Dawn of War II: Terminator Disappointment

You have to play the dreadnaut more than 1 level to realize how powerful he is. One of the first few items you will find for him boost his ranged damage from ~8 to nearly 1000. Yeah, one thousand. He is a beast, with incredible ranged damage, unrivaled melee damage, and a ridiculous ground stomp that instant kills 95% of the mobs around him and your squads.

His only drawback is that he is slow, and cant be healed by stimpacks. He has some nice traits you can learn to make up for both of these however.

yeah, after getting the ancient guardian perk, it is practically unstoppable. Even without the gun, mine could kill the mission bosses all alone. When taken some damage, I turned it off for the ridiculously fast health regen, then even the concentrated fire from HORDES of orks couldn't kill it.
It is seriously overpowered, imo.
On the other hand, the terminators....

before you post comments like this claiming your units have god-like abilities, make sure you post what difficulty level your playing on. if you can clear a whole map or even finish a boss fight with thule alone on primarch difficulty i would love to see a video of it. i play the max difficulty available on all games and though it might be possible when using "fall back" a hundred times or so, i have never met anyone with that much patience.

that being said, thule is good and i always use him. his main drawback is that his points can't be rerolled after you first get him, i think he always starts at lvl 7. i have speced him as both melee and ranged respectfully many times. i have found that ranged is superior especially after you get the explosive upgrade for his barrage. the only situation i can imagine him being better in melee is if he is your only melee unit because of the dreadnaught's slow speed. he can't keep up with anyone.

the squad for my latest game is as follows: Commander(melee), Tarkus(melee), Avitus(ranged obviously), and Thule(ranged). tarkus may seem like an odd choice for melee since he can only use chain and power swords but i have found that once you unlock the final stamina ability(which makes him unable to fall while tactical advance is active) and combine it with taunt, he is invaluable when fighting bosses.

plus since thule has a few points in melee and great default melee dmg he is more than adequate to defend avitus in the rear while he blasts away with his plasma cannon.

Yeah Thule is the strongest "squad" you can have. With my equipment he deals over 1500 range damage. And his special ability where he fires a slave of bullets into an area takes away even half of the live of a boss monster (the big ones at the end!!) and I haven’t seen may units which survived this attack. The only problem about him is that he can’t review your squads so it happened quiet often time that he was the only unit left alive and as strong as he is you mostly! can’t win with him alone.

Yes, I saw that once I played the Dreadnought a little more. But then I found that Terminator Armour is just as tough and I tended to field an army with the Commander, Cyrus, Tarkus and Thaddeus...

Apart from my commander, thule is the only one I would never left out. It´s barrage ability makes ridiculous amounts of damage even on bosses, and after you improve his stamina enough you can regain his health any time.

Well, I would competly disagree with the "unflexible" part of the dreadnought. Firstly, you need to level him a bit and spendon points on getting the ancient guardian perk to make him truely invaluable to your squad. Now, the dread can be configured in several different ways, with the assualt cannon this beast can deal well over 1300dps and once you get the hail of fury perk can basically mow down hordes of incoming infrantry while still keeping a instant pwnage ground stomp ability when they get too close. On the oter hand hes not too good at ONE thing, see you could trian him to become a increadible melee fighter and that might actually be good if your style is to use alot of support squads, I mean Avitus does nearly 2400dps with blues... So really there is no true downfall to using the dread, aprt from his slow speed, you just need to be patient and level him up a bit, then he truely becomes a increadily powerful tool.

dont forget to bring cyrus when playing with the dreadnought, if u equip medpacks on him he can even resurrect thule

hmm well Davian Thule is one of my most used persons in the game.
he has the most powerfull and most usefull abilities of all,
every mission i do with him is easy, you can take out hordes with just him,
so i really see him as the most powerfull tool in the game

Aparently you havent used the assalt cannon blast. One blast kills every enimy with in its range. Bad to the bone. Can be used about every 25 seconds. You probably set him up as a melee spec when you should have made him ranged. Can finish some later levels almost by himself.

Thule has many very powerful features:
1. He is nearly impossible to destroy with conventional weapons, especially with armour upgrades. You wont have to use Rites of Repair more than two times in a whole mission, if you use them at all.
2. Can deal a lot of damage, both melle and ranged.
3. Has two incredibly powerful abilities: Might of the Ancient (when he punches ground, i am not sure it is called that way) kills most enemies in a single strike over a wide are and also helps clear out buildings. Assault cannon blast is also very efective even agains killa-kans, wraithlords and carnifexes. Both thes abilities can be upgraded at higher levels to become even deadlier. A combo of these make a very effective tactic. And their recharge time is little.
4. If you level Thule up he may eventually get an ability wich allows him to heal, meaning that you wont have to bring Rites of Repair with you.

