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Psychic Focus
With the exception of Smite, each psychic power can be attempted only once per turn, rather than once per psyker per turn. In addition, when manifesting Smite with a CHARACTER with a Wounds characteristic of less than 10, you must add 1 to the warp charge value of Smite for each attempt (whether successful or not) that has been made to manifest Smite during a given Psychic phase, to a maximum warp charge value of 11.

For example, if an ORK psyker attempts to manifest Smite during a Psychic phase in which two other psykers have already attempted to manifest Smite, then the warp charge value of Smite is 7 for that attempt (note that if the result of the psyker’s Psychic test is 11+, it still inflicts D6 mortal wounds instead of D3 as normal).

Smite
Smite has a warp charge value of 5. If manifested, the closest visible enemy unit within 18" of the psyker suffers D3 mortal wounds. If the result of the Psychic test was 11+, the target suffers D6 mortal wounds instead.

"11+" is a more common type of wording than "more than 10" and I have encountered several people that didn't read Smite carefully enough and thought it was 10+ because they just remember it saying 10 in the description. Thousand Sons should not be untargetable Smite batteries for Chaos armies and neither should Grey Knights although we haven't and might never see the latter due to Masters of the Warp being neccessary for Grey Knight Smite to be scary. I'm fine with casting a smite or two with models with Character protection, but if you're casting 3+ then the effectiveness should go down.

On the other hand, it is totally unfair that you cannot smite spam with units that are freely targetable in the shooting phase like Wyrdvane Psykers and Zoanthropes when the problem of smite spam was spawned by untargetable characters and the armies with the most untargetable characters get off scot-free while units that were never problematic pay a price they don't need to pay. Big Psyker monsters like Lords of Change and Maleceptors don't deserve to be hit by this either, Smite spam is frustrating when you can't damage your opponent's damage dealers and all you're doing is whittling away at a screen, but there's nothing more degenerate about casting Smite with a big monster than having a shooting attack. Monsters are also generally expensive enough that they won't lead to an overload of Smites, you could take 6 Greater Daemons, but Smite would still not be too significant a part of your damage since the Monsters will probably also have good melee.

You’re basically killing the 1000 Sons faction with this rule. There’s not much to there army except smite spam. It seems odd that the army designed around the psychic phase gets penalized heavily for the psychic phase. If you really feel the need to nerf the 1000 Sons, you could maybe make them need to be monofaction to use their smite batteries? This would still cripple the faction since there’s not that much to their army. CSM don’t get doctrines but they can cross factions easier because of it. At this point it’s seems like it was planned that way.

For that matter the Tyranid magic bug has a 3+ invul and large units do a lot of damage on their psychic attacks.. I’m not sure the guard need a cheap smite battery option on top of all their other damage options.

Smite spam is awful, and needs to be removed. Increase smite to 7. Tsons have 18, 19 with a cult, additional psychic powers, and stratagems to boost those psychic powers.

I'd go even more radical than that and make Smite unspammable. Exempting Smite from the Psychic Focus rule always seemed like a stopgap measure to me from a time when most armies only had 3 powers, so taking 2 basic psykers meant you ran out of powers very quickly. Now every army has at least 1 full Discipline I see less and less need to make Smite an-always-useable power. Yes, I know TS and GK rely on Smite spam for damage output, but in all honesty Mortal Wounds in general are a miserable experience to be on the receiving end of and armies that can spam 5 or more Smites a turn are the epitome of a non-interactive gaming experience. As p5freak says, GK and TS also now have access to a lot of powers so you'd be increasing variety by restricting Smite.

I'd rather see a complete rework of the Psychic phase anyway. Having more Psykers should end up giving you diminishing returns on effectiveness much more quickly than it does now, and I'd like to see more thought put into how and when to use powers, with more player agency going into a successful casting. The benefit Psyker-heavy armies should get is flexibility, not just an extra phase's worth of damage other armies don't have access to.

