Any reason to play Primarch Difficulty?

[Grail Quest]

Other than getting beat up, is there any reason to play Primarch Difficulty? Any special reward like better gear, unlocked missions, or anything else?

I only just started fooling around with DOW2, and have been playing at Primarch until the first "real" mission -- to kill Orc Boss Gutrencher, one of the two orc bosses you get after the tutorials.
After a couple of tries, I finally got to the point where I can clear the map without any squad leaders going unconscious, unless I get hit by a grenade (not the 5-second countdown German-style big grenades, but the tiny ones that detonate on impact and so I have no warning and can't move my squads; and they wipe a whole squad all of a sudden). Once chancy move and my perfect Saviour record is ruined.

Then I get to the boss and it takes something like 30 minutes of just running circles around him, avoiding his attacks. It felt cheap and boring.

Are all bosses going to be this boring / tedious? I'm thinking that if they are, then I'm going to switch to Sergeant for x1 enemy damage instead of x4.5 from Primarch (I read in another post that the damage multiple is the difference) just to move things along.

[Gorb]

You get an achievement?

Primarch is an incredibly slog (that I've never personally completed, despite currently being in the middle of my 15th - 20th - I lost count - playthrough of the vDoW II/CR campaigns) that is mainly there for boasting rights. I've gotten most of the way through vDoW II on Primarch, I think, but not into Chaos Rising yet.

I've played Captain multiple times, that's a decent challenge but is still enjoyably playable.

[CommissarRezail]

Primarch wasn't that hard, I mean first time i played dow 2 it was on Primarch. You'll certainly need to use tactics on it, because even a harmagaunt can be god in it. Although the last boss on primarch was relative easy compared to khaine and even some minor bosses.

[Grail Quest]

Primarch wasn't that hard, I mean first time i played dow 2 it was on Primarch. You'll certainly need to use tactics on it, because even a harmagaunt can be god in it. Although the last boss on primarch was relative easy compared to khaine and even some minor bosses.

Well, there's not-that-hard and there's boring. I'm finding that tactics = cheap + boring. Like probing the orcs for their pull distance, then putting Avitus slightly outside so he can gun them down with his superior range. Or just running circles around Gutrencher. How is that an actual "fight"? Is the rest of the game basically like this? I'm finding Company of Heroes on Expert to be similar, to be honest, with the only challenges being time-based or scripted.

As for bosses... What about the talk of the final Chaos Rising boss being stupidly hard at all difficulty levels and having to cheese him with specific tactics? I'm late to this game so was that ever tweaked by Relic since the initial complaints?

[Gorb]

Personally I think people were just complaining for the sake of it. He's not really that much harder than any of the typical boss battles throughout vDoW II (and the odd ones in CR). I consider the Traitor boss battle in CR the hardest of the lot (particularly against Martellus or Cyrus).

[Arbit]

I played through vDoWII on primarch twice; once with a fairly standard setup (melee FC, shooty Tarkus, shooty Avitus, Cyrus) and once with bizarro world builds (shooty FC, melee Tarkus, shooty Thaddeus which makes him damn worthless IMO, shooty dreadnought... I don't remember what I did with Avi). If your e-peen can handle it, I would say lower the difficulty because boss fights are only going to get more tedious, and the vDoWII campaign relies very heavily on ability use and de-emphasizes traditional tactics. Basically, your weapon damage is puny but special abilities nuke the crap out of stuff and often grant invulnerability, so it's all about chaining together invulnerability moves and nukes because your enemies do ridiculous damage - like, guardians blowing through your terminators like they were wearing nothing but a blessed loincloth kind of ridiculous damage. If you're into that, it can be frantic and fun, but if you're not (and it sounds like you're not) I suggest going for a lower difficulty and churning through so you can get to the CR and RET campaigns which (IMHO OFC) are much better. You can import your characters to the CR campaign but the game swipes most of your gear so :/ to that.

[konfeta]

The problem with DoW 2 campaign is that anything below Primarch was stupid easy, but some of the Primarch fights are stupid grindy/cheap. However, if you can figure out some of the silly build/item tricks, Primarch gives a rewarding feeling of solving an RPG optimization puzzle.

