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Rather than nerf all the psyker armies and pyskers, what if smite was just changed to always be D6 Normal wounds, strength = to the casting roll, with a -3 to armor save.

I mean this would still be a nerf, but I like it a lot better than any of the other nerf ideas I've seen.

I think AP -5 would emulate the mortal wounding mechanic better but still allows invulnerable savss to be taken

Naah. I love that it bypasses Inv. The balancing part is the fact that it hits the closest unit. If you can see it coming, just screen your valuables.

Change Smite to Normal Wounds...

And totally feth every Psyker Army in the game.

No thanks.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Change Smite to Normal Wounds...

And totally feth every Psyker Army in the game.

No thanks.

Just trying to think of things that aren’t total nerfs but address the smite spam people are worried GW is goi to hit with the nerf hammer.

Smite is powerful, for sure.
But it's only a problem if you have units that don't pay enough points for that power. In that case, you can either lower their power (= nerf smite), or increase their point cost to account for how strong MW are.

My ideal fix would be to have a different cast value for each unit. It would make sense that a powerful psyker has an easier time casting the power. So you could still have cheap psykers, but if they had a 9+ smite or something, you couldn't use them for MW spam. But it's unlikely to happen, as that would be a change to the core rules and to every psyker's entry.
I would still prefer a point cost adjustment of the problematic units, rather than a complete nerf of smite.

 argonak wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Change Smite to Normal Wounds...

And totally feth every Psyker Army in the game.

No thanks.

Just trying to think of things that aren’t total nerfs but address the smite spam people are worried GW is goi to hit with the nerf hammer.

I think the rumored adjustment of limiting Smite to 3 times in a turn will work pretty well, and is very simple.

fresus wrote:
Smite is powerful, for sure.
But it's only a problem if you have units that don't pay enough points for that power. In that case, you can either lower their power (= nerf smite), or increase their point cost to account for how strong MW are.

My ideal fix would be to have a different cast value for each unit. It would make sense that a powerful psyker has an easier time casting the power. So you could still have cheap psykers, but if they had a 9+ smite or something, you couldn't use them for MW spam. But it's unlikely to happen, as that would be a change to the core rules and to every psyker's entry.
I would still prefer a point cost adjustment of the problematic units, rather than a complete nerf of smite.

This is ultimately the best way to do it.

Smite on one psyker in the army... That's cool, cinimatic, and not broken.

Smite on a dozen dfiferent doods? Dull and can be OP.

My favorite idea, so far, is for the matched play rule for casting the same power multiple times to be:
"Smite may be cast any number of times in one Psychic phase, but each time it is cast it causes -1 wounds for each time it has already been cast. (minimum: 1)."

Alternately, the WC goes up by 1 for each cast.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 argonak wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Change Smite to Normal Wounds...

And totally feth every Psyker Army in the game.

No thanks.

Just trying to think of things that aren’t total nerfs but address the smite spam people are worried GW is goi to hit with the nerf hammer.

I think the rumored adjustment of limiting Smite to 3 times in a turn will work pretty well, and is very simple.

No it won't. It will cripple psychic heavy armys.

What happens to tzneetch?

Grey Knights?

When every unit is some kind of a psyker in your army most of which ONLY know smite you end up making players pay points for an ability they cannot use.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bharring wrote:


Alternately, the WC goes up by 1 for each cast.

This. Also allow the other powers to be cast multiple times with the same rule.

Could you imagine the nerdrage if more than one CWE unit were concealed?

I don't like the "only cast it once" rule for the "basic" powers, but a flat "Sure, just bump the WC" might not be wise, at least without other changes.

In keeping with 'Lightest Touch', I'd suggest if you use the "WC goes up by 1 for each cast", you only do that for Smite.

Bharring wrote:
Could you imagine the nerdrage if more than one CWE unit were concealed?

I don't like the "only cast it once" rule for the "basic" powers, but a flat "Sure, just bump the WC" might not be wise, at least without other changes.

In keeping with 'Lightest Touch', I'd suggest if you use the "WC goes up by 1 for each cast", you only do that for Smite.

