Combat feels too restrictive

[moonlightavenger]

I need help figuring out what I'm doing wrong. I feel like the enemies are always *just* outside range. Melee always leaves my knigts exposed (Aegis doesn't help when they have the numeric superiority and can lock my knights from so far away with suppression) and it takes three strikes to kill an enemy. I feel like I'm constantly punished for being aggressive AND for being defensive. And very harshly punished for using psych powers. I feel like every single ability my knights have has a hard-counter on the enemy. For example, what is the point of engaging a marine in melee if they can just disrupt? I literally don't know how to play this.

Add to that Plague Marines have ridiculous healing abilities and can too easily inflict plagued. Bruh... A small army of poxwalkers with 2 armor because their 'wizard' cast swolen flesh on them? On top of plague marines and cultists casting pinned and forcing me to move with time bombs.

And that is when they're not getting reinforcements.

I'm getting injured knights (almost whole month) every mission and overwatch is nigh useless. What am I doing wrong?

[EnemigoDeLaMafia]

The reason you feel combat is restricted is because it is. Engagements start at about 15 squares, which is your 3 action points just to move. Or you can move 5 squares, aegis, then shoot once. This design is very limited indeed.

You gotta use interceptors, a librarian or just a psylencer purgator. The other classes have more difficulty to get into action. Another thing you can do is use a justicar with honor the chapter, to give AP to whoever goes in melee. This uses plenty of willpower though.

If you got granades, they can somewhat push the enemy if you aim them right

Another thing you can do is take cover and hope they come closer, but this is rarely optimal and some enemies are just happy to snipe from range.

The best bet is using interceptors, as they can close the distance with 2 ap left, maybe more if they trigger the AP refund skill they have.

[Mosta]

Engage one pod at a time.
Don't initiate a fight when the warp surge is near 100%, if you can help it.
Build your initial purgator to use psychic onslaught (mainly to deal with mobs of poxwalkers).
Getting a knight in melee range vs death guard marines prevents them from using their ranged attacks (they can hit you for 2 damage instead of 4).
Early on it might be a good idea to grab emperor's light from the purgator (blindness in an area), as it will cut ranged damage by 2 (from enemies affected).
Prioritize killing/disabling (initially, with astral aim, also from the purgator) whoever poses the highest threat to your knights, then move on to less threatening targets.

[Kharn the Bloody]

Coming from other turn based 40K games I was getting extremely frustrated w overwatch in Chaos Gate. In Chaos Gate Overwatch for the player is an open invitation to be shot from half the enemy units nearby. It's dog poop. Doesn't work very well in this game unless you're a Cultist lol and even then the damage against trash mobs is usually laughable. Odd that Cultists have longer overwatch range than Knights but whatever. There are very few instances where overwatch is useful in this game. Mostly against the melee blobs at church doors or on a narrow bridge. Don't use it all IMO unless there are only melee units incoming with no ranged enemies on the field.

Those ranged units pissing you off constantly, I go with a Purgator with Astral Aim(center bottom abilities) every mish and the Psilencer with the extended range(center top left in Abilities). You can snipe like a champ. Set up your Purgator with silencer off to flanks or way back somewhere up high for a true overwatch with manual picking of targets.

Get support fire for your Purgator and Interceptor. It's amazing and you can set up a chained, 3 shot attack from 3 different Knights for the cost of a single shot on your Apothecary or Justicar. Even if your Interceptor and Purgator are out of ammo the Support Fire will trigger. Enemies do have to be in range and line of sight for this combo to work. Target enemy with Justicar or Apothecary, use ranged attack and your Interceptor and Purgator with both follow up with shots as well. I use it even when I"m in melee range with my Apothecary or Justicar if I can't finish off an enemy with a melee strike and if I know both the others are set up to use support fire.

As far as melee you can either full blob and overwhelm as seen in many videos with various melee blob set ups. However on those missions when you get 6 to 8 Chaos Space Marines on the board with other various trash mobs, I tend to make a fighting withdrawl and wait till they overexpose themselves somewhere and pick them off one by one till you can take out several. Purgator with Psilencer using Astral Aim is amazing for me because I like to shoot their weapon arms off once per turn and let my Justicar and Interceptor deal with them later.

[LittleBallOfPurr]

Support Fire is pretty nice, upgraded it can do 5 damage, twice per turn. Combine that with a Psilencer and you've suddenly got pretty decent, high damage range, even if the trigger shooter isn't really causing much damage themselves.

Early game my Interceptor with Support Fire and a Psilencer has been very powerful. Since they can warp in (Optional Teleport strike for mass damage), offer 2 x Support fire, obliterate cover and cause damage with Scatter shot, still leaving 1 AP to retreat or regain 1 WP through a melee finish, though often I'll AP boost with my Justicar too.

