What are your typical composition in legendary ?

[Haryûu]

Hi !
Tl;dr, wanted to rerun the game I've finished last winter and seeking some fresh PoV as my strategies become redundant and I'd like to try some other things.

Here are the typical core of composition I've been playing :
Crazy Interceptor with TP+ crit AP refund, buffed by apothicarian and Justicar+obviously BiS stuff tier 3 (he litteraly one turn every boss that can be, otherwise garantees next).

Otherwise I tend to abuse psycannon purgator to benefit huge AoE that are crucial in legendary.
Librarian too is often abused to blitzkrieg with his TP or manage warp/deal AoE if no purgator available.

I've played all assassins to 9, wanted to try an eversor + apothicarian bleed build that ended up being meeeeh, even on chaos spawn or big target that can stack bleed enough to make it relevant.
Abused a lot of tier 3 stungrenade with the adequat passive trait and armor.

So here are what I basically played and wanted to know if some other things are fun AND viable to legendary as I'd really like tl enjoy some other ways through the game.
The play through will be with both DLCs on and no preorder bonus activated.

[JPLRocket]

Tried dedicated stun teams? These stack far more AP than a Justicar can for the crit interceptor.

[Haryûu]

Yup, stun teams were my deathguard comp favourite.
One grenade spec purgator, Iolanthus (our firdt justicar) had a grenade related trait, a purifier to ensure AoE with flamer and a librarian to TP. Went to like 9 AP with this comp on almost all ships. Depending on wound, I also play Culexus to start the chain on some heavy stun resist compositions.

[JPLRocket]

Try it with Apothecary and chaplain, alongside librarian + interceptor.

Much more repeatable than grenades, and the Terminator armor that buffs grenades is a fine option for the chaplain as a cherry on top.

Librarian speced into the psybolt tree makes excellent use of the extra AP as well- upwards of 15 damage per shot with Golden Mandate line bolters. No free reloads or bonus shots, but ranged damage on par with interceptor. And armor piercing.

[Voronyx]

I beat the game on legendary and used these 2 teams from start to finish:
2x purgator + apothecary + chaplain
2x justicar + apothecary + interceptor
The key is to get as many extra action point abilities and turbo buff your units with apothecary and chaplain. Stun builds are severely nerfed on highest difficulty so you want your units to do as much damage as possible and focus targets down.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2821623497
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2821623646

[Prophet Gamer]

Originally posted by Voronyx:

I beat the game on legendary and used these 2 teams from start to finish:
2x purgator + apothecary + chaplain
2x justicar + apothecary + interceptor
The key is to get as many extra action point abilities and turbo buff your units with apothecary and chaplain. Stun builds are severely nerfed on highest difficulty so you want your units to do as much damage as possible and focus targets down.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2821623497
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2821623646

Could you give us a screenshot of how you built them or write it here, please? Gonna start the game today and I'd like to kinda know how to build my dudes.

[Voronyx]

Originally posted by Prophet Gamer:

Could you give us a screenshot of how you built them or write it here, please? Gonna start the game today and I'd like to kinda know how to build my dudes.

I don't have exact builds saved, but here's the general idea:

For Interceptor+Justicar build, you want teleport perks and ruthless precision on Interceptor as he's going to be your main damage dealer. Extra points go into support fire. Justicars mainly need Honor the Chapter and Hammerhand skills, the rest is optional and I went for terminator armor + psycannon. Try to get equipment items for Justicars that increase Willpower points.

For psilencer Purgators, they need top left skills, everything for ammo then get astral aim. They basically keep reloading and using support fire when allies shoot. Their Chaplain mainly needs Litany of Hate fully maxed for extra AP and Intonement of Guidance for crit% later on.

For both teams the Apothecaries are there to cast Warp Speed, heal and use Servo Skulls.

Just remember to avoid anything related to stun because on Legendary the stun threshold is 2-3 times higher and not worth instead of focus firing. Also the reason why we need 2 teams is because last mission requires 8 characters fully built. Int+Justicars team handled outside of the temple, Purgators+Chaplain were inside and I remember Apothecaries being critical there.

Both were inspired by these videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ce3j7VOVvs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHP_BCpWmbQ

[JPLRocket]

Where does this idea that stun is nerfed on legendary come from?

It's wrong. Chaos space marine threshold is 7. Cultist is 6.

Marines with zero gear and iron arm biomancy do 3.

I've run four campaigns on legendary, all exp, as pure stun with complete success.


Also, warp speed buffs MELEE crit damage only so it sounds like there is some explicitly wrong info being presented. Warp speed on a purgator does not enhance their ranged crit damage.



