Plague of Undeath

[Kvek]

This PC global is useless. I never found a way to use it. Can you change the effects to something like a buff that gives your units more damage ?

[Ace of Swords]

It's a good global but it's only viable against nids/orks or an eventual double banshes, pop it right before the engagment , start killing their melees and watch how the "zombies" will win you the engagment and potentially wipe 2 or 3 squads, it's extremely good against mass melee or when coupled with auto cannons or other sources for AoE damage.

[Kvek]

Maybe but still it's 225 red (not sure). The ToN is just a way better .

[Dark Riku]

200 red.

[Lost Son of Nikhel]

Plague of Undeath have the same problem as Blessing of Omnissiah. In 1vs1 is useful but meh, in the other hand in 2vs2 or 3vs3 against swarmy races is great.

[Kvek]

Yeah but still. Noxious cloud and Touch of Nurgle are both better globals than the Plague of Undeath

[Raffa]

Just cos it's underused doesn't make it bad. But it's hard to find a place for it when ToN is so good.

[Nuclear Arbitor]

if people have ideas they could suggest reworkings of it. PC has a lot of active offensive globals, i think all of his are, so a defensive or utility one could find a niche.

[Lost Son of Nikhel]

What about to make it only affect one specific selected enemy squad, like the Chaos Sorcerer's Icon/Curse of Tzeentch? With a cost reduction, of course.

In this way could be used as a defensive debuff.

For example: Banshees charging against your poor CSM. You put Plague of Undeath in the Banshee Squad. If you were lucky and could kill one or two models, the battle could be a lot more fair and maybe you can force retreat the Banshee squad is the Eldar player see the Plague of Undeath in his banshees and decide not to risk the engagement.

And even we can make it usable in your own units!

Another example: You have KCSM against an enemy Vanguard Veterans ASM. Your CSM are wounded and have ~50% HP. You are guarding a VP and the SM player decide to own your KCSM before to capture the VP. You put Plague of Undeath in your own KCSM. The VV ASM kill one model, but the Plague of Undeathed KCSM creates a KCSM zombie which attacks the VV ASM. At the end, the VV ASM player decide to jump and retreat they because have low resources and don't want to sacrifice one model in a too much fair battle.

The KCSM player maybe could lose one or two models and some red, but he retains the VP.

[Kvek]

Yeah thats a great idea. Right now the PoN is useless compared to ToN -Noxious cloud

[Lost Son of Nikhel]

The problem with my idea is that Plague of Undeath creates vanilla squad members, without upgrades or level. So in my example the zombies created in my KCSM vs ASM example would be vanilla CSM, not KCSM.

Not sure if this could be changed, to create zombies with the same characteristics and upgrades than the original ones.

[Kvek]

I don't think so. The sword doesn't make "upgraded" zombies just the basic ones

[sk4zi]

true, you also get no devastor marine if you kill one of them but a normal marine. e.g.

[Tex]

I'm with Kvek on this one. Not even NoisyElmo can make Plague of Undeath useful. It is simply too expensive and not nearly enough of a game changer.

I am however, against changing the fundamentals of this global. I think it is stylistically perfect for the lore involving nurgle. The changes I would propose for this global would come in two stages:
The first stage would be increasing the duration of the global (and perhaps the duration of the zombies) as well as lowering the red cost by 25.
The second stage (if the first stage still does not bring this global to a useful state) would be to make this global affect ALL INFANTRY UNITS, friend and foe.

[Dark Riku]

Sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

[Tex]

Thanks, it isn't often that we agree on something haha!

[Caeltos]

There are two things to consider when changing Plague of Undeath

- All the zombie models effect your upkeep
- Increasing the duration and having more zombies will drastically effect your income rate.

When I first made some changes to this global, was that if it's possible to adjust the upkeep value of the Undead units, so they're not so taxing on your upkeep. However, in order to do so, you would have to manually re-evaluate each of the units in the game that are applicapable to becoming zombies. (From my understanding, and from what I can recall what Kolaris told me)

This lead to it a large time consumption and generally, ALOT of effort to tweak it. Then obviously, it would have to be tested on more or less, every unit to make sure it was working propertly. Needless to say, it was just abit too much effort.

We did increase it's duration by quite abit before. If I were to rate the general global, I'd get about a 5/10. The utility is nice when you can get it going, however- it's unreliable and overall backfire effect of upkeep is what ultimately sets it back.

I'm not so sold on the concept of applying it to teammates. There's a probability of issues to be abound on that, esp in team-games. First off, if it would be stackable. You would actually possibly end up regenerating 2x the amount of corpses, and I don't think I need to elaborate on how frustrating that would be.

Or, if it applied to your own units. You could just, for an example; 2x Doomblast from 1x heretic. I think the global itself would be far to rewarding for the most stupid mistakes.

[Tex]

But since we are still in beta mode it is a good idea to try anyway though right? Tell you what Caeltos, this might just be my opinion, or it could be the opinion of anyone who has ever tried to use the plague of undeath to great effect, but I will gladly pay the extra upkeep for 40 seconds or w/e instead of having a global that may or may not do anything at all.

