Paladins, Terminators and Strike Squad

[Odysseus]

Hello gents,

A few enquiries I had.

Why do Paladins and Terminators get the exact same upgrades (Incinerator & Psycannon)?

If you look at Space Marine termies, they at least have access to different upgrades for more versatility in the field.

I thought we could perhaps simply remove the weapon upgrades (apart from the liber daemonica) from the Paladins, so that they can focus on high damage against single targets while Terminators will be more about dealing with infantry and daemons and having the upgrades to making them an equally attractive purchase compared to Paladins. I don't know if it is just me, but I often think Paladins are somewhat a better all-round choice than GK terminators in most cases. Just a thought to try and diversify things a little and try to prevent overlap.

&

I've been testing the Strike Squad as of late, and the tooltip states that they deliver more damage than the average Space Marine in CQC, while sacrificing ranged damage overall compared to them. I am aware that they have a powerful special attack, but they seem to do much more ranged damage than they do in CQC. Is this intended? Would it be too much to wonder if Strike Squad ranged attack could be toned down somewhat to improve their melee damage in order to differentiate them from their Tactical Marine brothers?

Finally, I think it has been said before, but as of now, psycannons as the general GK upgrade is inaccurate. The weapons they upgrade to are the Psilencers, which are more akin to assault cannons, and not psycannons, which are more similar in behaviour to Heavy Bolters. If there is no intention of correcting this, I'd advise changing the tooltips relating to the Psilencers in the future to prevent confusion.

Just a few thoughts. It's not my intention to start some kind of flame war, so please keep it civil.

Kind regards,

Odysseus.

[Atlas]

I think your post, while very well thought out and organized, has overlooked a couple of things.

Starting with the Strike squad, your numbers a little off. Strike Squad stats. You'll notice that not only do they do more melee damage than ranged, they actually do more ranged damage than tacticals as well (not counting kraken bolts). Honestly, I think SM vs GK is hugely GK favored and the Strikes vs Tacs matchup is a big reason for it.

As for the Psilencer thing, meh I don't personally care. If it's easy enough then sure, change it up. But as it, I think we can stand a little lore unfriendliness in that regard.

Now about GK Terms/Palas:

I don't see a reason to nerf Paladins even more than they have been. People were already all up in arms about all this stuff like "oh shockwave wipes my squads" and " wait why are they retreating?" but you need to realize that without those ranged weapons, you can just kite a squad of Paladins. After that, you can just focus fire them down until they retreat.

Having Paladins retreat now is about the only good thing going for them. If they didn't have their psycannons, they would be totally useless since they can just be completely kited.

[Corrie]

Paladins with their physcannons do a silly amount of damage to everything I was kiting them with a leman russ and they brought it to half health.. They can basically out shoot the leman even when kiting and if they get a good teleport in and get a couple swings your tank is dead and they retreat without losing a model..

[Swift]

No, they upgrade to Psycannons and Caeltos made it that for a reason, they do behave like psycannons should and there are no representations of psycannons firing anywhere else on the internet except in The Lord Inquisitor.

However, I support a change of Psycannons to Psilencers for Strike Squads as the role of the Psycannon in the squad is not clear.

[Daddy]

Assault terminators don't have ranged attacks, retreat or shockwave, yet they are potent at what they do. Assuming they are comparable to Paladins, thunder hammers and all. If you compare the two, you can see clearly that the paladins have been made to be a one stop shop to deal with everything.

I will agree that this is not conducive to make an interesting game. The only viable t3 option now become paladins. They surpass even the land raider in utility and survive-ability.

They should be tweaked in some way.. have trade offs versus the other T3 GK roster. IMO

[Hellstar]

Man, if it wasn't already clear to me after 2.4 shipped, I guess it is now. People really hate the everloving bejesus out of grey knights. I really have no clue as to the actual genesis or root of the hate, but if I had to venture to guess, perhaps they compete with SM too much, and SM are an incredibly beloved faction?

