Dawn of War Codex

The other day I was looking over some hero globals and I out of curiosity checked out the Lord Commissar page. There I found the ability "Loyal to the End". Surprised by this ability since I had never seen it in-game or heard of it I started thinking of ways to make it more useful/noticeable.
Now, I'm not an IG player so I have no idea if people actually use this (ever). So I came up with two suggestions:

1) Make the effect more recognisable, so that casters/players can more easily call it out.

2) (and this is the big one) Change it into: "Send in the Next Wave", this could be like the old (read:broken) Call da boyz ability but it would only work on GM, so if you pop this at a start of battle you can get a real meatgrinder going. I won't list any stats since it would all be up to Caeltos in the end so I'll simply leave this idea here to get chewed up by the wolves.

P.S. Did anyone here actually use this Global, I'd be interested to know.

This global is awesome, It gives 25% health+damage buff for every member that dies for 12 seconds, great with chimera, it's just very underused

its still a dumb ability deesignwise because it only works with onfield (auto)reinforce

it would be fine with me to remove onfield reinforce alltogether by the way, its just a retarded mechanic. or if not remove it, at least limit it (e.g. a chimera can only reinforce 10 gm models and this potential is refreshed whenever it drives back to base)

@ Wurgl But that's a Chimera's role, to help you get an advantage over your opponet with on-field reinforce. If the reinforcement is just limited to 10 models, then that would totaly kill it. Also, it doesn't have such a hude dps to justify the limitation.

For the global idea, I think that "Send in the next wave" would be too op, to auto-reinforce out of nothing. Unless it costs like 350 or so red, I think it would unbalance things too much. Maybe it could cut the reinforce time by half near a reinforce point?

On another note I think it's simply ludicrous that orks get to generate red for free. No other race get's that, and they have such great red abilities. Relic are such dumbasses, clearly they are bias ork lovers.

IMO, they should get red normally and abilities should cost req, but reinforcing models for orks should be 25% cheaper, otherwise it's just retarded!

*quack*

Red is however required quite alot of Orks abilities. So I'm not really inclined to change that.

even tho caeltos already replied about the ork red thing, i'd just like to add this.
the red generation rate is not high, you get ~20 red/minute, that is about 1 ability granted per minute. is this red gen rate really a problem? c'mon...

That Torpid Gamer wrote: Relic are such dumbasses, clearly they are bias ork lovers.

I would say clearly elderp lovers

Re: Torpid

I think it's fine if you account for the abilities that cost red when designing the overall unit performance. If they are too powerful then the units likely need tweaking, rather than the overall red generation. In the end it's racial design: orks rely on their red to get the required performance.

That Torpid Gamer wrote:
IMO, they should get red normally and abilities should cost req, but reinforcing models for orks should be 25% cheaper

abilites should cost req ? Or energy ?
Reinforcing models for orks should be 25% cheaper=look at my eco sm nub

Gentlemen, please stay on topic. The ork balance thread exists for a reason.

Also: Caeltos if you could tell me why this idea is horrible and if it is at least change the buff so it can at least be seen, something like the boss pole or For the Emperor effect would do nicely. (I remember when Relic implemented these effects because of this same problem)

I think one nice way to make Loyal to the End a bit more versatile and a bit more useful IMO, would be to make the aoe a bit larger and to make the death of any unit within that area buff the damage of any other units around it by 5% for 5seconds and then boost it's red cost to 200. It would be nice then to send in some GM as meatshields first with some AK storms behind it, and it would make the global more useful without a chimera hanging about. I don't think a change is necessary though.

Loyal to the End is a shitty ability which is usable only on GM, and even that only when they are not under too much fire, and even then it is a shitty ability. It doesn't work on Catas as they don't die until their health is low so it doesn't help much there, while GM rarely get focused squad by squad, and even then they can die so quickly, despite the global. It is unusable on other units as they have too few a models. The only way, imho, to make it work is to make it way more powerful per model death, which makes it useful for all squads, and VERY useful for GM (just like Touch of Nurge is for Heretics).
And a new marker for the ability, because it is invisible otherwise.

Incidentally I would just like to point out that my sarcasm may not have been identified in my prrevious post. I was merely attempting to mock the ridiculousness of Wurgl's statement without bluntly stating so, alas now I've had to because nobody else got my post. I acknowledge that sarcasm can be difficult to detect on the internet, however that is why I quacked at the end of my post. Generally when people quack at you you shouldn't seriously consider what they said. Also, I used the word retarded, please don't think I would ever contemplate in any serious manner, or even advocate, using that word.I apologise for any confusion and digression that this may have caused.

