[SS 1.2] Dais of Destruction

[Titler]

No TT is balanced, TT is a strategic game, its RTS without bases hmmkay?

Umm... No it's not; just passing through really, but I'd be interested to know where in the Table Top game the rules are which dictate those players with better hand to eye co-ordination and with quicker micro-second reaction times gain an advantage? Because they always do in Real Time Strategy games, because they are based in real time. The Strategy S comes third for a reason, because you might have a fantastic strategic plan but it'll all be for naught if my Zergs/Apocalypse Tanks/Grey Knights are in your base, killing your (ahem) doods. But Warhammer is Turn Based, and your doods start deployed on the field right at the start.

[PandaMine]

Ive made mods for plenty of other games, though not for DoW. I know Mlai used to work for DowPro

Im just stating my opinion on what I would think would be a less of a hassle for everyone in terms of balancing the game (or what should have been done)

Umm... No it's not; just passing through really, but I'd be interested to know where in the Table Top game the rules are which dictate those players with better hand to eye co-ordination and with quicker micro-second reaction times gain an advantage? Because they always do in Real Time Strategy games, because they are based in real time. The Strategy S comes third for a reason, because you might have a fantastic strategic plan but it'll all be for naught if my Zergs/Apocalypse Tanks/Grey Knights are in your base, killing your (ahem) doods. But Warhammer is Turn Based, and your doods start deployed on the field right at the start.

Man ffs, im not talking about that

Im talking about the fact where we for example have the problem with Eldar units having more/equal HP of all their race equivalents although they are supposed to be a "fragile race". Im talking about stuff like necrons not costing any requisition and having to balance the whole race like that, or turning units like Terminators into pure specialists (which is what eldar is supposed to have). Im talking about shit like Eldar having units that are generally effective against all other types of units (apart from Fragons) which is completely against the design in TT where each unit (in eldar) has a specific role, which is one of the reasons they are balanced in TT. Its things like this which is what really determines balance

[AYPWIP]

Erm, Eldar were massively overpowered in the tabletop game until Games Workshop took some wild swings with the nerf-bat last year to reduce their effectiveness in 5th Edition - and they were wild swings, none of this 'careful balancing' stuff.

...To wit, their supposedly fragile-but-with-high-firepower tanks were essentially unkillable, and their supposedly hyper-specialised harlequins were capable of killing pretty much anything - overshadowing the rest of the Aspect Warriors in pretty much the same way as you're saying DoW does.

[PandaMine]

But they actually got fixed

Eldar in DoW is even more imba in the fact that no Eldar unit apart from the ranger is fragile. Their tanks have above average HP, their ranged units have above average HP, banshees have average HP, Seer council has just imba tanky ability (easily the tankiest squad in the game). All this on a race that is "fragile", I mean come on. DE is a good example of a fragile race, not Eldar

[Geno]

After fiddling around with DE T4 a bit, I realized that the Dark Scythe really is close to useless right now. A single sweep barely dents heavy infantry and while it leaves lighter infantry weakened, gives them ample time to retreat. It's also impossible to hit a group of infantry twice, since no sane player would want to stick around for a second sweep (unless the battlefield is ridiculously cluttered). And again, using the Dark Scythe turns the Dais into a sitting duck, so without nearby support using it is more of a liability than anything else. And frankly, compared to Skyray Missile Barrages, Earth Shaker rounds, Orbital Bombardment, and even Air Caste Bombardment, it just doesn't seem very impressive at all - not to mention all of the mentioned abilities provide knockback/area-denial.

As it stands though, I still think a pop cap decrease is the most viable solution (I don't know how many people will agree, but I think it belongs in the "no-brainer" list). However, I was also thinking about a few ways to make the Dark Scythe more viable, though to be completely honest I don't know how severely they might affect balance.

1) Decrease the cooldown time to 60s
2) Doubling the damage, but having the beam use up soul power
3) Add in a knock-back effect mentioned earlier in the thread
4) Completely demoralize or slow down units hit by the beam

Again, these are just some ideas and I'm not sure how legitimate the suggestions are, but I really think something should be done.

[corncobman]

2) is an interesting idea but I'm not sure if it would fit as the Soul Powers are soul powers and making other abilities use up Souls might be changing too much.

