Dawn of War Codex

Hive Tyrant Venom Cannon

This piece of wargear is overperforming quite heavily at the moment. It does full damage to all targets, can fire on the move with 100% accuracy, and has insane splash damage that causes its normally poor accuracy to infantry to not matter. The Hive Tyrant is also immune to knockdown and suppression, which means that preventing the Venom Cannon from firing is extremely difficult, as not all races have access to stuns or range-reducing abilities, especially not from far away.

The only drawback is that the Hive Tyrant is shitslow.

Specific matchup concerns:

Imperial Guard (all three heroes especially Lord Commissar and Lord General):
This weapon absolutely destroys Guardsmen squads and Catachans. It also completely prevents aggressive chimera play when combined with another source of AV, and isn’t half bad at dealing with ogryns either (full damage to SHI). But ogryns are not the solution either, because the Hive Tyrant is the most likely of the tyranid heroes to field 3 termas against IG, and 3 crippling poisons stops ogryns in their tracks regardless of the buffs they are under (move move move/bionic eye/use your head).

Space Marines (all heroes but especially Techmarine):
Razorback is the key to this matchup in t2, unless the Space Marine has enough resources to instantly get a dread out. The only way to prevent a Hive Tyrant from firing at the razorback is to knock it back with a plasma cannon. Even with buffed assault marines, the Hive Tyrant is durable enough to simply move past them (100% fotm) and keep firing.

Eldar (all heroes):
The Venom Cannon really shuts down falcon and dire avenger plays, simply because (once again) eldar don’t really have a way of preventing the Hive Tyrant from shooting. In 2.4.2 I used the wargear against PhatE’s WSE, who buys falcons quite frequently, and completely changed the dynamics of major engagements because my ranged blob was simply stronger than his. With the shield wargear, the Hive Tyrant also easily counters suppression teams (and shuries are the core of eldar t1 against the hive tyrant).

Now, the major issue with the Venom Cannon is not that its anti-vehicle potential is overperforming (even if I think that it could lose the 100% fotm or lose fotm entirely and get a small range buff). The issue is that the weapon functions as hard AV but also hard AI, so it’s a not really a choice of whether or not to buy it. It completely outshines the crushing claws in a lot of situations, for example. The anti-infantry capabilities of this weapon are way way way too good. Right now there are a lot of complaints (and rightfully so) about how the meta is dominated by anti-all weaponry/units (autocannons, plague marines, psycannons, old zoanthropes, old fire dragons). When anti-all units and weaponry is more effective than specific hard counters, it creates massive balance issues both externally and internally, as there is no need to buy hard counters at all anymore, and the opponent will find anything he can build easily shut down.

My suggestion is to reduce the damage of the Venom Cannon’s AoE. Currently, at distances short/medium/long/distant the damage modifiers are 1/0.5/0.3/0.3 (long/distant appear to be the same value here). I would reduce the modifiers to 0.7/0.35/0.2 and evaluate from there. This would especially solve the problem in the imperial guard matchup, where at the moment this wargear heavily dominates so much that pushing against a Hive Tyrant blob (especially with a brood nest) is exceedingly difficult.

Replay attached, Tex (#4 on the ladder) vs Forestradio (#25 on the ladder)
https://dawnofwar.info/esl/match/16289417

Can the Hive Tyrant capture with Venom Cannon equipped?

If yes then nerf plox =)

Asmon wrote:Can the Hive Tyrant capture with Venom Cannon equipped?

If yes then nerf plox =)

You mean cap and shoot? Because any infantry can cap with any weapon.

Putting the venom cannon to T3 imo can prevent T2 transports play getting completely destroyed by a single wargear purchase, while maintaining venom cannon's usefulness .
Or change the damage type to plasma? HT has crushing claws for AV already. Why not make the venom cannon an Anti infantry option. Venom cannon in tabletop can hardly kill a rhino back in 5ed anyways lol (low BS, template weapon vs vehicle at half strength)

The_Convertant wrote:Putting the venom cannon to T3 imo can prevent T2 transports play getting completely destroyed by a single wargear purchase, while maintaining venom cannon's usefulness .
Or change the damage type to plasma? HT has crushing claws for AV already. Why not make the venom cannon an Anti infantry option.

