I'll just quote myself for summary:
Cyris wrote:Let's be honest with ourselves: factions in DoW2 (and many pvp games) work because they are mixes of various OP elements you leverage to win. You leverage IG's OP reinforcement ratios by forcing battles of attrition. You opponent attempts to work around this by leveraging their factions OP elements to try to avoid battles of attrition. The balancing act is to avoid toxicity and to make sure factions have weaknesses to go with these strengths.
OM are pretty much a faction left with only weaknesses. SS are OP in the first half of T1 (or into early T2 in some matchups), but that's pretty much it. Horrible map control, BC doesn't pull his weight, clunky AV, numerous useless upgrades, little wipe threat, mediocre aggressive options and mediocre turtle options.
So here's a non-ordered list of problems I see with OM. I don't think they all need "fixing" - it's good to have weaknesses in addition to strengths. I just honestly think (and believe I'm backed up by most of the players I respect) that OM have far too many weaknesses and not enough strengths.
1- OM are the weakest 1v1 faction in the game. Hands down, no question. The holes in their roster are glaring and easy to exploit. They require tons of micro, lack squad wiping potential until late game and present few "must respond" threats.
2- Early map control might be the worst of any faction. Imagine SM but their scouts are slower and more expensive, their tacs don't cap faster and their hero is slow. Ops can begin to make some headway here, but you're paying 30 power for a dedicated capper that can't reliable fend off other cappers. This isn't intrinsically bad - it's ok to be bad at things and some faction needs to be the worst at any particular thing. It's when this is added to the continued list below that it's just too much.
3- Setup team counters are far too weak. BC more of less needs sword and purge to counter a setup team, and emperor help you if their are two. Ops stun and IST nades can disrupt, but the faction lacks followup to capitalize on the opening, and both of those squads have a tendency of taking bad bleed when preforming these roles.
4- Ranged blob counters are similarly bad. Only SS can stand in meaningful ranged firefights (purgs/op have short range, IST bleed too bad) and getting 2 SS is a death sentence come T2. IST nades again almost cut it, but followup is lacking unless you spend a large amount of power and get out teched hard.
5- T2 AV remains poor and lacks snare. With my nids, I have wonderful map control, rushdown, infantry control, ranged and melee blob builds and territory control with towers and nests. My lack of snare is a weakness that is appropriate, as is my mediocre (not counting VC HT) AV capabilities. OM brings no big advantages that this glaring weakness cover for. This is massively compounded in T3, as a single battle tank will often spell gg, even if I'm at a lead.
6- T3 is insanely predictable. The counter to everything OM field is "stack plasma damage".
Some more specific complains then:
1- Purgs need to cover far too many holes in the faction, have unnecessarily high upkeep, never face where you want, turn too slow, and burn gens slower then a tac flamer.
2- Ops are terrible. Imagine scouts but remove fotm, a nade that kills things and reliable cc. You're left with.... what? A slightly cheaper scout that comes out after you needed map control, and doesn't scale past T1.
3- Las Rhino fires once a month, and prefers infantry no matter what the codex says.
4- There are a nunber of upgrades across the faction that are just terrible - ss flamer, ss psilencer, BC purified blades, BC mantle, Dread flamer.
5 - SS are OP in early T1, but their weapon upgrades are both still terrible.
6- BC is a weak commander. He can bully a bit in T1, but falls off real fast. Early T1 is also when OM are the strongest with front loaded IST and SS strength, so it's not as needed.
7- Losing Flamestrike was terrible. It allowed punishment of blobs/setup in T2 when chained with CC. Now, OM hurt in both T1 and T2 against those compositions.
8- Dark Excommunication is overpriced and niche.
Some good things real quick:
1- SS in early T1 are OP. No reason for them to have top piercing damage in addition to the 70 melee skill.
2- HB Rhino is too cheap.
3- Purifiers with the faster casting time have been fun to use, though still outclassed by most other dedicated melee and requiring significant upgrades (libby, BC wargear) to scale, all of which opens the OM vulnerability to vehicle play too wide.
4- Experiments with heavy IST investments were fun, but ROI on sarge nade and overall preformance remain low. Capping suffers, T2 delayed too far.
/end rant
I really don't have anything constructive to add right now. There are so many directions the faction could go in that I get crippled with indecisiveness (as mentioned in the OM thread). Tiny decisions like "bring back Rhino in T1?" or "add crusaders in T1?" have such massive impacts to what other changes I'd make that it's hard to stay focused. Without any tentspikes to design around it's just a big swirl.