What's the worst unit in 40k?

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**ZacktheChaosChild**

Kveldulv wrote:

Therefore, I nominate the Chaos Lord.

*facepalm*

You best be trolling.

Many people use the Chaos Lord and they are very competitive.

**Iboshi2**

I grappled the shoggoth wrote:

I think the worst transport overall is probably the wave serpent. Not because its bad, though it needs a point reduction. But because eldar dont have any cheap transport options, but instead the most costly transport in the game. Thing costs more then the guardian squads it carries.

I think you're very wrong there. The reason they might seem bad to you, is because you're transporting guardians. The 'overpricing' you speak of might have something to do with the special rules it possesses, and Fast, Tank, Skimmer classification. If you plan to use the Wave Serpent like an Ork Trukk, you plan to loose.

I grappled the shoggoth wrote:
Noise marines are pretty poop too.

Have you ever played against them, or are you just judging by their entry in the chaos codex? They're far from even being listed in this thread. A squad of 10 noise marines with sonic blasters can deliver withering fire while maintaining mobility, being fearless, and hitting most units first in CC. I'm not sure you're thinking of the right unit.

Imo, Chaos Spawn is a worse choice than Aun'va. My reasoning, is that Aun'va has potential tactical application, while spawn have no strength on the table, besides being on the table as a contesting unit. Almost every unit can do that.

**Volkov**

Imo, Chaos Spawn is a worse choice than Aun'va. My reasoning, is that Aun'va has potential tactical application, while spawn have no strength on the table, besides being on the table as a contesting unit. Almost every unit can do that.

Aun'va gives your army stubborn which for tau is THE WORST THING YOU COULD POSSIBLY DO! A chaos spawn may be a waste of points but it is not going to take down your army while wasting those points

**bravelybravesirrobin**

On the subject of Grots I'm going to re-post my defense of them. They're one of my favourite units fluff, model and gamewise.

Grotz have won me more games with my orks than any other unit.

People complaining "their gun is rubbish" "they can't kill anything" are missing the point.

There are 4 main tactical uses of grotz in a list.

1. Grot Screen - 80 pts buys you 20 grots and 2 herders or a KFF. For a footslogging force the KFF will grant a 5++ save, the grots wil grant a 4++. That helps keep those more expensive shoota and slugga boyz alive as they advance across the battlefield more effectively for the same points. Oh and the extra wounds, extra sots and extra attacks over the KFF are a pure bonus.

The only downside if a drop in mobility since you can only manouveur as fast as the grots so if they roll a 1 to run you either have to break past the screen or slow down.

I use this strategy nearly every game to minimise incoming damage as I move up the field.

2. Grot Shield

If packed together tightly enough (i.e. less than the full 2") the enemy cannot assault past your gretchin to get at the orks behind. As we all know orks are amazing on the charge but rubbish if they get charged. If you have a bunch of grots in front of your orks the enemy cannot charge you. He either has to shoot the grots away (and there are 20 of them) or he has to charge them. The grots will almost certainly die but then the enemy is left out in the open ready to be charged by the rest of your force.

I used this just the other weekend against a chaos player. 2 dreads, a daemon prince, a greater daemon and a squad of berserkers were all poised close to my orks and ready to charge but the grot screen was in the way of all these units. He couldn't charge me and instead was shot + charged by me the next turn depriving him of his daemons and zerkers in one turn.

3. Hold objctives - in at least one mission we need to leave a unit at home whilst the rest of the short ranged ork army goes and does some killing. 80pts gets you 20 wounds, probably in cover, probably going to ground that only have to exist to potentially win the game. 160pts buys you 20 orks who aren't going to do the job any better at all.