Problem with those changes is that they are removing one of the only 2 counter plays to melee walkers in T2 the tyranids have ever since the melee walkers got melee damage resitance.

So far the only nerf that would make sense to me would be removing his 100% accuracy on the move because no amount of invunerability bubble is going to make a venom cannon hive tyrant either stop infantry from attacking something else or wait until the invuneraability ends to do some dammage especially if they are melee.

Really I should watch that replay because the whole tyrant vennom cannon being somehow overpowered is something I've only really seen from the tyranid perspective since not a lot of people play tyranids on elite and that makes it a bit hard for me to judge it properly.

Pretty much you can't really do anything effectively (mostly just reinforce/not any decent damage) with the Falcon with the HT there. It's maintained the accuracy it has against a lot of units which is its main strength other than being attached to the HT. Whatever it says, and I hate this term, on paper, either illustrates what it really does or it vastly undersells it.

However, that was before Zoans lost their snare. Now at the very least you can get away without getting sniped that easily. It killing a lot of Eldar models though is something that would need to be looked into, in my opinion. Too many times have I lost DA/Banshee Exarchs to that thing on one or two hits for it to go unnoticed.

That would be my only wanted change for that weapon.

Metal C0Mmander wrote:

Asmon wrote:Can the Hive Tyrant capture with Venom Cannon equipped?

If yes then nerf plox =)

You mean cap and shoot? Because any infantry can cap with any weapon.

hahah. He was making a joke.

Metal C0Mmander wrote:Really I should watch that replay

turns out you don't need to =)

PhatE wrote:hahah. He was making a joke.

Indeed, it's a reference to Relic's explanation of the retail Baneblade which could one-shot other t3 tanks: "Baneblade is fine it can't cap."

Tyranids have no snare. Hive Tyrant is so slow.I would rather fixes go to more obvious needs.

You can't really convince me that that weapon is OP. Sounds more like a L2P issue.

What?? How is this a l2p issue? that applies when you can use a squad well and you think it's underperforming. And besides forest never said that it kills his vehicle but it is severely limiting aggressive transport play with IG not because it does so much damage to the chimera (which it does)but because one shot from this would peel off over a 5th of guardsmen hp causing a large amount of bleed. A ranged AV weapon that actually has anti-infantry potential sounds like it would overperform imo.

Besides if a player decides to flank with the HT and charge into position with this wargear it is a dead tank. It's just that people prefer a support HT build with this wargear as he not only boasts hp of the guants but also provides basic synapse.

This is what I am talking about. It is situational as you mention in your above scenarios. It's not a blanket "I win" war gear. Nothing like the thunder hammer that used to roll whole armies, or the tracking stun on the FC power fist. There are plenty of options in the IG arsenal to deal with HT regardless of his weapon of choice imo.

It just means no aggressive chimera plays vs Venom Cannon HT. Defensively, I don't see this to be an issue.

First off I agree the HT Venom Cannon AoE is unnecessarily good and can really shred Strom Troopers and Catachans., reducing the AoE as Forest suggested would be a good change.

However:

Black Relic wrote:What?? How is this a l2p issue? that applies when you can use a squad well and you think it's underperforming. And besides forest never said that it kills his vehicle but it is severely limiting aggressive transport play with IG not because it does so much damage to the chimera (which it does)but because one shot from this would peel off over a 5th of their hp causing a large amount of bleed. A ranged AV weapon that actually has anti-infantry potential sounds like it would overperform imo.

Besides if a player decides to flank with the HT and charge into position with this wargear it is a dead tank. It's just that people prefer a support HT build with this wargear as he not only boasts hp of the guants but also provides basic synapse.

The entire purpose of an anti-vehicle weapon is to counter aggressive vehicle play. You shouldn't be able to shove a Chimera down your opponent's throat if he purchased an expensive AV source.

