Elite Apo vs Retail

[Cheah18]

Most people...

Torpid, is this actually most people or is it most of the people in positions to make changes to elite/have their contributions heard? Genuine question not trying to have a go or anything. Just a lot of people online to me seem to have a problem with it.

Watching replays and stuff of high level players using apo, it just seems too much of a gamechanger to me. I don't think the apo's weaknesses justify his strengths, and too many match ups go his way.

[Ace of Swords]

Watching replays and stuff of high level players using apo, it just seems too much of a gamechanger to me. I don't think the apo's weaknesses justify his strengths, and too many match ups go his way.

Provide examples then, because as of how the last 1v1 tournament went with apo winning 0 matches and with all the supposed apo players switching over to other races and obtaining extremely better results by simply choosing a whole other race or just going tm/fc i'd say you are completely wrong.

[Dark Riku]

See signature.

LA 33-2 Needs more buffs | Apo (main) 14-11 Needs more nerfs.

[appiah4]

I understand why Caeltos removed all these ON DEATH effects (Apo's armor, RA's armor, PC's armor).

The sacred standard's 40% damage buff on Commander death stays so it's kind of an arbitrary change..

As for the Apo being brokenly OP; I doubt it. I'm a good SM player and I can't win with the Apo, he's just not the kind of thing you can take anc point-click-win, he has nifty tricks but really sucks in very obvious ways (poor melee, low hp / can be easily singled out and forced off, no AV options etc.). But as I said, I don't main him..

From what I've been watching, the purification vials have an annoyingly low countdown timer (although I can't say they are as effective as people seem to think, yes you can throw them around a lot, but they don't do too well except against IG and Orks. Eldar can fleet away quite fine, the other races have HI that just don't care.)

EDIT: bolded part added, sorry.

[Sub_Zero]

Hm, yeah, this wargear can be classified as a wargear with on death effect. BUT! This wargear always grants you that effect if the FC dies. The other ones have a chance to grant some effect (RA's armor and APO's armor). Armor of PC gave you insignificant on death effect. But well I want to hear opinion of Caeltos about my idea which got lost already during this talk about how OP Apo is. And his explanation about on death effect abilities.

Cheah, about Apo being a problem. He got 600 health, he got 26 dps. That is the lowest combat conditions of any hero in the game. The only thing he does well is healing. And his ability to heal is not that great now. In T1 he can annoy you with sanguine sword and his grenades but in later tiers he is not capable of combat at all. He just sit back and throw heals. If his assault marines annoy you too then keep in mind that if you would have been against a FC player then you would have to deal with his assault marines and tanky hero with high dps alongside them. And in some cases that is a harder thing to deal with.

P. S. Purification vials are pretty strong at the moment.

[Lag]

"The only thing he does is healing", paired with a faction which doesn't lose models and remains on top of it's dps throughout engagements and has a low number of squads to heal. HMMMM he ONLY heals! Purity Vials are insanely good, the mass heal he gets later is pretty op in team games, he saves squads all the time and to top it all off - if giving him a ranged weapon didn't keep him out of harms way - let's give him a greater autoheal with chainsword to make him wreak some serious havoc in t1.
The fact that a lot of SM players who are used to playstyles you go for with FC and TM try out Apo and don't switch to conservative play but keep on roflrushing into everything and then losing the game doesn't change the fact that this hero overperforms in hands of good players. Same goes for Warlock and LG (thank god at least his healing armor is fixed).

[Lulgrim]

is this actually most people or is it most of the people in positions to make changes to elite/have their contributions heard? Genuine question not trying to have a go or anything. Just a lot of people online to me seem to have a problem with it.

In the last retail patches (late 2012) the Apo was nerfed rather heavily and since then, yes, the general opinion has been that he became rather weak. The Heal used to be a lot stronger before the after-effect was removed, and Stims were more powerful too (Lib being stronger indirectly connects with this).

The thing with Apo is that while he can throw a Heal, that's pretty much it. He's very fragile and has low damage output -- his starting melee damage is about what CSM do in melee with their bolter, and his T1 upgrade weapons only give about what other heroes start with (for a 20-25 power investment). Even with upgrades he's difficult to use in melee as there is no high HP armor or shield so only a Purification Rites Heal can protect him, and if you use that then there's no Heal for the Tac/ASM (which is what he should be doing). So you can kinda get an expensive yet crappy melee unit and lose most of the support power. If he gets knocked down he's probably dead.

[appiah4]

What's the Apo melee skill? 60? 70? He gets knocked on his ass quite often by things like sluggas and banshees..

