Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
Report this post
Don't judge every hero by how good of a beatstick they are. Tau heroes are primarily there to buff up your units, and an always-on +75% attacks buff to all adjacant non-vehicles is an incredible buff for Tau even before you realise what it does in the lategame with Broadsides. Plus it gets all the Fire Warrior abilities, which is a small laundry list of options by itself.
I wasn't aware it helps broadsides, that DOES help.
And yes, the loyalty bonus is nice - but then, I already said his bonus skills are good. That's not really the point here. The point is, a hero unit has a weaker attack than bottom tier regular untis, that's just not right.
Saying it's 'not as squishy as an ethereal' is damning with faint praise. You're trying to play devil's advocate here, fair enough, but 6 armor, 6 hp isn't 'tough'. It's not average. It's not below average. It's bottom tier.
6 armour, 6 HP is strictly average for an infantry hero. It's the same as a Commissar, functionally analogous to a Painboy or a Weirdboy, and tougher than a Primaris Psyker or a Spiritseer. Yeah, you want to talk 'squishy heroes'? Try playing Eldar and relying on ZERO armour and 6 HP for your only source of both healing and morale restoration. At least Tau can think of an Ethereal as a lategame luxury, the Eldar analogue is pretty much a core piece.
The Cadre Fireblade's support abilities are fantastic, and that IS the point; that's what the Fireblade, what Tau heroes in general, DO. For the Fireblade, that means your infantry basically get to dumpster enemy morale for free just by attacking them, and that when you set up an overwatch cluster (which you want to do with Tau, given their supporting fire trait), it goes from '+20% firepower is nice I guess' to 'I will vaporise anything that gets close', while setting up a brutal counterattack.
Pretty sure the Ethereal is worse. AND is melee :').
I'm also terrified by no stronger mention of his morale ability.
Have you never used it?
Sadly the photon grenade isn't a free action anymore (it meant twice as many actions removing morale before :')), but being able to annihilate the morale of most units is crazy good.
Even at lvl 2, it's -4 morale per hit. On 7 units (It's a free action thank you very much), it usually means crushing the morale of what's in front of you.
Even a Chaos Lord will suffer a terrifying -9 morale, crippling it to oblivion.
"Yeah like I have 6 units around the cadre fireblade at all time"
Put some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ drones and you'll always have 6 units to use your buff on.
Keep in mind Vespids (4 moves, 5 with Jump) and Kroot (6 moves) can get the buff too.
The morale ability is worthless against Tyranids sadly. It's its only drawback.
Against high morale unit (like Necrons), it's a nightmare. See, losing Broken/Shaken requires killing more stuff for high morale stuff.
A nightmare, I tell you.
Combine it with the morale nuke (For The Greater Good?) to ensure your enemy will have their morale entirely destroyed at engagement.
Either they run away, or you wipe them out.
If you didn't completely mess up, even if they do try to counterattack, your drones will take the brunt of the counter-attack. => Not much morale gained back for them, not much morale lost for you (and whatever, even if you DO lose your morale, you can just restore it instantly with the Knife Ritual. A free action. Thank you very much).
"But the cadre is so squishy!"
Yes, but see he doesn't need to be close to the enemy to send drones, use Break Composure and be an overall thorn in the enemy side.
"But if he wants to hit with BC, he needs to get close."
Yes, if ONLY he had a sniper ability.
OH WAIT HE DOES.
Enjoy this 3-4 range to ruin the morale of the enemy while being ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ intouchable.
If you're scared, adding a Zoat Hide Jerkin and/or Armaplast Bracers and/or Adamantium Vest is a good idea to ensure he won't die from the first ASM squad that will jump on him.
If you're Rambo, you can give him a Concealed Weapon System, an Omniscope (for the lulz), an Entropic Locum and maybe some Combat Stimulants, get within 2 tiles of the enemy and use the Snipe ability at lvl 2+ to wreck the ♥♥♥♥ out of anything dumb enough to get caught by your snipe.