Loyal to the End is a very good global.
Combined with the LC execute on, lets say, a lascannon weapon team it becomes pretty ridiculous. :p

It could use a new visual since it looks the same as the LC's lead by example.
If anyone can make it :p

+25% to damage for 125 red.

Dark Riku wrote:Loyal to the End is a very good global.
Combined with the LC execute on, lets say, a lascannon weapon team it becomes pretty ridiculous. :p

It could use a new visual since it looks the same as the LC's lead by example.
If anyone can make it :p

It's not a "good global". It's a marginally useful global that is overpriced, works best on just one squad, and requires way too many other factors to get the best use out of it, whether it is a chimaera, a medical bunker, extremely advantageous cover and positioning, or your opponent to be just plain dumb.

As Lag said, who spends an additional 125 red to get just an extra 25% damage? For that much red I'd rather cast Flare and have left over red. And you must execute a squad member for it. I'm not even going to begin theorycrafting the possibilities of how that might get the HWT killed, but other Globals like Dakka! Dakka! and For the Emperor don't have this issue. Remind me again how much those abilities cost? We can pretend a favorable outcome for the HWT, but that's still a lot of red to use for a single squad. And the "ridiculous" damage mostly comes from the execute. LTTE is really, really expensive gourmet-quality icing on the cake.

Obviously, people have no clue how the ability works as it seems.

It's +25% damage + 25% hp PER MODEL Lost. So if you lose 2x Guardsmen, the rest of the squad gains 50% damage and 50% more health. And so on forth, if you think the ability is bad, then I'm abit lost for words. It's argueably one of the stronger IG abilities, but it doesn't have that much of a visual effect, so it's easy to slip by. Apply those damage buffs and what-not to specific-related weapons, and the dps will skyrocket to absurd amounts.

People only see the damage and not the health boost. It can allow GM to cap vp under fire, whatever is shooting at them.

Caeltos wrote:Obviously, people have no clue how the ability works as it seems.

It's +25% damage + 25% hp PER MODEL Lost. So if you lose 2x Guardsmen, the rest of the squad gains 50% damage and 50% more health. And so on forth, if you think the ability is bad, then I'm abit lost for words. It's argueably one of the stronger IG abilities, but it doesn't have that much of a visual effect, so it's easy to slip by. Apply those damage buffs and what-not to specific-related weapons, and the dps will skyrocket to absurd amounts.

Yes we KNOW, we can read tooltips. I love how people literally type out what it does and think that makes it good. "GUYS! It can do X for Y long and it costs Z red!!! IT's AWESOME!!!!!!1111111lol" No it's not. You have to lose models for it to get you anywhere, it's not nearly as dangerous as touch of nurgle despite being a similar function (your men die, bad stuff happens to your opponent) and the +health bonus doesn't heal the squad members again unlike Touch of Nurgle so those remaining members could very well die soon despite all that sky-rocketed dps if the squad took damage somewhat evenly. Furthermore, the bonuses do not refresh. From the moment one GM dies, you have 12 seconds to ramp up as many dead squad members as you can before the bonuses begin to expire. It really only comes into play with reinforcing the squad, which is one of the points we're making against it; you need other things to make it work. The ability is not PRACTICAL at least not for that much red.

In the example Riku posed, the HWT would most probably not be receiving any more model loses since its a lascannon sniping a vehicle, thus it would be behind your lines not losing any more members, effectively making it just +25% damage.

How about this Caeltos. Would it be too much to ask for you to make the damage and health boost last as long as the duration of the global itself? And nerf the global duration to 20 seconds? If nothing else lower the cost.

I'm so happy that I at least got some discussion going on an ability that perhaps was getting overlooked. Also, I'm keeping out of this discussion since there are far better qualified players than me

*Hops into the Medical Bunker*

Yes we KNOW, we can read tooltips. I love how people literally type out what it does and think that makes it good. "GUYS! It can do X for Y long and it costs Z red!!! IT's AWESOME!!!!!!1111111lol" No it's not. You have to lose models for it to get you anywhere, it's not nearly as dangerous as touch of nurgle despite being a similar function (your men die, bad stuff happens to your opponent) and the +health bonus doesn't heal the squad members again unlike Touch of Nurgle so those remaining members could very well die soon despite all that sky-rocketed dps if the squad took damage somewhat evenly. Furthermore, the bonuses do not refresh. From the moment one GM dies, you have 12 seconds to ramp up as many dead squad members as you can before the bonuses begin to expire. It really only comes into play with reinforcing the squad, which is one of the points we're making against it; you need other things to make it work. The ability is not PRACTICAL at least not for that much red.

