Dawn of War Codex

In 2.4.2 hotfix, we'll be adressing a few issues. We'll try to tend to bug fixes, as well some balance notes - which I'll briefly go over here.

Inquisitorial Operatives
The current cost of the unit is abit underpriced for their value. They'll likely get a small cost increase to reduce some of their effiency, as well as tie their smoke grenade into their fallback plan to give them abit more cost-dump value. Exact numbers are not yet decided. Satchel Charge specifics I believe was already covered by Wise Windu, but they're not going to insta-kill generators.

Rangers supressing
We'll retract this change, but keep their cooldown decrease, as well their improved kinetic shot. No more supressing rangers, at least for now. It was too much of a drastic change, despite the best of interest in the overall concept of the unit and the army as a whole. The concept may return in a future update, but give the players more options to play around the shots, and how the modifiers work against covers.

Seer Council
Seer Council health regeneration will most likely be reverted back from 1.5 back to their old value of 0.5 hp/ (standard). It's a a small step, but they already have their self-inherit defence bonus that should be sufficient enough.

Paladins/retreat
Shockwave was never intended to be a squad-wipe functionality of an ability. It was intended to be more of a distruptive-ability that could be lined up with other units abilities, and to gain skirmish terrotrial advantage, however this is bad on my part for being not clear enough on the ability itself, and leaving out very important specifics on the ability itself. The new function will be that it sends units to the sides, rather than in a straight line. Ending up with having the squads suffer less damage in return. Whilst still on the subject - we'll also reduce the potent effiency of retreating terminators, to make sure that popping retreat is more of a rare action. The Paladin health regeneration will most likely also be reverted, to ensure that you can easier bring them down. It's a small step, but the goal is to elevate some of the frustrating gameplay that people are having.

Setup Teams damage to building_light modifier
Currently, we're setting to reduce the building damage modifier down to 0.05 for starters. This number might still be too high - so we'll have to test abit internally. Setup Teams should still be able to do SOME damage on buildings, just NOT AS profficient as they are now. It's all about finding a sweet-spot for it.

I'm sorry for being abit overambitous with the balance patch as a whole. It was abit too much of a undertaking, and being abit short-manned doesn't help.I'll try to be abit more focused and focus on one more primary thing, rather than try to juggle too many balls then I can handle. In the end, I just want a fun, entertaining and enjoyable game for everyone. I don't want to piss on everyone pudding.

Oh well, that makes my Ranger post moot
Was the Seercouncil too good? I didn't saw anyone complaining about it here^^ (Not that that means anything).

Supression teams will be exactly how I always wanted them now. Not utterly useless against buildings, just the same damage a normal squad would do.

This reminds me:
There were many great small fixes in the patch that were not mentioned by anyone because of the big things. But I want to say now, thank you they were very much appreciated. (For example my personal favorite fortune energy cost reduced).

Oh great! Shcowawe did ate a nerf but nothing to complain about. Now no one will write somethnig to this forum

I don't think its necessary for you to apologize imo, but i bet some people appreciate it. And if you want help in balancing or finding bugs I am always open. All you'd have to do is PM me and tell me what to look at. People at work always tell me how good i am at breaking things, maybe i can but that "talent" to use here lol.

I still stand by a small req reduction the the dire avengers "aspect" by 25 req. Everything else seems expected. Cost increase will be perfect if OPS stay the way they are. Paladins, nuff said already. Rangers suppressing will be missed, sort of, im sure there is a way to keep it though, maybe like if they have pathfinder gear and if the eldar player is in t2, then they start suppressing. Everything else I don't have much comment on other than "mkay."

On a side note, if any of your modders are interested in taking a peek, I fiddled with how tanks path a bit. And in my experience from playing when i changed it up the tanks move back wards a bit more professionally (when there isnt a infantry unit in the way of course). As in they will actually move backwards without turning around half the time.

