Eldar Farseer — Ork Mekboy — Space Marine Captain — Tyranid Hive Tyrant — Chaos Sorcerer — Lord General — Tau Commander — Necron Overlord
The following is a complete list of wargear available for the Tau Shas’O Commander in Dawn of War II: Retribution’s Last Stand game mode. I’ve personally confirmed everything up to level 18, other details are courtesy of friends and commenters. Thanks to Pika, Juno, and Forge for additional information and assistance. If you have any corrections or updates, please leave a comment below and I’ll update the list when I can.
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Plasma Rifle
Default weapon. Can only be replaced, not removed.
One-handed ranged weapon, 10.0 dps.
Shield Hardpoint
Default shield. Can only be replaced, not removed.
The Tau Commander may equip shields to this hardpoint on his battlesuit.
XV8 Crisis Battlesuit
Default armor. Can only be replaced, not removed.
Armor Rating: 50. Grants Ability: Jet (10
: Jumps the Crisis suit from its current location to the targeted location, knocking back enemies on impact.) Grants Trait: Unshakable (Makes the wearer immune to knockback.)
Command Issue Plasma Rifle
Starting equipment.
One-handed ranged weapon, 23.3 dps. Grants Trait: Armor Piercing (Attacks from this weapon ignore 100 armor rating.)
Flamer
Starting equipment.
One-handed ranged weapon, 7.0 dps. Grants Traits: Area of Effect (This weapon deals damage in a radius), Ignore Cover (Enemies attacked by this weapon do not receive a defensive bonus from being in cover.)
Shield Generator
Starting equipment.
Shield. +50 Armor Rating, +25 Health. Grants Ability: Energy Shield (Activates a powered shield that absorbs incoming damage in the form of energy.)
XV8 ‘Light’ Crisis Battlesuit
Starting equipment.
Armor Rating: 90, +25 Health. Grants Ability: Jet (10: Jumps the Crisis suit from its current location to the targeted location, knocking back enemies on impact.) Grants traits: Unshakable (Makes the wearer immune to knockback), Low Weight Composites (Increases the speed of the battlesuit by 1.)
XV8 ‘Armored’ Crisis Battlesuit
Starting equipment.
Armor Rating: 120, +50 Health. Grants Ability: Heavy Jet (10: Jumps the Crisis suit from its current location to the targeted location, knocking back and stunning enemies on impact.) Grants traits: Unshakable (Makes the wearer immune to knockback), Heavy (Lowers the distance of Jet, but increases the damage of impact as well as stuns enemies.)
Photon Grenades
Starting equipment.
Accessory. Grants Ability: Photon Grenade (25: Project a photon grenade at the targeted location. Photon grenades temporarily disorient and confuse enemies, causing them to attack random targets or walk around aimlessly.)
Snare Mines
Starting equipment.
Accessory. Grants Ability: Snare Mine (10: Places a Tau snare mine at the targeted location. When an enemy moves near it the mine detonates, slowing the target and other enemies nearby.)
Energy Core
Unlocks at level 2.
Accessory. +25 Energy.
Fusion Blaster
Unlocks at level 3.
One-handed ranged weapon, 30.0 dps. Grants Traits: Armor Piercing (Attacks from this weapon ignore 150 armor rating.)
Stimulant Injector
Unlocks at level 4.
Accessory. Grants Trait: Resuscitation (When the Commander’s health slips below 20 he automatically revives 100 health. Resuscitation can only trigger once every 30 seconds. If an attack is powerful enough to lower the Commander’s health to 0 from above 20 it will bypass the injectors and be fatal.)
Shield Drone Controller
Unlocks at level 5.
Commander Item. Grants Ability: Shield Drone (35: Summon a Tau shield drone to the battlefield. Shield drones emit a protective field that reduces incoming ranged damage by 50% to allies within range.)
Ion Battery
Unlocks at level 6.
Accessory. Grants Ability: Ion Battery (Places an ion battery at the targeted location. The ion battery quickly resupplies the energy of nearby allies.)
Repulser Shield
Unlocks at level 7.
Shield. +50 Armor Rating, +25 Health. Grants Ability: Kinetic Pulse (15: Discharges stored kinetic energy, knocking back and dealing damage to nearby enemies.)
Fragmentation Missile Pod
Unlocks at level 8.
Accessory. Grants Ability: Fragmentation Missile Barrage (30: Fires a large salvo of fragmentation missiles at the targeted location, dealing damage and knocking back enemies.)
Airbursting Fragmentation Projector
Unlocks at level 9.
One-handed ranged weapon, 6.0 dps. Grants Traits: Area of Effect (This weapon deals damage in a radius), Ignore Cover (Enemies attacked by this weapon do not receive a defensive bonus from being in cover.)
Coolant Injectors
Unlocks at level 10.
Accessory. Grants Trait: Cooled Systems (Decreases the cool down of abilities by 5 seconds and the cost by 5 energy.)
Iridium Plated Shield
Unlocks at level 11.
Shield. +75 Armor Rating, +50 Health. Grants Trait: Heavy (Lowers the distance of Jet, but increases the damage of impact as well as stuns enemies.)
Anti-Armor Missile Pod
Unlocks at level 12.
Accessory. Grants Ability: Anti-armor Missile (15: Fires a salvo of anti-armor missiles at the target. These missiles deal high damage to single targets with high armor.)
XV8 ‘Agile’ Crisis Battlesuit
Unlocks at level 13.
Armor Rating: 90, +25 Health. Grants Ability: Stabilized Jet (10: Jumps the Crisis suit from its current location to the targeted location, knocking back enemies on impact.) Grants Traits: Unshakable (Makes the wearer immune to knockback), Superior Stabilizers (Increases the range and lowers the cool down of Jet.)
Targeting Cluster
Unlocks at level 14.
Accessory. +25% Accuracy.
Heavy Gun Drone Controller
Unlocks at level 15.
Commander Item. Grants Ability: Heavy Gun Drone (25: Summon a Tau heavy gun drone to the battlefield. Gun drones are equipped with twin-linked burst cannons and fire on the enemy.)
Burst Cannon
Unlocks at level 16.
One-handed ranged weapon, 15.0 dps. Grants Trait: Suppressive (This weapon suppresses infantry, slowing their movement speed and ranged attack speed.)
XV8 ‘Command’ Crisis Battlesuit
Unlocks at level 17.
Armor Rating: 110. Grants Ability: Jet (10: Jumps the Crisis suit from its current location to the targeted location, knocking back enemies on impact.) Grants Traits: Unshakable (Makes the wearer immune to knockback), Fearless (Makes the wearer of this suit and allies around him immune to suppression), Improved Targeting (Increases the wearer’s and nearby allies’ ranged damage by 15%.)
Markerlight
Unlocks at level 18.
Accessory. Grants Ability: Mark Target (5: Mark a target using the markerlight. Marked targets receive additional ranged damage and will be the target of Skyray Seeker Missiles when the Sky Ray Barrage is activated), Sky Ray Barrage (40: Drops a seeker missile on any targets marked by the markerlight or a marker drone.)
Nano Technology
Unlocks at level 19.
Accessory. Grants Trait: Nano Machines (Increases the health regeneration rate of the Commander and nearby allies by 1.0.)
Marker Drone Controller
Unlocks at level 20.
Commander Item. Grants Ability: Marker Drone (15: Summon a Tau marker drone to the battlefield. Marker drones automatically mark targets. Marked targets receive increased ranged damage and are the targets of Sky Ray barrages.)
Networked Weapon Interface
Unlocked by achievement “Dynamic Entry” (Kill 100 enemies by jumping on them.)
