[1.2] Rangers and Guardians Damage vs Infantry_Med

[Fixer]

There are a couple of units the Eldar arsenal that defy belief when it comes to game design. Both Eldar rangers and Guardians have absurdly high damage to infantry_med for their cost.

Combine this with the fact that both of these units come out at the start of the game, and have a couple of easilly obtainable upgrades, they can easilly kill enemy capping units, gain tier 1 dominance and then the Eldar simply move on to a fast tech followed by WS spam for a finishing blow.

To give an idea of how much damage a guardian causes to infantry med. I shall compare to the humble space marine.

A space marine causes 10.6 DPS to infantry_med. A full squad at 390 Req will therefore cause 84.8 dps to infantry_med.

A guardian squad at 325/15 with a warlock causes 102.7dps to infantry_med.

Rangers maxed out at 320/40 do 66.4dps to infantry_Med, the same as 6 space marines, at a marginally increased cost.


In fact, guardians outperform both Sniper Rifles and CSM heavy bolters for cost when killing infantry_med.
(a CSM heavy bolter does 28.0 dps to infantry_med at 90/15, a sniper rifle does 33.2dps to infantry_med at 85/20 and will only do 23.3dps against Guardians since excess damage is lost over the 210hp of a Guardian)

Add in fleet of foot.

Guardians and Ranger's aren't exactly fragile either. Guardians have about 10% more health/cost compared to marine scouts. Rangers have a superior armor type that means that they are almost as resiliant as marines against most space marine weapons, with the exception of scout sniper rifles.

The overall effect of this high infantry_med damage + speed + durability is game breaking. Guardians and rangers can earilly gun down cappers, and Guardians having a detector as well can make a serious mess of stealth suits.

Imperial guardsmen are cut down easilly, combined with other Eldar abilities (FS storm, mind war) making this a hell match for the Imperial guard. What's more, Rangers scale massively and instapwn morale, plus infiltrate, plus fleet of foot.

It's not as if Eldar don't possess other weapons in tier 1 that can't handle infantry_med either.

My suggestion: Nerf the infantry_med damage of both of these units to bring them in-line with their damage to heavy_med and making them similar to other tier 0 / tier 1 squads in DPS (bringing them to around 70% of the DPS they currently put out)

Afterwards, bringing scout sniper rifle DPS down against infantry but reducing power cost to about 10 should balance this all out.

[ImmortalChaos]

I've never really noticed this as a huge problem, except rangers ability to free-kill any capper if the squad is full. Rangers could use a (small) nerf to inf_med, but I'm not sure about GUs.

[Melonplant]

To address the ranger part, i think it's squad size should be made smaller. I mean right now its like a big party of infiltrated units. Kinda silly.

[Ruonim]

Tacs+ probe kills rangers. So whats problem.

[Fixer]

Tacs + Probe don't kill Rangers. Tacs + Probe run after the Rangers in futility, get broken, shot up by guardians, the probe dies, they run away, and then get struck by a fast falcon and crushed by Warp Spiders.

[Ruonim]

Fast falcon and ws? What you were doing for 7 minutes of game?

[Spekkio]

Considering that rangers cost power, Eldar aren't exactly going to be fast teching when you see them.

[4Servant]

And you can't get any map control cause your cappers get gibbed.
Rangers are bullshit with their infiltration especialy against sm if you got some bad luck you got 2 cappers pwnd and no map control.

[SubakuGaara]

35 range+ t1 infiltrate+fleet of foot+decapping ability = t1 bullshit.

It wouldn't not be the end of the world if rangers lost one of those traits, at least in t1. Right now with rangers, map control is a giveaway to eldar.

[Ruonim]

Aspect portal: 100/0
Rangers+infiltration cost : 370/90
FOf : 50/50
2 cappers : 260/0
1 generator ( you cant amke rangers without it); 165/0 and bonesinger to make it 45/0
total: 940/140

This means you sepnded alll starting req at start. Soul shrine cost 200/200 yay great eldar fast tech

campare Sm now:
barack 250/0
survaitor 75/0
generator 135/0
2 scouts 180/0
Tact 190/0 + probe 75/0
total:
905/0

Tacs runing after rangers, scouts melle gaurdians. Guess who win. Sm will with gks. In 30 secs will tech up and other 30sec gk popup GG eldar.

[SubakuGaara]

yawn... so simple. Factor in different req rates and that chart goes out the window.

Issue here is ranger= free map vs a lot of matchups.

[4Servant]

2 scouts 180/0

rofl biased, how you wana take map control vs supurieur eldar cappers and rangers with just 2 scouts?

[Thelron]

The scouts will have a hard time meleing the GU's while they're dead, and that GK squad will be slowed down a bit as well due to the whole "why don't I have any points" problem.

