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The Devilfish and flyers are only bad in comparison. Without riptides in the army they would be fielded more often, but most tau armies I've seen depend on spamming riptides or a huge blob of suits.

Had the Tau book not been so free with support systems, and not included riptides you would see more of the flyers and the fish.

As it is, the riptides need to be about 200 points base, have access to only one system, and not be joinable. Then they would be less of a mandatory choice.

Phanixis wrote:
The shortcomings of Devilfish and flyers have nothing to do with Riptides. Devilfish were already lackluster and overpriced under 5e and 6e rules, long before Riptides were introduced, and having the Tau vehicle armory gutted in the latest codex certainly did not help matters. As for the flyers, they are simply rubbish, and would be losing out to hammerheads and crisis suits if they weren't losing out to riptides. Had flyers comparable to the Vendetta or even the Stormraven been available in the Tau army, you would see them fielded. Heck, flyers often are fielded in with Tau armies, they just happened to be allied flyers, which are far, far better than the codex flyers.

IG flyers are currently undercoated due to being an old codex. The Razorfish is broadly similar in cost and performance to the Stormtalon and DA flyers. The transport capacity of the Stormraven is lost on the Tau, they already have fairly mobile units. Its weaponry isn't much better stock, again broadly equivalent to a razroshark, but the upgrades make it more effective at anti-vehicle. Tau flyers have turreted weapons, so they have fewer issues keeping units in line of sight. The 30' range on most of their weapons, on a flyer, means that you will pretty much always have line of sight on a target and you don't need to be as risky with maneuvering like the eldar or SM ones.
Both the Tau flyers give you a large blast high strength attack in the fast attack slot. None of the other fast attack choices give you that option. Aside from pathfinders hiding in cover, none of the FA choices are as resilient as a flyer as well.

So from a codex perspective I think they would be a viable addition. One or two to supplement your HS slots firepower by hitting an enemy in the backfield. However, as I said, why waste points on them when a Riptide can drop an S9, AP2 ignores cover large blast anywhere in line of sight, and has skyfire and interceptor? Properly set up and used, a riptide currently takes the entirety of most armies long range fire to bring down in a turn or two, and retains its effectiveness throughout. Riptdies are good against any opponent, and are resilient against any opponent. Close combat is their only weakness, and even that is mitigated somewhat by overwatch tau and monstrous creature rules.

Without the riptide crutch, Tau players would find the flyers much more appealing.