Controller (equipped in shield slot). Grants Trait: Twin-Linked (Duplicates the currently equipped weapon, utilizing the shield hardpoint. Twin-linking weapons slightly reduces the damage output of each individual weapon. The duplicated weapon receives the same bonuses as the primary weapon.)
Advanced Drone Controller
Unlocked by achievement “Tau Efficiency” (Kill all three doppelgangers within 5 seconds of each other on wave 16, by yourself.)
The advanced drone controller adds an additional ability to the commander depending on the drone he has equipped:
* EMP Field (Shield Drone) — EMP field locks down all shield drones and anything under their radii. Anything locked down in this way cannot attack, move, take damage, or use abilities.
* Overdrive (Heavy Gun Drone) — Overdrive temporarily increases the damage and reduces the cooldown of guns drones to zero.
* Self Destruct (Marker Drone) — Forces all marker drones to self destruct causing a powerful explosion.
Atm my build i think is pretty diverse yet also allows semi support.
Fusion Cannon
Repulsor shield (this is a must have for me, just annihilates swarms.)
XV8 “Armoured” Battlesuit
Coolant Injector
Stimulant injector
Ion Battery (Drop while using the repulse, and its perma pulsing, while the fusion cannon works on the toughies)
Shield Drone (dont have gundrone yet)
Wraithlords, and myself as a dopple are easy work for the fusion cannon –
the repulsor shield litteraly is used for anything close enough, to throw them heavys to FC range, and normal just kill swarms.
the armoured abttlesuit so far has been my fav, but i’ve found without Repulsor getting bogged down is easy, and sure theres the jump out, but with twinlink on normaly im dead faster… i just find the repulsor to be better then all the twin links except burst cannon.
Burst Cannon/Airbursting Fragmentation Projector
Networked Weapon Interface
XV8 “Command” Crisis Battlesuit
Anti-Armor Missile Pod
Coolant Injectors
Stimulant Injectors
Heavy Gun Drone
-Burst cannon for suppress for being more mobile. Airburst projectors for setting up your drone in the rock area in the bottom of the map so it cant move and camp there shoot missiles, and shoot some airburst projectors. Stimulant Injectors help when under heavy fire or end up the last one standing on your team while you jump around waiting for a moment to revive your teammates
I most often use twin-linked airbursts with the Anti-Armour missile pod. Works very well as it diversifies between being able to take out swarms and those pesky armoured marines.
+++ The Hunter +++
Fusion Blaster
Networked Weapon Interface
XV8 ‘Agile’ Crisis Battlesuit
Anti-Armor Missile pod
Coolant Injectors
MarkerLight
Marker Drone Controller
Intricate but effective. This Build is for Dropping markers on anything that moves and Blasting and missiling anything that survives. The agile battlesuit also lets you effectively stay airborne for eternity, out of range of incoming bullets and grenades.
One config I use that works obscenely well:
Burst Cannon
Networked Weapon Interface
XV8 “Command” Battlesuit (Team Support) OR XV8 “Armored” Battlesuit (For Lone Wolfing It)
Anti-Armor Missile Pod
Coolant Injectors
Markerlight
Heavy Gun Drone
Simple and brutal. Throw Burst Cannon fire, drop free markerlights, use anti-armor missiles on priority targets, drop Skyray Barrages on anything pissing you off. Command Battlesuit is actually remarkably powerful with this, further amplifying the Burst Cannons and nearby allies, but the Armored Battlesuit is another fine choice, providing much better protection, though less mobility and abilities.
In bloodied Colosseum there is a glitch spot south of start where is drop my gun drone to break the rocks, after that i sit back and unload firepower and melee units cant get to my
Build is
Frag Projectors w/twin linked
Armored Battlesuit
Coolant Injectors
AA Missiles
Ion Battery
Gun Drone/Shield Drone
With that i can sit back and go afk during the first 11 waves, though fighting against this build is insanely difficult
My other build is a fast attack build
Flamer
Repulsor Shield
Combat Stimulants
Coolant Injectors
Energy Core
Agile Suit
Heavy Gun Drone
With this one i just jump around the field using the kinetic pulse to rip squads apart and then flame them, lacks anti-armor but usually yours companions can help with that, perfect for a hit and run player
or you can switch to Light Suit and Iridium Shield For a better jump hit, while retaining great jump distance and speed.
@Dubs I use that same setup and it works wonders. I’ve beat level 20 of blooded single-handed with that setup. Both my friends died in beginning and I was able to kill everything but the chaos lord w/o them and rezed them to help kill the chaos lord.
I call this one my “Stompy Build”:
XV8 ‘Armored’ Crisis Battlesuit
Command Issue Plasma Rifle
Repulsor Shield
Coolant Injectors
AA Missile Pod
Energy Core
Marker Drone Controller
—-
This build lets you stomp faces pretty much indefinitely in a heavy battlesuit, and when that’s not enough, you’ll be melting their faces with plasma fire on your way down and cutting the survivors down with kinetic bursts as soon as you land. The AA missile pod lets you turn around and rape harder targets like mechs and commanders (trigger this mid-air for a quick turnaround on landing), and the marker drones will go around assisting your teammates with the marker debuff while you’re off doing your thing.
this is my current build and works well;
XV8 ‘Armored’ Crisis Battlesuit
Fusion Blaster
Repulser Shield
Stimulant Injector
Coolant Injectors
Energy Core
Heavy Gun Drone Controller
jumping on hordes and then using the kinetic pulse kills them outright, the pulse also has low energy cost with the coolant injector so kiting nobs and the like becomes easy and the fusion blaster makes light work of the things that you cant kill by jumping and pulsing on.
my favourate setup is
twin linked burst cannons
command armour
coolant injectors
markerlight
anti-armour missiles
then either markerlight drone or gun drone its just your preference
it is just a massacre
I’ve been playing a lot with my hip hop version: Flamer with heavy shield, heavy armor, missle pods, coolants, and resuscitation. add a shield drone and place it between SW pillars to draw fire. Basically, I jump more than lebron james all over the map. coolants make it quick and cost very little, and i kill most minions in a single impact. stay on scene for a second to let them burn, move onto next. works great against armor with pods, and on heavy infantry can bounce back and forth to keep them out of the loop. also works great on 16 as i can keep the dopples stunned long enough for buddies to take two on one, or when they get near death, kill with pods. the suit takes a beating with 200 hp, and revives after 40hp instead of 20, making him harder to kill. in a pinch, just hop around and around and let them chase the rabbit until you have an opening. the burst cannon can also work well, but doesnt do as much damage following impact, but the standoff range is nice if you need to take a breather. alot of fun to play and im consistently in the 300+ kills since about lvl 14 or so, even alongside other lvl 20’s. if you have a tank and some support minions to draw fire, you can stun just about everyone and let them do the real dirty work.
Anybody else tried this?
I am also looking for help with tau efficiency achievment. Steam ID Yami_pl
if anyone is willing to help with the ADC achievement my Steam ID is gordielightfoot
i have an anti armour specific build you lot might be interested in
best at lvl 14 so far (im lvl 14 :P) but you cna do it at 12
you can use any though i would suggest command suit if you have it this can also be switched with flamer or the plasma rifle with weapon interface and the AA missel with the fragmentation missels for earlier levels as you will be an awsome sight to see moping the floor with almost every light troop around especially at the first 10 waves but then your next to useless against heavy troops so very good with a AA and a melee tank
fusion blaster
weapon interface
i use either agile or the armoured battlesuit
anti armour missels
Combat Injectors
Targeting Clusters
shield drone (optional i use it when holing up with allies against mass shooters like the orcs)
Fusion Blaster
Repulser Shield
XV8 ‘Agile’ Crisis Battlesuit
Coolant Injectors
Energy Core
Targeting Cluster
Heavy Gun Drone Controller
Lots of mobility with jumps, use repulser when necessary, fire support from the drones against massed targets whereas your own weapons are good against armor. Really simple, just jump and shoot.
