Glaring Balance Issues that need addressing before DOW dies
Posted: Sun 05 Jun, 2016 4:16 pm
Just going to point out some absolutely necessary balance issues that must be addressed to dramatically improve the fun of this game before it dies:
Beacons need to be moved to T2 - They are way way way too strong otherwise in 3v3 and tbh it's mostly cheese to get a beacon in t1 in 1v1 anyway. But it messes up 3v3 entirely. Unless you have a warlock the likelihood of taking it out is just negligible. It's way too difficult and it makes it easy for your foes to get 200 or so VP leads in T1 as well as holding contesting power farms for all of T1. The result is that you can't even fast tech to defeat it so you try your darnest to rush that vehicle but then they get a vehicle before you and it's just lul. It's so so broken. Move it to T2.
Nerf autocannon damage - it is just entirely OTT atm. Both the IG and havoc. They do more vehicle damage than the lascannon while shredding through squads so fast. For reference the havoc autocannon does more than triple the chaos dreadnought autocannon. And that thing is genuinely scary enough. The havoc one is too high damage. Also the burst duration being as long as it is combined with the bug that makes it so that once it starts to fire a burst it will continue to do so regardless of range and line of sight makes it extra problematic. So a reduced burst duration could solve this. Or making the damage less bursty in the first place, although I don't know how feasible this is - making it similar dps but shooting constantly without much reloading so the damage isn't all front-loaded. That makes it still a great damage bonus in a certain area to everything which seems to be the point of an autocannon, but it doesn't make it abuse that bug to be too strong vs infantry or more importantly vehicles since they cannot retreat.
Bloodcrushers - Due to the change to the charge that meant that units don't get knocked out of the way or can pathblock vehicles in anyway, or vice versa, charge has become a lot stronger on the bloodcrusher for retreat wipes. This combined with the already extremely strong chaos T2, and the reduced req cost on the BC have made it far too strong due to its spammability. It doesn't cause enough of an economic dent to the make it a bad thing to lose it and frankly it is far easier to keep a bloodcrusher alive due to its worship regen and charge than it is a wraithlord. That's just sad.
Plague Marines - We saw it before when Riku was facing Big Mathis' warboss where a plague marine spam was a great counter to the fire dragon spam merely on the basis of them having such solid ranged dps coupled with amazing hp regen. They just seem to be a bit too versatile atm. They are so hard to kill with nearly all squads and their explosion alongside chaos' great anti-melee makes fighting them with melee pretty tough too. What is the counter? Sheer piercing damage is great vs PMs but sucks vs the rest of the chaos T2 bar bloodletters, which obviously they aren't going if they are going for PMs. They just seem to cost effective atm. Rarely ever bleeding models, doing really significant ranged damage to infantry while also being great AV. I suggest an increase in their price to 500 req again and/or a slight reduction in their hp regen rate. I think that's preferable to gimping their anti-infantry capacities.
Heretics - Someone else can explain why they are so bad in their current state, because it is obvious they are but I cba
So just write it below and I will edit it in.
Fire Dragons - Someone else can explain why they are so bad in their current state, because it is obvious they are but I cba So just write it below and I will edit it in.
IG Heavy Weapon Team - This thing is overperforming like crazy atm, not merely due to it having the OP autocannon. But it has too much hp. Why in its change to give it more models (which strengthened its synergy with the LC via execute) was it necessary to increase the overall hp? It takes far too long to die atm in T1 nevermind when it gets to T2 and it gets the ridiculous shield. I call it ridiculous too as an IG player! Here are the ways you counter a suppression team in 1v1:
Flank it with melee.
Flank it and shoot it down with ranged (or split your squads while utilising cover to shoot it down from the front).
Use Snipers.
Knock it over with abilities like warp throw, shotgun blast, etc.
Knock it back and deal huge damage with artillery.
Throw grenades on it to force immediate wipes.
Counter-suppression teams.
Jump squads to tie it up in melee.
