Dawn of War Codex

I was just remembering good old days of retail with lvling terminators, 500 req tacs and all that stuff. I remember there were a lot of nerfs to TFC heavy flamer that had only one purpouse: backdoor gen bashing (not like in retail ranked anything else happened except backdooring ) and now my beloved TFC that i still not really like cost efficiency off sits with 18 flame DPS heavy flamer that costs 70 power. And for a damn good reason. I hated those backdooring fegs so much that i left retail just because of them. BUT!...

...The times of good ol' retail have passed and stuff happened. Like chaos rising stuff and retrib stuff and elite stuff. I look back at the changes to make ppl stop gen faggery and here is what i see. Godly genbasher FC will still cost you 270/170(+cost of ur wasted wargear). If u willing to spend that much just to bash, go ahead. But why SM were so punished for that? Orks still have mega rumblah, that costs 150/50, insta wipes gens and is on much faster teleporting commander. And pleg champion has his bile spewer that is a flamer, has just 7 dps less but is t1, costs 100/25, slows and has super slowing ability. Yea, he is not teleporting and doesnt have 2500 hp but he can heal, he can suppress, he can slow, he can knock back, he is faster, he can bash in t1, he can throw super hurty grenades, and he is not doing it wearing his HI pants in t3.

If all the other factions nowdays have so gud bashing options why poor TFC still so nerfed? I already made a thread about some TFC tweaks and if no1 liked that, np, i aint gonna make 9000 more like some ppl Yet what about heavy flamer? Nerfs lost their purpouse a few years ago. How about beefing up that HF to make TFC more appealing? 70/40 with 44 flame DPS like other termies would be 2gud since he can retreat retreat unlike normal termies (not like ppl gonna be shoked nowdays after seeing retreating terminator tho ) but beefing up damage or reducing the cost (or both) will be welcome

Ahhh good old days where Orbitals were 800 red...

TFC Flamer ability was the reason it was BS in retail since only way to prevent the bash was to use ability KB. And the ability wiped a full genfarm in 3 seconds iirc.

The flamer dps was less of a problem then so I suppose one could give the Heavy Lamer a 10% damage buff or something.

Ability was nerfed too btw. A little. Yet i dont feel like 18 flame dps and 25 dps ability is really 270/170 stuff. 50% more flaming power for 450% cost on a fat slow teleporting platform that replaces godlike powerfull commander? eh

The ability is still painful. It just demolishes all things infantry.

Iirc the only nerf the ability got was the damage type to ability_flame so that it doesn't instabash farms anymore. I might be wrong here though.

TFC armor is niche as it is and it has 3 weapon options from which AC is the safe one and LC/HF are the more situational ones.

Termi flamers are crushingly powerful as is against any swarmy races. Can't really get behind any desires to buff em...

I'm less certain of the differences between the FC and "normal" termies versions of the flamer. The ability to bash gens aside, the active skill will pretty much delete light T1 infantry still around, retreat or not: teleport up, flame them all.

Cyris wrote:Termi flamers are crushingly powerful as is against any swarmy races. Can't really get behind any desires to buff em...

I'm less certain of the differences between the FC and "normal" termies versions of the flamer. The ability to bash gens aside, the active skill will pretty much delete light T1 infantry still around, retreat or not: teleport up, flame them all.

There is no problem with termi flamers. They are godlike. The problem is with TFC one that costs 4.25 times more and deals 2.4 times less dps. Abilities are the same but buying most expensive armor in game that is not that great and then getting the most expensive weapon in game just in case u need to roast 1 or 2 GM squads with ability and then force melee all the time with ur default powerfist? Meh. If it had more base damage and maybe less ability damage, it would've been much less situational.

I wouldnt call terminators' heavy flamer much less situational since i know that even if i roast some tacs, i still get tons of damage on them and even more if they decide to take cover which they usualy do

@Cyris:

FC Flamer does 18dps flame and the ability does 25dps ability_flame

Terminator Flamer does 44 dps and the ability 30dps flame

Terminator flamer is a lot better than the FC one. FC flamer is a lot less risky. No pop cost, retreat 250 req repurchase or just a teamie res. A smallish power cost reduction or a minor damage buff is all I would do to buff it. Not sure it even needs a buff though.