Thought I’d come by and drop this off:
————-
Flamer
Networked Weapon Interface
XV8 ‘Armored’ Crisis Battlesuit
Coolant Injectors
Ion Battery
Advanced Drone Controller
Marker Drone Controller
————-
Tau shocktroop build and really the only Tau build I use. Jump into the fray, burn them all alive, then jump out. Heavy armor? Jump in, drop your drone, and detonate it. Low on energy? Keep yourself (and your allies!) topped up with the Ion Battery to minimize downtime and maximize efficiency. Ally fond of long-range fighting? Leave your drone out to mark everything, then redeploy it at crucial junctures as a detonation device. Fun, hell on everything, and fuels the big nukes (or heals, or jumps, or whatever) you know your allies are packing. However, it does take some practice to get the timing on the self destruct down, and you have to rely on good judgment and guerilla tactics to stay alive since you’re not packing Hive Tyrant-level armor.
So, to reiterate, my favorite Tau build: fast, fun, effective.
My ‘blow up everything in sight’ build:
Plasma Rifle
Networked Weapon Interface
‘Command’ Crisis Battlesuit
Coolant Injectors
Markerlight
Stimulant Injector
Gun or Marker drone
The main idea is to plasma the living daylights out of heavy and elite enemies, while spamming your free markerlight. Keep evading and once your ready, hit the Skybarrage key and enjoy the show. Works best if there’s at least 1 tanking player on the team.
Harassment/Hit & Run @ lvl19, I’ve used this build since lvl12
Flamer
Network Weapon Interface
Armored Battlesuit
AntiArmor Missile Pod
Coolant Injectors
Stimulant Injector/Nano Tech
Heavy Gun Controller
This build involves kiting, lots of it. I choose the armored suit for the extra hp & stimulants to keep hp up. Reduced cooldown time on the jumpjet makes it really agile. There’s a lot of displacement involved & also breaking columns of enemies.
With a decent amount of hp, flamer & AA, this build can take down enemies at close range & heavily armored units from far. Jump in, set enemies on fire, then retreat before they can recover. Rinse, repeat. I’m usually the last one alive, reviving everyone.
No, marker drone marks only, you need markerlight to call skybarrage.
A quick though about build, do you have any low level build (with DLC and Achievement stuff) that is good for wave 16+?
For example with the space marine with claws and jetpak lvl 8 you are strong enough, with the chaos sorcerer you can use vestment of power undivided / touched helm / oracle staff and you can beat wave 16+, etc…
The point is triple elite, i was playing with my sorcerer and there was no big difference in my level 20 and level 4 build.
I’ve never tried it, but can you call skyray barrages if you have a marker drone but no markerlight yourself?
Personally I’m fond of the burst cannon, repulser shield, ‘Armored’ suit, ion battery, coolant injectors and anti-armor missile pod. And either the shield drone or the marker drone, depending on whether anyone else has a shield drone.
No gun drone does not suppress.
Does the gun drone also suppress, since it carries a burst cannon?
I’ve got another build for you guys: This one can be done at level 17, but it can be modified to work at 14 if you don’t mind giving up the command suit.
Command Issue Plasma Rifle
Networked Weapon Interface
“Command” battlesuit /Agile (if you don’t have command)
Coolant injectors
Targeting Cluster
Fragmentation Missile Pod/Anti Armor Missile pod (i prefer frag, but if you want to be an anti-boss sniper, AA missiles are a solid choice.
Gun Drone/Shield drone. I generally use the gun drone for that extra dps, but if I find that I’m dying a lot, I’ll switch to shield drone.
Unlike my other build, you will be doing gallons of damage with this build. The dual plasma rifles with the targeting cluster will kill 2 mobs at a time in a low-mid health squad with 96% accuracy. The fragmentation missile pod will slaughter several high-model squads in one shot, and with the coolant injectors, it’s pretty cost effective. If you chose to use the AA missiles instead, they’re nearly spammable. The command suit is nice, since it eliminates the problem of suppression (especially useful on TBC), and that 15% extra damage is really handy. The agile suit can be helpful if you don’t have the command suit, since the jumps are cheaper and farther. This build requires pretty solid micro, since you don’t have much health, and you have no “oh crap” button like a repulser shield. Stay mobile, jump around a lot, and don’t get in melee. The one problem I’ve had with this build is that I have no way of taking out lots of banshees on my own (except a frag missile barrage, but you need to land that before they jump towards you). This build synergizes well with a heavy melee character, and another decent ranged character. A little teamwork will keep the banshees and stormboyz off your back, and you can jet around raining death. I’ve found it especially helpful if I have an allied tau who uses an ion battery. If you have access to a battery, you can spam frag barrages as fast as the cooldown allows.
Nice build DrunkDave 🙂
My Suppression/Nuke build: Level 20
Burst Cannon
Repulser Shield
“Armored” Crisis Battlesuit
Markerlight
Anti Armor Missile
Coolant Injectors
Marker Drone
You won’t be doing tons of damage with a single burst cannon, but you can suppress multiple squads at once by switching targets. Focus on marking as many different targets as you can. The drone marks one target every 5 seconds or so, and you can do more than that yourself. The coolant injectors make using the markerlight free of energy cost, and the cooldown is two or three seconds. Jump around, suppress and mark everything you can, hit big targets (anything bigger than a big choppa nob) with AA rockets, and once you’ve got most of the enemies marked, call down the skyray barrage to murder everything on the board. Rinse, repeat. This works well with an ally who can tank and another ally who can help take out the bigger targets.
To Johnnkaykay:
1. The ally can do damages, but you must kill all the clones..if ur allies kills a clone you wont get the achievement.
2. Hvy gun drone kill will not count as your kill. So same as first answer.
3. The 5 sec starts as soon as the first clone dies.
4. You have to kill the next 2 clones within 5 sec.
5. No, the revived clone has to die within that 5 sec window.
Check out my earlier blog on how I got the achievement (click on older comments).
Truthfully it’s not worth getting it, the Advance Drone Controller is kind of useless…I’d rather use Network Interface, Coolant Injectors and AAMP.
Hi there,
Tried this achievement but still failing.
Some guys told me to use flamers/repulser as it prevent the tau clone to jump and use missiles or one-shot me.
Here is the config i am using:
Flamer / Repulser Shield (or Networked Weapon Interface)
XV8 ‘Command’ Crisis Battlesuit
Anti-Armor Missile Pod / Coolant Injectors / Snare Mines
Heavy Gun Drone Controller (or Marker Drone controller)
Explanation:
Flamer prevents Tau clone jumping or firing anti-armor missile, kinetic pulse can finish off remaining guys.
Snare mines slows them down, commander armor gives damages bonus as well as marker drone but heavy gun drone can be useful too.
End of wave 15 drop mines (a lot) and wait at flamer range of the spawn point, flame them and wait till they are low health then fire missile and use kinetic pulse if there is some guys left.
A few questions also:
1. Can ally do damages? Some guys said that you only need to hit clones then if they die all 3 whatever you killed them or not you got it…
2. If heavy gun drone kills a clone does it count for it? As it count as one of your kill for stats…
3. The 5 sec starts running as soon as you fire or as soon as one clone dies?
4. The 5 sec is between kills or just after the first kill? For example, I kill one, then i got 5 sec to kill another one and 5 sec again for the last one / or I kill one and got 5 sec to kill the 2 remaining?