Chaos Rising is an even more extreme version of it. The final boss fight was outright retarded unless you figured out a way to cheese it or figured out horrifically overpowered builds (well, more accurately, horrifically overpowered lucky drops).

Retribution got a lot better about it though. De-emphasizing the RPG number spam element did wonders for Riot's ability to balance a tighter single player experience.

P.S. Melee Tarkus is god. I think of all cheese builds, melee Tarkus was the silliest.

You can import your characters to the CR campaign but the game swipes most of your gear so :/ to that.

Carrying over some of the seals/terminator teleporters/jetpacks/banners is pretty important, though. While armor/weapons rapidly get obsolete, CR had no answer to stuff like the 20% damage reduction seals. This was probably the biggest downside of the CR campaign - Riot took the "zomg random mission spam" complaints a little too close to heart and completely gutted your ability to find items for specific builds.

[CommissarRezail]

Retribution got a lot better about it though. De-emphasizing the RPG number spam element did wonders for Riot's ability to balance a tighter single player experience.

Primarch aka very hard, in Retribution was so damn easy, all my guys was bi pedal wrecking balls. Tarkus with a heavy plasma gun would wipe out whole areas, not to mention the las cannon was a "gundamn fcking wing twin buster cannon".

[Grail Quest]

the vDoWII campaign relies very heavily on ability use and de-emphasizes traditional tactics. ... If you're into that, it can be frantic and fun, but if you're not (and it sounds like you're not) I suggest going for a lower difficulty

I'll have to think carefully about this. I rarely use powers in any RTS. If I'm going to have to *rely* on button-mashing powers to get through Primarch, I might ditch it. I use Pause but I don't think you can do more than assign movement while Paused. I did figure out mid-mission saves, so I might still try it. I also got the all-gear mod and the respec button mod to reduce grinding and re-playing.

[Gorb]

@Arbit: I consider ranged Thaddeus more abusable than a lot of other builds (though perhaps not so much as melee Cyrus - try it - and melee Tarkus with screen-wide anti-ranged Taunt). The only problem is you give up the Terminator Jump Bomb build which is probably the most effective way of destroying worlds.

Level Stamina so that Jump stuns on landing, level Ranged so that you get a massive ranged burst upon Jumping, equip a Plasma Gun and rain hot plasma death on the infidels. Combine with Blind Grenades and/or Melta Bombs for maximum coverage.

With regards to "gear swiping", the game transfers all items you are equipped with during the final mission of vDoW II as well as the mission reward for that mission. I was disappointed seeing Isador's Folly as the mission reward for The Last Stand, but was pleasantly surprised to see it when I started up my CR playthrough (just the other day, actually). If you take all the choice Purity Seals as well as a buttload of Terminator wargear, the game equips you with default wargear during the first mission of Chaos Rising anyway which gives you a decent set of normal wargear and all of the best Terminator wargear for you to rush the saving Martellus mission to get Terminator squads by about level 24.

I did this on my most recent/current playthrough with surprisingly good results. If only Terminator Armour actually worked on the Force Commander (Battle Cry without Inspiring Shout is removed, Battle Standard is still the only usable Commander Item and doesn't work with Terminator Armour).

@konfeta: I personally find Captain to be a challenging midpoint that requires me to be awake, but isn't overly tedious during the boss fights. Also, when in doubt, Orbital Bombardment twice in one missions solves everybody's problems

Also it's Relic, not Riot

[Thorno]

Personally I think people were just complaining for the sake of it.

We all know he had mammoth amounts of health, as in, millions maybe? But I'm sure more people complained about the crash that sometimes occurred after killing fatty and having to restart that very long mission again, including the very slow predator bit and then the big bit in between and then the two days wearing down the boss.

My friend encountered it a few times in a row and he was not nice when it happened.


Ok, on topic. I played through on Primarch for the achievement, so, there's that. But I still enjoyed it. I played that shit until the game ran out of random missions, it was a while ago now but I do remember Warp Spiders in particular being totally rage inducing if I didn't bring Cyrus to snipe them.

