[DC 1.51]Burna Bombs -- Too good?

[Xanthian]

I've gotta say, using burna bombs has come to be almost as powerful a tactic for me as a hard rush to wartrakks with bomb chuckaz used to be. It's also clear that there are some bugs involving the use of burna bombs (like deleting them for insta-boom, and them exploding when killed also).

My question basically is, however, are they too good? Right now, a burna bomb is ALWAYS good to use. If you're up against an army, up against a turret farm, up against any kind of farm, up against any sort of clustered force that threatens your army, they will wipe it out. (If you're up against vehicles that can outrun you, it's trivial to ZZZAP them, and then blow them up.) The defence to them seems to be the fact that an attentive player will run away... but the nature of dok juice or infinite sluggas (or even the delete key), or hell, the nature of slow moving necrons even, means that you can make that physically impossible.

The reason I ask is that I don't want to be the guy that goes online and exploits imba just because it hasn't been fixed yet. So I've made this discussion thread. And the question is... are burna bombs just too good, or are they just enough kick to make up for an all-infantry army suffering with lackluster looted leman russes? Perhaps someone can propose a solution or counter that I can't seem to formulate? I have only been on the ork side of these things, and I've gotta say, I can't find a downside to them -- really, it's not like my energy is going anywhere else.

[DA CAP'N]

i would like to see the burna bombs damage to vehicles reduced significantly. seeing as the word "burna" implies fire and burning, it really makes more sense for it to do heavy damage vs inf and not vehicles. it would also be nice to have some way of stopping it... after that doc hits the juice your not gonna have much luck stopping him before he dives into your mass and drops da bomb!

[White_Pointer]

Yes, there's currently an exploit that means deleting the burna bomb makes an insta boom. That's a bug that Relic are aware of and are working on fixing.

Other than that I see nothing wrong with the burna bomb. Finally orks get some kind of tier 3 ability like the other races do and all of a sudden people scream imbalance. I think the damage it does it fine, especially since it has a global cooldown, and if you disrupt the doc en route to the targetted position, the ability will reset and the doc won't ever drop the bomb, meaning you need to re-send the order to drop it. It also hurts your own units and the damage it does to any building other than turrets and LP's is really not that great.

Fix the insta-boom delete exploit sure, but leave it alone other than that.

White_Pointer

[Xanthian]

It is possible to stop the dok planting the bomb... possible, but not easy. He has to plant it at point blank range.

If you see any lone doc running towards your army, it's trivial to juggle them around with interruption (artillery, grenade launchers, frag grenades, whatever) 'til their juice wears off; and if they aren't able to stand up, they aren't able to plant the bomb.

The hard part becomes spotting doks within a sea of green, of course. Made harder yet by the fact that you can have 4 doks running toward your army, and exacerbated by the fact that doks can be attached (and so only targetable with direct ground attacks). Also, focusing on a dok while the entire ork army goes uninterrupted may stop the burna bomb, but the effects will be equally devastating.

But I take it as a "too powerful" vote of confidence from you then. I pretty much agree.

The problem with reducing their vehicle damage then raises the question of "how do orks deal with dreadnought and wraithlord spam once bombs are nerfed so they can't handle them anymore". Tankbustaz are great anti vehicle platforms, but can hardly churn out enough damage to take out walkers in a reasonable amount of time, and building killa kans to counter walkers is just stupid. They handle anything else (short of fire prisms), but not walkers.

Hmm... then again, nobz with klaws [read: kan openers] tear through them faster than a hot knife through butter, and juice means they're an ideal candidate for dealing with walker spam. Hmm...

[kornuletz]

burna bombs are awesome, but, if they remove the delete-expoit, and nerf the damage to vehicles a bit, then they are balanced.

they are good but counterable:
1. massive disruption of the dok. artillary or grenades work best.
2. running away. seriously, run a bit away with your units, the fighting juice will wear out, and kill the dok.
(3.) (not sure if it really works but...) killing the bomb yourself before the timer should negate its effects. for that to be easier - maybe HP nerf of the bomb itself

[Boomstar]

Fix the delete exploit and nerf its damage to vehicles a bit, thats all. SM get orbital bombard for free tau get that big blue area of death thing. Burna bomb not only costs energy but its really obvious thats its down.

