Tactical marines sergeant

[Sub_Zero]

Relevant information:
Purchase requirements:
75 requisition
25 power
Statistical data of the model:
400 health
15.64 piercing DPS with 100% accuracy on the move
26.15 normal melee DPS with 60 melee skill
Specifications of the ability:
Requirement - presence of the sergeant and 1200 taken damage
Cooldown - 80 seconds
Duration - 20 seconds
Benefits - the unit takes 40% less damage, breaks suppression and gains full immunity to this effect, has 50% probability to perform single knockback/special attack in melee combat
Drawbacks - speed is reduced by 40%

Difference between leader and ordinary model:
Difference in cost:
75 requisition = 75 requisition
25 power > 0 power
Difference in strength:
400 health > 350 health -> 1.14 times better
15.64 piercing DPS > 14.58 piercing DPS -> 1.07 times better
26.15 melee DPS > 19 melee DPS -> 1.37 times better
60 melee skill = 60 melee skill

Analysis of this difference and some other notes
Tactical marines are primarily a ranged squad with more or less decent capabilities in close combat. Their leader is just 14% better in ranged combat than an ordinary model. This is what the unit is used for - ranged firefights. The best statistical difference is between melee damage outputs. However, due to the low melee skill and heavy armor this unit is barely suitable for taking on anything melee oriented.
The sergeant is almost an identical model with negligible differences (+50 more health and 1.06 more ranged DPS), given the purpose of tactical marines we consider these values to be determining of this leader's strength.
Roughly speaking we overpay 25 power for just about the same tactical marine. And it is worth mentioning that the positioning of the leader among his squad makes him very susceptible to incoming damage.

Why he even costs power or the ability
Now we reached the part that justifies (it is debatable) the current cost. I won't tell you about the functionality of the ability. I am here to raise actual balance problems.

Here is a justification of why things go the way they do - a leader with mediocre stats has an awesome ability. But is it so? Let's find out.

PROBLEM NUMBER 1 - strange design
In order to activate the ability tactical marines should be exposed to damage and take 1200 of it. In T2 that is a risky business because ranged and melee units alike get powers to cause serious pain for heavy armor wearers. So by exposing themselves to damage they risk to lose expensive models and more importantly their leader that costs 25 power. All it leads to a more careful approach. You retreat earlier than you would in T1 because a) damage is caused too quickly due to increased lethality of certain units; b) now you have a leader that you never want to lose and he stands in front of everybody what makes things even worse for him.

In short you have to take damage to use the ability, yet you don't want to take that much damage anymore for the shift from T1 to T2 brings new rules.

PROBLEM NUMBER 2 - different heroes
An apothecary has no problems to prolong his tactical marines' sustainability. This is probably the only hero under whose command tactical marines are easily able to use their ability twice or even more per standard game. What about force commanders and techmarines? Tactical marines under their command aren't so lucky. Sure, there are some tools to prolong staying power at these commanders' disposal but they are extremely lackluster compared to those of the apothecary. You will be lucky to see tactical marines use their ability once (bear in mind that by one usage I imply that you activate it and exploit it for all 20 seconds of the duration without retreating and losing models, that is the only valid usage). And what that means? You basically overspent 25 power on a slightly better tactical marine, you would be better off investing in something else.

In short it seems that the ability was designed to be used only when your commander is an apothecary.

PROBLEM NUMBER 3 - drawback? really?
And this is the most ridiculous problem. It takes a lot of time and risk to obtain one usage of the ability. Yet, you can't fully benefit from the ability. All because of the ridiculous speed decrease. How does that make sense to have it? Tactical marines are nothing without any upgrade, they become something with one. The leader is nothing without the ability, he becomes valuable when you are able to exploit the ability, yet not to its full extent. I cannot get in range to use the flamer with ATSKNF activated against a competent player, he will just pull back rendering my so hard achieved ability useless. I cannot chase down a vehicle with ATSKNF activated. I cannot kite. I cannot force melee. A lot of "cannot", right? Tell me of a single thing that you acquire so hard and yet it brings you some serious drawback. Other units enjoy their abilities in every engagement. I can activate the ability one time per 3 engagements (it has to be fully ready, your tactical marines have to have a lot of health and other conditions should be met), yet I suffer a penalty.