[Gorb]

The crash issue was indeed a huge turn-off at the time, I remember. That said I'm pretty sure they fixed it soon enough. I encountered it once or twice after boasting I hadn't seen it before. Ironic indeed

[CommissarRezail]

The hardest part on Primarch on Do2 vanilla was fighting eldar in general, their units was fcking high dps and fast. Defense mission where two Waith lords was comming at you surrounded by 3 squads of banshees was tiring. Either the surhi cannon on the waith lord would take out Avitus, or the banshees would jump from 5 miles away on to my FC face. I had to use cyrus demo packs to blow up most of the incoming group before i could actually engage them.

The thing is Thule was a great help in my missions, considering self repair made him almost un-kill able if there was no dedicated AV around. His auto cannon however was a bit ehh unless you had a lot of points in range, it still was ehh. The autocannon did save my ass a lot, the sweeping barrage it does knock back incoming melee was a blessing from the Emperor.

[Arbit]

@grail, I certainly wouldn't characterize it as "button mashing". You have to be very judicious and use good timing when delivering your special abilities and have a good tactical sense where/when to use them, and there is strategy is building your squad and selecting the right weapons. But the potent nature of the abilities and the crazy damage enemies put out reduces the importance of flanking, cover, and suppression (enemies begin shrugging off suppression fairly quickly). Again this is for primarch; this might not hold true for lower difficulties.

@konfeta,
I thought CR dialed back the cheese boss fights (except for Ulkair) and I really felt that the base damage on weapons was made more important relative to special abilities. It restored some tactical feel to the game.

Even Ulkair wasn't so bad as long as you realized he regained health by killing your dudes. Just don't feed him the redshirts that accompany Cyrus, Tarkus, Thaddeus, and Avitus and he goes down soon enough. I seem to recall not bothering to reinforce Thad's melee squad since that did more harm than good, and used my FC and Dread to soak up damage. I don't recall having particularly OP gear or builds.

@Gorb,
Hmm, I thought I remembered most (like 80%) of my gear being taken away, but it's been awhile since I've played so I'll defer to your experience.

Regarding Thad, the concept of a ranged assault squad just doesn't work very well. My first inclination was to use him as a skirmisher - jump from cover to cover, throw grenades, and eliminate weakened squads - but it didn't work very well because the jump crushes cover and enemy damage outpaces cover benefits fairly quickly anyway, he doesn't put out enough damage, and grenade tossing works better when you're in the thick of it (especially since you can spike stun nades with no ill effect to your bros). The other alternative is to focus on disruption, but this leaves him out of position and vulnerable to focus fire and melee squads hanging around the area. And then there's the main issue: given he's going to be right up in the face of a ranged squad, why wouldn't he use his strength (melee) against their weakness (melee)? What happens too often is he disrupts the ranged squad, then after the knockback/stun wears off, they get up and shoot the shit out of him. He works much better as melee - spearhead the assault by jumping and meleeing ranged troops, use spiked stun nades and merciless strike to buy time against melee defenders while the rest of the team moves up.

[CommissarRezail]

He works much better as melee - spearhead the assault by jumping and meleeing ranged troops, use spiked stun nades and merciless strike to buy time against melee defenders while the rest of the team moves up.

As stated in the Codex Astarte

I think his jump would had work better if they had meltas at the time, then it would probably be very effective to jump in and melt infantry with meltas.

I also found that having the tacs be bait and having thaddues jump on top of any incoming melee while devastor team finish everything off is also effective. I think that's in the codex well at least Tarkus said so.

A good combo for me was to have Cryus go cloak get close to the enemy then unleash suppression fire, then have Thadduess jump in. While that's happening i would have fc teleport on top of any incoming melee fighters, and have Thule come in at almost at the very end of suppression fire and use auto cannon knock back. It was very flashy to watch that pull off. Once Thule was in there, most of the enemy was pretty much wiped.

[konfeta]

Primarch aka very hard, in Retribution was so damn easy, all my guys was bi pedal wrecking balls. Tarkus with a heavy plasma gun would wipe out whole areas, not to mention the las cannon was a "gundamn fcking wing twin buster cannon".

Yeah, but as a whole, it had a lot fewer damage/tankiness extremes IMO. It felt more like a wargame than an RPG.

Also it's Relic, not Riot

Both are companies with hilarious game balance issues and begin with R. CLOSE ENOUGH FOR ME!

I thought CR dialed back the cheese boss fights (except for Ulkair) and I really felt that the base damage on weapons was made more important relative to special abilities. It restored some tactical feel to the game.