4. Bait - this is more of a psychological trick but you'd be amazed how often it works.

In Dawn of War you can only deploy 2 troops and 1 HQ. I routinely deploy my gretchin in a vulnerable position and leave the rest of my army ready to emerge turn 1. Players don't like to do nothing, they like to feel like they've achieved something even if it is just killing grots. So most players will move towards the gretchin "bait" in their turn and try and shoot/assault them. In one tournament I had a ravenwing player manage a first turn assault against my grots with a big expensive bike unit and kill them all. In response my entire army including some bikes marched on, shot and charged him and made short work of that expensive unit.

This works against any opponent where you might want to reserve your entire army i.e. daemons. Take everything away and he'll get canny by deploying into cover, out of line of sight, too far from the edge, etc. Give him a focus however and most players will send at least 1 unit to go kill the grots which gives you 1 unit you can move up, shoot and assault turn 1.

Those 80pts can be used to lure your opponent into making tactical misjudgements which can help you.

There are of course dozens of other uses, they can bodyguard a Big Mek, they can actually shoot something sometimes maybe if they get lucky, they can assault an enemy and pull it out of position and with 2 herders their actually pretty good at taking on MC's. But none of those other uses have ever helped me directly win games like the first 4.

Arguably all of these can be done using standard orks who are also better at killing. But those orks won't do the grots jobs any better than the grots and they'll cost twice the price, if all you want from a unit is to die and in so doing potentially win a game then keep that unit cheap.

On the subject of the worst unit in 40K the easiest and best way to do this is to pick the worst choice from every codex and then compare them with each other.

Marines - Vanguard, seem fine but are waaaay too expensive to ever be properly used. They take up too many points for their potential benefit to the army.
Space Wolves - um, there isn't really a bad one. Lukas isn't a unit as such but sucks hard because he's only really useful when he dies. Even he has some good points though (hey, he can kill abaddon in one turn or a titan!)
Blood Angels - Tycho, hello. I have anti-ork rules but wargear that is useless against orks. Nobody likes me.
Dark Angels - Techmarine, more because he's pointless than bad.
BT - I dont know.

Sisters - Redemptia, they will never get into cc and when they do they'll die before they get to swing. And they cost too much. Also priests.

Daemonhunters - Daemonhost, stops you using GK's, is unrealiable, expensive and hard to use. Fun though.

Imperial Guard - Priests, even worse than Ogryns and Techpriests which have a use but just suck at it. Priests turn ordinary guardsmen into cc monsters, except they don't and why would you ever want to?

Chaos - Spawn, hard to use, expensive, will kill sod all.
Daemons - Nurglings, non-scoring troops competing with the awesomeness that is every other troop choice.

Tau - Vespids was my first thought but really it is the Space Pope. Does nothing then dies and he makes your men run away for an astonishingly huge amount of points.

Necrons - Pariahs, which actually are pretty good just expensive and fragile and competing with Immortals which everyone likes. Reduce your Necron count.

Eldar - Hawks or Spears. Spears are expensive and fragile but powerful, hawks are tricksy but will struggle to kill anything.
Dark Eldar - Hellions, they are an assault unit with a rapid fire gun! Expensive, fragile, crap at what they are meant to do and competing with better units in that slot.

Orks - Flashgitz, which again have great stats and actually are a bargain for that statline compared to regular nobz but will end up being too expensive and fragile. Especially without the bosspole that makes them expensive and ludicrously likely to run away.

Nids - Pyrovore, fulfills a role no one asked for, competes with awesome and necessary stuff, is expensive and fragile.

Out of all of these most of the units are either too expensive and fragile for their potential effect on the game (pyrovore, vanguard, repentia) pointless and fulfilling a role nobody asked for or that they do badly (techmarine, priests) or competing with units that do the same job in the same codex or are better in the same slot (pyrovore, nurglings).

That only leaves three very special units that actively make your army BAD! Not just by sucking up points better spelt elsewhere but because they're rules actively work to make your forces suck.

Those are Pariahs, by reducing Necron count, Daemonhosts, by denying GK's, and the Space Pope that makes you flee.

Pariahs are quite awesome statwise they just suck in the context of the army.

