FAQ Salt Containment thread.

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**Continuity**

Spoletta wrote:
bananathug wrote:
Spoletta wrote:
Let's put a bit of math in this discussion.

People are talking like reapers are shooting black holes into things, but Dark Reaper's damage output against T7 3+ is hardly stellar, no actually it's really bad and can hardly be considered AT fire:

59,13 points per wound inflicted, after the nerf. A manticore without orders or traits is 46,9, a las dev is 29,9 without auras.

You can put a lot of support into making it better, but it adds to the cost, and you are making better something that is bad at it's basis.

For example, let's give it guidance. which would bring it to a decent 50,68 points per wound. But it's not going to cost you less than 55 points which if added to the math brings it back to 58,88, and you are not even sure that the power goes off!

The best thing you can do is use WoP on it, which (if it goes off) makes it 41 points per wound inflicted. Good, but they will not last long, unless you again invest a lot of points into keeping them alive.

Before the nerf dark reapers were 46,9 without buffs, which means that they were manticore equivalent to start with! Being able to give around lots of support is as good as what you can buff, and in this case the base is BAD!

Dark reapers are now bad against tanks, and have always been bad against hordes. They mow down elite infantry sure, that is the correct role for them.

I don't think your math is right on the reapers. They have a 3+ s8 -2ap 3 wound weapon

http://mathhammer.thefieldsofblood.com/

vs t7 3+ you get 2/3 and then 2/3 and then 2/3 x 3 or about .9 wound per reaper unbuffed which is more like 41 points per wound after "nerf", WoP brings that down to around 20 right (shooting twice for the same cost should halve the points per wound).

41 ppw is okay, but you combine that with their stellar performance against anything t5 with more than 1 wound and immunity to negatives to hit and they are still a problematic unit. The additional synergies of being hard to hit, having great strats and psychic powers can push that 41 ppw inflicted down to the low teens.

That same las cannon dev after it moved, shooting at something with a -1 to hit (a lot of targets) goes from that 29.9 to 58.5 while the reaper is still shooting at 41. Just plain moving or shooting at something with a native -1 brings them pretty close to even (41.57 vs 38.78) and that's with the reaper being miles more efficient at most other targets (suffers vs t8 for sure but that's about it)

There is no way to protect yourself from the reapers, they remove an entire armies defensive bonus (ravenguard might as well not have a chapter tactic) and are pretty much guaranteed at least one round of shooting at their ideal target due to high mobility and strats. With really good shooting screens (-2 to hit rangers) the removal of the ability to t1 deepstrike those screens with multiple units pretty much gives reapers 2 rounds of unmolested shooting.

If they would have adjusted the 3+ to hit only working if they stand still or the 3 damage to d3 or reduced max size to 5 or the secondary fire mode to 3 shots 1d or s5 no ap and made the tempest launcher actually cost a reasonable amount of points I think the "reaper problem" would have really been addressed. Instead slapping a small increase on price (they should cost 47 points IMHO) was lazy. I hope I'm proven wrong but I don't think it is going to stop the armies that were already fielding 10-30 of them (10 ynarri, 2x5 would be how I would do it)

Indeed, for some reason i did all the math with the S5 profile, i need more sleep i guess...
All my numbers have to be increased by a 1,5 factor (and by consequence all the wound/cost ratio multiplied by 0,66).

Wow, point wise reapers were seriously busted before the nerf...

After playing around with my brother DA list though, i think that the new hellfire shells will prove to be a problem for them. Many SM lists will invest those 80 points necessary for a dev squad with heavy bolter, which will shoot 2 bolts that hit on 2+ and inflict d3 MW. If you take 4 reapers away from a 10 strong squad you have crippled it seriously.

Pretty sure you can only use hellfire shell once per turn, so you're killing 3 reapers max per turn. The problem is that your dev squad will likely never get to fire until the reapers have fired at least twice. If they are deep striking, then that's a guaranteed 1 round (or potentially 2 with ynnari) of shooting, then with Fire and Fade they can get themselves into safety to potentially avoid another round of shooting from the enemy, if you want to catch them with a deep strike unit, then they erase you with another round of free shooting using Forewarn before walking back into firing position for another 2 rounds of shooting with no penalty.

Pre-nerf dark reaper are so tactically flexible and effective that they might as well be playing a different game.

I think dark reapers could be toned down by simply decreasing the max squad size to 5 and slightly increasing the points by 2 or 3, they will still be hands down the most effectively damage output unit against 90% of the units in the game but combined with the rule of 3 change you can only have a maximum of 15 of them, and the smaller squad size ensures that all the remaining eldar force multipliers won't be as effective on them.