At any rate...

Paladins with their physcannons do a silly amount of damage to everything I was kiting them with a leman russ and they brought it to half health.. They can basically out shoot the leman even when kiting and if they get a good teleport in and get a couple swings your tank is dead and they retreat without losing a model..

BS. I lost a couple of paladin squads teleporting on top of a leman russ and hammering away at it. A couple of guardsmen repairing and the thing won't die. Target the guardsmen? The russ still kills the paladins.

The guy didn't even kite or use range or do anything. He just sat there tanking the damage while firing into the paladin's faces.

[Crewfinity]

Assault terminators don't have ranged attacks, retreat or shockwave, yet they are potent at what they do. Assuming they are comparable to Paladins, thunder hammers and all. If you compare the two, you can see clearly that the paladins have been made to be a one stop shop to deal with everything.

I will agree that this is not conducive to make an interesting game. The only viable t3 option now become paladins. They surpass even the land raider in utility and survive-ability.

They should be tweaked in some way.. have trade offs versus the other T3 GK roster. IMO

Yeah but these units have entirely different places in the composition of each faction's T3, so they really aren't comparable.
Assault terminators are specific to the force commander, and are pure AV or anti infantry, with the claw upgrades. they can be supported by force commander or libby to move faster and deal more damage, and SM has predators for the longer range anti vehicle role. they also have access to gate of infinity, which is an excellent escape mechanism (like retreating).

GK terminators and paladins, however, have to be able to hit the battlefield and be able to deal with other faction's T3 purchases, so they need to be extremely flexible. paladins cant solo an army, neither can terminators, and now that the retreat period has been increased, they cant retreat out of every engagement anymore when in trouble. I actually quite like the changes now, it gives them some more survivability (which they needed), while not being an autowin unit. and they definitely aren't more survivable than the land raider. its got the most health out of any land raider variant, after all

[Corrie]

BS. I lost a couple of paladin squads teleporting on top of a leman russ and hammering away at it. A couple of guardsmen repairing and the thing won't die. Target the guardsmen? The russ still kills the paladins.

The guy didn't even kite or use range or do anything. He just sat there tanking the damage while firing into the paladin's faces.

in what world does a leman beat palandins with no kiting?

Please stop with the GK fanboy your the only person I see that disagree with GK being too strong.

[Atlas]

Did you just quote yourself, then call yourself a GK fanboi?

Honestly, with the new hotfix out that addresses those nagging issues with 2.4, I'm pretty patched out for now. Let's go a month or two with what we got before we suggest anything drastic.

[xXKageAsashinXx]

Did not notice that till just now. Wow what a fail XD

[Hellstar]

in what world does a leman beat palandins with no kiting?

In the real world, because it happened right there in front of my eyes. I might even have a replay.

Please stop with the GK fanboy your the only person I see that disagree with GK being too strong.

I do plan to stop defending them. It's boring. If you people hate GK that much, nerf away - its no skin off my nose. Nerf them into oblivion for all I care.

[Aguxyz]

in what world does a leman beat palandins with no kiting?

In the real world, because it happened right there in front of my eyes. I might even have a replay.

Please stop with the GK fanboy your the only person I see that disagree with GK being too strong.

I do plan to stop defending them. It's boring. If you people hate GK that much, nerf away - its no skin off my nose. Nerf them into oblivion for all I care.

Play vs good GK players then you'll understand

[Swift]

I'd be wary of just calling someone out with "That's BS" on any forum, since you can't know what they did because you weren't there.

The root of the hate with GK is all 2.4 with Operatives and Paladins becoming very strong. I never thought Operatives were OP, but they were very good and was sad to see the Satchel Charge damage vs generators nerfed, because although it is frustrating, GK have little in the way of gen bashing tools so I think it may hinder GK a fair amount in tier one, but I shall wait and see what happens.