Mortal wounds are miserable but is it any worse than watching a unit of death company deep strike in and delete a unit? Is it worse than watching 40 points of shield drones intercept 500 points of shooting? Plenty of armies have a phase they can’t do much in. The guard and Tau tend to have an underwhelming fight phase and demons have lackluster shooting phase. You wouldn’t just have to rewrite grey knights and 1000 sons, you would have to completely overhaul their unit roster. The 1000 sons do have a large number of powers but how many of those are actually viable? The army has glaring weaknesses in long range fire power and powerful close combat. Plus smite always targets the closest visible unit so if it’s hurting something valuable, you’ve left it vulnerable.

If the game curtailed the number of invul saves maybe the game could go back to where they could be used against psychic powers again. I’m also a strong proponent of giving the Tau a psychic auxiliary or at least a denial drone for psychic defense. The Necrons should also get some sort of denial unit to protect them as well.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
You’re basically killing the 1000 Sons faction with this rule. There’s not much to there army except smite spam. It seems odd that the army designed around the psychic phase gets penalized heavily for the psychic phase. If you really feel the need to nerf the 1000 Sons, you could maybe make them need to be monofaction to use their smite batteries? This would still cripple the faction since there’s not that much to their army. CSM don’t get doctrines but they can cross factions easier because of it. At this point it’s seems like it was planned that way.

For that matter the Tyranid magic bug has a 3+ invul and large units do a lot of damage on their psychic attacks.. I’m not sure the guard need a cheap smite battery option on top of all their other damage options.

Magnus, Rubrics and Terminators would still cast smite on 5+. Thousand Sons have access to a metric tonne of powers, Smite is not the only game in town. With +1 or +2 to cast you can still cast Smite several times pretty easily with characters before moving on to Magnus/Rubrics/Termies. It would be nerf to Thousand Sons, I am aware of this and it is intended. I don't mind taking away the crutch of a cripple and giving them a wheelchair is wrong, what that wheelchair would be I don't know. This is not a house-rule I'd introduce without considering what might be needed to fix any problems it might cause. I don't believe Hive Tyrant smite spam would be a problem, but it could be, I'd need to test it to be sure. I still think this fixes more than ruins and it doesn't really ruin TS, it's just a tiny nerf.

I love the current psychic phase and I think mortal wounds are perfectly fine, assuming you can kill the unit causing them. I don't know if any of you have tried a little thing called summoning in 7th, but it was a mess. The changes I posted in the OP as well as some rounding out of warp charges to make the best powers worse and the weakest ones better is all I want.

If this proposed rule is meant to be paired with other proposed rules, you probably should have thought those out before posting this part. As it is, you want to nerf two armies that frankly struggle to stay in a game with most armies. For that matter how is a power that has to target the closest enemy unit that hard to deal with. Unless you’re just blindly bumbling your best units into the teeth of a bunch of powerful sorcerers, there shouldn’t be a real problem with smite. The terminators and rubrics also only deal a single mortal wound for their s’mores and Magnus is most likely dead in one turn if he goes second and probably dead if he goes first. I don’t think you’ve really looked at the massive spell list you mention. Most of those powers are extremely mediocre to useless.

Are you suggesting that smite spam on two half baked factions is anywhere near the problem that summoning a potentially infinite amount of points was? The meta would look very different if that were the case. I agree that everyone should have something to do in the psychic phase. It makes no narrative sense that the necrons have no plan against the warp in game when they’re responsible for the cadian pylon system. But kicking another army in the teeth isn’t the way to go about that.

I could go for that rule as a caveat if you’re allying 1000 Sons or Grey Knights with another army. Against the mono-faction version of either army though this would be too much.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
If this proposed rule is meant to be paired with other proposed rules, you probably should have thought those out before posting this part. As it is, you want to nerf two armies that frankly struggle to stay in a game with most armies. For that matter how is a power that has to target the closest enemy unit that hard to deal with. Unless you’re just blindly bumbling your best units into the teeth of a bunch of powerful sorcerers, there shouldn’t be a real problem with smite. The terminators and rubrics also only deal a single mortal wound for their s’mores and Magnus is most likely dead in one turn if he goes second and probably dead if he goes first. I don’t think you’ve really looked at the massive spell list you mention. Most of those powers are extremely mediocre to useless.

