Thinking about GK!

[531st]

With all those GK complains (with some of which i even agree) I want to share my ideas of how those problems could be solved as a "guy who mained GK (in 3v3s) for a year already" (and programmer to be)

Strike squads
Great t1 squad can shoot ppl, can bully ppl, can counter melee to some point. Has serious problems with scaling into t2 and onwards. Their upgrades are not as good as they cost. In t3 they become just pointless with with interceptors that have more damage, grenades, teleporters, 3 psycannons and more HP
*Flamer
is not as good as other faction flamers with fire on the move but is kinda awright with its high damage and courage damage that is not as good as set up team's but enough to keep 1 squad suppressed. Makes them feel uniqe
*Psycannon
good generalist upgrade but using SS is AV is still borderline reasonable since its wasting their glorious Anti-inf potential and dealing little short range not burst damage. This upgrade is good for not allowing u to get bullied by early vehicle but so is the vindicare that costs just 5 more power and gives much more than psycannon. Even with psybolts its not definitely not go-to wargear, more of a luxury since it sets u back more than gives u an advantage over anything. But since GK have only 3 ranged special weapons with last one being psilencer. Maybe psilencer would be a better idea that makes them even better anti-infantry with the addition of even more bolter-strengh dakka (mb some a bit longer range piercing DPS t2 weapon?) This will make sure they have the anti infantry role in roaster, unlike tank hunter interceptors. We do not have a model but i guess it looks like a triple barreled psycannon so it shouldnt be too hard to make (even for me )
*Psybolts
as with psycannons, it sets u back more than gives u an advantage. "Oh, look, got 3 guardsmen worth of piercing damage for 100/20" doenst sound so solid. I'd say that psybolts are least rational use of ur power in t2. I tried going for psybolts in almost every single game and it always sets me on backfoot. It is as questionable as 30 power GL for dread was. I'd say that its cost could be lowered or it should be buffed. Like 20% range 20% damage? Or 40% damage? Or giving them sm_bolter_sternguard_kraken damage type for entire squad instead of plasma justicar to allow damage go a bit higher without them evaporating poor eldar and orks that already suffer from their piercing damage?
*Justicar
Very good upgrade. Plasma damage+power weapon+2 awesome abilities. The only problem in getting almost twice as gud is without it SS becomes half as good So losing justicar that is not cheap to replace hurts SS a lot. Much more than some tacs or CSM. I'd say hurts as much as losing banshee exarch but banshee are not the main unit of eldar armies in t2, SS are. Maybe make him cheaper? Or die last? Or upgrade that makes him just 4th squad member? Or more HP?

Operatives
They do have quite a lot of tasks now in GK t1. Being the only counter melee, fast capping skirmisher and a crowd control unit at the same time. Their damage is quite off the charts but simple half range=half damage should fix the problem of double ops appearing out of nowhere and wiping DA in a single burst. Maybe some shotgun blast could be more useful and less abusable than fallback plan with smoke and retreat cancel.

Rhino
Totally not worth it as it is. I havent seen a player that was able to use rhinos in t1 in 3v3s. But we learned that SHI could be too much for it. Here are few ideas what could be done about it:
*Toolbawx! To boost its durability there is self repair ability that it has in tabletop so it will become stationary, give cover and repair itself. Seems like a great tool for hiding ur stuff behind and not losing rhino at the same time. Yet the damage of some factions may make it not enough to save rhino. Maybe self smoking or giving it SHI when its stationary would help. Not like it will run away while stationary and if it tries to get out of its little "shieldwall" it will be melted as all the rhinos do atm.
*Tiny grenade barrage! To make it more of a melee counter nerfed version of grenade barrage could be added. Since there is not much use to that smoke bomb anyway. Run forward, burst grenades to knock stuff around, unload ur ist, shoot stuff, run away. Adds more to GK's fast attacking hard hitting faction flavour
*Teleporter relay
Ability to teleport squads inside into enemy face! Since there is no interceptors around now, it could use a function of getting ur SS into enemy position/behind set up teams to rek some stuff. BC cant get into rhino anyway so no free teleport in t1 and no catapulting ur entire army into enemy's face. Just 2 squads. Shouldnt be too gamebreaking, adds more assaulty flavour, adds counter-camper tool that gk dont have atm, adds jump stuff that GK dont have atm, can synergize with some purifiers in t2 (mb add reinforce in t2?). Yet its proably too much for a rhino to have powerful weapon in t2 and this so i guess weapon should remove it

Purgations
They were good in t1 and they are barely usable in t2 even with increased damage. Expensive, barely usable with flamers, and somewhat outclassed by t3 interceptors if given psycannons. Just leave them in t1 which will allow to ease the pressure on ops that have to be only melee counter atm. Since there is no more SHI rhinos around, no more driving past turrets and armies and burning all of ur techmarine's toys and gens