Absolutely not. Can you imagine a Nid army entirely buffed by 5+ FNP and debuffing your entire army with the horror? (-1 hit -1 ld). Repeat powers should get more and more difficult to cast. It ads a soft and hard cap to how often things can be cast but everything CAN be cast which adds flexibility and variety instead of the smite only spam we see now.

I meant "Don't allow repeat casts of powers other than Smite", or at least not without doing more than just having the WC go up by 1 each time.

Even if the WC of Conceal went up by 1 each time, how many units could Alaitoc get to -2 or -3 to hit in one turn? Even assuming Conceal wouldn't stack with itself, it's still scary. That nid power would be even worse.

Bharring wrote:
I meant "Don't allow repeat casts of powers other than Smite", or at least not without doing more than just having the WC go up by 1 each time.

Even if the WC of Conceal went up by 1 each time, how many units could Alaitoc get to -2 or -3 to hit in one turn? Even assuming Conceal wouldn't stack with itself, it's still scary. That nid power would be even worse.

Ah! Yes, also powers don't stack with themselves.

So you could cast conceal 3 times on 3 units but can only be applied once to a specific unit.

I still think Conceal would be OP, even in that situation. But I think Smite would be fixed.

The advantage of the -1 wound per cast is that Smite Spam armies can still spam Smite (GK), but it becomes a single mortal wound each cast instead of each cast being progressively harder. It's not like GK need more nerfs.

Doesn't some of the armies that kinda depend on it depend on it for things that that army cant actually handle. (say high T models and or heavy elite armies with big invuls?)

Bharring wrote:
I still think Conceal would be OP, even in that situation. But I think Smite would be fixed.

The advantage of the -1 wound per cast is that Smite Spam armies can still spam Smite (GK), but it becomes a single mortal wound each cast instead of each cast being progressively harder. It's not like GK need more nerfs.

Except there are still 2 problems. 1) its boring as feth. Nobody wants to run around just spaming smite alone. It's terrible. It's a choice thats made for you. There is no tactical flexibility. There is no choice to make. And 2) the value of smite keeps going down while still costing the same in points while all the other powers are still just as restrictive.

If you want to stop smite spam you want to encourage taking high cost psykers that know and can cast multiple powers. The way to encourage buying those units and casting those powers is to give them a value. Right now they don't have much because they can only cast that other power once. So beyond 2 or 3 not smite casts all you want to spend points on is the cheapest most viable way to cast smite. The moment a player can count of some of their other powers coming from each psyker, or at least having a gamble on a increasing difficulty, those units become insanely more valuable then those cheap ass smite spammers.

Which also means you will see less over all psykers, which means less over all smite.

fresus wrote:
Smite is powerful, for sure.
But it's only a problem if you have units that don't pay enough points for that power. In that case, you can either lower their power (= nerf smite), or increase their point cost to account for how strong MW are.

My ideal fix would be to have a different cast value for each unit. It would make sense that a powerful psyker has an easier time casting the power. So you could still have cheap psykers, but if they had a 9+ smite or something, you couldn't use them for MW spam. But it's unlikely to happen, as that would be a change to the core rules and to every psyker's entry.
I would still prefer a point cost adjustment of the problematic units, rather than a complete nerf of smite.

The problem is that I don't even care about smite for my cheap psykers, it wasn't why I was bringing them. But if you raise the prices on them because I might use them to spam smite, it makes them less worthwhile for doing anything else.

Just give an appropriate cost to the psykers. Smite spam issue fixed.

 Blackie wrote:
Just give an appropriate cost to the psykers. Smite spam issue fixed.

Agreed. If lascannon devs were OP and I was spamming them, the solution would be to adjust their points cost, not limit the number of lascannons that can fire per turn. Failing that I would also prefer to see lower "level" psykers have a harder time casting in the first place.

Limiting smite casts just means that anything more Tha a few psykers is literally useless. Psyker 1 casts smite, power A and B, psyker 2 casts smite, C and D, psyker 3 casts smite, power E and F. Psyker 4... Has forgotten everything he knows and has to stand around for a turn.