[Batpimp]

But since we are still in beta mode it is a good idea to try anyway though right? Tell you what Caeltos, this might just be my opinion, or it could be the opinion of anyone who has ever tried to use the plague of undeath to great effect, but I will gladly pay the extra upkeep for 40 seconds or w/e instead of having a global that may or may not do anything at all.

Effign right. I rather have 40 seconds of bad upkeep with a global that works. the first suggestion Tex posted seems like the rather obvious one.

What about to make it only affect one specific selected enemy squad, like the Chaos Sorcerer's Icon/Curse of Tzeentch? With a cost reduction, of course.

In this way could be used as a defensive debuff.

For example: Banshees charging against your poor CSM. You put Plague of Undeath in the Banshee Squad. If you were lucky and could kill one or two models, the battle could be a lot more fair and maybe you can force retreat the Banshee squad is the Eldar player see the Plague of Undeath in his banshees and decide not to risk the engagement.

And even we can make it usable in your own units!

Another example: You have KCSM against an enemy Vanguard Veterans ASM. Your CSM are wounded and have ~50% HP. You are guarding a VP and the SM player decide to own your KCSM before to capture the VP. You put Plague of Undeath in your own KCSM. The VV ASM kill one model, but the Plague of Undeathed KCSM creates a KCSM zombie which attacks the VV ASM. At the end, the VV ASM player decide to jump and retreat they because have low resources and don't want to sacrifice one model in a too much fair battle.

The KCSM player maybe could lose one or two models and some red, but he retains the VP.

The other one i thought was good was making an specific squad targettable.

[Nuclear Arbitor]

if you change it in such a way that it causes more upkeep issues i would put a warning in the tooltip; it doesn't have to be detailed.

[Flash]

I'm really not familiar with SCAR coding and how it is hooked into the game engine, but to prevent stacking of the global, could you script it so that it checks for the presence of the global in play? As it affects all enemy units (or is supposed to) shouldn't that parameter be prominent in the engine? If the global is hard coded, could it be turned off with the script, and a new one (same ability just different implementation) using SCAR be put in? Or am I totally off base with how much control SCAR gives over the engine?

[Torpid]

It can't affect your own units because then heretics would become horrendous to deal with (as if touch of nurgle isn't bad enough). Honestly, I think this is a teams global and we know relic did design this game with team games very much in mind. A good touch of nurgle forces the enemy to at least soft retreat out of an engagement in 1v1 and were plague of undeath to be buffed then it could only do the same at the very best in 1v1.

Still I see no reason why this cannot be done to improve the global's effectiveness in general:

"The first stage would be increasing the duration of the global (and perhaps the duration of the zombies) as well as lowering the red cost by 25."

[dance commander]

Biggest gripe with this ability, the zombies are unupgraded versions of the squad, the global costs too much red, it's not effective against races that have low bleed since it relies on the enemy bleeding to even start showing its effects.

[Caeltos]

Quality over quantity.

And I'm partially being serious on this. I'd rather have an ASM zombie that can jump, over a 2/3x hormagaunts.

It can be extremely brutal if you can snag it on Terminators, but like I've said before. It's unreliablity is sort of it's crucial flaw. Both increasing or tweaking can provoke alot of issues, because I think the general concept & design of the global has it's ups and downs. When you start snowballing zombies, it can really get messy.

[Batpimp]

Quality over quantity.

And I'm partially being serious on this. I'd rather have an ASM zombie that can jump, over a 2/3x hormagaunts.

It can be extremely brutal if you can snag it on Terminators, but like I've said before. It's unreliablity is sort of it's crucial flaw. Both increasing or tweaking can provoke alot of issues, because I think the general concept & design of the global has it's ups and downs. When you start snowballing zombies, it can really get messy.

taking this into consideration. Are you saying you agree with the current state of the global? Are you saying you indeed think it needs a change/buff?

[Indrid]

I think it's very hard to make work. If it does start snowballing in a big engagement, your opponent just mass retreats out when they realise what is happening and loses map for a bit but is generally okay. Compared to decisively winning an engagement with ToN, trying to drop a sneaky Cloud or just waiting for Termies/Abyss it's generally inefficient and unreliable.

When I first heard the name of the global I assumed it would be a sort of Nurgle version of Angels of Death. Perhaps it could be reworked into a support global. Give all your infantry beastly health regen and death explosions (like Plague Marines) for 250 red or something.

Or a targeted global that gives a single allied squad lots of health regen and prevents death (like None Shall Fall). Kind of like the opposite of ToN.

Anyway, as a long-time Plague Champ player in 2v2 + 3v3s I literally never try to use it anymore. The PC has great globals though, so I don't really miss it either.

[Caeltos]

Quality over quantity.

And I'm partially being serious on this. I'd rather have an ASM zombie that can jump, over a 2/3x hormagaunts.