It was dialed back, but good lord no on the special abilities. The perks became exponentially more absurd. At some points, fighting certain enemies like Plague Marines was a waiting game for all the instant kill buttons to start working.

[Arbit]

Hmph, I remembered back and forth firefights being possible in CR, whereas vDoWII's version of a firefight was your guys' heads exploding like watermelons while you wait for Cyrus' abilities to go off cooldown.

To clarify, I meant that regular weapon damage was more important than it was in DoWII, not that weapon damage was more important than special abilities. I guess it would help if I didn't say the exact opposite of what I meant?

Anyway, all this talk makes me want to fire up the old campaigns.

[Grail Quest]

OK, I've now played (at Primarch) all the way up to the first defense mission and the Warp Spider Exarch.
I know I'm not as experienced as all of you yet, but it seems there are parallels with the difficulty setting here and in Dungeon Siege III. In DS3, higher difficulty = more damage. As in retarded amounts of damage. The problem with that is it negated certain builds and tactics in HardCore. There was no point in Blocking or using any Block-related powers because the enemy did so much damage. At one point, bosses could 1-shot you if you didn't have a specific build emphasizing Stamina (health). Later some mob units could kill you in 2 hits. Bosses were doing 800 damage past your armor, and around the same time in the plot, certain mobs were doing almost 500 past the same amount of armor. And Blocking lowered that by less than 100 damage, or even less than 50, depending on your gear.
Basically, IMO, jacking up damage is a lazy way of increasing difficulty. I haven't played a lot of DOW2, but I've played a lot of games that just did that and it never worked. Even going back as far as IceWind Dale that was what devs did.

Now in DOW2, what I'm noticing is that melee and Tactical Advance was basically useless in Primarch. Map-clearing was basically about using Avitus to out-distance the enemy, or pulling squads into your killzones. Anything else and you started losing squadmates. Anything daring and you lost squad leaders.
Boss fights were too chancy: You get like 1 second to react to the Warp Spider's grab and drop power -- how are you supposed to react to that, even with Pause? -- and if you were in the wrong place when that happened and the Exarch called reinforcements, you basically lost that squad. I killed the Exarch by attrition, staying near one of the ramps to retreat any squad that got into trouble. I hate using exploits to kill bosses but staying to fight was just stupid.

I switched to "Normal Difficulty" (Sergeant) and suddenly the game was a lot more dynamic and exciting. Avitus still does what he does, but suddenly Tactical Advance from Tarkus actually meant something -- advance to enemy flank -- and you could actually use Force Commander's melee to break deadlocks involving both sides having too much cover as he now had a chance to charge forth and get around enemy cover (or destroy it). There was a chance that the enemy would then break cover and melee you too, but that was the tradeoff.

Pardon my French, but forget this Primarch BS. I'm switching to Sergeant. It's just a more interesting game.

If they really wanted to increase difficulty, I think they should do something like what Heroes of Might and Magic did: Higher Difficulty unlocked enemy abilities. When you played a lower difficulty, the enemy didn't have access to the upper tier spells. At the highest difficulty, they had more troops but also full spell access, which was a real game-changer. Not just harder but a different gameplay experience.

In DOW2, this could look like having officers with each squad. At lowest difficulty, they have just more health or one clearly visible better gear. A normal difficulty, add a one-use Accessory. At higher difficulty, give them 1-3 uses of 1-2 accessories. At highest difficulty, add a weak powers drawn from PC powers.

[Pocktio]

Eldar hand lasers trolololol.

[CommissarRezail]

I manage to get through primarch with out Avitus and Cycrus a few runs, mostly because of thule though. Well i went all melee, FC with teleporter pack, tacs with melee weapons, thule full melee, thaduess in terminator armor. It worked, but i had to do some kiting and a lot of special moves to keep the tacs alive. That run was haaard though.

[konfeta]

Now in DOW2, what I'm noticing is that melee and Tactical Advance was basically useless in Primarch. Map-clearing was basically about using Avitus to out-distance the enemy, or pulling squads into your killzones. Anything else and you started losing squadmates. Anything daring and you lost squad leaders.

