That Avatar...

[alyoohoo]

Greetings. I'm an SM player, and recently had a pretty good match with a friend who played Eldar. He was winning tier 1, and I pulled it back in tier 2 with assault marines and a razorback. At one point he was clearly outnumbered. Then he simply sat back and waited for an avatar, and once it hit the field, I didn't really know what to do. You don't (or at least I don't) really see avatars much in 1v1s.

Replay is on gamereplays, "alyoohoo (SM) v. chillywhisper (Eldar)".

So... what's the best SM response to an avatar if terminators weren't available? I didn't have anywhere near enough points to call them in. I was also apothecary, so FC terminator upgrade was unavailable.

[KotCR]

Not sure; Anything that kills vehicles I think.
So Predators or Missile Tacs.

[glenn3e]

He's not classified as a vehicle. He just has a lot of hit points. Everything is effective against him, so you should just bust out your biggest concentration of fire, preferably ranged.

[Saberdark]

Predators work pretty well if you micro them. Throwing a huge number of troops at him will also work...but of course then the rest of his army kills yours. I can tell you for sure that you should never use set-up weapons against him.

Of course, there is always the option of ignoring it and taking the points, as he can't have many units left if he can afford an avatar.

[hellic]

Try cat-and-mouse? There's only one Avatar, it's pretty slow, and your opponent probably doesn't have enough resources to buy additional units. What's it going to do besides destroy some of your power generators and maybe attack your base? If the Avatar attacks power gens, just cap them back when it goes away. If it tries to attack your base, focus fire the shit out of it. Other than that, the Avatars either going to a) chase some of your units around, allowing you to send others to cap VPs or b) guard a single VP or power point, which in essence gives you the two other VPs.

Since you're probably not going to lose many units, you have the resources to spam Preds. Well microed, a couple of Preds can easily take down a single Avatar.

Edit: You do have an Apothecary, which means you can attack the Avatar with squads of ASM while continuously healing with the Armor of the Apothecarion.

[KotCR]

I realise he's not a vehicle, but FWIR, for balance purposes "monster" class units seem to take effective damage from anti-tank weapons...probably due to the fact the Tyranids have no vehicles and they didn't want anti-tank weapons to be totally useless against them.

[Kam!kazee]

Or because anti-tank weaponry works different in DoWII than in DoW 1. Most AV weapons just deal huge damage per shot with slow refire. They still kill infantry, but are ineffective because infantry comes in packs and AV weapons will overkill them most of the time.

[ErichTheGraham]

Yeah it seems armor types are toned down quite a bit in this game from last one. Heavy bolters damage vehicles, too, just aren't effective because they are hitting in such small increments, so they aren't AV weapons. It seems to be much more in line with CoH, except that it seems generally most things can hurt each other but not be effective against everything.

[Gen_Khan]

Edit: You do have an Apothecary, which means you can attack the Avatar with squads of ASM while continuously healing with the Armor of the Apothecarion.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I belive the Apothecary is officially bugged after the last patch. Cannot heal anything but himself or other heroes. (untill retail 0-day patch)


From Thunder:

Apoth heal is bugged and will be ready on release. Might as well quit using Apoth until then.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Advanced Healing (provided by the Armor of the Apothecarion hellic mentioned) probably still works.

[Shuma]

Just shoot at him, i dunno since the patch, but before it the Avatar had no real weakness, so just concentrate fire on him, the carnifex on the other hand IS weak against AV weapons and ranged carnifexs are weak in melee.

[Giant Moth]

Avatar is superslow. Best is usually to ignore him and keep your vehicles away while you kill the rest of the eldar army. I defeated one with two tacsquads with missile launchers, a powerfist commander, a devastator heavy bolter and a predator. He tried hunting my predator but I just backed off with it constantly, keeping him at bay. He really doesnt do that much damage to massed infantry, but the buff he gives to eldar units is nasty.

[Ryouichi]

SM is probably the worst against the avatar because while you're durable, you can't output as much ranged firepower as can other races such as critical mass Tankbustas and multiple VC Warriors (and pre-patch, teleporting WS did wonders).