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So, in contrast to the Eldar Bikes debate (yowza!), what do people think of Distort weapons (S10 currently) becoming SD?

Recall that Distort tends to be low ROF, short range.

I'm not sure that it will change much. Scythes would need something different sure, but it won't have a huge effect on their killing power.

What's the difference in survivability between eating 5 S10 shots or 5 SD shots at short range?

People think they'll cleave through hulls, but isn't a WK going to be about 50/50 chance of hurting a Chimera in one round of shooting?

The artillery is scary, but 24" Artillery rules means its predictable and static.

What do y'all think?

48 inches isn't really "short range", especially not when it is mounted on a Wraithknight in the form of its Heavy Wraithcannon.

The difference? The difference lies in vehicles.
5 S10 shots can hurt a LR, but are unlikely to destroy it.
5 S: D shots will outright remove it from the game.

Things get even worse if you go into Superheavies.

S: D is downright broken and should NOT be on such models, ever.

But ROF2 for the pair is quite low for a gargantuan creature, don't you think?

Direct fire, so 1/3 miss, and each shot can only damage once.

So all Distortion weapons are now STD?

Geeze.

They reeeeeeallly want people to accept Apoc stuff dont they.
I think it will be fine.

There are a few things that really need a good D ing. like those 2++ rerollable invul guys and 3++ 4+++ Wraiths.

S10 vs LR
5x(2/3)(1/3)(1/3) = 2/27 outright explodes
5x(2/3)(1/2) = 5/3 HP

SD vs LR
5x(2/3)(1/6) = 10/18 of the D effect
5x(2/3)(2/3) = 20/9 HP

Goes from less than 10% chance to a little over half of killing a LR, and a 33% increased HP loss rate

I should have run the numbers. But Melts vs LR:
5X(2/3)(~.6)(1/3) = 6/9 chance to pop a LR
5x(2/3)(~.7) = 7/3 HP, or 21/9

Melts Drop works better, for fewer points, than either new or old Wraithguard at killing LRs.

So to counter the 3++ 4+++ Wraiths we give Eldar Str D? way to go GW!

I keep wondering how long it's going to be at this point to another 3E style reboot

 Kanluwen wrote:
48 inches isn't really "short range", especially not when it is mounted on a Wraithknight in the form of its Heavy Wraithcannon.

Yeah, 48" stretches across my 4'x4' table.

For the heavy wraith cannons (36" range) on the WK, how does that compare to, say, equal points of LasPreds? You get 2 shots, at who knows what pricepoint?

For Wraithguard, its 12" range, one shot each.

For Artillery, its 24" range, no movement.

36" is a decent range, but relatively short for super heavy class weaponry. And quite low volume for the points. What is it, 3 WK shooting a tank has the same chance to auto-delete it as 5 melta guns, or something like that?

yeah I forsee this change shooting the wraithknights points up considerably. expect it to be 400+ points

It does sound like it should be 400+ points. But how much of the change do you think is due to actual-D instead of last edition's fake-D?

Sorry, my numbers are fail. I was treating non-6s as auto-not-explodes, which isn't accurate.

Its still "only" still less than 2 Meltas, I think.

And even at its current price point, tri-las Preds are much, much scarrier shooting threats than WKs unless you're doing something like 2++ rerollable.

And I'm still not seeing how Wraithcannon WG change much, compared to what they used to do. Probably more expensive, but a full unit of S10AP1 generally killed things before (although less likely vs vehicles than Melta squads, despite their points).

It's all well and good saying 'I don't think it's too bad' in a vacuum, but a competitive Eldar army will probably have a tonne of Jetbikes, strD weapons out the wazoo, and whatever else they can fit in... It's not gonna be a one or the other deal, you're probably going to have to deal with a lot of very potent threats at the same time.

Hilarious I realized that if other eldar units get any form of D we will never see wraithknights as eldar suddenly become the perfect counter to eldar.

Oh, I'd rather they didn't get the upgrade. I don't think I needed it (but they always kinda had D-but-not weapons). But I don't think its quite as impactful *or* pants-on-head as last book's Serpent Shield, or the new SL spam bikes.

When we get the codex, its possible (but unlikely) it may even have been done right somehow.

From what I understand of Eldar culture, things getting D is a pretty rare thing. Hell, the WK has had to wait a few thousand years for its chance, I'm not sure the trade-off was worth it.

St D is soooo much more potent in comparison to St 10. The D sticks it to all vehicles (even a 1 results in a hull point loss), MCs of all types (Flying and Garg included), and anything with Eternal Warrior.

My sincere hope is GW manages to balance this out by making Distort weapons have a form of Gets Hot that actually makes the firing unit take the D hit (a vortex blast would be even better), and still couple that with a significant price hike.

 KaptinBadrukk wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
48 inches isn't really "short range", especially not when it is mounted on a Wraithknight in the form of its Heavy Wraithcannon.

Yeah, 48" stretches across my 4'x4' table.

You dont by chance play orks do you? the points values and abilities of the units are designed for a 4'/6' table. if you go smaller, you give the horde armies like orks and nids a huge advantage just as if you go 2 feet larger, you give the shooty armies like tau and guard a huge advantage.

I'm oping at the very least to see a huge points hike (Id rather they be left out altogether of course.

I could care less about the 12" guns on wraithguard. Even the WK only gets 2 (split fire) shots, if it works like it does now. I'm more worried about str D flamers in a deep striking DE raider, or frigging str D flamer overwatch. And 55 points for iron-tough artillery, small blast, str D, BARRAGE is CRAZY. Even with only 24" range, that's devastating.

I mean, this is all conjecture and we don't know exactly how things will shake out. But taking current points values, ranges, and templates from D-scythe weapons and changing them to straight D is just insane.

In general, I don't mind Str D melee. Str D ranged is great. Str D ranged templates (blast or flamers) are incredibly good. Being able to spam str D ranged templates (like revenant titans) is simply game breaking. Being able to spam str D flamers in open-topped transports and artillery pieces would similarly be..........bad. Very very bad.