BaneBlade underperforming

[egewithin]

Find a solution than.

[Dark Riku]

so we shall remove bunkers or Baneblade?

Yes, that's exactly what everyone wants. /sarcasm.

thing is, is the IG player gets bunkers, mantis and HWTs to bunker up then no res for a BB, if you get a BB then you got no manti, no bunkers, no HWTs. Can't have it all as dark riku thinks

I think whatnow? °_O and yeah you can have a BB, manti, bunker, HWT at the same time. (3v3 ez)

Same as SM defensive lines with several devs, pdevs and LRR plus terminators(which is a bit more feasible)

Dat bias though XD

[Bahamut]

again.. show me a replay of a balanced match where that happens.. i'm going through indrid casts and i can't find any.. i havent checked faction wars yet tho i dont think there has been 2015 IG faction wars yet, not sure

Anyway, again, i'm not asking for a performance upgrade to the BB, just a price adjustment to match its performance.. 800/200 like any other superunit

[Lost Son of Nikhel]

Flanks and nukes are still possible. If you can't force off IG there, split them up. Go bash some power farm, cap their natural victory point, etc... Every defence must have a weak point. What are we going to do? We can't beat multi-bankered Baneblade, so we shall remove bunkers or Baneblade?

Not all maps allowed that kind of strategies. And Chaos don't have an unit with infiltration for ninja capping.

thing is, is the IG player gets bunkers, mantis and HWTs to bunker up then no res for a BB, if you get a BB then you got no manti, no bunkers, no HWTs. Can't have it all as dark riku thinks

It's like trying to break a defensive line with a LRP, a chaos termie squad with an autocannon, a blastmaster squad, a khrone havoc, a tzeentch havoc and a worshiped nurgle shrine with 2 or more tzeentch marine squads. Reality is, the chaos player can't afford all that.. and if it does then the match was over long before

Same as SM defensive lines with several devs, pdevs and LRR plus terminators(which is a bit more feasible) Or an eldar player with several dcannons fire prisms, avatar and seer council for counter initiation..

I must be worshipping the wrong Dark God, because a LRP + Chaos Termies + 2 x Havoc + BM NM + Heretics + Shrine + 2 x TCSM its 118 pop even if Heretics and TCSM don't have AC. Except if you only keep one member for each setup team squad, but its risky because you can easily lose the squad under a minimun of focused fire.

[Bahamut]

I must be worshipping the wrong Dark God, because a LRP + Chaos Termies + 2 x Havoc + BM NM + Heretics + Shrine + 2 x TCSM its 118 pop even if Heretics and TCSM don't have AC. Except if you only keep one member for each setup team squad, but its risky because you can easily lose the squad under a minimun of focused fire.

Only way that can happen is with 2 chaos players, since nurgle shrine does affect allies, but exactly as you said, even if this setup is in theory possible it's imposible in practice, same as the so mentioned IG defensive line that has a BB.. you either have bunkers and cool stuff or you got a BB and barely anything else.. unless there's 2 IG players which is something totally different

[Foma]

Ive tried the base game again ... and its quite better imo in many ways. Including Baneblade.

Once upon a time strong shot means that minimum range is acceptable for both weapons. It also has a bigger health (3750) It is also able to defend itself from armor due to better health / seemingly stronger lascannons.

so what Elite managed to do among many other things (including fails) was overnerf Baneblade especially vs vehicles.
from 450 (?) damage per shot, reduced to 180 with low AoE. Autofire while minimum range is still kept. Any tank can get within range, if 2, bb wont do anything. That isnt mentioning heavy melee infantry.
I might be wrong, but lascannons seem to do less as well (suppress weaps?)
- demolisher turned into psychic damage, because it somehow needed more nerfs.

Also, it was possible to fire both guns at stationary armor and finish it with lascannons. Was this so op? But even if so, both main gun and demolisher were nerfed.As if main gun nerf wasnt enough so it wasnt as effective, due to insta high damage being removed?