Daemonhosts really should be excluded as you kind of know that you want a no-GK army to use them. They're for fun and they do that job very well. Noone will ever take them to a tourney but plenty of people like them.

But the Space Pope. Crap model, no real benefit when he is alive and a crippling blow when he dies plus he costs a huge sum of points.

Space Pope is the worst unit, always.

**Mastershake**

Most of these "worst units" are simply inefficient point-wise or do something useless. For me a worst unit has to be detrimental to the army.

Worst unit in the game- the IG commisar, why? He lets your guardsmen stay in combat for 1 extra turn so you can't shoot whatever charged them. If you plan on blobbing 50 guardsman together the guy has a use, but otherwise is not simply a bad investment of points, but is detrimental to the army. Al'Rahem is a close second. He forces you to outflank an IG infantry platoon every game. It's just made of fail. The Tyranid parasite of mortex looks like he'll be on failboard as well seeing as how he makes extra kill points for your opponent.

**Kveldulv**

ZacktheChaosChild wrote:
Kveldulv wrote:

Therefore, I nominate the Chaos Lord.

*facepalm*

You best be trolling.

Many people use the Chaos Lord and they are very competitive.

I see your facepalm, and raise you one!

Show me a tournament-winning list with Chaos Lords in it. I have stated my arguments against them, now state your arguments for them.

Of course, the Lord packs a lot of whupass, but he is never viable in a list. Grots are.

**bravelybravesirrobin**

Those blobs with hidden commissars seem plenty popular though. If something has a limited use but that use is effective and lots of players like it you can hardly claim its bad otherwise we'd have to put land speeders, flaners of tzentch, termicide and other suicide units on this list.

Consider other choices in the IG list and how little they see play.

Priests - make guardsmen good at cc. Worse at that job than commissars without the bonus of the big stubborn unit being a great tarpit/objective grabber. Why would you ever use one when a commissar will do that role for you but better?

Ogryns - way too expensive for their fragiltiy and game effect. Trying to solve a problem (bad at cc) that IG are better off not solving.

Techpriests - crap at a job that doesn't need doing (fixing vehicles, most of the time vehicles are either dead or don't need fixing)

Punisher - expensive and uses a heavy slot for shooting power that is comparable to and available in your cheaper troop slots.

Commissars don't even come close to the crap these units are.

**starbomber109**

On the subject of "Worst Transport" I actually think the Wave-Serpent and the Devil-Fish are some of the best transports in 40K, yes, they are 80-90-100 points, but what does that buy you?

AV12 (which is pretty good all things considered), some special rules to improve their staying power, and the Serpent gets some cool twin linked guns, they are also skimmers, which means terrain only matters if you land on it. This makes the serpent a better Tank, and the fish a better Transport, but both are fairly good. The battlewagon is pretty close as a great transport, but only a few orks can take one as a 'dedicated' transport, also it has only a few gun options and none of them are all that great, as well as the slightly over-costed Deffrolla that has become the hot-topic of rules debates everywhere (which is not worth headaches arguments lost friends $20 or 20 points imho), another good 'transport', just not as good of a 'tank'.

Drop Pod has to be one of the worst transports, but "For what it does it's pretty good," it can get a squad or a dread almost anywhere on the board in relative safety, once they get there they will get shot apart, but the pod delivers them and delivers them fast...then it normally dies, oh, and it only has a storm-bolter, when has a storm-bolter won a fire-fight with a Predator tank?

Therefore, worst 'transport' in the whole game, has got to be, the ork Looted Wagon, an open topped rhino which takes a breakdown test, it also has competition from the awesome battlewagon, and NOTHING can take it as dedicated. You can make it closed topped to maybe make it more durable, but you lose all the utility of having orks shoot/assault out of it. Granted, it could be somewhat useful (great as a random transport in an appoc game, or good if you have a HS slot open and simply NEED an extra transport) but not quite good enough.

**bravelybravesirrobin**

Looted Wagon is easily the worst transport.