Similarly the Purgator can gain +4 Range on top of the Psilencer's 14 range and has better ammo capacity, as well as Support fire and ignoring half cover.

Those two do most the ranged damage in my group, with the Justicar enabling them through trigger fire/buffs before engaging in melee as the enemy close in.

That's what has got me through the first act on Legendary/GMM as a new player. I'm sure there's probably smarter tactics out there, but wanted to share as I can empathize with your frustrations and how I overcame similar feelings.

[Galdred]

There are several ways to close the distance, or to shoot from range:
1) Honor the chapter from the Justicar provides 2 AP to someone else, so you can use them after you have closed. I found it invaluable either with two melee justicars buffing each other, or a Purgator with Psilencer+Justicar
2) Teleport, either via Gates of Infinity, or the Interceptor skills (or later, the Librarian skills)
3) Rush, from the Justicar. It doesn't combo well with Honor the chapter, unless you run 2 Justicars, as you don't have much left to do useful things.

From range: Psilencer and Psycannon.
The Psycannon AoE ignores cover and is more convenient to use. The Psilencer AoE usually requires your knight to get very close, so you usually need honor the chapter buff from Paladin to make it work
I like having one of each early. The Psilencer has a very good range, and is ideal with astral aim.

You then need to focus on action generation.
There are basically several ways to get more actions:
Auto that provide an extra action (on melee crit : Interceptor, Justicar, Apothecary. Auto reload: Purgator, Justicar, Ranged crit: Purgators).
Support fire triggers on any attack and is very strong, especially on the Interceptor, as it can be buffed to 5 damage (and your interceptor should be in the middle of the enemies anyway).

The grenade from a grenade specced purgators can also help a lot.

The gear you get at T2 can help a lot in one of these areas.

As Kharn the Bloody pointed out, you can also fall back, and most opponents will do really stupid things if you break los.

[Galdred]

Originally posted by Disciple.:

The reason you feel combat is restricted is because it is. Engagements start at about 15 squares, which is your 3 action points just to move. Or you can move 5 squares, aegis, then shoot once. This design is very limited indeed. .

You should almost never cast Aegis(or any buff) in combat.
If you cast it on your turn out of combat, then move someone to initiate combat in the same turn, you will refresh your actions and keep all the buffs.
Aegis is a very poor value proposition at 1 action for 2 measly points of armor (unless you have traits or gear to make it better).

The ways you mentioned to close the distance are the ones I used indeed. All can work well. Even Gates of Infinity, but you get to use it only once.
Psilencers with the Purgator extra range and ignore cover can delete opponents from a very long distance without exposing yourself too much (or you can spend all moves to get into shotgun range, but that requires AP buffing).

[moonlightavenger]

All of this sounds like good advice until you have to fight one of those preacher ♥♥♥♥♥ with 15 armor that regenerates and the warp surge has 10+ enemies running around casting pinned and overwatch cones all over the place.

I'm stuck on tier 1 equipment. How am I supposed to deal with this? My Apothecary runs out of willpower and can't heal my knights and he's too weak and has no action points to move, kill, heal someone because the cultists won't let him a single turn without pinned. If I leave them clumped together they suffer AoE attacks and if I separate them they get overwhelmed.

HOW DO I COUNTER ENEMIES CASTING PINNED ON MY KNIGHTS? They're all level 3. Everything I can do feels situational and there is nothing I can do against what the enemy can do against me. Even Honor the Chapter has limited application because it's all dependent on willpower. Not opnly it's very liumited, but it just makes warp surges come faster. Then it's either the damn technophage disabling my ranged weapons, or more enemies.

Crits to get AP, is again, situational and depends on RNG, especially with lower level knights. Support fire is limited by the low ammo count on the storm bolters. I a particular fight I got support fire to shoot three times while a purgator shot at an apostle from range. But It barely actually hurt him because of his 15 armor. Next turn he was back to full health and full armor.

I'm playing on the easiest and I come from XCOM all the way to the original. I just quit on the first technophage mission. I just don't want to say that the game is unbalanced because I know there are people doing much better than I am. Does anyone know a good youtuber I can watch to see if I can figure out how to play this thing?

[Galdred]

Originally posted by moonlightavenger:

All of this sounds like good advice until you have to fight one of those preacher ♥♥♥♥♥ with 15 armor that regenerates and the warp surge has 10+ enemies running around casting pinned and overwatch cones all over the place.

I'm stuck on tier 1 equipment. How am I supposed to deal with this? My Apothecary runs out of willpower and can't heal my knights and he's too weak and has no action points to move, kill, heal someone because the cultists won't let him a single turn without pinned. If I leave them clumped together they suffer AoE attacks and if I separate them they get overwhelmed.