Now its dps ... it is low. So, given that most engagements dont take minutes, lacking high damage per shot even on cooldown is much less effective and allows whatever enemies to close the distance. You wont be forcing off anyone with a brain with this.

You have also removed knockback from the main cannon. That means, another weakness added. More options to close the distance - where BB is even more inept.

What I see is that many must have cried how op the overnerfed BB from base game is, this mod nerfed it further while making it look better because of autofire.(without removing minimum range) A series of nerfs seemingly aimed at balancing made the BB an easily counterable weakling that cant move or shoot, that turns around without orders given. Im sure many of you so-called pros will say how op in this new adaptation it is, when it isnt.

[Caeltos]

I don't understand what you're even saying at this point. The Baneblade has the highest damage output out of all the tanks in the game, and you're complaining that it doesn't do any good damage?

It has roughtly the same raw damage output as a regular lascannon predator variant.(We're calculating the lascannons + Main Battle Cannon) as anti-vehicle source. Besides that, the main Battle Cannon has probably the most lethal AoE damage modifiers for it's type, and against vehicles, AoE damage is largely neglible. Besides, in no scenario what-so-ever, would the Baneblade EVER lose to any other tank in the game, so if you're complaining that it's bad againts vehicles, surely means you're not utilizing it propertly, because statistically, it's a mean bean killing machine.

Regular Baneblade in retail is broken, it's not better or anything. It's just dumb, stupid and even mindboggling all the same time. I mean, for heaven sake - some Relic Employees even had a laugh over it's overperformance and gave birth to the infamous "It's fine it can't cap" as a balance arguement. Do not even try to justify it's performance in retail, because it's downright laughable.

[Batpimp]

The bane blade is fine. Here it is helping Toilalee(?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2oxM_ZyG7Y

(can we not embed?)

[Commissar Yarrick]

This entire discussion is so pointless its starting to get funny.

[Crewfinity]

Really it sounds like what we need is a Commissar upgrade to the baneblade.

[xXKageAsashinXx]

Or a baneblade upgrade to the commissar. LG buys commissar retinue and is now able to paradrop a BB anywhere on the map within 10 seconds. Insta-wipes HQs if drop zone is on top of one. LC also gets to call in a BB when Emperor's Wrath is acquired. Also, Inq gets to call in a BB as a base ability in T1 because she's the spanish inquisition.

[Lost Son of Nikhel]

Really it sounds like what we need is a Commissar upgrade to the baneblade.

Yeah, I can see it: unlock the ability "Badass Inspiration". Similar to Inspire Determination/Courage/Terror, uses the Baneblade Main Battle Cannon to execute the selected unit/squad. If the unit is a vehicle, all nearby allied units gains +100% damage. If the unit was a squad, increases 10% per model executed.

Why not?

[Batpimp]

This entire discussion is so pointless its starting to get funny.

there are SO MANY SM/IG fanboys that start playing that think they understand balance. the BB wrecks. its not perfect but I think its in a good spot. It was godlike before vs orks.

[Forestradio]

Here it is helping Toilalee(?)

that was actually me

[Adeptus Noobus]

Here it is helping Toilalee(?)

that was actually me

What a scrub you are for not killing Batpimps entire army with the first one BB clearly needs buffs.

[Batpimp]

shit I swore that was toil.

[Foma]

I really dont care no matter how hard you try to troll.

There is an idea, that:

someoe starts making a mod. Then some others join the person. They decide why this and that is good, why this and that, is bad. Then they follow not just balancing the base game, but changing roles of units and overall decide that something is weak something is strong based on certain mechanics, certain imagination on how things properly should be. Now. That is the general way how things usually go. When the modder gains some popularity, usually this leads to him believing that the chosen course is the right course of action. Those who stay with him, also support him and where this leads is that his very circle 'supports' his way of thinking. They know and he knows that his ways concerning the mod are pretty much infallible, nothing to change except thsoe noobs l2p. They dont understand the bigger picture. He understands the bigger picture in his own and his circle goes and tells him he is cool. When everyone tells you youre so cool, I suppose it must be, right ? Except, this everyone is just a limited number of people and the rest are discarded as stupid and the like, ... or simply have given up on the guy's mod. When somebody doesnt think the way he does, his 'circle' henchmen come and try to somehow make those people look stupid, only showing their ignorance, stupidity and self-righteousness. The mod had a lot of good potential, infallibility tied with inevitable failures resulted in chaos the mod is. Even if there were just 2 factions, you wouldnt do any better than Relic. The BB is just the result of decision fails. Who am I to explain what and why should be changed, when the lemmings say all is good, reminds me of CoH 2 forums german fanboys. Mod fanboyism also results in hypocrisy, not just faction fanboyism. When you think all is pretty much perfect, you better take a look from a different perspective, if you want an improvement, not regression. But I'm quite sure that reading that much is just too much. Not that I care. Dont forget to say that its offtopic, since youve derailed it already. You could even try to close the balancing section, because you know, all is good already.

[Codex]

You really must be at the end of your tether to be posting like that. That surprises me, considering this is your 3rd? post on this particular thread. Maybe you've sensed a pattern across the rest of the forums, or whatever.

To finally throw my two cents into the picture, I've personally never found Baneblade to be underpowered in any iteration, and I've been playing the game since DOW2 Vanilla came out. I should probably state upfront that I don't agree with all of Caeltos's (and the team's) design choices, but that isn't my area of authority.

I also have no doubt in my mind that any person and any group of people are going to have biases. That is part of being human. But to accuse a whole group wholesale of being fanboys, blindsided and biased, well. That's a big statement and likely to sideline your own views further. As a casual observer, someone who hasn't felt the need to add to this thread before this, it actually feels slightly off beat, but that's how you feel I suppose.

Back to the topic on hand, the old Baneblade was not okay, imo. Its activated abilities could one-shot lesser squads, and with any kind of ranged blob supporting could easily counter large swathes of ranged forces. It also could tank Global nukes, artillery shots etc and required inordinate amounts of firepower and resources to take down.

I see tanks in general being ranged superiority units with good mobility, but relative glass cannons that need to be microed well to maximise their value. In my eyes the current BB swaps some mobility for extreme durability, with a higher cost and very good sustained damage. So part of the change was to change BB from a burst orientated super unit to a sustained damage one. As already stated the dps of the BB is in line with other T3 super units, and the fact that a well supported BB is so hard to dislodge/ kill, especially considering that it's in a race with easy access to repair, including repair bunkers and even heavy weapons team, this thing can be beastly in 2v2 and 3v3, although it's probably not the best choice at closing out a game in 1v1. Besides, its relative immobility would be more exposed in 1v1 as well. Normal tanks would normally have to kite the opponent to maximise your damage output, whereas the BB can just stand its ground with repair and be a beast, and have all the benefits of a ranged superiority unit with high range and sustained damage (unlike a Land Raider, which can be countered with artillery and long range weapons).

People have been asking for cost reductions to bring it in line with other super units. But just recently IG got a change to their economy as Guardsmen no longer have any upkeep on them. We haven't even examined the full effects and consequences of such a change, but people don't take these kinds of considerations in mind. Case in point: people have in the past screamed OP at the way that Chaos Terminators seem to be very effective and cost efficient compared to SM Terminator variants, having lower cost to boot as well! On paper this would seem to be outrageous, a clear imbalance. But unfortunately such arguments do not factor in the composition and the economy that this is based off: Chaos in particular have a tendency to stay in T2 longer than a lot of races, due to being requisition starved, which also makes them float a lot of power. A fairly good game for SM, on the other hand, would allow him to float requisition (relative vs power) and thus power would be the limiting factor. So the reduced requisition cost of Chaos Terminators is justified to account for the relative requisition deficiency of the Chaos economy.

Going back to the BB, IG as a race tend to be very req efficient: they had a the 3-for-1 reinforce before and now don't pay upkeep on GM? They're probably one of the best races for going T2 with minimal power investment, and unless they're running a "HOLD-THE-LINE" strat with chimera they're not going to be req starved. At the very least we should examine the IG economy in detail before deciding this way or the other that the BB deserves a cost reduction.

