D cannons. yep ive heard enough hate:p

[Superhooper01]

I love D cannons. I often get them over the ever tier 3 choices for eldar simply as i find them great in so many ways. As most of u know i often forget to take into account the 1v1 perspective but here the points are mainly the same for why i think they need a change for balance sake.

D cannons are a massive pain in the ass with trying to cap a vp or req point etc, as they have massive range which hit ninety-percent of the time or more and do a evil amount of damage to units, both infantry and vehicles making it to good as p-devs and blast-master do decent damage to vehicles but hit less often and dont have singularity...

Singularity has a very small activate time allowing in to be placed on units in retreat or as they are about to cap meaning unless u catch the ability being placed(which is miss-able) u will suffer a huge amount of damage and units like guardsmen and ever tier 1 units still alive suffer horrible damage plus they will take a shot or two before and after while they retreat.

Certain maps encourage multiply D cannons which makes me think they need a least a cost increase because trying to cap a vp with 2 or more d cannons is simply suicide or just not effective due to their range and ability.

I think the simply answer would be to increase the cost of the d cannon or change the damage type to something less heretical to both infantry and vehicles. Changing it to do similar damage as a p-dev shot or even changing it to fire orbs instead of a torrent of energy would make it easy to see coming as well as seeing where the last shot hit.
Another idea is to reduce its range as it can be put back very far behind a line of eldar vehicles and infantry and still deliver killer shots and set up nasty combos with its singularity (Asmonozaurus using it to set up Eletricth lol) and just throw stuff into shes etc.

To sum this up: Range,cost,accuracy,damage,ability and even the pop used allow this unit to over-perform so at least one thing in the equation needs to be changed to make this gibb less and not be spammed as much.

See what u people thing.

[Cheah18]

I concur

[Daddy]

What about reducing the attack range? This will make it more micro intensive for the user and costly if unsupported.

Frankly the ability to shoot from godly range is the true handicap for opponents.

[Superhooper01]

Lowering the range is a sound idea but not sure by how much? maybe have the range of a P-dev which should be less i believe.

[Ven]

i think as a unit, its fine. its singularity ability might be a little over the top and perhaps a "pull in" range decrease would be a good change.

HOWEVER for the D cannons cost, its stupid.

i propose that we keep the D cannons cost the same; but you have to purchase an upgrade to get singularity.
perhaps costing something like 80/15?

its damage, range and accuracy is fine, it is an entire tier behind all the other artillery and costs more power than most afterall.

[Vapor]

I propose decreasing the damage per shot in exchange for increased fire rate. It's too good at gibbing squads atm.

[Torpid]

I propose decreasing the damage per shot in exchange for increased fire rate. It's too good at gibbing squads atm.

I think that's a fantastic idea because I'm not convinced that overall they're particularly OP given that they cost 400 req AND 40 power AND are T3. It's hardly fair to compare them to P-devs with that in consideration. Singularity is a really slow ability too. It's OK but nothing to write home about.

That said, the burst damage it does now is absurd. I lost a venom brood to two shots of a d-cannon the other day instantly. That's just ridiculous.

[Cheah18]

That said, the burst damage it does now is absurd. I lost a venom brood to two shots of a d-cannon the other day instantly. That's just ridiculous.

I lost kasrkin in one... Its annoying because aside from 'knowing he has a D-cannon so keep moving' there wasl ittle I could do.

[Dark Riku]

Singularity is a really slow ability too. It's OK but nothing to write home about.

Singularity is just an OK ability in your book? °_O

[Torpid]

Singularity is a really slow ability too. It's OK but nothing to write home about.

Singularity is just an OK ability in your book? °_O

Yeah. It's really slow to trigger and so can easily be dodged by even non-alert players. Mostly useful in retreat but then that's the risk you take pushing against an eldar and fully committing to that push and then failing to force off the D-cannon and so letting them get a singularity in the retreat path. Alternatively it is useful with suppression, but suppression itself is not too handy come T3 and often the shurikens by that point are either dead or brightlances anyway.

[Lost Son of Nikhel]

Eldar have some good stuff to make Singularity very easy to land. Gravity Blade/Armour of Assuryan for Farseer, Gravity Grenades and Phase Shift for WSE.

