balance suggestions (MP)

[Fosil]

after playing for a while after "the sons of cadia" release, I would like to make a couple of balance suggestions.

imperial guard:

- grenadier guardsmen need a buff, they are outperformed by flamer and lasguns squads. I would like a range increase to 5 or 6 tiles and a damage buff to 15-20dmg per shot.

- plasmagun guardsman could use a small price reduction to 140 points. atm they are only cost-effective as buff receivers together with whitelock.

- powersword tempestus scions are a bit too pricy too. ogryns are much more useful as a ZoC-units (sturdy) and other scions are easier to use as damage dealers (vollygun/melta). I small price reduction to 180 points would make them more attractive.

- hotshot lasgun scions are pricy too, especially compared to the vollygun variant. 180-200 points would work better with them too.

- chimeras are too cheap for 200 points. there is no reason not to take them for this price. I small increase to 220-240 points should help.

- sentinels need a price increase too. fast attack rules together with a lascannon and high movement makes them very good. they should be priced closely to landspeeder, so 280-300 points would work for them quite well.

- the primaris psyker is way too cheap with his free action defensive buff and his offensive skills. he should be priced closer to a major hero. 360 points is a good price for him. I would also suggest to reduce his skill range to 6 tiles to make him less easy to use (that would be more in line with the skill range of the other psyker heroes).

- bullgryns need a buff to their ranged attack too, similar to the guardsman. they don't need a range increase, but more damage/pierce and power would help alot. something similar to the difference between flamers and heavy flamers.

- the leman russ variants are fine, but their rear armor could maybe use a small buff (to 35-40 heavy armor). atm a skyclaw pack can dish out 200+ damage with two action point when attacking the rear. if that could be reduced to ~130-150hp damage at average, it would be more in line with point costs. the new damage system makes heavy armor already less useful compared to before, so they don't really need that achilles heel (the supa kannon should get the same buff and the predator a similar increase to keep the gap between the different tanks. I would not touch the transporters).

- the knight paladin should cost 750 points. the paladin battle cannon is much more usefull than the thermal cannon of the other knights (more range, damage and accuracy to deal with hard targets at range). he will easily beat them in 1vs1 situations.

- castellan stein is hard to price correctly, because he scales alot with point size, especially his air strike skill. I still would like to see his 11x11 tiles area of effect reduced to 5x5 and his price accordingly reduced (maybe ~550 points) to make him more viable in medium/large size games and less powerfull in 3200+ point games.

bugs: the scions and several guard heroes still play the wrong audio files for using skills/getting killed etc.

[Fosil]

space wolves:

- bolter packs are too cheap atm. the new damage model helped bolter performance alot. 140 points should work better.

- flamer packs could use a price reduction to 80 points.

- winterfang should cost 120 points. his AP-ammo makes him quite deadly.

- rhinos could use a small price increase to 220 points too. same reasons as for the bolter packs.

- stormbolter terminators cost increase to 300 points. same reasons.

- long fang heavy bolters are too expensive. a predator is faster, more resilient and has 2/3 of their heavy bolter firepower for only 50 points more and stormbolter terminators or bolter packs are more cost effective as infantry. 300 points would work better for heavy bolter long fangs (would be better balanced with the vollygun scions too).

- the dreadnoughts could be a little bit cheaper too. 350 points would make them more attractive as an alternative to predators.

- the venerated dreadnought could use a price increase instead to 470-480 points. once again to compensate the improved (storm-)bolter performance.

bugs: crocium arcanum has range 0 and heavy flamer terminators have range 1 instead con4 in the unit details descrption.

[Fosil]

orks:

- mogroks telliporta attacks are a delight, but they need to use up all remaining movement points. he should not have the WAAAGH-ability (this seems to be an oversight)

- flash gitz could use a small price reduction to 290 points. that would close the gap to warbikes and vollyguns.

- killa kan rockets perform very poorly in my experience. I would drop their price to 220 points to make them more of an option. at the moment they cost more than a sentinel with nearly the same hp and armor stats and less mobility and a worse gun. the big shoota killa kan can drop to 190 points to keep them competitive with the rokkit variant.

- combi-skorcha nobs are too pricy too. you can have a shoota and a burna for less points. ~160 points should work better.

- burnas could use a small price reduction down to 60 points too.

[Galdred]

Regarding Vehicle rear armor, I obviously agree given our discussion history, but due to the formula in use, going to 40 would be a huge gap over 39. It is another reason why I don't really like the way Heavy armor works, given that there is no information on this hidden threshold anywhere. If armor is >=40 and AP<40, armor gets rolled twice, so the damage reduction is squared (ie, if an unit would take 75% for damage thanks to Heavy armor at HA 39, it would take only 0.75*0.75=0.5625 at Heavy Armor 40. Going from 0.75 to 0.56 is a huge gap for a single point of heavy armor.
But that might be why vehicle armor is so weak from the rear actually, because under 40, they become much more vulnerable to small weapon fire(AT weapons ignore the second heavy armor roll).

