There appears to be a general lack of counterplay to enemy ranged attacks. You can either kill them first or get shot to pieces. Not like this is news to this forum, people complain about it here and there in various forms. Part of the problem is that cover largely does nothing. This goes extra for Ogryn, who sometimes cannot even hide behind door frames due to size, let alone anything that a more average sized individual would consider “cover”.
Enemies do not care if they can see a small part of you or the whole you, they just shoot and hit regardless. If some actual proper cover system cannot be devised, then we should at least get enemy accuracy reduction based on how much of our character model they can see. Out in the open, standing still or running at them? 90-100% easily. Standing behind some boxes? Way less. Crouched behind sandbags with just the gun and head popping out? At this point their shots should more keep us pinned behind that cover than actually hit us.
Shooting at a target moving sideways in relation to them should also grant some accuracy reduction. In general the near 100% accuracy needs to be abolished. Those are not some elite units or Chaos Space Marines. One can barely peak from high ground to shoot at troops below, as they will immediately start hitting that tiny portion of you exposed and wobble your aim. It’s a rather frustrating experience, and it’s not like all classes can even attempt to counter-snipe.
Waist-high cover is indeed useless even when crouching. I’ll just… put this here. @Spazz made this in his long post about Veteran and gunplay, and it should really be a simple fix for the devs.
Just make gunners shoot at your center of mass instead of whatever sticks out (your head, usually).
Currently, there isn’t much tactics involved in dealing with gunners. It feels more like brute force : either you sprint, slide and dodge ahead to engage them in melee as fast as possible, or you take the convenient side path that leads behind them, or you corner-peek and shoot them before they can shoot you (if you’ve got a long-range weapon equipped).
It would be nice if the waist-high cover littered around everywhere was actually useful to promote the use of mid-range weapons and flamethrowers. That way, you could work your way down the rows of gunners while taking minimal damage if you sprint-slide to the appropriate cover.
I found out that instead of sticking to cover while fighting scab shooters, I found myself dodging, sliding and sidestepping as I was shooting them. The enemies already spawn all around the player trying to flank him so I don’t think it would make the game too easy. In practice, you only seek cover when you really need it.
I mostly don’t mind cover not working when I’m playing my Ogryn, at least it’s “on brand”, but otherwise, yeah, horizontal cover should help. Or, heck, show damage decals on your side of the cover to explain that it’s soft cover and not stopping any shots. Less interesting gameplay, but at least it would make sense.
Enemy incoming fire and suppression is WAY too prevalent. They need an accuracy penalty for shooting at moving targets, and a bigger penalty for shooting at people in cover. Also, why the hell doesn’t OUR suppression do anything? It’s super busted.
I’m sorry but when I sprint by and a specialist gunner has 100% accuracy that completely prevents me from being able to move, that’s some BS. I’m getting really tired of being subjected to non-stop firing lines with no way to properly defend myself. Crouched behind cover? Have fun losing all of your toughness!
Bad enough Toughness has chip damage bleedthrough (which should NOT be a thing, considering how Toughness is supposed to work and how it’s explained in the tutorial), but now we’re not allowed to escape enemy gunfire? Wow. Just wow.
AND SPEAKING of enemy fire. They shouldn’t be so triggerhappy as to shoot in the direction of any of their allies in melee. I’m sorry but being surrounded AND shot at is just too much.
“. They shouldn’t be so triggerhappy as to shoot in the direction of any of their allies in melee. I’m sorry but being surrounded AND shot at is just too much.”
That part at least is consistent with the lore. Their allies should provide cover, however.
On difficulty 4 and 5 especially, the aimbots are far more aggressive and spawn in ranged critical masses of 40+ shooters backed up by streams of gunners/shotgunners/snipers/trappers. There’s literally more shooters/specials than there are poxwalkers.
Ranged units:
-shoot WHILE strafing and advancing
-snipe you through hordes of their own units
-shoot you while you’re fighting their team in melee
-any one of them will take out your shields in one burst
-so many of them that you can just forget about running into melee
-stunlock the moment you leave cover
-hitscan from across the map, hidden behind cover/shadows
-have their fingers held on the trigger the entire time on diff 5
I agree with you, OP. Enemy ranged should have a cone of accuracy.
They should also friendly fire when they miss, or not be able to shoot you if you’re fighting in melee at all, as in the Warhammer core rules.
Warhammer characters don’t/can’t shoot at units locked in melee with their own. It’s one of the main reasons why melee is so iconic in the universe.
Per the rules:
LOCKED IN COMBAT
Models cannot make attacks with ranged weapons while their unit is within Engagement Range of any enemy models. Models also cannot target enemy units within Engagement Range of any other units from your army – the risk of hitting your own troops is too great.
Units cannot shoot while they are within Engagement Range of any enemy units. Units cannot shoot at targets within Engagement Range of any friendly units.
The -probably- untrained, unwashed masses of heretics should also suffer from recoil and the debuffs we suffer from.
Instead we get diehard, steel biting hard asses that will stand unflinching and unblinking in the face of lasguns, grenade launchers, bolters and other heavy ordnance that typically rip bigger baddies in half on a typical Wednesday.
