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Throughout the past editions of 40k, hiding behind cover somehow always has been a top priority for almost every gamer out there.

90% of people would sacrifice offensive army effectivity (maneuverability, LoS, etc.) for defensive bonuses in the form of cover saves. I have played countless games where people hid almost all their stuff and spent their first turn just maneuvering things into position to get LoS for turn 2 afterwards.

Now this has always been a viable thing, but when 7th edition dropped and took an obnoxious dump all over ruins (and their multi-levelness), I've kinda given up on them now. What is the point of hiding 10 men in a 3 story ruin if all 10 can be targeted by a single Plasmacannon now? And if markerlights happen to be nearby, well thats it.

Its always blast weapons that do the most damage - and deploying in ruins usually means your dudes are cramped in tight quarters anyway. While ruins still provide good cover against non-blast weapons, these usually tend to never do as much damage as blast weapons.

I would now rather have all my infantry deployed where they have the best LoS (even if this means they are completely out in the open) and space them out evenly to minimize blast damage as much as possible, and if I get first turn, all the better!

Thoughts?

The change to blast weapons was very, very, VERY badly needed. 6th ed basically had ruins be invincible bastions of impregnability +10, while blast weapons were made completely hopeless.

Now that they've fixed it, they didn't make ruins worthless, they just stopped making them ludicrously overpowered. Like they used to be.

Ruins still give you a lot. They still give you a good cover save. They still do it directionally with a small footprint, which means you can still move your army around freely without getting stuck on terrain. They still allow you a higher vantage point, which allows your shooting units to ignore other pieces of terrain for free.

They're still the best terrain in the game, it's just now they finally have something that stands a chance against them for once, and there's an actual risk for taking them.

It works when we've played it. A 50/50 chance to ignore damage vs template weapons hitting more.

It also makes more sense to me as I visualise it - it's a ruin from a mortar strike, so it shouldn't then only damage the remaining roof. And flamers stick/run along things to cover complete areas.

That said, getting hit with a lot of ignore cover blast weapons in ruins would be a pain. Perhaps the issue is more with 'ignores cover' on certain weapons