Nurland wrote:@Cyris:

FC Flamer does 18dps flame and the ability does 25dps ability_flame

Terminator Flamer does 44 dps and the ability 30dps flame

Terminator flamer is a lot better than the FC one. FC flamer is a lot less risky. No pop cost, retreat 250 req repurchase or just a teamie res. A smallish power cost reduction or a minor damage buff is all I would do to buff it. Not sure it even needs a buff though.

Normal termies can't teleport to your gens, burn the farm in seconds and then just retreat like fc. Altho that may have been nerfed in elite?

Toilailee wrote:Normal termies can't teleport to your gens, burn the farm in seconds and then just retreat like fc. Altho that may have been nerfed in elite?

It was. Ability does flame_AoE_ability damage that has 150% damage to gens and not 500% like flame damage. Unique damage type of combi flamer and FC's flame ability so it takes some time to burn gens down. So:
1) The ability to instantly burn gens was removed
2) Other factions still have such ability and much cheaper and/or earlier so no unique SMOPNERF effect here
3) Heavy Flamer has nerfed damage, nerfed ability damage and nerfed ability damage type
4) Requires not that great armor
5) Is close ranged weapon on slow commadner with poopy armor type to have in t3 (idea of single-use FC with teleport+ability+retreat isnt really worth the trouble imo)
6) Costs 270/170+cost of wargear that u lose

A questionable choise of gen bashing tool if u ask me.


P.S. Im not saying that it should be 44 dps with 70/40 cost like terminator one. I'm not the numbers guy but 30 flame DPS with 100/50 cost would make it worthwhile (not being able to level and increase damage should probably be included in base damage). Damage almost the same as with ability but ability recharges, locks u in place and deals more AoE. Also costing the same as assault cannon, it trades range and single target damage for damage to squads with 90 flame dps to 3 man squads should make it kind of capable even vs power armored races. And if ppl want to pay 300/150 just to get a gen bashing tool, i guess they should get smth better than 2 teleporting tac flamers in place of commander.

30 dps flamer would make the Termie FC almost the same genbashing bullshit it is in retail.

I would buff it to 20 dps at first (IF it needs buffs in the first place) and see where that lands us.

There is a lot of gen bashing bullshit that came from retrib. But for some reason some mega rumblas or banewolves dont cost 170 power to get. And TFC that only has 3 wargear has one weapon that is nerfed to stone just because it could be a strong option for those who want to spend land raider worth of power on gen bashing. When was the last time u saw TFC with heavy flamer? Its been a year since I joined elite community and i saw it twice (both times roasting triple gm)

It is the most expensive weapon in the game atm. And its so situational that in some cases it deals even less damage than his default storm bolter. I even doubt it would be a popular choise of wargear even if it was 30 power and not 70.

In the world with crushing claw tyrants, corrosive devourer raveners, hgds warp spiders, holy braziers etc. The most expensive weapon in entire game should probably sound more appealing than 18 dps because "it could be too strong".
I agree that it was a very good gen bashing tool in vanilla though in vanilla ranked gen bashing was the only point of the game and teamfights were much much less common than just probing around and trying to sneak in to generators. But the times of tryhards have passed and now ppl actually try to enjoy the game and not just ignore everything with the sole purpouse of genbashing. It was a strong option and many heroes have very strong wargear choices. But just because it was annoying, HF was nerfed to near-uselessness vs factions that not swarm light infantry in t3, ability got its own damage type to prevent gen bashing with ability and just to be sure a price tag of 70/70 was slapped on top of it, in case some1 will still try to do that.

Why you always sayin' "170 power for flamethrower" ? You pay 100 power for SHI 2500 HP retreating terminator with powerfist in first place, then you pay additional 70 power to replace thunderbolter with flamethrower that both good vs nodes and nids or IG blobs. So in the end you got SHI 1 model retreating terminator with 2.5k hp with effective vs all targets powerfist and effective vs certain targets flamethrower that also can bash power. And yea, he can also teleport. Nothing similar with banewolf

DandyFrontline wrote:Why you always sayin' "170 power for flamethrower" ? You pay 100 power for SHI 2500 HP retreating terminator with powerfist in first place, then you pay additional 70 power to replace thunderbolter with flamethrower that both good vs nodes and nids or IG blobs. So in the end you got SHI 1 model retreating terminator with 2.5k hp with effective vs all targets powerfist and effective vs certain targets flamethrower that also can bash power. And yea, he can also teleport. Nothing similar with banewolf