Purifiers
Are not really as useful as intended. Expensive not fast, not too tough power melee infantry with heavy melee sergeant? With that cost they definitely meant to be melee superiority unit but they are outperformed by every single t2 melee unit i think, even by some t1 ones AND they become completely worthless with terminators hitting the field that are same speed, more damage, better psykery, splash damage, better armor, thrice more health, teleport and better ranged weapons. And when upgraded with their justicar they worth almost the same as terminators.
What could be made to make them uniqe and usable in generic situations?
*Halberds!
Since no1 will mistake strike squads for interceptors, strike squads can get their default swords back and we can give purifiers shiny more powerful (codex wise) halberds. Also give their justicar a halberd, he dont need that hammer. His heavy melee does not give him capable AV and decreases anti-HI/SHI capabilities. Adding some power melee AoE will secure their dominant melee position. I also thought about extra speed but with their charge and WaTH that could be 2gud. Even if u dont wanna touch their damage, i'd still liked to see them with halberds rather than strike squads. Squad with better melee weapons being much worse than squad with "bad" melee weapons hurts my brain
*Soulblaze!
Their distinctive feature that they set stuff on fire by punching it. Adding some piercing/flame damage over time will make them better anti-infantry and add to their melee prowess to once again be closer to melee superiority unit (yet we all know that there is no chance them outpunching genestealers though. But at least they can beat ogryns/KCSM that way). Maybe make it activated ability or smth
*Immunity to suppression
They are the only Fearless unit in GK TT roaster. Even BC and paladins are not That will definitely make them unique melee infantry (I know that this is not TT, I dont like TT, I dont want elite to be like TT, I just suggesting lore-friendly quirks. Lore friendly stuff will make 40k universe fans happy i think)
*Inspiration on kill
GK dont have it. That will make following their charge a good idea. Not a huge change but adds more linebreaker flavour rather some lone skirmishers that run around the map trying to find not protected enemies to hit
*Lower price
Duh

Terminators/Paladins
Retreat is strong but nececcary to make sure that GK would not suck in late game. I have a few ideas how we can balance this
*Upgrade
I for some reason checked out good old retrib vanilla and remembered extra armor on IG vehicles. What if terminators had un upgrade "Remove glory from pointless defeat" that allows to reatreat only once and costs like 150/40 with 90 sec build time? Sure, u dont bleed, u can have ur linebreaker, u can be safe with it but this also costs munnies, has long build time and kinda starts on cooldown since u need to buy it!
*Overcharge teleporters
Since GK are the only ones adept at using perosnal teleporters we could focus on that instead of retreat and make ability that allows to teleport at x3 range but damages teleporter so it couldnt be used for like 3 mins. Thank the empra they have their stormbolters, right? Gets them out of danger, debuffs them, not spammable, returns good ol' beating termies with stuns, if ur a cheeky little baseraper u wouldnt run too far.

Interceptors
More melee damages and reasonable justicar plz


P.S. I dont mean that every single one of those should be implemented at the same time and i dont want GK to be "made stronger", I want more options for players to play with. So much different builds with other factinos and so strict GK strats if u wanna be even allowed to live in high lvl games. All the other units I think are awright or I forgot about them

[Crewfinity]

agreed for the most part with strike squads, their weapon upgrades and psybolt ammo just feel inefficient, and in most cases this squad feels like it become more of a burden than anything else in the mid/late game. i'm not really sure how they could be tweaked though.

IST
i think IST are in a pretty good spot right now, but the sergeant nade could still use some love :/
its radius is really small, and half the time when you try to throw it the rest of the squad walks right up to where it lands, making it fairly ineffective as a counter melee tool.
*could either remove friendly fire from the grenade or add a suppression effect like the interceptor's psyk out nades.

ops
i think a lot of the issues with ops could be solved by tying their infiltration ability to the fallback upgrade (idea cred to cheekie monkie). i think they could also get their stun bomb back as a default, this change would lessen their initial suprise factor from wiping squads, and give a bit more crowd control earlier in t1.

Rhino/purgations
I really dont like where these two units are right now. rhino isnt very useful in t1 without purgations, and t2 purgations that cost 400 req just make me so sad. its a really big price tag for a t2 initial purchase that is just a flamer squad. I think if the purgations were moved back to T1 and the rhino were moved to T2 a lot more diversity would be seen in builds, and the two units would be in a much better spot internally.

Purifiers
I dont have a problem with their combat performance, they're very tough and quite killy, and can be supported by a plethora of options from the bro cap or librarian. they already have a really good ability in their plasma field thing. the only changes i would want is an initial cost reduction and a reinforcement cost reduction, like i've mentioned before.

Bro Cap
*halberd could get a power cost increase, the warding staff and hammer could both get cost reductions.
*The force sword dps could be increased from 40 power melee dps to 50, on par with the FC power sword.
*I'd also like to see a mantle of terra rework. with the loss of t1 interceptors it lost a lot of utility, and ops are really energy intensive enough to warrant the purchase. could maybe be changed into a more support-based wargear?
*teleporter could be changed from 120/30 to 100/40, on par with the FC teleporter.
*purified blades could use a buff. 100/20 for 5 melee splash damage per strike and 20% chance of knockback just isnt good enough to justify it over the unending purge. the BC struggles with melee squads (benshees, sluggas), so this wargear should address that better. either a higher splash value (10 melee per strike? 15? his attack animation is suuuuper slow so it just really isnt that noticeable) or a higher chance of passive knockback could help.