I have only ever seen it fielded as a boomwagon sacrificing the transport capacity for a (relatively) cheap big nasty ordnance gun.

**Luke_Prowler**

Not really. For the same points as a trukk, you can get better armor and count as a tank without taking reinforced ram. run it with a KFF mek and you got a more survivable vehicle that can tank shock something after dropping the cargo.

**I grappled the shoggoth**

I still think wave serpents are amazingly overcosted. Im not saying they should be dropped by half, but one with lances and stones shouldnt cost more then 100, maybe 110. Same for the devilfish. Its got average firepower, and average armor, the disruption pod is cool. But all it does is carry around fire warriors, big fething deal.

Chaos lords a very good choice. Ive seen one with blissgiver and 9 zerkers rolling around in a raider dish out the pain, ask Starbomber's nobs about that unit. Never gave me issue as I have yriel, but god help the poor player who doesnt.

He can be better then a demon prince in that he can be hidden in a unit, ride in a tank, and with certain demon weapons dish out comparable amounts of pain in hand to hand. I know someone who ran a khorne lord on bike with 4 nurgle biker escorts. Boost up and charge whatever, kill it off.

As for noise marines i should have clarified. Both plague marines and zerkers are better for cheaper.

**schadenfreude**

I nominate the Khorne Deamon prince.

Simply put Khorne Deamon princes suck when compared to a Deamon Prince with warptime. It fills the exact same role as a warp time prince, is in no way better, and is an inferior CC combatant.

Noise Marines are a good unit, they just have different uses and tactics than zerkers or plague marines. They have 2 good uses.

#1 Hold an objective while in cover. Place an objective in cover and set up a squad with sonic blasters and a blast master to hold it. With a 4+ cover save and 3+ armor save they are not squishy, the have a lot of firepower, and they are a fearless unit.

#2 Jump a squad out of a Rhino. Even with their sonic blasters they are I5 and still have a bolt pistol and cc weapon so they get to shoot an assault 2 weapon and then charge with 3 Initiative 5 attacks. In this squad dump the blastmaster for a doom siren and it's an excellent marine killing unit.

**J.Black**

The WH list has some awful crap in it:

Sisters Repentia, sure they get holy rage and eviscerators, shame they'll be wiped out by anything even approaching competence in CC before they get to swing.

Penitent Engines, being av11 and open-topped is really just asking for trouble especially when their only viable tactic (indeed, rules-enforced tactic) is charging headlong towards the enemy gunline. And how much do you have to pay for this? 80 points :(

I see someone mentioned swooping hawks, i'll go one further and mention Baharroth. 200pts for what? a blast marker every turn? some s4 pw attacks? wewt :(

**Volkov**

Penitent Engines, being av11 and open-topped is really just asking for trouble especially when their only viable tactic (indeed, rules-enforced tactic) is charging headlong towards the enemy gunline. And how much do you have to pay for this? 80 points :(

I have found the only use for penitent engines. The problem is it just requires two armies. We often do 2vs2 games and my WH friend will fight along side my guard, and he has 6 penitent engines he holds in reserve and the enemy will rush headlong at us and right as they smash into our gun line the penitent engines come running in from the board edge and rip up crap

**dumplingman**

I find it hard to find any unit worse than sisters repentia

overcosted T3 4+ save always strikes last

Also warp beast packs are pretty low on the list too: tiny unit terrible save completely worthless

**40kenthusiast**

I find it hilarious that you can take a Khornate Daemon Prince in WHFB Warriors of Chaos, Daemons of Chaos, and in 40k Daemons of Chaos and Chaos Space Marines, and in all those codexes it isn't a good idea even once. Harsh.

There's even an awesome Forge World model (guy with big pole axe).

**I grappled the shoggoth**

penitent engines can be down right scary at times. My friend Kevin runs 9 of them, and I know I dont want to see that across the table from me. Sure they are av 11 open topped, but its a unit you have to deal with.