3) doesn't really make much sense since Dark Lances don't do any knockback and making what is essentially a Dark Lance sweep would seem strange to me.

4) I like this idea the best

[Flagg]

I like the idea of the DAIS doing the damage output it has now, plus a complete and utter devestating morale attack. With your units next to the DAIS getting that aura bonus and the enemy in front of you suddenly taking a massive morale twatting, it would make the DAIS a lot more viable rather than seeming like a suped up Ravager.

[D-coy]

I think it'd be imba. Just imagine your whole force suddenly breaks, then DE starts to chew on you with WB (who can't be broken now, because your troops are weak), drugged wyches and other nasty stuff. And don't forget soul powers.

Cool idea, but OTT, IMO.

Giving it only really high morale damage and a modifier which decreases the opponent's morale regen rate on the other hand...

Cheers

[PandaMine]

Well currently they are quite bad in T4 (along with SoB's). If any buff comes to the dias the DE would require a nerf somewhere else, preferably in their T1/T2

[White_Pointer]

Im talking about shit like Eldar having units that are generally effective against all other types of units (apart from Fragons) which is completely against the design in TT where each unit (in eldar) has a specific role, which is one of the reasons they are balanced in TT.

I'm a bit late replying to this...I know...but I'm just going to ask you PandaMine...did you actually play the original Dawn of War? Eldar were *exactly* as you describe...every unit they had was a very specific hard-counter to certain armour types. Warp Spiders annihilated light infantry. Dark Reapers pwned heavy infantry. Banshees were good at carving up just about anything (except upgraded nobz which were tier 3 back then). Eldar were able to build all three of these units, in addition to rangers, guardians and the farseer, in tier 1.

Guess what? Eldar were still imbalanced. In fact they were even more broken than they are now. As soon as you saw your opponent was eldar, you might as well type "gg" and leave (especially if you were orks cause warp spiders killed them faster than you could blink).

Back then too it didn't show your opponent's race on the loading screen, and bonesingers could teleport from the start of the game. So an eldar player would teleport a bonesinger to your base, see what race you were, then build the appropriate aspect - which were effectively: "counter orks" (ws), "counter SM" (dr) and "counter chaos" (shees).

Also, if you think the TT game is balanced, you are seriously deluding yourself. It's a good thing Relic didn't just copy that balance or the game would be such a horrible mess it would be unplayable. TT is a turn-based game too whereas DoW is real-time - you can't bring across balance rules from one format and expect it to work in the other. DoW also almost totally revolves around player skill and their micro/macro. TT relies on the luck of dice roll.

1) Decrease the cooldown time to 60s
2) Doubling the damage, but having the beam use up soul power
3) Add in a knock-back effect mentioned earlier in the thread
4) Completely demoralize or slow down units hit by the beam

Or 5) Don't change anything because you can already use Rekindle Rage to fire the beam twice.

...

Or has everyone else missed that?

Also, have you ever seen what the Dais beam combined with Soulstorm does? It's pretty scary.

White_Pointer

[Pseudonymn]

^ All sound points above, except for one thing that I'll disagree with:

TT is a turn-based game too whereas DoW is real-time - you can't bring across balance rules from one format and expect it to work in the other. DoW also almost totally revolves around player skill and their micro/macro. TT relies on the luck of dice roll.

Turn-base rules can be successfully ported over to a real-time environment provided the rules are clear enough and the devs correctly model relative unit strengths/weakness. A great example I might cite would be the Baldur's Gate series. It's widely acknowledged as being the best PnP AD&D game ported to a real-time PC environment ever, simultaneously being faithful to the core rule set and playing it all out in real time (or back to turn-based if you mash the pause button). There are others too, but that's enough OT from me.

[D-coy]

I will solve this whole Eldar-hard-counter-system-can't-be-balanced-and-cool-at-the-same-time nonsense, but I still have a long way to go. Modding alone takes looong.

To be a bit on topic at least a lil' bit, I agree with WP. You should use DE powers in conjuction with each other, that way it's possible to crush elite units and such in a really short time.

Cheers

[Flagg]

If you think you can pin some squads down in one area, using Acid Rain is also very good on top of Soul Storm and DAIS beam, just for mopping up that last few squads.

[Hopit]

what T1, T2, T3 and T4 mean?