I don't think, I know it's good.

It's not like Touch of Nurgle either, there's nothing really comes to anything close to it's functionality.

Loyalty to the End can weight the dividence between big fights and who comes out ontop. CoSNem_OK actually used in retail quite an overbundance, and he was probably, and argueably one of the best IG players until he stopped playing. We used to kid and abuse it to ridicilous levels.

The fact it requires some synergy is just purely design wise, even done by Relic. There's alot of globals that require abit of hand-in-hand conjunction with one another. Bunker/Chimera are both two things that makes it go work together like bread & butter.

Then there's also the Aura of Discipline. (Since it heals for a % of the squads health now) you can actually regenerate the squads health quite rapidly. And needless to say, if you're in desperate need to take down a vehicle fast, any genius Commissar will Execute his lascannon team + possible Loyalty to the End for the maximum damage potency. It's close to an insta-kill button against vehicles that had the plan of going head-on to breakthrough the frontlines. Loyalty is just icing on the cake, or requirement for the tougher stuff. But since it's an AoE, you could just buff several squads in a conjunction, so there's was usually always abit of flexibility to it.

Caeltos wrote:I don't think, I know it's good.

Once again: No it isn't.

Caeltos wrote:It's not like Touch of Nurgle either, there's nothing really comes to anything close to it's functionality.

I'm not sure if you're referring here to ToN's or LTTE's functionality but....

The humor aside, this really doesn't pertain so much to how good LTTE is, but you're going to tell me that an ability that causes a health and damage bonus whenever a squad member dies is not like an ability that has a health and damage bonus when a squad member dies? Pop quiz, in that previous sentence was I talking about Touch of Nurgle or Loyal to the End as the former or latter? That's right, you can't say because both do the same thing. Just because one is an explosion/heal and the other is a hp increase/dps increase doesn't mean they're both not having the same end result: delaying the squad's death and causing more damage to the enemy than they normally could do. We can discuss all you want about how good or bad LTTE is but if you don't think that there some parallels then I have no idea wtf you're thinking.

Caeltos wrote:Loyalty to the End can weight the dividence between big fights and who comes out ontop. CoSNem_OK actually used in retail quite an overbundance, and he was probably, and argueably one of the best IG players until he stopped playing. We used to kid and abuse it to ridicilous levels.

I would LOVE to see a game where LTTE meets all these vaunted expectations you claim it has. I'm not kidding, either. If I saw one game where this ability literally won engagements then I know I'm simply not using it wrong. That is, barring the next point...

Caeltos wrote:The fact it requires some synergy is just purely design wise, even done by Relic. There's alot of globals that require abit of hand-in-hand conjunction with one another. Bunker/Chimera are both two things that makes it go work together like bread & butter.

Again, this doesn't help its case. For the Emperor costs 75 red, cast it on a squad, bang, the squad gets 25% damage increase. End of story. Is double that cost really justified for LTTE? Especially when you have to spend 300/65 for a chimaera or 200/25/75 for a medical bunker. Yes, people do usually get one or even both of those things in game, but why does the ability almost REQUIRE them? Do ork players say to themselves "I should wait until I have that wartrukk before casting use ur choppas on meh boys"? No because it doesn't have such a hampering requirement. Why does my ability have to have something else to make it work at its best when the ork player can cast use ur choppas, more dakka, or an eldar player can cast crack shot and all they need to get the most out of their red is the squad they're casting it on and nothing else. You say there's a lot of abilities that need multiple factors to make it great, but I would say the only other ones that require such synergy would be.... catalyst... maybe malignant blindness... and that's really it.

Caeltos wrote:Then there's also the Aura of Discipline. (Since it heals for a % of the squads health now) you can actually regenerate the squads health quite rapidly. And needless to say, if you're in desperate need to take down a vehicle fast, any genius Commissar will Execute his lascannon team + possible Loyalty to the End for the maximum damage potency. It's close to an insta-kill button against vehicles that had the plan of going head-on to breakthrough the frontlines. Loyalty is just icing on the cake, or requirement for the tougher stuff. But since it's an AoE, you could just buff several squads in a conjunction, so there's was usually always abit of flexibility to it.