And in every instance, even prior to 2.4, Paladins beat a Leman Russ, the LR is just too slow and can't deal regular enough damage for the Paladins. The Paladins may or may not get out with losses, but ultimately it's Paladin favoured.

[Corrie]

Did you just quote yourself, then call yourself a GK fanboi?

Honestly, with the new hotfix out that addresses those nagging issues with 2.4, I'm pretty patched out for now. Let's go a month or two with what we got before we suggest anything drastic.

Haha I do not know how that happened, I should avoid posting on my phone!

[hiveminion]

The root of the hate with GK is all 2.4 with Operatives and Paladins becoming very strong. I never thought Operatives were OP, but they were very good and was sad to see the Satchel Charge damage vs generators nerfed, because although it is frustrating, GK have little in the way of gen bashing tools so I think it may hinder GK a fair amount in tier one, but I shall wait and see what happens.

Wait wut. They have more flamer platforms than any other race AND high ranged dps on their T1 squads. They are probably the best bashing race in the game, and being able to insta-bash three gens isn't a justifiable compensation even if they were poor at gen bashing.

If you want to be shit at bashing gens in T1 play Nids.

[Torpid]

The root of the hate with GK is all 2.4 with Operatives and Paladins becoming very strong. I never thought Operatives were OP, but they were very good and was sad to see the Satchel Charge damage vs generators nerfed, because although it is frustrating, GK have little in the way of gen bashing tools so I think it may hinder GK a fair amount in tier one, but I shall wait and see what happens.

Wait wut. They have more flamer platforms than any other race AND high ranged dps on their T1 squads. They are probably the best bashing race in the game, and being able to insta-bash three gens isn't a justifiable compensation even if they were poor at gen bashing.

If you want to be shit at bashing gens in T1 play Nids.

You mean eldar? Much lower dps than nids. And their units tend to be more vital compositionally than a stray ravener or horm squad. But yeah, your other points still stand.

[Dark Riku]

in what world does a leman beat palandins with no kiting?

Please stop with the GK fanboy your the only person I see that disagree with GK being too strong.

He explained, a LR with a repair bunker and 2 GM nearby, good luck with damaging the tank, 1 pally squad isn't going to cut it.
I've seen more people disagreeing about GK's.

[Corrie]

in what world does a leman beat palandins with no kiting?

Please stop with the GK fanboy your the only person I see that disagree with GK being too strong.

He explained, a LR with a repair buker and 2 GM nearby, good luck with damaging the tank, 1 pally squad isn't going to cut it.
I've seen more people disagreeing about GK's.

He said a couple guardsman meaning 2 guardsman and that was all..

[Hellstar]

The root of the hate with GK is all 2.4 with Operatives and Paladins becoming very strong.

I could swear that Caeltos posted that GK has always been hated, and that 2.4 is just the latest round of hate-mongering on GK. In other words, if I'm right on that, no, the root of GK hate is something else.

And in every instance, even prior to 2.4, Paladins beat a Leman Russ, the LR is just too slow and can't deal regular enough damage for the Paladins. The Paladins may or may not get out with losses, but ultimately it's Paladin favoured.

If my game is saved, I'm gonna find it and post it.

[Cyris]

Back to the OP...

Why do Paladins and Terminators get the exact same upgrades (Incinerator & Psycannon)? Some ideas for changes.

I can't speak for Cael, but the impression I've gotten from him is that differentiating GK Termies from Pallies more is a goal in future updates. I agree that the two units feel very close to each other, and fussing with whcih upgrades each has access to would make a ton of sense. I know for myself, I nealy always get the Incinerator on Termies, and the Psy on Palladins, since each upgrade enhances what their main roles is (AI or AV).

I've been testing the Strike Squad as of late, and the tooltip states that they deliver more damage than the average Space Marine in CQC, while sacrificing ranged damage overall compared to them. I am aware that they have a powerful special attack, but they seem to do much more ranged damage than they do in CQC. Is this intended? Would it be too much to wonder if Strike Squad ranged attack could be toned down somewhat to improve their melee damage in order to differentiate them from their Tactical Marine brothers?

