@focused- The way I see it, that wouldn't "remove the FD spam problem" as much as make Dragons redundent. Why bother with a unit of fire dragons and a wave serpent when you can deep strike some hawks behind a vehicle and get the same result for significanty fewer points?

Although, having just finished (FINALLY ) finished reading the DE codex despite having had it for 8 days now, there could be more ideas we could borrow and modify for Eldar.

Personally, I love the idea. Then leave the lasblasters as base weapon and allow the haywire blaster as an upgrade option. Would make them a harassment unit with that being their aspect role and they either carry it out against personnel or vehicles.

seems to me to be just another suicide unit, which we should avoid.

I think the way to make FD spam go away is to add viable ranged AT to the rest of the codex. I suggested this before, but I think the best way to do this is to make the pulse laser available on more platforms. Its S8 ap2 Heavy 2 - put it on the wraithlord, guardian platforms, etc. Its essentially a souped up autocannon. Great for taking out transports of all stripes. Then, make the brightlance AP1. It is still a crappy weapon to take on a guardian platform, being only 1 shot, but with guide or BS4, it will do better at taking out land raiders and AV13 targets because of AP1

Appropriately cost all the heavy weapons (which means price decreases, generally, to 5th edition levels), and fire dragons will still be the 100% need-it-dead-yesterday AT option, but we won't be forced to take 3x5 dragonwagons in the elite slot.

While I fully agree that the Eldar codex need alternative methods of destroying tanks that are effective, either by being reliable or being cost efficient enough to be massed, the only way to stop Fire Dragon spam is to increase the cost of Fire Dragons.
Essentially, they are the only troops in the Eldar codex that's under-priced if you cross-compare to other armies. It's not at all uncommon for Fusion Guns to be worth 10 points when you upgrade from their standard weapons. Add this cost to an Eldar Aspect Warrior's estimated value (without weapon) of around 10 points and you get a really cheap unit for what it does.
This comparison is not without flaw, however, since the Fire Dragons do not upgrade their weapons and where one or two fusion gun upgrades at 20 points is a viable upgrade in most units, 5 to 10 such upgrades simply is over-kill and you've likely wasted a lot of points. For this reason, I propose a cost increase on Fire Dragons, but with the highly important addition to give them more weapons to choose from.
Heavy Flamers should be roughly comparable in cost to a Fusion Gun (btw, Eldar tech being more advanced, usually meaning more reliable, why is a Fusion Gun exactly the same as a Melta Gun?), and a Fire Dragon at aroun 18 to 20 points choosing between a Heavy Flamer and a Fusion Gun makes sense strictly fluff-wise - although their specialization suddenly opens up to a much wider range of possible targets.

Swooping Hawks thus receiving a complete weapon overhaul to have Haywire Blasters could be interesting to see. These weapons would be rolling against vehicles without using their strength value, and would thus be more efficient against heavy vehicles (Monoliths and Land Raiders) rather than against transports (Venoms and Rhinos). This distinction is important since Eldar has several means of destroying light vehicles simply from massed S6 fire, but on the other hand Eldar are very poor at destroying heavier vehicles due to lacking S9 or S10 weapons in general. Haywire provides a way around this problem.
Something that would be neat would be a weapon similar to the EM blaster in Fallout New Vegas, a weapon which does low damage but an extremely high amount of damage against robots and power armoured enemies. It's not translatable to 40k, though, for the simple reason that while it would make sense against Tau and Humans, it would make less sense against Eldar and absolutely no sense against Orks and Tyranids - having a weapon which uses an enemy's armour against him, that is.
Haywire Blaster
24", S3, AP5, Assault 2 Haywire*
* On an armour penetration roll, always glances vehicles on a roll of 4 or 5 and penetrates on a roll of 6

This is absolutely lethal to vehicles, maybe a bit too powerful, but what do you say about the concept? Assault 1 or 2? Better or worse chance for glance/penetration?

For the haywire blaster it should only glance on a 5 and pen on a 6. Other wise good for hawks.

Raising the points cost of fire dragons may stop dragon spam, but doing so leaves the eldar hopeless against tanks such as LRs, but others too. If the points of fire dragons were to be increased then the points of AT weaponry has to be decreased. The issue is not as much the lack of decent AT weaponry, but its unafordability. Given its worth it would be reasonable to decrease a bright lance to maybe 15 points, or an EML to 10.

I fully agree on the cheapening of heavy weapons. It's fully necessary, and part of the three most glaring issues in the codex, in my opinion: poor Guardians performance, poor Fast Attack performance, poor heavy/support weapon cost:performance ratio.

Mahtamori wrote:
I propose a cost increase on Fire Dragons, but with the highly important addition to give them more weapons to choose from.
Heavy Flamers should be roughly comparable in cost to a Fusion Gun (btw, Eldar tech being more advanced, usually meaning more reliable, why is a Fusion Gun exactly the same as a Melta Gun?), and a Fire Dragon at around 18 to 20 points choosing between a Heavy Flamer and a Fusion Gun makes sense strictly fluff-wise - although their specialization suddenly opens up to a much wider range of possible targets.

The only problem is that magically changing their weapons in such a radical way gives them the capability of being both AT masters and master horde killers. The flexibility gives the best unit in the codex even more viability, whilst making other anti-horde units (scorps, scatterwalkers ect) less necessary.

I do however, think increasing the potency and availability of ranged AT would go a long way to help removing the dependence on Dragons. AP1 on Brightlances at a reasonable 5th ed point cost would help no end. But still keeping Dragons viable as the " need-it-dead-yesterday AT option" as Gwyidion said.

OMG, no posts for days!

How about a summary of the consensus in a new post.
1. Decisions reached.
2. Decisions/issues still pending.

I think we are getting a bit intimidating for anyone to look at.

Yeah, I've been "working" on that article. Feel free to pitch in.

Just list just about anything as a general description in something resembling a format. Just don't get into specifics regarding points and mixing ideas.

It's getting really well fleshed out, though I still haven't touched on the Fast Attack section yet. It'll soon be time to make a new thread, unless someone objects?

This one is getting pretty cumbersome. If someone whants to make an epic first post out of the stuff we've covered so far then it might be easier to keep track of. Once the article has has Fast attack written up then I'll get starting a new one if you want?

New thread made...thats a good way to waste 2 hours at work

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/328980.page

Shall we defect to there now? hopefully its a LOT more managable.