Alright, fact based argument only.
Iranna wrote:
So what you're saying is, you want to pay 105 points to:
A) Make a support caster slightly better in melee, somewhere which he really doesn't wish to be in the first place.
B) Have a trait which forces you to castle up your units to make full use of it.
C) Have things which any normal seer can get access to?
No, I'm not saying that. I said I'm paying 105 points for 1 extra Psychic power, the Spirit-link special rule, the ability to redeploy D3 units, AP3 and Force to go with Fleshbane, the Stealth trait, and the T4/3++ (Without having to be stuck on a Jetbike), and the Runes of Warding, and the Runes of Witnessing. Your attempt at a summary which leaves out plenty of the benefits of these factors is disingenuous. Regarding your points.
A) AP3 and Force is not slightly better, it is significantly better, and I wish him to be there if it means (a) I win the resulting combat/push a unit of an objective and (b) I can eliminate targets like
MCs not immune to
ID, or act as area denial to them. Precognition is a huge force multiplier here, but with 4 rolls on Divination he has that more than not. Even without Div, the fact he is AP3 and Force at I5 is enough to offer a genuine choice to the opponent, where assaulting a Farseer or not is no choice.
B) It's 12" from him on the ground, or 12" from a Serpent Hull. That's 24" of space in which to place your Serpents. If you're playing a fast shooting/wave serpent hull based army with redeploy vulnerable to assault, refused flank is a more than valid tactic anyway.
C) A normal seer on a Jetbike, with Stone of Anath'lan, and both Runes, costs 155 points. From there, it's 50 points for a Power, the melee ability, the redeploy the 3++ Invul, no Stone drawback, and the trait. It's generally best to just take Eldrad rather than try and recreate something not even half as effective for 50 points less.
So your suggesting that one puts Eldrad in a Wave Serpent? The thing which stops all of his ML4 glory from affecting anything other than his own transport and unit inside said transport. By doing so, Eldrad will be unable to assist the rest of your army until turn 3 due to the rules regarding Blessings and Maledictions:
Turn 1 - Cast limited psychic powers -Drive
Turn 2 - Cast limited psychic powers -Get out
Turn 3 - You are now free to buff the army.
I didn't realise you liked to invest 200+pts for a character who will only be buffing a fraction of your army for half of the game.
First, You're unlikely to cast Maledictions Turn 1, and quite possibly Turn 2.
Second, should you want to, you can start outside a Waveserpent/s Turn one and cast Blessings to full effect, get in, and move with no restriction.
Third and Fourth, Four of the Divination tree powers are cast-on-psyker powers, and if you're travelling with something significant in your serpent, that's probably what you want to buff anyway.
Fifth, you can choose not to ride in the Waveserpent. This generally comes into effect against armies like Daemons and Tyranids, but it can be pulled anytime you're confident of not getting shot off the table.
1) The Eldar Warlord Traits are sub-par at best and yes, whilst Eldrad may come with the best of the bunch there's plenty in a standard competitive scene that will just simply ignore a 2+ cover, especially when you want to Turbo-boost Eldrad right in their face:
-Heldrake: Vector Strike.
-Codex Tau: Ooodles upon oodles of Ignores Cover in this book.
-Other Wave Serpents: Pretty self-explanatory.
- Necron Wraithwing: One charge equals a dead Wave Serpent.
- IG Hydras: 2+ cover is nothing when you don't get it.
- Ignores Cover Horror blob: So many S6 shots that your Serpent Shield is literally nothing to them.
The list goes on. Every army that 6th edition has churned out has an answer to Cover Saves and subsequently, Wave Serpents. This trend will only continue.
I'm not sure how to reconcile this with a Mantle Farseer, which I think is one of the worst ways to run a Farseer, but you seem to like. The Mantle Farseer forgoes any cast on psyker powers, and dies to Perfect Timing/Blast Masters/Tau, it's not very good.