In short the only justification of this high power cost for this statistically dull commander is his ability, it should be free of any imperfection, I should fully exploit the benefits it provides for I cannot have it activated for every engagement, I really have to be smart and patient to "cook" this ability, no drawbacks ought to exist.

Balance proposals
-Remove the drawback completely, it has no right to exist if no other aspect is changed (stats, cost, ability itself)
or
-Scale down the ability a little bit (30% less taken damage, 35% chance to cause knockback) and make it like the infamous "Slaughter"
or
-Make the ability more accessible: 600 damage taken - you can use one benefit (40% less damage or suppression immunity or knockback in melee, drawback is applied to each one), 800 damage taken - you can use two simultaneously, 1000 damage - all three. Indeed the counter drops when you use it at any point. This way you can constantly reap the benefits of the sergeant purchase. Tell me is there ever a need to have all three active at one time? Very rare occasions.

[saltychipmunk]

Realistically speaking , the 25 power is actually for the option to have a 4th model over anything else. this is because heavy infantry like tacs, csm , or strikes are already pretty well rounded as units.

they do the same as or more ranged damage than any one light infantry squad
they have way more base hp
they have an arguably better armor type.

So unlike said light infanty squads , heavy infantry dont particularly need anything exotic in a squad leader to keep them relevant (because their durability does that all on its own) where as light infantry squads do.


As for ATSKNF, I strongly dislike its design as well. Personally I am in the camp that says it does too much but asks too much to be activated.

1200 damage is ridiculous. but then again so is being able to take 40% less damage and become impervious to suppression. the movement speed is there because thematically it is supposed to be a last stand mechanic where they hold the line against an attacker. Having normal movement speed would allow them to be the attacker themselves which is simply not what the ability is supposed to do.

I think a better solution would be to go with 600, and drop the damage and speed reductions to 25%. it wont be as potent true, but it will be use-able far more often

[Ace of Swords]

The sergeant is cost effective as it is, it has a significant dps and hp increase, it helps winning engagement both at long range and in melee, it's especially effective vs nids/ig, ATSKNF is a great ability, it's an engagement winner and makes tacts counter melee squads like KCSM and shees since the sergeant will have 100% chance to do special attacks under it's effect, you may even wipe those squads if the other player doesn't back out immediately.

The price is fine, what I'd like to see and this goes for all squad leaders is them getting a lowered buy-back cost, for everything else as I mentioned it's effective but it's not a must buy, it enhances tacts but you don't have to go for it 100% of the times because it's retardedly effective (example of this is endless swarm), it's good design honestly, you have to make a choice, purchase more units, get that libby/rb/dred etc out faster or do I need to have more powerful tacts on the field for the time being?

[Sturnn]

At this stage of the balance people almost never build sergeants on tacs because he is not cost efficient and almost always dies first So again TSM are punished for being low model, high hp squad with heavy armour. Even Chaos Champion scales better with CSM (especially when u upgrade them to TCSM).

However it is not true that TSM can work well only with Apo. As FC u can boost them with shield and For the Emperor! which bascily will allow them to win almost every shooting fight (maybe apart from 2x GM and sentinel becasue fuck you SM xD) without taking a lot of dmg.
With TM they do have additionl dps next to them, some mastercrafted bolter to outshoot melee squads and signum armour in t2 which benefits all SM squads.

For me the bigger issue is idea of paying everytime for weapon change. Like if I buy plasma gun and then rocket launcher and then want to switch back to plasma I need to pay again for it. WTF, TSM with 2 upgrades already costs hell a lot. I dont get idea behind it. If you pay so much for many upgrades you should be allowed to switch between them for free everytime u want. To be honest, Stenguard Veterans looks like how TSM should - multipurpose range infantry which can quickly adapt to changes on the battlefield. TSM are just, meh.