1) It is not SHI. It is heavy infantry which is not really to your advantage in t3. He gets almost twice the damage from anti space maine waepons and gets more damage from some anti all weapons. And since you are playing space marines enemy usualy have those by the time of not that early t3. Artificier+iron halo FC is even tankier than TFC, does not cost 200/100 and retains all the FC stuff
2) It cant level and has single target special attack with less damage than normal attack
3) You lose all the buffing from force commander which he have a lot of, you lose speed, you lose disruption. So all the things FC good in are lost (except being a bullet sponge)
4) Teleporter and powerfist u get are worse than FC ones because FC can level and scale the damage and melee skill and teleporter has less range and longer cooldown

He becomes a very good bullet sponge, that has some good dps. Who can also teleport and retreat (a.k.a) unkillable.

That alone is a very powerful upgrade. IMHO.

The Non-Terminator options are better if your FC is leveled up enough.

But if you don't have levels or haven't invested in FC, the Termie armor does a lot for the price.

Only tweaks I think TFC could get is that he could level up with no or very minor hp increases but could at least get the melee skill increase and maybe the damage bonuses + extra energy.

Those would also make the Flamer better due to his enhanced melee capabilities and improved energy pool + small damage buff with leveling.

I don't understand why you want to give the flamer an insane damage buff + cost reduction. You do realise that most stuff in this game that has gotten similar treatment have become insanely OP (remember FD?).

Nurland wrote:The Non-Terminator options are better if your FC is leveled up enough.

But if you don't have levels or haven't invested in FC, the Termie armor does a lot for the price.

Only tweaks I think TFC could get is that he could level up with no or very minor hp increases but could at least get the melee skill increase and maybe the damage bonuses + extra energy.

Those would also make the Flamer better due to his enhanced melee capabilities and improved energy pool + small damage buff with leveling.

I don't understand why you want to give the flamer an insane damage buff + cost reduction. You do realise that most stuff in this game that has gotten similar treatment have become insanely OP (remember FD?).

FDs can be spammed and have relatively low cost. There is not so much problems with 1 FD or 1 Ops hitting the field. The problem is in spamming them. And u cant 4 TFCs on the field. U get only 1 unit. And even if flamer cost will go down to 50, it will still remain the most expensive weapon in the game power-wise (at least i dont remember 50+ power weapons ) And those weapons that actually cost 50 power (not talking about BC's ones) do tremendous impact on how commanders perform. CL's lightning claws, WB's power claw, HT's crushing talons, LC's fist of brockus. Do you feel that flamer as it is does 40% more than those? I dont.

Even if we dont count the cost of FC's HI pants in t3, what is the reason to go for heavy flamer? There is assault cannon that costs 50 power, does suppression, has good range, has no scatter damage and does 60 dps? Unless you play vs IG flamer has no use at all, it will just perform even worse than storm bolter for a tremendous cost. Even gen bashing is easier with assault cannon since u can do it from safe distance and walk back a bit if you get threatened. U get about the same damage for 40% more cost, no bleed potential, always put your crappily armored TFC in danger that has almost no hp regen and low speed, ability that will probably be your only source of ranged damage (since it usualy better to just hit smth with powerfist rather than try to flame it) once in 45 seconds yet can be walked out of with enough hp to tank it for 2 seconds (i dont think you will use it for full 30 seconds of time at all)

I agree that ability should've been nerfed, it was very powerful as with genbashing so with teleport+flame on some IG/ork blobs. But the flamer itself is so not worth it in 95% games i play. It is not comparable to its ability. The flamer has AoE radius 4 and ability has 15, ability has 25 dps and flamer has 18. There is no reason in that flamer except that ability, the weapon itself very rarely performs better than storm bolter. And what i want not to give it insane buffs + cost reducion to make it t3 game ender. I want players to look at FC and think "I think spending my res on terminator armor and flamer going to be better idea than buying other t3 stuff or upgrading stuff" Because now its more like "Oh, im in t3 with huge resource advantage, vs IG that goes triple GM and is not LC with fist of brockus or inq that will probably not make any tanks, on small map, dont have enough red for real terminators, with lvl1 FC that has no wargear and i dont need to build or upgrade any units so i can spend a small army worth of resources to flame down a few guardsmen. What a lucky coincedence".