Melee isn't useless. It just requires being very familiar with the game, map lay outs, enemy threats, etc; and a healthy dose of fast reaction micro. I suggest giving a Tarkus/Thaddeus/Dreadnought all melee team a try once you get used to the game, it's a very fun and different experience when you don't hide behind Avitus/Cyrus/Assault Cannon spam. You can easily win fights with minimal losses by properly stacking damage reduction, healing, and crowd control effects (jetpacks/taunts/blind nades/synapsebooms/etc.)

Admittedly, the Avatar fight is basically autoskip with a double OB hit unless you are a very patient man.

Hmph, I remembered back and forth firefights being possible in CR, whereas vDoWII's version of a firefight was your guys' heads exploding like watermelons while you wait for Cyrus' abilities to go off cooldown.

Eh, it just took using cover and rapidly sniping certain very specific enemies (Venom Cannons/Seer Councils being the worst offenders). The problem with DoW 2 is that it doesn't.... make it obvious which enemies are basically the enemy versions of Avitus. Back and forth firefights were very possible with almost everything else (well, as back and forth as you mass murdering enemy light infantry without any losses is).

[Pseudonymn]

(well, more accurately, horrifically overpowered lucky drops)

Or find maps where enemies spawn infinitely (Eldar maps were good) and farmed the living fuck out of that shit for the good drops. I'm talking about setting Ye Ol' Campe of You Can't Touch Dis and leaving the game to run for hours. Go to work, come home, pick up a precious few decent/good drops, rinse, repeat.

Taking cheesing the game to a whole new level just to have a decent crack at winning and having at least some fun while doing it without some fucking Warlock popping an entire squad+termie armored sarg in one shot. RAAAAAAAGE!!

Holy shit, I hate grinding for the best loot on random drop tables and I hate it when devs think this is a cool idea.

[Gorb]

I want to fix that but apparently my thread is too long for people to read

[Grail Quest]

Melee isn't useless. It just requires being very familiar with the game, map lay outs, enemy threats, etc; and a healthy dose of fast reaction micro. I suggest giving a Tarkus/Thaddeus/Dreadnought all melee team a try once you get used to the game, it's a very fun and different experience when you don't hide behind Avitus/Cyrus/Assault Cannon spam. You can easily win fights with minimal losses by properly stacking damage reduction, healing, and crowd control effects (jetpacks/taunts/blind nades/synapsebooms/etc.)

Are we playing the same game? DOW2 (not CR, which I haven't tried yet). Primarch difficulty. CAVEAT: I haven't played further than the first 2 missions on Typhon. No real toys yet and Thaddeus is too vulnerable even with a +10 Armor banner to jump into the middle of anything.

This is why FC melee is too tedious/dangerous to really use: (in no particular order)

(1) Reaction to a move order is too slow and unreliable. Not entirely certain, but if you give a long enough move order he can wander off and attack something, forcing you to re-order his move.
(2) He occasionally stays to make sausage meat out of an ork with a "special killing move" while in the middle of a firefight and getting perforated
(3) His charge scatters the enemy clump in every direction, and he now has to wander around chasing them down.
(4) While he is wandering about, he can pull more squads or move even closer to the enemy, or wander into the range of an MG in a building and get pinned.
(5) Enemy DPS on Primarch means he is down to half health or less in literally seconds unless you have the enemy pinned with Avitus.
(6) If there is more than 1-2 squads of enemies, you might as well just chuck a grenade while they approach, which is why I always have FC and Tarkus swap accessories.
(7) If he is suppressed or pinned, you need a power or accessory to get him immediately unpinned and retreated or you will lose him.
(8) If your nearest retreat rally point happens to be behind the enemy clump, a squad in Retreat will run right through them. DUH.
(9) His charge destroys my cover if he starts too close or is engaging enemies at my shooter emplacements. His charge destroys cover I could have used later. I have to pause and set sequential moves to do anything with him.

I'm pretty sure I've forgotten one or two things, but those are the main points off the top of my head.
I looked at his skill tree, and the power that looks like the best one is the auto-kill-on-hit with ranged attacks. Not sure what the % is, but if it kill any non-boss regardless of health, it's a good power.

Until the Eldar missions, the FC was basically passive unless there were very, very, few enemies. I was tempted to give him a two-handed bolter most of the time.