Charge+VC is one of my favorite HT combos but not because it is so devastatingly effective. The Hive Tyrant always performs a kind of 'huh where am I?' animation after the charge that stops him from attacking immediately. This, combined with the time it takes him to reload between volleys (I think he fires in quick bursts of three shots and then stops) gives a vehicle more than enough time to back away. Now that the Zoanthrope snare is gone, there is no way a Hive Tyrant is going to shoot down any full health tank without the opposing player having some chance to flee.

hiveminion wrote:First off I agree the HT Venom Cannon AoE is unnecessarily good and can really shred Strom Troopers and Catachans., reducing the AoE as Forest suggested would be a good change.

Ditto on this. L2P isn't a really good argument in favor of a AV weapon that is in practice anti-all. This is why the las-rhino (and TDread) was nerfed. Despite having low accuracy to infantry, it's splash meant that even though it "missed" 95% of the time, the splash would still hit and deal considerable damage. I had a full health Ranger squad die in one hit to this. It wasn't at all reasonable.

Is the HT VC similarly OP? I dunno, I haven't seen it much personally and reading the AOE circle entry in the codex isn't very informative. But if it does bleed infantry models consistently, it's prolly in a bad spot. Maybe change it to the new AV damage type, or reduce the AOE radis/falloff. Could even get a cost reduction as part of such a change.

Remove any anti infantry it can do, if it can fotm and kill vehicles it's good enough, especially when considering the HT can still effectively tie up squads.

hiveminion wrote:

Black Relic wrote:but because one shot from this would peel off over a 5th of guardsmen hp causing a large amount of bleed.

The entire purpose of an anti-vehicle weapon is to counter aggressive vehicle play. You shouldn't be able to shove a Chimera down your opponent's throat if he purchased an expensive AV source.

I know, said "their" instead of "guardsmen" which has been edited.

That this weapon yes stop a certain play but what forest was saying is over performing was the anti infantry aspect of it. and that needs to be toned down. Which i do agree with.

Ace of Swords wrote:Remove any anti infantry it can do, if it can fotm and kill vehicles it's good enough, especially when considering the HT can still effectively tie up squads.

I am against this. the ht is not a mobile hero. thus he cannot rely on positioning to get around having a weapon that only damages a unit type which is often in the minority on the battlefield. the knob gets away with it because he can go invisible so the rocket launcher can work. But the hive tyrant has to face tank whatever it is chasing and he is not even good at chasing, i just cant see the vcannon as a good buy if all you would need to do to stop it is put infantry between it and your tanks.

saltychipmunk wrote:

Ace of Swords wrote:Remove any anti infantry it can do, if it can fotm and kill vehicles it's good enough, especially when considering the HT can still effectively tie up squads.

I am against this. the ht is not a mobile hero. thus he cannot rely on positioning to get around having a weapon that only damages a unit type which is often in the minority on the battlefield. the knob gets away with it because he can go invisible so the rocket launcher can work. But the hive tyrant has to face tank whatever it is chasing and he is not even good at chasing, i just cant see the vcannon as a good buy if all you would need to do to stop it is put infantry between it and your tanks.

He........has 2 other weapons to switch to......................................................... can't even believe what you are saying honestly.

Why just not remove the AoE of the venom cannon all together?

Ace of Swords wrote:

saltychipmunk wrote:

Ace of Swords wrote:Remove any anti infantry it can do, if it can fotm and kill vehicles it's good enough, especially when considering the HT can still effectively tie up squads.

I am against this. the ht is not a mobile hero. thus he cannot rely on positioning to get around having a weapon that only damages a unit type which is often in the minority on the battlefield. the knob gets away with it because he can go invisible so the rocket launcher can work. But the hive tyrant has to face tank whatever it is chasing and he is not even good at chasing, i just cant see the vcannon as a good buy if all you would need to do to stop it is put infantry between it and your tanks.

He........has 2 other weapons to switch to......................................................... can't even believe what you are saying honestly.

And what does that have to do with anything? i said face tank.... have a venom cannon? you still need to face tank because you are a big porky hive tyrant. have a crushing claw? still a big fat porky hive tyrant. you will still be face tanking . Unless someone is hiding a melee wargear on the ht that suddenly adds 2 speed and makes him teleport or go invisible ... he is still a big fat porky slow commander .