[White_Pointer]

But I take it as a "too powerful" vote of confidence from you then. I pretty much agree.

Uhhh, no. I'm saying it's fine. Just fix the delete exploit.


(3.) (not sure if it really works but...) killing the bomb yourself before the timer should negate its effects. for that to be easier - maybe HP nerf of the bomb itself

I'm pretty sure the bomb still explodes if it's manually destroyed by the opponent.

White_Pointer

[Lord_Ulrik]

Just fix the "bug" and its ok. Hell, we have to pay 100Energy for the bomb and it can be easily turn out ot 100 wasted energy.

[your_neighbour]

I think the bomb is kinda fine for the Orks. If there's anything to nerf then it will be it's cooling time.

[DukeRustfield]

If you see any lone doc running towards your army, it's trivial to juggle them around with interruption (artillery, grenade launchers, frag grenades, whatever) 'til their juice wears off; and if they aren't able to stand up, they aren't able to plant the bomb.
Necrons have none of these. Not only that, they are mega slow. Not only that, they are usually grouped up in giant formations. I.e., unless they have a port available, they are toast. So all you need is 2 docs to wipe out a big chunk of necrons. With the delete option, it is insanely OP.

[Mandos]

If the bomb didn't detonate when destroyed there wouldn't be any problems. With such a short detonation timer, having to just move away is not a good option, especially for necrons and ork mass.

[LordAba]

It does a great amount of damage against vehicles (greater then 4000 to vehicle_high), but with the timer fix you can get out of the way. It does decent damage to building_med(1200-1500), kills building_low, and does about 400 damage to HQs... Not much at all.

And for the necrons... deal with it. Doks are easy to kill, the bomb costs 100 energy, and if you're entire force is destroyed it's just bad luck. From testing the bomb it won't wipe out an entire squad... even most of the sluggas will survive it. Though I LOVE the disruption.

Let's just fix one thing at a time (the delete bug) and see what it's like from there.

[Chris]

Juggling a lone dok is trivial. Juggling a dok that is in the middle of a swirling melee, that's possibly attached to a squad is next to impossible. I don't know any other race that has a similar ability except for orbital bomb, which got nerfed up the wazoo.

[GRIM Ripper]

yeah i think its a bit OPed. id leave it as it is but increase the cost to about 100/100 or maybe even a bit more. think about in comparison an earthshaker round... same type of ability only it costs 200/200 for about the same level of damage if not worse.

[Takalth]

Let's just fix one thing at a time (the delete bug) and see what it's like from there.
I second that. Small changes are a good thing. If they get too worried about it, they'll take it from being overpowered to useless. Maybe they'll have to nerf it two patches in a row, but that's fine. I've never liked the huge nerfs and buffs that relic is often famous for.

[Xanthian]

Except for two things... do earthshaker rounds have a cooldown, and do you have to be in melee range for an earthshaker round to hit?

(Also, does an earthshaker round start beeping telling everybody "Oh crap, get out"?)

[GRIM Ripper]

hence my suggestion for still cheaper cost at 100/100.

[DA CAP'N]

earthshaker has range, but since the doc cant die, he doesnt really need range. the timer really isnt very long at all, and i find it difficult to get slower units away in time (units such as guardsmen) even when i see teh doc in advance and know whats coming. also, if i am correct, the bomb is free, and has about the same radius as the earthshaker, and does similer damage, and i think even does better damage to vehicles. 200/200 is a lot of resources, i dont really think its far to give any race an ability so similer in the amount of damage it causes yet at no expence what so ever.