The tooltip is realistically incorrect in T1, and sort of correct in T2 SS start with higher bolter damage then tacs (though tacs out-shoot them with kraken added in) but it's by a tiny amount. Their melee damage is also only a hair higher (again, Kraken rounds compensates fully), but the 10 extra melee skill they have means they will do specials to the tacs, and likely win. This is also the situation against melee units like shees - SS fare better primarily because the shees 15% special chance drops to 5%, and the SS have an equal chance to proc it right back (well, a bit less cause 3 vs 5 models, but you get the idea). In T1, tacs still have access to the incredibly useful capping speed trait, so all is not lost.

That said, come T2 tacs pull ahead in a number of ways. Often by now, getting tacs / SS into melee becomes unlikely, so ranged firepower is king. Here, tacs easily pull ahead with the vastly superior plasma gun, Sternguard ammo types or a clutch ML as needed. Fully upgraded SS take a LOT of investments, can't fire the psy-cannon on the move and generaly underpreform in combat for the cost. They make up for this by being a good support core for your army, sitting in heavy cover to make a front line, snaring enemy melee and providing energy regen.

Lore stuff.

No opinion, but again, I think Cael has been toying with breaking out some of the weapon upgrades some more.

Just a few thoughts. It's not my intention to start some kind of flame war, so please keep it civil.

It almost worked

[Codex]

Imo, I feel like the Strikes vs Tacs matchup isn't that significant when it comes to GK vs SM being skewed. Sure tacs are hardly superstars when it comes to fighting GK, but I feel like their T1 composition is overall quite weak against GK's T1.

Before the addition of IG, Scouts had roles in all matchups that were relatively power light: a bare minimum of a shotgun is generally enough to make progress, or perhaps a scout sergeant. Even vanilla scouts had a role as a light, fast squad that's able to harass melee from range, able to use their superior mobility and vision to at least outmaneuver the melee squads, making them melee counters (in T1 at least, faster infantry does hit the field T2 onwards). Further, all races had access to a melee squad that was part of the meta (Banshees, Heretics, Hormagaunts, Sluggas). I'm not including SM because scouts can fight scouts (nowai really?). This is part of the reason why IG vs SM is a pretty tough matchup, especially in T1: Scouts get bullied by everything that IG have in T1, but at least they can get a scout sergeant, and shotguns are decent in that matchup, even if 40 power scouts in T1 is a pretty large investment.

If we now examine the case of GK, Scouts lose to IST, they lose to Strikes, they lose to Operatives, which form the main army composition these days. They even struggle to kite the BC, who has access to WATH, and his ranged attack is pretty decent at picking off models. Further, due to the popularity of Operatives and their having infiltration out of the gate, this means you're basically committed to a scout sergeant, and the grenade is largely hard to land since scouts will generally take so much damage on approach. The other problematic matchup I raised was IG: at least in that situation IG in T1 has Speed 5 except Sentinels, but Sentinel's damage is kiteable.

GK on the other hand bring slightly slower light ranged infantry, limiting scouts' mobility advantage. Scouts never really seem to have a defined role for me: the scout sergeant doesn't make them combat worthy against the light infantry blob of GK, virtually requiring a weapon upgrade in addition to the required detection of the sergeant. But even then, they don't do enough work: the shotguns don't make sense with so much ranged focus fire that GK are able to bring to bear. I personally don't feel like snipers make sense either, they're liable to be displaced by the BC at any point, and the power investment of now 50+ is a bit much.

So, when scouts find it hard to find a capping role since it can't solo any GK squad, and scouts find it hard to fight when they can't find a combat role, this severely hamstrings SM's ability to deal with GK, since as most people should know by now, as much as the heavy infantry part of SM is important, scouts are really what allows them to do their damage.

