Dawn of War Codex

Hi all,

was in a game vs Manbearpig and I decided to give the terminator FC a whirl. was against IG so I got the heavy flamer for him. used cleansing flame vs generators, boom, no problem.

Manbearpig responded with 2 squads of plasma GM. I turn my heavy flamer on them to realized the standard attack it does absolutely nothing.

after maybe about 10 seconds he had taken down 1/5th of their health. no model losses.

in the end my t3 terminator FC with his expensive heavy flamer got forced off by 2 plasma gm. is it working as intended for the FC's heavy flamer to do as much damage as scout bolters?

tldr. cleansing flame works fine. anyone else notice the standard attack does nothing?

Plasma damage on the GM is the only thing they are good at. They are anti HI/Hero, so you need to approach them with something other than just your FC to give him time to do some damage. Also, use Cleansing Flames to kill the entire IG army in under 4 seconds.

his point is that it seemed very ineffective.

or are you referring to the standard flame attack?

referring to the generators, you killed them or you didn't?

cleansing flame worked fine.

the normal attack on the heavy flamer did diddly squat. that is my point. It seemed to do a fraction of the damage even flamer tacs do

I always thought the damage on the flamer should be increased, and the damage on cleansing flame decreased, as it is now by the time he gets termi armor and flamer there's nothing much that will be damaged by it, you pretty much get it for the ability alone.

My suggestion? Use him as a melee commander (his power fist does 85 heavy melee) while the ability is on cooldown-

Lag wrote:Plasma damage on the GM is the only thing they are good at. They are anti HI/Hero, so you need to approach them with something other than just your FC to give him time to do some damage. Also, use Cleansing Flames to kill the entire IG army in under 4 seconds.

2 Guardsman squads should not be able to stand up against a FC terminator with a big ass flamer. A T3 commander that costs a shit ton of resources with a specialized anti-infantry ranged weapon should not lose vs 2 Gaurdsman ever.
And yes Cleansing Flame will kill your army if you cuddle up nice and close in 1 spot.

If you look at the wiki's the damage on that thing should be higher than the damage that a tac flamer does. But, as stated above, seems to do only a fraction of what a normal flamer does. A slight increase in damage or fix would be nice.


Could it have something to do with the splash?
Heavy Flamer: "Splash damage in radius 4"
Tac Flamer: "Full splash damage in radius 5 circle"

Source wiki. So not sure how accurate or up to date this is.

Dark Riku wrote:2 Guardsman squads should not be able to stand up against a FC terminator with a big ass flamer. A T3 commander that costs a shit ton of resources with a specialized anti-infantry ranged weapon should not lose vs 2 Gaurdsman ever.
And yes Cleansing Flame will kill your army if you cuddle up nice and close in 1 spot. [/u]"

Source wiki. So not sure how accurate or up to date this is.

Every hero gets raped quickly by double fully upgraded and leveled GM squads. As I said - dealing with HI and heroes is the only thing they are good at once they get their plasmas and levels. Other than that they are just cannon fodder. Try engaging two GM squads with plasmas with a Tac Flamer and see if they do better than a FC in Termi suit.

In my experience the FC Flamer does really almost nothing.

Far less than the regular Terminator Flamer, (unless I'm hallucinating).
It looks really strange, he just fires away at really light, squishy blobbed, targets... and nothing happens.

But if it was me to decide, I wouldnt have given him the HFlamer as an option to begin with.

It is weaker that the termie squad lamer at least in terms of dps and it has a way higher dps than tact lamer. It might be as Riku already stated that the splash is what screws it up and makes it do jack shit.

(1) Tac flamer
(2) Termie heavy flamer
(3) FC heavy flamer

yeah that doesn't seem right at all. i mean you sacrifice some pretty cool wargear options when going fc terminator. including the fantastic thunder hammer.

I have never really been a huge fan of the terminator ranged upgrades , for either the the squad or the fc upgrade . they all seem like over priced and lack that certain wow factor that one would except from them.

^Actually you sacrifice all of your levels, aswell as the possibility to level past 4, you also lose commander armor and gain Heavy Infantry Armor.