5. If for some reason a clone dies and get revived by another clone can i still achieve it?
Hope I can help you and you can help me.
This is one of the hardest achievement to get IMO.
I use 2 builds baised on my allies
1)
-Dual Airburst
-Command Suit
-Coolant Injectors, AAMP, Markerlight/Targeting clusters
-Sheild Drone(haven’t unlocked marker drone yet and the gun drone is pointless in a good team)
Excells at killing hordes and being a general nuscience. However only worth while if you have allies who either are dedicated anti-H.inf or lots of missle pods!
2)
-Fusion Blaster
-Irriduim Shield
-Commandsuit/Heavy XV8
-Coolant Injectors, Energy Core, AAMP
-Sheild Drone
Run around and batter peoples faces in with you FB while constantly dropping on people.
The Tau commander may not have a melee attack.
But this build will make you devastating against all light infantry. While still having the ability to take on heavy’er targets.
Flamer.
Repulser Shield.
XV8 Heavy Command suit / XV8 Command Crisis Battle-suit. ( If you want to be able to stun enemy’s Heavy is the choice you should make. As you will be jumping in to battle and not away. )
Coolant Injectors.
Anti-Armor Pod.
Stimulant Injectors / Ion Battery / Energy Core
(This will either make you more tanky, or more energy heavy. Personally i prefer Energy as i find it to improve my surival chances way more than Stimulants)
Heavy Gun Drone / Shield Drone.
( Well i will recommend the Gun Drone, but some prefer Shield Drones as they negate 50% incoming dmg, and that can really help you out againt marines with plasma rifles. or anything else that hits like a truck from afar)
Hope this helps. A really fun close brawler build.
Basicly what you do is Jet you way into a middle of a group, Use kinetic pulse and finish of the remains of with the flamer.
ENJOY
is the advanced drone controller an ability of the tau or of the AI drone?
My main build at the moment is
Lvl18
Burst Cannon
Repulser Shield
XV8 ‘Command’ Crisis Battlesuit
Coolant Injectors
Stimulant Injectors
Markerlight/Anti-Armour Missles
I love the Repulser shield as it can knock most enemies away from you for only 10 energy when paired with Coolant Injectors and the fact that it can be used while reviving makes it perfect.
I’ve got a few builds I really like. Each is dependent on what the group is running…
Ranged Turret:
VX8 ‘Command’ Crisis Battlesuit
Burst Cannon
Networked Weapon Interface
Anti-Armor Missile Pod
Targeting Cluster
Coolant Injectors
Heavy Gun Drone Controller
-This build depends on your teammates being able to dish out enough damage, protection, or disruption to keep melee units at bay. The Networked Weapons can be replaced with a Repulsor Shield, but your ranged DPS suffers qutie a bit (pretty much 1/3). The Shield also requires quite a bit of kiting.
Group Slayer:
VX8 ‘Command’ Crisis Battlesuit
Airbursting Fragmentation Projector
Networked Weapon Interface
Anti-Armor Missile Pod
Ion Battery
Coolant Injectors
Heavy Gun Drone Controller
This build is a little more survivable than the previous. The Airburster takes care of larger groups of low end melee – something that the Commander is weak against. Just as above, the Networked Weapon can be replaced with the Repulsor. That’s even more effective than above because you can spam the Repulsor quite a bit and recharge energy when the threat is decreased with the Ion Battery. The Heavy Gun Drone can easily be replaced with the Shield without loosing much firepower.
I’m not 20 yet, so haven’t been able to mess with the Marker Drone, and simply haven’t used the Markerlight. It seems popular, so I’ll try to squeeze it in somewhere at some point depending on the teams make-up.
Thanks Gray
Here is my idea for a combo
Command issue plasma rifle
Iridium plated shield
XV8 ‘armored’ crisis battlesuit
Coolant injectors
Markerlight
Add another acc of your choice, some might be more useful than others depending on the situation.
Marker drone controller
I have, Jamin. The damage increase stacks, the stun doesn’t seem to, and the range debuff does not.
Has anyone tried the Iridium Plated Shield and XV8 ‘armored’ crisis battlesuit combo?
That’s an excellent build, one which I’ve just discovered at level 10. Coolant injectors is truly overpowered, especially with kinetic shield, makes you a constantly exploding almost infinite energy monster. Not quite as damaging as the ork explodeport build, but it makes up for it in survivability.
how early is early level?
one of the best builds you get is at level 10, well not best but a really good all around build that can handle most units. basically jack of all, master of none build. only requires level 10 iirc. it’s been posted a couple of times, but i’ll repost it.
command issue plasma rifle
repulsor shield
‘armored’ crisis battlesuit
Coolant injectors
the next 2 accessories are you up to you, they are interchangable. I prefer ion battery + anti armor missile pod, but you can’t use AA until 12. So until then you can use stimulants. Basically after coolant injectors you can use whatever you want, I like using the battery with it since you do use a fair bit of energy (kinetic pulse + jump spam) and it turns you more into a team player. Jump + Kinetic pulse is usually enough to wipe out weaker squads (boyz, gaunts, banshees) or put a decent dent into some of the higher hp squads (warriors, raveners).
Now if you’re talking about a level 1 build, I’d go pulse rifle, shield generator, heavy armor, photon grenade, snare mines, and stimulants once you hit 4.
Combat stims are probably the best accessory the tau commander has, but I try to stay away from them since I end up using them as a crutch.
You guys need to give some early-level builds 😛
what is the point of nanobot regen? Cant find a good use for it….
With fusion blaster vs plas rifle it’s more dmg and slow fire rate vs lower dmg (still good) and faster fire rate. explains why plas rifle got more kills, shoots faster and still packs punch. I personally use following set up:
Burst cannon (weapon interface)
Commander suit
AA missile, Stimulant injector, markerlight/nanobots
Marker drone/gun drone (marker drone with marker light and gun drone with nanobots)
Result is stable firepower with range,dmg, supression, and scatter dmg. perfect against masses
@Zaro27
That is a very good build, but there are a couple changes to consider to make it even more effective. First and foremost is replacing Targeting Cluster with Coolant Injectors. This makes your Anti-Armor Missile and Markerlight spammable (you can mark a target for zero energy!). When it comes to Drones one should always change to fit your current team. If your team packs plenty of offense and/or lacks survivability, the Shield Drone is an excellent choice. If your team is lacking an offensive punch (besides yourself, of course) you may wish to bring the Gun Drone. And if your team lacks any glaring weakness or you happen to have the Advanced Drone Controller ability then bring the Marker Drone. Last but not least if your team lacks a tank bring the Armored battlesuit. You won’t be a tank, but at least you’ll survive better when forced to kite and rez.
The build I see everyone using is as follows:
Command Issued Plas Rifle
Networked Weapon Interface
Command Battlesuit
Targeting Cluster
Markerlight
Anti-Armor Missile/Advanced Drone Controller
Marker Drone
People take this and wreck everything, all the time. I saw a guy take twinlinked Fusion Blasters once, though. It was retardedly powerful against everything, but he still got fewer kills than the guys that double up the Plas Rifles.
Is the Advance Drone Controller granted effects activated by the commander or by the pet AI?
first the team combo : (only used in the bloody arena)
-eldar with tau… wave 14 to 20, we are only two to stand face enemies : an eldar lvl 13 and a tau because the other leave…
Just use the “strategic clock” with the eldar and ennemies dies progressively…(team teleportation in blocked area,as a clock, the most important is to survive the time that ennemies stop spawn, but with the invunerability of the eldar, it’s easy, after the tau will do all the work).