-Against Helldrakes, the best answer is being able to manipulate your reserves appropriately to counter. Eldrad gives the best odds of obtaining successful reserve manipulation in the codex, so it's a win here, regardless of what else he brings to the table should you matchup with Helldrakes. However, it does work on Termicide, it does work on Obliterators, it does work on the general Melta/Plasma found in Chaos, and it does work on allied Necron Fliers.
-Codex Tau, Eldar have good answers to Pathfinders, Tetras, and with a bit of luck, Skyray thanks to Wraithknight. So markerlights tend to end up concentrated around the
HQ choice, which becomes a target. They quickly lose the ability to ignore all the cover all the time, and if they are spending two 'lights to remove a save, they're not boosting
BS elsewhere.
-Other Waveserpents, it's a mirror match. Having Eldrad over the seer in a mirror gives you some control over their Wraithknights and you can out-reserve them better.
-Necron Wraithwing, that's
CC, and Stealth works wonders vs their Fliers.
-Hydras I've never seen. What about all the other
IG firepower?
-Ignores cover Horror Blob. I don't put much stock in this as a game turning threat to a Waveserpent based army, Plus, it's good to have that ML4 and Force come into play vs Daemons.
2) And what armies will typically be running a MC-heavy list? Tyranids and Daemons spring to mind.
If facing Tyranids, the Swarmlord alone has a very high chance of rolling IA, not to mention any other lvl 3 Tervigons floating around.
If Eldrad gets into combat with a beastie from the Daemons codex you can be pretty much assured he'll lose that combat. Especially considering that it's quite easy for a Lord of Chance to get a 2++ re-rollable save. That'll beat a Fortuned 3++ anyday I'm afraid.
3) If you're suggesting that one who decides not to risk not getting a particular power they need and instead rely on the Primaris Powers - which they are guaranteed -lack the strategic/analytical brainpower of those who do then I'm afraid you know very little about this game. The more dice rolls one can avoid making, the more one can control the game. By designing a list reliant upon psychic powers you are guaranteed to get you can't be caught out when you don't get the powers you need.
Also, I don't know what Jetseers you've seen, but my Farseer will always have a 2+ re-rollable cover save regardless of whether I go first or not. Even with her base partially in area terrain, my Farseer is practically immune to anything but Ignores Cover weaponry thanks to the Mantle. She can also buff the rest of the army whilst retaining mobility without the need to sacrifice one for the other.
4) No arguments here.
5) Sure you can get use out of the Runes, but a lot of the time they're redundant (more so Witnessing rather than Warding). Most of the time, a normal Farseer will be denying on a 4+ anyway and she only has a 1/18 chance of failing a psychic test per game. That's approximately 1 every 6 turns. Those 25pts could always go somewhere else.
2) And Eldar Wraithknights, and Tau Riptides. Once you're precoged up, you can put your 3++ rerollable up against the Riptide hit on 5's 2+ save no probs, Against the LVL3's you mentioned, it's a good time to be LVL4, 5+ is a lot worse than 4+. Also, Precog Eldrad does take out non-
IA Daemons. I don't see Swarmlord much over 2x Flying
HT.
3) I disagree entirely, being successful with Eldar (placing in a tournament) isn't about avoiding dice rolls, it's about risk management, giving yourself the options and tools to beat the best the other codexes can throw down, and a little bit of luck. A seer aiming for 3 Primaris powers is not enough to carry an Eldar Army to a win over the best lists it can face, compared to the toolbox options the table powers can provide. The best Eldar approach is to design a list that can stand a few setbacks on the psychic powers roll phase, but most importantly can leverage the most from the potential game changers available to it when they arise. Primaris fixated players don't give enough thought to that second point in their list design.
This is also why 4 powers on one table is significantly better than 3 when it comes to list design. As in the 50% vs 66%.
5) You want to go further on RoWit with a probability distribution for number of failures. Napkin math says taking Runes of Witnessing doubles the amount of games you play without failing a Psychic test. Pantsonhead did the math awhile ago.
Farseer with RoWiT gets 15 powers off without a hitch (except maybe the occasional Perils on double 1s) in
27% of games. He whiffs one out of 15 tests in
37% of games, two in
24% of games, three in
9% of games, and four in
3% of games.
