Please please can we fix Cata bleed?

[Raffa]

Devils bleed about as much as a sentinel....I'm aware of the unit composition with up to 4 squad leaders and damage-sharing but I think most people can acknowledge they're an anomalous unit. Would a simple change work - remove damage sharing from them, and instead make it that when a squad leader would die, he simply takes the place of the highest-health model left in the unit that isn't a squad leader. I mean atm they can tank a ton of sniper shots without losing one model. There's got to be a better way; I'm so tired of seeing them retreat over and over again with 200hp and no model losses.

[Ace of Swords]

100% agree, they rarely lose models still they reach 150hp then they start dropping like flies.

[Nuclear Arbitor]

while we're at it their damage should be reduced.

[Dark Riku]

while we're at it their damage should be reduced.

Specify ranged, melee, both, by how much and why?

[Nuclear Arbitor]

currently both ranged and melee are 120dps base. i think ranged needs to come way down, maybe 80, max, although they might need some adjustments to compensate, and melee should be decreased and preferable changed from power melee. partly my complaints are balance based and partly they're fluff without a significant counter argument from balance. even with a decrease in melee damage catachans would still be able to counter melee, even units like ASM, on their own. personally i find the unit horribly designed from a gameplay point of view because they have so many die last units and try to fill an area that IG lacks but in a lazy way.

[Maestro Cretella]

I kind of like Catachans the way they are now that I actually play IG

Glad they aren't as good as they were in retail though >:(

[Raffa]

Cata damage is a whole new topic. Bleed is the problem and imo it needs fixing asap. Ask anyone with any experience at this game and they will say Cata model losses are an issue. If no changes are coming could we at least get an explanation for why there aren't going to be any alterations?

[Raffa]

However I do agree with you entirely Nuclear. The whole unit needs to be rethought and redesigned from the ground up. It's just broken but has become accepted which is a shame.

[Brn4meplz]

Yes please god. Catachans are the only unit I use where I have to be mindful of retreating them while at full capacity. I hate how 4 guys can just vanish from them with a single las shot.

I happen to think their damage is pretty good in elite. Not crazy broken like retail, and I think that if they were given a proper squad health and reduced shared models they'd need decent damage to fight power armour armies.

It's all it has for that really.(early anyway)

[sk4zi]

i dont think they need dat damage... they are the dedicated melee and setup counter for IG, ok but in ELITE there are also spotters, whitch counter setupteams very well. as a melee counter scouts also need to rely only on their shotgun blast.
Catachans have also teir ol' reliable.
give them power melee is a bit exorbitant.

bleeding models and damage belongs toghether beause squads loose damage when they are bleeding. so if they would, it might be enough change to have them balanced.

[Nuclear Arbitor]

i think the damage is OP right now; i think it's batshit insane in retail. iirc they do like 210 rdps in retail and 120 melee.

[Nurland]

In retail they did 210 power melee and 90 something piercing + 22-23 melta iirc (when fully upgraded). So T1 catas did as much ranged dps as 2 T1 tac squads (with shorter range ofc). Not sure about the current values in elite though.

[Nuclear Arbitor]

guess i got my number backwards then. fairly sure it's 120rdps without any upgrades though, because that's what it is now.

[Nurland]

I suppose Caeltos and Lulgrim know better but I'd say that they have probably not at least buffed the cata dmg from retail. And in retail it is 17,65 dps piercing per shotgun model (four of them = 70,60 dps). The demo man does 20,59 dps piercing and the sarge does 22,65 melta so in total 113,84 dps ranged when fully upgraded.

[Nuclear Arbitor]

wtf, i did the math on it a while ago and got 120... not sure what happened but it does appear to be 70ish base, which explains why they were doing less damage than i expected.

[Nurland]

Maybe you didn't note in your calculations that the two sword models and gl model don't do ranged dmg?

[Nuclear Arbitor]

i only did the math for the base squad, which is all shotguns, baring the GL guy who i know only does melee.

[Nurland]

Well since they reverted the squad size back to 7 models to start with so there are two sword models, who don't do ranged damage (at least there were back in retail when the squad had 7 members iirc).

Not entirely sure about the situation currently in elite though.

[Nuclear Arbitor]

maybe that's what i did but 6 guys with shotguns is only about a 100 and i know i accounted for the GL. arg, whatever.