The shield on the IG HWT makes it only really viable to use jump squads or flank it with melee. All the other ways to deal with suppression become extremely hard to do or just much less effective. And while flanking melee is highly viable in T2 vs IG it is difficult to get through T1 with a lot of melee vs IG. Jump squads are not good vs IG. They have to be out in the open constantly and they melt to plasma/autocannon fire. Nevermind any hero usage. Personally I would rather the shield was a toggle-on ability that used energy and worked like the iron halo in that it absorbs damage and prevents knockback but as it absorbs damage it loses energy and it doesn't recover over time while the ability is active. That would make it a little more skillfull to use and not such a total no-brainer, first buy on an IG HWT come T2.
Melta Stormtroopers - We've been playing for quite a while now dealing with these absurd fire dragons for a cheaper cost than the stormtroopers are dealing a lot more damage. Let's look at the stats:
Storms do 60dps, range 20 and are speed 5.5 they get infiltration however. 920hp LI
Fire dragons deal 84dps, range 28 with exarch and are speed 6.5 while being immune to knockback + having dragon's fury to further increase their dps 1070hp HI
Fire dragons are clearly OP, but it seems to me melta storms are also not strong enough. They highly disbalance the IG economy due to it being so req dependent come T2 as it is and then being so req heavy in their sunk costs and their bleed. Also the battle structure of the squad is very tight so any aoe will own it. for example the KN shotgun blast often just straight up wipes them if he has levels. Looted tanks will kill 3 models in 1 shot. It's just insane. These guys are certainly no fire dragons despite the infiltration. Personally I would like to see increased range on these guys and preferably a reduced req cost OR increased hp because their bleed and sheer capacity to get owned very fast by aoe makes them rarely worth it atm.
Chem Bomb on Banewolf - This is quite a niche thing to bring up I know. But that is not due to it being contentious as to whether or not it is balanced, rather, it is just used very rarely because the IQ is rare enough and then the timing window for the bane wolf is rare. Now, I don't think the bane wolf itself is very OP, I just think it is this ability. I think the timing window for a good BW drop being so low and the high power and red cost justify its speed, hp and gen bashing potential. This ability though is too good. The bane wolf is already speed 8 so killing it is rough. It is harder to kill than the falcon since it is the same speed but faster and that would apply even if it didn't have this ability. This ability has a very very low CD and can be used to wade off entire armies for significant amounts of time while also doing significant damage (10 melta damage a second). This damage+snare combined with autocannons and hellfury strikes becomes insane. In fact, it is still possible to base-rape pretty effectively with the chem bomb ability + hellfury in base. And given the utility the ability has defensively on such a hard-to-kill vehicle, when the ability has such a short cooldown, something has to go! I suggest reducing the damage to 5 melta damage a second and increasing the cooldown from 30s to 40s.
Tyrant Guard - The changes to the nid T2 that have occured recently I greatly appreciate. I am actually really liking this new zoanthrope as bold as it was to remove the only proper snare that nids have. This has now left them extremely vulnerable to tank plays but I think that's fine because nid's t1 and t2 pressure is so grea that if my opponent manages to get a tank out before I defeat them via victory points then so be it, kudos to them! Still, even with those internal balance changes to the race and the increase of power cost to the tyrant guard it is still performing WAY too well. This is mostly due to how damn long you have to sit there trying to kill the thing when it is in shieldwall.
There are two solutions - make the ability not last indefinitely so that the nid player can't just "hit shieldwall" and then not worry about his TG dying. Give it a max time of 20seconds for example. Or alternatively allow it to last as long as the nid player wants but reduce the hp regen rate because let's be fair it is pretty ridiculous that a SM las-dev shooting at it just barely and I mean literally just barely out-damages the heal rate.
The fact that this unit forces your opponent to get anti SHI if they lack it initially THEN get AV too and not really just one source of AV or two, and if they get one they have to dedicate it to doing nothing for literally 3minutes. It's way too much for a unit that is as cheap as it is. One could nerf it's melee damage, it's hp etc. But I think this is the best way to balance the TG.