Look at FC now, every wargear has its purpouse, every wargear is flexible, any wargear could be bought vs any opponent and have great effect (except probably some rare occasions like shield vs melee spam orks or nids). Except terminator armor. Have you ever seen geared up TFC making so much impact that it paid for itself?

P.S. Didnt cael said that he will never let any terminator variant to lvl up no matter the bonuses?

If Cael said so, then that's how it is at least for now. The game is evolving and things change so if we go through some changes that warrant it, Termies might get some love in the form of leveling.

FD are OP as fuck even when there is one on the field. There is no going around that one. Same goes for Ops. They just become impossible to deal with en masse but both still overperform even with one squad out.

TFC is easily worth it when you haven't invested much in your hero. I play a style where I like to kit out heroes with multiple wargears so I rarely do TFC.

I don't see a reason why it should be a viable choice in most occasions. It is not like FC doesn't have options for different situations. Why would he need more wargear that would be a great all around wargear.

Giving huge buffs to a wargear/unit is rarely s good idea. Better to buff it a bit (i.e. give a smallish cost reduction or damage buff and see where that leaves us).

Well, big changes could be either very good or very bad. So i guess small steps are the safer variant, I totally agree with that. As i said im not a balance guy so whatever cael thinks will fit. The idea was to show reasoning behind such a suggestion, not to propouse numbers. And the reasoning was a bit lost in all that discussing so here is in a nutshell version:

*You must first buy t3 200/100 (most expensive armor in the game plus cost of previous wargear) that has cewl weapons and a bit worse teleport
*You must pay 70/70 (most expensive weapon in the game) more for a weapon that has radius 4 AoE and 18 flame damage, half the bolter range, good ability with radius 15 damage and 25 dps.
*This weapon is on slow (but sometimes teleporting) medium sized, huge HP, tiny regen commander with armor type that recives much more damage from all that melee, power melee, plasma, grenade, inferno, psychic etc. Damage types that flood the t3 and you are a space marine player.
*You spend land raider worth of power on a unit with flamer that works only vs light inf spam only because of its ability (You can just buy terminators that have more damage, tankiness, regen, cheaper and better upgrades (but no retreating))
*Even if u really want to gear up TFC, there is assault cannon that has 250% more range, 60 single target dps with no scatter damage, and costs less which is better for bleeding models, better for keeping fragile fatty safe, more cost efficient, even bashes gens not worse cuz of sheer damage and safe distance
*Idea behind damage nerfs was to not have insta gen bash stuff that only space marines have but now many factions have those and space marine's one is nerfed to death (Ability damage type and damage nerf were totally needed imo)

The standard attack was bugged in retail so it did no AoE. It is actually better than in Retail due to that. The ability still wipes farms fairly fast.

I don't see the Heavy Flamer really underperforming very much but it could maybe get some love without being OP as hell. Gonna do some testing here.

The standard attack could get a better AoE radius since 4 is rather small and/or slight damage buff like 10-15%

70/70 is not really any more expensive than 200/50. If anything, I feel like it is cheaper since req is anyway more of a limiting factor in the later stages of the game. And losing previous wargear is a tradeoff of the Termie Armor itself, not the Heavy Flamer.

Well, I usualy view most of the wargear as "cheaper than buying actual units but can make some impact". All the TFC stuff including armor itself is not really cheaper than buying actual units and does not make as much impact as buying actual units. And even spending 200 req is not such a big of investment as spending 70 power imo (except some real req starve situations but thats usualy not 3v3 mustard race problems). Esp after u already spent 100 power for armor. About dev worth of req and about LRR worth of power are not what i'd call even remotely equal things at any stage of the game

And it could be hard to have really balanced matches that go into late 3v3s for ppl to swim in power and starving for req. Im trying hard to rush TFC almost every single game (because reasons) with FC but i only manage to even get it in like 1 out of 6 games or so.

Termie armor is only really a back up for when your FC did very poorly the whole game and is level 1-2 at the end of the game against mass ranged DPS where a teleport with thunderhammer won't make you useful.

Now, the trend of elite trying to make everything be always viable in every situation is pretty bad IMO, because like that you can just be braindead about your purchases and still be successful, while actually, both purchasing units and upgrades is part of the strategy you are aiming to use, so keep wargears with their own niches, termie armor is a pretty good (although you actually pay for it a lot) it basically saves your commander from being useless late game, it doesn't need to be always viable, THERE NEED TO BE situations where X wargear is superior to Y wargear and vice versa.