Since when can he level to 4? :p
He can't level at all anymore when he gets the armor ^^

You sure? I remember pretty well that he can level up as a normal unit up to level 4

The heavy flamer options have always been screwed up if I recall correctly. I think the termie squad heavy flamer has no splash. If it actually did the listed damage (44 dps) in a radius it would utterly annihilate infantry in seconds - if you hit four models at once you'd be doing 170+ dps for just the flamer model alone (~230 dps for the whole squad). If you hit something in heavy cover for x2.5 the damage... granted it has been a long time since I've used flamer termies.

Lulgrim, dowcodex lists the AOE distances for short/long/medium/distant as 6 for the tac flamer and 30 for both the termie flamers. The damage modifier is listed as 1 for each AOE distance increment but I wonder if the massive difference between the splash radius (5) and the AOE distance increment (30) is screwing with the termie flamers somehow.

edit: this terminology i.e. "AOE distance increment" is a bit fucked. If it isn't making sense, follow lulgrim's links and scroll down to the bottom of each one to see what I'm talking about.

final edit: the wiki does not list a splash at all for the termie squad flamer, FWIW

in his defense he does become a beast all rounder, 2500 hp of anything on a single model regardless of armor is nothign to scoff at and he does do fair melee damage with the fist and ranged damage with the storm bolter. And he gets the tele.

but the wargear options post upgrade are kind of a joke with exception maybe of power claws.

but the wargear options post upgrade are kind of a joke with exception maybe of power claws.

Wut? The claws are probably the worst of all the wargear you can get to FC. I mean 85dps heavy melee with a good ranged attack is generally superior to having 70 dps power melee even if it is with splash. Heavy Lamer still pretty much rapes gen farms and late game req starvation is pretty common so wiping gen farms constantly can be an issue. The AC gives him good burst damage with a good range. It is basically the same as dread AC without the ability.

And I do not think FC with termie armor could level in Retail or in Elite.

i think the terminator flamethrowers could use a look; they clearly got missed in the flamer rebalance because they still have range 20 and do no courage damage.

personally, i don't see any reason for cleansing flames to exist; it's a flamethrower ability on a flamethrower which normally attacks as a flamethrower. the CL's combi-flamer could easily get away with just doing the aoe attack and not normally being a flamethrower since combi-weapons only have a small amount of secondary ammunition.

FC terminator armor is usually a bad investment, esp if your FC has levels and/or is kitted out with wargear.
you can do all the things the FC termie can do as the regular FC pretty well, with the obvious exception of long ranged dakka.

And no, the FC termie cannot level at all. Not even to level four.

Terminator FC cannot level. Terminator FC flamer does not need any buff. Terminator armor is an excellent purchase as long as your strategy is to get to T3 and buy it.

Asmon wrote:Terminator FC cannot level. Terminator FC flamer does not need any buff. Terminator armor is an excellent purchase as long as your strategy is to get to T3 and buy it.

Could u explain why the Terminator FC flamer doesn't need a buff? I mean just saying that it doesn't need one, doesn't offer anything to the conversation at hand.

And no the Terminator armor is lackluster, u spend 200 req and 100 energy for a t3 armor, granted u get 2500 hp and a teleport. But afaik the teleport cooldown is longer compared to the normal teleporter, the powerfist doesn't have a the awesome flesh over steel ability, the lightning claws are a joke compared to the thunder hammer, u can't buff your army with a banner. You are slow as shit with the cumbersome terminator armor.

Right now you only get the Terminator Armor to show your enemy that u can afford it to get a lackluster wargear because u already won the game.

the main point is that it's pathetic damage against everything (cleansing flame aside) is ridiculous considering you have to spend so much to get this piece of wargear.

you get a single model termi squad with 2500 health that cannot die and is reinforced for 250 req. pretty good but maybe not better than the standard FC.

I get the impression Relic were trying to copy table top where you lay down a "template" on an area with the heavy flamer

Also, the current set up adds risk to playing the FC (or flamer terminator squad). You get one shot and then you have to back off. If you use up all your energy you are vulnerable and cant teleport out of a bad spot

Not trying to win the "bleeding obvious" award here, just pointing out that this was probably a deliberate balance decision in order to give a time window during which the opponent could do some damage safely to the terminator FC.