- Ah... Those changes will definitely address the current problems with GK. Except GK everything else was pleasant for me in this patch especially Eldar changes. Well, I never felt vs Eldar match ups were impossible or difficult beyond imagination before the patch either but heard too much complaints from new people saying it is a huge anti fun experience vs Eldar.
- Unlike other factions, when an expert eldar player owns an underhanded opponent, they tend to do mess wipes with retreat grenades and banshee back doors and other control ability into AOE comboes. This is most likely the cause of intense hatred I sense amongst low skill casual players vs Eldar. I mean other factions at least do not wipe their squad if retreated early but Eldar will still kill them leaving them with nothing humiliating them further. Yeah, Eldars over relied on back door banshee to build up their momentum for too long. Especially in team games 2 Eldar or 3 Eldar teams will rely heavily on banshee back door to 2 v 1 or 3 v 2 opponents who were uncoordinated with using voice chats behind to coordinate their actions. In this way they give 1 v 1 lane players obscene advantages over the enemy by damaging his squad or economy making that 1 v 1 unfair or just mass attack 2 v 2 lane with 3 players for gen bashes. However, now that banshee cannot retreat kill reliably such complaints disappeared. It is good not to hear those intense Eldar haters in team games that were prevalent among low skill players. Probably only that banshee change really mattered for that retreat kill issue of Eldar because it was significantly less micro intensive way then other moves performed to wipe squad by Eldars. They will still use that mobility to make 2 v 1 or 3 v 2 tactic viable but without banshees its not impossible to counter even by low skill players which is good IMO.

Well, very nice to hear it. Still, GK SHI need not just fix but radical change but well.. those small steps may bring us to something big.

(づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ └(^o^ )Ｘ( ^o^)┘ ~(˘▾˘~) Most Excellent

to this hotfix.

Except the Rangers. I liked it when they suppressed my stuff.

Caeltos wrote:I'm sorry

Don't ever apologise achtung!

I'm sorry that you had to listen to so many ungrateful little shits with no patience. Fuck their self-entitled BAWWWW-ing.

Thanks for the hard work .

Swiftsabre wrote:8-) to this hotfix.

Except the Rangers. I liked it when they suppressed my stuff.

Agreed, this should fix the few issues that were in 2.4 and people can get back to playing the game instead of whining about the same stuff. A tip of the hat to Sir Caeltos for being the bigger man here when I think it would have been far easier to take easier paths.

I'm gonna kind of miss the rangers suppressing but I think it was slightly ott with 2x Ranger builds. I think we can see it back with some minor tweaking.

The interceptors can switch between the melee/ranged weapons at will

Can we have the same for the raptors?

Also, the Chaos dreadnought is still not very good. Low health no ability mediocre weapon. The weapon should still be better IMO. Just look at how powerful the Phobos weapons are compared to the SM land raider. Ofc the flamers are also very good but at other things when compared to the lascannons.

Anyone has got any good chaos dreadnought replays or vods?

Max_Damage wrote:The interceptors can switch between the melee/ranged weapons at will

Can we have the same for the raptors?

Also, the Chaos dreadnought is still not very good. Low health no ability mediocre weapon. The weapon should still be better IMO. Just look at how powerful the Phobos weapons are compared to the SM land raider. Ofc the flamers are also very good but at other things when compared to the lascannons.

Anyone has got any good chaos dreadnought replays or vods?

Chaos dreadnought is good enough. What are you talking about, dude?

Phobos got less HP, dont heal, and you cant retreat to it. It's 2 totally different units. They shouldn't be the same

I appreciate the ambition of this patch to shake up the stale meta in the game - GK will always be a work in progress for the foreseeable future and you may have ambitions to revamp a faction like the one given to Eldar.

However, I also realise that the developers just don't have the manpower of a full development team.

Max_Damage wrote:The interceptors can switch between the melee/ranged weapons at will

Can we have the same for the raptors?

Also, the Chaos dreadnought is still not very good. Low health no ability mediocre weapon. The weapon should still be better IMO. Just look at how powerful the Phobos weapons are compared to the SM land raider. Ofc the flamers are also very good but at other things when compared to the lascannons.

Anyone has got any good chaos dreadnought replays or vods?