Are you suggesting that smite spam on two half baked factions is anywhere near the problem that summoning a potentially infinite amount of points was? The meta would look very different if that were the case. I agree that everyone should have something to do in the psychic phase. It makes no narrative sense that the necrons have no plan against the warp in game when they’re responsible for the cadian pylon system. But kicking another army in the teeth isn’t the way to go about that.

I could go for that rule as a caveat if you’re allying 1000 Sons or Grey Knights with another army. Against the mono-faction version of either army though this would be too much.

Half baked, is that what you're calling the faction that has some of the most top finishes in 8th edition? Thousand Sons have been used in an insane amount of top-performing tournament lists. Magnus hasn't been nerfed since he was used extensively in top lists, he's been powercreeped, but not nerfed directly.

I have looked at the powers, I know some of them are useless, but it's still a massive amount of powers. You should have enough to cast every turn without resorting to ever casting smite unless you are deliberately spamming characters, something that doesn't work for buffing characters like Chaos Lords or SM Lieutenants, why should it work for Sorcerers? The first -1 hardly matters, so you can still do two character smites before it starts to hurt, with +1 to cast you can cast three before it starts hurting, +2 on the last one and you've cast four smites and the power is manifested on 8+ but with +2 you just need a 6+. Then you can go on to cast any number of baby smites or smites with Tzeentch Daemon Troops and Monsters. I think smite-spamming characters are bad for the game, as evidenced by the arrival of the smite nerf in the first place, the smite nerf however was misplaced and hit the wrong targets and failing to hit Thousand Sons Characters means character castles doing smite spam has been popular for exactly one faction and has forced Chaos Daemons to soup to cast smite multiple times, when Lords of Change and Pink Horrors should be able to do it well enough.

The alternative is removing the smite nerf entirely, why shouldn't Inquisitors or Craftworld Eldar be able to smite spam if Thousand Sons can do so with impunity? Is it because the 6" extra range to psychic powers is a bad Legion Trait? It's certainly no worse than Word Bearers and probably better than DG, WE and EC. I feel like the TS and GK exemption was not because those were the perfect solution to the smite nerf hitting these factions too hard, but because GW didn't have an immediately better and more equitable idea, which I believe my solution would be.

I think it's perfectly fair to nerf these two factions at their strongest, I wouldn't suggest Craftworld nerfs or Inceptor buffs in an Iron Hands nerf thread either and I don't think it's appropriate to offer input on how I'd nerf every faction in the game in this thread or how to fix the less functional Thousand Sons units. This is changing a core rule of matched play, not a direct nerf to Thousand Sons or Grey Knights, they just don't get special exemptions in my version because I think those special exemptions turned out to cause negative consequences like Paladin bombs and allowed smite castles behind screens to continue. Just like if you suggested a nerf to DS, like limiting it to T2/3 or limiting T1 DS to your deployment zone you wouldn't need to account for the balance of every unit with deep strike, if the core idea is solid (we don't want players to hide their entire list and then alpha strike their opponent to oblivion/characters not interacting with the enemy behind a screen and just throwing out smites is bad for the game) then affected units will be fixed in Chapter Approved with appropriate points costs or will be helped with updated rules and Stratagems.

Vict, your proposed rules are almost universally bad because you rarely put in the depth of thought required to make a good suggestion. In this thread, you suggest a massive nerf to a pair of armies and yet haven't designed the rules to compensate them for these nerfs.

Also, why are you suggesting CA point changes and rules changes to units changed via limited use (if it indeed is ever used at a real table) house rules? This smacks of extreme laziness and an unwillingness to put in the effort to make a rules change an actual player of this game would be likely to try.