Even if the scouts survive somehow, they alone aren't going to put a dent in the GUs, down they go, down go your flags, and the tacs follow soon after. If you *didn't* manage to keep the scouts around, buh-bye servitor I'd expect, and if the tacs turn around to try to deal with the GUs... good luck with all that.

I'm sure there are plenty of ways for marines to deal with rangers, but that isn't going to cut it, and the eldar should be able to scrape together an extra gen after putting the marine out at least 180 in scouts, not to mention having better map control. So, I can still see a falcon coming down on top of you before the knights can save the day.

[The_Guardman]

Funny. It is since WA 1.5 that I was sayng how powerful are GUs in respect to IG unit, ever when factoring scaling upgrades in.
The typical reply is that IGs have attachable commanders and special weapon... Well, GUs have all of the rest of the Eldar armies around

[Ruonim]

2 turrets can cover big amout of map. And cost less than rangers. You really dont like eldar do you.

[DukeRustfield]

Rangers out-range all turrets except Necron.

I think they got just a few too many goodies. As IG I never could beat someone who was at least remotely competent. You're doing everything with vastly more resources (CS + Guards) to just hang on, while he's just using one or two squads and teching.

[Wraith_Lord]

Once again, there is only 1 Ranger squad...

And anyone who is losing to Guardian squads has some kind of problem. They do absolutely no damage to anything, unless they outnumber you 3-1.

[magicalcarpet]

It seems like GU were custom made to kill GM. They also do good commander damage for cost.

If you're using GU wrong, that's your problem.

[Ruonim]

sorry but it takes about 1:30 minute to rangers kill the turret. And about 4-6 will be shooting. Bceosue they are on edge of range. You need to watch tv really to get killed by that. And singble builder can ioutrapair turret even if it was catched at 50% hp.

[Nobunaga]

How many races can afford to build 2 turrets at the start of the game and still tech in any kind of reasonable time? That's a huge loss of power and it isn't a particularly useful strategy since the Eldar player can just FoF past or kill the builder in the 45(!) seconds it takes to build a turret.

[Chris]

If eldar see turrets they should think to themselves "zogm tech to fire dragons 4 great justice!".

Guardian damage has always been a bit suspect in my opinion. Guardians with warlocks have always been about on par/slighty above tactical marines in terms of DPS vs infantry. Of course, guardians are more fragile than marines but then you have to look at how quickly you can get a bunch of warlocked guardians out compared to a single tactical squad. Add in fleet of foot for uber mobility/map control and the ability to get plasma grenades/conceal from the get-go and they become a very tasty unit.

[Micro102]

Once again, there is only 1 Ranger squad...

you really only need 1. they break everything in 1 volley

[DukeRustfield]

sorry but it takes about 1:30 minute to rangers kill the turret. And about 4-6 will be shooting. Bceosue they are on edge of range.

They have 5 range to line up their men and still be free from damage. It takes anywhere from 50 seconds to 69 seconds to kill a turret (Chaos/SM all the way up to Waagh baner). That's just using 6 Rangers.

Eldar turret would be even faster, but they wouldn't use them.

But yeah, no one is going to drop 2 turrets anyway. It would cripple your economy.

[Infernoblaze]

Rangers do seem to dominate early on and are just a pain later on, plus they've got FoF to surpass any of these defences you claim will beat 'em.

[Melonplant]

Ok stop joking about rangers taking down a turret. If the eldar player wants to kill a turret with the ranger squad then he is seriously wasting his time. Playing this game.

Anyone who complains about rangers vs turrets is hallucinating. They kill infantry way too easily. That's the big problem.

So is a squad size reduction out of the question?

[BurnedToast]

IMO rangers need to lose infil or FoF (not both) in T1. They can get back the one they lost in T2.

[CrazySteve]

If you think it is balanced please go use a light infantry race against this tactic. As in guard, ork, and eldar.

While this tactic still works againt csm and tacs, the original poster is not possing question about their effectiveness against heavy infantry, he is talking about light infantry.

Also, the youve got turrets argument is not very effective. While it might keep your base safe, it means you are both a squad down, and can't fight over map control because realistically, you are not going to get forward turrets up before the builder gets killed. Furthermore as other people have pointed out, it cripples your economy. Power going to turrets means no power going to teir 2. As in you can't tech, which is kind of important in this game...

This post is more of a request for people to attempt to inform themselves before posting. Yes, most of what goes on in here in this forum has always been and will always be theorycraft, but at least get the theory right before you go crafting.

[drcole]

Cultists do 10 damage to inf med in cc and are cheaper - no one is complaining about them. Nor should they be.

Tacs eat GU alive for cost I'm sorry because of HP. Nobody tries to shoot down tacs with GU ffs.