Terminators/paladins
they're both still a little too strong, a build time decrease along with a couple nerfs would be fine i think. GK terminator health regen could probably be adjusted back to 0.5 since they can retreat these days.

Interceptors
agreed on both points. the psycannons outmatch their melee values by a hilarious amount. right now its probably better to just teleport behind an enemy unit and shoot it rather than try to melee it. the justicar could definitely use a rework, they're much worse as a melee jump squad so the knockback on teleport isnt nearly as useful. in most situations its better to just not get him, he's just another model with a psycannon that bleeds for 90/25 instead of 83/10. no complaints other than that though, they're a very good tank-hunting unit and i like their inclusion into the T3 roster (although i still miss T1 interceptors sometimes).

[Cyris]

Some additional 1v1 GK perspective here. I mostly agree with Crew and 531. It's interesting to see your opinions 531, because they are so clearly from a 3v3 perspective. My limited experience with team games is that T1 and T2 go by much faster, and a lot more of the game is spent in T3. This makes units likes Purifiers even worse, since they are clearly outclassed by Terminators. In a 1v1, some of the most decisive moments of the game happen in T2, so you can't really stall till T3 and get dem super units.

SS
I win a surprisingly high numbers of games where I lost my SS in late T1.5 or early T2, before investing in them. I really think the only good thing about the squad after T1 is Energy Burst. Even the Plasma damage is iffy, since it's only 14dps and this is reduced against light infantry. Once in a while I top up the BC's energy, but that's about it.

Purgation
I freaking love this unit, not sure why all the hate! I think for 50 less req then a SS, it's quite a bit stronger. I find I can pull some nasty combos with the flamers, and the option to upgrade to psy gives it real versatility. The nearly non-existent power cost lets me either field a Dread next, or rush T3 if I'm ahead.

Purifiers
I'm more with 531, I don't think a cost change is really going to cut it. It would definitely make the unit more viable, but it's still going to be very niche. It is awkward to transition into this unit and it really begs to be comboed with melee support options to preform well (warding staff, power sword, libby etc) and by the time I've spent that much, a T2 vehicle has snowballed me out of the game. I like the idea of removing heavy melee and doubling down as an anti-infantry squad.

OPS
The more I think about it, the more I agree with the stealth going away by default. I think the burst damage could safely go down, with perhaps even a small dps increase (ie, reduce reload time). I'd like to see their speed go from 6.5 to 5.5, but gain +1 speed while stealthed. I think this would help reduce their side capping potency. Oh, and the T2 sarge could really use either a buff or cost reduction.

BC
I could even see him losing the teleporter pack completely. I can't pretend that I think teleporting is totaly ok on an unsupressable tanky commander. My instinct is that this alone would make the halabard and agies much more reasonable. And yeah, purified blades is a joke. I've even tried it against what it apears to be specificaly built fore: countering T1 melee swarms (2+ tics, hormas, sluggas etc). It doesn't work :/

VA and AV
I think the VA needs to lose the damage boost on his ability, 50% range is plenty. My ability to combo this with mind blades will 1 shot some light vehicles, and god help you if I get the rear armor. I think that GK's AV needs some overall tweaks still, some vehicles are honestly too easy to kill / force off, and others stomp all over me. VA could safely even lose some of his AV damage. I think the unit overpreforms overall. He's enjoyably difficult to micro, but I think he's too strong for his cost.

[Kentation]

I was actually thinking about proposals for reworking Paladin and Terminator teleports. One of their strengths is being able to teleport aggressively and tie up ranged squads instantly.

What would your thoughts be on removing the teleport from them. I say this beacuse there appears to be lots of ways for them to get into combat, WATH and Ward from the BroCap; Shrouding and Might of the Titan from the Librarian and the Holy Ground from the Paladins.

Now I can see this as being as a fairly harsh and a drastic change but I am hoping to have a starting point of some discussion and continue forward.

A less drastic approach could be having a windup to their teleport, similar to blood letters and Interceptors(?). It gives the opponent a window to fire at the Terminator/Paladins and/or reposition your units to avoid being tied up so quickly.

So... Thoughts?

[531st]

I was actually thinking about proposals for reworking Paladin and Terminator teleports. One of their strengths is being able to teleport aggressively and tie up ranged squads instantly.

What would your thoughts be on removing the teleport from them. I say this beacuse there appears to be lots of ways for them to get into combat, WATH and Ward from the BroCap; Shrouding and Might of the Titan from the Librarian and the Holy Ground from the Paladins.

Now I can see this as being as a fairly harsh and a drastic change but I am hoping to have a starting point of some discussion and continue forward.

A less drastic approach could be having a windup to their teleport, similar to blood letters and Interceptors(?). It gives the opponent a window to fire at the Terminator/Paladins and/or reposition your units to avoid being tied up so quickly.

So... Thoughts?