What would upgrading to say crushing claws do for you in your example? you would go from a ranged av weapon. to a short ranged close combat weapon .. on one of the slowest commanders in the game. at that point i dont even think i would need to retreat my tank.. you would have done the thing i would have tried to do already... prevented you from shooting my tank....

So i am very confused at your response which to me is equally unbelievable as you think my response was.


my underlying point is about his mobility. In every case where a commander has a dedicated wargear that only is good vs tanks . that commander is mobile. he can teleport . or he can go invisible . or he can run faster . This allows him an easier time actually getting into position to strike the target his weapon is built to counter .

The tyrant does not get that luxury. apart from his charge he has almost nothing in the form of mobility. He doesnt really get the option to choose his method of attack as often as others. he is too slow for that. Thus he needs a more well rounded wargear that is effective in more situations. because ... he simply cant be expected to reliably avoid as many encounters as those other more mobile heros.

that is why he has an all damage venom cannon . (i do agree the splash is a bit much)

Only talking about his mobility: towers help him with speed, don't forget those, and as you mentioned the charge.

saltychipmunk wrote:

Ace of Swords wrote:

saltychipmunk wrote:
I am against this. the ht is not a mobile hero. thus he cannot rely on positioning to get around having a weapon that only damages a unit type which is often in the minority on the battlefield. the knob gets away with it because he can go invisible so the rocket launcher can work. But the hive tyrant has to face tank whatever it is chasing and he is not even good at chasing, i just cant see the vcannon as a good buy if all you would need to do to stop it is put infantry between it and your tanks.

He........has 2 other weapons to switch to......................................................... can't even believe what you are saying honestly.

And what does that have to do with anything? i said face tank.... have a venom cannon? you still need to face tank because you are a big porky hive tyrant. have a crushing claw? still a big fat porky hive tyrant. you will still be face tanking . Unless someone is hiding a melee wargear on the ht that suddenly adds 2 speed and makes him teleport or go invisible ... he is still a big fat porky slow commander .

What would upgrading to say crushing claws do for you in your example? you would go from a ranged av weapon. to a short ranged close combat weapon .. on one of the slowest commanders in the game. at that point i dont even think i would need to retreat my tank.. you would have done the thing i would have tried to do already... prevented you from shooting my tank....

So i am very confused at your response which to me is equally unbelievable as you think my response was.


my underlying point is about his mobility. In every case where a commander has a dedicated wargear that only is good vs tanks . that commander is mobile. he can teleport . or he can go invisible . or he can run faster . This allows him an easier time actually getting into position to strike the target his weapon is built to counter .

The tyrant does not get that luxury. apart from his charge he has almost nothing in the form of mobility. He doesnt really get the option to choose his method of attack as often as others. he is too slow for that. Thus he needs a more well rounded wargear that is effective in more situations. because ... he simply cant be expected to reliably avoid as many encounters as those other more mobile heros.

that is why he has an all damage venom cannon . (i do agree the splash is a bit much)

I can't believe you think the VC is fine as an anti everything on a tanky as fuck hero that can become immortal for 8 seconds or so, he's also designed to be a melee hero and slow so that you can actually counter it, having a RANGED anti everything with a decent range defeats the whole point of the hero, why get anything else? It's simply, fucking retarded to think it's fine as it is, his mobility is also fine, it's not better nor worse than many other heroes and this wargear probably shouldn't even have FOTM, but for now we should see how it performs as an AV only, while the HT can get other stuff for AI.

Just reduce the anti-infantry capabilities of the weapon. Maybe not take them completely away but reduce the splash damage modifiers

Ace of Swords wrote:

saltychipmunk wrote:I can't believe you think the VC is fine as an anti everything on a tanky as fuck hero that can become immortal for 8 seconds or so, he's also designed to be a melee hero and slow so that you can actually counter it, having a RANGED anti everything with a decent range defeats the whole point of the hero, why get anything else? It's simply, fucking retarded to think it's fine as it is, his mobility is also fine, it's not better nor worse than many other heroes and this wargear probably shouldn't even have FOTM, but for now we should see how it performs as an AV only, while the HT can get other stuff for AI.

depends on what you compare his mobility too. other fatty commanders? then of course he seems fine . vs the lighter ones? he is understandably less mobile.

fundamentally there is nothing explicitly wrong with having a weapon that does damage to everything on a hero , provided is designed right.