How often are people using stimpacks? On Primarch (again, only up to the first 2 missions on Typhon) I used no accessories except against the boss. (Sadly, Cyrus's detonation packs don't work on the ork bosses, which is a bit BS) And I always aim for 5/5 Saviour stars since that is a good sign that my tactics are decent.

[Gorb]

Right, you've given me a challenge. Primarch with an emphasis on melee it is.

[konfeta]

Are we playing the same game? DOW2 (not CR, which I haven't tried yet). Primarch difficulty. CAVEAT: I haven't played further than the first 2 missions on Typhon. No real toys yet and Thaddeus is too vulnerable even with a +10 Armor banner to jump into the middle of anything.

The first few levels are obviously the hardest because you have none of the good perks (and your gear sucks). Like, with FC? You need to gun straight for "Invulnerable after charging" perk if you want him to be significantly better in melee. Thaddeus with "Fury of the Chapter" can and will solo entire Primarch maps with laughable ease if you want him to. Etc.

I would give you specific advice on which perks to take, but I played the campaign so long ago I cannot recollect without seeing the list of traits in front of me (the DoW 2 wiki seems to be gone and google is failing me). Thaddeus also has a rushable invulnerability trait IIRC.

*Oh, right, try to score a Rosarius as soon as possible. Missions that let you pick up shrines are extremely important in Primarch. Turrets are nice for some bosses and defensive missions, Signum is a pile of crap compared to the other two (though situationally useful).

[Arbit]

GORB THROWIN DOWN!!!

Grail Quest, the FC is meant to draw fire and knock stuff down with battlecry. The rest of your team should be throwing grenades/jumping/suppressing etc while your FC is busy. What konfeta said

You can easily win fights with minimal losses by properly stacking damage reduction, healing, and crowd control effects (jetpacks/taunts/blind nades/synapsebooms/etc.)

is very true, with an emphasis on the crowd control elements if you're just using what you can scrounge up and not grinding for loots. Basically, if your enemies are not knocked down, stunned, or suppressed, you're in serious danger of dying or you better have triggered some sort of invulnerability ability. Controlling how many enemies you've pissed off (won't say aggro won't say aggro) is another key element.

You should be using accessories all the time. Blind and frag grenades are very potent.

And in my experience, a ranged FC ends up as a crappier Avitus.

[konfeta]

Ranged FC is poor mostly to compensate for how awesome he is in Terminator Armor. The most useful thing about him prior to that point is that he can use Plasma Guns (which are decent AV weapons without being utterly useless agaisnt everything else). But yeah, he doesn't come into his own until CR with power armor weapons.

Speaking of Plasma Guns, Tarkus "Veteran Squadmates" trait is awesome. It gives him a boost in firepower uncharacteristic of a guy speccing in the tanking line of traits - I love getting it fast because Tarkus can basically kill Falcons with rear armor shots entirely with his mooks.

[Gorb]

He's so awesome in Terminator Armour that he loses Battle Cry.

Also, the entire Ranged tree is a secret set of abilities that culminates in "equip a Flamer, activate Battle Cry and instant kill everything in the game that isn't a boss".

So, I'm on the first of the two optional missions. I was proud of not losing a squad in the preliminaries (i.e. the first two levels) and now Tarkus and my Force Commander won't stop dying before they've even reached Skykilla. I find it ironic that Cyrus and Avitus haven't gone down yet.

Got my Rosarius though.

[konfeta]

That was a bug with one of the traits IIRC. Pretty sure my FC used Battle Cry plenty in termie armor.

[Gorb]

Inspiring Shout provides a different ability that does work with Terminator Armour. However, this pidgeonholes you into build Inspiring Shout.

I mean, you should always max Will unless you're trying something funky with the FC, but being shoehorned into a particular set of builds is distasteful.

[Grail Quest]

the FC is meant to draw fire and knock stuff down with battlecry

I agree with this, but ONLY when the enemy comes to you (e.g., melee). Especially if you like grenades and their friendly fire (does friendly fire do x4.5 in Primarch?)
If you have more than one squad intercepting melee, you're wasting ranged firepower for the majority of your engagements, which are shootouts. Melee isn't *entirely* useless, but it's not *generally* useful on Primarch (at least not in the early missions).