You can complete this combo with a lord general, an other tau or…
-chaos sorcerer with tau : this time, you don’t have to move : shield drone with orb of blood and everything can be stand if it’s at distance(for the close range, i advise to have a sorcerer specialized in that).
Same thing here, it can be completed with an other tau, a lord general or an eldar, for double combo (strategic clock when it’s begin to become hot at the location).
now the stuff (it’s a stuff in completion with the two combos mentioned):
-wearpon interface with plasma rifle (if there are only one tau) or air fragmentation or burst canon but only in complement to plasma rifle.
-for the armor, as you want, but maybe the lvl 17’s armor can be fun.
-for the accessories, i don’t advise you anything, just be sure before begin that the offense acessory (frag missile, AA missile or markerlight) complete the action of your mates.
in theory you don’t need the stimulant injector…
maybe ion battery is a godd choice because you and you mates are united^^.
-finally the commander item… one of the tau may have a shield drone and if you choose the markerlight, choose the markerdrone but i thing that at less one shield drone must be active.
Apologize me if i did faults, but i’m french and i’m not fluent in english…
Thanks for the site.
Finally unlocked Advance Drone Controller.
I was equipped with twin linked Plasma Rifle, Command Crisis Battlesuit (lvl 17), Targeting Cluster, Coolant Injectors, AAM Pod and a Gun drone.
My buddy had a twin linked Burst Cannon, a Armored Command Crisis Battlesuit, Snare Mines, Coolant Injectors, AAM Pod and a Shield Drone.
Another gamer who joined was a Sorc with Deathless armor (rest of equip doesnt matter).
Make sure you know where spawn point is and camp outside the alcove. Just before wave 15 ends, hv ur buddy throw at least 4-5 mines at the centre (or close to centre) of the spawn point. Also have him stand to the side (where most of the cover is).
Make sure both shield and gun drones are near you.
Make sure you stand just a little bit further than him.
Make sure the Sorc (and his minion) as now where near the spawn point alcove (have him stand at the centre of the colliseum).
When clones spawn they’ll be immobalized by the mines. Buddy (with burst cannons) should fire first with his AAM, aiming for the centre TC. The AoE blast will also kill the sorc, but will resurect him instantly.
You then aim your AAM at the sorc, which will kill at least two of the clones right away and ur plasmas will kill the last one within a second afterwards.
Hope this set-up works for you folks.
Good hunting!
Daykin, I ran an AoK where we made it to wave 19 where he was using Dual fusion + fragmentation missile pod and I was running plasma rifle + kinetic pulse and ion battery. As soon as he’d fire off a salvo, I’d give him a battery. Worked great but we had a weak third player so we ended up wiping there. If your teammates can handle blobs dual fusion is fine though, and with the missile pod you can help chip in if you have someone with a battery. I really would never recommend missiles without an ion battery paired with it.
My bad; I was pretty sure it was Heavy Jet, but I have been known to be wrong about these things. 😉 Fixed!
The “Command” Suit does not grant heavy jet, just regular jet like you would see if you took no gear/used the “Light” suit.
@Shard: Yeah… my mistake, I forgot to add that part to the stats. Updating them now. 🙂
Why do people keep suggesting to “jump around” when they use command suit builds?
The stats here do not say the command suit has a jet, or am I missing something?
Drone controller build:
WEAPON:
burst cannon
twin-link network interface
SUIT:
command armor
GEAR:
anti-armor missiles (can opt for markerlight instead)
coolant injectors
drone controller
DRONE:
marker drone (if going with anti-armor missiles)
gun drone (if going with markerlight)
AoK is a small melee-centric map. If you dont clear out the blobs fast enough, you will get swarmed and it’s GG. Unlike Bloodied Colosseum, there is little room for maneuverability given the small map size so jumping around like a rabid bunny on a jetpack doesnt buy you sufficient breathing space to stay alive. Fusion blaster would not be my weapon of choice on that map given its slow rate of fire.
Im loving this guy at the moment. Tau have been my favorites since i played them on table 😀 I was a little dissapointed about his size though ( thought he would be noticably bigger than the lord general, but hey ho)
Does anyone have a build that uses the advanced drone controller that can be posted?
Also is the fusion blaster any gd on AoK?
To those looking to predict where the Evil Twins are coming from, in wave 2 look for the gate that only has 2 squads of Hormagaunts coming out of it, & confirm with the bulk of Banshees in wave 9.
Hello_Moto: Thanks, was thinking in the same lines as you then. Good call on the Round 9 spawn, will have to try this with two friends later.
Madcow, S-Zilla: Yes the Airbursting Fragmentation Projector have a minimum range, its roughly the same as the Fragmentation Missile Pod. (quite short, you basicly want to jump away anyway, but when having a taunter close to you to take aggro, you will notice it)
So far I have had great success with the following build:
– Dual Command Issue Plasma Rifle
– XV8 ‘Command’ Crisis Battlesuit
– Anti-Armor Missile Pod
– Coolant Injectors
– Stimulant Injector
– Heavy Gun Drone Controller
As with most heavy damage builds you need to take the clone out on round 16 quick (a single salvo of your AA-missiles usually do the trick), or it will have a high probability of wiping your whole group.
The plasma rifles have better range than the fusion blasters, and will give them more total damage output, since you will be shooting more and standing around less than with the fusions.
madcow, I’ll try to test it more but the things I were trying to hit were usually termagaunts that had just wandered up point blank, but weren’t meleeing me. Maybe there was something that was throwing me into melee, but a lot of the time I would stand point blank and not fire if I tried to fire on a squad within melee range. So far I’m not really a huge fan of the frag projectors, I’ve used every other weapon and other than the safety of ranged and ignoring cover, they don’t really have an edge over the other weapons. They do, but just not enough for me to consider running them.
And the targeting clusters I only use when going dual fusion launchers, since misses with those are painful because of the firing time.
S-Zilla, the frag progectors don’t seem to have a min range…are you sure that they are not shotting because a mob has you in melee? If there is a min range, it seems so slight as to not be noticeable.
Targeting cluster only affect plas and fusion blaster as far as i’m aware.
Burst cannon accuracy seems to be 100% like the flamer and airburst projector (although the latter does not track moving targets).
Feel free to correct me if anyone else knows otherwise.
so, has any1 tried dual burst cannons with targetting clusters? I personally don’t see big dif between 20% accuracy and 25%
So you can predict the spawn location of the clones based on wave 9? That’s certainly useful information…
@ Druid:
Having recently unlocked the Tau Efficiency achievement, I can say it’s more to do with luck than outright skill.
My personal setup was as follows:
– dual burst cannons
– command armor
– anti-armor missiles
– coolant injectors
– markerlight
– heavy gun drone
My 2 allies were another tau commander sporting light/agile armor (cant remember which one to be exact) and mekboy using a teleporting-centric build. The point being that both my allies were sporting low armor ratings *IMPORTANT*.
I made note of where wave 16 would spawn (2nd banshee wave emergence location on wave 9, FYI) and camped outside behind cover. As soon as the clones appeared, I was already within their firing range so they engaged me straightaway and did not move ie. they remained closely clustered together *IMPORTANT*. I shot off the anti-armor missiles and the resultant damage took off approx. 75% from the primary target and the splash damage caused approx. 45-50% damage to the other 2 clones. All the while, I was firing from behind cover with dual burst cannons and with gun drone support.
To cap things off, I markerlighted the primary target and called in a skyray barrage. The single detonation was sufficient enough to kill off all 3 clones (all of whom were extremely low on health) in one fell swoop.
Reading this back, it all sounds rather easy but what actually happened was a lot of frantic clicking on my part. Guess Lady Luck was on my side that particular day!