Yes the venom cannon should be able to do damage to everything. but at the same time no the venom cannon should not be the best thing at damaging everything . to me it seems the issue you really have with the cannon is not that it is effective vs everything but rather it is too good at everything.

that can be addressed without totally gimping the wargear to a role that doesnt actually really make sense . the venom broods doing only damage to vehicles is already a stretch on the fluff that probably could have been entirely avoided by applying the same changes then as what would work here.


does too much damage vs infantry? then make it do less damage to infantry via the nerfage to splash or the reduction of its damage as a whole.. invulnerable chase cheese an issue? nerf its fotm. there the two main issues with the thing are addressed and we can still call it, without cracking a smirk, an actual venom cannon

saltychipmunk wrote:

Ace of Swords wrote:

saltychipmunk wrote:I can't believe you think the VC is fine as an anti everything on a tanky as fuck hero that can become immortal for 8 seconds or so, he's also designed to be a melee hero and slow so that you can actually counter it, having a RANGED anti everything with a decent range defeats the whole point of the hero, why get anything else? It's simply, fucking retarded to think it's fine as it is, his mobility is also fine, it's not better nor worse than many other heroes and this wargear probably shouldn't even have FOTM, but for now we should see how it performs as an AV only, while the HT can get other stuff for AI.

depends on what you compare his mobility too. other fatty commanders? then of course he seems fine . vs the lighter ones? he is understandably less mobile.

fundamentally there is nothing explicitly wrong with having a weapon that does damage to everything on a hero , provided is designed right.

Yes the venom cannon should be able to do damage to everything. but at the same time no the venom cannon should not be the best thing at damaging everything . to me it seems the issue you really have with the cannon is not that it is effective vs everything but rather it is too good at everything.

that can be addressed without totally gimping the wargear to a role that doesnt actually really make sense . the venom broods doing only damage to vehicles is already a stretch on the fluff that probably could have been entirely avoided by applying the same changes then as what would work here.


does too much damage vs infantry? then make it do less damage to infantry via the nerfage to splash or the reduction of its damage as a whole.. invulnerable chase cheese an issue? nerf its fotm. there the two main issues with the thing are addressed and we can still call it, without cracking a smirk, an actual venom cannon

HT is a melee hero, he has crushing claws doing what, 100 heavy melee dps? That's anti-everything, but it has a downside, it's melee, so even being a really tanky hero you can't rely on just that for AV against tanks, though it still counters ranged walkers quite well and still contests melee ones well enough, but requires the support of a venom brood to kill them, it also has a counter play at disposal which is baiting into setup teams and kiting, something you can't do at all with the venom cannon, it does RANGED AI, it has FOTM, it doesn't do reduced damage to melee dreds, it counters transports and tanks, it would be fine as AV only as that your choice for AV it shouldn't do AI on top of that.

And on that note, I don't think Nids AV is too strong, as I've said in the past they require some sort of snare built in their army, but this weapon is just stupid right now.

HT is a support hero with field presence. he is not explicitly a melee hero. In fact some of the best use i have seen from him , is as a defensive support hero .

take advantage of the free synapse he gets for your gaunts in early game. take advantage of his immunity to spore mine suppression to cheese opponents off the field without ever actually doing damage. using things like seismic scream or the t1 claws to disrupt and debuff attacking infantry
hold an area with disposable units while being reinforced by a brood nest right behind them. pretty much counter melee walkers because of his ridiculously high hp and melee heavy damage would be a threat to any attacking walker. or be a big fat weapons platform that again is right at home in the thick of his little mini zerg blob.

hes a better support hero than the ravener alpha in many situations...


look in the end i do agree that the cannon needs to be nerfed. But we don’t need to change its role into so something it is not in fluff. not when it isnt necessary from a game balance point. It is not necessary to make it an av only weapon. It just isnt. There are better options on the table. hell if you really want to get creative why not give it the tac plasma gun treatment and give it penalties explicitly vs light infantry? it is a big ass bio cannon afterall . so i can easily see it being something bordering on the inaccurate vs small things kind of deal.