Throw a squad of 3 in a guard army and give them out flank ala creed.

**wuestenfux**

Chaos Spawns.
Hellions - I never had any success with them.

**Reecius**

Some of these "worst" unit nominations had me laughing! I guess it really just comes down to how you use a unit. Everyone's experience is different.

Chaos Lords are the worst unit in the game? Really? Wow, that is crazy. A lord on a bike with MoN and a Nurgle daemon weapon is NASTY. A guy in our group, who is one of the best players I have ever met, uses one in his list and routinely put a beat stick on people.

Lord with MoK, jump pack and LC's is a boat load of hurt too.

The reason you don't see lords more often is because lash sorcerers and warptime princes are so much better for the points. Lords aren't weak, just less powerful.

Penitent Engines are great too, if taken en masse. I have lost games to those stupid things multiple times because they are across the board in two turns and hacking gak apart. They aren't the greatest, but certainly not the worst.

And wave serpents are the worst transport? That is nuts! They are awesome! Super fast, crazy hard to kill, what more would someone want?

I guess it just comes down to how you play to answer that question. I am sure there are people out there who can find a use for any unit.

If I had to choose though, I would say Daemonhosts.

**olympia**

Gretchin are a great unit. Flash Gitz, on the other, eat @#$^

**O'shovah**

+ 1 for the Space Pope.
The only time Furious charge and preffered help is with a Farsight deathbomb unit (can't be fielded in the same army) and a maxed kroot unit (not caring about if the Space Pope dies or not).

**Kveldulv**

Kveldulv wrote:Of course, the Lord packs a lot of whupass, but he is never viable in a list.

olympia wrote:The reason you don't see lords more often is because lash sorcerers and warptime princes are so much better for the points. Lords aren't weak, just less powerful.

Yep, I agree! I play Orks, but I meet chaos marines quite often and they're always boring lash/plague marines/oblits. That's just how their codex is, I guess

And yes, I can't name a worse unit than Aun'va, so the "worst unit in the game"-discourse is no longer as interesting as "the worst unit in each codex". And let me throw a torch in here: Every time the SW player I regularly meet field Bjørn The Fellhanded all he gets is hassle. Bjørn gets shot up first, and with some luck SW will spend the rest of the game trying not to loose an objective.

**RedFloyd90**

Why do people bash the fire warrior all the time? I would hesitate to say they are one of the best troops around. They get the best basic ranged weapon, possibly contested by the gauss rifle, decent armor, for a reasonable price.

Here's what I keep hearing people say.

Theyre too fragile. oh waaah, go play space marines then, what armies in the game other than necrons, SoB and the numerous variants of space marines has better than 3T 4Sv.
If you're going to consider anything not in power armor as being too fragile to possibly play, youre powergaming too much and should just stick with your undercosted OP space wolves.

They suck in CC. well, of course they do, don't let them get assaulted, tau take more finesse and dodging than brute force.

They cost too much, not realy.... youre getting a guardsman with 4+ armor and a S5 AP5 30" range gun for 5 more points, who cares about weakening them in CC with lower I, and WS when youre playing an army that by definition loses CC.

They can't shoot well, you have two choices here, use markerlights or volume of fire to fix that. Once again, these arent space marines where 1 squad can destroy everything, you have to use different tactics and combine arms. Send a hammerhead's blast and 6 BC shots into something then mop them up with rapid fire FW's.

for long range, you can add a marker light to the squad for a small cost on the ui you should already have bought, and for a little more, let him shoot his rifle as well as his ML, send 2 squads at max range into something, kill a few things, get a ML hit or two, then send that crisis team or stealth team into them with extra BS

the only reason people think FW's suck is because they don't bother to use tactics or synergy in their armies, that doesn't work in most armies, especially not tau

On the subject of Pathfinder's, i was somewhat morbid about them until i started thinking about them as FW's with carbines for 2 points more, that can outflank in their devilfish, this seems like a good tactic, take a squad or two, outflank them, fly on, drop out into cover, shoot something up with some long range help from rifle FW's, crisis suits, or HH's. then unleash the markerlights next turn. plus i have been informed that pinning is done per weapon that does a pinning wound, not a squad that does a pinning wound. so if pathfinder's do 4 unsaved wounds, obviously from 4 diff carbines, that's 4 pinning tests. The way pinning is worded is a little vague, but i'm pretty sure that is the way it works.

