Dawn of War 2: Space Marine Balance Issues

Ok, I only play SM, so that's what I'm going to talk about.

The Force Commander's terminator upgrade is horrible and nobody ever buys it. It's pretty much the most expensive hero upgrade in the game but turning your Offensive hero into a ranged unit that lacks any sort of retreat is a really bad thing. Really really bad. There needs to be some improvement. Perhaps give him a Thunder Hammer and Stormshield option, perhaps a retreat, perhaps a teleport? Something needs to be done to make it an actual viable upgrade to use.

The Force Commander's global ability For the Emperor is also quite bad. Nobody ever uses zeal for it, since it turns your targeted unit into a statue that can be killed pretty easily. I was thinking perhaps it could be changed into an ability that gives your unit increased knockback for ranged attacks, but that might be overpowered in conjunction with ATSKNF. So, not entirely sure what it should be changed to, but it's certainly useless in its current form.

Terminators and Assault Terminators right now aren't worth their cost. 900 requisition and 700 zeal are a huge price to pay for a unit that's mostly lackluster. Only the Terminator w/ Cyclone missile launcher is anywhere near useful enough to that price right now. And that's only because the Cyclone launcher is really overpowered compared to the other two weapon options. For costing as much as they do, Terminators and Assault Terminators are destroyed by Seer Councils and upgraded Nobs. Assault Terminators in particular receive no defensive bonus for holding stormshields, only the 40% melee resistance that all melee troops are endowed with. They look to have a lot of health, but this is countered by them being size Large, which means that everything on the field is able to hit them, such as AV weaponry. Missiles that will miss nobs and other infantry 95% of the time will hit Terminators 100% of the time. So their health goes down much quicker then one would expect. But they also lack a retreat option. This seems very strange, since other heavy infantry like the Seer Council and Nobs have retreat. It's thus very easy to preserve those high cost units, except in extreme circumstances. With Terminators, you're limited to a 30 foot teleport with a 60 second cooldown, after which your very very slow Terminators will still get caught up to. This isn't good for such an expensive unit and most SM players will simply choose to build more tac squads.

The failings of the Terminators and the recent nerf to OB are bad, but the actual buildable T3 unit for SM, the Predator, is also generally shunned. This means that SMs usually never try to tech for T3. Only the Dark Age of Technology upgrade is worthwhile, and that's rare to use since Dreadnoughts are rarely built. The problem with the Predator is that it's much too fragile in battle for the price. This fragility combined with the spotty vehicle pathfinding means SM players will prefer to build more tac squads.

Nobody uses the flamer upgrade for tac squads since it's only useful in T1 against swarms or generators. Plasma guns or missile launchers are infinitely more valuable and always stay effective, so the flamer might as well not exist. Perhaps you could leave the option to upgrade to either the plasma gun or the missile launcher after equipping the flamer, with the limitation that the second upgrade is the final one? It would encourage people to actually equip and utilize the flamer, while not punishing them in the later game with an obsolete tac squad whose pop cap you can only get rid of by sacrificing to the enemy.

The overall melee vs ranged dynamic is okay, except for the retreat damage. Ranged does 20% damage to retreating forces, while melee does 130% damage to retreating forces. This is a very heavy disadvantage for ranged forces in general, and SM units in particular since the Eldar at least have access to fleet of foot which avoids the retreat dmg bonus. Right now, melee does very heavy damage compared to ranged in the normal battlefield, there is no reason to have such a large and punishing disparity for the retreat mechanic. Or if the bonus should stay, attacking melee units should not be able to block the retreating squads. Retreat, I feel, should be a way of saving your unit while sacrificing the field to the opponent, and right now I don't feel that's true with the melee damage bonus. A lot of retreating units are not preserved, but simply killed more quickly when pursued and hit by melee units. Ceding the field and also losing the unit in the process. That's too punishing and defeats the purpose of having a retreat mechanic in the first place, in my eyes. Perhaps a flat 30 or 40% damage to retreating units for both ranged and melee would be alright? Not sure about the exact percentage of damage, but melee is way too good right now.

Complete DoW 2 patch notes released

1.2.1 Patch Notes

AG Warrior nerf: Oh wow, Tyranids are definitely gonna be feeling this one. 52 to 40 is a huge 24% reduction.

Energy shield nerf: About what I expected. 4 to 1 efficiency ratio is still a potent defense. And the 8 second toggle cooldown means people aren't going to be microing the shields on and off in an inane manner.

Falcon regen nerf: Perfectly appropriate nerf. You can argue that the Eldar race in general is UP, and I wouldn't argue with you, but the T3 Falcon spam was getting pretty lame. Something's wrong when your T2 transport is invincible compared to your T3 main battle tank.

Ripper nerf: Still too durable.

Zoan nerf: Uh... 3 seconds? That's... sort of a nerf I guess. Kinda.

Guardian equipment nerf: Not sure why this was needed. Guardians using grenades didn't strike me as OP.

Carnifex cost increased: 50 more req and 10 more power... meh. Was hoping for more, but I suppose the AG warrior nerf will work to magnify the significance of this change.

Tac sarge nerf: Oooooouch. 50 to 28... almost a 50% reduction in damage. I suppose it's a nice push to grab ASMs.

ATSKNF nerf: Reduced to 40% damage... alright. Knockback's unaffected, so it still serves its purpose. Again, just an incentive to invest in ASMs.

