the dreadnought

[Dimension]

yeah, so with the advent of the new mode, lets talk about the balance of dreadnoughts.

the general gist I hear is that its massively overpowered. This has led to the somewhat disappointing practice by many players to quit the game as soon as one team has gotten the dreadnought. I'm not sure if they're forfeiting because they don't see a chance to beat the thing, or if they're disappointed they don't get to play it. Either which way, there's so many host migrations that its not funny anymore.

Personally, I want to play more with and vs the thing and make up my mind then, but here are my thoughts on it regardless.

dreadnoughts feel as fast, or even faster than marines. The fact that they are bigger means that you'll get stuck on objects a lot more, so you cannot run uninterrupted the way you can as a marine. I feel that this is a bit much, as you sometimes can't keep up with the thing as an ASM, which I find to be slightly ridiculous. But this is no major gripe.

dreadnoughts have a shit ton of life. they take upwards of 10-15 lascannon shots to down (I've not labbed it yet, so this is an estimate). imo this is okay, they're meant to tank, and the fact that they're huge means that they're drawing a LOT of fire.

They also have armor, but I've not quite found out how thats supposed to work. playing as a dread, I never saw an armor bar, only a health bar.

what I find somewhat overpowered is their health regeneration rate. I don't notice it when I'm a dread myself because I'm busy trying to keep people from flanking me, but playing vs the dread its health regen seems to be very strong. Possibly even too strong. This allows cautious and able players to basically make the whole thing a walkover.

However, what I feel most of all is that after playing about 10-12 hours of DA, I still think people need to learn how to play as and vs the dread. In some games, the dread is more or less fodder, and dies after capturing the first point to a dedicated and concerted team of players. I myself have landed about 6-8 killing blows on the dread, so they do die.

some players don't have the situational awareness required to pilot the thing, I distinctly remember one instance where I got a chain of 5 hammer swings in before the dread noticed me. I didn't kill him, but he didn't survive the next 15 seconds iirc. Other dreads however don't allow me to get more than one swing in, and often intercept me even before that. I have also noticed that awesome players in general don't necessarily make good dread pilots in vice versa. Its a bit of a different shoe, and it takes more practice than you'd think. Conversely, I doubt that we've seen the true potential of the dread yet. There's a lot of room for improvement, especially in the weapon switching department.


If you put me on the spot, I think the dread is somewhat OP, and could do with a slight speed reduction (devestator) and a health regeneration rate nerf of 20-25% for starters. nothing too big, I still want a more defensive playstyle to be viable with it. However, I'd like to play this mode a bit more before fully forming my opinion.

so what does teh rest of you guys think?

*edit*

as for counters, I've noticed that lascannon and hammers work best. meltas would be good in theory, but you can't close in fast enough and will be picked off either by the dread, or its bodyguards ime.

[Thorno]

However, what I feel most of all is that after playing about 10-12 hours of DA, I still think people need to learn how to play as and vs the dread.

This is what I think. People need to stop crying and adapt. Meltas and Hammers destroy the thing and on most maps Lascannons can be used out of the Dreads assault/autocannon range.

[mecha]

What we saw here was that after a while the non dread team pretty much always was a mix of las cannons and hammers and were really effective with it being hard to cap more than one point before dying. As the dread player you then end up hoping the assaults on your team suppress the cannons while you take care of the assaults with hopefully some help from fast spawning melta guys.

[Dimension]

yeah, I played a couple of more hours after making the above post, and that just happened. since playing the last time, people have adapted. I don't think I've seen a dread cap more than 3-4 points ever since. Unless the opposing team suuuuuuuuuucked. the 8 point capping 40+ people killing walkovers I achieved yesterday are close to impossible now. I now get kill streaks as a boltertac or sword assault going flanking people wanting to gank our dread.

so yeah.

[mecha]

oh yeah that's lots of fun, trolling the sidelines killing folk way too focused on taking pot shots at the dread

[uncle_anaesthesia]

Im sticking to dev so i can offer fire support to the assaults, but the dread gets creamed in some games fairly often from the assaults n meltas. but im still sure the dread moves to fast, keep
the firepower as is people have to learn to be smart. I think once people are up to speed in controlling the dread then capping points will rise a bit, i had a go in turd alley map and it was a task twisting n turning in those tight corridors.

[Jaimas]

My major issue with the dread is that Lascannons, Meltas, and Hammers are pretty much the only viable counters. If you're a non-hammer assault, a Tactical using not-Melta, or a Devastator of a flavor other than lascannon, the dread is ridiculous.

Charged Plasma should do a little more to the damned thing. So should charged Plasma Pistols/Guns. I wouldn't mind the Vengeance Launcher being a tiny bit more effective as well.

Also, do Luma Grenades affect the dread? I've never gotten the chance to ever actually pilot it.

[Dimension]

what is a luma grenade? If you mean blind grenades, yes they work. And they are fricking awesome. One of these days when I get over my hammerine addiction I shall try lobbing Mastercrafted blind nades at the thing.

Also, those people running around in non-high-dps weapons do serve the function of supporting the dread killers by neutralizing bodyguards. being able to get 3 las shots off before dieing is more effective than being killed after the first one.

Don't expect to kill the dread with it, but a bolter marine has its purposes even when playing vs the dread. Just make sure you have enough heavy guns on the team.

I also disagree that the PC needs to be more effective vs it. In fact, if the labs conducted are correct, I think the PC is TOO effective (by quite a bit to be perfectly honest), given that it also kills bodyguards with splash.

VL could be more efficient, but it doesn't need to be. I refrain to judge charged plasma guns and pistols until they've been properly labbed, and imo others should do the same.

[Arbit]

I think the dread's fighting capability is OK. Killing blow hammers will juuuust about kill it in three hits - leaves it a 9%. A charged plasma gun staggers it but I have no way of telling how much damage it does.