[Asmon]

It's 70 like any melee commander, hence he cannot get knocked down by Sluggaboyz (except with UYC). I'm not sure if he drops to 60 when upgraded with the Bolter but I believe he doesn't.

[SirSid]

I find the Apo to be hard to use however i do manage to win with him sometimes.


His stims are just such a odd ability to balance it has gone from total insane to total crap over the coure of retail and into elite. He's not the best SM comander in fact he is probley the worst for sure however they can't all be the best can they ?? ( o wait it's a SM thread so they are looking for making it totaly broken OP again )

Even though i offten disagree with Dark Riku 1 thing i will not do is argue with him about how to use the apo ( or any SM commander for that matter ) and i also pay alot of atention to his ideas about how to balance the race ( no matter if i disagree with it or not ) he is a VERY good SM player if not the best so his opinions do carry a level of importance over my own.

That being said IMO the vast majority of dedicated SM player very rarley stray at all from the most powerfull tools units they have and offten they seem to bash thare faces against a wall trying to make something work since they simply think it should. Even if the battel dictates they should get a "odd ball " unit or wargear they simply overlook it for the more "main stream " items thare fellow SM players deem best.

Perhaps he could use some buffs but perhaps not. He dose not do well in most 1v1's however he can do well in team games, after all he is a suport leader not a front line force commander , so y players try to use him in this way baffels me.

The SM army as a whole seem "static" to me with little to no thory crafting done to the race from the player base ( this is not a 100 % thing i mean dark riku and others do so ) but as a whole it is rare . Becuse of this i find that the apo actualy CAN make a solid push against his foes if u break the mold with him just a bit.

Purification viles can be nasty as fuck, the comander can make use of many scout squades much eayser than the others , he can save devs from serten death , ASM's can have insane staying power , his melta gun can kill gen farms almost as fast as a PC bile spewer , he makes getting as secound ASM unit in t3 to upgrade into vanguards very viable. He has uses they are just not as frontal as the other 2.

Personaly i could live with some small buffs to him however i almost like the fact he is used less. I remember fighting the fucker in chaos rising , it was not fun .

[appiah4]

Apo has a meltagun? (I agree with most of the rest)

[SirSid]

Apo has a meltagun? (I agree with most of the rest)

Ummm DURP !!!

yha im pretty drunk ATM some how my wires got mixed up thare thinking of the teck marien .

Ill just leave it in so others can flame me A-boot it

[Lulgrim]

Perhaps he could use some buffs but perhaps not. He dose not do well in most 1v1's however he can do well in team games, after all he is a suport leader not a front line force commander , so y players try to use him in this way baffels me.

As I meant to say, he's pretty much fully a support hero, even Lulseer can do something like cast Fortune and go to town with the heavy melee spear, but Apo can maybe tie up a ranged unit in T1 (later he will just die trying to approach it) and otherwise just stay the fuck away from killy stuff and throw heals/buffs. In other words the hero isn't really contributing much to the actual combat so the abilities are supposed to be fairly good to make up for that.

[Sub_Zero]

Well it is nice but why nobody haven't given a single comment about my suggestion yet?

I raised this topic from the dead to discuss with you about my suggestion but not for those haters who have been appearing here lately.

I feel like I can repeat my suggestion.

I got an idea how to make the Armor of Apothecarion better. How to make it more attractive for players. As the most of us probably know that this armor used to have the ability in retail with a 50% chance to revive apo if he dies. Here in elite mode this ability has gone without any compensation. Yes, the Apo is very fast with this armor now and that is a very good thing but this is not a compensation I wanted to see. I understand why Caeltos removed all these ON DEATH effects (Apo's armor, RA's armor, PC's armor). Since you don't want your hero to be dead and hence you can't rely on an ability that will be activated only if your heroe dies. And now to my idea. Does anyone has experience with the TAU commander in the last stand? This commander has combat stimulatants that restore his health automatically by N amount of HP if his health reached M amount of HP. What about we give this ability to this armor to compensate its on death effect it used to have?

[Dark Riku]

"The only thing he does is healing", paired with a faction which doesn't lose models and remains on top of it's dps throughout engagements and has a low number of squads to heal. HMMMM he ONLY heals!
....
doesn't change the fact that this hero overperforms in hands of good players.

This reeks of bias. Fact: Nobody believe lies just because you put fact in front of it.
You also misspelled under performs.

he makes getting as secound ASM unit in t3 to upgrade into vanguards very viable.

They still are never viable in my book. I've never had a situation where a vanguard upgrade or new purchase in T3 would serve me any good. Especially not considering what you can do with that amount of resources if you even managed to reach T3.


