Dawn of War II

[TinCow]

In my campaign (also on Captain) I've found the Assault Marines to be the all-stars. I focused them entirely on melee, and while the Force Commander could dish out more damage in hand-to-hand, the assault jumps are a game winner by themselves. Once you get the low level assault jump improvement skills, landing in the middle of an enemy group does significant damage to them, throws them all to the ground, and suppresses them. Anyone that survives the impact (which can often be surprisingly few) is easily finished off with a bit of shooting while they are out of cover and suppressed. The skill that makes the Assault Marines temporarily invulnerable after a jump is just icing on the cake. I would guess that my Assault Marines are responsible for 40-50% of my kills. I've completely avoided using the scouts, and found the Assault Marines were a good substitute for structure killers. I gave them the demolition packs and it's very effective to have them jump in, toss a pack at the target, then run out (or run in, and jump out, as per the demands of the situation).

The situation changes a bit when you get Terminator armor for them. This massively increases their survivability, but it removes the assault jump ability in favor of a teleport. The teleport does not do any of the damage, stunning, or knockback of the assault jump. For this reason, I eschewed it for a while and considered taking the Terminator armor off of them. Then I discovered that the teleport recharges MUCH faster than the assault jump, and it's also near instantaneous. Once I realized this, my Terminator Assault Marines became pure death machines. They're only level 17-18, but with their armor and the hammer/shield weapon thing, they dish out upwards of 700 damage per second in melee and have about 100 armor. Since they can teleport right into the middle of any enemy formation, they simply don't get hit by ranged fire and nothing but bosses pose a challenge for them. They alone can keep 4-5 enemy groups engaged while the ranged units pound them down, with most of the kills still going to the Assault Marines.

I highly recommend them.