Dawn of War Codex

I think the librarian still does piercing damage with his ranged attack, which confuses me on several levels.

First, AND LEAST IMPORTANT, psychic damage would make more sense from a lore perspective. (Just wanted to get that out of the way.)

Second, I understand that the librarian's ranged damage was buffed with the force staff upgrade, a while back, in an effort to increase his chances of survival by giving him a ranged fire option. That made good sense to me, but I still don't feel much of the impact from that upgrade. I don't feel that the upgrade has adequately opened up the option to use the librarian at range in those match-ups where that may be desirable.

There are a number of SM units that provide piercing damage at range, and giving the librarian psychic damage would further open up an option that the mod developers pretty clearly wanted to explore with the force staff buff (Caeltos, please correct me if I am wrong). Good librarian play is pretty fantastic to see, and the force barrier buff was a big help, but the libby continues to suffer from high vulnerability in melee and a high cost to purchase and upgrade. I think that the ranged attack idea was a good one. I just don't think it went far enough to fully have the intended effect.

There is always room for improvement, and changing the librarian's range damage type is fairly straight forward (It might require a minor damage nerf to offset increased armor penetration. It would make him less effective at ranged against basic infantry squads, which is fine, because those same squads are the ones most vulnerable to smite. I'm thinking that his ranged attack SHOULD be less effective against those basic infantry squads to preserve balance.).

I'd like to add: Giving the librarian psychic damage on his ranged attack would also give him another role to fill in the SM army. It makes him into a more dynamic unit, with additional options for different play styles.

Actually smite is best used vs things like tzeentch chaos space marines - high HP heavy infantry that may lose a model or two the smite due to its doing plasma damage and not piercing damage, whereas tacs/sterns can happily sit in cover and shots at other high model ranged squads bleeding their models but losing none of their own in turn even if they do "lose" the ranged fight.

That makes some sense. Although, I find that dropping smite on a heretic/gaunt/guardian/shoota squad is...effective. I don't think it is unfair to suggest that those units are, by their nature, vulnerable to AOE damage followed by subsequent ranged fire. After all, each individual model sports a low total hp, which is compensated for by the number of models in the squad. Ipso facto, high vulnerability to AOE moves like smite regardless of the damage type, because those AOE moves open them up to rapid bleed from subsequent ranged attacks.

Regardless. I'm most interested in the librarians normal ranged attack with the forcestaff.

Well you're right that it is nevertheless effective vs the lighter infantry higher model squads. True. But I would still say it ought not to be used vs them because it is equally as effective vs the otherwise harder to deal with low-model high hp squads.

More on topic though... I'm not sure whether I'de change it to a more specialised damage type to be honest. I mean you don't want the dps to be overwhelming and you want it to be consistent vs most foes so if we were to make it plasma then it necessarily would have to be worse vs LI. Nobody ought to buy the force staff for the ranged attack that's really foolish as it costs way way way too much to justify a ~20dps increase in ranged dps and a 10dps increase in melee dps. You buy it for the melee/ranged dps increase combo AND the ability (which is great now; thank you so much for changing that, it's wonderful).

I think a maximum of 40piercing dps would be ample, that would be 5 more than the rod of warpfire for the CS, doing a little more damage because warpfire is arguably a better ability than force barrier. 45onwards is getting a bit extreme, we're talking a whole squad of tactical marines in ranged damage, although that said, the libby can only use his ranged staff attack while immobile so that does make it much weaker in practice than the dps would suggest for most ranged weapons.

I agree with just about everything you just said. In particular:

"Nobody ought to buy the force staff for the ranged attack that's really foolish as it costs way way way too much to justify a ~20dps increase in ranged dps and a 10dps increase in melee dps. You buy it for the melee/ranged dps increase combo AND the ability (which is great now; thank you so much for changing that, it's wonderful)."

I agree, but I also see this as a problem. I remember when the ranged damage increase occurred, and the idea behind it seemed to be that you could choose to keep your libby out of combat and still have him contribute damage in proportion to his cost. It would be less damage than in melee, but still enough to have impact. I don't think the piercing DPS he has now accomplished that goal, but I suspect that 20-30 psychic or plasma damage might (I lean towards psychic). That would open him up to contribute to some of the harder hitting heavy infantry options that SM squads struggle against in Tier 2 and up, and give SM players a new reason to choose the more conservative option of keeping him at range and sacrificing damage for survivability.

As always, I appreciate your willingness to engage with me on this.

I cannot find any arguments here really. Sometimes you want to keep him as a ranged unit but he is pathetic at it so you basically waste the damage you could deal in melee with his short invulnerability. I think that he deserves really good ranged damage once he's upgraded his force staff. Raise its cost but make him way better in this field. Also I have a bad feeling that his intended damage isn't what we see in game. Like in the case with kraken rounds of sternguard veterans, strike squad's issues. Sometimes he hits with his ranged attack and it deals zero damage. Worth double checking?

thank you so much for changing that, it's wonderful

And I always get angered when I see him launching that barrier and taking a whole lot of damage at the same time. When I use it offensively to cap or move forward with my army safely. He could launch it a little bit faster or take a little less damage while he does it.

i agree that it could be changed tbh.

psychic damage on his ranged attack would add a nice dynamic to the SM army, because right now a dreadnought is a blind purchase in most MUs for SM, and you dont usually see much else from T2. SM gets plasma and power melee and thats about it, they dont get autocannon damage, psychic, inferno or any of those cool damage types that other races can get. they get sternguard veterans which have a butt ton of damage types, but compared to plasma gun TSM they wont be as effective vs heavy infantry. i think that SM lacks some capacity to deal with certain unit types compared to a race such as chaos or grey knights.

i dont think a dps nerf would be needed as he can only fire while standing still. perhaps a slight range decrease instead so he cant just snipe CSM models from far away.