Ranged firepower is the whole point of an army -- the projection of firepower. If the enemies are engaging your shooters, you need to tangle them and reposition your shooters -- to keep up the projection of firepower -- so that you can continue to kill them with reduced or negated risk of them killing you.
This is how the entire DOW1 vanilla campaign was won: Whirlwinds wasting enemy from afar. If they got closer, hit them with Space Marines equipped with missile launchers. If they got even closer, the Space Marines opened fire with bolters. If they got even closer than that, you did something wrong, but don't panic, just tie them up with some space marines on Reinforce-Overwatch and regroup your shooters to shoot them to death. If it looks like a giant-sized thingie (you know, Daemon Lord or something like) lead them around with Space Marines to get them in range of your orchard of missile launcher turrets.
Projection of firepower: Units exist to help another unit project firepower to a greater range. Melee-focussed warfare is for heroes, and on Primarch, you don't have heroes.

This is why I cleared mission with Avitus on long range. Because it works and it's safe (not against a boss, but that's another story) and anything else got you shot up so why risk it on Primarch.

Notice the enemy has a LOT of shooters because that's how modern warfare is fought: Shooting people before they get close. Only when they have an excess or units (enough ranged units to cover an advance of melee units), or if they could close range VERY fast to reduce their exposure to shooting (e.g., Warp Spiders) did you see more melee. The enemy can use this tactic because they can bring in more squads than you can to tie up your units and they aren't worried about collecting Saviour stars, blowing up their friendlies, or dying.

The FC moves too slowly in and out. Hell, I'd rather use his Victory charge to get OUT since it can be fast.
If Thaddeus ever lives long enough to get invulnerability after jump, I forsee he'll be spending that getting the hell out because he'll have aggro'ed an extra 4 squads I didn't want to engage.

I can see how Tarkus would be a better melee character around level 10 because he could have the skills to draw and survive melee from the others (Taunt and melee-damage-reducing Tactical Advance). Any more melee than one squad seems wasted unless you need to split your squads into two forces.

Primarch forces me to play more "logically", but it's not as fun. We're the hard-charging Space Marines, not sneaky Wood Elves.
(That said, how come I'm suddenly taking almost no damage at all on Sergeant... While being shot in the rear by Eldar. Hmm...)

[CommissarRezail]

Defense mission with only melee is hard, well fc with hammer and teleporting pack makes it a little more bearable, but mostly i have to pick one generator and guard the shit out of it. Not to mention aggro everything on tarkus poor soul, thule however thule is highly allergic to bright lances, just really really breaks out in holes when being hit by them.

[Pocktio]

I always found being able to shoot first and kill the thing before it shoots was the best way to survive primarch.

Unending firepower, colossal AoE attacks and throaty prayers to the Emperor for deliverance from the Eldar Hand lasers.

[konfeta]

Wellll, if you are doing a ranged FC, Energy is pretty much there for it.

Primarch forces me to play more "logically", but it's not as fun. We're the hard-charging Space Marines, not sneaky Wood Elves.

Well, this is a common problem with any video game that tries to incorporate melee, they have to bend the ever living fuck out of rules to suppress the emergent result of "deadly shooting vs deadly melee." That said, melee works just fine in DoW 2 Primarch. You will see this eventually.

[Gorb]

To be fair, Chaos Rising gets to the point where anything works fine. You just have to be level 27 or higher with the right weapons equipped.

Melee-wrecking Cyrus with Energy-based Cluster Mines and a Shotgun is always hilarious. Land a few melee hits, micro out, drop Clusters, move back, Shotgun Blast if necessary, repeat. Who needs your three other squads?

[CommissarRezail]

Only serious problem is melee Avatar, the bastard. Big thule can't scurry away fast enough..

[comradegrumpy]

Hell, in CR melee Cyrus combined with the FC energy tree ability which lowers the energy cost of abilities was downright hilarious. Pop battlecry a few times with Cyrus in the vicinity, and enjoy your *entirely free* cluster mines and remote detonators. That's right folks, completely free explody stuff.

[Grail Quest]

Trying Primarch again. Finding that gear is HUGELY important. Cyrus with suppressing sniper rifle is great, as is a second grenade. Master Crafted Grenades in the early game are a game-changer as it lets you have two bomb chuckers in the team. Too bad gear is so chancy.