[saltychipmunk]

to be fair only IG armies that make heavy use of guardsmen are very req efficient , this kind of efficiency can be thrown out the window if the ig player decides to use too many specialist units which bleed resources just like every other light infantry unit in the game does. Need to give guardsmen more credit they are ridiculously good for their asking price.

[Codex]

Well, let's examine their non-Guardsmen units:

T1:

Sentinel (doesn't bleed)
Heavy Weapons Team (it can bleed but generally shouldn't be focused down. Generally a low bleed unit)
Catachans (can bleed a lot if not microed well, but have good damage sharing and tends not to lose models for ages, then lose a bunch of them quickly.)
Artillery Spotters (if they're bleeding their positioning is not ideal)

T2:
Chimera (the anti-bleed/ mobility/ pressure unit)
Manticore (doesn't bleed)
Ogryns (bleed quite heavily and can be a drain on an economy if they lose lots of models)
Stormtroopers (bleed req quite heavily when focused, relatively fragile. No power cost. They have access to infiltration, which can mitigate enemies being able to focus them down and therefore reduce bleed)

The IG composition in general is quite resistant to bleed, especially considering GM are likely to be posted front and centre. Ideally, the IG player should try to draw as much aggro onto the right units for the situation (generally GM or sentinel, game state dependent). That actually does come down to play: if you post the Catachans or Spotters or Stormtroopers in really bad situations where they can get focused down, that's generally your problem. This is a concept that applies to other races as well, e.g. most of the early game for SM you want them to focus on your tacs and not your scouts, and positioning allows you to protect those scouts.

[Adeptus Noobus]

Going back to the BB, IG as a race tend to be very req efficient: they had a the 3-for-1 reinforce before and now don't pay upkeep on GM? They're probably one of the best races for going T2 with minimal power investment, and unless they're running a "HOLD-THE-LINE" strat with chimera they're not going to be req starved. At the very least we should examine the IG economy in detail before deciding this way or the other that the BB deserves a cost reduction.

I think this is the most important point in this entire thread: economy. Since IG have recieved buffs to their economy by lowering the upkeep on the Sergeant and Commissar from the GMs and the models themselves too, lowering the cost of the Baneblade would be a very unfair advantage. Many people do not take army roster and the respective economy into account, i.e. the complex connections between cost and unit roster that may not be obvious straight away (e.g. Baneblade cost).

EDIT:
And also what you (Codex) said about the resistance to be bled dry.

[saltychipmunk]

well then following that angle we have to mention that the sentinel and its pop requirements . it is a unit whose pop cap , asking price and upgrade cost all scream resource inefficiency at the cost of early game potency.

[Codex]

Please explain your thoughts in detail, because I don't agree with the idea of Sentinels being "resource inefficient". What features of them make them not worthy of their early game potency? And how is that relevant to the overall discussion of BB?

[saltychipmunk]

personally i think they are fine. Sentinel is and always will be that hot button unit simply because it is a vehicle in t1 that can decap. Its early game versatility is undeniable and it deserves every single req / power point of resource inefficiency . That being said one can also point out that as a unit in the later tiers of a match .. they can be seen as excess baggage as their durability issues are crystal clear once plasma hits the field and their damage is very much lack luster against the beefier units in the game.


bottom line sentinels very much seem designed to squander most of the resource efficiency gained from the guardsmen in exchange for their various early game perks.

So to that end you cant really use the guardsmen efficiency as an excuse to keep BB expensive in situations where sentinel use is expected. Of course you can argue that a guard player can forgo the sentinel all together and then claim the BB cost is justified .. but then one can also argue that the guard player is taking a calculated risk since the sentinel is a huge player in ig early game.