HOW DO I COUNTER ENEMIES CASTING PINNED ON MY KNIGHTS? They're all level 3. Everything I can do feels situational and there is nothing I can do against what the enemy can do against me. Even Honor the Chapter has limited application because it's all dependent on willpower. Not opnly it's very liumited, but it just makes warp surges come faster. Then it's either the damn technophage disabling my ranged weapons, or more enemies.

Crits to get AP, is again, situational and depends on RNG, especially with lower level knights. Support fire is limited by the low ammo count on the storm bolters. I a particular fight I got support fire to shoot three times while a purgator shot at an apostle from range. But It barely actually hurt him because of his 15 armor. Next turn he was back to full health and full armor.

I'm playing on the easiest and I come from XCOM all the way to the original. I just quit on the first technophage mission. I just don't want to say that the game is unbalanced because I know there are people doing much better than I am. Does anyone know a good youtuber I can watch to see if I can figure out how to play this thing?

On lower level, I didn't bother with these abilities indeed. Against lots of cultists, I went with 2 Purgators supported by 2 Justicars (or 1 Purgator, 1 Justicar, 1 interceptor, someone else). Run the psilencers into position, AoE the cultist, and repeat with second Psilencer.
If some are still alive, clean up with honour the chapter.
If you pre-buff before enterin combat with aegis, you can afford to let some opponents live.
I kept using the psilencer until I had all the skills for the Psycannon blast on my first Purgator, then switched to Psycannon.

On a Psilencer Purgator build, Astral aim is of higher priority. They cannot damage you if they don't have their weapon arm left (they will still troll you with grenades, though).

What I found critical was to never bench wounded knights, because extra levels give more HP anyway, and the abilities gained are invaluable.

I found healing with servo skulls much better than with the apo skill: it costs 0 AP, and 0 WP, but it is one use only (I had the trait granting a second one on someone, though).

Technophage missions without a dreadnought are very very hard indeed, and the most cramped ones are rage inducing. There is not really a good way to handle them, except by making really sure you don't trigger a new pod while in combat.

[moonlightavenger]

Originally posted by Galdred:

On lower level, I didn't bother with these abilities indeed. Against lots of cultists, I went with 2 Purgators supported by 2 Justicars (or 1 Purgator, 1 Justicar, 1 interceptor, someone else). Run the psilencers into position, AoE the cultist, and repeat with second Psilencer.
If some are still alive, clean up with honour the chapter.
If you pre-buff before enterin combat with aegis, you can afford to let some opponents live.
I kept using the psilencer until I had all the skills for the Psycannon blast on my first Purgator, then switched to Psycannon.

On a Psilencer Purgator build, Astral aim is of higher priority. They cannot damage you if they don't have their weapon arm left (they will still troll you with grenades, though).

What I found critical was to never bench wounded knights, because extra levels give more HP anyway, and the abilities gained are invaluable.

I found healing with servo skulls much better than with the apo skill: it costs 0 AP, and 0 WP, but it is one use only (I had the trait granting a second one on someone, though).

Technophage missions without a dreadnought are very very hard indeed, and the most cramped ones are rage inducing. There is not really a good way to handle them, except by making really sure you don't trigger a new pod while in combat.

Noted. Thanks. Do you take all your knigths with the medicae servo-skulls?

About the pods, I just quit another mission where I set up my knights to enter a room with a bloospawn (the walls kept the pod from activating). Then a pod with three plague marines comes out of the blue (never were detected) and one of them blows the wall from a long distance. Didn't shoot at my knight. He shot at the wall and it collapsed activating the bloomspawn and a pod that was inside with it.

.... I just thought it was funny.

[Galdred]

Originally posted by moonlightavenger:

Originally posted by Galdred:

On lower level, I didn't bother with these abilities indeed. Against lots of cultists, I went with 2 Purgators supported by 2 Justicars (or 1 Purgator, 1 Justicar, 1 interceptor, someone else). Run the psilencers into position, AoE the cultist, and repeat with second Psilencer.
If some are still alive, clean up with honour the chapter.
If you pre-buff before enterin combat with aegis, you can afford to let some opponents live.
I kept using the psilencer until I had all the skills for the Psycannon blast on my first Purgator, then switched to Psycannon.

On a Psilencer Purgator build, Astral aim is of higher priority. They cannot damage you if they don't have their weapon arm left (they will still troll you with grenades, though).

What I found critical was to never bench wounded knights, because extra levels give more HP anyway, and the abilities gained are invaluable.

I found healing with servo skulls much better than with the apo skill: it costs 0 AP, and 0 WP, but it is one use only (I had the trait granting a second one on someone, though).

Technophage missions without a dreadnought are very very hard indeed, and the most cramped ones are rage inducing. There is not really a good way to handle them, except by making really sure you don't trigger a new pod while in combat.

Noted. Thanks. Do you take all your knigths with the medicae servo-skulls?