TLR; shooting/melee armies aren't punished for spam, why should psyker armies?

 argonak wrote:

fresus wrote:
Smite is powerful, for sure.
But it's only a problem if you have units that don't pay enough points for that power. In that case, you can either lower their power (= nerf smite), or increase their point cost to account for how strong MW are.

My ideal fix would be to have a different cast value for each unit. It would make sense that a powerful psyker has an easier time casting the power. So you could still have cheap psykers, but if they had a 9+ smite or something, you couldn't use them for MW spam. But it's unlikely to happen, as that would be a change to the core rules and to every psyker's entry.
I would still prefer a point cost adjustment of the problematic units, rather than a complete nerf of smite.

The problem is that I don't even care about smite for my cheap psykers, it wasn't why I was bringing them. But if you raise the prices on them because I might use them to spam smite, it makes them less worthwhile for doing anything else.

Which is why my preferred fix is to have a adjustable cast value, that depends on each psyker. That way, you can have pskyers that are good at buffing, but very bad at smiting.

Another thing about restricting multiple smites per turn: some psykers are meant to cast smite each turn. For instance, the shadowseer can cast two powers, but only knows 1 + smite.

No

I want Warlocks which are great at Runes of Battle, but with a passable Smite capability.

If I have one Farseer, using Smite in a pinch should do some real damage, but if I run 2 farseers and a Spirit Seer, they shouldn't each be smiting so strongly.

This is why I like the -1W each successive cast. Each GK Squad can still smite. They usually do 1 damage each, so it does the same thing. A solo psyker in the list can still smite at full strength. Two psykers, and one is still full and the other is good. 3+ psykers, and it starts dropping off.

If every psyker gets full-smite with no change, that puts a fairly high floor on the value of a psyker regardless of powers, stats, etc. But if either some psykers (Warlocks, GK Squads) get mini-Smite, you can still have Psykers that don't need to pay full price for Smite.

So our options are:
1) Make Smite less cinematic game-wide (weaker smite)
2) Put a high cost floor on any Psyker in the game (Warlocks, Primaris, and Maelifics now need to cost 50-100 pts each)
3) Implement a change that reduces Smite effectiveness as it gets recast.

The reason I like #3 is because Psyker powers are inherently once-per-turn, and Smite can only be recast by a specific rule. So it seems very light-touch to change that rule.

(Also, a -1W per Smite cast, min 1, wouldn't hurt Strike Squads much, because they usually do 1 MW already.)

If only there was some way to prevent smite from hitting elite models that depend heavily on toughness and saves...


... oh well. Better nerf it.

Well, how good should Smite be at hitting physically-imposing models vs physically-weak models? How much of it is psychic, and how much of it is physical manifestations?

If it's "normal" wounds, what S and AP would it have? Would it autohit/autowound? How many hits?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
If only there was some way to prevent smite from hitting elite models that depend heavily on toughness and saves...


... oh well. Better nerf it.

I feel like forcing everyone to run armies loaded with cheap, expendable troops is one of the biggest problems with 8th. If I wanted to do that I would have picked Guard as my army.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 argonak wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Change Smite to Normal Wounds...

And totally feth every Psyker Army in the game.

No thanks.

Just trying to think of things that aren’t total nerfs but address the smite spam people are worried GW is goi to hit with the nerf hammer.

I think the rumored adjustment of limiting Smite to 3 times in a turn will work pretty well, and is very simple.

Those "non-scalable" solutions aren't solutions. They are the worst kind of solutions. 3 smites a turn is fine un 1k games. Not in 2k games.

Arachnofiend wrote:
I feel like forcing everyone to run armies loaded with cheap, expendable troops is one of the biggest problems with 8th. If I wanted to do that I would have picked Guard as my army.

Naturally, I went with a version of Guard *without* lots of Cheap Expendables.

M.

I like the proposal that smite deal d3 wounds of S=casting roll, ignores armor and invulnerable saves. It allows for there to be a counter to invulnerable saves without countering all defensive attributes. Terminators need a pt reduction anyways.