Do you have a source for the most top finishes in 8th edition? Rather than quibble about standings, let’s take a look at the LVO breakdowns. https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2020/02/02/lvo-by-the-numbers/

Despite being one of the so called best factions in 8th edition, a whopping 9 people decided to field 1000 Son armies. You should probably tell these top players that they’re ignoring such a high preforming army. Now let’s look at the win percentage. Maybe all of them ended being really good? Oh wait it’s hovering at about 52%. If the 1000 Sons need a nerf, all the armies ahead of them probably do as well. Maybe we should start looking at ways to nerf those overpowered necrons. And where are the Grey Knights? You can find them in dead last.

So since the 1000 sons have a bunch of useless powers, they don’t need one of their most lethal option. That logic makes no sense. I still also don’t understand how you’re falling prey to a power that has to target the closest units. Assuming that every 1000 sons character rolled a 3 for their smite damage, Magnus rolls a 6 for his, and the army took the maximum number of character to smite with, the total damage comes out to 57 wounds. Said army also costs over 2000 points. In the average 2000 point game you’ll probably see half that many characters and the average damage roll will be a 2. 8 character smites at 2 damage, assuming every single one went off, gives you 16 wounds. Add in Magnus for and average of 3.5 and over 1000 points of characters nets you almost 20 wounds. Just enough to kill of a mid sized infantry blob. Truly that is game breaking.

Smite didn’t get nerfed because of expensive exalted sorcerers or grey knight captains. It got nerve fed because people were spamming cheap renegade psykers or the cheap guard paykers. Unlimited smites on extremely cheap models is a problem. Smites on pricey models, not so much. I also don’t see why you have a problem with the two specifically psyker armies having good psychic damage as their specialty. Should a grey knight player be upset that destroyer units can out shoot them? I sincerely doubt the average inquisitior rivals most combat psykers. I could swing the eldar ignoring the penalty too but some units would need to take baby smite instead

Removing rules from the 1000 Sons and Grey knights isn’t nerfing them. Can’t argue with that reasoning. The flaw with your final point is that your core idea isn’t solid. Your core idea is “I don’t want to be meaningfully hurt in the psychic phase”. If smite is hurting you, get better at screening.

I don't feel that smite spam is currently a huge problem for the game, but I do understand that a smite spam army can be frustrating to play against. Mortal wounds bypass defensive stats and abilities you invested in and actively punish you for taking units that spent points on those stats (losing a necron warrior means losing more points than something like a termagaunt).

Part of the intent behind Smite seems to be to give all psykers some form of psychic offense, a replacement for the default powers of the various psychic disciplines from 7th edition. Would it be reasonable to change smite to do a larger number of non-mortal wounds?

For instance, a standard smite might inflict d6 mortal wounds with a super smite doing 6 + d6 (details can be tweaked). This would still bypass the Toughness stat of the target, but it would allow targets to benefit from saves and being in cover. A terminator would be relatively safe from someone shooting force lightning compared to a termagaunt.

Then again, half the time I picture smite as a brainsplosion or having your armor transmuted into a fleshy mass of sapient mouths, so maybe allowing armor to factor in defeats the point.

I made a psychic rework thread a long while back.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/747851.page

It might have some interesting ideas to mine-notably, a Smite Nerf is included.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
Vict, your proposed rules are almost universally bad because you rarely put in the depth of thought required to make a good suggestion. In this thread, you suggest a massive nerf to a pair of armies and yet haven't designed the rules to compensate them for these nerfs.

Also, why are you suggesting CA point changes and rules changes to units changed via limited use (if it indeed is ever used at a real table) house rules? This smacks of extreme laziness and an unwillingness to put in the effort to make a rules change an actual player of this game would be likely to try.

You're going to have to give more examples than this one you don't agree with and you're going to have to prove how this suggestion is bad in the first place. You can't just go in from the start and say all my suggestions are poorly thought out and bad.

"Codex Rules for Tau and Necrons and more in the works" poorly thought out? What problems did they create, is it Sautekh being too strong against MSU armies as opposed to being the only viable choice because of how good it is against units with giant units?

"Necron Support Units Critique and Fixes" How are these ideas poorly thought out?

"Necrons Dynasty, Stratagem, WL Trait and Relic Balance" What about these? "Necron Specialist Detachments" or these? "Make Your Own Necron Dynastic Codes" or these? "Necrons Homebrew Psychic Awakening" or these?

