This ability is far too OP. It essentially makes waaagh towers invincible to all but the heaviest ranged firepower (say... 4 lascannons would take it out). This makes fighting the towers nigh impossible, where the towers themselves are already potent.
The whole point of the ability making the tower take extra damage is to allow the opposing player to have a chance to stop it, and to stop aggressive use of WAAAGH (say, activating it right in front of your army). It completely nullifies this drawback of the towers.
Instead, players will activate it in the midst of a pitched-battle, since nearly nothing can kill it.
This doctrine (almost ubiquitously taken) makes attacking an Ork encampment from hard to "not-gonna-happen."
Comments
Katitof
Agreed, doctrines which prevent units/structures intended counterplay should never be in game.
WAAGH towers have long wind up time and show on the minimap when used specifically to give opponent a chance to attack ork and destroy it before it goes off.
tritol
on the other hand they are kinda squishy and they are one of the primary targets when pushing, so wasting one doctrine slot to counter certain faction weakness maybe makes sense ? ... kinda both agree and disagree here
I mean something like ... lets say SM dont have reinforcing vehicles so you could take doctrine that would allow you some sort of on field reinforcement ...
孙子兵法
Space marine should have a doctrine preventing standard and orbital strike from being captured LOL.
Katitof
Ever heard of Jonah presence doctrine?
孙子兵法
Yeah that also stop your own forces, stupid.
Stoner
Before tac spam meta was a thing, it was pretty hilarious playing against Ork who had this doctrine, while my BO was Scout/ASM, but since it's no longer a thing and everyone focusing mostly on ranged units, yeah, that doctrine became OP...
Dullahan
I think it's fine. Yes, it makes them hard to kill with ranged weaponry, but melee will still kill the tower very quickly.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't Waaagh towers channeling waaagh get near instakilled by a droppod? Been awhile since I've played but that was my understanding.
vindicarex
Ya cuz Eldar and SM melee is sooo effective vs Ork...
Trust me Dullahan - i've tried to get ASM to kill those waaagh turrets while they WAAAGH - the problem is that, unless they are literally attacking the turret the moment it hits the button, they most likely will not have time to kill it. Most Ork players WAAAGH when their army is around, right? Otherwise, why bother using it. This means that Ard' Boyz, Shoota stikkbombs, any Ork Elite, or deff guns will make short work of ASM trying to focus a WAAAGH tower. So not - it's not fine.
Btw - they are not "hard" to kill - they are nearly impossible to kill with ranged weapons.
They made it so drop pods dont damage buildings and the like some time ago iirc.
Dullahan
The rest of your army should be engaging his army while you attack the tower of course. Waaagh forces the encounter, you can either commit to engaging fully or retreat. (Orks set the tempo of the battle because of this)
ASM and Banshees are both very good vs Ork when used properly. Doctrines make them a hell of a lot better but even without they can be quite potent.
Perhaps they could tweak the amount of damage absorbed. I don't think you should be able to snipe Waaagh towers with no risk if his entire army is sitting on it but at the same time if it's too difficult to punish Waaagh tower usage then it creates an awkward state where using the doctrine becomes essential.
vindicarex
The rest of my army (ranged units) cannot damage the waaagh tower - it has an unkillable shield...
So what happens when I can't kill the waaagh tower, it pops off, and the entire ork army gets + dps/speed?
That's right - I lose - you can barely fight a WAAAGH when they use 7 seconds to run towards your defenses - but if you get caught in open field vs. Ork army under WAAAGH? You're dead - so, so dead.
This is why every SM player with a brain backs up into shield gen/turret cuz that's literally the only place you can fight orkz under waaagh (unless you pull of some amazing trap and flank and get the best engage ever... even then ork player can easily dodge since he moves so fast).
Martin
If you have or get any could you post replays in which you face this?
charlando
My question is, in its current state, why wouldn't an ork player choose this doctrine? Seems like a no-brainer
Dullahan
Against the current meta which seems to favour shooty stuff, it's really good. It isn't nearly as good against melee heavy armies so when ASM spam was all the rage, it was a pretty mediocre choice. Unless you're building really forward towers, it's pretty useless. And in the mid game there's stuff like dreadnoughts and elites like gabriel who don't give a single ++heresy redacted++ about it. It really depends on your playstyle as to how effective or ineffective it will be. I wouldn't call it a must pick, although pretty useful against a lot of the current strategies like sniper spam.
vindicarex
its been constantly picked all the time since day 1 of this game...
Dullahan
Except it hasn't. A cursory glance at replays on GR.org demonstrates that.
Going through the Replay of the Week, once the replay parser was updated to display doctrine information, it was used in 6/14 games featuring orks.
if I set a custom search to look for 1v1 Ork games on the latest patch, it was used in 24/67 games. And atleast half of those are one player using it in every game. (Bhruic)
So that's pretty representative of the last ~4-5 months or so of high level Ork play I would say.
I'm sure Relic themselves have way better stats on doctrine pick rate but they haven't put out such information since one of the first releases.