[mlai]

As some of the others have said, the Dais beam now requires other DE abilities used in conjunction, for you to see its full potential. As well it should; in the past it was just a nooby 1-click-profit affair. You buff the current beam any more, and it will be OP as soon as you use other DE abilities in conjunction.

However, the current pop cost of the DoD is too much.

As for "DOW Eldar with hard counters were imba too"... that is true. However, that doesn't mean the hard counter system of DOW Eldar cannot be balanced. It just means that Relic was unable to do it. And... is that really such a big surprise?

DOW Eldar definitely was the race that was hardest to balance in WApro (the DOWpro version that was closest to Relic's gameplay). But it wasn't impossible.

[Flagg]

Hopit, the "T" in your question stands for "Tier".

Like when you first start the game you start at T1 (capping units, builders). Then as you build more infrastructure and tech up to get better units/abilities, so do you begin to climb the Tiers. Tier 4 is generally a races end game, their best units including the relic unit.

Are we likely to see another patch for SS, in regards to further balance? I know there was talks about fixing Auto Match, but what about further balance, or is this it now? Not to rain on anyones parade, but it just almost seem fruitless to talk about fixing things if relic has no intention to. I would love to see such things as the IG assassin come out already stealthed, or FoF changed to a special ability with a cool down, not a Goddamn on/off switch and so on...but is any of this ever likely to be addressed?

[Geno]

Or 5) Don't change anything because you can already use Rekindle Rage to fire the beam twice.

Firing it twice still doesn't make up for the inconvenience of using it. Most enemy troops don't stick around even before the first sweep finishes, so they certainly won't be dwindling around for a second serving. And again, against any sturdy T4 infantry it really doesn't do much damage at all, and it leaves the Dais open to focus-fire from enemy AV. I find rekindle rage to be a much better investment for the Archon's abilities anyway.

Also, have you ever seen what the Dais beam combined with Soulstorm does? It's pretty scary.

To be honest, I've tried this myself (mostly against the DoS AI) and it doesn't really do much at all. Enemy troops suffer a decent amount of damage from the DS, but the Soulstorm itself hardly scratches them before they can get away. Given it's horrible pathing, the SS is also a bitch to micro.

Of course, even though I do play the game quite a bit, I'm by no means a professional player. Maybe you're right and nothing needs to be changed (aside from the ridiculous pop cap), but it's worth considering at least. And like Flagg said, Relic has most likely retracted all support for DoW1 anyway.

[Inst]

for Dark Eldar, for some reason, Mandrakes > Warriors. So tier 4, DE has to use upgraded mandrakes instead of warriors to puff out its infantry complement.

[PandaMine]

I'm a bit late replying to this...I know...but I'm just going to ask you PandaMine...did you actually play the original Dawn of War? Eldar were *exactly* as you describe...every unit they had was a very specific hard-counter to certain armour types. Warp Spiders annihilated light infantry. Dark Reapers pwned heavy infantry. Banshees were good at carving up just about anything (except upgraded nobz which were tier 3 back then). Eldar were able to build all three of these units, in addition to rangers, guardians and the farseer, in tier 1.

Guess what? Eldar were still imbalanced. In fact they were even more broken than they are now. As soon as you saw your opponent was eldar, you might as well type "gg" and leave (especially if you were orks cause warp spiders killed them faster than you could blink).

Back then too it didn't show your opponent's race on the loading screen, and bonesingers could teleport from the start of the game. So an eldar player would teleport a bonesinger to your base, see what race you were, then build the appropriate aspect - which were effectively: "counter orks" (ws), "counter SM" (dr) and "counter chaos" (shees).

Also, if you think the TT game is balanced, you are seriously deluding yourself. It's a good thing Relic didn't just copy that balance or the game would be such a horrible mess it would be unplayable. TT is a turn-based game too whereas DoW is real-time - you can't bring across balance rules from one format and expect it to work in the other. DoW also almost totally revolves around player skill and their micro/macro. TT relies on the luck of dice roll.

They are NOT imbalanced (as Mlai said) because their units are highly specialized(which is their fluff for the race). They ARE imbalanced, because 90% of their units are not as fragile as they should be in TT.