The second aspect of SM vs GK T1 that I would like to touch upon is that I feel like both the Devastator and ASM are meh extension purchases in T1 for SM. The devastator is decent against a ranged blob and feels like a natural choice, since GK are very ranged blobby right now. However, GK boast the unsuppressable WATH Brother Captain, and Blessed Aegis alone makes him extremely tanky for a relatively low dps race of the SM. Further, the speed boost, although not as fast as Speed worship for Chaos Lord, has a similar effect of making him good at dealing with devastators. GK even have access to a grenade launcher on ISTs which are not a bad upgrade, while not sacrificing say Doomblast. An idea explored in the past with other races is multiple overlapping devastators, but this would simply play into GK's plan as double ISTs with grenade launchers would be a very cost efficient counter in addition to WATH BC, especially considering that many GK's get 2 IST's as part of their standard build.

On the other hand, consider ASM. Jump is great, and one might think that it would be a good purchase against a primarily light infantry ranged blob. However, GK has many ways to deal with this. If Cyris is correct that Strikes have 10 melee skill over tacs, that means they have equal melee skill to ASM (God forbid the strikes are level 2, as ASM will not be able to special them). The GK can stun bomb the charging supporting army, which although I appreciate doesn't come free any more, is still a good way to deal with them, and they will have enough focus fire to force off a squad or two in that scenario. Last but not least, ASM are terrible at chasing anything that's faster than them. Their dps per model is decent (melee_pvp 26.92 per model unless it changed), but the fact that there are only 3 models makes their squad dps somewhat lackluster. Case in point, look at ASM's ability to chase down a Guardians Weapons Team after jumping on them. They will eventually kill it with melee charge, but don't expect that to happen any time soon. Now consider that ISTs and I believe Operatives are faster than ASM, Strikes can stand up to them in melee, and if worst comes to worst, WATH can be laid over the top and the entire GK composition can kite ASM all day. The normal anti-kiting tools are scouts, but we've discussed how they are lackluster against GK.

All in all, SM vs GK puts a lot of pressure for SM to go heavy T1 to deal with the threats of GK: operatives force scout sergeant, and maybe a weapon on top of that, ASM and/or Devastator are probably necessary to deal with WATH ranged blob, but as mentioned before are mediocre at it. The normal SM tactic of pinning the enemy down with jump or suppression and laying into them with scouts and tacs is largely nullified, and scouts are too squishy and low dps to deal with the entirely ranged composition of GK. And as I've mentioned before, going heavy T1 vs heavy T1 and coming out behind is terrible and will require a lot of effort to come back from. Having this being a theoretical advantage? Well, that hurts.

[Torpid]

Tacs+dev and 3x scouts of which 2x sniper, 1 fully upgraded shotgun scout. That's your best bet I find.

[Forestradio]

What Codex said.

At least in the previous patch SM heavy t1 could compete a bit more with GK, now, it doesn't matter whether or not the gk is stalling for a quick t2 or investing the same amount as the sm, things are not likely to go well for the sm regardless of hero.

[enasni127]

Now about GK Terms/Palas:

I don't see a reason to nerf Paladins even more than they have been. People were already all up in arms about all this stuff like "oh shockwave wipes my squads" and " wait why are they retreating?" but you need to realize that without those ranged weapons, you can just kite a squad of Paladins. After that, you can just focus fire them down until they retreat.

Having Paladins retreat now is about the only good thing going for them. If they didn't have their psycannons, they would be totally useless since they can just be completely kited.

...so what about ork nobs or space marine assault terminators? do you think they should get some crazy range weapons to be less easy to kite? i think it's not so bad if a unit has at least ONE weakness.

[Codex]

Yeah but you're taking the units out of context of their race: SM and Orks both have anti-kiting tools e.g. Veil of Time and Weirdboy's Warpath, just for some examples. They also have well-rounded T3s with tanks. GK on the other hand have terminators and a LRC, so it makes sense to a degree to make the terminators hard to kite, and they need an upgrade to do so.