Which would make them useless vs firedragons, dark reapers, TCSM, leman russes, Plasma guardsmen, flash gitz, etc Remember that they have to be the strongest terminators in order to stand against SM/CSM counterparts and they have to not be not hardcounterable to fight against other factions. Neither it would make sense lorewise since GK are the only ones using personal teleporters. Neither SM nor CSM use them in masses except obliterators that are not in the game.
There are extremely potent anti-SHI around nowdays and with good micro termies can be demolished. GK was the least played faction and it kinda is now. Having low health, lowest damage terminators without teleport does not help. Just removing smth is kinda just silly if u try to balance barely sustaining itself system, not nerf the thing u dont like :/


Yea, cyris, 3 power farms mustard race
Good point on ist, ops and BC which i totally forgot.
Yet i'd say cost increase for teleport would be better than just removing it imo.
Yet i'd say reworking his weapons could be easier than balacning between 2 super high power melee sticks and 1 melee one. Halberd could be beefed up in cost, force stave should cost less to look better and be melee damage(mb with splash), judging by the tabletop again where it has AP4 (punching through armor with a sword is easier than with a stick! Who might have thought!) and thunderhammer should be a dam thunderhammer, not a rock on a stick. Give it heavy melee, maybe lower heavy melee DPS but with splash. Sounds interesting enough for 50power wargear

[Atlas]

I can fully get behind swapping purgs and rhinos into t1 and t2 respectively with the obvious tweaks needed.

The big problem with ops is that they have the golden combo of damage, speed, range and stealth in t1 right out of the gate. Speed 6.5 as well as full damage at 30 range means that they can very quickly and easy get in and out of combat thanks to that speed and stealth. I've been in favor of a flat speed nerf on ops that makes them easier to chase down by range 38 forces. Dps wise, they're basically catachans with the same full damage at range and no fotm, but catachans move at speed 5 and can't stealth.

I'd be fine with GK terms/palas losing their teleport, buffing them to speed 5 and giving them nerfs to health while making the retreat ability a 100 energy cost ability instead of a simple cooldown. This would make any of their very useful abilities into a decision to commit to a fight, while making them a little easier to take down. The energy cost can also promote some synergy with some of the lesser used abilties like SS Energy Burst and Mantle of Terra. It also promotes some more GK Libby play. The speed increase is there to compensate for the overall nerfs while allowing them to help close in on targets easier due to a lack of teleport.

[saltychipmunk]

"GK was the least played faction and it kinda is now. " back then it was because they were up, now it is because they are distastefully unfun to play against. Most people who see you routinely play them will start to black list you from their lobbies . this is especially true in the medium player skill level where people are good enough to start seeing certain patterns in race implementation.

[531st]

"GK was the least played faction and it kinda is now. " back then it was because they were up, now it is because they are distastefully unfun to play against. Most people who see you routinely play them will start to black list you from their lobbies . this is especially true in the medium player skill level where people are good enough to start seeing certain patterns in race implementation.

Oh, go butthurt somewhere else. Find urself some GKOPNERF thread and post there. We're trying to find solutions, not hear what u'd did to punish bad boys who do stuff u dont like

[saltychipmunk]

"GK was the least played faction and it kinda is now. " back then it was because they were up, now it is because they are distastefully unfun to play against. Most people who see you routinely play them will start to black list you from their lobbies . this is especially true in the medium player skill level where people are good enough to start seeing certain patterns in race implementation.

Oh, go butthurt somewhere else. Find urself some GKOPNERF thread and post there. We're trying to find solutions, not hear what u'd did to punish bad boys who do stuff u dont like

I play gk too btw, And I have been kicked from lobbies explicitly for it. if you want to write me off as one of those "butthurt" players that is fine.

people dont like gk because they arent fun to play against that is not some cute little opinion i shat out to cause people to flare up, it is no longer some super rare opinion shared by a minority either. it is a legitimate view point that is spreading throughout the medium skill community. It is, whether you like it or not, a growing problem.

fact of the matter is that being fun to play with or against is actually an important component in game design. that is why certain players (who shall not be named here) are deliberately avoided.

because all this stuff you are posting here.. all of these suggestions , all of these changes. they can be perfectly great. but if you dont solve that image problem you might as well go home now. you do yourself a disservice by trying to avoid that fact by blatantly insulting me.


Now as for why i even brought that prickly point at all is because said people who share this opinion do so because they latch on to certain poisonous mechanics. like for example the presence of the retreat on the terminators.

they expect units like these to behave a certain way and when one set of units gets a really really really nice perk over the other , even if it is only a little op, they will latch on too it like nothing else.

So if we wan't to start some where, we gotta look at those prickly mechanics and ask ourselves... do they need this ? And i hold the opinion of NO.

[Codex]

Oh wait I'm still a moderator? Oh yeah. Chill out and be civil, or warnings and/or locked thread. Simple enough

Edit perhaps I was a bit lax in my application. I don't want any chat about butthurt or ad hominems. It's been civil up to this point so let's keep it that way.