Eldar are imbalanced because they are not fragile at all, and their whole scaling system (especially DR and FD) have been completely screwed around. FD's do not have terminator armor (or the equivalent in TT) in T2 and "anti" grav boots, DR do not have FoF which makes them a lot more vulnerable, Fire Prisms do not have 7k HP, there isn't this stupid FotM thing where Wraithlord is the only walker worthwhile to get weapon upgrades and for every other walker its useless.

In TT, Eldar units ARE fragile. Likewise for reasons apart from their race design, Eldar have a borked economy with cheap builders (45), cheap LP's (80) etc etc. The reasons why Eldar are imbalanced in vanilla has NOTHING to do with the fact they were highly specialised, it had EVERYTHING to do with the fact that they were badly implemented. If Eldar was as fragile as DE, and did not have such a good economy, there would be no problems with their units being specialized.

Of course its not going to work in SS, because units from other races have also become highly specialized, terminators which are designed to be great in both ranged and melee combat have now been specialized to just ranged combat. Almost every elite (obliterators another example) has been turned into this

Also back on topic with DE,

Soulstorm is practically useless, and using rekindling rage on the Dias twice means you are not using it on some other unit which could influence the battle more strongly. That unit does desperately need something fixed about it

[Flagg]

Does anyone else not think that Rekindle Rage is quite an expensive Soul ability?

[White_Pointer]

Ummm, Mlai never claimed the TT game was balanced. He just said unit specialisation can work - and he admitted that balancing Eldar in that format was quite difficult. I can guarantee you they didn't look at the TT game for many ideas or inspirations when trying to balance Eldar for DoWPro either.

TT != DoW. Period. Stop comparing the two. DoW is based on the TT game. It's not meant to be (and never was meant to be) an accurate representation of it. The TT game is a turn-based game with no real economy, no base building and no quick thinking that's based largely on the luck of a dice roll. It's for exactly these reasons you can't just blanketly take rules from that format and apply them to DoW and expect them to work.

Yes, stuff like fire dragons having terminator armour and ridiculous mass isn't in TT - that's true. But there were actually sensible reasons for those changes when FD's first made their appearance in WA - it's because the squad mechanics worked differently back then and they would have been too easily disrupted and countered. Those things are now making FD's imbalanced because the squad mechanics have been changed so entire squads aren't taken out by artillery anymore - Relic just neglected to take that into consideration when re-assessing FD balance. But FD's are actually a perfect example of TT balance not working when applied to DoW. If they were just given their TT balance properties, they would have been largely useless in WA. They are imbalanced now because the game has changed since then and Relic forgot to (or decided not to for some stupid reason) change FD's to compensate.

White_Pointer

[PandaMine]

There is nothing stopping Eldar units from being heavily specialized, its because that relic failed at doing it that now everyone has such a hard grudge against hard counters.

FD were used as normal AV in WA, they weren't useless. The "anti" grave stuff was added in for no reason, the reason they had problems with disruption in WA is that disruption effected the whole squad, a missile launcher for example would constantly knock back a squad. This was removed in DC and SS

But FD's are actually a perfect example of TT balance not working when applied to DoW

No thats wrong, FD's are supposed to be very good AV units, they are HOWEVER not supposed to be infantry tanks, which they are not in TT.

[Geno]

Does anyone else not think that Rekindle Rage is quite an expensive Soul ability?

Actually, I think it's a fair cost. What does seem kind of off is its long cooldown time (which somewhat goes against the concept; since most abilities recharge before it does anyway). To be honest, though, aside from the Archon and possibly the DoD and Haemonculus, there's not many other uses for it. I suppose out of desperation one could use it on Warp Beasts. It's a shame that the ability kills Wyches...

[White_Pointer]

FFS PandaMine are you actually reading the posts you are replying to or just extracting a couple of sentences out of each one?

It's no use having any kind of reasonable debate with you, seriously. Learn to read.

(Hint: You don't need to tell me about something that I've already mentioned).

White_Pointer

[PandaMine]

Yes I am reading them, I think you need to get the idea of "FD failed because they attempted to follow TT" out of your head.

Relic attempted to make Eldar as similar to TT as possible in DoW Vanilla, and did very badly because of numerous reasons.