If you want to change this you are going to have to re-think all the counters to terminators with flamer.

Actually you get:

- 1180 more health
- suppression immunity
- knockback immunity
- a 34 dps ranged weapon
- an 85 dps heavy melee weapon
- a teleporter

for buying that one upgrade. Sure it's expensive (do we still have the old prices?) but wanna estimate how much that sort of kit would be worth when bought separately? Even if the weapons come with no ability and the armor type changes (which actually gives even more effective hp against small arms fire), it's really not a bad setup.

Back in the day you were laughed at for buying the TA... Until the price was lowered in Ret. Then everybody was buying it and one for their cat and nobody called 'em noob anymore. The stats didn't change at all (AC got a buff later I think). It was just as effective in CR, including the generator / HQ turret cheese.

Overall the basic setup is solid as-is, if you need that sort of thing in your roster. It cannot be very cheap either. But the HF does cost 70 (seventy!) power... The default attack must be good for that sort of cost, in T3, for a weapon meant to pwn light infantry.

Generally I think AC should have an active ability and I kinda like the hammer & shield idea for him and I don't think the weapons should cost quite that much.

Well in Chaos Rising version 1 or whatever it was called, everyone hated playing against the TA with lightning claws because they where insanely op (good old FC days) .
And even in ret u only got the TA for the flamer gen cheese, not because it was particularly good against infantry.

About the prices, I'm not sure, but the terminator armor costs 200 req and 100 power and even though u posted a link to the dow wiki thingy with the stats and all, it still feels kinda weak compared to the other flamers.

Btw. any words or maybe an eta if those abilities u are talking about will be implemented?

Kinda off topic: I think the FC lightning claws need some love, because they just don't cut it, either make em stronger (how about some good old splash damage) , cheaper or give em an ability. I prefer the splash damage idea tbh.

If I had anything to say in the matter ( Im usually glad I dont )

I'd take away heavy flamer and assault cannon, (those just shouldnt be commander wargear) and give him something that actually makes sense.

Like a CombiWeapon or a Powersword.

The Terminator TerminatorFC in his curent form just feels rushed, and lazily implemented. It doesnt help that didnt even get his own model.

I'm really amazed that in all these years no modder/modeller seemed to do anything about it

*sigh*

Edith: sry, I went offtopic

Two things.

1. The FC teleport when he is in terminator armor costs no energy. Both battlecry and cleansing flame are 50 energy, but the teleport costs NO energy.


2. Just tested the FC termie flamer.

There is clearly a glitch going on with it. It didn't seem to do any splash damage to a guardsmen squad of 10 models.
They took 20 damage per second. Not twenty damage per model, twenty damage to the entire squad overall.

The same thing happened to a heavy weapons team: the flamer was clearly hitting three models, and it only was doing 20 dps to the whole squad.

I know the flamer got toned down in elite, but completely removing its splash damage seems rather extreme.
Can this be fixed in the next beta?

You get a lot from the Terminator upgrade Lulgrim agreed.

But you usually don't have the time to wait till T3 and you will get upgrades on your FC during the course of them game when you need it.
In my experience a fully kitted out FC outperforms the terminator variant.
Unless in a 3v3 game where he is on capping duty under fire :p

That being said, I think the flamer's normal dps should do a lot more than what it does now. Almost no dps on such an expensive wargear that you can only get after a very expensive wargear that strips your FC of all previous upgrades seems very lackluster.

Orkfaeller wrote:If I had anything to say in the matter ( Im usually glad I dont )

I'd take away heavy flamer and assault cannon, (those just shouldnt be commander wargear) and give him something that actually makes sense.

Like a CombiWeapon or a Powersword.

The Terminator TerminatorFC in his curent form just feels rushed, and lazily implemented. It doesnt help that didnt even get his own model.

I'm really amazed that in all these years no modder/modeller seemed to do anything about it

*sigh*

Edith: sry, I went offtopic

It always struck me as odd tha the FC terminator was just another terminator, but oh well a lot of stuff in DoW2 is not very fluff friendly, I'd like to see a proper model with the right wargear though, still, for just one piece of wargear it might be too much work, maybe Shuma made something? I remember him making a nurgle variant of the terminator armour for the PC so I think he might also have made something for the FC.