Rangers do sweet FA to any armour type other than inf med - they are meant to be able to kill cappers. They also cost power.

I don't know what sort of crack you are smoking saying scout snipers outshoot GU for cost because even across only 3 squads scout sniper costs about 90 / 25 and do 33.2 dps to inf med at 40 range.. enough to instagib GU squads before they even get a shot off.

[Fixer]

Cultists can be avoided.

A lot of people don't realise Scouts have a damned long reload time. They do serious damage to infantry. Then do nothing for 9 seconds afterwards. It takes 5 seconds for the guardians to rally, and you can re-enforce almost 2 guardians in the time it takes for the second volley. If you use the guardians correctly you can charge them towards the scouts, open fire point blank, then at the 8 second mark move into melee. When the scouts retreat (because they will lose in close combat) open fire with the guardians again. Since it only takes 12 seconds of fire from a single guardian squad to wipe out a fully upgraded tier 1 scout squad. It will take two scout squads which cost far more, a much longer time to kill a guardian squad.

If the Eldar player is smart and targets the squads with the attached probes, the Rangers will have free reign. They instantly break any squad they target and can butcher scouts with their still relatively high DPS.

Additionally, they do not do 33.2dps to guardians. They do roughly 430 damage to a single inf_med target with a single shot at 70% accuracy. This means that 220 of that damage is lost when they kill a 210hp guardian. Their DPS vs guardians is therefore only 16.31 (210hp / 9 seconds *0.7 chance to hit)

Their power comes from their range, burst damage and shock value to lesser experienced players (as well as being the only marine unit actually capable of dealing with Rangers), who will retreat their forces from the scouts instead of pressing the advantage in the 9 seconds it takes to reload (thereby giving the scouts another chance to setup and fire).

Guardians almost match marines for cost in a standing fight and beat them with Mysticism. They will not win in larger engagements as marines have more firepower in individual marines, and when massed can bring larger amounts of firepower onto a single squad in a smaller area.

[magicalcarpet]

It's not gonna be a straight fight of x number of resources of GU vs x number of resources of Tacs.

Pitting a quick unit with FoF against a slow unit with lots of health in a straight fight isn't exactly how things go.

[Question]

Good thing the quick unit with FOF cant even hurt the slow unit with lots of health EXCEPT in a straight fight eh?

DC has no "hit and run" mechanisms for fast units to get in, do damage and get out before the retaliation starts.

[Melonplant]

Uh...Fragons on listening posts? But thats for another topic.

While 2 or 3 guardian squads can kill a tac, they cost more. Guardians are a bit powerful for a starting unit. Move them to tier 2 :-D

[drcole]

As question said, it makes no difference having FoF when the units have the same range. You cannot leverage an advantage from that. Try putting up a GU squad vs a tac squad of equal cost and watch them get massacred. lol "with mysticism" never mind that costs 150/75 and only lasts as long as the warlock is alive, who takes forever to reinforce. Your cost equation goes out the window then.

[magicalcarpet]

umm, lol? This isn't about fighting GU vs. Tacs, I have no idea why you'd try that.

There is actually some degree of hit and run, it's called 'harassment.' Shoot baddies while they're trying to cap a point, taking no damage from them.. and running if they stop uncapping to fight you with a superior force.

Or shooting retreating troops in the back, you're not going to take too much damage from them. Or from broken units.

[Question]

There is actually some degree of hit and run, it's called 'harassment.' Shoot baddies while they're trying to cap a point, taking no damage from them.. and running if they stop uncapping to fight you with a superior force.

Only works if its a single tac squad capping the point un-assisted, which, since he has scouts, pretty much doesnt happen. Also you will barely scratch retreating tacs with guardian fire anyway(He probably wont retreat in the first place, tacs really beat the shit out of guardians).

[magicalcarpet]

LOOK, JUST FORGET TACS. I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT FIGHTING TACS.

I'm talking about harassing capping units.. like Scouts and GM, infantry_med units.

[drcole]

OP and Chris were both comparing GU to tacs. There are other people posting in the thread you know..

[JVikeing]

Cole,
While the posts you mention do compare the statistical aspects of marines and rangers/guardians, nowhere is it mentioned that there is an imbalance in that match-up. The concern is the amount of damage these units deal to "lesser" infantry. Your sidebar was out of line, no one (with the exception of you, question, and maybe some other strictly eldar posters) is simulating the tac marines vs guardian scenario.


As far as the thread topic is concerned, mass guardians is an incredibly effective tactic. If you believe otherwise, chances are you have not seem them utilized at high level play. Since I don't specialize in playing races with masses of inf_med armor, I cannot speak to the larger of the two imbalances being discussed. However, I do feel that rangers are exceptionally good for their tier and cost (even after the power increase in 1.2) and agree that a decrease in maximum squad size may be the optimal solution.