"Space Marines Chapter, Stratagem, WL Trait, Psychic Powers and Relic Balance" How about this, did I not consider how much it would hurt pwoor babwy iwon hwands? Oh wait, it wasn't a bigger hit than what GW ended up doing.

So where are the universally bad suggestions I am making? You know what I think? I think you are a loser and an donkey-cave, going around threads looking for people to pick on but I'm pretty happy with the rules and changes I have proposed, so until you actually explain how my ideas are bad you can go do some meditation, you have issues and you're not making this thread or pretty much any thread better until you change your purpose for being here.

I'm not suggesting points changes due to the changes I'm suggesting, I'm saying those are needed irrelevant of these changes. Mutalith Vortex Beasts, Thousand Sons Land Raiders, Predators, Vindicators etc. etc. All need changes whether I nerf TS Smite spam or not.

It's not a massive nerf, it's a perfectly appropriate nerf to the most unfun part of two relatively strong armies. We're sadly not getting many tournament results these days and Iron Hands warped the meta to an insane degree. The 2019 data from 40kstats isn't easy to navigate, so I don't know how to leave out pre-nerf Iron Hands and as I have explained Thousand Sons have ways of navigating the nerf I suggested, as does Grey Knights with their Dreadknight GM that won't be hit by the nerf. The core concept of unkillable psykers throwing out mortal wounds is bad for the game, the Smite change did not remedy the problem because it failed to hit two of the relevant armies, which makes the smite nerf useless in the first place, why not remove it entirely if it was never a problem? This is really all the reason I need to suggest a change to the game.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
Do you have a source for the most top finishes in 8th edition? Rather than quibble about standings, let’s take a look at the LVO breakdowns. https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2020/02/02/lvo-by-the-numbers/

So what do you think were in all those non-mono CSD and CSM lists? A Supreme Command Detachment of Thousand Sons wouldn't show up on any of these graphs. On the other hand this proves that mono-Thousand Sons need help regardless, HQs do not an army make, whether they can smite spam or not.

Despite being one of the so called best factions in 8th edition, a whopping 9 people decided to field 1000 Son armies. You should probably tell these top players that they’re ignoring such a high preforming army. Now let’s look at the win percentage. Maybe all of them ended being really good? Oh wait it’s hovering at about 52%. If the 1000 Sons need a nerf, all the armies ahead of them probably do as well. Maybe we should start looking at ways to nerf those overpowered necrons. And where are the Grey Knights? You can find them in dead last.

Over the whole course of 8th edition, I did not say they are one of the best at the moment, but the amount of top lists that used at least one Thousand Sons model has been large over the course of the edition. Exactly because of Smite nerf not hitting their characters those characters are the ones that have performed the best in the codex. The nerf to Tzaangor, one of the most common units in mono-TS lists being 14% more expensive hurts. Switching from Thousand Sons to SM is also a more obvious leap than GSC, Orks or Necrons. Seeing as the representation of Thousand Sons was much higher at the previous LVO and much lower at the most recent one and the reverse happened with SM, I think it's reasonable to assume that due to an unfair nerf to Tzaangor and Iron Hands not being nerfed enough initially SM stole TS thunder.

All the armies ahead of Thousand Sons need a nerf IMO, I thought that was obvious? SM already got their nerf, fight twice and shoot twice Stratagems need to be nerfed, that's SM, Nids, CSM and Orks. Relics and WL traits need to be worth their CP cost, not much more, that's Orks, Knights, SM of several varieties. Some Necron Stratagems and Quantum Shielding need nerfs. Tau Sept Overwatch needs a nerf. cover rules need changes to nerf shooting which would nerf all shooty lists. The AdMech no-LOS boat needs to cost more pts, changing the Dakkabot rule immediately should cost more CP. But if you don't think Smite should cost more to cast for Thousand Sons, why should it for any other faction?

So since the 1000 sons have a bunch of useless powers, they don’t need one of their most lethal option.

That's not what I said, stop strawmanning me.