Wraithlord - This guy is just pitiful at the moment. Seriously. Tex has said it himself - he never gets a wraithlord anymore over a falcon and it is obvious why. The falcon is sooooooo fast and hard to kill because of it while putting out great generic ranged damage vs everything it is basically a T2 tank that can also transport and reinforce. It is amazing. In contrast the wraithlord just doesn't have enough hp to stick it out in fights for long, especially if you don't go for a multiple DA build, yet if you go for a multiple DA build the falcon tends to end up better anyway since they have even better synergy with it.
Personally I do not think this is a problem with the falcon being way too strong. A speed reduction on the falcon would be nice imo, but even if that does happen the wraithlord will still be shit. I don't see the basis for reducing its maximum health at all? But it has made it veyr weak in most MUs. It is too slow compared to the rest of the eldar faction to be going around at 1000hp. This thing is not a deff dread. It is more like a space marine dreadnought. Great for counter-initiation vs things like ogryns, but atm it just falls so fast to cumulative damage and it is too slow to compensate for that with mobility and evasiveness like the falcon. It's pathetic and literally nobody gets it now, ever. That's not right. Buff its max health or further reduce its cost. It needs to fulfil a bloodcrusher role or a SM dreadnought role, it's in a real awkward middle right now.
Wraithguard - Let me just start by asking this. What is the point of wraithguard in the eldar composition, when do you get them? The answer is obvious. They obliterate immobile structures such as turrets and bunkers and they do the same to suppression team spams or ranged unit spams (think 3 TCSM or 3 tacs). Let me ask then, what was the point of giving them reduced hp in return for fire on the move? While it might be thematically 'pretty' insofar as it does make them more 'mobile' and 'versatile' which is apparently the ongoing thematic of eldar (even though the elite mod has since crushed that thematic with its various balance changes) it is not good for the sake of balance. Firstly, reducing their hp has meant that things like tac/csm spam can out-shoot a wraithguard squad quite easily with a little splitting up. Kinda defeats the point. Also autocannons take them down too quick. Artiller ysquads hit too hard. It just isn't needed. Wraithguard can barely solo the damn plasma cannon heavy turret :L Secondly, the fire on the move was just totally unnecessary from a balance perspective. Why do they need to be better vs melee? And most importantly the warlock/farseer synergy with WG between guide with FOTM and Heart of Darkness with FOTM basically guarantee wipes on vehicles. Which has crippled the performance of IG vs eldar.
Dire Avengers - Refer to this thread: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2566
I shall say I have no idea why this thread has devolved into a discussion concerning shields. Shields have never been weaker now that the battle equipment upgrade doesn't grant additional hp. The problem with avengers is their reducing reinforce cost, their reduced cost out of the gate and the exarch in T1 being so tanky and doing the dps he does.
Rippers - this is another 'surprise' pop-up like the chem bomb ability on the bane wolf. Again this is not because it is contentious as to whether or not it is overpowered or not, but instead, just because tyranids are rarely used as it is. However as shown by this thread they are just fantastic:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2602
A unit that only costs 100 req and can be spawned anywhere on the field and that has the backup of the AMAZING melee army that nids have (including the best T2 AV squad in genestealers) is just unjustifiable. They take way too long to shoot down and even if the nid loses both squads the rippers tanking damage protects the rest of the nid army from bleed.
Nids suffer vs a well entrenched position. They aren't great at assaulting it. They are better at swarming all over the map and taking out individual units 1 by 1 and then capping everything in an instant due to their high speed and high squad count. Rippers are too cost effective at negating the one big weakness that nids have in their T2 and that is not on. Increase their req cost to 150 at the very least, or reduce their hp, or both oh and reduce their damage too. They shouldn't be killing things. I have no idea why they got that random damage buff that time, but it was weird...
SM, IG and Orks are mostly balanced as you can see. Chaos is a total mess and despite that being name appropriate it does suck gameplay wise
Eldar is really weird atm... Nids are finally finding their own balanced niche in the meta, albeit a little late haha, but better late than never. I didn't comment on GK here because they are utterly unviable atm and fixing them would be too much work for me to even care for but I could give some advice if the motivation is there to try to fix them...