Eldar is imbalanced for all the things that cannot be obtained from TT, such as economy and buildings, the things that should have been taken from TT, but never were are half the reasons why they are imbalanced now i.e. none of eldars units are fragile, they have the tankiest tanks in the game etc etc

FD were never useless in WA, they were just used as normal AV units would be used. Apart from what I described earlier, they were never "useless"

And as psedyonim has said, there have been many examples of games that are real time which have been accurately bassed off table top games, such as Baldurs gate

[mlai]

Stuff like Terminator FDs and un-fragile Eldar troops/tanks did/do indeed make Eldar imba, but that's just the brain-dead simple basics. Anybody (except Relic, it seems) can fix that, make things better than they are under Relic's hand, and still stay true to fluff.

However, it will be at that point that you will realize that Eldar is still not balanced. Sure, you took out the Avatar pop bonus etc etc. Sure, in 5 minutes you've made it better than it's ever been under Relic, but it's still not as balanced as say SM vs Ork (the "easiest" MU to balance in vanilla).

The problem that TT does not have, is that TT doesn't have economy and teching. 2 pre-made armies at their strongest, meet in battle on equal grounds. All armies have a flat power curve.

In DOW vanilla, Eldar is the only army with a close-to-flat power curve. Other armies start with weak troops, then either upgrade them or get elite troops. Because of their extreme hard counter system, Eldar start out of the box with their elites, who are rigidly focused and unadaptable, and they finish the end game with the exact same troops. This uniqueness was why they were so hard to balance.

Sure you can turn this unique Eldar design paradigm into the generic progressive army they are now, with WSs being elite troops that are arbitrarily stronger than other Aspects. Or you can include lots of upgrade researches that scale DRs from T1 shooters to T3 shooters. But this means you're throwing away fluff (not too important) and you're throwing away the unique Eldar design (this is what's important).

The way DOWpro/WApro approached this problem was to make Eldar scale without throwing away the feel of a flat power curve. There is no "most elite aspect" that serves as Eldar's Oblits, and there are no generic upgrades that scale Banshees from T1 CC into T3 CC. We looked to the spirit, not the body, of the fluff/TT.

First, squad leaders play more important roles than in any other army -- this follows the spirit of Eldar fluff. They endow new abilities and boost the entire squad in numerous ways. This allows (1) an additional level of scaling and (2) a capricious/ unpredictable element in Eldar army strength that follows its spirit. Some ppl didn't like #2, the same way some don't like how Soul Strip used to randomly backfire on the Psyker, the same way some don't like sync-kill invul, and I guess the same way Relic balance team saw fit to destroy the entire concept of DOW arty. As an aside, I believe that ppl who can't accept a certain randomness in DOW gameplay, should just go play SC.

Second, rather than scale squads by brute hps and dps, they are scaled by gradually allowing bigger squad sizes as Eldar teched. You can have DRs in tier 1... but each squad only gives you 3-4 members at such low tier. This also goes naturally with Eldar's "dying race" fluff.

Third, instead of scaling upgrades simply being generic ones that made Eldar troops stronger and deadlier, Eldar spirit was followed by giving different Eldar troops different unique ways of becoming better at their roles as gameplay intensified. Examples... In T1, DRs still hard countered, but weren't overpowering against T1 cc disruption because they had long setup times and shorter range. They gradually become better at long-range shooting as they gain an Exarch's boosts, lose their setup times, and gain range. They don't become better because they suddenly gain 1000 hps.

These were some of the general ways DOWpro/WApro Eldar was balanced. It still wasn't perfect, but it was 100x better than any Relic Eldar.

I cannot comment on DCpro Eldar.

[PandaMine]

mlai said it correctly

All I am saying that if Relic at least stuck to the fluff of Eldar (i.e. fragile units, non terminator FD's) and based teching/echo ontop of that, they would be a hell of a lot more balanced.

[Derogator]

Lowering the Dais Of Destruction vehicle cap to 3 would do it. Maybe to 4. That's about it. Simple.

[Inst]

Am I wrong when I say that the original Eldar design was supposed to be: you start with one weak and over-specialized unit, and then with every additional unit aspect your race becomes stronger. I'm not saying it worked out that way, what happened with Eldar was that people ended up massing one or two aspect warriors or abusing the aspect stone system to rush up to Warp Spiders or Fire Prisms, but that was the design concept.