This seems to be a recurring theme with you Max. You're asking for unreasonable Chaos buffs for no reason and without proper arguments.
For what reason should raptors be able to change between them at will??!! That would make the unit extremely OP.
The Chaos dreadnought is just fine.
Just look up some replays yourself? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1uPI0ets9k (dread is used here and I haven't watched it yet.)

This is also not the thread for this kind of thing.

As far as the rangers suppressing,

I wouldn't mind if rangers or SM sniper scouts suppressed after a few shots in T2. It was a bit much in t1 but in t2 there are so many more abilities and units available to negate all that. It would also make the investment and use of snipers a bit more long term.

WOOOHOOOO! Yes, yes, yes! 2.4.2 come to papa!

Dark Riku wrote:

Max_Damage wrote:The interceptors can switch between the melee/ranged weapons at will

Can we have the same for the raptors?

Also, the Chaos dreadnought is still not very good. Low health no ability mediocre weapon. The weapon should still be better IMO. Just look at how powerful the Phobos weapons are compared to the SM land raider. Ofc the flamers are also very good but at other things when compared to the lascannons.

Anyone has got any good chaos dreadnought replays or vods?

This seems to be a recurring theme with you Max. You're asking for unreasonable Chaos buffs for no reason and without proper arguments.
For what reason should raptors be able to change between them at will??!! That would make the unit extremely OP.
The Chaos dreadnought is just fine.
Just look up some replays yourself? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1uPI0ets9k (dread is used here and I haven't watched it yet.)

This is also not the thread for this kind of thing.

The dreadnought performed very well in this game (I already watched it ^^). There is no reason to buff it further. I totally agree with Riku here.

The Dread is fine, you have two other options to upgrade it for dedicating to any situation too.

Not rly fine. Vs chaos its not really very representative. Chaos has it bad vs walkers. Any replay vs legit race and good players?

Most of the Chaos roster is AV -.- Chaos is a legit race. Tyger is one of the legitest players out there.
/wrists

I really appreciate this post Cael, it's great to get a sense of the things you guys are looking at. I'd love to help out in beta if you need more testers. My mostly 1v1 GK perspective feedback follows:

Inquisitorial Operatives
All the changes sound perfect. I think the unit is in a decent place as far as stats and skills, but it's cost is too low for the impact. I would happily pay 300+ req for this squad base, 225 is just so low for it's impact. I also nearly never buy fallback plan. It's cost is not justifiable, since stealth + 6.5 movespeed means I'm rarely in a position to need to retreat. Perhaps I should focus on leaving them with my SS, so the cloud can reduce ranged damage, then re-setup a few feet back to shoot at melee... but that's a really hard sequence of events to engineer and allow you opponent to fall into. Rolling some of the potency into this "aspect" upgrade will force me to buy it more, and likely learn new micro tricks with it as a result. Satchel change is exactly what is needed too. Sarge price should come down imo.

Rangers supressing
I am sad to see this fully go, I like the direction a LOT. Not sure if it's balanced though, haven't experienced it enough to have a balance opinion.

Seer Council
Ditto.

Paladins/retreat
I have no idea what "we'll also reduce the potent effiency of retreating terminators" means, so I can't give feedback. Can you elaborate?
Shockwave clearly seemed bugged. Looking forward to being able to use it without feeling like a scab!
Losing regen is fine. The old terminators needed regen, they spent all their time walking to and from base after losing all their health But gaining retreat changes this, so having both is excessive.
As a 1v1 player, I would like to strongly request the build time increase be reconsidered (willingly trade it for other nerfs). I've said for a while that in 2.3, GK T3 was bad (I believe Atlas has been on this point too) in 1v1, and borderline OP in 3v3. The units were strong, but the amount of req and time needed meant you had to be in a crushing board position to go for them, and why not just grab a dread now and finish the game? 2.4 made made all of these issues worse in my mind: increased build time meant giving up even more map before they came out, and increased potency makes them even cheesier in 3v3. The req decrease on termies was a good start, and INT as an option are nice, but waiting for 100/40 more to buy termies instead of them is a no brainier. Changing regen, retreat or ability costs is going to change this, since it was a problem in 2.3 already.