On a side note, dual fusion blasters is a massive risk (especially when coupled with targeting cluster). The fusion blaster clone will single-handedly solo all 3 heroes if not prioritized first in the killing order.
Druid, I’ve heard about people getting lucky and timing the kills right, or they do it solo.
Solo you’d have 2 people take heros with no gear / accessories on, and then make it to wave 16 and kill yourself + the other clones before they kill you. Really the only threat to you would be the other cloned version of you, but with a jump stun and possibly photon grenade your clone should never get the chance to attack back.
In a team game, if your the only tau you can try running dual fusion blasters + heavy armor. Dual fusions are great for landing the killing blow on a clone with the ridiculous damage output they have. If you don’t drop your clone fast though, it will probably 1 shot every hero on your team including you.
Anyone got any good tip on unlocking Tau Efficiency?
Mu guess would be marker drone and Sky Ray Barrage, but I am yet to gain lvl 20, any other ideas on how to unlock it?
Here’s my favorite setup:
Plasma Rifle
Iridium Shield
‘Command’ Battlesuit
Frag Missile Pod
Ion Battery
Coolant Injectors
Shield Drone
It’s a great support/nuke build. The coolant + battery combo means that you can fire two missile swarms, pop a battery, and then fire another one about 5 seconds later. On top of that you’re tough as nails and have a great gun for killing armored single targets. You also have Heavy, which is REALLY useful for stun-locking your clones. Squad damage boost and shield drone are just icing on the cake for you, but your team will love the bonuses.
After playing this setup for ~10 games, you’ll have the timing of the missiles down and realize how amazing they are. I actually prefer them over the Markerlight; they deal more damage and will reliably wipe out entire squads of infantry.
Really enjoying this character, he’s almost a cross between the Captain and the Sorcerer.
I’ve been messing around with dual flamers instead of twin fragmentation projectors. The frag projector has a min range, and isn’t that great vs moving targets. The flamers do continuous damage and I can actually kill a gaunt / banshee running up on me. Its pretty much the same as madcows build, except I swapped out command suit for ‘armored’ instead.
Managed to rack up 640 kills on AoK by wave 18.
Lvl 17 at the moment:
Twin Airbursting Fragmentation Projector
XV8 ‘Command’ Crisis Battlesuit
Stimulant Injector
Anti-Armor Missile Pod
Coolant Injectors
Heavy Gun Drone Controller
Twin-frags shred infantry and the AA missiles takes care of everything else (be sure to get the Coolant Injectors so AA missiles is fairly spammable when you need it).
Gotta ask, anyone remember the builds they used to get the Advanced drone controller? Been trying at it for days now.
Urgent! Advanced Drone Controller plus marker drone: it does a lot of damage, over a pretty big area, for cheap. It also hurts/kills *everything* in the blast zone, enemies, friendliest, even yourself! Don’t wipe a promising TLS run like I did!
@krz
Twin linked grenade?
What are you talking about? You mean the Airbursting Fragmentation Projector? (which have AoE damage like a grenade?)
my favorite combo (for around level 13/14) is
Twin-linked grenade
Heavy armor
Coolant
Anti-Armor
Stimulant injector
With the twin linked grenade, swarms of enemies vaporize for the first 10 waves or so. Plus twin linked grenade launchers actually damage the heavier units (the anti-armor is mostly if your up against wraith lords, copies, or you absolutely need to take that melee unit down)
I’ve been using the same build as Gravecat’s above for a while and having great success.
However, I just hit level 20, and wanted to try out the Markerlight Drone, so I took Coolant Injectors, Markerlight, and AA missiles as accessories.
…Good grief you can do an obscene amount of damage with two Tau and a marker drone. Target practically everything for free, take turns barraging with skyrays, profit. We died on wave 18 only because the other Shas’O went down and I didn’t have enough energy…
P.S. thanks for this website, btw. Having complete/detailed lists of the commanders’ wargear is a great help.
This is the build I like to use when I know someone has anti-armor or heavy units hunting down however it is still useful for most situations:
Weapon/Shield hard point:
-Networked Weapon Interface
-Burst Cannon
Armour Type:
-XV8 ‘Command’ Crisis Battlesuit
Accessory:
– Stimulant Injector
– Markerlight
– Coolant Injectors
Drone Choice:
– Heavy Gun Drone Controller
Due to the Coolant Injector I can “mark target” using Markerlight for free, which gives me a couple of options on how I play on the map. Before I continue I should note that any target you mark can be in turn used by another player who also has Markerlight to perform “Sky Ray Barrage”, and at the moment there is no limit on how many units you can “mark target” at any given time (I’ve seen player just mark only one target or squad without targeting many more before unleashing “Sky Ray Barrage”)
Since “mark target” increase the amount of range damage a target receives and the XV8 ‘Command’ Crisis Battlesuit increase the range damage output by 15% for my allies (i.e. that includes your heavy gun drone) and myself, most infantry squads get chewed up rather quickly; due to my choice of weapons and drones. Furthermore my since the burst cannon suppress it allows me “mark target” rather easily, cause i would pin and “mark target” one group then jump somewhere else suppress and do the same to another. This usually comes into play later in the game as I jump around the map marking multiple squads (usually I will pick squads or single units that is surround by other units) before I perform crowd control using “Sky Ray Barrage”. Unfortunately this usually draws fire from these squads so I took the stimulant injector which let me survive long enough to mark many targets.
@Forge: Thankya! I’ll get the site updated when I get home. 🙂
Advanced Drone Controller icon
http://steamcommunity.com/id/forge64/screenshot/648743187090213254
@azkuma:
the nice thing about the drone controller is that it affects all drones on-field (your own + allied ones) so 1 per team is sufficient. Having said that, the particular properties it bestows on allied drones depends on whatever type of drone is currently equipped on your own Tau Commander.
For example, if all 3 TCs have shield drones then EMP lockdown affects all 3. However, if you equip the drone controller + shield drone and your tau allies equip gun drones, then only your own shield drone will exert its “special” ability.
EMP lockdown costs 25 energy. Haven’t really found a proper use for this ability yet other than novelty value. I guess it serves as expensive alternative to Tau builds that don’t involve the use of kinetic pulse as it traps everything apart from super heavy relic units (land raider, baneblade, hive tyrant on anvil) and maybe vehicles (dreads/chimeras/LR tanks not verified yet) therefore allowing you time to jetpack out to a safer location. 3-way EMP lockdown (assuming tau allies also equip the shield drone) for 25 energy is not bad considering it potentially covers the majority of Bloodied Colosseum barring the 4 spawn points….Just make sure to redirect your firepower to everything outside the drone radii when the EMP ability is active otherwise it’s wasted energy!
Overdrive costs 10 energy; basically the barrels on the gun drone glow red hot (indicative of ability activation) and it continually fires its burst cannons with no cooldown. Overdrive seems to last for approx. 10 secs.
Detonation costs 5 energy; blast radius is a little smaller than kinetic pulse AoE but damage is on par with Mekboy BoomTime. Animation is rather deceptive for the amount of damage it inflicts. Has a start up time of a 1-2 secs before the drone actually detonates.
I’ve had (still having) great fun with the Tau Commander since last week and I got to wave 20 with two other Tau Commanders (we lost instantly though) and we each had different fits but now I really like this one:
* Repulser Shield – For those close encounters with Eldar, Ork or Tyranid.
* Airbursting Fragmentation Projector
* XV8 ‘Command’ Crisis Battlesuit
* Coolant Injectors – This means that to ‘mark a target’ costs 0 energy. Great!
* Anti-Armor Missile Pod – Costs 10 energy to fire
* Markerlight – Marerlight costs 35 to fire but it’s not as powerful as anti armour missile volley
* Heavy Gun Drone Controller/Sield Drone – Both of these are great but moreso the shield drone for it’s defence and decoy.