First, squad leaders play more important roles than in any other army -- this follows the spirit of Eldar fluff. They endow new abilities and boost the entire squad in numerous ways. This allows (1) an additional level of scaling and (2) a capricious/ unpredictable element in Eldar army strength that follows its spirit. Some ppl didn't like #2, the same way some don't like how Soul Strip used to randomly backfire on the Psyker, the same way some don't like sync-kill invul, and I guess the same way Relic balance team saw fit to destroy the entire concept of DOW arty. As an aside, I believe that ppl who can't accept a certain randomness in DOW gameplay, should just go play SC.

Second, rather than scale squads by brute hps and dps, they are scaled by gradually allowing bigger squad sizes as Eldar teched. You can have DRs in tier 1... but each squad only gives you 3-4 members at such low tier. This also goes naturally with Eldar's "dying race" fluff.

Third, instead of scaling upgrades simply being generic ones that made Eldar troops stronger and deadlier, Eldar spirit was followed by giving different Eldar troops different unique ways of becoming better at their roles as gameplay intensified. Examples... In T1, DRs still hard countered, but weren't overpowering against T1 cc disruption because they had long setup times and shorter range. They gradually become better at long-range shooting as they gain an Exarch's boosts, lose their setup times, and gain range. They don't become better because they suddenly gain 1000 hps.

#2 seems like a weird way of scaling it, but it has interesting side effects. First, you make teching up partially equivalent to creating a mass army, as to inject resources into your army size, you'd either have to tech up or build more webway portals. Second, it creates increasing returns on exarch investment, 3 AW + Exarch is more than twice as cost effective as 1 AW + Exarch since if the Exarch is not cost-effective by itself, then the cost-inefficiency of the Exarch is diluted by larger squad sizes.

#3 looks weird because the hard counter to Dark Reapers for SM/CSM is tier 0 infantry with upgrades, say Sniper Rifles to break Dark Reapers, or Cultist Grenadiers to just kill them.

[mlai]

Am I wrong when I say that the original Eldar design was supposed to be: you start with one weak and over-specialized unit, and then with every additional unit aspect your race becomes stronger. I'm not saying it worked out that way, what happened with Eldar was that people ended up massing one or two aspect warriors or... rush up to... Fire Prisms, but that was the design concept.

I assume you meant "weak and generalized unit", i.e. Guardians.
The Eldar idea is that all the aspects are equal in "eliteness", but each serves a different focused function. Therefore, you need only as many aspects as the enemy requires you to have (if SM only masses tacs then you only need DRs).
The ideal gameplay is if the enemy uses different unit types, requiring the Eldar player to react with different aspects working together synergistically.
However, the nature of DOW causes many races to be able to play by only massing 1 armor class. SM, for example, must mass inf_hvy_med. SM has inf_high but Scouts cannot be an army center at late game.

#3 looks weird because the hard counter to Dark Reapers for SM/CSM is tier 0 infantry with upgrades, say Sniper Rifles to break Dark Reapers, or Cultist Grenadiers to just kill them.

DRs are also supposed to be countered by jump troops regardless of armor class. Had to lower DRs' vertical firing arc, otherwise they were just sniping jumpers out of the air.
Chaos also has it easier because monster_med is a significant part of its army. We made it so that DRs don't counter monster_med.
The methods I listed worked partially, and in combination.

[Inst]

The ideal gameplay is if the enemy uses different unit types, requiring the Eldar player to react with different aspects working together synergistically.

That is what I think Relic was thinking when they designed Eldar, considering their extremely fast teching rate. But like you said, it never worked out that way. On the other hand, I disagree that SM must mass inf_hvy_med against Eldar; scout snipers (infantry_med) were a usable counter to Dark Reapers. They're fast, long-range, infiltratable, meaning that while they won't butcher Dark Reapers due to their high-cooldown, they will score casualties and prevent assaults by Dark Reapers from being successful.

DRs are also supposed to be countered by jump troops regardless of armor class. Had to lower DRs' vertical firing arc, otherwise they were just sniping jumpers out of the air.
Chaos also has it easier because monster_med is a significant part of its army. We made it so that DRs don't counter monster_med.
The methods I listed worked partially, and in combination.