But the game mode needs to change in a couple ways.
1) Automatically give the other team the dreadnought if they kill it! Christ, you pull it together against a superior team and what happens? They immediately cap the point and get it again. Seriously disappointing and unfun.
2) The position of the dreadnought should be revealed to the other team. Your team gets scattered all over the map due to the variable spawn points and it's difficult to tell where the dread is so it's freaking impossible to group up. It feels a bit like just repeatedly launching suicide hammer ASM at it is the best way to kill it, as opposed to teamwork.

Just played a 12 to 14 game where we never got the dread but we killed it 3 or 4 times, two times by me with my sneaky hammer ASM. The dread pilots were generally not that good though.

Oh yeah, the dread having a teleport beacon seems a little over the top.

[uncle_anaesthesia]

Killing blow hammers will juuuust about kill it in three hits........not for me in fact no where near that in game for me ive had numerous hits on the bugger n not dropped his/hers armour/health to anywhere near 9%. but good point for revealing dread position ive been wandering about wondering were the dread is a lot of times. And due to the sometimes dodgy spawning we have enemy spawning beside me in game then me spawning at the other end of the map with no one around. have also found a lot of times after my team kills the dread, the spawn point activates in the furthest away point from my team giving the enemy basically a free dread

[Dimension]

I never had that problem. A dread is either camping (in which case he is stationary), capping or moving from point to point. if you know the map, you know where the dread will be.

as for non-changing dreads, yeah, that can be annoying. but automatically giving it over to the other team? I don't know.

and it definitely takes more than 5 hits to kill an undamaged dread, as that is the max amount of hits I ever got in.

IIRC, someone labbed it at 6 or 7 hammer strikes with killing blow.

[Kalimac]

I think it's 7 strikes with hammer, with killing blow, and 6 strikes if you use combat stims as well.

[Arbit]

Hmm, OK, I thought I was hitting an undamaged dread but I guess not.

A charged plasma gun is pretty decent for the more open maps. You can pop out and nail him and be hidden before anyone is the wiser. Definitely takes in excess of 10 shots to kill, though.

I'm actually the enjoying the plasma gun a bit more in general. Start charging it whenever you corner, tap R to cancel the charge up if no one is there to blast. It's nice to start a firefight with your enemy's armor completely stripped . Damn thing clips on terrain like crazy, though; I've managed to blast my OWN armor off many times when trying to shoot over a low wall.

As far as automatically switching control of the dread, why not? Given two evenly matched teams, capping the dread point is basically a coin flip. If you are unlucky to lose that flip twice than it's basically an autoloss given how restrictive the time limit is. It's a real accomplishment to destroy a well-piloted dread so it's a bit of a downer to not even get a minute of respite before it's killing you again, especially if something happens like what uncle-anaesthes describes.

[Dimension]

Someone really needs to lab how much damage a charged plasma GUN shot does to it.

Also, the way you describe it, the simplest solution to the problem at hand is increasing the delay between dreadnought death and activation of the control point.

[Arbit]

When I say it's a coin flip, I mean two equally skilled teams have an equal shot at getting the dread assuming the control point is in a reasonable location. If the team that just had it gets it, they've basically won because unless the dread pilot is terribad as you can typically expect to get 6-8 points. It doesn't make sense to have a 20 minute game revolve around the frantic 2 or 3 minutes you spend trying to grab the control point.

Basically, it's like this - at the beginning both teams scramble to get control of the dread. It's kinda like a, um, drop ball or a scrum or whatever the hell you call it any sport when both teams are given an equal chance to get control of the ball/puck/severed goat head or whatever. When one team scores i.e. gets control of the dread and scores some points until it dies, it's kinda like scoring a goal or touchdown and the other team should get possession. There's precedent in any number of games. Having both teams compete for possession of the dread after it's destroyed is like doing another coin flip after scoring a goal, a touchdown, successfully returning a serve, etc. It should be "here's how well we did with the dread; now you go on offense and try to beat that" instead of "here's how well we did with the dread; now you either successfully get control of the dread point or we get the dread again and you almost assuredly lose and you'll definitely experience a wave of disconnects"

[Kien]

Has anyone noticed the camera can get a bit off? I had the dread first time today and after walking in some small rooms where the camera had to zoom and change a lot I noticed it moved a bit to the left. It stayed that way until I died.

Btw multi-melta has no purpose I see. Any time when they are not in melee range enemies can be eliminated with the assault cannon.

The dread is completely out of place on the bridge map. First one who gets it is gonna stay with it for a long time. One guy got like 50 kills and 2 deaths. 1 of the deaths was because he was checking the scores. The problem is of course that the map as such a fat choke point. I wish there was a possibility for the other team to get a dread as well. But it would be harder somehow. Being able to have dread on both teams would make it a little more even and seeing dread against dread would be so fun!

[Kalimac]

I personally think that the bridge map is one of the harder ones to have the dread on. Enemies spawn all over the map, and your back is never really covered from las shots etc. (if not your team is decent that is), making it difficult to defend yourself at times.

The multi melta is much more reliable than the melee weapon, and is very useful at taking out assaults (even in mid air).

[Arbit]

With more experimentation, I've come to believe the plasma gun with the improved charge perk is excellent if you can hang back and snipe with it. Staggering the dread is helpful to your team and you can pop off three shots in quick succession... I won't say you can stun lock it, but it'll spend an awful lot of time stumbling around.

It's an all around pretty good weapon. Think of it as an M79 grenade launcher with an underslung pistol.

[Kien]

I just discovered that switching to multi-melta during reload animation cancels the reload effect but still plays the animation. Doing melee or stun attacks works fine while reloading. Just felt for mentioning it.