Let's suppose we use RoW on the very first failure each game (actually we would be able to decide if a power is really worth trying to save this way, but that just makes RoW even better). Now the Farseer succeeds in getting off every single power in
61% of games. He whiffs one out of the 15 tests in
25% of games, two in
10% of games, three in
3% of games, and four in <
1% of games.
It can also be used to provide super-reliablity on a key power. If you cast a single power 5 times in a row, you go from 35% chance of a failure to 8%.
So 15 points for a 4 power seer is a good deal.
For Runes/Warding, Last thing you want when you're Eldar is losing control at a key moment of the game, which can certainly happen if the enemy has Misfortune, or Hallucination, or Doom type powers. Doesn't come up all the time, but since Eldrad couples best with other strong units to cast buffs on, the 2+ matters when this crops up. It's practically a free bonus since he gets plenty of value for the other stuff.
So what type of army
can Eldrad bring some benefit to? Here is the last list I took to a 4 game tournament, it's got some fat and needs rejigging for sure, not a lean machine yet. May even take it in a different direction.
HQ
/Eldrad, 205 points
/Spiritseer, 70 points
Troops
/10 Guardians, 90 points
/Dedicated Waveserpent, T-L Scatter Lasers, Holofields, Shuriken Cannon, 145 points
/10 Guardians, 90 points
/Dedicated Waveserpent, T-L Scatter Lasers, Holofields, Shuriken Cannon, 145 points
Elites
/10 Fire Dragons, Exarch, Firepike, Fastshot, Iron Resolve, 260 points
/Dedicated Waveserpent, T-L Scatter Lasers, Holofields, Shuriken Cannon, 145 points
Fast Attack
/Crimson Hunter, 160 points
/Crimson Hunter, 160 points
/5 Warp Spiders, Exarch, Spinneret Rifle, Fast Shot, Marksman's eye, 140 points
Heavy Support
/WraithKnight, 2 Heavy Wraithcannons, 240 points
1850
Here is the field, I am 3rd, opponents in bold, Tau, Flying Circus Daemons, Grinder/Dog Daemons, Serpent/Suncannon Knight/Aegis Eldar. The Tau game was a draw. Out of the 5 Eldar, I played Eldrad, the rest played Jetbike Seers.
1 Necrons
2 Chaos Space Marines
3 Eldar
4 Tau
5 Daemons
6 Tau
7 Tyranids
8 Tau
9 Eldar
10 Chaos Space Marines
11 Eldar
12 Tau
13 Daemons
14 Dark Angels- Ravenwing
15 Daemons
16 Blood Angels
17 Eldar
18 Eldar
19 Tau
20 Dark Angels- Deathwing
21 Space Wolves Allied Grey Knights
22 Space Wolves Allied Tau
23 Imperial Guard
24 Dark Angels- Deathwing
25 Blood Angels Allied Tau
26 Necrons
27 Space Marines- Imperial Fists
28 Imperial Guard
29 Space Marines- Salamanders
30 Dark Angels
Divination/Fire Dragons strategy was strong, Telepathy vs Flying Circus was good too. I can say with confidence if this particular list had a Mantle/Bike Farseer instead of Eldrad, or spent 205 points elsewhere on the
FOC, it would not have placed in the top 10.
It's not enough to just take the most effective guns for the least points per gun while avoiding situationals and do well with this Eldar 'dex. You do need some utility, even if sometimes some of it is 'wasted'. You need to ask more questions than "I shoot Wave Serpents and guided Warwalkers at you and you die" and you need to have the potential to answer the 'what-ifs' in the meta.
2k (lotsa spiders) 
3k (lotsa LR's)
It's not enough to just take the most effective guns for the least points per gun while avoiding situationals and do well with this Eldar 'dex. You do need some utility, even if sometimes some of it is 'wasted'. You need to ask more questions than "I shoot Wave Serpents and guided Warwalkers at you and you die" and you need to have the potential to answer the 'what-ifs' in the meta. 