[HarmlessPenguin]

for the record, the bomb's 0/100 and has a global cooldown rather than individual, as is the case with the earthshakers

[CheeseThief]

How about stopping the Doc for just juicing himself, or making it so you can't plant the bomb while juiced? Make good honest orky use of those free slugga squads.

Doc can only juice squads and not himself, he will still gain the benifit of the juice if he joins and juices a squad, he just can't use the ability on himself. More a pet peeve from the AI randomly rushing individual juiced Doc's at me than anything else though.

[mlai]

It is easy to disable_abilities as part of the effects of juice. I don't know if that would disable jump, too.

It only solves part of the problem. The delete-boom is the biggest problem.

[Full_ork]

Since it has friendly fire from what I've just read, I'd say fix the delte issue and it's good.

[your_neighbour]

I don't think it's OPed, Doks are not that tuff, you can just move away from the dok even if he has juiced himself up, then kill him after the duration is off.

[Dorkdav]

I think if they can disable laying the bomb while the doc is juiced then it will work. They should probably nerf the building damage a bit too. Since buildings can't really run. And the cooldown should be increased.

[DA CAP'N]

i agree, make it so juiced docs cant drop it, or they cant juice themselves period and i think it would be great.

[SPADEZ]

I don't know what you guys are talkin' about.. Burna Bombs are fine.. they are difficult as hell to pull off! I use Dok Bombz and Sluggas alot.. usually my dok gets shot up before he can even get to the bomb location >.< even if I add him to a nob squad.

[z3r05k1ll]

about the necrons not being able to disrupt..... lord destroyers, stasis field, not only does it stop him but it allows you to keep shooting at em

[Trizzdog]

The burna bomb is not overpowered in my experience, except for delete-insta-boom and the crazy vechicle damage. Tankbustas, klaws, and the Big Mek zapp can take out vechicles good enough as it is :p

But yeah, reduce the vechicle damage, remove the instant boom, and give it a longer countdown perhaps, so you have a chance to do something about it.

[MrBims]

I don't know what you guys are talkin' about.. Burna Bombs are fine.. they are difficult as hell to pull off! I use Dok Bombz and Sluggas alot.. usually my dok gets shot up before he can even get to the bomb location >.< even if I add him to a nob squad.

That's why you use Fighting Juice just before getting into weapons range.

IMO, the damage to everything is fine except vehicles. One Burna Bomb can insta-kill any walker vehicle, and the blast range is sure to take out or heavily damage another. As it's incendiary, the damage should be geared mostly towards infantry and buildings.

You really can't stop a Dok from running into your base without heavy disruption weapons, if the Ork player uses Fighting Juice. Disabling the bomb while Fighting Juice is active sounds going a little too overboard. I think forcing the Dok to be attached to a squad to use Fighting Juice or Burna Bomb would be good. If an Ork player has to sacrifice 4 Sluggas and one Dok for a Bomb instead of just one Dok, it should be spammed slightly less. Ofcourse with Free Sluggas he won't use up requisition, but it's still Ork Pop Cap being used up.

But this really shouldn't be nerfed too much. The Burna Bomb, along with Free Sluggas, finally allow Ork players some strategy other than "mass Trukks" or "mass Killa Kans". Kind of like CSM Infiltration, it opens up possibilities for a losing Ork player to turn the tide of a losing battle with some smart moves.

[SPADEZ]

Fightin' Juice never seems to work for me..

[Lazerguy]

How about we fix the bug and reduce the explosion effect (radius, damage?) when an enemy kills it? That way having the bomb go off (unmolested) is more rewarding then simply letting the enemy do the job for you by killing it.

[Niemivh666]

I know I used these to devestating effect yesterday in an Ork vs. Ork match where I killed literally 55 of his units with a single Burna Bomb!

I'm not complaining, but to prevent these imba from coming my way we need to change something.

How about increasing cost or increasing cooldown timer or and making them have a reasonable amount of HP, so the opponent can actually have a chance to destroy them, rather than simply run away?

Obviously the deleting of the Bombs is imba.