Well, we all have seen that some changes to tacs have led to the blobbing again.
At first, i was more concerned about what was letting to this tac blobs to form again in 1.4.2 but after some looking at numbers and their performance, i have noticed that the tweaks to balance them should be done with a silk glove, instead of a nerf hammer.
First lets take a look at what happened in the process.
As we all knew, their functionality was hampered in 1.4.1 because of the so many counters to heavy armor, making it more of an annoyance than an aid AND their dps was below par taking in consideration that they are above average ranged infantry capable of besting MOST of the ranged enemies, and yes i said most like the game itself suggest, but not all. The problems lies in :
1-the TACS ability to nullify by a big margin ranged damage,
2-AND something that seems to being overlooked by everyone, their melee damage, yes their melee damage.
When you combine this 2 factors and add to the equation their ability to decimate enemies before their reach the tacs (this should be this way btw), is when the problem shows.....their durability.
Let me elaborate;
In the 1,4,2 numbers were reverted, and their armor and dps was buffed... but their hard counters damage were diminished....(altho slugga and shees needed some tweaks to be honest, i think they are fine now). Most of their counters now suffer heavy loses on the proces of getting into melee to them, but well thats understandable. What happens is that when melee units reach them, the tacticals which are dedicated ranged units, can do a big amount of melee damage to this units(Sarg not ncluded), even when they are hitting them with the guns itselfs. And their attacks per second combined is nothing to be laughed at. As a result, fragile but hard hitting melee units still take a lot of damage in a melee battle against tacs.
Note: Some counter-argument suggest that they cost 500 req, yes is expensive, but this unit is the only unit in game capable of adjusting to any battle with their equipment. Thats a luxury only the TAcs have. Their durability ensures they will not suffer a lot of loses also, so the req of 500 is well a worth investment in the long run. What happens here is those cheap units of other races on the long run end being a lot expensier to the other players because of the heavy loses the tac inflict, while the tacs 500 reqs just get paying more and more. If you kept ur tacs alive(is not difficult to do), by the end you have a unit capable of reaching 2k hp, with uber DPS , and capable of dealing with everything u throw at them and all that from 500 req. Please take this into account.
Now, ill post 2 videos to show what im tryingt to say.
Video 1: In the first video you will see a fight between vanilla Tacs and their supposed hard counter, vanilla banshees. What happens is that Tacs inflict good damage on the banshees while ranged, but notice how the banshees start to lose members once engaged to the tacs on melee. In the end, the vanilla shees survive with 168 HP and 2 models. Its pretty basic but you can clearly see what is happening.
Video 2: In the second video you will see vanilla tacs fighting against a vanilla warboss. Warboss description says that he is the strongest of orcs and excels on melee fights.
In the fight you will also see the warboss using his stomp ability to make it more real.
As you can see, the boss survives with 17 HP, yes 17. He does not have a power weapon but anyways, a very strong melee unit like him, cannot be weathered down like that by ranged specialist units meleing with his guns.
Video 3: There were also experiments with stormboys and stikkboomas. Stormboys won with half hp and all models but take into account that im paying power cost for them. They jumped of course to close the distance.
Stikkbommas won with 50 hp and one model. But i think this has more to do with the boomas melee dps which is suspicious , but it could have been because of their melee bomb animation attack, if thats the case, then is completely understandable.Notice the tacs dodging the initial bombs to make it more realistic.
Sluggas were beaten on melee in another video i was not able to record.
There was a fourth video but i was not able to save it. It was vanilla warp spiders vs vanilla tacs in a ranged duel. The Tacs were not in cover and most of the spiders teleported on firing range and took cover. The battle ended with the Tacs winning it by a small margin. The spiders are a dedicated tech 2 ranged unit with a fearsome dps, and cost 440 req and 40 power, considerably more than vanilla tacs but even on cover were not able to win. If tacs are specialized on defeating most of ranged enemies, definitely warp spiders should be one of the exceptions if not the only one, being so elite eldar ranged units. IM sure you can recreate it if needed. It was on teh same map and location of both previous videos.
As you can see the trend, what happens is that tacs still do the job when being meleed. A specialized ranged infantry unit cannot be doing this amount of damage to specialized melee unit, in a melee combat. They should have a sarg to defend them but as you can see, they fare very well meleeing with their guns.
Now, what i suggest for a change, to put tacs were they belong:
• Increased the Autocannon damage against heavy armor from 100% to 125%
• Increased the Explosive damage against heavy armor from 100% to 120%
• Increased the Piercing_pvp damage against heavy armor from 0.6 to 0.7 0r 0.8
• And of course the reduction of their melee damage, with the exception of the sargeant which needs to receive buff if necessary.
Bolter Damage by TACS is strong and is fine.
Also, this tweaks are directly related with assault marine price decrease. The Assault Marines which must have a slight power and requisition decrease to be able to help on melee the TAcs while the tacs fire support. This will mess up platforms and HWT ingeneral but that is another problem that is related more to the HWT than the ASM themselves.
I even think that TAcs should have a slight power cost. But this should be on par with ASMs power cost decrease considrably and of course devastator price drop.
Well, i hope you enjoyed the read and feel free to discuss.
VIDEOS HERE:
http://www.gamereplays.org/community...owtopic=511843
Originally Posted by Troubleshooter