[saltychipmunk]

Very well, then to expand on my position.

we need to axe some of the mechanics that were introduced.

The gk teleport on terminators is fine. the retreat is not. it must go.
purgs were working fine as counter melee in t1, the operatives were not. the operatives need a redesign.

the way i see it these changes were added to address issue with the gk line up that were present only in the patch these changes were not in.
Ie they were already solved by the patch in other ways.

terminators could be easily trapped? well that was because gk t3 was basically 80% terminators. this issue was solved by adding a non terminator option to t3... interceptors.

purges were too good in t1 because of the rhino gen bash potential? well the rhino got nerfed back to being crap (really just give it tank armor and put it in t2 already with a las cannon).

the operatives aren't needed for counter melee.

if we get rid of those two things then we eliminate the two largest reasons people dislike gk and have some working balance to boot.

[Crewfinity]

guys this thread was going so well

its silly to try to make meta statements anyway since every player is going to have differing experiences due to location/opponents/whatever, lets keep it to specific thoughts on GK performance/potential tweaks with some explanations instead

The big problem with ops is that they have the golden combo of damage, speed, range and stealth in t1 right out of the gate. Speed 6.5 as well as full damage at 30 range means that they can very quickly and easy get in and out of combat thanks to that speed and stealth. I've been in favor of a flat speed nerf on ops that makes them easier to chase down by range 38 forces. Dps wise, they're basically catachans with the same full damage at range and no fotm, but catachans move at speed 5 and can't stealth.

While I agree that Ops are overperforming for their cost, i think its difficult to approach making changes to them simply because they are a large part of what makes the GK t1 viable. if they get nerfed a bit too much then the whole GK early game is going to suffer a lot, since they are filling so many roles right now.

Ops are in a really good place right now as far as survivability goes, purely due to their infiltration and speed. they dont have a very big health pool and they have fairly small range. the reason i would favor them losing infiltration rather than the speed is because a speed nerf will make them much more vulnerable to melee, amplifying some of the existing problems in the GK roster. right now one of the few ways to counter mass melee with GK in t1 is to get multiple ops squads and use their speed to skirmish rather than commiting to any fights. losing their infiltration out of the gate means more potential for counterplay and gives the opponent more options, a flat speed nerf on ops takes away utility from the GK player. additionally, not having infiltration to start would make them more fragile from not having the 20% damage reduction, helping with some of the durability issues of the Ops. I could probably go into more detail but those are a few of the reasons i dont like ops speed being reduced, and would rather them not have starting infiltration instead. no other squads have active infiltration out of the gate in T1 anyway so that would make the game a little more consistent.

Also, while catachans are probably the unit most similar to ops, they have radically different roles. catachans have 2 sources of knockback, a higher health pool, power melee, detection, and are in general just a much beefier, frontline squad. ops are best used on the periphery of the map, and are a much more mobile skirmishing unit than a utility/support role like the cats.

[Crewfinity]

if we get rid of those two things then we eliminate the two largest reasons people dislike gk and have some working balance to boot.

Caeltos has said multiple times that retreatadins and ops are here to stay, so just saying that they should be axed isnt super useful

while both of those seem quite powerful now, I have faith in Caeltos' vision and i think that with some changes GK could evolve into a much more diverse and fun faction to play with/against. I'd also rather just keep moving forward and making changes in general rather than trying to go back to old patches.

[saltychipmunk]

if we get rid of those two things then we eliminate the two largest reasons people dislike gk and have some working balance to boot.

Caeltos has said multiple times that retreatadins and ops are here to stay, so just saying that they should be axed isnt super useful

while both of those seem quite powerful now, I have faith in Caeltos' vision and i think that with some changes GK could evolve into a much more diverse and fun faction to play with/against. I'd also rather just keep moving forward and making changes in general rather than trying to go back to old patches.

Then that is unfortunate ,because that means the issues that were introduced are here to stay. there is such a thing as adding too much.
It may be futile for me to say that. Then again i could argue that not doing that is also quite futile because you wont be addressing the real issue.

its like trying to fix a broken axle by washing your tires.

to be fair i said redesign for the ops. i only want the retreat on terminators axed.

While I agree that Ops are overperforming for their cost, i think its difficult to approach making changes to them simply because they are a large part of what makes the GK t1 viable. if they get nerfed a bit too much then the whole GK early game is going to suffer a lot, since they are filling so many roles right now.

they very heart of the issue. perhaps it might be a good idea to reduce the roles they can fill and either move them to other units or keep them out of gks reach. units that have too many roles become generalists.. and therefore spam-able.