@ Sub_Zero. People do read your suggestion or should have at least.
My point here on the matter is still the same: Nobody is going to get the armor of the apothecarian in a 1v1 because it cost a whopping 50 power, power you need to invest in units and more importantly as an Apothecary in some solid AV.

[Cheah18]

Lot of good points seeing where you're coming from. I'm trying to be objective don't get me wrong, but perhaps my play style is preventing me from seeing this in such a way. What I find is that the apo can not even be involved in direct combat (with his low health and dps) but still sway the engagement hugely, especially as the dps and health is made up for in other units being healed and lasting longer.

I'm glad a lot of us are agreeing on PV being very strong. I see them as unnecessarily both a grenade that does large explosive damage and a lasting AoE which still does large damage, especially when you have to retreat through it. It should really just be something that either blows up and hurts or does damage that starts to hurt over time imo, not both.

[Tex]

Armor of apothecarion is actually a damn good purchase assuming you have some sort of AV at your disposal. Just check out what Noisy has been doing with it lately (super fast cant catch me try killing me now I heal my blob)

[Dark Riku]

Armor of apothecarion is actually a damn good purchase assuming you have some sort of AV at your disposal. Just check out what Noisy has been doing with it lately (super fast cant catch me try killing me now I heal my blob)

Those aren't serious 1v1 games though but rather lul 3v3 games with barranced teams ^^ Have a look at Noisy's apo 1v1 stats and they don't even include all the losses outside ranked games :/

[Pega]

Apothecary is fine. L2p. I own in 1v1 with him just like any other heroes I use.

[Dark Riku]

I would very much like to believe you Noisy but the numbers speak for themselves :/
Hope you enter with apo in the next MRT then ^^

[Pega]

I already have apo as first hero choice. I am gonna main him. And no, you can't look at the stats, I play alot of ggs that are not recorded onto the elite stats and apo can do many things my other heroes can't.
One other thing, why do we see so narrowly. All we do is complain this and complain that. How about we grow some balls and use the heroes we like and HF playing/losing. How about that?
I honestly don't give a damn about winning and stats anymore. Lets just fight, and i hope half the people in this thread actually man the hell up and duel rather than telling me that they have something to do tomorrow as an excuse for 5 straight weeks.

[Torpid]

It's hard to take you seriously though pega with your constant semi-sarcastic (probably a better way of describing this) tone. Case in point:

Apothecary is fine. L2p. I own in 1v1 with him just like any other heroes I use.

[Caeltos]

Please don't refer to the minor statistical information we've gathered from the tournaments so far. Give it a year and it'll be more accurate and something to go on.

Besides that, it's just some fun-pointers, and hardly anything to go by. For an ex. the tournaments has been played on different patches with different buff/nerfs/tweaks here and there.

Also on that note, whilst something may be considered weak in ones person eyes in 1v1 department, it should be considered that 2s/3s are very popular game-modes and should be considered and evaluated as well in terms of general balance, disregarding them is a mistake.

So if the X is super powerful(op if you wish) in 3s, it should be considered to make tweaks to make it less powerful, without risking the decrease in performance in other game-modes.

[Asmon]

Lul Noisy. Fight me bro =)

[Lag]

Please don't refer to the minor statistical information we've gathered from the tournaments so far. Give it a year and it'll be more accurate and something to go on.

A year in statistics might not be anything to go by. If you look at Starcraft 1 statistics Protoss might have been the strongest race on the ladder and terran the weakest, yet Boxer, Flash, Xellos and Fantasy dominated good parts of pro gaming seasons.

[Raffa]

Noisy beating Riku in the next MRT final...

...using Apo

#AWKWARD

[Sub_Zero]

Today I have had a 1 v 1 game in retail. To make a long story short:

My tacs were bashing gens and there was my incapacitated Apo near them. Tzeentch marines tried to stop my tacs from banshing and they would have if my Apo would not have suddenly raised up. Yeah, I used the global.

What do I tell it for? And I will answer. The ability had a very significant effect on the battle. Now this ability only allows to save 250 req.

And I am pretty sure there are tons of examples how this ability used to help you win ENGAGEMENTS.

To be honest 175 red was too much really. 125-150 red is the way to go.

[[TLV]Soul_Drinkers]

ahh noisy saying the stuff i think. play who u love fuck winning or losing. this is goddamn 40k. this is warrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[Tex]

Seriously though, watch him use apo with AoA. That armor is fucking good. And yes, I truly believe Noisy is gonna give Riku hell with the apo in this upcoming tourney... so long as I don't get to him first ^_^. Then again though, I am really hoping some well deserved LA nerfs are dished out before that time because we all know LA vs Apo can almost be considered a no contest.

[Nuclear Arbitor]

this is where you have to be a gentleman and not use LA