With this loadout I have 6 energy abilities (pay for 5) which work really well so long as I manage my energy (jumps cost only 5) so it’s not the most resilient but it packs a really nice punch. It’s really necessary if all three heroes are Tau that there is at least one shield drone on the field as it protects against the ranged damage so well while you dish out you own damamge.
I’m not sure if anyone has achieved the Advanced Drone Controller yet (I have 1 out of the 3 requirements but don’t know how or when it happened) so any input into how it performs would be nice to hear.
@Juno: It certainly does. The assistance was much appreciated. 🙂
@Hello_Moto: Probably the easiest way is to just email me a screenshot. 🙂 gravecat@gmail.com
I’ll happily contribute the graphics for the advanced drone controller which I unlocked yesterday….
someone just needs to tell me how and where to upload etc.
There we go, the list looks better now. 🙂
I’ve been messing around with Barrogh’s build for awhile now, the best weapon to use with it would probably be the plasma rifle. Swarms of weaker enemies get squashed by jump + pulse. Jump + pulse on its own is absolutely devastating, there’s no real reason to use the Fragmentation Missile Pod when Jump + Pulse does a much better job and is easier to aim. Not to mention you can also pulse on its own to keep a teammate or drone safe.
Nobs become a joke with the repulser shield as long as you have energy.
Command Issue Pulse Rifle
Heavy Armor
Ion Battery
Coolant Injectors
Third accessory is completely up to you.
I’ve actually been trying to stay away from stimulant injectors since they are a bit of a crutch, but its hard to find a third to replace them. I’ll mess around with the mines and see how they do in its place.
On a side note, if you can hit the same unit twice with mines they completely stop moving it seems. I’ll have to test it more but I’ve stopped carnifexes multiple times with 2 snare mine hits. Hard to tell if the debuff stacked though with the horrible AI those things have.
Played my Tau Commander tonight with two others, all of us had twin-linked plasma guns… the result is that we mowed down nearly everything, especially with a gun drone mopping up the light infantry. Wave 16 didn’t even get a shot off because we concentrated our fire and didn’t waste time deploying anything.
The lack of melee does present its own challenges, especially since Hormagaunts seem to run fast enough that I can’t get a shot off after jumping away from them. Tyranid waves are now “find a meat shield and hide behind it” time for me. I was a big fan of the burst cannon for suppression and mass destruction, but I tend to prefer this build:
*Twin-linked Plasma Gun
*Agile Armor
*Markerlight
*Coolant Injectors
*Stimulant Injectors/Nanobots/Advanced Drone Controller
*Chef’s choice of drone (I like the gun drone because there always seems to be a shield drone on the field already, haven’t got the marker drone yet!)
The plasma gun is great all around, and two of them makes it possible to deal with a squad of Banshees if they’re alone… and you don’t have to kite the bigger units as much either! Agile armor means you can jump across half the arena, which makes evasive manoeuvers much easier.
Markerlight is awesome, but with Coolant Injectors it’s FREE and can be used once per second! That, plus the Agile suit, means that I spent my whole game zipping around and marking targets for everyone, occasionally raining down 6-12 Sky Ray missiles when my marking got ahead of their mowing.
I love Tau, they totally fit my playstyle!
Got to play with my friend yesterday (me trying out different things and him on his Commander) and I have to say this hero has great synergy with a lot of things. The best combo we’d been able to find was the Commander set up for mass infantry elimination (something like Twin-Linked AFP; Light Battlesuit; Frag barrage, coolant injectors, and the last accessory kind of floating; Shield Drone) and a Captain set up for soaking fire (Chainsword; Shield; Unshakable armor; Zealous Leadership, Taunt, and extra health accessories; and Dreadnought). Kept the heavies and melee off of him and his drone, and bunched them up for a Frag Pod assault (which would barely scratch me but eliminate most everything around me). I wanted to try Bombardment with his Ion Battery for fast, widespread elimination, but we never got around to it.
The thirds varied, but they were normally Commanders or Captains and so added the missing single-target firepower to our team. Overall, it made for a strong team and I’d love to go at it again once his Commander hits max level (he was 11 when we called it a night).
So, yeah, overall the Commander seems to be the most solidly-designed out of all the Last Stand heroes. Think I might pick him up either tonight or tomorrow.
My personal build, which I’ve found works extremely well in most situations, especially when you just don’t know who you’re going to be teamed up with:
* Twin-Linked Burst Cannon
* Command Battlesuit
* Anti-Armor Missile Pod
* Coolant Injectors
* Stimulant Injector
* Heavy Gun Drone
The twin-linked cannon is amazing at taking down swarms of infantry, especially when boosted by the command suit, and the heavy gun drone adds some very welcome firepower to the party. Similarly, the anti-armor pod excels at taking down heavies (it can kill a Wraithlord in two bursts). So right there, you’ve got the tools to take on pretty much anything in your path. Add the coolant injectors to allow almost limitless jumps (for when things get hairy), and you can pretty much bounce around the battlefield, sniping heavies and suppressing waves of infantry with minimal effort.
The stim injector is purely personal preference; I like the survivability it adds, but the build wouldn’t lose much by replacing it with something else. Either way, I find this build to be extremely survivable, and I usually end up being the last to die. If in doubt, jump away and suppress from afar. 😀
The new tau unit is basicly a very strong ranged unit which doesnt have melee
you can you several abilitys against infantry and heavy infatry.
the one i like the most is the marker light… you can mark units and after that throw a very strong sky ray.
the jump packs are pretty awesome to, use the with the cooldown perk and you can instantly jump around. (coolant injectors)
the second shield you get (repulser shield) is very good with the jump pack, jump on the and use the ability and you will kill em all.
you can kill stronger units with the Fusion blaster (which i think fits best with the shield).
this is just a low level setup… try to use it ^^
my only problem is the Heavy Gun Drone they should give it suppression trait then it can be more useful and used more offend by other players, it has the same weapons like the burst cannon.
Agreed with S-Zilla on that. So far my universal build (which I use every time I’m not sure about my allies or something) looks like this:
– Any weapon (usually plasma since it’s good agains everything)
– Repulsor Shield
– Armored battlesuit
– Anti-armor missiles
– Coolant injector
– Ion battery
– Shield drone
With this build you will be relatively mobile (5 mana and no CD for jump will do the trick even with heavy armor), you wil just annihilate lesser foes (jump + pulse kills almost every small enemy, except maybe stormtroopers), also you will be able to protect your teammates (or drone lol) getting overruned by those shees or gaunts, anti-armor missles just EAT tanks, nobz, BCs and such.
To make all this stuff work you have to get coolant injector. It reduces missle and pulse CD by 50% and reduse manacost by 33%.
5 mana jump is also poerfull feature. You can totally stunlock some enemies (like 16 wave dopples altogether) and make your allies deal with them like NP.
This build won’t work without mana really, so get Ion battery. Don’t forget to feed your allies with it aswell.
All in all, it’s an incredible hero with lots of possibilities.
I mean, I smell another imba…
@Forge
Don’t you also get to spam kinetic pulse with coolant injectors? One of my favorite things so far is to get the heavy trait, jump + pulse on weak mobs and have them scatter all of the map dead.
Still tough finding a final build, unlike the other heroes so far the tau commander has no wasted pieces of wargear (I’m looking at you thunderhammer).
My current build:
Armored Crisis Suit
Airburst Projector
Repulser Shield
Coolant Inject
Stim Inject (works well for me, I do not fall down, multipliers NOT reset)
Ion Battery (recharge self and other teammates.