Setup Teams damage to building_light modifier
Excellent to hear. The "bad old days" of setup teams razing power farms are not someplae I want to go back too, but I'm in favor of finding an amount of damage that's fair.

I'm sorry for being abit overambitous with the balance patch as a whole.
I would much rather have these more frequent patches with experiments like these, then wait 8 months for the next patch Iterate away!

Edit:
A word on Rhinos...
They have been over-nerfed. I'll be the first to admit that the SHI plus the las-cannon dealing full damage to infantry was over the top, but the unit is far too fragile even in T1 to be worth 180/30. 650 HP as HI sounds good, but the size modifier is a hidden damage boost that almost negates the armor type, there's rear hits, IST don't have GM repair bonuses and . Add on the increased cost of the las gun and reduced performance and the speed increases on tanks, and the rhino is looking quite sad. Also, I'm endlessly amused that the Rhino, which is supposed to be a transport, has no reinforce and limited seating, but more guns, while the Razorback which is supposed to sacrifice seating for weaponry, instead sacrifices weaponry for seating

There are many things that could be changed about it, but I think it really needs some focus on what it's supposed to be good at. It's between roles. In T1 it's a really expensive and micro intensive webway gate, and in T2 it's an overpriced razorback without renforcement OR an AV weapon that mostly misfires at infantry. Here are a couple of not terribly fleshed out ideas:

-Full on transport: Increase speed, acceleration and/or deceleration! New T2 upgrade: Extra Seating - Mutually exclusive to weapon upgrades, grans reinforcement, +150 health and +2 seats.
-Mostly the same: Reduce price to 180/20, increase bolter and las-cannon costs by 10 power.
-IST buddy: Increase cost to 225/30, increase bolter damage, reduce health to 500 and change armor type back to SHI.
-Just more durable: Reduce health to 500, change back to SHI.

I was waiting for that hotfix. Good to see that GK Termies is not so hard to kill now.
About rangers suppression - well, that was just waaaay to good. I think that they still may have some good courage damage maybe smth like 40-45 but 75 was just insane.
I really appreciate the hard work of Caeltos. Good luck in the next patch, and I wish a lot of interesting ideas.

I'm sorry to see the rangers suppression go, but I'm biased to eldar. From reading the codex, I think suppression is underutilized; seems largely limited to specialist setup teams. Of course, it could probably be done excessively, but it seems natural that any massive hail of fire should suppress somewhat, or perhaps extended firefights should.

Cyris wrote:Edit:
A word on Rhinos...
They have been over-nerfed. I'll be the first to admit that the SHI plus the las-cannon dealing full damage to infantry was over the top, but the unit is far too fragile even in T1 to be worth 180/30. 650 HP as HI sounds good, but the size modifier is a hidden damage boost that almost negates the armor type, there's rear hits, IST don't have GM repair bonuses and . Add on the increased cost of the las gun and reduced performance and the speed increases on tanks, and the rhino is looking quite sad. Also, I'm endlessly amused that the Rhino, which is supposed to be a transport, has no reinforce and limited seating, but more guns, while the Razorback which is supposed to sacrifice seating for weaponry, instead sacrifices weaponry for seating

There are many things that could be changed about it, but I think it really needs some focus on what it's supposed to be good at. It's between roles. In T1 it's a really expensive and micro intensive webway gate, and in T2 it's an overpriced razorback without renforcement OR an AV weapon that mostly misfires at infantry. Here are a couple of not terribly fleshed out ideas:

-Full on transport: Increase speed, acceleration and/or deceleration! New T2 upgrade: Extra Seating - Mutually exclusive to weapon upgrades, grans reinforcement, +150 health and +2 seats.
-Mostly the same: Reduce price to 180/20, increase bolter and las-cannon costs by 10 power.
-IST buddy: Increase cost to 225/30, increase bolter damage, reduce health to 500 and change armor type back to SHI.
-Just more durable: Reduce health to 500, change back to SHI.

NO, NO, NOOO!