[Maestro Cretella]

Catachan damage values are actually quite a bit more complicated than what has been said here, and most of us are probably working from outdated values anyway. The old retail tooltip said something roughly like 11 dps per shotgun model on the starting shotguns and 20 dps on the demoman. Two of the Catachan models have machetes and autopistols, and those autopistols had dps listed as something like 1.4.

But Catachan damage values are a bit more complicated since I believe their shotguns work more like that of a CoH unit. This means that within the weapon's range, there are three ranges -- short, medium, long -- that are defined at certain values. At short range shotguns do more damage than at long range, while medium is in between.

It would be nice if Lulgrim or Caeltos could tell us exactly what the Catachan values are like right now.

[Nuclear Arbitor]

last i heard scout shotguns had damage fall off but cata chans didn't and they certainly act that way in game. if they do have damage falloff it's tiny.

EDIT: just looked in game, 5 shotguns, 1 sword and pistol, and one grenade launcher guy. assuming their dps values are the same, and i believe they are, 5*17.65 + 1.11 = 89 dps. lower than what i thought but i still think it's to high, especially for a unit with so much else going for it.

this is all off http://dow.wikia.com/wiki/Retribution/C ... ls/Weapons
doing the math from there i would get 270 mdps with the two leaders but i think their melee damage was changed. 132.6 rdps with both leaders. can't look at the old patch notes though now so i can't check what all was changed from retail.

[Dark Riku]

Sure you can.

http://www.dowreplays.net/elite-changelog.txt

[Nuclear Arbitor]

well, looks like i need to do more math and i'm to tired to right now. thank you for finding that though.

[Raffa]

Again we going off-topic...Cata bleed is a fundamental problem, we can sort dps out after. Can we at least get the views of Lulgrim and/or Caeltos? I realise people have accepted the way the unit is as it hasn't been changed since retribution came out...but really it's quite a serious change to make but it's for the best.

[Caeltos]

Sometimes they bleed, sometimes they don't. That's just abit of the random nature of this game onfortunately, it's not really an exclusive issue to the Catachan themselves. Heck, the occasionally 100 hp 3/3 members in the power-armored races will make you bleed from your eyes, as you lose 3/4 members of a Banshee Squad or Dire Avengers for that matter.

At least the unit itself isn't killing everything in sight in it's own right. They'll do good with support, but hell- at least it's better then nothing. I wouldn't want to fiddle with their bleed too much either, since it can really cripple the IG economy to a stop at some points.

[Ace of Swords]

No cata's problem is not random at all, there is a clear issue with their leaders and that's a fact that has already been proved in the past, you can easily reproduce a bug where snipers hitting the immortal leaders will make the cata take 0 damage aswell.

[Nuclear Arbitor]

thought about this a bit and i came up with an idea. currently they have 3 die last leaders and 5 normal members.

make the base squad 5 shotguns. replace the demoman with the grenadier and move the barrage ability with him or get rid of him completely. make the sargent upgrade add another shotgun member and give a melta special weapon.

that would leave them with the same number of models, ~~2rpds less, and only one die last model. the only issue i can see is that there could be conflicts with the special weapon and the sargent, similar to the HWT, but i know tacs have a special weapon and a sargent and i've never heard of the plasma gun jumping to their sargent. of course it's a bit less of an issue with them, as the sargent can die.

[Lost Son of Nikhel]

Can't we simply erase the grenade launcher catachan and make that any catachan model able to launch Ol'Reliable? With this we have only 2 die last model (if we buy the demoman and the sargent)

[Ace of Swords]

And why they should have 2 immortal leaders? IG is the only race that has not to worry about losing any leader (with the exception of ogryns) and it hardly bleeds at all in both req and power.

Im fine with the demo man beign immortal but not the guy with the melta.

[Raffa]

Cata problem is not random. If it was I wouldn't have posted this thread.

IG hardly bleeds anyway. Squad leaders on gm, sent and cata mean that hwt is the only squad that bleeds properly in T1. And hwt is probably the least taken choice. Not bleeding enables stupidly fast techs for ig even after buying wargear for your hero.

Yes it is nice to have a unit that doesn't bleed much if you play IG. But the unit is out of character in the game. Infantry squads are meant to punish you for losing hp by bleed.