[Codex]

I don't understand what the issue is though. All units generally follow the pattern of being strong out-of-the-gate but scaling poorly, or being weak OOTG and scaling strongly. Most T1 units have limited scaling to reflect this, and all of them can become baggage in the ultra late game of artillery, global nukes and super units. This is the whole reason why fast teching even works: units that are strong now will become less relevant because you have teched past their phase of maximum impact, and that turns their assets into burdens instead. It's also one of the major mechanics that makes lategame comebacks possible.

If you feel like a unit isn't giving you that much but the game is going very late, you can legitimately sacrifice it for the greater good, economy efficiency and pop cap space. Nobody's stopping you, and the fact that it lasted so long meant that it bled your economy exactly by 0 for the entire time it was up (no other T1 power free unit can claim this). Maybe you lose a missile launcher. Oh well.

Still, the missile launcher allows them to retain much utility later into the game. The superior range of the AI missiles allows them to be fire support at the back in a firefight, and their AV missiles coupled with superior mobility makes them decent dreadnought hunters (and tank hunters with any support). They're also great at sweeping up the map and denying map control after the enemy is forced off. So they retain late game utility that way. It's only in the ultra late game that they really fall off heavily and should be really worth sacrificing.

[saltychipmunk]

I don't understand what the issue is though. All units generally follow the pattern of being strong early game but scaling poorly, or being weak early game and scaling strongly. Most T1 units have limited scaling to reflect this, and all of them can become baggage in the ultra late game of artillery, global nukes and super units. This is the whole reason why fast teching even works: units that are strong now will become less relevant because you have teched past their phase of maximum impact, and that turns their assets into burdens instead. It's also one of the major mechanics that makes lategame comebacks possible.

If you feel like a unit isn't giving you that much but the game is going very late, you can legitimately sacrifice it for the greater good, economy efficiency and pop cap space. Nobody's stopping you, and the fact that it lasted so long meant that it bled your economy exactly by 0 for the entire time it was up. Maybe you lose a missile launcher. Oh well.

Still, the missile launcher allows them to retain much utility later into the game. The superior range of the AI missiles allows them to be fire support at the back in a firefight, and their AV missiles coupled with superior mobility makes them decent dreadnought hunters (and tank hunters with any support). So they retain late game utility that way. It's only in the ultra late game that they really fall off heavily and should be really worth sacrificing.

I think you are misunderstanding my point , I am not saying that a sentinel is good or bad , what i am saying is that the sentinel is clearly made to be resource inefficient from a pure economy stand point. the very Idea that you offer sacrificing the unit as an option is undeniable proof that deep down you also agree with this assessment.

The sentinel is a good unit. but come on, its 15 pop , 400+ req 40 power when fully upgrade while having none of the durability of vehicles in late game and all of their vulnerabilities , their damage is decent but they are not 15 pop damage as even their rocket launcher is notably muted. But again I want to point out that this is >NOT< a bad thing. Having the sentinel be resource inefficient as a trade off for early game potency is not a bad thing.

It is a good thing , but we don't need to pretend that it scales even remotely as well into the later tiers as say.. the guardsmen. it doesn't .. it is not supposed too.

All that I wanted to point out is that its cost inefficiency most certainly is designed to in part offset the efficiency of the guardsmen.

these two units had their efficiency reversed in the same patch if i remember.. the sent got more expensive and had its pop increased by 50% while the guardsmen upgrades lost pop cost. I do not think it is a stretch to conclude they were meant to offset each-other at-least partially.

so again i conclude , you cant really claim the guardsman and their cost efficiency can justify the bb's cost since there are other units in an ig players core build order which can also be thrown in the same role as the BB (in terms of being a money sink)

[Forestradio]

imo baneblade needs the ability to fly

[Codex]

Define resource inefficient though: I don't disagree with a lot of your assessment (like 15 pop is a lot of pop for a single unit like the Sentinel), but I completely disagree with the idea that Sentinels are resource inefficient.

The nominal price tag of a fully upgraded unit is very deceptive. Of course I could cherry pick and say that 475/40 costs around the same as Kommandos, which is a really potent late game T3 unit. But the reason that this assessment is deceptive is that Sentinels appear in T1 and as part of an opener and Kommandos are a T3 unit. The cost of units is not uniform for this reason: in reality higher tier units have more value than their nominal price tag gives them because of teching, which is a one time opportunity cost investment that pays off further down the line (more potent units for "cheap").

