Weak Plasma?

[Saref Gethovich]

It's just me or plasma is a bit weaker then other weapons? I already beat more then 10 campain missions and my Hellblasers squads all that time was pretty much useless. Literally any other unit is better then Hellblasters even without any upgrades. As a result I'm very sceptical about plasma weapons for Interceptors and Sororitas commander.

[Shards]

Depends on how you're using them. Plasma is an anti-armour weapon, they do the Emperor's work at taking down large targets from distance.

For the Inceptor, the Plasma is a great upgrade if you use your Inceptors to head hunt big targets (otherwise the assault bolter is better if they're harassing enemy light forces)

[breezingthrough]

They do not seem to have as much kick, I can agree but they are more effective against armoured targets. Swarms Bolters are the way to go, fast and not much waste when missing or killing a small model. But Plasma has a lot of wasted stat, damage lost in over kill, damage lost in misses, but I find against larger harder target enemies Bolt guns do little It is here I pull in my Plasma. But I only have 1xHellBlaster and only one Vehicle has a plasma.

But I agree I always feel like they do not have much punch to them. Until you put them against armour, then you see the value of them.

[SpaniardSword]

I bring a couple of those to kill the largest monster. After they do they job, they are just a crappy unit to have around. But yes, they shine against high armored objectives, as their armor penetration is high.

[Schnittertm]

Yep, anti armor weapon. On my last mission I could finally try out the Heavy Plasma Incinerator and, boy, did that evaporate the heavy units, especially the Tervigon in a flash. Heavy Plasma and Overcharge and all your big Tyranid troubles go away.

[fluxtorrent]

im 50/50 on the inceptors. The armor pen is nice, but they get less shots at higher damage. Against bigger targets they are definitely better but for crowd control they are worse. I tend to keep some of both for that reason.

My hellblasters are heroes though, I try to keep 3 squads, 2 with heavy and 1 with the regulars. one of the heavies and the regular combined can take down most of the bigguns in 1 round with overcharge.

[etalian]

Plasma becomes much more useful on the later missions since you will be running into more single model units which need to be killed fast.

Just make sure you hit the sweet spot for range and also good line of sight since doing a single shot means it's easy to miss the whole attack.

For plasma squads to re-cap the Heavy upgrade mainly shines against enemies that have 1- 3 units per squad / lots of HP per model.

The standard plasma is more useful against enemies like genestealers that have decent armor but more units per squad.

[Bier und Brezel Spiel]

Yeah in the Tabletop the plasma weapons are armor killer too. Normally the plasma weapons are very usefull against chaos space marines. But the nids rely on huge swarm formations. So aside from their monsters like Carnifex, flamethrowers and aoe weapons are the better choicea against nids. The predecessors of the Primaris had the Devastator with a huge plasma gun. I do not know if you guys played dawn of war 2, but there one of this plasma guns can melt whole Squads. Same in Tabletop. In the Tabletop the old normal plasma rifles had the chance of exploding when firing. So they were never used that much. The good thing about the Primaris plasma guns is the fact they do not overheat anymore. But in the Tabletop you can overcharge them. Then they have the chance of exploding, but at the same time you can do huge amount of damage when you are lucky.

[peXmo]

Hellblasters area great. Give them heavyplasma, have a healer near, overcharge and melt what ever you need to melt.
I run a line of dreadnoughts and a backline of hellblasters. The rest of the units are just around watching the show.
I would not mind to see large units degrade upon taking to much dmg. They can already be healed up to full as long as they survive, a squad loose both firepower and permanently loose both that firepower and health.

[norm]

Two Hellblasters on overcharge killed the final boss in one round.