Beacons need to be moved to T2 - They are way way way too strong otherwise in 3v3 and tbh it's mostly cheese to get a beacon in t1 in 1v1 anyway. But it messes up 3v3 entirely. Unless you have a warlock the likelihood of taking it out is just negligible. It's way too difficult and it makes it easy for your foes to get 200 or so VP leads in T1 as well as holding contesting power farms for all of T1. The result is that you can't even fast tech to defeat it so you try your darnest to rush that vehicle but then they get a vehicle before you and it's just lul. It's so so broken. Move it to T2.
Nerf autocannon damage - it is just entirely OTT atm. Both the IG and havoc. They do more vehicle damage than the lascannon while shredding through squads so fast. For reference the havoc autocannon does more than triple the chaos dreadnought autocannon. And that thing is genuinely scary enough. The havoc one is too high damage. Also the burst duration being as long as it is combined with the bug that makes it so that once it starts to fire a burst it will continue to do so regardless of range and line of sight makes it extra problematic. So a reduced burst duration could solve this. Or making the damage less bursty in the first place, although I don't know how feasible this is - making it similar dps but shooting constantly without much reloading so the damage isn't all front-loaded. That makes it still a great damage bonus in a certain area to everything which seems to be the point of an autocannon, but it doesn't make it abuse that bug to be too strong vs infantry or more importantly vehicles since they cannot retreat.
Bloodcrushers - Due to the change to the charge that meant that units don't get knocked out of the way or can pathblock vehicles in anyway, or vice versa, charge has become a lot stronger on the bloodcrusher for retreat wipes. This combined with the already extremely strong chaos T2, and the reduced req cost on the BC have made it far too strong due to its spammability. It doesn't cause enough of an economic dent to the make it a bad thing to lose it and frankly it is far easier to keep a bloodcrusher alive due to its worship regen and charge than it is a wraithlord. That's just sad.
Plague Marines - We saw it before when Riku was facing Big Mathis' warboss where a plague marine spam was a great counter to the fire dragon spam merely on the basis of them having such solid ranged dps coupled with amazing hp regen. They just seem to be a bit too versatile atm. They are so hard to kill with nearly all squads and their explosion alongside chaos' great anti-melee makes fighting them with melee pretty tough too. What is the counter? Sheer piercing damage is great vs PMs but sucks vs the rest of the chaos T2 bar bloodletters, which obviously they aren't going if they are going for PMs. They just seem to cost effective atm. Rarely ever bleeding models, doing really significant ranged damage to infantry while also being great AV. I suggest an increase in their price to 500 req again and/or a slight reduction in their hp regen rate. I think that's preferable to gimping their anti-infantry capacities.
Heretics - Someone else can explain why they are so bad in their current state, because it is obvious they are but I cba
So just write it below and I will edit it in.Fire Dragons - Someone else can explain why they are so bad in their current state, because it is obvious they are but I cba
So just write it below and I will edit it in.IG Heavy Weapon Team - This thing is overperforming like crazy atm, not merely due to it having the OP autocannon. But it has too much hp. Why in its change to give it more models (which strengthened its synergy with the LC via execute) was it necessary to increase the overall hp? It takes far too long to die atm in T1 nevermind when it gets to T2 and it gets the ridiculous shield. I call it ridiculous too as an IG player! Here are the ways you counter a suppression team in 1v1:
Flank it with melee.
Flank it and shoot it down with ranged (or split your squads while utilising cover to shoot it down from the front).
Use Snipers.
Knock it over with abilities like warp throw, shotgun blast, etc.
Knock it back and deal huge damage with artillery.
Throw grenades on it to force immediate wipes.
Counter-suppression teams.
Jump squads to tie it up in melee.