"But its damage sucks"
Only because YOU suck.
A lvl 3 Fireblade with 200 influence worth of items (CWS + Omniscope + Entropic Locum + Combat Stimulant) will remove 33% HP of any 8 armor tank from 2 tiles away.
Without any upgrades.
Add some morale removal, and you can be a moving ranged Melta Bomb.
Too expensive for you?
The Omniscope is just +10% damage, you can skip it.
Don't want to spend on combat Stimulant?
You're so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cheap, man. Just get the Mortonium Accelerators (T4 research. Easily affordable). It will compensate.
Still removing at least 25 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ % of any 8 armor tank.
And 2 morale. Yeah. Because OF COURSE you should combo the morale breaker with the Rambo-build.
You don't care about killing tanks?
Well the Fireblade can also help remove a support unit (like... an enemy Fireblade? an Ethereal? A Spirite?) from a distance. It can be those precious few damage that allow you to finish something while being far away.
But I will point out that while being Rambo is incredibly fun and fulfilling, it's not the best use of the Fireblade.
The Fireblade is either a trap unit (+75% attacks to nearby allies meaning a devastating OW when the enemy gets in your trap), or a morale breaker unit (if you think waiting for the enemy to suicide on your OW is way too risky).
I will repeat : Playing Rambo is not the best use of Cadre Fireblade
FInally, I must point out something.
No T'au hero is a war machine.
You don't have a Chaos Lord-like.
Instead, T'au heroes multiply the power of your army.
A Cadre and three fire warriors will almost always be worse than 6 or 7 Fire Warriors.
However 6-7 fire warriors and 3-4 crisis with a Fireblade will almost always have a better mileage than a dozen fire warriors and half a dozen crisis. Unless you're crap at strategizing and rely on overwhelming numbers. Then yeah. Ok. Fireblade sucks.
The same apply for Ethereal and Commander. They require a decent army to buff it, they can't make up the army by themselves.
Wrong.
The Commissar and Psyker have a 33% invulnerable reduction, while the Spiritseer has a 50% invulnerable reduction.
Against 0 AP weapons, the Spiritseer has the same defensive stats as the Cadre.
Against high (actually ANY, since you know... the spiritseer has 0 armor to remove...) AP weapons, the Spiritseer is tougher than the Cadre.
Finally one fun trick for those that are ok with suiciding ally's units.
Get a Librarian by begging your Space Marine ally.
Get the Librarian to lvl 2.
Make him pick Shockwave and Levitate (tell your Space Marine ally that you want to make sure his Librarian can escape. Lying is allowed.)
Make sure your enemy must stay in a semi-circular formation.
For example get some kroot/vespids in two covers separated by a very thin band of open land. The enemy will focus fire on the units to kill them. By doing so, leaving his units in a semi-circular formation.
Make sure your Fireblade is adjacent to the Librarian. Give him Break Composure.
Tell him to move in the middle of the enemy with Levitate.
When your ally asks you "But wasn't it supposed to be used to run away?", tell him that you have another extraction plan. If you have a Devilfish or Tidewall Gunrig nearby, move it roughly in the direction of where you ask him to Levitate to make it more credible. Otherwise, use any lie you see fit.
Once the Librarian is in the middle of the enemy army, tell him to use Shockwave.
Watch as your ally just put -4 (or even -6!) morale on 3 or maybe 4 units at once.
Send all the army that was hiding in the wood, watching the kroots/vespids getting shot for them.
Finish the enemy morale with other units having received Break Composure. Kill what you can (keep in mind that the Pinned trait from Shockwave will hinder your ranged damage).
If the Librarian survived, get him to run away, then repeat previous steps until the Librarian dies or the enemy does.
If the Librarian survives to the end, you are of course allowed to say that it was all planned.
If he dies, you can say it was for the greater good. And if you lose a friend, well... It was for the greater good?