Not completely sure about that. In DoW's final patch, there were no more T1 infantry_high jump troops, so there were no jump troops that were countered by Warp Spiders. Banshees had a tough time stopping jump troops because they had to close into melee range, and Guardian damage was mediocre. So if Eldar wanted to counter jump troops, they'd have to use Dark Reapers + Webways. I still insist that if SM and CSM wants to counter DRs, they'd use armoury-upgraded capping units.

But w/e, you and Korbah are pro-players and I'm just a theorycrafter who maxed 1300 with Chaos (1.2 Defiler spam!). You guys should know better than me the intricacies of DoW counter units.

[lackofcheese]

Up until DC, units couldn't shoot while infiltrated.

So, scout snipers were a decent counter to dark reapers... Until a single squad of warp spiders would teleport in and butcher every last one of them.

[mlai]

Yup, that was the problem of massing Scouts... WSs were too good at their job, and 1 squad of WSs was all Eldar needed to build to counter any growing Scout threat. Boy, did IG have problems against Eldar lol.

As for inf_hvy_med jumpers vs Eldar... it gets pretty complicated in DOWpro/WApro, rather than just a counter mechanic in a vacuum. Eldar also has Entangle, potent FS and Warlock disruption (Warlock rush was a potent tactic by Choko and True, iirc), early Seer Council (small squad size in early tiers), WS Exarch who does decent anti-inf_hvy_med damage, fast Shees, and tier 1.5 grav plats.

Jump troops have always been very powerful in pro mods. Korbah hardcapped them in DCpro.

[Inst]

The point of infiltration was to setup within maximum range of your targets, so you could activate fire against Dark Reapers without the Dark Reapers FoFing away.

Yes, the WS were a massive problem, but at least that forced the Eldar to mass two types of units. SM had a partial counter in the form of ASMs to entangle WS, but WS dealt a lot of damage and ASMs weren't fast enough to engage the WS before they'd kill the scout snpiers. If SM somehow survived to plasmarines, the plasmarines would perform better against the WS than Heavy Bolter Marines would perform against the Dark Reapers, but scout snipers were inherently vulnerable units.

WS were imbalanced in DoW Vanilla; it would have been better off to reduce their range to 18, the same as flamethrowers. This would make them work a lot worse against melee, since it would be a lot easier to entangle them in melee.

[Orgad_E]

why oh WHY 50% of the threads in this forum turns into "nerf eldar" threads. eldar arent as bad as ppl make them out to be. you lost to eldar? simple solution:

GET BETTER


and ontopic: dais cap to 3-4. done.

[ImmortalChaos]

Agree with orgad, but replace "get better" with "play tau."

Seriously, this is not an elf balance thread. The dias cap just needs to be reduced- Dark Scythe is still pretty damned good for a free ability. I'd like to see it start with 7000 HP instead of needing the upgrades for that, however.

[KotCR]

SM has inf_high but Scouts cannot be an army center at late game.

Scouts are only inf_med. They'd be far far better for combat situations if they were inf_high. At least that's in official DoW.

If you meant DoWPro though...I don't know what armour type they are in it...so feel free to carry on...

[corncobman]

So I think the consensus is:

Reduce the pop cost, down to 4 at the most. This seems to be the most requested one, all other changes are secondary.

[Flagg]

Ograd, being a Tau player im sure it's easy for you to say "dont complain about Eldar, they're not that bad, just get better".

Anyways, is there much point discussing any sort of balance issues these days? I really cant see Relic making any radical changes to SS now, if they will make any changes at all.

[Pseudonymn]

why oh WHY 50% of the threads in this forum turns into "nerf eldar" threads. eldar arent as bad as ppl make them out to be. you lost to eldar? simple solution:

GET BETTER

Isn't this what people used to say about DC 1.0-1.2 Necons? The Elder -do in fact- have some pretty glaring issues that can't be trifled away with, "Learn2playkkthxbai". And if Tau are the only race that can counter them effectively, then the problem is only that much more severe.

Back on topic, reading through the thread and stewing over its contents for a couple of days, it sounds to me like people are wanting to see the lolbeam make a come back. How is this a good thing? Just reduce its pop cap to be in line with other uber vehicles and now the DE have room to field an additional vehicle or two to pick up the slack. Problem solved.