[stealth]

to be honest most people i play with only get the sergeant as they want to get the stern-guards out as the still have all of the ability's of normal tacs along with more anti infantry so you only lose the AV side of the tacs e.g missile luncher.

[Asmon]

The damage for ATSKNF is calculated before any reduction, including cover, thus it's not that big of a number actually.

[Atlas]

I think you guys are underestimating the importance of the serg's melee prowess. A model with significant melee dps and can special on an already pretty solid ranged squad? Assuming you open fire on incoming melee, the serg allows you a very real shot at fighting normally cost efficient counters to tacs like tics and horms without being forced to retreat.

Plus that ATSKNF ability :O . The serg doesn't have as much impact on the way the squad behaves as the other wargears, true, but that doesn't mean that it costs too much.

[Sturnn]

I think you guys are underestimating the importance of the serg's melee prowess. A model with significant melee dps and can special on an already pretty solid ranged squad? Assuming you open fire on incoming melee, the serg allows you a very real shot at fighting normally cost efficient counters to tacs like tics and horms without being forced to retreat.

Plus that ATSKNF ability :O . The serg doesn't have as much impact on the way the squad behaves as the other wargears, true, but that doesn't mean that it costs too much.

Yes, with ATSKNF they can hold even Nobs for a moment but to be honest, very often it takes ages to make this ability avaiable. It should just have some cooldown timer instead of dmg tanked trigger, imho ofc.

[Dark Riku]

.... and can special on an already pretty solid ranged squad? ...

60MS though. You're never specialling any melee squad with that.

[Tex]

Give sarge 70 ms.

Change ability type from damage charge to normal cooldown. Give it an initial cooldown similar to slaughter.

Done.

[Black Relic]

Id rather the serg have 60 ms tbh. However I always thought that as a serg he should have 70 ms. So i changed it up a bit where when kraken bolts are active the sergeants MS goes up by 10. Not sure that's a way Caeltos will go though.

[Nurland]

The ability could maybe turn into something less impactful but more spammable. Like reduced damage resistance but also takes less damage to charge it.

Sarge Melee skill could go up for the duration of the kraken rounds.

Overall however I don't think Tac Sarge is a bad upgrade at its current state.

[saltychipmunk]

The ability could maybe turn into something less impactful but more spammable. Like reduced damage resistance but also takes less damage to charge it.

Sarge Melee skill could go up for the duration of the kraken rounds.

Overall however I don't think Tac Sarge is a bad upgrade at its current state.

It is not bad , but out side of when the ability is activated it is not exactly special enough to warrant buying it , then again the only reason why the csm sarge is worth it is mostly because of the fact that he shares the improved damage type of the squad's marks which is worth 25 power all on its own. The current slaughter is kind of moot for me in most cases since i tend to directly upgrade to a mark excluding pure light infantry conflicts.

it would be interesting to see what would happen if the TSM sarge got say a plasma pistol with 15 plasma dps when the tacs get a plasma gun

or the justicar gets a psilencer with the psi cannon/ psilencer upgrade.

I think doing something like that would be just enough to make the sarge/ justicar more attractive as a general purpose unit against more unit type match ups without explicitly making it superior to the csm upgrade relationship.

[Black Relic]

I just had a thought on the TSKNF ability. Someone mentioned before its sort of a last stand type of ability which I completely agree with.

What if the ability didn't require a certain amount of damage to be able to use?

What if the requirement was that the squad itself had to below a certain health percentage like 35% and it had a 1 min and 30 second cooldown.

Same benefits however the squad is already low health so peeling off model should be too difficult unless they are in cover.

[Ace of Swords]

I just had a thought on the TSKNF ability. Someone mentioned before its sort of a last stand type of ability which I completely agree with.

What if the ability didn't require a certain amount of damage to be able to use?

What if the requirement was that the squad itself had to below a certain health percentage like 35% and it had a 1 min and 30 second cooldown.

Same benefits however the squad is already low health so peeling off model should be too difficult unless they are in cover.