About the pods, I just quit another mission where I set up my knights to enter a room with a bloospawn (the walls kept the pod from activating). Then a pod with three plague marines comes out of the blue (never were detected) and one of them blows the wall from a long distance. Didn't shoot at my knight. He shot at the wall and it collapsed activating the bloomspawn and a pod that was inside with it.

.... I just thought it was funny.

Regarding servo skulls, it depends. Early on, I usually just take a single one, until I have unlocked a few more inventory slots, either through gear or skills (I lost 3 Purgators in my playthrough. One of them was supposed to be deathless, but it didn't save him from the critical wound going bad event. By the time the third died, my Interceptor was able to carry the squad, so it worked just fine).

Regarding pods activating each other, It is very irritating indeed, and I don't think the game is balanced around that. If it is the last Bloomspawn, you can try to destroy it and ignore the pods. Otherwise, it depends on how far apart they are.

I once had three pods activated (thanks Duty Eternal!) at once. I destroyed the leftmost one, then used the Gates of Infinity to get away from the other two, but what you can do is highly situational (and might involve reloading a save or whatever).

[EnemigoDeLaMafia]

Originally posted by Galdred:

Originally posted by Disciple.:

The reason you feel combat is restricted is because it is. Engagements start at about 15 squares, which is your 3 action points just to move. Or you can move 5 squares, aegis, then shoot once. This design is very limited indeed. .

You should almost never cast Aegis(or any buff) in combat.
If you cast it on your turn out of combat, then move someone to initiate combat in the same turn, you will refresh your actions and keep all the buffs.
Aegis is a very poor value proposition at 1 action for 2 measly points of armor (unless you have traits or gear to make it better).

The ways you mentioned to close the distance are the ones I used indeed. All can work well. Even Gates of Infinity, but you get to use it only once.
Psilencers with the Purgator extra range and ignore cover can delete opponents from a very long distance without exposing yourself too much (or you can spend all moves to get into shotgun range, but that requires AP buffing).

I was assuming no pre-buffing. But definitely, if aegis and other buffs can be cast before battle, that's ideal.

My point was that 3 AP is rather restrictive when it considers movement.

Aegis can be situationally useful. Mixing it with low cover, and ideally with penalties for long range for the enemies, you can really minimize the damage they might cause on a character. There's this dude with a suppression cannon and an axe, which attacks from quite a distance. Its good if you couldn't finish the enemy, or you're trying to play more 'tactical', taking enemies from a distance and so on.

[EnemigoDeLaMafia]

Originally posted by moonlightavenger:

All of this sounds like good advice until you have to fight one of those preacher ♥♥♥♥♥ with 15 armor that regenerates and the warp surge has 10+ enemies running around casting pinned and overwatch cones all over the place.

I'm stuck on tier 1 equipment. How am I supposed to deal with this? My Apothecary runs out of willpower and can't heal my knights and he's too weak and has no action points to move, kill, heal someone because the cultists won't let him a single turn without pinned. If I leave them clumped together they suffer AoE attacks and if I separate them they get overwhelmed.

HOW DO I COUNTER ENEMIES CASTING PINNED ON MY KNIGHTS? They're all level 3. Everything I can do feels situational and there is nothing I can do against what the enemy can do against me. Even Honor the Chapter has limited application because it's all dependent on willpower. Not opnly it's very liumited, but it just makes warp surges come faster. Then it's either the damn technophage disabling my ranged weapons, or more enemies.

Crits to get AP, is again, situational and depends on RNG, especially with lower level knights. Support fire is limited by the low ammo count on the storm bolters. I a particular fight I got support fire to shoot three times while a purgator shot at an apostle from range. But It barely actually hurt him because of his 15 armor. Next turn he was back to full health and full armor.

I'm playing on the easiest and I come from XCOM all the way to the original. I just quit on the first technophage mission. I just don't want to say that the game is unbalanced because I know there are people doing much better than I am. Does anyone know a good youtuber I can watch to see if I can figure out how to play this thing?

There's too methods. You can either rush the priest and hit him with everything you've got, or you can try to drain the enemy reinforcements so once you trigger the priest encounter, theres only him. (I wouldn't recommend this though. You'd need a ranged comp and this strategy is in itself risky).

Anyways, ideally you apply shielding before triggering the encounter (this resets your AP, and keeps the buffs for one turn)

Once you've trigerred the encounter, it's on. You need to focus the priest and ignore everything else.

Purgators need to be using celestial aim, then shooting.

Interceptors both melee or ranged need to port in and crit right away.

Justicar can charge in, or buff an ally. Getting the justicar in by walking is more trouble than worth. (You'd need a second one to buff the melee one)

An apothecary is rather useless in this fight. But you can apply a biomancy for extra crit on your melee fighter. Ideally apply before encounter.

The BEST way to tackle this encouter is with an stratagem that allows you to teleport right in. This is the meta right now

Also, none of this applies to DLC. I don't own that one.