Dawn of War Codex

Hi guys,

I'd consider myself a veteran CoH 1 and 2 player and played a lot of DoW 2 when it was first released on GFWL. I just recently started playing Elite because I didn't actually know about it earlier, else i'd have been playing it a long time ago!

I'm having problems with actually learning the game. It seems immensely micro-manage-y and the biggest problem i'm having is figuring out what units kill what units etc. etc. Checking the forum has given me useful information like the strategy discussions and codex, but can anyone point me to a guide for new players? I also watch Indrid for information.

Thanks.

Watching enough Indrid should help you. I learned this game just from his casts and campaings. Campaing is for basic game mechanics. Indrid is for real multiplayer.

For campaing, I suggest directly roll out with SM (Space Marines), finish SM capaing, then play Ork campaing. Because any new DoW3 will continue from SM campaing ending and need to know what happened. Ork capaing becaseu it is VERY fun to play.

Also, we can help about clear questions like '' How to counter this unit? '' or '' Need new tactic, any ideas? '' But directly wanting game to be explained you know, can not be done like that. We focus on small problems becauseeeeeeeee reasons?

At last; you can watch Maestro casts too. He sometimes get bored from casting match and starts to explains units and talk about them. He might be much much helpful from indrid.

Hey,

I play games every evening with a group of guys ranging from beginners to semi experienced. You are more than welcome to join us if you fancy learning the game with a cool bunch of guys!

We generally just have a couple of games most evenings and you are free to ask questions about any of the units as well as counters, tactics and general gameplay stuff.

Make sure to also read this from the Codex http://www.dawnofwar.info/index.php?pag ... t_glossary ^^.
If you have any questions, just ask. A direct noob guide I don't know, but if you played CoH you should be good to go anyway

Which race do you play, maybe I can find something more specific then.
Here are some general CoH --> DoW tipps:

Melee.
-Melee does BONUS damage to retreating units.
-You can force your rangedunits to enter melee by d-clicking, this is usefull for tying up enemy rangedsquads, especially weaponsteams who get desetup.
-Also use it with Ranged units like Tactical Spacemarines against other ranged units, they are better in melee than most ranged units.
-A unit that gets meleed, can't shoot. (It still can kinda shoot if it runs towards another target). Especially good against setupteams.
-Supression doesn't affect Meleedamage and Speed, but it slows the movement. So it is still beneficial, but way less than against ranged.
-No Pinned.
-All Melee units (and some cheaters like Tactical Marines/Scouts/Havoks) and Heroes have a meleeresistance buff. This means they get 40% less melee damage. So a meleeunit shreds a ranged one, but 2 Meleeunits fighting each other take longer.
-Also, every unit that is in meleecombat, takes 40% less ranged damage (to represent friendlyfire considerations and such.) So, it is important to get fragile melee units into melee as fast as possible, without getting shot at much while walking there.
-Most meleeunits (and Heroes) have a Meleecharge. When you rightclick an enemy squad, and they get in a certain range they get a speedbuff. This way they can't be kited ONCE they ARE in the meleecharge range. You should see the animation if you look. This also allows them to even keep up with retreating squads for a bit. Meleeunits are deadly for retreating enemys.

-Meleeunits have a Meleeskill and MeleeSpecialattacks. (Best to read it up in the codex page I linked) Basically, specials knock enemys around so that they lay on the ground without fighting for a moment. Specials are also mostly AOE. Different units have different Specials. Bascially if you have more meleeskill then the enemy, you will never get specialed. For every point you have over your enemy, you have a 1% higher chance per swing to special your enemy with a base of 5%. When both units have the same Meleeskill, both units have a 5% base chance to special each other. Try to not move through the enemys meleeunits with yours, because when they have the same Skill, they loose 3 or so through moving which makes it way more likely for them to get knocked around.