That would make it terrible at 35% hp you are going to lose the engagement no matter what buffs you put up and you're going to bleed too.

[stealth]

I just had a thought on the TSKNF ability. Someone mentioned before its sort of a last stand type of ability which I completely agree with.

What if the ability didn't require a certain amount of damage to be able to use?

What if the requirement was that the squad itself had to below a certain health percentage like 35% and it had a 1 min and 30 second cooldown.

Same benefits however the squad is already low health so peeling off model should be too difficult unless they are in cover.

35% does seem a bit to low perhaps 45% as it just under half of the units health but should have a higher damage reduction but as you said a last stand should mean digging you feet in the ground and not moving

[Toilailee]

Tac sarge is fine imo.

[egewithin]

You guys are so booreedd, you started to talk about even one of the most balanced thing in this game.

You all need an interviev.

[Sub_Zero]

Very different opinions, if I contest every one of them this thread will turn into a war of quotations. I will just try to elaborate even further and once again leave that as food for thought. This time I will try to make my answer as compact as it is possible, long texts aren't always better.

Why did I even think of a change? I analyzed all squad leaders in the game (I've almost completed a comparative table which you will see soon) - their costs and what they bring for this cost. Once you purchased a leader for a squad you immediately enhance this squad with a more potent fighter (who in most cases is at least 20% better than his subordinates in main for this type of unit parameters - the table will prove it) and immediately (barring slaughter) get access to passive benefits and activated abilities. You spent resources and received an adequate growth to your army's strength.

Yet tactical marines' leader is not impressive as a single model (not even 20% stronger than his troops) AND the only provided ability is locked from usage until you meet the requirements. I emphasized "and" because it is important to understand that in this case there is a unity of abnormalities - the squad leader is uncharacteristically weak and the ability he provides cannot be used at will (let's face it, we are able to use 80% energy+cooldown-based abilities provided by squad leaders in every massive engagement).

Assault marines' leader is pretty much a standard model in the context of ordinary assault marines (the same health and slightly more melee DPS with a better damage type) BUT he provides an ability that I can rely on (it has no drawback) and use at will (only low energy will prevent me from doing so). I would be concerned about this guy if his ability had some complicated access.

Hopefully you understand my logic behind this change. And let's get back to my proposals. I will explain them over.

-Remove the drawback completely, it has no right to exist if no other aspect is changed (stats, cost, ability itself)

I have explained the reasoning - a so-so model and an ability that is hard to acquire. Is there any room for a negative effect to exist among these abnormalities*?
*It is a common practise in this game for a leader of a squad to be significantly better; almost all abilities provided by leaders can be used without serious drawbacks and strict requirements.

-Scale down the ability a little bit (30% less taken damage, 35% chance to cause knockback) and make it like the infamous "Slaughter"
or
-Make the ability more accessible: 600 damage taken - you can use one benefit (40% less damage or suppression immunity or knockback in melee, drawback is applied to each one), 800 damage taken - you can use two simultaneously, 1000 damage - all three. Indeed the counter drops when you use it at any point. This way you can constantly reap the benefits of the sergeant purchase. Tell me is there ever a need to have all three active at one time? Very rare occasions.

These two solutions are to kill one of the abnormalities. Namely - the complicated obtaining of the ability.

As a side note I want to mention that this common practise (a leader is a way better model; free of any imperfections and restrictions abilities) is usually true for leaders whose cost is around N≥75/25 pattern. There are other leaders that cost less and thus bring less. If tactical marines' leader with his current cost cannot fully represent this common practise then there is a problem either with his cost or performance. This is a logical conclusion I ultimately come to.

P. S. If you are to post in this thread then make sure that your answer will consist of at least 50 words that explain a little bit why you disagree/agree. Short posts aren't helpful, especially those that lead the discussion away from the topic. I should have made a poll for those who do not desire to give an elaborate answer, yet want to express their relation to the subject.

[Nurland]

Comparing squad leaders accross factions in a vacuum is very often pointless. You are not taking into account the general compositionary unit synergies and economic factors.