[Torpid]

Eldar have some good stuff to make Singularity very easy to land. Gravity Blade/Armour of Assuryan for Farseer, Gravity Grenades and Phase Shift for WSE.

That's more of a problem of phase shift/time field in general. Grav grenades/grav blade are fine by me.

[Broodwich]

Having 0 travel time as well as perfect accuracy I think is the biggest problem. Range is nasty too, but it is a t3 unit.

Don't forget it does suppression on hit as well, higher rof will have to take that into consideration

[Ven]

Having 0 travel time as well as perfect accuracy I think is the biggest problem. Range is nasty too, but it is a t3 unit.

Don't forget it does suppression on hit as well, higher rof will have to take that into consideration

huh? i dont remember it suppressing on hit.

i know wraithguard do, but d cannons?

[Broodwich]

My mistake, I was thinking of WG

[Surprise Attack!]

How about capping the number of d cannons a single player can field to 1?

[Dalakh]

Changing it to do similar damage as a p-dev shot or even changing it to fire orbs instead of a torrent of energy would make it easy to see coming as well as seeing where the last shot hit.

That wouldn't make any sense. The D cannon works as follow : it opens mini warp rifts among the targets. So orbs of fires...

How about capping the number of d cannons a single player can field to 1?

It never is an option to cap any unit to one for a reason different than the unit being extremely rare/unique. Why cap d cannons to 1 when you can spam terminators or karskins or flash gitz/nobs or even carnifexes ?

To be honest if anything needs to be done (which is not a given) I like torpid's idea of trading damage for rate of fire like it was done for snipers. Makes them less punishing on the first hits but still a big threat as it should be.

Regarding late 3v3s capping fest you could talk about how ridiculous terminators, land raiders, manticores are too.

[Surprise Attack!]

How about capping the number of d cannons a single player can field to 1?

It never is an option to cap any unit to one for a reason different than the unit being extremely rare/unique. Why cap d cannons to 1 when you can spam terminators or karskins or flash gitz/nobs or even carnifexes ?

Normally I would agree, but I feel that the issue here is not arising from the amount of damage done by the D-Cannon, but the amount of damage/number of singularities done/triggered by multiple D-Cannons. Dislodging one d-cannon, regardless of how much or little damage it does is a different feat compared to dislodging two or three d-cannons.

I'm sorry, but I don't see your comparison with terminators, kasrkin, flash gitz, etc... as relevant because none of those are really like d-cannons at all. Flash gitz and Kasrkin are glorified piercing dps squads, carnifexes can be spammed like prisims and leman russes, and nobs are melee units that quite frankly get countered pretty hard by many things unless you invest a significant amount of resources into them. Finally, terminators are hugely expensive, can't retreat, and cost red, which restricts the amount you can call in.

Edit: In regards to land raiders and manticores, none of those can just attack ground in the fow to deny a cap.

[Ven]

the D cannon only does 10 more damage than a plasma cannon, costs power, and is an entire tier behind all other artillery in the game.

i think its singularity that needs to be looked at. as i've said before i think the D cannon is fine and its only singularity that might raise some eyebrows to its balance.

the D cannon is so good at gibbing squads because its a whole tier behind the other artillery. plasma cannon devs can do just as much, sure you can retreat and mitigate damage, but you've been forced off. so either of those units have a similar effect. plasma cannon forces retreat, D cannon bleeds you then forces retreat.

now with that out of the way, lets look at singularity.

its ABILITY KNOCKBACK, now thats something that i consider to be a tad silly. i think Light weapon knockback or Medium weapon knockback might be a bit better. its damage is also kinda silly, being 160(?) explosive_pvp. it kinda shreads anything and everything.

i still think singularity should be a seperately purchased upgrade. perhaps even have it so that the weapon cooldown of the D cannon is reduced for x number of seconds after singularity is used.

[Nurland]

Pdved shots can actully be dodged. D-cannons are frustrating in 1v1 but usually quite manageable.

The 3v3s are the biggest problem. Like D-cannons are kinda ridiculous due to the instagibbing stuff with basically undodgeable projectiles at massive range. Due to the high projectile speed they are actually decent AV. Singularity is mostly dodgeable but it will still provide huge area denial

[Superhooper01]

Think nurland summed it up tbh. Not being able to dodge is a pretty big pain.

