Dawn of War Codex

oook, so we are in 2016 and I realize I never really got this basic issue, I should at least know before dow3... how are buffs supposed to work on abilities??? Inspire courage buffs ol'reliable (I don't play LC but it is known), yet I don't think any buff applies to any ability ? Plasma grenades suffer from FoF I think, does guide buff them ? etc o.O

Yes, they all affect abilities, inspire does affect ol'unreliable, etc.

Team strat: guided stikkbombs and rocket barrages of all kinds. Mini nukes in their own right. Wait seriously? You can guide a D cannon singularity? or FTE a merciless strike? Mind blades a nemesis vortex? Do they have to apply at the time of cast, or till the ability goes off?

Before casting.

Combat-Stimmed Merciless into a Scout ’nade used to be a solid Apo move… Although using the Stims on Lib Smite (back when Stims were +40% and Smite was 4×25) was so good & easy as to overshadow most fancier combinations.

Asmon wrote:Before casting.

Hehehe time to go wild with buff stacking

thanks for your answers... I asked as I had these doubts for a long time with guide, that made me avoid trying these combos in-game. I re-labbed a few times and I'm pretty convinced Guide doesn't apply to any FS ability, like mind war still drops 40 hp/s on a commander. I would say bug then. If the mod team feels motivation (and if I saw correctly, you have 10s under guide to cast something else so not that easy) it could be worth checking out.
Not that it's so often better so guide herself than anything else but for the sake of consistency there might be other exceptions wandering around (I couldn't be sure on plasma grenades as the radius issues make it hard to compare).

Some abilities do static damage no matter what buff or debuff the unit is affected by. Either relic intended to make them so or implemented them wrong. Mind war indeed behaves like this.

stikkbombs also act this way AFAIK. I tried buffing them with all orky methods available and to no avail.

@Tex
What about the Mekboy's More Dakka Global? It says in the description that it increases the stikkbomb damage by 20%, if I am not mistaken. Could be a bug though.

I tested this a long time ago. Things may have changed since.

Most spells aren't affected by buffs, and many do fixed damage regardless things like retreat or damage reduction. Projectile abilities like grenades (including stikks) are generally weapon based and therefore affected by these buffs though. There are odd ones like PC sword that is a weapon but with all it's damage set with a on hit effect that is fixed, ie not increased by retreat modifier or decreased by melee resistance. In short it's a mess and no way to determine without digging in the files. We would have to introduce keywords in the tooltips or something to make it clear.

I will retest stikkbombs at some point.

Like I said though, last time I tested them, I used every ork buff available and it didn't change the damage at all.

What about chaos shrines and worship? The Tzneetch shrine says it gives a 10% reduction to ranged damage but regular Tic worship infiltration gives a 20% reduction. Does this mean if i worship with Tics near a shrine i get a 30% damage reduction or a multiplication of the two? If it doesn't stack to 30% then i might as well not bother worshipping the shrine since the Doombolts are kinda underwhelming and enjoy the 20% reduction + slower Doombolts.

Would the FS's Guide stack with a shrine of Khorne buff? Is there a general rule to this sort of thing?

The answer would be 30% ranged damage reduction, for the stack is additive, though the infiltration bonus only applies when units are not revealed by detection. Doombolts are actually quite fine damage wise now.

Most buffs stack indeed, including Guide with Khorne shrine for instance.

Cool, thanks Asmon. Yeh, i realise it's a bit of a moot point since pretty much everyone has a detector unit in T2 but still, good to know.

Black Maw wrote:Cool, thanks Asmon. Yeh, i realise it's a bit of a moot point since pretty much everyone has a detector unit in T2 but still, good to know.

Not really as most ranged weapons have far greater range than the true sight radius of most detectors. So if you're having long-range firefights the infiltration will still be useful.Only exception is something like rangers due to them having such large detection radius.

Good point. I think I'll stick to just regular worship as opposed to worshipping the Tzneetch shrine - the Doombolts can be potent but a 30% damage reduction - even if it is for the back lines - plus some slow DBs still seems more appealing. They're so cheap too, I should use them more often. Thanks for the tips guys.

The only other thing to worry about when using infiltration to that end is that units will cease to automatically fire at their enemies when infiltrated. Therefore you will lose a lot of dps if you don't manually tell each unit to attack... and trying to micro that often results in units attacking too late, artillery missing, units moving out of formation. It can be quite a bother...

I wish we had a cease fire button and therefore could be done with that part of infiltration.

Torpid wrote:I wish we had a cease fire button and therefore could be done with that part of infiltration.

Sounds good to me, has this been discussed on the forums before...? Is it much of an issue for other units in other races? Would it be difficult to implement? I don't personally feel like it's a massive issue but it is particularly annoying for the CS.

Black Maw wrote:Sounds good to me, has this been discussed on the forums before...? Is it much of an issue for other units in other races? Would it be difficult to implement? I don't personally feel like it's a massive issue but it is particularly annoying for the CS.

It has indeed but it is either impossible to implement or simply too difficult to implement. So we're staying in dream-land for now.

Really it isn't too much of a bother for other things, although the cease fire button would be nice on tanks when chasing, as well as AV (especially lascannons due to the long time between shots) before a big fight so they don't whiff their first shot on infantry if the enemy leads with that rather than a vehicle (as you always should).

And then for the CS it is huge.

Ah well, it's a shame but i guess i'll just have to try and micro better. I'll play around with shrine + worship and see if it actually makes much difference to engagements anyway - it probably won't by much.