Is the defiler overcosted?

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**Traditio**

Simple question:

I made a comment to a Khorne Demon Kin player that defilers are probably one of the stronger unit selections in his codex; however, it's still overpriced for what it does.

My reasoning? He's paying 5th edition prices for a 7th edition meta.

Was my comment right? Wrong?

Opinions?

**MarsNZ**

It's been discussed dozens of times and yes it costs too much.

**Captyn_Bob**

Yes. Especially the daemonkin version, as you can take a soul grinder in the same slot, which is just better.

**CrownAxe**

Yes you are completely wrong. The defiler is one of the worst units in the codex. Its very expensive, slow, fragile, and doesn't do a lot of damage. Everything it wants to do a Soul Grinder will do better and for cheaper.

**Sgt. Cortez**

If it had armour 13 like the soulgrinder or the 45pt. cheaper plague hulk, it might be worth its points. Still expensive, but not massively overcosted.

**lessthanjeff**

I recently sold my defiler and I pretend the entry isn't even in my codex anymore. Maulerfiends and Soulgrinders are pretty solid, I can't say the same about a defiler with a straight face. There is not a single situation that I can think of where I'd rather take a defiler over the other options.

**Slayer-Fan123**

I can't really think of anything the Defiler does better than the Soul Grinder except give up KP more easily.

**the_scotsman**

You're dead wrong, the defiler is like an Olympic athlete of awful:

1) it's slow and gets fethed by VDT like all non-SH walkers

2) it has an incredibly inefficient ranged weapon that turns off all its other ranged weapons like a leman Russ

3) AND it pays bonkers prices to be a unit type that might just go *poof* like a land raider.

Defilers were purposefully neutered to sell new dinobots. This is consistent with GWs rules sales strategy: for the privileged dexes, releases are made with rules so bonkers people have to buy them (see riptide stormsurge wind riders centurions wulfen etc)

And for the reject dexes, new releases are given bad rules and old competing units are nerfed to oblivion to make them the only option (see Ork Meganobz w/ Nobz nerf, was bomb with all other flyer nerf, Taurox with Chimera nerf, and dinobots with defiler nerf.)

If it's hard to picture imagine if every release for space marines were like the new Stormhawk release.

**coblen**

Defilers are nearly twice the points they should be. I don't know if I would even take it at 125 points. Mauler fiends are better assault units, and forge fiends are better shooting units. They are both cheaper, in the same slot and less confused about their role in life.

**BoomWolf**

Oh ffs another conspiracy theorist.

The defiler wasn't made bad to sell new models, it was made bad because GW rules team are incompetent. For every new powerful model there is another not worth fielding (tau jet got released alongside the riptide after all, and is hardly good)
Had he been nerfed with the intention to sell the (awesome looking) dinos, they would at the very least bother making the dinos good to begin with.

As for the defiler, it sucks. It pays full price for being an artillery platform, and full price if a melee Walker and full price of genetic dakka tank, despite the fact it only does one at a time.
A defiler at 100 points would have been overpowered as hell, but he's 195, and there he just sucks.

150 points is probably where it belongs. The dinos also need a price drop (at least the forgefiend)

**Badablack**

The defiler does have a few things over soulgrinders. It gets daemon forge and Iwnd, can have twice as many attacks, power flails make it stronger in cc, and it can take almost every upgrade in the book. That said, you're paying too much for a platform that wants to do everything and thus does nothing.
Drop its cost 120 points but start it with no weapons or upgrades, make it the chaos lord of walkers, completely customizable. The kit can support it, just throw something like a battering ram upgrade in the sprue to replace the cannon for melee builds. Then you could make a ton of cool variants like mass flamers or cheap cannon platforms or hammer of wrath monstrosities. It just takes the writer spending more than 10 seconds copy pasting the previous rules, instead of shoving a new big kit out revamp the old kit. They'd save money on molds and everyone else would get to go wild with conversions again.

**Slayer-Fan123**

Doesn't the Soul Grinder have IWND? And Daemonforge is NOT worth that many points, so you can't use that as a justification.

**MechaEmperor7000**

The Defiler doesn't know what he wants to be and it's mainly due to the battle cannon mounted in his chest. Use it as an Artillery platform and you're paying for the walker and melee stats for nothing. Gun upgrades also don't work as well as you'd hope whenever the battle cannon fires. Try not to fire the cannon and you're essentially paying premium points for a cannon that you never want to fire. And even if you gear it up for melee, it's too slow to catch anything and it's armor won't make it survivable for something so huge.

that and yeah the Soul Grinder does everything the Defiler does, but better. I actually use my defilers as count-as soul grinders now simply because of that.

**labmouse42**

BoomWolf wrote:
it was made bad because GW rules team are incompetent.

This.

GW has a horrible concept of 'balance' and is constantly overvaluing specific traits in units. For example, they think that having a good AP on a weapon makes the unit worth it -- such as bloodletters. They also think that 2+ saves with power fists are amazing, and still keep overpricing terminators.

It's like the GW employees who write and test the rules live in their own bubble. They should instead beta test and get input from competitive players.