Smite didn’t get nerfed because of expensive exalted sorcerers or grey knight captains. It got nerve fed because people were spamming cheap renegade psykers or the cheap guard psykers. Unlimited smites on extremely cheap models is a problem. Smites on pricey models, not so much.

What is the cut-off point where a psyker should no longer be covered by smite nerf? Is it 40, 60 or 80 pts? Is it PL 2, 3 or 4? I'm open to changing the wording on my rule if you think that all expensive psykers should be exempt, maybe it's perfectly fine if you smite spam with Thousand Sons Characters, but then it should be fine to do the same with CSM Characters since they cost more or less the same. I just took issue with Lords of Change and Pink Horrors being affected when Thousand Sons are not, when the Thousand Sons characters are closer to the problem we agree being psykers hiding behind a screen. Do you at least agree that Lords of Change should be able to Smite spam if Ahriman should be able to and that Pink Horrors should be able to if Rubrics should be able to?

I also don’t see why you have a problem with the two specifically psyker armies having good psychic damage as their specialty. Should a grey knight player be upset that destroyer units can out shoot them? I sincerely doubt the average inquisitior rivals most combat psykers. I could swing the eldar ignoring the penalty too but some units would need to take baby smite instead.

I don't have a problem with TS and GK doing damage in the psychic phase and I never said I did. I said that it's problematic when you're throwing out lots of smites from behind a screen and it's irrelevant whether you are a Thousand Sons or an Eldar. I do have a problem with Thousand Sons shooting, like their Predators and Vindicators not being viable. I think Thousand Sons should have more options in terms of psychic powers and I'm happy with that leading to them being slightly stronger in the psychic phase, I don't think they should just be more pts efficient to help push the narrative of how Thousand Sons fight, instead I'd love to leave it up to the individual collector and player what models they want to collect and use.

Your core idea is “I don’t want to be meaningfully hurt in the psychic phase”.

Learn to read, stop strawmanning, stop being a dick and have a good day.

I realize that the article is very long and got very dry but I’d like to draw your attention to one particular quote; “ When you consider there were only 39 lists that contained Thousand Sons units.......”. There were over 700 players at the LVO, 39 of the included 1000 Sons units in them. That data suggests they are not a massive issue to balance at this time. A little over half a percent of players decided to use any unit from that codex. If you want to discuss removing the supreme command detachment that’s another topic, but it is probably one of the more questionable detachments. Ahriman did appear in 35 of those lists so you might argue that he is an issue and needs to be adjusted.

How do you balance 8th Edition except with the more up to date data. I would hope that no one is making balance changes off of the index days. There were important lessons learned in those days but it cannot overshadow what the present situation is. The 2019 LVO was at the height of Imperial Soup featuring Castellans. Three lists in the top 25 featured 1000 Sons detachments, the rest did not.

Smite shouldn’t cost more for the 1000 Sons or Grey Knights because the armies were essentially designed around the mechanic. There’s a compelling argument for mono tzeentch demons joining that crowd too. I don’t find it odd that the sorcerers I field in my CSM lists are inferior to the 1000 Son options. Sure, they can put out a lot of mortal wounds out in the psychic phase but I have better mobility, better shooting, and better melee options. Just because you’re a loon tapping into the warp doesn’t mean you should be on the same level as the guys who’s entire cultural revolves around sorcery.

Well several things helped to curb the proliferation of cheap psykers. The rule of 3, points hike, and smite change all dissuaded smite spam. If I had to pick a points amount, I would go with 80 points base for the cut off. D3 mortal wounds are less useful once you go over 100 points. I could absolutely get behind mono-tzeentch joining that fold.

If the Oppenheimer builds a smite castle then you have a 24” radius where you have to leave a screen. Considering you are already screening against deep strike this should not be a problem. In order to efficiently smite spam, the sorcerers must be concentrated. If you have no way to eliminate them, then simply avoid leaving your critical units in their way.

Most armies have a theme or two. I’m really struggling to figure out why the 1000 Sons have other than psychic power and the Egyptian Litch theme. Literally any 1000 Son that isn’t roomba food is a space wizard.