The shield on the IG HWT makes it only really viable to use jump squads or flank it with melee. All the other ways to deal with suppression become extremely hard to do or just much less effective. And while flanking melee is highly viable in T2 vs IG it is difficult to get through T1 with a lot of melee vs IG. Jump squads are not good vs IG. They have to be out in the open constantly and they melt to plasma/autocannon fire. Nevermind any hero usage. Personally I would rather the shield was a toggle-on ability that used energy and worked like the iron halo in that it absorbs damage and prevents knockback but as it absorbs damage it loses energy and it doesn't recover over time while the ability is active. That would make it a little more skillfull to use and not such a total no-brainer, first buy on an IG HWT come T2.
Melta Stormtroopers - We've been playing for quite a while now dealing with these absurd fire dragons for a cheaper cost than the stormtroopers are dealing a lot more damage. Let's look at the stats:
Storms do 60dps, range 20 and are speed 5.5 they get infiltration however. 920hp LI
Fire dragons deal 84dps, range 28 with exarch and are speed 6.5 while being immune to knockback + having dragon's fury to further increase their dps 1070hp HI
Fire dragons are clearly OP, but it seems to me melta storms are also not strong enough. They highly disbalance the IG economy due to it being so req dependent come T2 as it is and then being so req heavy in their sunk costs and their bleed. Also the battle structure of the squad is very tight so any aoe will own it. for example the KN shotgun blast often just straight up wipes them if he has levels. Looted tanks will kill 3 models in 1 shot. It's just insane. These guys are certainly no fire dragons despite the infiltration. Personally I would like to see increased range on these guys and preferably a reduced req cost OR increased hp because their bleed and sheer capacity to get owned very fast by aoe makes them rarely worth it atm.
Chem Bomb on Banewolf - This is quite a niche thing to bring up I know. But that is not due to it being contentious as to whether or not it is balanced, rather, it is just used very rarely because the IQ is rare enough and then the timing window for the bane wolf is rare. Now, I don't think the bane wolf itself is very OP, I just think it is this ability. I think the timing window for a good BW drop being so low and the high power and red cost justify its speed, hp and gen bashing potential. This ability though is too good. The bane wolf is already speed 8 so killing it is rough. It is harder to kill than the falcon since it is the same speed but faster and that would apply even if it didn't have this ability. This ability has a very very low CD and can be used to wade off entire armies for significant amounts of time while also doing significant damage (10 melta damage a second). This damage+snare combined with autocannons and hellfury strikes becomes insane. In fact, it is still possible to base-rape pretty effectively with the chem bomb ability + hellfury in base. And given the utility the ability has defensively on such a hard-to-kill vehicle, when the ability has such a short cooldown, something has to go! I suggest reducing the damage to 5 melta damage a second and increasing the cooldown from 30s to 40s.
Tyrant Guard - The changes to the nid T2 that have occured recently I greatly appreciate. I am actually really liking this new zoanthrope as bold as it was to remove the only proper snare that nids have. This has now left them extremely vulnerable to tank plays but I think that's fine because nid's t1 and t2 pressure is so grea that if my opponent manages to get a tank out before I defeat them via victory points then so be it, kudos to them! Still, even with those internal balance changes to the race and the increase of power cost to the tyrant guard it is still performing WAY too well. This is mostly due to how damn long you have to sit there trying to kill the thing when it is in shieldwall.
There are two solutions - make the ability not last indefinitely so that the nid player can't just "hit shieldwall" and then not worry about his TG dying. Give it a max time of 20seconds for example. Or alternatively allow it to last as long as the nid player wants but reduce the hp regen rate because let's be fair it is pretty ridiculous that a SM las-dev shooting at it just barely and I mean literally just barely out-damages the heal rate.
The fact that this unit forces your opponent to get anti SHI if they lack it initially THEN get AV too and not really just one source of AV or two, and if they get one they have to dedicate it to doing nothing for literally 3minutes. It's way too much for a unit that is as cheap as it is. One could nerf it's melee damage, it's hp etc. But I think this is the best way to balance the TG.