And on a sidenote, based on my experience you can use ATSKNF very often as Apo and while not as much, almost as much with FC/TM.

[Sturnn]

And on a sidenote, based on my experience you can use ATSKNF very often as Apo and while not as much, almost as much with FC/TM.

Does Apo somehow influence ATSKNF to charge faster or what? You mean that with Apo tacs can take more punishment and stay on the field?

[Atlas]

And on a sidenote, based on my experience you can use ATSKNF very often as Apo and while not as much, almost as much with FC/TM.

Does Apo somehow influence ATSKNF to charge faster or what? You mean that with Apo tacs can take more punishment and stay on the field?

Exactly. Because the Apo regens quite a bit of HP for them, tacs stay on the field longer and tend to absorb more damage faster under Apo.

[Sturnn]

Right. But still I do not agree that Sergeant has any synergy with SM army (he has poor one even with squad to which he is attached ). Really it shouldnt work that way that you need to wait whole game, lose x squad members etc to finaly being able to trigger this ability. To be honest when you do so you are already again T3 units.

[Black Relic]

the Tac serg doesn't really need to add anything to the squad other than TSKNF. The squad can be specialized toward any armor type. The squad doesn't need much out of their leader purchase, he just adds a model and increases their dps toward infantry (and HI when under kraken bolts) a fair amount. Honestly, I do hate the 60 ms on the serg since he has a chainsword, but then tacs spam would be a bit harder to deal with since your melee squads can still be specialed. Increasing the MS straight up is something I am against. But having it be tied to the duration of Kraken bolts I wouldn't mind although it's not something that really needs to change.

My other suggestion was just to make TSKNF be used more often by other SM heros. The Health % requirement is supposed to be low to begin with. And Any higher than 40% would be way too much imo. When activated they have a good chance of dealing with melee squads and can stall for a very large amount of time against ranged squads when they are in cover. And the Apothecary being there would make tac spam almost unbeatable imo.

As a SM Fan boy perspective I chose 35% since to me it symbolizes march towards death, since they don't fear death to begin with (or anything for that matter) they push forward doing their duty to the very end.

For a gamers perspective I think 35% is plenty of health. And increasing it to something over 40% (hell even 38% seems alot to me) maje Tac spam extremely hard to deal with considering the SM roster and the heros that accompany them. The ability should never be instant win vs Melee squads (when two tacs are together and use this ability when at full HP with Apothecary support) I want the ability to be way of buying more time or making the squad do something that's essential in an engagement but have them still be in harm's way rather than they can do it with minimal loses.

The change would hopefully inspire some quick thinking on both sides. (Mainly on the SM side.) And Hopefully seeing the normal drop pod (the one that doesn't spawn tacs) would be used more often because i can see that both of these. And the opponent has to make a quick decision to either keep focusing them of change targets and have a single squad wail on them.

Either way I want people to make hard decisions in the game. TSKNF would be able to be used more often but it would also be situational. But the option is still there.

If you really think 35% is too small that considering adding another buff like Weapon KB immunity for the first few seconds of the ability. But I really don't think that's necessary.

[Ace of Swords]

Mate, there's really no decision to be made at 35-40 or even 50% hp, you should have retreated long ago, and if you are in melee with T2 shees/hormas/sluiggas/raptors/letters or whatever else you want regardless of you popping ATSKNF your squad will be wiped.

The ability works fine as it is, no need to make it worse.

[Oddnerd]

If you wanted a lore-friendly version of ATSKNF maybe let it break a retreat after 10 seconds or something, no model execution required of course.

[Black Relic]

I agree that you should retreat when they are being attacking by a t2 melee squad, no doubt about that. You are being way too narrow in judging my idea. You think people should only use the ability when tacs are in melee. And that is not the case.

The ability would be worse in the fact that the squad has to be low health to use it\, but you'd have that option to use it more often. If you want to use it while they are in melee ok. But i will use it to finish a cap on a VP, to force melee on a set up team if needed, tie up a hero that's extremely annoying and get some melee kb on them if i am lucky (since all the models will focus on one model.) Or have them hit a low HP low model melee squad. Or i'll use the ability so i can stall for time to reinforce them with the drop pod and sit them in cover.