Case in point: fully upgraded MOK CSM are 400+ 75/25+ 70/30+ 60/15= 605/70. You may consider Eternal War a luxury upgrade, so it might cost 545/55. So if you were to buy a KCSM squad in T2 from scratch, it will have less performance for cost than most race's options to buy a melee squad for ~545/55 in T2 (you could even argue that Bloodletters outperform this for cost). This is a big reason why it's generally inefficient to buy a lower tier squad and upgrade it, when instead you could pressure by buying a current tier unit: after all it has all of its "cost efficiencies" to compensate for the period of vulnerability while you tech.

On the other hand, fully upgraded early tier units are "cost-inefficient" at nominal price tag, because they're expected to do work for you in the early game, and be carrying that impact into the later game. In the context of upgrades, MOK is a very cost efficient and cheap upgrade to completely change the role that CSM give you, because the CSM would have done a lot of work for your for the entirety of T1. This is in spite of being a cost-INefficient squad to buy from scratch. That's why comparing nominal price tags across tiers is dangerous and in general flawed. Not to mention that a lot of the value of upgrading units comes from maintaining and enhancing the positive effects of a leveled army, as in many cases some T1 units will be level 2 by this point.

In the first example I gave the difference is two tiers, so the example is more obvious. One can say it's an unfair comparison, which it is, but it shows the principle. It also brings the second example into perspective.

In my book, the Sentinel is a very cost efficient unit, if it is able to apply its pressure and doesn't bleed (while every other T1 unit except for painboy bleeds). Sure, it has 15 pop, but what upkeep are you likely carrying anyway? Now that GM don't pay upkeep, is it really that much of a burden for you to keep a Sentinel going, when it gave you that much early game and applies that much map pressure?

[Aguxyz]

imo baneblade needs the ability to fly

I love you

[ytimk]

I really dont care no matter how hard you try to troll.

There is an idea, that:

someoe starts making a mod. Then some others join the person. They decide why this and that is good, why this and that, is bad. Then they follow not just balancing the base game, but changing roles of units and overall decide that something is weak something is strong based on certain mechanics, certain imagination on how things properly should be. Now. That is the general way how things usually go. When the modder gains some popularity, usually this leads to him believing that the chosen course is the right course of action. Those who stay with him, also support him and where this leads is that his very circle 'supports' his way of thinking. They know and he knows that his ways concerning the mod are pretty much infallible, nothing to change except thsoe noobs l2p. They dont understand the bigger picture. He understands the bigger picture in his own and his circle goes and tells him he is cool. When everyone tells you youre so cool, I suppose it must be, right ? Except, this everyone is just a limited number of people and the rest are discarded as stupid and the like, ... or simply have given up on the guy's mod. When somebody doesnt think the way he does, his 'circle' henchmen come and try to somehow make those people look stupid, only showing their ignorance, stupidity and self-righteousness. The mod had a lot of good potential, infallibility tied with inevitable failures resulted in chaos the mod is. Even if there were just 2 factions, you wouldnt do any better than Relic. The BB is just the result of decision fails. Who am I to explain what and why should be changed, when the lemmings say all is good, reminds me of CoH 2 forums german fanboys. Mod fanboyism also results in hypocrisy, not just faction fanboyism. When you think all is pretty much perfect, you better take a look from a different perspective, if you want an improvement, not regression. But I'm quite sure that reading that much is just too much. Not that I care. Dont forget to say that its offtopic, since youve derailed it already. You could even try to close the balancing section, because you know, all is good already.

Calling 'hivemind' is pretty insulting (and baseless) to the people that try and engage in rational conversationabout an issue. If you want to prove your point, maybe try and put some more effort into reading the forums some more, and providing evidence and reasoning to support your claims/questions. I'm not trying to start a dogpile but this is not constructive in any way.