-Melee does almost nothing against units in Buildings (btw, most buildings have only one exit, so always grenade it). And meleeunits in Buildings can only shoot out with their weak pistols.
-There are 3 notable Melee types, normal melee, power melee and heavy Melee. You can look up the exact modifiers in the Codex, but basically:
Normal melee is the worst, powermelee does increased damage against Heavy Infatry (HI) and a tiny bit agaisnt vehicles, it does the same damage as normal melee agaisnt lightly armored infantry. Heavy Melee does huge damage to Vehicles and still normal against Infantry (but less against HI than Powermelee).
-I think thats all I got for melee


Vehicles:
- Vehicles have Reararmor. AV Weapons always penetrate anywhere, but Reararmor hits have multiplied damage. So its even more important not to expose reararmor.


Economy:
-Units like in CoH, have upkeep and Population.
-Requisition is basically Manpower and Energy fuel. But more early units and upgrades need energy.
-You get Requisition by cappin Req points, the longer you hold them the more they give per minue (max after 1-2 minutes or smth.).
-Energy you get through capturing powernodes, but mainly you need to upgrade those powernodes with Generators (up to 3 per node). You mostly have a natural Power, close to your base, hard to reach for the enemy. At some point you always should have one Node fully build out. Sometimes you build more than that. Depending on the Race, you wait with building them in your buildorder.
-Teching You just have 3 Tiers. The first one is unlocked in the beginning, the second costs 300/125, the third one costs 300/150. Some units get unlock passives when you go to the next Tier, some can buy other upgrades. Same as CoH.

Leveling:
- Your units can reach 4 Levels (except for Terminators, they don't). Everylevel give bonus HP, damage regeneration and most importantly meleeskill. A melee unit that is one level above the same unit of the enemy will destroy that unit totally, because it has then 1 meleeskill more. This means the enemy doesn't special you at all. The specific levelbuffs you can see in the Codex.

The Hero:
-Every Race can choose between 3 Heroes. They are powerfull singlemodel commanders. Depending on the Hero, you have different Globals. You can revive a Hero for 250Req, or in Teamgames Heroes can revive each other. They have 3 Slots, Weapon, Armor and Accesoir. Their Wargears are powerfull. The Base has regeneration for all units, btw you can active autoreinforce by rightclicking the reinforce button. You can also Autobuild units by rightclicking the build button, its usefull for building something as soon as you have the resources, but you have to be carefull not to end up with 2 of the same unit that you didn't want.


-Munitions:
Don't exist in DoW. Instead of throwing a nade for 30 Ammo, you purchase one time the ability to throw nades and then use the units regenerating energy to throw them. Maybe the closest thing is The Red from Orks.

Puh, thats all I got right now

Well perhaps I could lend you a hand if you wanted to talk some time, and maybe you can help me brush up on my CoH 2 skillz.

Snarfindorf wrote:Hi guys,

I'd consider myself a veteran CoH 1 and 2 player and played a lot of DoW 2 when it was first released on GFWL. I just recently started playing Elite because I didn't actually know about it earlier, else i'd have been playing it a long time ago!

I'm having problems with actually learning the game. It seems immensely micro-manage-y and the biggest problem i'm having is figuring out what units kill what units etc. etc. Checking the forum has given me useful information like the strategy discussions and codex, but can anyone point me to a guide for new players? I also watch Indrid for information.

Thanks.

Hey Snarfindorf, I'm in the same boat as I come from CoH (w/ Blitzkrieg) too. Sci-fi units don't have the benefit of historical understanding and I find do take longer to learn as we can't leverage our existing knowledge. I started a similar thread a while back and ended up making myself a chart to help learn the units and their counters. I think perhaps you'd find this useful too.

You can find my chart in the "Army overviews for new players" thread. Hope that helps!

Psiborg wrote:

Snarfindorf wrote:Hi guys,

I'd consider myself a veteran CoH 1 and 2 player and played a lot of DoW 2 when it was first released on GFWL. I just recently started playing Elite because I didn't actually know about it earlier, else i'd have been playing it a long time ago!

I'm having problems with actually learning the game. It seems immensely micro-manage-y and the biggest problem i'm having is figuring out what units kill what units etc. etc. Checking the forum has given me useful information like the strategy discussions and codex, but can anyone point me to a guide for new players? I also watch Indrid for information.

Thanks.