All-

When starting out, a super viable no gear squad (levels 1-3) is:

Justicar (bottom center skills)
Apothecary (top left skills)
2x Interceptor (top left to teleport boost, and range boost, but no upgrades to teleport strike)

Gameplay approach being, equip a staff on one interceptor and give him iron arm biomancy. Have him teleport in and stun enemies, have the other interceptor teleport in and execute them. Boost the stunning interceptor AP with HtC. If the Justicar/apothecary can deliver some executions, all the better.

As your gear improves you can kit out the non-stun interceptor to deal damage along the lines of the "one man army" video, and the executions delivered will increase his AP, effectively concentrating the team's AP in him.

This carries all fights except technophage and bloom assaults until about day 300. Works on craftworld.

[Haryûu]

Thanks for all these in-depth answer !
I don't mind too much final mission as I will play a long paced campaign. I don't want to blitz 8 marines and the dread to max level with stuff then go for Mortarion, I'll probably aim a 1000 days campaign because.. Why not. Just want to enjoy playing with my space marines while waiting a proper translation of RogueTrader lmao. This is why I asked this, I want to play exotic !

As JPLRocket said, stun is still imba in legendary (even though I've only hit the 2nd reaper on legendary, ended the game only in the previous difficulty which already has increased stun resist).
It's just sometimes hard to see things from an other perspective (like the stun biomancy that I've been sleeping on because I already had Culexus and a stupidly OP stun hammer).

[Jakob]

I love Stuns and Executions too (on Legendary). One of my favourites was 2x Justicars and they both had maxed out Crushing Charge ability. I use that ability to smash through a wall and start a fight, great fun. One time I Charged into a group to set up 5 units for Execution it was beautiful.

[Bursacio]

For legendary I stayed away in early fights, to avoid injuries.

I use x2 purgators highest range possible.
Melee is difficult to use in fights where you are overwhelmed in numbers.

Right now I am in day ~1100 in Legendary, with 0 morbus.

[JPLRocket]

Originally posted by Bursacio:

For legendary I stayed away in early fights, to avoid injuries.

I use x2 purgators highest range possible.
Melee is difficult to use in fights where you are overwhelmed in numbers.

Right now I am in day ~1100 in Legendary, with 0 morbus.

Against cultists, melee effectively grants a bonus attack through your knights' reactions, granting an extra AP in effect.

Against tougher enemies, the value of melee is more in stuns.

[Haryûu]

Melee on tougher enemies is also very strong on an invested critbuild (interceptor typically of course). Makes me on turn / full cycle almost any enemies.
The only enemy my interceptor needed sometime a little bit more of setup is Mortarion because of his gimmick.
The red reaper is the one I didn't face, but my interceptor basically one turned every reaper (except the immortal which needed 2-3 turns because he is made to tank n amount of crits). Chaplain buff, biomancy, justicar to get spicy AP and crit reset AP fiesta with AP and crit damage stratagems. Absolutely ridiculous damage output.
Edit : and by any means this creates a panic button on bloomspreader mission where you can at any moment chose to blitz the spreader instead of grinding xp at the risk of your knights / timer

[JPLRocket]

One thing you can optimize more is drop the AP refresh in tp for an extra passive wargear on your interceptor, then use final justice instead of one of the +crit% weapons. More total damage and you can also use the righteous passive for even more AP.

I do this as a late game respec since early game the tp AP is huge

[Haryûu]

Originally posted by JPLRocket:

One thing you can optimize more is drop the AP refresh in tp for an extra passive wargear on your interceptor, then use final justice instead of one of the +crit% weapons. More total damage and you can also use the righteous passive for even more AP.

I do this as a late game respec since early game the tp AP is huge

I usually sacrificed the bottom left corner with the support fire and keep the tp bonuses. I often get more than the 10 damages from support fire on lategame build when I get refund the AP, allowing me to get back AP on crits and tp while having extra slot.
I've always got the feeling that the support fire goes from stupidly OP early game to just average so tend to skip it when I get properly geared up through the campaign.
I'll take a closer look when restarting the game ! For now, it's heatwave, AC on and no gaming to keep some fresh air lmao.

[JPLRocket]

The purpose of support fire investment is enduring reflexes which is a flat +2 AP/turn between righteous and ruthless precision. Always take this.

I drop the extra support fire damage boosts as it actually can be counterproductive if you are using the soulhammer to set up stuns.

When I don't yet have endgame gear, I keep teleport boost, but teleport strike and swap are dead point investments along the way that can be better spent on an extra 20% crit chance once you hit late/end game.