[Crewfinity]

that's fair, sorry i misrepresented you then

ops definitely have potential with some tweaking.

terminators retreating is a tougher issue to look at. on the one hand you want the GK terminators to have much better upsides than the SM or chaos ones, because they are the backbone of GK T3. other factions can always get battletanks, a unit that is in general much more viable, flexible, and effective than terminators simply by design. for other factions terminators are much more of a niche purchase, and have to be planned for in advance by the player to save up red for them. because GK terminators are doing the bulk of the work of t3 purchases, i can get why giving them retreat could be okay. right now i think they are too hard to force off in the first place, so i think one potential direction could be to nerf their health pool, but increase their health regen. this would make them easier to force off, but give some more sustain potential to reward keeping them out in the field and in play rather than bumrushing the enemy line to get a tank kill or squad wipe and then retreating out.

im not saying that would completely solve the issue or that its even the best way to approach the current balance issues, but what i mean is that there are so many ways to change them or tweak performance that just saying that retreat should be taken out seems a little close-minded. i like how retreating diffrentiates them from the other variants and i think it can make GK t3 more interesting, and I dont think it's a toxic mechanic in and of itself. So while it may seem a bit broken now, thats just because they could use a few nerfs in the performance category.

I quite liked Atlas' ideas on termy changes, although I do agree with 531st that they should keep teleport. If they lost that, then they would have to take the full army's ranged fire on approach, and would have MUCH less escape options than normal terminators, since teleport is much more flexible, has a 60 second cooldown instead of 300, and can be used aggressively as well as defensively. I'd rather see changes to make them easier to force off the field, making the GK player support them more to have the same performance potential.

[Cyris]

At work, but wanted to jump in quick... For Termies, I'd like to see:

Retreat cooldown reduced to 0s.
Teleport removed.
Health and damage reduced, by quite a bit.
Gain ability to level.
Cost and build time reduced.
Libra-demonica now also grants a speed boost or charge attack skill, whose cost is 60ish energy (unsable to use it and Holocust unless you've leveled).
Strongly consider removing/altering weapon upgrades...
Consider giving them a melee teleport charge like Blood Letters.

I think this will make the unit a much reasonable core of GK T3 in 1v1 while reducing their out of the box potency. 3v3 players who keep the terminators alive for a while will end up with a real strong unit. I think retreating makes GK terminators very unique, and I'd prefer to preserve that aspect of them over teleporting.

Palladins are a different issue, as I'd like the two units to be more dramatically different. I could see a cost increase alone as sufficient (like 750/180).

GK roster badly needs either another T1 unit, or for the Rhino to be impactful in T1 with whatever cost changes needed. Until this happens, needed Ops nerfs/focusing are going to be impossible to evaluate.

[531st]

saltychipmunk, oh, i thought ur one of those guys who run around saying "I payed my 20$ to relax in competitive game, not to get countered. Remove stuff i dont like and let me play my quad plague marines!" that i've seen too much of lately. My apologies then


I do think that termi retreat was absolutely vital for t3 survivability of an entire GK roaster. Enemy that knows that he is gonna fight GK and GK is good enough to not lose in early game, can expect terminators as soon as the game starts which means that counterunits can be picked well in advance. There are the myriad of ways in countering termies that every single faction had "evolved" from back when DoW2 came out. Experienced player that knows his faction's strong and weak sides can easily get all the HI/SHI coutners in t2 and not even bother wasting resources on it in t3 just because of dire need of smth to throw at those termies. And those termies die as gud as any other unit
The problem is that there more averege players that dont plan the game so far in advance, play4fun guys that just build units they like, less experienced players and guys that were not blessed by holy power of codex and dont know what exactly they should build to counter that. A tank, carnifex or even a baneblade coming out of nowhere from player that rushed to t3 can be bad, may require some quick upgrades, maybe some extra units or smth. The melee terminators coming out of nowhere, teleporting on your face and crowd controlling u to death hurt like a dam truck, doing colossal amount of damage, soaking twice as much and then retreating away dont require counterplay, they force it. And not all the players can realise, recalculate their army builds and react (though all of them can complain)
I'd call all the melee termies "the most impact 2015" maybe with some nobs doing almost the same. The problem with terminators mobility, large size and being crowd controlled can be instantly sloved by retreating +damage resist and +speed thats why i suggested to either make that retreat cost with one use upgrade mechanic or with lower distance covered by their escape aka replacing retreat with mega teleport that cooldowns for a few ages.

The same with ops having too many roles and thats why i suggested purgatinos brought back (yea, sneaky gen bash potential but ops do almost the same damage, have more speed, infiltrate and retreat cancel which is even worse for ur gens imo) and rhino getting more utility rather than more durability so we'll have 5 decent t1 units instead of 2.5. I also like the idea of ops getting infiltrate with upgrade instead of grenade and not speed decrease. Though i wouldnt mind rhino turning into a good ol' t2 razorback with big gun on it by default (i still think that unit "catapult" could be an interesting mechanic for a faction with no t1 dedicated melee units and that is struggling with turrets)

Retreat cooldown reduced to 0s.
Teleport removed.
Health and damage reduced, by quite a bit.
Gain ability to level.
Cost and build time reduced.
Libra-demonica now also grants a speed boost or charge attack skill, whose cost is 60ish energy (unsable to use it and Holocust unless you've leveled).
Strongly consider removing/altering weapon upgrades...
Consider giving them a melee teleport charge like Blood Letters.

I like the idea. Turning them into mega-strike squad. Dunno about teleport removing. Maybe make their teleport bloodletter-ish with 1-2 sec delay and sparkly effect on the ground where they land?