The fireblade has 2.2 damage, 1 attack. The Ethereal has 2.2 damage, 2 attacks. The rest is a bit situational.
The rest of what you write is either interesting, amusing, or trying a bit too hard, but appreciated. :)
The cadre has rapid fire, 10 accuracy and 1 AP while the Ethereal has 8 accuracy and 0 AP.
Meaning if your Ethereal is at melee, it deals less damage than a Fireblade at melee (all buffs/debuffs/resistance equal obviously).
If the Ethereal isn't at melee it deals no damage which is less than a Fireblade at range 2, and the same as a Fireblade at range 3+ (assuming no skill use, since the Fireblade could technically hit up to 7 tiles away)
So no, the Ethereal doesn't deal more damage.
Never!
I'm not a tryhard!
With that last one? Yeah, you kinda are. It's a little fun to see how you guys contort the stats to make the fireblade seem good. "It's not that bad, in certain cases it's actually on par with the second worst unit in the game'. Or reading motives into what I write that isn't there; that gets a bit tiresome actually.
Still, let's pretend I actually meant it when I said that the abilities are good, and that you don't actually need to write pages up and down on the subject.
The crux of the matter, to me, is that the fireblade is a single entity with the same weapon and attack values as soldiers in a multiple-entity unit, which is lackluster for any sort of 'hero' unit. Usually, they get a higher attack value or similar to compensate a little, but the CF doesn't. Giving it, say, 2 attack instead wouldn't turn it into 'rambo', able to massacre armies - it would be just half as good as a regular fire warrior squad - but at least it wouldn't be a liability that is completely cost-inefficient early game (when you have a very limited number of units and abilities) compared to building a fire warrior..
No. Ddraig gave you several example of support units.
As are support heroes for other factions.
It doesn't mean it's a bad hero.
Yes, Ddrag did. That was about HP. You know what? All of them does more, or several times more, damage. The only hero that does as little damage is the spiriseeker, but that isn't supposed to be even in the same neighbourhood as combat.
But that doesn't matter.
Most support heroes are not the first hero recruited. The first hero recruited is usually combat capable, because at that time the amount of troops to support is limited, and the odds are, that hero will have to pull combat duty (As is what happened to me, and made me post this thread.). CF is entirely unsuited for that role.
That doesn't make him a bad hero.
But it does make him a bad starting hero.
Which is not what you said in the original message.
As per my long message, I agree that T'au heroes aren't good early as they are strength multiplier instead of army pillar.
I will not agree however that the Cadre Fireblade is worse than the Lord Commissar (first AM hero), and it's arguable whether the Autarch (first Eldar hero) is any better (In my opinion it's way too expensive and needs way too much exposure to be useful).
Just like you need to adapt your strategy and the timing of when you start making heroes for AM and Eldar, you need to do it too for T'au.
Ok.
Then don't make him do what he isn't suited for?
T'au can make drones, claim Kroot Hounds and Vespids. They can morale nuke in case of an emergency (it's usually fairly cheap on neophytes/cultists. The stuff you encounter early).
They don't need more early power.
Ehh, nah. Per the Lobster Sept guide there's actually a whole school of thought about rushing out an early Fireblade to level it fast to get the ult rolling for your cities. Iffu's right though, you're shifting the goalposts here.
I'd also note that like, Tau heroes are ALL support heroes, really. The Commander's the closest thing they have to a beatstick hero, and that's just raw stats, all its abilities are buffs for surrounding troops. It's a faction trait; Tau, as a faction, aren't about heroes leading the charge and throwing out big damage. Their heroes are force multipliers for your army. Stop expecting the faction and its heroes to be something they're not.
The Cadre Fireblade is not, as you have asserted, a "surprisingly bad" unit (your OP), or "just not right (because of its weak attack)" (post #3). The Cadre Fireblade is a good and powerful unit BECAUSE of its strong abilities.