Edit: It is ridiculously late (I've been up all night) but I do want to add that comparing two distinct units from separate races is not a good method of determining imbalance. Analyzing the unit holistically, in regards to the function it provides its own race and its effectiveness is a much more accurate "determinator"... zzz...

[Daemon64]

ASM >Guardian BO
Raptor + CSM > Guardian BO
Any CC Unit > Rangers.

the only problem with themis how much morale damage they do in 1 shot. Nerf that slightly and you have your perfect harassment unit for eldar.
I.e chaos has raptors.

[Hiroshi_Tea]

rangers are made to do massive morale damage
that's their job
they do rather pathetic physical damage
(other than infantry_med)
their utilization comes from making 1/2 the enemy army obsolete
i think it's against the ranger mechanic
to reduce the morale damage done

[fs_xyz]

Sometimes I wonder if Guardian and Flayed Ones are the answer for Eldar and Necron for anti morale weapon... They got no flamers...
Just a thinking...

[Troubleshooter]

"zogm tech to fire dragons 4 great justice!".

OMGROFL

ASM >Guardian BO
Raptor + CSM > Guardian BO
Any CC Unit > Rangers.

Got it! Now, who do I have to bribe to score one of those for IG?

@Fixer: Wait a minute.. hang on... you mean GU squads are better than GM? Pfffft... thats not true! I mean, GM cost more. Everyone knows that if you pay more, you win!
Stupid noobs

[Chris]

OP and Chris were both comparing GU to tacs. There are other people posting in the thread you know..

No I said guardians are comparable to tacs in terms of DPS:Cost to most tier 1 targets. There's a big difference.

[mlai]

It is naive to assume that GUs cannot utilize their superior speed to their advantage against enemy infantry "because there are no hit-and-runs in DOW."

Especially now that FOTM is abysmal for all races.

[The_Guardman]

Ok, just look at this:

GU:
build in 16.5 sec, for 130/0, reinforce at 30/0 in 6.6 sec.

Morale: 300, 400 with warlock.
regen 9/sec, 10/sec. with warlock,
regroup at 50 (???Should'nt be 150???)

HP: 210/263/329 Infantry_med, regen 1/sec.
DpS to Infantry_med: 8.4/10.5/13.1,
with warlock: 10.1/12.6/15.7

Note: warlock also augment your unit cap by 1. For a cost of 55/15 all those bonuses mean it is really the key to change a capper to a true effective fighting unit..

IG:
build in 20 sec. for 160/0, reinforce for 20/0 in 7 sec.

morale: 100, 150 with sergeant.
Regen 3/sec, regroup at 30.
Minimal time broken 12 secs.

HP: 160/175/200/250
plus 35/44 from the Sergeant, for a maximal of 294 HP.
plus 125/144 from the Priest, for a maximal of 438 HPs togheter with sergeant.

DpS to Infantry_Med: 5.5.
Execute: 11.5
Priest: 8.5
Execute + priest: 12.8

So, it is very true that IG need its attached sub-heroes to be combat effective, and also need the heavy weapons. However, the GU that should be just an early detector and capper is in fact a decent fighting unit, with a maximal DpS vs. Infantry_Med that is 150% of a SM tac bolter with optic, while the lasgun reach a comparable efficency only with attached priest and execute.

What is funny is that the IG sergeant cost the same as a warlock (55/15), dish out lot of less bonus, and that without attached heroes the IG need its expansive weapons to be effective, and without any optional unit as support, while GUs have the support of the mighty Eldar T1-T2 units.

[mlai]

What IG needs is its hidden WA upgrades back. That'll help, is nice candy for players, and the balance team won't have to work SO HARD to try to buff IG.

Let's see...

General's arm bolter - Can use Wargear graphics to improve his weapon.
Power fist for Commis.
Plasma pistol and power sword for GM and Kas sergeants.
Upgradeable weapons for Sents.
Lascannons for Leman Russes.

[Hiroshi_Tea]

add in flamers for the Gmen
and the meltas also

[mlai]

LOL you're missing the point. I'm talking about hidden items already present on the game CDs, not goodies you would LIKE to have.

Rangers should be infantry_med.

Edit: GM had flamer LUAs. They never had actual working flamers themselves until modders like Riker and Medes put them in.

[Hiroshi_Tea]

i swear, gmen had flamers somewhere on the disk

[4ries]

It seems the DoW code is alot more than meets the eye... :P

It would be nice to see those upgrades/ability's ingame. I'd love to see a GM + flamer breaking tacs for one... Or multimelta a pred to death. :P (multimeltas ARE AV right??)