And how is the pathfinder's devilfish the worst transport? if you want to use it for FW's, just put them in it 1st turn, its the same price, and you can reroll scatter dice on deepstrike, very nice for TL flamer/melta crisis squads dropping in to assassinate hordes of infantry or tanks.

People should really think about tactics and synergy instead of playing a unit like MEQs before declaring them worthless

PS, i will grant that aun va sucks, a lot, but regular ethereals can be handy, just have to be very careful. one of the tricks that's fun with them is to use them to reroll passed morale in melee, let the enemy sweep your FW's that get caught during their turn so that you can immediately open up on them before they can move into cover or assault again

**Daemon-Archon Ren**

Just because CSM have amazing HQ choices doesn't mean the Lord is instantly the "Worst Unit in 40K". Quite contrary, Chaos have some of the BEST hqs in the game, and just because one strat that uses all of your HQ choices seems best with CSM, doesnt make the lord any worse, I can names a few units from the CSM dex alone that pale in comparison to the Chaos Lord;

i.e

Summoned Lesser Daemons

Thousand Sons (Extremely point inefficient, especially when Plague Marines are SO much better)

Chaos Dreadnaught

Chaos Terminators (there is a reason the strat with them is called TermiCIDE)

Chaos Spawn is not on that list in my opinion because while it costs 40 points, it takes up no space in your Force Org, and really should only be taken as filler points (I.E you have all the upgrades you need and you have the extra 40-160 points, as nothing decent in the dex costs <150pts). Also keep in mind that the same statline comes free with the Gift of Chaos spell, which could actually pay for itself in a single cast, exampe CSM vs CSM ahriman casts GoC on Abadon x3, 3 tests should pass, you should beat his T5 by the second roll, either way, your 250 pts just IKed 275pts and gave you a 40pt model with S5 T5 W3 AD6.... kinda win if you ask me.

Hellions are definately up there for worst unit in the game, however all and all, my vote for the worst Unit in the game would have to be Codex: Black Templars

**I grappled the shoggoth**

How the hell arent chaos terminators good. They are better then TH/SS terminators under some situations. Full claw slaanesh termies are monstrous to fight in hand to hand. Same for a squad of 5 with combi melta hopping out of a raider.

**Daemon-Archon Ren**

I grappled the shoggoth wrote:How the hell arent chaos terminators good. They are better then TH/SS terminators under some situations. Full claw slaanesh termies are monstrous to fight in hand to hand. Same for a squad of 5 with combi melta hopping out of a raider.

And with the slannesh ones, you are wounding T5 on 5+s (plaguemarines, bikers, orcs, Tyranids, things you would be meleeing. Inorder to get close to the space marine equivalent, you have to BUY powerfists (15 each) and BUY Mark of Tzeentch (35 points for the squad) to give you a 4+ save where Space Marines get the same free.

As for shooty, granted we have a bit more customisation with our termies, but against any army thats worth their salt, if you are getting close enough with normal dakka termies (or worse, Combi-Melta single claw/Chainfist) those termies are as good as dead, meaning the 1 vehicle or 5 models you are killing better be worth over 200 points, or you have officially lost points (assuming you didnt take any melee upgrades)

Again, chaos really shines in its HQs and Heavy support (and plaguemarines).