Wraithlord - This guy is just pitiful at the moment. Seriously. Tex has said it himself - he never gets a wraithlord anymore over a falcon and it is obvious why. The falcon is sooooooo fast and hard to kill because of it while putting out great generic ranged damage vs everything it is basically a T2 tank that can also transport and reinforce. It is amazing. In contrast the wraithlord just doesn't have enough hp to stick it out in fights for long, especially if you don't go for a multiple DA build, yet if you go for a multiple DA build the falcon tends to end up better anyway since they have even better synergy with it.
Personally I do not think this is a problem with the falcon being way too strong. A speed reduction on the falcon would be nice imo, but even if that does happen the wraithlord will still be shit. I don't see the basis for reducing its maximum health at all? But it has made it veyr weak in most MUs. It is too slow compared to the rest of the eldar faction to be going around at 1000hp. This thing is not a deff dread. It is more like a space marine dreadnought. Great for counter-initiation vs things like ogryns, but atm it just falls so fast to cumulative damage and it is too slow to compensate for that with mobility and evasiveness like the falcon. It's pathetic and literally nobody gets it now, ever. That's not right. Buff its max health or further reduce its cost. It needs to fulfil a bloodcrusher role or a SM dreadnought role, it's in a real awkward middle right now.
Wraithguard - Let me just start by asking this. What is the point of wraithguard in the eldar composition, when do you get them? The answer is obvious. They obliterate immobile structures such as turrets and bunkers and they do the same to suppression team spams or ranged unit spams (think 3 TCSM or 3 tacs). Let me ask then, what was the point of giving them reduced hp in return for fire on the move? While it might be thematically 'pretty' insofar as it does make them more 'mobile' and 'versatile' which is apparently the ongoing thematic of eldar (even though the elite mod has since crushed that thematic with its various balance changes) it is not good for the sake of balance. Firstly, reducing their hp has meant that things like tac/csm spam can out-shoot a wraithguard squad quite easily with a little splitting up. Kinda defeats the point. Also autocannons take them down too quick. Artiller ysquads hit too hard. It just isn't needed. Wraithguard can barely solo the damn plasma cannon heavy turret :L Secondly, the fire on the move was just totally unnecessary from a balance perspective. Why do they need to be better vs melee? And most importantly the warlock/farseer synergy with WG between guide with FOTM and Heart of Darkness with FOTM basically guarantee wipes on vehicles. Which has crippled the performance of IG vs eldar.
Dire Avengers - Refer to this thread: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2566
I shall say I have no idea why this thread has devolved into a discussion concerning shields. Shields have never been weaker now that the battle equipment upgrade doesn't grant additional hp. The problem with avengers is their reducing reinforce cost, their reduced cost out of the gate and the exarch in T1 being so tanky and doing the dps he does.
Rippers - this is another 'surprise' pop-up like the chem bomb ability on the bane wolf. Again this is not because it is contentious as to whether or not it is overpowered or not, but instead, just because tyranids are rarely used as it is. However as shown by this thread they are just fantastic:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2602
A unit that only costs 100 req and can be spawned anywhere on the field and that has the backup of the AMAZING melee army that nids have (including the best T2 AV squad in genestealers) is just unjustifiable. They take way too long to shoot down and even if the nid loses both squads the rippers tanking damage protects the rest of the nid army from bleed.
Nids suffer vs a well entrenched position. They aren't great at assaulting it. They are better at swarming all over the map and taking out individual units 1 by 1 and then capping everything in an instant due to their high speed and high squad count. Rippers are too cost effective at negating the one big weakness that nids have in their T2 and that is not on. Increase their req cost to 150 at the very least, or reduce their hp, or both oh and reduce their damage too. They shouldn't be killing things. I have no idea why they got that random damage buff that time, but it was weird...
SM, IG and Orks are mostly balanced as you can see. Chaos is a total mess and despite that being name appropriate it does suck gameplay wise
Eldar is really weird atm... Nids are finally finding their own balanced niche in the meta, albeit a little late haha, but better late than never. I didn't comment on GK here because they are utterly unviable atm and fixing them would be too much work for me to even care for but I could give some advice if the motivation is there to try to fix them...
But a number of the points you bring up I agree on to various degrees...