Dawn of War Codex

I like the idea of having a webway in its most basic state for a cheap price. Toil and Raffa are right that 85 red for a Farsight gate is too powerful and too easy to attain. However, all in all it's still 135 red to achieve this, almost as much as an Autarch.

Part of the problem with gates in their current state is that they require a detector to effectively combat them. Without a detector you have to get very close to them to detect them, which makes their short range threats far more effective. Banshees and Wraithguard in particular can spring up and destroy anything that dares come too close. Thus, in general you need to send a sizable force around the map, working together to root out lone gates. Strategically this is a big plus, when you force your opponent to blob when normally he would spread out and cap, simply by having gates.

So I would suggest:

1. Increase cost of gates to 60 red. Reduce hp of gates and no infiltration. However, they would still come with their activated ability.

2. Give them an upgrade, costing 50 req 10 power 25 red (or something like this), that gives it infiltration and makes them more durable (back to current levels). Basically a nominal cost that becomes expensive if the upgrade is spammed.

3. Remove the sound effect of using the webway gate if it has purchased this upgrade.

The thinking behind these changes:

1. The 60 red cost is to make them slightly less spammable, but still easily worth it if used correctly. Setting up 2 gates with a farsight costs more red than an Autarch call-in.

In their current state, it still takes significant damage to take them down, and probably requires at least a couple of units to take them out quickly so the Eldar cannot use the gate and swarm you. Hence the health nerf.

The activated ability remains, which gives them some attraction in being static support behind the front lines. However, the fact that they are no longer infiltrated and less durable means that they can become strategic liabilities rather than assets, and if your army is operating elsewhere on the map it is quite trivial to take down the gates that you leave behind. I do acknowledge that Warlock still retains his advantage by having effectively a healing webstation at base.

2. With the addition of the upgrade, infiltrated gates become less spammable. Upgrading them actually adds a decision: which gates are fire-and-forget, and which ones shall become more permanent assets? For example, upgrading a webway gate when the opponent already knows where it is would be wasteful, whereas you can set one up behind your front lines and purchase the upgrade for a long lasting gate.

Having an upgrade also means Eldar can no longer summon infiltrated gates to the field. If the opponent is proactive, he will see where a gate is located before it can be infiltrated, making the upgrade almost totally useless. Therefore the Eldar is committed to making sure he can guard the webway during its upgrade, an investment of time and resources on the Eldar's part.

3. In the current state, hearing webway sounds is one of the primary ways of knowing they are active. However, if we are to change the infiltration to a non-spammable upgrade, I think that considering how much more difficult a secret webway gate is to achieve, it should be very effective.

Therefore I think that an infiltrated gate should not have a sound effect when used. If a player is not wise to his opponent's webway use he will probably not be looking into the fog of war and hearing gate sounds anyway. Infiltrated gates would be rarer but more rightly should take more effort to root out.

50/10/25 is probably to expensive for the upgrade; either make it cost red or power and no more than 50 req with a token power/red cost.

pretty well thought post though.

Most players here have never played Eldar in vanilla with 75 red gates and no infiltration. They were uttely useless.

And the Warlock still has a head on his fellow WSE and FS? Lawl. Seriously. That little healing is nothing compared to FS and WSE gates' abilities. Nothing.

Gates just need a slight price increase to 60 red, a maximum of 4 (arguably), and an ability to self-destruct in exchange for resources.

@Codex
Finally someone talking sense..but that would still be 95 red for a free gayt by power farm whilst the opponent is spread out/capping. Trust me I abuse this in every game I play as Eldar I mean hell it works ridiculously well in T1. Play farseer for the farsight+gayt combo even though she's my worst hero this more than makes up for that. Gayt by farm sometimes even lets you into retreat path for nades. Happy to abuse them against you if you're around tomorrow

I think most people haven't faced the farsight-gayt combo. Honestly playing Eldar you can feel how pissed your opponent gets when he has to constantly check his farm for gayts with most of his army in case the whole eldar army pops out.

If gates only cost 60 and have infiltration by default with no cooldown the problem is not solved. Eldars can still spam gates when you are destroying one. 50 or 60 red are really cheap, because is a transport wich have benefits for eldar units. The cooldown and price for infiltrate are necessary imo, you can win one engage, put your gate, pay for the infiltration and then use it in the same way you are using it now. Red increase, cooldown and infiltration upgrade cost ( also with cooldown) will prevent that spam, wich is the worst thing of the eldar gates. Maybe 70 red, cooldown 60 sec and the infiltration upgrade: 20 sec delay and small price.

Well, toil already abused them against me but I'm happy to give it a go tomorrow.

Asmon wrote:Most players here have never played Eldar in vanilla with 75 red gates and no infiltration. They were uttely useless.

No they weren't...
They just weren't cheesy and easy to use enough for most Eldar players.

20 second upgrade time means at least 30 seconds to get a gate up. on small maps that means that you can't and on large maps you might be able to, depending on where you place it. and gates do have uses on small maps, although tiny ones like outer reaches they're not worth it on.