Not saying that the details of their upgrades etc don't need tweaking, but that's the theory of it.

[enasni127]

Yeah but you're taking the units out of context of their race: SM and Orks both have anti-kiting tools e.g. Veil of Time and Weirdboy's Warpath, just for some examples. They also have well-rounded T3s with tanks. GK on the other hand have terminators and a LRC, so it makes sense to a degree to make the terminators hard to kite, and they need an upgrade to do so.

Not saying that the details of their upgrades etc don't need tweaking, but that's the theory of it.

sounds well thought but what about their teleport? since they have retreat now it could be used more offensively, i think.

[Codex]

I'm not defending it, I'm just saying that you can't look at the different units in a vacuum, they need to be examined in the compositions they are likely to arise in.

[Adeptus Noobus]

Coming in a bit late here but having fought against a few GKs in 2.4.2 now I can at least give my 2 cents on Torpids build:

Unless you make every engagement count, which you wont until you have the army for it (the one you mentioned), you will be quite behind the GK who does not have to invest that much to effectively chase you off the field every single time. Codex pretty much layed it out - Scouts are simply to fragile in any scenario in this matchup. It is asking a bit much (105 power on just scouts + 30 for devs) to invest into all that, when all the GK player has to do is to invest into some Grenade Launchers and/or Operatives with the Fallback plan (both would be 90 power incl. IST-Sergeant).

I think your idea is supposed to deter the BC from charging around with no dmg taken but once the Ops, be they detected or not, drop the stun bomb on the Devs the BC and the rest of the army can just charge in. Within these 7 seconds the Ops, if not focused down immediately, will have dealt quite a substantial amount of dmg to the devs (or shotgun scouts if closeby) and the BC has either gone for the snipers (even if he wont reach them) because the rest of his army will be enough to force of the tacs + hero + shotgun scouts.

OR

Grenade Launcher Barrage the Devs and pressure the shotgun scouts with the Ops (they outrange and outdps them) at the same time all while charging in with the BC. Result is the same.

EDIT:
Come T2 that strategy will come to bite you in the ass because of the Teleporter. Teleporter + WATH on the BC is very strong right now. Better than Teleporter + Alacrity because BC can't be suppressed and SM have no snare except mines from the TM. Good luck banking on him teleporting next/on to it. Really wish the HPS would snare rather than suppress.

[Cyris]

Quicky response to the termi topic: If GK T3 was completely replaced with SM or Chaos T3, it would be a massive buff for the faction in 1v1. I believe GK to be a bit OP in 3v3, but a req cheep, power intensive battle tank would be much stronger in 1v1 - especially when the faction can get by without vehicles before then, making transitioning into AV a real problem for the opponent. It's important to keep this in mind when considering nerfs to termies/pallies.

I for one would welcome cost and build time decreases for GK termies (and the ability to level added!) in tandem with damage, health and ability nerfs, including putting teleport behind an upgrade. The goal would be to to make them more useful in 1v1 and less overpowering in team games.

[Impregnable]

Quicky response to the termi topic: If GK T3 was completely replaced with SM or Chaos T3, it would be a massive buff for the faction in 1v1. I believe GK to be a bit OP in 3v3, but a req cheep, power intensive battle tank would be much stronger in 1v1 - especially when the faction can get by without vehicles before then, making transitioning into AV a real problem for the opponent. It's important to keep this in mind when considering nerfs to termies/pallies.

I for one would welcome cost and build time decreases for GK termies (and the ability to level added!) in tandem with damage, health and ability nerfs, including putting teleport behind an upgrade. The goal would be to to make them more useful in 1v1 and less overpowering in team games.

This sound good indeed. I felt GK termie variants are not so useful in 1 v 1 but crazily good at 3 v 3 so there should be a way to make them less overwhelming in 3 v 3 while keeping their potential in 1 v 1. Having to buy all the abilities and buffs like nobz do would greatly balance it out and with cost and build time reduce it will still be viable in 1 v 1.