P.S. I do enjoy playing vs GK (only if im not gk myself, i hate mirrors esp gk ones) and i do enjoy countering things that other ppl call "godlike broken uncounterable OP", seeing "new" faction and thinking of builds that can work with and against it and i never play in no gk lobbies even if i dont want to play gk.
The reason im so annoyed by haters lately cuz they dont seem to even know what are they hating at. I was just going with BC+Sword+Purified blades, 2xSS+Justicars+Psybolts+incenerators and Purifiers+Justicar vs IG that had commissar, 2xGM, HVT and 3 mantis and shouted at me "Stupid broken race, why is it even added, i aint playing with that OP shit again, what a noob u need to be to play this in order to win". I was like "really nigga?" Strikes and purifiers vs commissar with his swrods and plasma gm and mantis? How is that op? Will he explode if I'll go 2xOps, libr or VA into termie rush? Haters usualy only make me laugh a bit but i am very annoyed by ignorant and overzealous ppl. Esp by those who try to parody things they dont know about

[Kentation]

I can fully get behind swapping purgs and rhinos into t1 and t2 respectively with the obvious tweaks needed.

It would seem to be a good option. My only concern would be if SS's weapon upgrades would be less impactful and useful since they would be overshadowed by Purgations, espeially since, to me at least, it would seem like Purgations would be a frequent purchase in T1.
This could lead to more problems with SS not scaling well.

On the topic of SS, my (poorly thoughout) thoughts for helping SS is to have the option of being more melee centric perhaps. This could lead to issues with conflicting roles with Purifiers but I always found the synergy between Warriors with either Hormagaunts and/or Genestealers to be interesting and feel balanced and fulfill their role. Perhaps something along those lines could be done with SS and Purifiers? Not the greastest idea but I thought it was food for thought.

Maybe make their teleport bloodletter-ish with 1-2 sec delay and sparkly effect on the ground where they land?

Lol, which was what I said as the other proposal.

[MaxPower]

Just to chime in on the terminator/paladin stuff:

1. They should either field a melee weapon or a ranged weapon not both (or reduce the damage of both weapons [if they should be able to field both] drastically)
2. How about teleport or retreat costing red?
3. Or they should cost some red if you wanna build them (especially paladins)

And please remove the freaking teleport from the BC and maybe the splash from the halberd.

[Cyris]

Talk of terminator stats made me wanna get a better sense of the real numbers. So, here's some data!

Chaos ranged/melee, SM ranged/melee, GK/Pally

Health 3750 4500 4500 5400 4250 5250
Regen 1.25 1.25 1.5 2 1.75 0.5
Speed 4 4 4 4 5 4
CostReq 550 550 650 650 600 650
CostPow 100 100 100 100 100 150
CostRed 350 350 350 350 0 0
RenfPeq 100 100 125 125 100 108
RenfPow 50 50 25 25 17 25
ranged 30 0 33 0 28 28
melee 40 70 38 50 45 66

I'm a noob at formating still. It's in excel now, I'll mess with it later some more (adding weapon upgrades etc)

A couple of things jump out at me:
Chaos should prolly be 25 power to reinforce.
Pure stat wise, GK advantages are: no Red, low reinforce, +1 speed and +10 melee skill on GK/ranged weapon on pally (I personally think it's a tossup if powerfists or haldards are a better melee weapon on the GK/SM vanilla terminators)
Assuming upgrades are equivalent in efficiency(I don't feel like doing the analysis now), then I think it mostly boils down to GK trading the ability to make battle tanks for Retreat and 350 less Red cost.
I think GK would be a stronger 1v1 faction if their terminators did lose Retreat, tacked 350 red on and they gained a battle tank. I also think this would make their late game a copy of SM/Chaos.
I was not sure what I'd find running these numbers, and I'll fuss with them more later.

[Crewfinity]

Nice stat dump, I love some numbers

Don't forget that SM melee termites are radically different with claws instead of hammers

[531st]

But GK dont use battletanks. They have razorbacks, rhinos and land raiders but not predators

GK termies now are like old strike squads. Outpunched by melee counterparts, outshot by ranged ones but they can bully stuff
I guess chaos termies are that expensive only cuz of how strong the rest of CSM roaster is and how good are they with both their weapons

[Atlas]

If anything, this makes me think GK terms might be better than Palas. +1 speed and over triple the hp regen?!?!

[Crewfinity]

If not for the lack of good AV they would be. Against anything but vehicles terminators are the better option. Problem is in t3 you gotta be able to counter the tanks coming out

[saltychipmunk]

I can fully get behind swapping purgs and rhinos into t1 and t2 respectively with the obvious tweaks needed.

My only concern would be if SS's weapon upgrades would be less impactful and useful since they would be overshadowed.

lets put this to bed right now... None of the SS weapon upgrades are good, none of them.

the sorry excuse for a flamer they get is the very definition of unnecessary.. if you want gens dead .. ops/purgs whatever the heck eventually goes there will do that job better and have other perks to boot.

the psi cannon is horribly bad. Again the major trade off of having it be an all damage damage type is that its damage values are pitiful.