[Ven]

thats the thing though, its a T3 unit so it shouldnt really be balanced with the other artillery. its a whole tier behind all the others and it costs a lot more, it shouldnt do the same thing as a plasma cannon or a blastmaster.

[Dalakh]

Surprise attack

You missed my point so let me make it more obvious : The only units that are capped to one in DoW 2 are super units and (sub)commanders. The D cannon falling in neither of these categories it can't be capped to one. End of story.

My point with karskins and other T3 units is that if you can spam such potent units then everyone should be able to spam them if only to be able to keep up in term of raw power.

Once again I think torpids idea is good and making d cannons shoot balls or something would be as innacceptable as having orks shoot pew pew star wars lasers. Hence the instant hit shouldn't be changed.

[Cheah18]

I'm concerned that at faster speed it will still just own low hp model squads, even with lower damage. Even faster than it does now.

[Wise Windu]

The only units that are capped to one in DoW 2 are super units and (sub)commanders. The D cannon falling in neither of these categories it can't be capped to one. End of story.

Sternguard + Vanguard

[Torpid]

I'm concerned that at faster speed it will still just own low hp model squads, even with lower damage. Even faster than it does now.

Well if the maths is done properly it will be impossible for them to die faster as the dps will remain the same. It will stop 2 separate D-cannons from instantly gibbing a venom brood from outside of the fog of war though because instead it will instantly drop them to half hp and you can quickly retreat them. They will still be as effective at deniying caps or providing fire support as their dps will be just as good it's just they won't be quite as good at sniping moving vehicles or just out-right insta-gibbing squads before you can even react. That's why it's a good idea. They remain clearly better than Pdevs/BMs but are not quite as ridiculous as they currently are when it comes to killing units immediately with no warning from outside your line of sight...

[Torpid]

Surprise attack

You missed my point so let me make it more obvious : The only units that are capped to one in DoW 2 are super units and (sub)commanders. The D cannon falling in neither of these categories it can't be capped to one. End of story.

My point with karskins and other T3 units is that if you can spam such potent units then everyone should be able to spam them if only to be able to keep up in term of raw power.

Once again I think torpids idea is good and making d cannons shoot balls or something would be as innacceptable as having orks shoot pew pew star wars lasers. Hence the instant hit shouldn't be changed.

Lore isn't the only reason why units are capped and this mod doesn't operate on the basis of lore as we all know, else catachans wouldn't be able to pwn warrior broods/tacs in melee would they? I don't really know why sterns/vans are capped tbf. Kasrkin/gitz are very different from Dcannons from the perspective of gameplay and so arguments to cap them wouldn't really apply to d-cannons and vice versa. Kasrkin and gitz (in their default form) don't have the retreat killing potential that D-cannons have or the burst damage from such long range.

That said, capping units is always a bad decision really unless the unit is like a sub-hero and is compositionally really unique or something, this is because capping it suggests too many of it are too good but that suggests that the unit has a fundamental flaw in its balance design in the first place and probably is overpowered, so it would be better to just nerf it so that people don't want to spam it instead.

Also to clarify it was FrozenVapour who originally proposed decreasing the on-hit damage of D-cannons while increasing their ROF and so not altering their DPS not I. I was just +1ing that comment and saying why I agreed with it.

[Sub_Zero]

When I saw this thread the only thing I thought of was reducing of its damage per shot and making it fire faster to have the DPS unchanged (pretty much what happened to snipers and they suck now vs light infantry SO BADLY).

[Deuce Bigalow]

+1 for decreasing damage and increasing fire rate. I don't care what tier it's in it shouldn't be able to gib full health sqauds.

[Cheah18]

I'm concerned that at faster speed it will still just own low hp model squads, even with lower damage. Even faster than it does now.

Well if the maths is done properly it will be impossible for them to die faster as the dps will remain the same.

I can't see how this works out, in the same way that flamers do more damage to multiple units? Is the D-cannon not for all intents of purposes AoE? For instance if x is damage to model and y is model health, and x is more than 2y, halfing x and doubling RoF will still kill the same number of models and do the same damage? Or am I mistaken somewhere on the mechanics...