Spore Mines nerf: Awesome.

Warp Spider DPS buff: Pretty great, it's a 50% increase. Hope that's enough. If not, try try again.

Relic: My Favorite Game Developer

Who's Relic? They're the best game developer working today, IMO.

You have to keep in mind, back in the old days I had only dabbled in a bit of C&C red alert and Starcraft as far as RTSs go. They weren't anything special, I was far more involved in FPSs. So then, being a Trekkie... I go and buy Star Trek Armada. Ultimately a fun game, one of the better Star Trek games ever made, but pretty much a disappointment if you expected it to be more then Starcraft with starships. Then Homeworld 2 came out (I missed the boat on HW1), and what a revelation. Completely 3D environment, with no basebuilding, intelligent fleet formations and fighters all swarming around on their own. It was simply incredible. All from a completely new studio, out of the blue.

And the environments they created... were completely breathtaking. Every Relic game has had that unique Relic art direction that utilizes quality concept art to bring the game to life. It's completely unrealistic, but space never looked more beautiful then in HW2. FreeSpace games come close, but staring at some of the backgrounds as your battle-weary ships sail past... it's majestic, breathtaking, elegant, operatic, awe inspiring... like looking at a brilliant sunset in autumn. The grandeur of the cosmos was perfectly captured.

I dunno... it was the first, and still stands as the greatest 3D space RTS ever, as few of those as there are. Sins of a Solar Empire adds more 4X elements, but I can't say it really comes close. Of course, someone did tell me they made Sins with only 9 people and 3 million dollars, which is impressive in itself.

Relic's just a great innovator of RTS games and has been pushing the envelop for years now. That's ultimately what makes them tops in my book. In Dawn of War, they gave us squads of infantry to control, syncronized kill animations, and reinforcements on the fly, retreat mechanics, morale mechanics, as well as terrain cover. Instead of just mining crystals or chopping wood, resources were gathered from strategic requisition points on the map.

With Company of Heroes, they took it even further with directional terrain cover, supply lines, location-based vehicle damage modeling, and machine gun suppression mechanics. In multiplayer, annihilation of the enemy base was replaced with victory point capture mode, which is kinda like Battlefield's tickets concept.

Dawn of War 2 introduced RPG gameplay elements to the single player and bravely took out basebuilding entirely. What we got was a small squad-based tactical game that made you care about your units and preserving them in combat. Plus, they added in the Tyranids, making it superior to DoW 1 by default. Yep, Relic's obviously the most innovative RTS developer out there and I can't wait to see what they've got in store for us next.

DoW 2: Hormagaunts and melee-synapse: Leap

Am I the only one who thinks melee-synapsed Hormagaunts are way too good? They get frigging leap! That makes them practically impervious to ranged fire. Let me tell you, ranged fire is not very far in this game. Not even a full screen length, at full zoom out. Tactical squads can get maybe 3 or 4 bursts off before hormagaunts close the distance and tie them up. With leap, they can reduce that to about 1 burst. Melee damage in DoW 2 is higher then ranged damage to compensate for the fact that you have to close the distance. That's the entire justification for weaker ranged damage. Leap removes that disadvantage almost completely. Leap allows your 240 requisition unit to completely trump a 500 requisition unit. Not to mention the knockdown it provides. I find leap pretty damn overpowered right now. If ranged units had twice the distance, leap would go from being amazing to merely a good addition. Which is what a synapse bonus should give you, IMO.

My reaction to the upcoming Dawn of War 2 patch notes

The Carnifex cost increase is really nice though I always thought it was the pop that needed adjusting. 18 pop is way too low for a game-changing unit like that. I mean, Terminators take up 24. Does anyone really think Terminators are that much better?

The nerfing of the energy shields was pretty much expected, but got me thinking... the Terminator armor for the Force Commander really deserves some rethinking. A Thunder Hammer and Stormshield weapon option at the very least. Right now, it's completely unviable.

Definitely a nice change to warriors. We'll probably see a shift from full on AG spam to them including a few zooeys. Which is undoubtedly going to shift community focus onto them and their degree of OPness. Right now they're generally untouchable behind a solid wave of AG Warriors. But with the energy shield nerf... who knows. *shrug*

Overall, pretty good. Though the general impression I get with these notes is that tac spam is a more dire balance issue right now then Ravener tunnels. Which I can't really agree with.

Another Dawn of War 2 query

Anyone else find this strange? How come Terminators, Assault Terminators, and FC in Terminator armor aren incapable of retreating? All other infantry units are able to retreat. It makes sense for vehicles to lack a retreat button, but Terminators aren't vehicles. Other powerful infantry like Tier 3 Nobs and the call-in Seer Council are capable of retreating, so why are Terminators deprived of this option? They'd probably have to retreat slower because of their heavier armor, but that's alright. It just seems like an unnecessary disadvantage.

Dawn of War 2 query

Here's a question... what's up with heavy bolter and plasma devastator squads? Is there a reason they only have 675 health when a tactical squad have 1050? I mean, these squads are all just three guys in power armor. The Tact squad doesn't appear to be wearing heavier armor then the devastators. Why would they lose 35% of their health just because one of them swaps out a bolter for a heavy bolter/plasma cannon? Anybody else think this is strange? Do Warriors lost 35% of their health when they gain a barbed strangler or venom cannon? I'm not writing this because I want SM buffs, it's just kind of an odd inconsistency.

Pretty peculiar.