All of ^this^ is just best-case-scenario theorycrafting with various degrees of validity. Yeah you can combine Execute and LTTE for a WOW factor but I would never spend that much red for it. For that much red I'd rather cast Flare and get a view of the enemy while debuffing them and maybe even layer a manticore strike over it. Regarding the area of effect,



Take a look at the size of the area. You would have to clump your GM right on top of the Lascannon and then move on with the squad in order to have them also be buffed. Amongst all the other microing and ordering you're doing, does that seem like something you have a lot of time for? And aura of discipline will NEVER regenerate a squad through the fire it receives. Maybe if you pull it back but then you're not getting the full use of it by having squad members die to buff it.

This also brings me to something you didn't even address. The duration of the health and damage buff DO NOT match the duration of the global itself. I tested it once more. I took a squad of 12/12 GM, cast LTTE on them then did the following, while recording their maximum hp (not the current hp of the squad) while it was being reinforced by a chimaera. The squad was level two btw which gives it 1472 HP.

Stormtrooper grenade - kills 3 members, 2572 hp
Improved execute - kills the 4th member, 2944. Shortly after the squad was at 11/12
second execute - kills the 5th member, 3312 chimaera reinforces back to 12/12
Max hp goes back down to 2208 since the buff from the first 3 expired, effectively making it as if the squad had only ever lost 2 members the whole time.
third execute - kills the 6th member, 1840. a 25% increase.
LTTE ends.

At best there was an hp increase of 125%. If there was no execute on the squad then the damage increase would be the same. Sounds great at first but it really doesn't last more than a couple seconds, 3 at most. And this is considering a sudden burst of deaths from a grenade. In a real game the GM's will probably die in a more staggered manner, probably never netting more than +50 or 75% bonus over the course of the duration. Considering the cost of flat damage increase globals like For the Emperor which is 75 or More Dakka which is 50 then we're nearly doubling our tripling the cost for about the same proportional increase in damage and health. However that still requires the other previously mentioned factors for this synergy. So in reality, we're paying far more than just the 125 red to get the most out of the global.

PS. The tooltip currently states that it gives 25% health and 20% damage for every member killed. Typo or stealth ninja?

Not sure if treating Caeltos like an idiot is going to help you cause Helios. Just a random thought.

owkay so for every member that dies you have 25% more damage=just let a few guardsmen die for exam 6=150% damage buff then execute them 250% damage buff hmmmm yeah it's the most useless global ever.

Caeltos wrote:Obviously, people have no clue how the ability works as it seems.

It's +25% damage + 25% hp PER MODEL Lost. So if you lose 2x Guardsmen, the rest of the squad gains 50% damage and 50% more health. And so on forth, if you think the ability is bad, then I'm abit lost for words. It's argueably one of the stronger IG abilities, but it doesn't have that much of a visual effect, so it's easy to slip by. Apply those damage buffs and what-not to specific-related weapons, and the dps will skyrocket to absurd amounts.

Using it on the HWT, which, if focused, will go down easily despite the ability, and if not - then yes, it is just125 red for +25% damage (if you are using Execute). It doesn't magically give the remaining models the killed model's health. If a model has 100 hp it will get 125, which, under fire, hardly means much for the HWT. I remember trying the ability out and running two spread out plasma GM to a Autocannon with the buffed squad slightly closer to automatically attract fire, only to have to retreat it after three seconds. It's all great in theory, but actually works only with GM + Chim (and I have tried it A LOT).

You're going to need 2 shots only on Predators if you use Loyalty to the End + Execute tho. It's effective 371.25 damage, compared to 330 with just Execute.

If you simply just execute, you'll need to get +1 extra shot on standard Predators. The difference right there between not getting the last shot or not, can decide the outcome of the game. The health addition is more of an extra bonus, the damage is what matters for the most part. But that doesn't mean the extra health can't be put to good use.

I remember trying the ability out and running two spread out plasma GM to a Autocannon with the buffed squad slightly closer to automatically attract fire, only to have to retreat it after three seconds. It's all great in theory

Maybe because the Autocannon was under the effect of Execute?

Joke aside, it doesn't sound like a very thoughtful engagement. Besides that, there's no real to exaggurate. The Burst duration for all Autocannons (Havoc/HWT) is 2 secs. And one volley is not enough to push them them off. Besides that, if you wanted to kill the Autocannon squad, you would have flared it. Not use Loyalty to the End to push it off. They're the polar opposite of their useage, and you got them mixed up.