Shield Drone
All defense, keeps a Shield Drone up 24/7, regens tons of energy for self and others, spams airburst at the spawns, repulses often and well when they get inside.
If in a good group, I’ll switch out the Ion Battery for Anti-Armor Missles. Otherwise I’m quite useless past waves 12-13 or so. Makes you need to pay attention to energy levels, too, while you can spam away with battery.
@S-Zilla,
Twin-linked burst cannons and a heavy gun drone will wreck havoc in the enemy lines. You can pretty easily hold back most infantery alone on two fronts at the same time, if equiped with the “Command” suit you will make wicked damage and good suppresion at the same time.
The build I found most interesting is this:
Burst Cannon
Iridium Shield
XV8 ‘Command’ Crisis Battlesuit
Anti-Armor Missile Pod
Coolant Injectors
Stimulant Injector
Heavy Gun Drone.
Might look a bit odd but you get a jump that only costs and 5 energy and you can pretty much spam AA missiles, great for taking down bigger enemys. And the most important, survival. I`ve played a few matches with this setup and have about allways outlived the other Tau commanders because of the extra hitpoints and armor. Remember, keep suppresing and on the move and you can kite about anything.
-Wycroft
Also forgot, the synergy Tau have with other ranged heroes is great too. Ork with bouncy shield, Laughing Staff Farseer, Scroll of Unholy Might C.Sorc, HT with warp field.
I hated using warp field on my tyrant since he had god awful energy regen, once I was out of energy I was never going back up to 100 for the rest of the game. Now with that little battery I wouldn’t have to worry about it as much.
/nerdravings
The shield drone is pretty amazing with the commanders high armor, he can eat a lot of shots that would’ve outright killed other heroes. The only thing is the ai for these little bastards sucks. The ion battery is also great, good for any class with nukes on a short cooldown / high energy cost. It seems like it replenishes around 30~40 energy back for EVERYONE standing near it. Hard to tell inbetween passive regen and the energy you get from it, but it is good nonetheless. I was plopping them down to keep our shield drones up since they are squishy, and to get some missle barrages out for other tau commanders.
I’m actually having a hard time deciding on repulser or twin linked. Repulser is amazing, especially following up a heavy landing. The damage isn’t great but it will absolutely ravage low hp / high model squads. Twin linked is pretty nice though, running twin linked plasma rifle since it has a good rate of fire and good damage.
The stims are also pretty buggy lol, the tooltip says if you take a hit that goes past 20-0 you die, but stims will go off and automatically revive you. Still counts as a death and resets your multipliers though.
Has anyone tested twin linked burst cannons yet?
Whoops. Meant to reply to “Deuzerre”, not “NomNom”. Sorry.
NomNom – I got both achievements in one lucky run this morning. The key thing to the Drone Controller achievement is that *you* have to give the kill shot, and it has to be 5 seconds or less from first to last. You don’t have to do all the damage, though. I had a Miasma Tyranid happen to already be in the spawn where the Doppels dropped, with plenty of Miasma down. A second or two of marinade time, I fired my twin-linked Fragment Projectors, and *bam*, Achievement unlocked.
It takes timing, and also some preparation and/or luck.
Do NOT try it with multiple other Tau. I can’t imagine it succeeding, with the spike damage multiple Tau put out.
Very happy about finding that build:
-Twin linked plasma rifles
-“Agile” battle suit
-Coolant injectors
-Anti-armor missile pods
-Targeting Cluster
-Heavy Gun Drone
With this, you are relatively efficient against low infantry, very good against heroes and monsters, and extremely mobile, but not really tough. Great guerilla mode. Your “clone” in also easy to kill if you have a “tank” in your team to soak in the damage.
little update
if you are not using a flamer, burst cannon or airbursting fragmentation gun be sure to have the targeting cluster!
To NomNom: I kinda disagree about the last one: It should be the Airbursting fragmentation guns instead of flamers.
“Agile” and “Heavy” armors are the two best I saw so far. “Agile” can be used in hero and elites hunting (plasma or fusion + anti-armor missile pod) if combined with coolant injectors, so the armor can jump with no stop at great distances.
The advanced drone controler is IMPOSSIBLE to achieve!
3 tau win team:
1 has fusion blasters and anti armor missiles
1 has plasma guns and anti armor missiles
1 has flamers and anti infantry missiles
fusion blaster kills anything close, plasma guns from long range and flamers anything that comes to melee
Once lvl 10 try:
Command Issue Plasma Rifle
Repulser Shield
XV8 ‘Armored’ Crisis Battlesuit
Fragmentation Missle Pod/Anti-Armour Missile Pod (when you get it later)
Coolant Injectors/Stimulant Injectors
Ion Battery/Energy Core
Shield Drone Controller
Yeah, Shield Drone Controller is actually pretty good; a nice decoy, takes a fair bit of damage and regenerates its own health. With one or two other Tau you take very little ranged damage at all.
Would Suggest Stim + Energy if you are mainly stomping on things and aren’t interested in using Fragmentation Missles and Kinetic Pulse non-stop.. personally prefer Ion battery and Coolant Injectors so far. Very cheap to cast Ion battery when you combine it with coolant.
Weapons really depends on your team though, twin-linked Plasma Rifle and Flamer are good, personally I don’t think Fusion Blaster/s are worth it.
Also been thinking about Twin-Plasma, Stabiliser armour for extra range and cooldown, Coolant injectors to lower your jump cost, Stims because you take more damage and have less hp and Anti-Armour Missile (which is REALLY good, especially with Ion Battery+coolant injectors). Again depends on the team as always. 🙂
soooo im pretty sure they already started nerfing tau some. and energy sucks never use it after you get NWI or a diff shield
Energy Shield + Ion Battery anyone?
Tip for the “Networked Weapon Interface” achieve. Use the flamer to soften them up a little and then stomp on them. With light infantry you tend to get the whole squad which makes it go much faster.
I agree with rjneuen. Although the AI of the Shield drone sometimes leaves it sitting in the middle of nowhere using it at certain times is a godsend, especially if you are holed up somewhere on strong ranged squads such as marines or ravagers. Also it serves as a great decoy.
The ion battery is an amazing support ability. Your energy heavy teammates will love you.
I really am enjoying the playstyle so far, as it really resembles how the Tau feel on the table. Stay at range and drop bombs. I can only hope the repulsor shield ability finds its way to the next rulebook.
Also, not gonna lie…. I was really hoping to see XV88 Broadside armor upgrade with TL Railguns. No idea how you would balance it… but would have been fun.
i must say i disagree with everything gravecoat said. in fact minus the photon nades and twin linked comment i feel the opposite on everything. shield drone is a complete life saver and makes enemy plasma useless
A few notes, from what I’ve discovered thus far:
Early on, the Photon Grenades are a godsend. Similar to the Eldar’s Confuse ability, they have a relatively quick use time (they explode immediately upon landing) and can cause enemy squads to attack each other. They even work on enemy hero units. 🙂
The Shield Drone Controller is trash. Equip it to fill the slot, sure, but it’s not worth the energy cost and will get shot down very quickly.
If you have a Fusion Blaster (especially so if it’s twin-linked), you will die very quickly on wave 16.
The Ion Battery seems decidedly meh, but could potentially be useful in some builds. Maybe. Possibly.
Finally, the Networked Weapon Interface is pretty easy to unlock (just equip the heavy armour and go crazy with the stomping), and makes for some very interesting combos. Twin-linking Airbursting Fragmentation Projectors, along with the Fragmentation Missile Pod, is a stunning combination that results in quick decimation of most light infantry squads, as well as respectable DPS against tougher targets.
This looks like it will be an epic character. Can’t wait to see it in action.