Thule is very powerful on higher levels. In the last mission he held off enemy assaults neraly single-handedly.

I never have a mission without thule, when you get all squads to level 20 and the best wargear the best squads are Commander-Terminator Armor with thunder hammer and storm shield, Thaddeus - sam as commander, avitus with terminator, assualt cannon and power fist and finally thule with venerable dreadnought trait and shut down one - along with the best claws possible UNBEATABLE!!!

u are brain damaged, i can use only the hero and dreadnought to clear the whole map.......

Yeah, so, the writer of this article apparently sucks at this game.

Get Thule some explosive resistance from wargear and the auto-repair perk, and spec him for ranged combat with the explosive hellfire rounds (or whatever they're called).

You have to micro him a bit more than you would if he were melee, but his ranged attack spray (which DOES NOT require supply drops to replenish) is pretty much instant-win in all situations but against end-of-mission bosses.

Also, if you get the Venerable Dreadnought trait, there's no way your assault squad is gonna have more health and damage than Thule.

As for spec'ing him for melee... most say you shouldn't ever do this, but it's viable with the right wargear and if you make sure to only use him in certain missions -- if you're expecting a lot of anti-armor, don't bring him. For the most part, a melee-spec Thule is great for 9 in 10 of Tyranid missions. If he gets below half-health, auto-repair and bring in your other units. Unless he's taking MASSIVE constant damage, the auto-repair is so fast he won't die.

Btw, anyone else notice how Avitus is far less effective as a Terminator? Sure, he's more durable, but he doesn't kill stuff anywhere near as fast, and he no longer really suppresses anything, because the other members of his squad just have storm bolters and he doesn't fire the cannon for long bursts. The assault cannon is good against all targets, but it's like a jack of all trades, not an end all be all.

Better to just keep him in power armor and pay attention to the mission intel to equip him with the most suitable heavy weapon.

I remember cogwheel from gotfrag.com...

Avitus's strongest weapon in the original SP campaign is a level 20 blue called The Never ending Hail of Devastation. He will do over nearly 2000 damage with the weapon when equipped and spec'd for range. He cannot use it in Terminator armor, however, so he is somewhat vulnerable to attack. I liked him more in Terminator armor as he could actually take a hit, and an 1800 damage weapon is about equally as useful anyway.

Also, who puts the commander in Terminator when you can put him in good power armor, and give him the rally ability? Who DOESN'T abuse that?

he's a lot more versatile in the expansion's campeign

This article is utterly wrong about dreadnought's value. Playing on Primach level it has finally provided my team the durability that my marines lacked against most of their enemies. I got him at level 14, and his stats were already evenly spread out, allowing me few choices of customization. What there was however was more then sufficient. Before even discussing his skill abilities, the first thing that you should not is that he is the only actual heavy armour unit at your disposal. For example enemy units such as the Eldar Seer Council are equiped with pistols that never miss and always result in one-shot kills on any marine, except the force captain. Even those wearing terminator armor. This means that a squad of 3 of them will usually kill one of your squads before they even get in melee range. At in the end game you will often face pairs of such squads supported by banshees and mobile turrets. Tyranid warriors and lictors also kill a marine with every melee attack they make. Lesser enemies will often overwhelm your marines in melee and many possess jumping abilities to quickly close with you. Without the dreadnought the only ways to tackle such enemies are either use of stealthy attacks with Cyrus, or carefully set up ambushes with crossfires and use of suppressing fire, blinding grenades and explosives.
Dreadnought can butcher several squads of such enemies solo as their attacks that are devastating to your marines, barely scratch his armor.
His basic melee ability make him the perfect counter to any rush as it pulverizes everything around him. Put him in the way of a tyranid wave and watch him kill 30 rushing gaunts as they surround him with one hit. A quick refresh timer allows it's use several times in a single fight. On defence missions he is invaluable just for this one skill.
I have also found his last endurance skill to be of great use when in a ranged stand off. When damaged he can be told to power down in middle of combat - in this state he quickly regenerates his health while providing cover for your ranged squads, making him a mobile fort for your marines. As the enemy closes in, this fort can reactive in a second, slaughter the first wave with his power smash and quickly counterattack with his melee rush.
I am unable to comment on his use with ranged weapon specialization as I only got melee weapon drops for him. Used with proper tactics he is the most powerful weapon available in the game. His only weakness is anti-armour units which are relatively few and should be scouted and sniped/mined/grenaded by Cyrus from amongst the enemy ranks before the main force makes contact.