25 power for a 14 ish dps weapon is decent for tanks true. but for every other unit type in the game they are going to laugh you out of the room.


even interceptors dont do much damage. 45ish explosive dps (again) is good av. but even some of the weaker t2-t3 units have options to double that in pierce or get 50% more in inferno /plasma. but on interceptors it is fine because they all have the same damage type and are more designed as a legitimate hard-counter to vehicles .

Strikes arent an av unit they arent interceptors or purgs and that 14ish explosive dps wont scare any real tanks and it wont scare any infantry units.


the strike psi cannon is so terrible that if you buy two strikes you are better off not buying a weapon upgrade on them and save that 50 power and 150+req on a vindi .

If not for the lack of good AV they would be. Against anything but vehicles terminators are the better option. Problem is in t3 you gotta be able to counter the tanks coming out

now that interceptors have been moved to t3 there is far less pressure to get a paladin over a terminator squad. interceptors are now a legitimately good answer to pressuring vehicles especially vehicles of the predator class.

terminators are also decent enough as a soft counter to vehicles that buying them with the intention of having another av unit down the line is not a particularly unreasonable strategy to pull off.

[Sub_Zero]

Your knowledge about the psycannon of stike squads is outdated. It is more powerful now (almost 17 dps and almost 20 dps when you have the upgrade). And even more powerful when you boost it with psybolt ammunition. And it is really a decent weapon now since sometimes it delivers so much hurt to models that stand too close to each other as well as do that decent 19+ DPS to anything else.

Sure with all upgrades they are damn expensive and aren't really great against a certain target but I am pleased with their performance.

[Cyris]

I'll throw some maths to help out:

Strike Squad
23 damage, 17 dps
Upgraded
27 damage, 20 dps

Purg
20 damage, 20 dps

INT - Same as SS, but no upgrade

The SS and INT have the exact same weapon "gk_psycannon". This differs from the Purg weapon "gk_psycannon_purgation" in that it deals slightly more damage, but has a cooldown and reload time. This leads to it's dps being lower (and vulnerable to suppression - which still feels like a bug). It also has a lower burst duration (2 vs 3) which means it's "spike" damage is also lower.

Tactically, I find the SS psy-cannon is best when fighting swarms of light infantry where the AOE can help. As a result, I like it against nids and IG, and sometimes Ork or Eldar. The Justicar is nice, but the extra upkeep/pop and cost are sometimes more then I'm willing to pay, and the plasma damage type deals less then full damage to light infantry, which makes it a weird weapon. NEVER make them as an AV option. It really isn't going to work, you should be saving up for a AV, purg or las-rhino. Even with the psy-cannon, SS are much better suited to shooting at the infantry supporting the vehicle. The AOE really is the single part of the weapon that is truly strong.

I agree SS upgrades have some to be desired, but as I said before SS make such a large impact in T2, I'm largely OK with them petering off. Making their T2 scaling stronger would make them an OP unit real fast.

[saltychipmunk]

Your knowledge about the psycannon of stike squads is outdated. It is more powerful now (almost 17 dps and almost 20 dps when you have the upgrade). And even more powerful when you boost it with psybolt ammunition. And it is really a decent weapon now since sometimes it delivers so much hurt to models that stand too close to each other as well as do that decent 19+ DPS to anything else.

Sure with all upgrades they are damn expensive and aren't really great against a certain target but I am pleased with their performance.

ok that is a little better. they still hit notably softer than more dedicated weapons. very well ill resend my quip bout the psy cannon, it is not terrible. but it is not fantastic either. the flamer weapon is horrific though.

and it is still more effective to buy a vindi for av since his spike potential and kill potential is much much higher.

also can we please get some tooltip updates. it is nearly impossible to keep track of all this stuff in game.

[Crewfinity]

ok that is a little better. they still hit notably softer than more dedicated weapons. very well ill resend my quip bout the psy cannon, it is not terrible. but it is not fantastic either. the flamer weapon is horrific though.

and it is still more effective to buy a vindi for av since his spike potential and kill potential is much much higher.

also can we please get some tooltip updates. it is nearly impossible to keep track of all this stuff in game.

awww, flamer isn't so bad! yeah its quite niche, i usually only get it if i have no other units near the opponent's gen farm and i have some spare time, but its quite good in that role. you can upgrade later to psycannons so its not locking you out of anything, and it even does some suppression damage if you can find a way to control the enemy units for a bit (ops nade?).

losing the special attack potential and their awesome bolters is a bit of a tough tradeoff, but its nice to have the option for it.

definitely second the tooltips updating

[saltychipmunk]

Ehh but there was always a better option.

pre current update you had purgs which was your anti melee.

now you have ops which are so stupidly cheap that you can get 2 of the wankers, never ever upgrade them ,and just go around wiping stuff out.

plus my play style tries to hold off investing in the strikes since i don't really like anything about them in t2... which is sad because i tend to use 2 of them...