Using it is situational, you aren't going to throw away your tacs, but sometimes you need them to do a high risk job whether they are low Hp or not. This change would allow them to do just that a have a chance to get out alive. I base this change on that the tacs will not be alone in the fight. If they are alone then fuck yea retreat.

BTW
"If you wanted a lore-friendly version of ATSKNF maybe let it break a retreat after 10 seconds or something, no model execution required of course."

That is not lore friendly. That is what that trait does in tabletop.

I don't really care if this is implemented or not, but if you give me a single obvious scenario (or statement) of using the ability without thinking about others than you have insulted yourself and the concept of the game imo.

[Ace of Swords]

What you proposed is straight up worse in literally every instance, good luck keeping your sarge alive at 35% hp, you are going to lose melee and ranged engagements, it's not going to help at all, in the best case scenario you will have 3 models up, most likely 2.

At least as it works now you can actually go cap a side of the map with your tacts and when they send something like a shees squad you pop the ability at full hp and have good chances of winning the engagement, what you propose is 100% useless.

[Nurland]

Yeah. You need to be able to pop the ability at full hp for it to be really useful.

[Sub_Zero]

Comparing squad leaders accross factions in a vacuum is very often pointless. You are not taking into account the general compositionsary unit synergies and economic factors.

It isn't the way you imagine it. It (the table) compares an ordinary model of a unit with its respective squad leader to find out how much better the latter is and whether its cost is justified. Why, for example, a warp spider exarch costs so little? Because he is almost no different than ordinary models and his passive ability isn't that strong. Does it seem logical to have a lower cost? As I previously claimed a tactical marine sergeant is almost like an ordinary model (it was mathematically proven) and has a very unorthodox (in a bad sense of this word) ability (it is also true because there is no single ability granted by a squad leader that has such a big requirement). It begs the question about his cost. But I propose to change him, not his cost.

And on a sidenote, based on my experience you can use ATSKNF very often as Apo and while not as much, almost as much with FC/TM.

And that I covered in the very first post. The current state of the ability is fine if your commander is Apothecary. It is not if your commander is not Apothecary. And ultimately you end up paying 25 power for pretty much the same model. Good thing if you get to utilize the ability twice, usually it is just once per match. And that I dislike.

Extraction from the first post:
An apothecary has no problems to prolong his tactical marines' sustainability. This is probably the only hero under whose command tactical marines are easily able to use their ability twice or even more per standard game. What about force commanders and techmarines? Tactical marines under their command aren't so lucky. Sure, there are some tools to prolong staying power at these commanders' disposal but they are extremely lackluster compared to those of the apothecary. You will be lucky to see tactical marines use their ability once (bear in mind that by one usage I imply that you activate it and exploit it for all 20 seconds of the duration without retreating and losing models, that is the only valid usage). And what that means? You basically overspent 25 power on a slightly better tactical marine, you would be better off investing in something else.
In short it seems that the ability was designed to be used only when your commander is an apothecary.

To explain it further - tactical marines receive a portion of damage, they have to retreat, Apothecary heals them, they are again able to receive the same portion of damage and only then they retreat if he cannot heal them anymore; they also benefit from passive healing aura. Tactical marines of force commander don't take that much damage because force commander is supposed to and when they receive a critical portion of damage they retreat. So tactical marines of apo charge up their ability quicker because they are able to take 2x times more damage per engagement than tactical marines of FC. The same thing is about techmarine (relay beacon helps a bit but not so much).
In order to fully utilize the ability tactical marines should be at 90%-100% of their health and there has to be a situation where tactical marines would be the main target and the usage of this ability would help you. Hard to meet these requirements with 2 other commanders because you can't wait for so long near your HQ for them to heal up to 90-100% whereas with apo it is so easy. Another factor to add to the argument why tactical marines of tm/fc aren't that likely to use their ability often enough to justify the cost of their sergeant.