Dawn of War Codex

OK, I am gonna refer to it as Apo's 3rd armour.

It used to heal for 2% of units' health, now it is 1,5%, the cost is the same, the cost is huge, the performance is severely crippled.

This is really important to understand that this armour has a very limited use. It synergises only with tactical marines and terminators.

To buy this wargear alone you pay 150 / 50. To have energy to use the ability you need an axe (a risky way) or improved Apo's equipment. It is another investement. So you pay 250 / 70 only just to have this healing potential. But it is not going to pay off unless you have very expensive terminators or tactical marines with their sergeants (honestly they need to be leveled to benefit better from this ability). And this is one big chain of investments.

If someone wants to tell me that Apo and assault marines and this armour compose a good combo I will hasten to disagree. When you keep your Apo behind your ranged units he is not exposed to damage, when you need to run up to your assault marines you will be shot at and smacked by all sorts of melee threats, not to mention specific abilities that shut down single entities.

So there you have it. No reason at all to cripple efficiency of this armour.

FC for example can purchase his T1 100 / 20 shield and make his units INSANELY unbreakable. This improved healing forces you to blob up and doesn't solve a single problem that counters tactical marine blobs - suppression, artillery. And FC can also take on entire armies with his hammer and teleporta whereas Apo can only rely on his troops.

Please, revert it back!!!

The Armor of the Apothecarion should be the last thing you purchase on the list and not the first imo. It's expensive, but if you play it right it basically makes your blob unbreakable to anything but truly excessive amounts of firepower. At that point in the game you have leveled tacs/asm and quite possibly terminators if you managed to save the red for it. I honestly think that it's not the most amazing 150/50 wargear in the game, but it serves just fine.

In fact, I think it'll really shine in 1v1s if you get to the stage where you can safely purchase it. There's less total damage going around than in teams and that sustain will really shine. I'll reiterate that it's not the go-to purchase for t2 on, but rather a possible opportunity to really shut the door on your opponent if he allowed you that luxury.

Actually, you don't need the axe. You need Medical Equipmant. It makes more sense. Also, you need bolter so you can stand next to your dear Tacticals. But axe is cool if you have Assault Marines.

You are right about that 1,5% thing. I think 2% was perfect. Not too much and not top low. Buy if the armor or the ability is gonna give us other buffs, price is accettible. Othervise, cost decrease needed.

I'd rather see the armour redesigned entirely to fit a T3 wargear to be honest. The thing is that the best time to grab stims/purity is in mid tier 2 onwards when you've obtained squad upgrades and have levelled the apo/army sufficiently to make your heals really count. The result is that you'd almost always want to grab stims/purity in T2, which leaves no room for the AoA.

The theory then is to make the AoA competitive and desirable enough to switch to in late T3. A few ideas then:

Toning down the speed debuff, as it makes a melee apo completely redundant would be a big step - forget about kiting, a few melee specials being thrown around is enough to make him hobble back into the fight like a space marine pensioner.

Remove the speed buff - he doesn't need to be speedy gonzales speeding along ahead of the army as his job isn't to solo, but to blob with the rest of the army. It also makes him ridiculously hard to nuke and chase.

Buff the armour's regen to 0.3. This won't have too much of an impact during engagements, as there's a lot of dakka and choppa flying around in T3 to more or less negate the regen. It'll have more of an impact out of engagements as the apo doesn't have to waste his precious heal on himself.

Other ideas included increasing the radius of the apo's passive regen or making it improve his wargear (increase the range of the grenade? Make rites do ability knockback? I wouldn't consider this OP, as the only way to make this viable would be to grab the more risky axe)

I want to point out that my main complaint is the unnecessary change (I think it is one) from 2% to 1.5%. What do you think about it? About these precise numbers.

Before the change I bombarded Caeltos with questions. He didn't even bother to say a word to my decently detailed questions.

There musta been something that had made him think that it was too strong. What was that factor?! Looks like I will never figure it out.

Why is everybody OK (there have been no complaints about this armour's performance besides mine) with this change? It has never been a popular accessory, I've never seen it used in a competitive game. So what is up?! Why ruin it even further?

I still think it's abit too good if you ask me. I'm sure I can't convience you to think otherwise. That's why I sometimes don't bother responding, because everyone has their own opinion on matters.

Playing against for ex. players of decent skill in 2s/3+s with that wargear is an insane challenge, because it offers an tremendous amount of sustain potential, and in certain matchups where a prolonged fight is suicide, it's a wargear that is golden for the occasion.

Caeltos wrote:I still think it's abit too good if you ask me. I'm sure I can't convience you to think otherwise. That's why I sometimes don't bother responding, because everyone has their own opinion on matters.

Playing against for ex. players of decent skill in 2s/3+s with that wargear is an insane challenge, because it offers an tremendous amount of sustain potential, and in certain matchups where a prolonged fight is suicide, it's a wargear that is golden for the occasion.

I can see your point, the speed buff also makes him incredibly hard to nuke and chase down, especially in team games.

1v1's however, are a completely different story. It just doesn't work outside a few niche builds. If something is a little too good in team games, but rarely works in 1v1's, isn't this an indication that a redesign is needed?

Caeltos, well if you insist on this percentage then let it be so. But then I want to propose reducing the armour's cost. 150/50 + 100/20 is a bit too much to only get this healing going. 150/40?! The performance was crippled, the cost should reflect it.

P. S. Used that yesterday. My terminators liked that. As usually they did. But that was a 3 v 3 game. I still can't imagine a single situation where I would want this combo (would be able to afford) in a 1 v 1 game.

EDIT:
Still out of curiosity though... What are those amazing plays that made you think it overperformed?

If I have ASM I will do everything to support only them. And there are two cheap wargears that help them greatly. The first one is faster second heal. They jump a lot, disrupt, try to survive for as long as possible and then receive a second heal, nobody can oppose them after that. Or they are strenghtened by stimulators, suppression no more controls them and their damage output becomes fearsome. And there is that third armour I will only be able to use on my tacs who also need their sergeants and weapon options to be effective. So many investments, my opponent just fucks me with a vehicle. And Apo himself is toothless against that.

Look at all these huge costing accessories of the commanders. Most of them are weapons, weapons that either rape infantry or vehicles. Other few are super-effective support/offensive abilities. SUPPORT/OFFENSIVE ABILITIES THAT DO NOT REQUIRE FURTHER INVESTMENTS TO BE USED! Poor bastard Apo pays a ton. Oh my god.................... I am at a loss

And to use ASM is the best strategy ever for any Apothecary if somebody wonders why I mentioned them and Apo's synergy before