Your hero is already able to move straight through setup team fire and survive, your storm troopers can use their nades as counter, operatives can use cloak and stun nades to counter setups AND YOU STILL WANT A SHI VEHICLE ON T1?!

Sry, but this ******* rhino was SOOOOO overpowered vs some races and in a 1v1 absolutely game breaking. The lascannon was a cheap anti everything eradicator and the rhino on t2 in general a battle tank light version, which was highly op as well.

i mean, where is the justice? i will only accept that if eldar exarchs are changed against avatars on t1 and the sentinel gets quadro autocannons (not the IG variant, i'm talking about the havoc's OP variant) and 1500hp vehicle armor on t1, cause this is actually the level of balance you are talking about.

People need to abuse T1 smoke grenades more.

enasni127 wrote:NO, NO, NOOO!

Your hero is already able to move straight through setup team fire and survive, your storm troopers can use their nades as counter, operatives can use cloak and stun nades to counter setups AND YOU STILL WANT A SHI VEHICLE ON T1?!

Sry, but this ******* rhino was SOOOOO overpowered vs some races and in a 1v1 absolutely game breaking. The lascannon was a cheap anti everything eradicator and the rhino on t2 in general a battle tank light version, which was highly op as well.

i mean, where is the justice? i will only accept that if eldar exarchs are changed against avatars on t1 and the sentinel gets quadro autocannons (not the IG variant, i'm talking about the havoc's OP variant) and 1500hp vehicle armor on t1, cause this is actually the level of balance you are talking about.

:/

I do believe Cyris makes a good point, whilst the prior patch was heaven for the Rhino it's now back in a position of being sort of crap. The best use I have found in tier one is either use it as mobile cover (literally and smoke grenades), but it doesn't have much health in order to survive this. Next use is as a disrutpion unit. Incredibly risky, but using my COH 2 1337 skillz I drive it up to the enemy lines and literally drive through units to push them around and gain precious seconds of zero return fire. Basically it's a flanking battering ram.

It's also hurt by loosing the Purgation in tier one, driving down to the power farm all snug like Sardines in a can. However I can see with maybe a slight change to Rhinos, and only slight, some Operative synergy shenanigans, as it mitigates the Operative's liability to take large amounts of damage and suppression when in the open.

Max_Damage wrote:Not rly fine. Vs chaos its not really very representative. Chaos has it bad vs walkers. Any replay vs legit race and good players?

Vanilla Chaos Dread is insanely good at the moment. Maybe even too good. Walkers aren't really the main problem for Chaos... I mean you have many tools to deal with walkers... Upgraded Havocs, Plague Marines, Bloodcrusher (ranged walkers), KCSM and melee Raptors (ranged walkers), melta Raptors (ranged and melee walkers), Upgraded Dreadnought, Tanks, Phobos, Autocannon Terminators and even the Blastmaster to some extent. Worshipped Bloodletters aren't horrible against ranged walkers either.

Swiftsabre wrote:It's also hurt by loosing the Purgation in tier one, driving down to the power farm all snug like Sardines in a can. However I can see with maybe a slight change to Rhinos, and only slight, some Operative synergy shenanigans, as it mitigates the Operative's liability to take large amounts of damage and suppression when in the open.

The synergy is bigger than you think. Fallback plan smoke mitigates most of the damage ranged fire can throw even to a T1 rhino whilst both the stun grenade and the banshee nerf offers a good melee deterrent. Of course, the rhino is still a godsend in large maps like Ashes. The only remaining reason to not like the T1 rhino is that it still doesn't allow you to attack-move, so all too often you're going to get shot at and charged at before you can back up (You might argue that attack moving is lazy, but not having it in a fragile unit is an unecessary drain in micro).

I urge people to play around with the synergies the new units offer to the T1 GK roster before they call it out as crap. No, it's no longer the super heavy battering troll it was before, but more of a cheap positional tool which still scales amazingly into T2 - as it's meant to be.

Cheekie Monkie wrote:I urge people to play around with the synergies the new units offer to the T1 GK roster before they call it out as crap. No, it's no longer the super heavy battering troll it was before, but more of a cheap positional tool which still scales amazingly into T2 - as it's meant to be.

