit.


Crippling poison is the only cheap nid control T1, and is usually only once per engagement. BS warrior is pricey at 50 power

[Tex]

Does the brother captain really need to have a teleporter pack? I think this is a balance question that really needs to hit the microscope in light of hotfixes.

[enasni127]

I had some games vs gk yesterday (2on2's and 3on3's) and, really, there was no game without people complaining about gk (especially the bro captain and their t3) being op. some guys even left the game.

just to be honest, I think there is some truth in this. gk still feels like an unstoppable force to me. it's just impossible to stop them when they roll over your lane. vehicles/setups die to teleporting termis, and the rest gets melted by their enormous range potential. i think there are really only 1-2 races atm that don't have trouble to stop gk.

[Tex]

I personally haven't experienced this so called "GK T3 snowball", because honestly, terminators of any kind are hard hitting and equally as hard to kill.

I have however, experienced the brother captain being the ultimate face check unit in T1, and then becoming a hard hitting splash damage unit that can teleport in T2 that can still face check anything.
Especially now that he has operatives for invisible flanks on setup teams, I don't see why he should be blessed with a teleport so he can just outshine the force commander in almost completely parallel roles other than not having a powerfist.

Anyway, this kinda stuff all comes out in the wash. Maybe it just needs to cost more or something.

[Adeptus Noobus]

I personally haven't experienced this so called "GK T3 snowball", because honestly, terminators of any kind are hard hitting and equally as hard to kill.
I have however, experienced the brother captain being the ultimate face check unit in T1, and then becoming a hard hitting splash damage unit that can teleport in T2 that can still face check anything.
Especially now that he has operatives for invisible flanks on setup teams, I don't see why he should be blessed with a teleport so he can just outshine the force commander in almost completely parallel roles other than not having a powerfist.

Anyway, this kinda stuff all comes out in the wash. Maybe it just needs to cost more or something.

GKs are by no means an "A-move to win" faction as many make them look like but they put the hurt on you quite a lot. I totally agree with you regarding the BC vs FC (Everything you can do I can do better...).
Their T3 is kinda silly to fight sometimes. I think I can speak for a lot of people when I say that the increase in cooldown on the retreat for Paladins and the decrease of their health regen were a very good choice from Caeltos. Now that does not however make them any more fun to play against since they will just keep on fielding Terminators after Terminators until you simply can't deal with them any longer. This is of course only the case in teamgames. If your enemy fields multiple Termis + 1x Paladin squad in a 1v1 you must have made mistakes earlier in the game.

I had a game (3v3) where one enemy was clearly fast-teching to T3 and could pull it of beacause their Psycannons are nothing to be sniffed at and the BC simply teleports into your army and does what he does best. Now I am not calling imba because I am in no position to do so (at all) but I'd like to point out that the SM vs GK matchup is a tough one. Kiting the BC is not so easy when he has the teleport and Wath. But back to T3. We kinda managed to keep the GK player in check as he was obviously not fielding enough units to make a greater impact, which completely changed once he got Paladins + Terminators. Unless you have loads of Plasma guns or LC-Termis you are in world of hurt and I believe that is why many people rage at them. Teleport + Speed Buff + Psycannons + shockwave + melee dps, and all in one squad.
I am still experimenting with some unit combinations to effectively counter GK T3 but so far, as a TM/PC player, I have found mass ranged fire to be the best choice against GKs. Also the occasional Dreadnought when they get to close.
What are your thoughts?

P.S: I really want to stress that I am not saying GKs are imba.

[enasni127]

I have found mass ranged fire to be the best choice against GKs. Also the occasional Dreadnought when they get to close.
What are your thoughts?

P.S: I really want to stress that I am not saying GKs are imba.

I've found out that exactly this doesn't work at all if you play IG cause they just teleport their BC and Termies into your ranged units and it's over in a second. usually you also get hellfury strikes on top or AOE abilities.