[Fosil]

hidden thresholds are less of a problem, if you don't stat your units with armor yourself.

39 HA gets hit by 100 1dmg attacks: 61 attacks do full damage and 39 get reduced to half damage resulting in overall 80,5 damage.

40 HA gets hit by 100 1dmg attacks: 36 attacks do full damage, 16 get reduced to quarter damage and 48 attacks do half damage resulting in overall 64 damage.

it is roughly a 20% damage decrease, if you ignore the other possible extra HA rolls.

[Galdred]

Actually, vs 39 HA, you get 61 attacks at full damage (or 60 depending on whether it is 0-99 or 1-100), 20 at half damage, and 19 at 1/4 damage (<=Heavy Armor -20).
So overall, the damage is 0.76
vs 40, you get: 0.75 applied twice, so 0.75 squared to 0.56.

[Fosil]

I intentionally ignored the extra HA rolls, because I thought the HA-20 role would not change proportions much. that was before I knew that the "40 HA & low pierce" 2nd roll has an extra set of HA-x rolls.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by galdred:

Regarding Vehicle rear armor, I obviously agree given our discussion history, but due to the formula in use, going to 40 would be a huge gap over 39. It is another reason why I don't really like the way Heavy armor works, given that there is no information on this hidden threshold anywhere. If armor is >=40 and AP<40, armor gets rolled twice, so the damage reduction is squared (ie, if an unit would take 75% for damage thanks to Heavy armor at HA 39, it would take only 0.75*0.75=0.5625 at Heavy Armor 40. Going from 0.75 to 0.56 is a huge gap for a single point of heavy armor.
But that might be why vehicle armor is so weak from the rear actually, because under 40, they become much more vulnerable to small weapon fire(AT weapons ignore the second heavy armor roll).

Are vehicles the only units where armor strength is differentiated depending on the side? I assume rear and side armor are weaker?

[Lampros]

By the way, someone tell me how to kill Warboys with basic early-game units.

And also: Melta gun infantry sucks :(

[Fosil]

some heavy infantry units have weaker rear armor too. you can see all units infos in the unit details screen (right bottom of the UI is a button to open it).

meltas work fine for killing heroe units like a warboss or vehicles.they are a bit pricy compared to the imo underpriced bolter packs.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Fosil:

some heavy infantry units have weaker rear armor too. you can see all units infos in the unit details screen (right bottom of the UI is a button to open it).

Hmm, ok; I see numbers like x/y/z for armor on some units. Does this mean the "x" is front armor; the "y" the flanks; and the "z" is rear?

I really wish there was a place where all these vital information is compiled.

Originally posted by Fosil:

meltas work fine for killing heroe units like a warboss or vehicles.they are a bit pricy compared to the imo underpriced bolter packs.

Agreed. Bolters seem more price-efficient than Meltas.

[Lampros]

After having played about 5-6 missions with the Cadia campaign, I feel every IG infantry outside of the Ogryn/Bullgryns/Tempestus Scions need to be buffed. My God. Useless fodder.

[Orbital Drop Spicy Taco]

Wow how I miss this post? I agree with most of the opinions. This is well written.

[Fosil]

atm I would cut down the stormbolter terminators to 3 models. I don't think that -10 accuracy is enough. the mega nobs could use a small price increase probably too.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by TURBULENT:

Wow how I miss this post? I agree with most of the opinions. This is well written.

Yes, "most" - but not "all." For instance, I don't agree that Sentinels should be nerfed. And generally, Fosil wants to buff Orks relative to the other factions - which I don't want. But I may be biased here, because I don't play the "bad guys"! ;)

Originally posted by Fosil:

atm I would cut down the stormbolter terminators to 3 models. I don't think that -10 accuracy is enough.

I think that's too much. If you do that, then you'd need to decrease their cost quite a bit.

[Fosil]

I was trying to buff units that are rarely used, because they get overshadowed by other units in the same roster and nerf units that imo are too strong atm.

If you look at the suggestions for the ork list, it is a pretty big nerf to mogrok (the WAAAGH-ability is very strong), a small buff for flash gitz (that are pretty much overshadowed atm by mega nobs) and burnas and a big buff for combi-nobs and both killa kan variants, both units that are imo bad choices in MP atm.

I would argue the ork meta list is all about the major heroes, mega nobs, battlewagons and supa kannons. having other viable choices would be a good thing, without making them overpowered (a small nerf for mega nobs is probably a good thing too).