It can be extremely brutal if you can snag it on Terminators, but like I've said before. It's unreliablity is sort of it's crucial flaw. Both increasing or tweaking can provoke alot of issues, because I think the general concept & design of the global has it's ups and downs. When you start snowballing zombies, it can really get messy.

taking this into consideration. Are you saying you agree with the current state of the global? Are you saying you indeed think it needs a change/buff?

Actually, I've been more on the fence of a rework that makes it more of a reliable global in general, but obviously try to stay true to it's general "theme" // "design" to some minor degree.

It's been on my radar for a while, but I really want to give it some thought, and let the whole thing just slip into peoples mind and give it a spin before making hasty decisions.

The thing that comes to mind is to indeed go with the direction of the following;
- Target enemy squad , infest the target squad with "Plague of Undeath", the target is then suspectible to becoming zombies upon death. The Plague of Undeath can be spread between enemy units & allies if they get too close.
- Duration is set to 30s , and can only effect target squads once.

What this does;
- Opens the option to use it both defensively & offensively (The defensive aspect can be scrapped, I'm just throwing it out as a propositional option, then it's time to theorycraft)
- Reliablity increases due to the nature of duration increases, but can be maintained by spreading out units. Hench stopping the precaution that I mentioned before with "globally increasing it everywhere".

Ultimately, you can still effectively apply it to just about any army, to enforce movement, or pay the consequences of fighting a fight that can get out of hand. With moving squads out of position, you're at the same time allowing yourself to get the better position advantage. How much of a factor this is tho, is really subjectively dependant on the players skills, and is a hard thing to judge on the overall performance. So It'll need extensive playtesting to get a good idea on how both the reciever & giver (luls) handles the global useage.

Then of course, you'll have to re-evalutate the red cost effiency of the global itself. And find a good balance between being "powerful", or just a potent "zone" global against compotent players. I think somewhere actually around the lines of 175 is a good idea. And then finding a nice balance between frequency (Cooldown) of the global itself to get a good match.

[Batpimp]

Quality over quantity.

And I'm partially being serious on this. I'd rather have an ASM zombie that can jump, over a 2/3x hormagaunts.

It can be extremely brutal if you can snag it on Terminators, but like I've said before. It's unreliablity is sort of it's crucial flaw. Both increasing or tweaking can provoke alot of issues, because I think the general concept & design of the global has it's ups and downs. When you start snowballing zombies, it can really get messy.

taking this into consideration. Are you saying you agree with the current state of the global? Are you saying you indeed think it needs a change/buff?

Actually, I've been more on the fence of a rework that makes it more of a reliable global in general, but obviously try to stay true to it's general "theme" // "design" to some minor degree.

It's been on my radar for a while, but I really want to give it some thought, and let the whole thing just slip into peoples mind and give it a spin before making hasty decisions.

The thing that comes to mind is to indeed go with the direction of the following;
- Target enemy squad , infest the target squad with "Plague of Undeath", the target is then suspectible to becoming zombies upon death. The Plague of Undeath can be spread between enemy units & allies if they get too close.
- Duration is set to 30s , and can only effect target squads once.

What this does;
- Opens the option to use it both defensively & offensively (The defensive aspect can be scrapped, I'm just throwing it out as a propositional option, then it's time to theorycraft)
- Reliablity increases due to the nature of duration increases, but can be maintained by spreading out units. Hench stopping the precaution that I mentioned before with "globally increasing it everywhere".

Ultimately, you can still effectively apply it to just about any army, to enforce movement, or pay the consequences of fighting a fight that can get out of hand. With moving squads out of position, you're at the same time allowing yourself to get the better position advantage. How much of a factor this is tho, is really subjectively dependant on the players skills, and is a hard thing to judge on the overall performance. So It'll need extensive playtesting to get a good idea on how both the reciever & giver (luls) handles the global useage.

Then of course, you'll have to re-evalutate the red cost effiency of the global itself. And find a good balance between being "powerful", or just a potent "zone" global against compotent players. I think somewhere actually around the lines of 175 is a good idea. And then finding a nice balance between frequency (Cooldown) of the global itself to get a good match.

I am going to be afraid to fight the PC even more!

[saltychipmunk]

generally i find in practice that most kills tend to happen on retreat , or cause the retreat. Therefore it can be argued that an ability that is dependent on a proportion of dead enemies to fuel it is rather pointless.

functionally you trigger it and the enemy retreats , they lose some models and you get some zombies. but the zombies will be dead by the time the enemy comes back

or

you trigger it and you kill a bunch of enemy models and they retreat. but they dont retreat because of the zombies, they retreat because this game programs the players head to retreat units that are taking heavy losses.

in either way this ability functions the best when it no longer really matters.

its a gimmicky ability that looks cool but ultimately doesn't do anything meaninful most of the time .

its why no one even really mentiones the zombie effect when talking about the plague sword. its ability to do heavy t1 damage is more than enough for its price.

[Dark Riku]

its why no one even really mentiones the zombie effect when talking about the plague sword. its ability to do heavy t1 damage is more than enough for its price.

The zombie effect is a big trait! Getting an asm model jumping into the enemy.
Or, my favorite, vs another chaos player: killing their tics and doomblasting with them.