Fair points.

First, I have played with it. I did not post this right after the patch hit, I'm a fairly dedicated GK player and have been experimenting with the Rhino for a while. I am not calling it crap across the board, in T2 it's fine as AV or AI option that forces AV against me when I don't plan on ever fielding more vehicles, but it's a T1 unit. A number of factions can get enough ranged fire going in T1 that the unit needs to be exclusively used as a slow webway until T2, and this would be fine if it's cost/stats reflected this (the transport option). When I'm trying to field an army that can hold the map while getting myself to T2 in time, 30 power is simply a bum deal. I occasionally find a use for it in later T1 right before teching up, but this is largely as AV insurance against vehicle rush (BC, Deff).

In no way did I claim I want the old Rhino back, it was OP. However, I think the pendulum has swung too far. The map control I do gain from it's mobility is often negated by the time I waste repairing it with IST. Imagine IG map control if the sentinal took rear hits, had no repair bonus and couldn't decap. And costs 30 power!

Lastly, I would not say it scales amazingly well into T2. It scales sort of averagely (which is above average for GK scaling though!) Assuming you get the armor upgrade and a weapon, it's comparable price to the razorback, but has only 2 seats and can't reinforce. This seems a poor trade for a 25 dps, forward shooting only bolter The AV option does bring versatility, but it is far weaker then it was in 2.3, and the infantry miss-fires don't really do much damage anymore. For a cost of 380/75 (180/30 + 100/15 + 100/30) is it a super-efficient AV squad? Compared to tankbustas, Venom Warriors, melta ST's, las-setup? Does it also provide as much non-AV capabilities as those squads (not counting the setups... but they snare!) Heck, VA is cheaper and arguably better, and psy-purgation are only 30 power.

Cheekie Monkie wrote:People need to abuse T1 smoke grenades more.

I amuse you mean Rhino smoke? I have tried it out in T1, I can not find any real uses for it. I'd love to see some examples of good times to use it, or replays with people using it well (or T1 Rhino in general). The fact that it negates outgoing damage makes it really awkward to use, since my army comps tend to be very ranged focused early on. The cast range is also too short to hit enemy range troops with, and the cast time is a bit long.

enasni127 wrote:Angry injustice.

I explicitly said the old Rhino was OP, I do not want it back, please don't act like that's what I'm asking for. I think in it's current state it is a weak and risky T1 investment of 180/30 that could get me nade laucnhers + gen, or Agies, or SS flamer, or 50 short of a 2nd Ops squad. None of my badly thought out possible changes would bring it even close to it's old strength, and many included a nerf and a buff. For example, 500 SHI is a hair less EHP (effective HP) as 650 HI, but repairs to full faster. It also dies faster to AV and plasma in T2, and removes the awkward fact that sometimes the T2 armor upgrade reduces survivability. Maths:
650 * (1.33) = 864
500 * (1.7) = 850

TL/DR - I'm not coming to these opinions in a vacuum, I have made attempts to use the unit. I'd honestly appreciate tips and replays on how to make the Rhino / Smoke valuable in T1. Rhino used to be OP, now it's UP, and if Ops get proper nerfs in the hotfix, I'm really concerned for the shallowness of GK T1 options (4 units, with 1 being a non-combat transport!).

enasni127 wrote:Your hero is already able to move straight through setup team fire and survive

I find more and more that my hero dies pretty quickly moving through setup team fire these days. I don't know if that reflects some kind of balance change to units, better usage of setup teams from my opponents, just plain bad luck for me, or what.

This is coming from a noob (i.e. shit-level) player, so take it with a grain of salt if not a truckload, but my feedback on the rhino is that it is currently crap. I've tried to use it many times to absolutely no avail, so I don't build it anymore, ever. Just off the top of my head, I'd say remove the power requirement, and make it tougher so that it doesn't die like a fly. Or maybe make its stock T1 weapon better, because it seems to do almost nothing. I dunno, it certainly needs something. It seems all I do in T1 these days is just spam strike squads and try to get to T2 as quickly as possible.