**bravelybravesirrobin**

Chaos Termies are an average as an assault specialist and a good as a shooty unit. Termicide works for them as do Landraiders. Far from as broken as Thunderstorm termies but pretty good in limited roles.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Luke_Prowler wrote:Not really. For the same points as a trukk, you can get better armor and count as a tank without taking reinforced ram. run it with a KFF mek and you got a more survivable vehicle that can tank shock something after dropping the cargo.

Uses a heavy slot.

Hey, wanna buy a rhino for a heavy slot?

No, no I do not.

Its stats are fine, its a rhino (that might go out of control) with open-topped which is great for a transport. The only problem is that it takes up heavy slots that couldbe used for kanz, kannonz or battlewagons.

**ZacktheChaosChild**

Kveldulv wrote:
ZacktheChaosChild wrote:
Kveldulv wrote:

Therefore, I nominate the Chaos Lord.

*facepalm*

You best be trolling.

Many people use the Chaos Lord and they are very competitive.

I see your facepalm, and raise you one!

Show me a tournament-winning list with Chaos Lords in it. I have stated my arguments against them, now state your arguments for them.

Of course, the Lord packs a lot of whupass, but he is never viable in a list. Grots are.

Well I can't find you a tourney winning list with one because I don't know where to look, but Lords are great in my opinion. Many special characters are good, but in most cases you can make the Lord as good at the job or better. Yeah, a Daemon Prince is the more "competitive" choice, mbut for whoever for whatever reason doesn't want one, the Lord is a fun one to play, and still kicks ass. IMO, he is far from being useless.

And whoever said that noise Marines are bad has obviously never played against them. I can make you cry with Noise Marines.

Sonic Blasters: Bolters that can rapid fire at the full 24" and still asault (which, by the way, they will almost always go first in, and hard).

Blastmasters: Just scary.

Doom Siren: a S5 AP3 flamer.

Noise Marines are amazing.

**bravelybravesirrobin**

RedFloyd90 wrote:Why do people bash the fire warrior all the time? I would hesitate to say they are one of the best troops around. They get the best basic ranged weapon, possibly contested by the gauss rifle, decent armor, for a reasonable price.

2 reasons really.

1 - they are overcosted. 11 pts is the same as a Sister of Battle. On the Tau side you get the pros of a longer ranged (by 6") and stronger gun, access to bonding, defensive grenades and the possibility of markerlights and pinning but lose

1 worse armour save
1 worse BS
1 worse init
1 worse WS
access to specialist weapon upgrades like flamers, heavy flamers and meltas
a squad specialist who can take cc upgrade equipment
book of st lucius which is better than bonding
faith which further lets them enhance the role of their specialist equipment

Seriously compare that statline with sisters, eldar, guard or orks and you start to realise that firewarriors are quite horrendously overcosted.

2 - They don't really do anything much. They are focused on killing the enemy's basic troops (with a sideline in really piss weak vehicles) which is fine. Generally troop guns are used to kill other enemy troops. The problem is they aren't very good at it. They need support from the rest of the army (quite rightly so as this is the Tau design ethos) in the form of markerlights, a transport (an expensive one) to let them get to where they can rapid fire, other support units to soften up or finish off the enemy (i.e. another fire warrior squad or a crisis suit team in your example) all of which raises their effective cost to do a job that isn't that essential. You could just equip your crisis teams for troop killing and send them off on their own really rather than spending a lot of pts and several units trying to force fire warriors to be good at that role.

Compare them to troops in other armies which are either good enough to kill the enemy without much support (Orks, Grey Hunters, Berserkers, Genestealers, Bloodletters) able to be equipped with specialist tools to give them a defined role (IG vets, Normal Marines, Dark Eldar) or tough enough/stealthy enough to be a good objective holder (Plague Marines, Pathfinders, Scouts) and Fire Warriors which are overcosted, limited to one job and unable to do that job without support look pretty rubbish.

The key to fixing them though whilst remaining in the Tau design ethos is making the units they synergise with much more attractive and cost effective (devilfish, markerlights) along with probably a slight pts decrease.

**Asherian Command**

Rippers...