Hey Snarfindorf, I'm in the same boat as I come from CoH (w/ Blitzkrieg) too. Sci-fi units don't have the benefit of historical understanding and I find do take longer to learn as we can't leverage our existing knowledge. I started a similar thread a while back and ended up making myself a chart to help learn the units and their counters. I think perhaps you'd find this useful too.

You can find my chart in the "Army overviews for new players" thread. Hope that helps!

I just got around to reading the thread and I think you just reignited my interest in Elite. I was about to give up.

Lichtbringer wrote:-Melee does almost nothing against units in Buildings (btw, most buildings have only one exit, so always grenade it). And meleeunits in Buildings can only shoot out with their weak pistols.

Ironically. IRL building clearing is probably a major opportunity for close range/melee.

What about attacking buildings themselves (I.e. gen bashing) ? When I looked at the codex, it looked like the best dps for T1 eldar (against light building armor) was banshees (a melee squad). This might easily be modified in way unexpected to me though; I've spent more time reading the codex than playing.

Yeah, Eldar don't really have good gen bash tools in T1, Banshees probably being the best. Dire Avengers are decent as well.

Melee doesn't really do anything to buildings, but on the other hand anything that has melee splash will damage units in buildings when you hit them (e.g. walkers).

Unless you are playing the Warlock who can purchase the Immolator. It does quite a number on Gens too iirc.

Generators are different from garrison-buildings.
In general garrisons can get damaged, so that they collapse and kill everything in it. Most of the time this is only achieved by the SM Orbital (high damage), or the Nids Globalnuke which insta kills buildings as a special bonus.

Generators have Building_light armor.
The highest damage against those types are flamers or Melta weapons.

Direavengers piercing does x0,5 damage against it, Banshees powermelee only x0,25. Still banshees as a Meleesquad have higer dps and do in the end 6,73dps per model while DAs do 4,38.
I like to bash with Banshees, if they are hitting the gens they get in meleecombat resistance (40% reduced damage from Ranged) and can finish the last 30% or so off even if under fire. It also puts them in nice flanking positions and they can hold their own against lonely squads mostly. I also don't like how much they bleed in other Situations and its an OK way to level them a bit.
While we have no Flamers as Eldar, 3 DAs do quite the number on Gens anyway.

The Warlocks immolator that was mentioned is sadly not effective agaisnt Generators. It does ability flame damage )= http://www.dawnofwar.info/elite/damaget ... bility_pvp .That means it only gets a x1,5 modifer against generators. Which puts it at 157,5 damage which is around 5 seconds of banshees hitting it.
The immolator has a great damage type against enemy turrets though with a x5 multiplyer and can 1 hit them if they don't get repaired.
Tactical SM Flamers have the x5 damage not only against Turrets but also against Generators.

A good tactic for a bash are Gates though. In T1 you can use them to bring Banshees behind the enemy gens, but you should retreat them normally, and don't run towards your gate, it will reveal its position. Another option is to hold off untill T2, then Bash with a Brighlance or Firedragons when you see the enemy is pushing you. Brightlance or Firedragons destroy the whole enemy farm with ease. It has also helped me greatly with the dual purpose of getting AV on the enemys rear armor, or just having an AV squad in the enemys vehicle retreatpath after the infantry has retreated back to base.
Another good option is the Falcon in T2. You can either send him alone there (maybe with a Banshee squad inside to cover his retreat/ defend him agaisnt a single AV squad), his pulselaser bashes really fast and his speed allows him to outmanouver AV sqauds and keep your enemy running. Or you use his field presence and reinforcement to make a decisive push against the Generators with your whole Army.

What is "counter-initiation"?

"Counter-initiation" is usually used in DoW2 to describe a situation in which your opponent attacks you with a melee unit, and you have the ability to shut down that melee assault, usually with another, superior melee unit.

So for example, ASM jump your Shuriken Platform, and you have banshees right behind it to counter-initiate the ASM and force them away.

Lichtbringer wrote:-Supression doesn't affect Meleedamage and Speed, but it slows the movement. So it is still beneficial, but way less than against ranged.

Wait-a unit attacked by melee must also melee. E.g. banshees
But suppression e.g. warshout doesn't debuff meleeing targets except movement speed, and finally, fall-back breaks suppression.