Flare is used to neglect // force the opposition to move. Loyalty to the End is an global that thrives on a sustained/prolonged skirmish confrontation that will slowly but surely tip in your favor.

If you're going to utilize Loyalty to the End for it's maximum profitable useage, you're going to need a proper army composition that works just for that occasion, and also apply the same player behavior / mentality.

FTE Is 75 red, is double that cost really justified for LTTE?

75 + 75 = 125?

You say there's a lot of abilities that need multiple factors to make it great, but I would say the only other ones that require such synergy would be.... catalyst... maybe malignant blindness... and that's really it.

I've heard Blessing of the Omnissiah is great with just infantry.

Drop Pod requires infantry in the viccinity, and eventhen, it's hell of a gamble to utilize, few people actually get to use it to good effect, but it works.

Larramans Blessing is not so good, it requires you to die afterall, that can't be good!

Angels of Death is lots of red. But you'll need the army to make it work.

The list goes on. Globals require a certain type of synergy with one another. Loyalty to the End is no exception.

Yes, people do usually get one or even both of those things in game, but why does the ability almost REQUIRE them?

Like I said. If you want to use Blessing of the Omnissiah, you need vehicles. If you want super beefed Guardsmen, get with the program and get some back-up synergy to utilize it. It's potatoe , potato all over the place. Just because one faction is designed and functions one way, doesn't mean the other factions has to work the same.

Your irrelevant comparisons are really annoying. Guardsmen die like flies, Orks don't die in the same quantity, hench the effect is the way it is. I don't think I explain it any clearer then that.

This also brings me to something you didn't even address. The duration of the health and damage buff DO NOT match the duration of the global itself. I tested it once more.

That's because a persistant effect of it's existing values would make them completely bonkers overpowered. The duration of it's effect is to keep them in check and not cause them to overload with % damage values and just A-blob and attack. The duration of the global + the duration of the effect works with one another to find the fine-tune of balance between the power of the effect, and the power of the duration.

By removing the boundaries of the effect duration, you're ultimately breaking up the bound that makes the global actually relatively in-line with it's overall effect. It's like being a mad scientist, just going "Nothing can go wrong by removing this, can it?" and ends up blowing up the world.

I do however, think that the Global itself is extremely subtle and you can't identify how good it's actually doing. I'm sure there would be more appriciation and understanding of it's effect. If the Guardsmen started wearing party hats and firing rainbows, and every target they killed went up in flames, I'm sure people would identify it's effectiveness, but as it stands now, it's difficult to say.

But I've been on the recieving end of Loyalty to the End abuse for quite some time, and it's extremely difficult to play against. As you can't commit to prolonged sustained fights, which some factions generally tend to want to commit to. You'll have to be on the defensive to mitigate how effective it can be.

On a final note.

Once again: No it isn't.

Yes it is. I'm not changing it's effect, maybe it's visuals at best.

Caeltos wrote:Maybe because the Autocannon was under the effect of Execute?

Joke aside, it doesn't sound like a very thoughtful engagement. Besides that, there's no real to exaggurate. The Burst duration for all Autocannons (Havoc/HWT) is 2 secs. And one volley is not enough to push them them off. Besides that, if you wanted to kill the Autocannon squad, you would have flared it. Not use Loyalty to the End to push it off. They're the polar opposite of their useage, and you got them mixed up.

I didn't do it to negate the Autocannon (I was winning). I did it to see how effective it is, and I wasn't impressed.
Visual changed would be great. Some red cost reduction as well.

Caeltos wrote:If the Guardsmen started wearing party hats and firing rainbows, and every target they killed went up in flames, I'm sure people would identify it's effectiveness, but as it stands now, it's difficult to say.

I'm not changing it's effect, maybe it's visuals at best

Please. This.






On a serious note though, I do agree with Caeltos on this.

After reading 3 pages, I still don't understand why people is complaining about Loyal to the end (besides its visual effect its the same as Lead by Example)

Because a 25% hp and damage increase per Guardsmen lost for only 125 red (and more when the Guardsmen with Commisar + Sargent are cheap as fuck) it's simply awesome. The only similar thing to LTTE it's the Chaos Lord's Bloodlust, which is more expensive and its effect grows more slowly than the LTTE buff.

Not sure, but with the Catachan's change (the squad have more models than in retail) with the adequate support LTTE on them could be... interesting to see