Ig just doesn't have a good melee vs melee counter vs such a thing like terminators. so usually you try to run circles, use abilities, tie them up with different units for a short time and focuse fire with ranged units. that's ok vs sm or chaos, cause there are not so many "ultra-strong-knock-back-and-suppression-immune-high-dps-high-hp-teleport-melee-units" but vs gk there's almost only exact these units and so it's just absurdly hard to counter them cause you jsut cannot tie them up and so cannot use range fire even from leman russ's or baneblade. And this shit starts on t1 when they use their BC to even run through setup team fire and melee down your troops with strike squads or just AOE them to pieces with IST's or 100-mile-shotgun them with operatives.

[Adeptus Noobus]

I have found mass ranged fire to be the best choice against GKs. Also the occasional Dreadnought when they get to close.
What are your thoughts?

P.S: I really want to stress that I am not saying GKs are imba.

I've found out that exactly this doesn't work at all if you play IG cause they just teleport their BC and Termies into your ranged units and it's over in a second. usually you also get hellfury strikes on top or AOE abilities.

Ig just doesn't have a good melee vs melee counter vs such a thing like terminators. so usually you try to run circles, use abilities, tie them up with different units for a short time and focuse fire with ranged units. that's ok vs sm or chaos, cause there are not so many "ultra-strong-knock-back-and-suppression-immune-high-dps-high-hp-teleport-melee-units" but vs gk there's almost only exact these units and so it's just absurdly hard to counter them cause you jsut cannot tie them up and so cannot use range fire even from leman russ's or baneblade. And this shit starts on t1 when they use their BC to even run through setup team fire and melee down your troops with strike squads or just AOE them to pieces with IST's or 100-mile-shotgun them with operatives.

IG have a somewhat extensive arsenal when it comes to dealing with the main GK threats, depending on what hero you picked. That is just my opinion though.

[enasni127]

I have found mass ranged fire to be the best choice against GKs. Also the occasional Dreadnought when they get to close.
What are your thoughts?

P.S: I really want to stress that I am not saying GKs are imba.

I've found out that exactly this doesn't work at all if you play IG cause they just teleport their BC and Termies into your ranged units and it's over in a second. usually you also get hellfury strikes on top or AOE abilities.

Ig just doesn't have a good melee vs melee counter vs such a thing like terminators. so usually you try to run circles, use abilities, tie them up with different units for a short time and focuse fire with ranged units. that's ok vs sm or chaos, cause there are not so many "ultra-strong-knock-back-and-suppression-immune-high-dps-high-hp-teleport-melee-units" but vs gk there's almost only exact these units and so it's just absurdly hard to counter them cause you jsut cannot tie them up and so cannot use range fire even from leman russ's or baneblade. And this shit starts on t1 when they use their BC to even run through setup team fire and melee down your troops with strike squads or just AOE them to pieces with IST's or 100-mile-shotgun them with operatives.

IG have a somewhat extensive arsenal when it comes to dealing with the main GK threats, depending on what hero you picked. That is just my opinion though.

IG has very good counters vs units that can be supressed or knocked back. vs gk t3 you basically only have the sentinel stomp (sentinel won't survive a second...) and the inquisitor who i usually play rarely.

[Corrie]

Please mention what game mode your talking about in these topics, as the matchup plays very different if it's a 1v1 as oppose to a 3v3 lane against them,

[Hellstar]

I'm not defending GK here one single bit - hate on them all you want, nerf them to oblivion etc. It's all good with me.

Having said that, for what it's worth, I fielded a total of 2 paladin squads and 1 terminator squad against an IG player (naturally not at the same time) but he won. He killed them all pretty quickly by massed focused ranged firepower (tons of guardsmen plus whatever elite tier infantry IG gets - stormtroopers? karsikin?), an ogyrn squad, and a melee hero with powerfist or powerclaw or whatever it is (I clicked on the hero to figure out what was doing all the damage). Not sure the exact hero he used, but I think it may have been the one with the power shield. It wasn't the inquisitor, anyway.

The point is, it worked for him, so try it out and see if it works for you. I'm not arguing that GK isn't OP, I'm just throwing out what's worked against me in the past.