Gayt top on outer reaches not worth it?
Whut? °_O

Gates are worth everywhere

Eldar gates are usefull in all maps, but even more in large ones.

maybe you guys can find a use for gates but the map is so small that it doesn't really save any travel time. the longest distance is from the base to the top vp and even that is pretty short.

You call that distance short? wow..
Well as Eldar player you might think it's short and even then
instant teleport to the other side of the map.. the hell man.

outer reaches is probably the smallest map and the bases are in the middle.

Outer Reaches travel time is not negligible. At all. That's the whole idea about retreat: if the distance isn't that long retreat isn't punishing. Plus, in the end, it's not all about time saved: having your army approach from an unexpected angle typically gives you a big strategic/tactical advantage, especially banshees.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq1QQD4wxVE indeed webway gates are useless in outer reaches.

Just checking, SNP, that's sarcasm yes?

This replay is such a poor example. Toilailee just threw the game away. No link with webgates.

Whut? Without the webwaygayts Tex would have lost that one for sure.

Speculations, speculations for everyone.

Crack Shots could have helped out with pressure and damage potentiality of Wraithguards immensely, or he could have absorbed more red for Eldritch Storm.

Who knows how the outcome would have been.

Indeed I was being sarcastic Kodecks. Not sure if that game was the best example but the point was that webway gates are far from useless in that map.

Something a little different now. Haywire grenades.

Always found them too good since they do 3 things: Damage, snare and disable.
It should only do 2 of those things. Those 3 make them just too brutal.

I would keep the disable since that is what differentiates theirs from the others.
And makes it so the ~fragile~ units can move in.
And then either have it slow and do no damage
or have it deal more damage (180-200 from 160) but not snare.
The latter one has my personal preference.

Thoughts?

ASM melta bomb: snare + damage on a T1 squad. SM also has lascannon with snare.
Storm melta bomb: snare + damage on an AV squad. IG also has las w/ snare.
Raptor melta bomb: snare damage on an AV squad from T1. Chaos also has las w/ snare.
Interceptor melta bomb: snare + damage on a unit from T1, but I don't know GK that well, so I won't discuss this case.

And then we look at Eldar's haywire grenade. This faction doesn't have a lascannon with snare, and on the top of that has to buy an expensive(especially with upgrades, models cost a lot to reinforce, and the exarch dies a lot) and fragile squad to get out a snare. I'd hope that haywire grenade is far superior to other ones.

However, with the changes made to shuriken in elite, I can see a balance in haywire grenades where the weapons on vehicles are not disabled, but the snare is buffed.

It's a complex question.

The Hayware grenade do 160 melta damage, reduce speed by 60%, and disable weapons for 15 seconds. And have a 48 seconds cooldown.

The Haywire it's in a squad which can instant teleport. So, usually the Warp Spiders are going to do rear armour hits with the Haywire. Make two, and you are going to a) Have a enemy vehicle damaged and disabled for 15 seconds or b) The enemy vehicle will be almost dead.

Now add the AV changes in this mod: Brightlance new ability, the addition of Fire Dragons, the soft AV of Dark Reapers, the fire on the move of the Wraithlord's Brightlance, the light speed increase and light weapon recharge of the Wraithguard...

In retail the current Hayware grenade stadistics could be OK, because of the relatively weak AV Eldar have. But now in ELITE, with all the new Eldar AV options, IMHO this needs to be changed a bit.

The problem is: how?

It's not very recomended to erase the disable effect, because the WS are going to be owned by any ranged vehicle. And in contrast of the Meltagun Stoormtroopers, WS don't do by themselves almost any AV damage to compensate the lose of the Hayware grenade disabled ability.

The snare, maybe? Nope, because eldar don't have any other vehicle snare despite the Hayware grenade.

The damage? Maybe this is the most "sacrificeable" stat if the other two don't change.

My opinion:
Reduce to a very low or eliminate the Hayware grenade damage. Reduce a bit the cost (45 req -15 energy from 50 req -20 energy). No other changes.

haywire grenade snare shouldn't stack on vehicles.

Also gayts need to be fixed seriously it's getting ridiculous now.

Haywire is the best vehicle snare in the game if we dont count eldricht/promixity mines
Yeah those gates are insane had a 2v2 game we were losing and then "gayts". I have a replay if you guys want

gates are a pain they are dirt cheap and have no pop cost i remember that gates started first with a cost of 125 no cloaking and 5 pop cost but later they got buffed and in mod they got totaly hyped to the sky ;]
i sugest 100 red and 5 pop - FIXED

200 red to travel. 5gates= eldricht storm. The codex idea was best

5 well palced gates can win you games just as a well placed eldrich so i dont see any problem with it

Teleporting on most mobile army isnt problem? The only race that needs free teleporting homes is chaos , the slowest race without transporter which units are just weaker loyalist counterparts .