Tactical Marine

Increased damage of Frag Grenades

Frag Grenades were already behind the curve compared to similar abilities, but they needed a substantial boost to maintain relevance in conjunction with the infantry health changes.

DOCTRINES

• Frag Grenade: Damage increased from 15 to 26

Scout

Increased effectiveness of Cluster Mines

To improve the effectiveness of Cluster Mines, we decreased their detonation radius and the ability's area of effect to ensure that units are more reliably hit by the explosion.

CLUSTER MINES

Detonation Radius: 

5

2.5

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Area of Effect: 

5

6

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Scout Sniper

Increased damage

With the sweeping health changes, Scout Snipers would have had to take and extra three or four volleys of shots to kill a squad. We've modified the damage so that it only takes one extra volley than it did previously. Thought it is overall more forgiving to fight snipers using infantry units, early game Elites will have a tougher time soaking their damage.

Land Speeder

Increased ranged attack damage

One big focus for this patch was to examine how the infantry health increase would affect the relationships of early Tier 2 units. In particular, it was important not to change the relationships drastically between early skimmers and their counters. We ran a lot of combat tests to monitor how the relationships change. The Land Speeder's DPS was high enough to trade well with its counters, so it only needed a slight tweak. We tested bigger damage increases, but this made them absolutely shred through early game Elites.

Chaplain Diomedes

Decreased health

Diomedes has quickly risen to be one of the most frequent Space Marine picks in upper skill brackets. After these changes, he was a bit too resilient given all his other benefits, so we scaled him slightly down.

Jonah Orion

Increased Health

Jonah is still a strong Elite unit in terms of his overall potential - he can make great plays, but in many ways felt less effective in the early game. We wanted to slightly increase his resiliency and improve the buffs from Emperor's Light.

Emperor's Light

• Allied damage buff duration increased from 5 seconds to 8 seconds while within Stonewall
• Allied damage buff duration increased from 7 seconds to 10 seconds while outside of Stonewall

Assault Terminators

Increased health

Although Assault Terminators can be quite strong in the right situation, we found that they needed a bit more resiliency considering they are most effective in melee range, and are susceptible to being kited.

Dire Avenger

Increased Plasma Grenade damage

 We've tuned Plasma Grenade damage slightly in response to health changes.

Plasma Grenade

Dire Avengers are very dependent on their Plasma Grenades and though they've never done as much damage as similar abilities, their utility is what makes them strong - so we didn't want to overtune the damage.

Damage: 

20

26

DOCTRINES

• Improved Plasma Grenade: Damage increased from 40 to 52

Ranger

Increased base damage

As with Scout Snipers, we needed to increase the damage to ensure that it didn't take substantially more volleys to kill an enemy squad. We also found in testing that without this increase, Rangers were disproportionally less effective than Snipers in terms of cost.

Wraithguard

Increased melee damage

It was intended that Wraithguard could be countered by being tied up in melee combat, but it was far too easy to achieve that with worker units. Of course, the cost effectiveness of sacrificing a worker for a squad of Wraithguard was imbalanced, and these changes should make them less susceptible to this tactic.

Vyper

Increased damage versus infantry

We opted to roughly double the firepower of its twin-linked shuriken catapults so that this change mostly affects its effectiveness versus infantry. The below changes affect the shuriken catapult, not the auto attack that fires more often.

• Increased targeting width from 5 to 15, meaning it can hit targets for longer before needing to adjust its facing

Fire Prism

Increased damage versus infantry

A concern we kept hearing from the community was that the Focused Beam doctrine felt weak. After testing this more thoroughly, we agreed - but we had to reduce its damage versus objectives to compensate. We'll continue to monitor how often it's being used.

DOCTRINES

• Focused Beam: Damage increased from 60 to 120 and now deals reduced objective damage (to the same value as pre-patch)

Farseer Macha

Reduced Psyker Blast damage reduction

There's been some discussion about the Psyker Blast damage reduction bonus that Macha applies to allied units. Though it's correct that you can choose to abdicate the fight, it does last for a substantial amount of time and given the infantry resilience changes, it needed a slight reduction.

Psyker blast

Damage reduction: 

75%

60%

Ranger Ronahn

Health, shield, and damage increased

Though Ronahn recently received buffs, his health change felt like a big step backwards for him. He went from being viable in some cases to irrelevant in most. Like other snipers, his auto attack needed to be increased, but his Long Shot took a dive with the increased health. He was always fragile to begin with, but now that units can survive longer and trade with him more easily, we increased his health as well.

Long Shot

Damage: 

275

360

Jain Zar

Increased survivability

Though she can be quite lethal, Jain Zar also suffers from being easily kited and is lower among Eldar Elite picks. This change should help her to find a better niche in the new meta.

Autarch Kyre

Bug Fixes

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a bug where Kyre was not correctly prioritized on the command card
• Fixed a bug where Kyre would revert to his default model when using Skyleap if a skin was equipped

Wraithlord

Changed Improved Webways functionality

To boost the Improved Webways doctrine, it will not only affect the cooldown of teleport, but also other abilities.

DOCTRINES

• Improved Webways: Now properly reduces the cooldown for Webway Holofield and Webway Shield

Shoota Boy

Stikkbomb damage decreased

Shoota Boyz always had high damage relative to their cost. With increased survivability, we felt they were just a it too good and needed a slight tweak,. We didn't want to go to far considering the health change will affect one of their cornerstone abilities - the Stikkbomb.

Stikkbomb

Damage: 

2

1.9

Tankbusta

Damage versus skimmers reduced

Tankbustas have always been very effective versus skimmers because they deal their damage in bursts. We needed to tone down their bonus damage do that it is now equivalent to Lascannon Devastators and Shadow Spectres, which should make it a bit easier for skimmers to harass an Ork army.

• Damage bonus versus skimmers reduced from 40 to 25

Deffkopta

Damage increased

Deffkoptas have received near-constant buffs and though we feel that they're viable, we've increased their damage to compensate for the health buffs. This makes them that much better as low-cost Elite counters.

Stormboyz

Damage reduced

Stormboyz have always been strong as a 2-point Elite, with their high burst damage and jumping capabilities. One of the major design intentions for this re-balance is to affect early Elite units, and we felt that in comparison to Striking Scorpions especially, their base damage was too high.

Critical Strike

Damage: 

90

80

Warboss Gorgutz

Bug Fix

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a bug where Gorgutz would get stuck after casting Grapplin' Klaw while performing a Critical Strike

Big Mek Wazzmakka

Damage reduced

Although Traktor Beam is really awesome and provides great utility, Big Mek Wazzmakka's overall toolkit felt underwhelming - especially in comparison to similarly-priced Elites. Due to the design of Orbital Scrap, his damage was inconsistent - so we've made that less variable. Orbital Scrap damage will no longer be capped at one entity, making it more lethal to squads.

Orbital Scrap

Damage: 

350

455

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Damage vs. Objectives: 

350

200

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Damate (Outer Radius): 

20%

50%

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Scrap Turrets

Damage: 

12

15

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