So what use is war shout? It might suppress more ranged targets than the banshees can force into melee, but then you're sending an upgraded unit against an outnumbering blob. Perhaps you could use it to bypass a ranged squad to go behind enemy lines.

destructomat wrote:Wait-a unit attacked by melee must also melee. E.g. banshees
But suppression e.g. warshout doesn't debuff meleeing targets except movement speed, and finally, fall-back breaks suppression.

So what use is war shout? It might suppress more ranged targets than the banshees can force into melee, but then you're sending an upgraded unit against an outnumbering blob. Perhaps you could use it to bypass a ranged squad to go behind enemy lines.

You shouldn't be sending the Banshees into a superior blob alone unless you really, really need to stall. All it will do is cause your Banshees to not be on the field for a larger engagement. And even just causing Fall Back is a victory. It means your opponent has less potential to contest the map, and less potency in engagements.

You can use War Shout for a lot of things. If you get your banshees into a ranged blob, you can use that to start a favorable engagement in which your ranged squads can deal damage to the enemy without taking ranged damage back. The Banshees will also do a lot of knockback to the ranged squads which could potentially domino knockback models in other squads, and will kill a lot of models in squishy squads as well.

It can also be used to deter or stall melee squads. If you move your Banshees in the path of a melee squad, War Shout in range of them to suppress, and then immediately back away so you don't take damage, it leaves the other melee squad very vulnerable, or can allow you to set up a more defensible position with the time you've gained slowing them down.

It's important to note also that units need to move in order to get into position in melee fights. It doesn't matter much against smaller melee squads, but with squishy squads like Sluggas, if they are not all attacking at once and need to move around to find an open position to attack a Banshee model, the slow movement increases the time it takes to get there, and reduces the effective damage output of the squad.

destructomat wrote:

Lichtbringer wrote:-Supression doesn't affect Meleedamage and Speed, but it slows the movement. So it is still beneficial, but way less than against ranged.

Wait-a unit attacked by melee must also melee. E.g. banshees
But suppression e.g. warshout doesn't debuff meleeing targets except movement speed, and finally, fall-back breaks suppression.

So what use is war shout? It might suppress more ranged targets than the banshees can force into melee, but then you're sending an upgraded unit against an outnumbering blob. Perhaps you could use it to bypass a ranged squad to go behind enemy lines.

What Windu said about moving into melee. Also, Banshees really don't need enemy rangedsquads to be weaker in melee, they shred them anyway with almost no loses.
You need the Warshout now especially because Banshees have no longer a melee-charge. This means, Rangedsquads can kite them forever without taking significant damage. Warshout guarantees a retreat from an enemy rangedsquad.
Other uses are surpressing the enemy meleesquad and then attacking their setupteams. Or just surpressing and running away and letting rangedfire do the rest. For example the Forcecomander wrecks them in Melee with his warcry and always knockback. But they can surpress him untill your Shuriken is setup or just wait the Warcry buff out. This tactic even helps agaisnt Assaultmarines with Seargent, because of his knockback/damage Aoe attack you might just want to surpress them and run your banshees away and shoot them down. Keep in mind that if you don't engage them in melee, they also wont get the 40% ranged damage reduction.

If you manage to get them into a big Rangedblob, he can't split up and kite you. This way they can bind up more than one squad (if you get them there :/)

Also very important, they prevent runbys. If you surpress the enemy meleesquads that want to kill your ranged/setupteam, you don't have to insta retreat them, you can just move them a bit further back.

So:
-stall for time against Meleesquads that are stronger then them so that your ranged units can run away/ shoot them good.
-keep the enemy from running away/through you.
-stall for time against melee and rangedsquads while you hack up enemy Setupteams.
-use it as a setupslow for things like grenades.
-gain a slight advantage against meleesquads. For example if a Strikesquads special attacks a model from you away he normally would smack your poor banshee while she is on the floor. This way he will slooowly run behind her while she gets up, and maybe even other banshee models smack the Strikesquad.
-You might not want to use it when your enemy isn't paying attention to the squad the banshees are attacking, the enemy can hear their howl on the whole map.
-if you are against 2 Meleesquads, use it on one and hit the other one.