Please avoid name calling, it does not foster a healthy conversation. Please also try to avoid profanity. Bless your heart but if you don’t want constructive criticism, you should avoid this forum.

 vict0988 wrote:
You're going to have to give more examples than this one you don't agree with and you're going to have to prove how this suggestion is bad in the first place. You can't just go in from the start and say all my suggestions are poorly thought out and bad.

No, you have to prove the need for a rules change (something you've failed to do), detail how your changes will resolve the issue that you've proven to exist, and then show what additional smoothing over you're doing to fix issues that have come out in playtesting and/or theory crafting.

Your threads just dive into rules suggestions as if the need for them is entirely self-evident which is the common issue that spans all of your threads, and 90% of this subforum as a whole. Do the work of illustrating the need for these changes and you'll get not only better feedback but more people willing to test rules in their own games.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
You're going to have to give more examples than this one you don't agree with and you're going to have to prove how this suggestion is bad in the first place. You can't just go in from the start and say all my suggestions are poorly thought out and bad.

No, you have to prove the need for a rules change (something you've failed to do), detail how your changes will resolve the issue that you've proven to exist, and then show what additional smoothing over you're doing to fix issues that have come out in playtesting and/or theory crafting.

Your threads just dive into rules suggestions as if the need for them is entirely self-evident which is the common issue that spans all of your threads, and 90% of this subforum as a whole. Do the work of illustrating the need for these changes and you'll get not only better feedback but more people willing to test rules in their own games.

No, I do not, read the rules of the forum or create a Reddit sub or something where you can go around being a dick to people for your own amusement, I'm not here for your entertainment or education.

This forum is for suggesting rules changes, if you want to enquire as to why I think the rules would or could make the game better, that's fine, but it's not in the rules of the forum that I must publish a scientific paper with an abstract, a method, tables of tournament data to back my decisions and my own personal playtesting data. I agree this thread would have been better and far more convincing had I done that and I could still do that, but I don't need to do that before posting a thread according to the rules. However, according to the rules you are supposed to provide constructive feedback and make no personal attacks on the OP. There is no circumstance under which it is allowed to start by attacking or ridiculing the OP. You are blatantly breaking the rules and I saw fit to do the same back at you because you are being an absolute ass to me for no good reason. Why, oh fething why do you come into a thread you can see I've created if you don't like seeing my ideas except to be an ass? You're just making this place worse, stop it, get help.

 vict0988 wrote:
No, I do not, read the rules of the forum or create a Reddit sub or something where you can go around being a dick to people for your own amusement, I'm not here for your entertainment or education.

Cute, somebody who has no convincing arguments so they hide behind forum rules and a veneer of civility to mask their inability to suggest rules that are of use to anybody.

I agree this thread would have been better and far more convincing had I done that

Then perhaps you should work on that rather than engaging with me.

However, according to the rules you are supposed to provide constructive feedback and make no personal attacks on the OP.

I provided just that in my first post in this topic:

"you rarely put in the depth of thought required to make a good suggestion. In this thread, you suggest a massive nerf to a pair of armies and yet haven't designed the rules to compensate them for these nerfs."

I also didn't insult you as a person, I said that your threads all suffer from the same issue, detailed above and clarified in another post, which is 100% in line with forum rules. If you dislike the answer, try putting in the work.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

"you rarely put in the depth of thought required to make a good suggestion. In this thread, you suggest a massive nerf to a pair of armies and yet haven't designed the rules to compensate them for these nerfs."

The second sentence is constructive criticism. The first sentence is more of an attack on the behavior of the poster.

Can we get back on topic about the Thousand Son and Grey Knight nerf?

Can we get back on topic about the Thousand Son and Grey Knight nerf?

The thread is already ruined, why would I post any further effort I went into to change or improve my suggestion here? The attitude of "waaah don't nerf my faction" makes it impossible to try to improve the rules of the game, the only option available that won't automatically get criticized is power creep, making all the bad units better, then when one of the bad units accidentally becomes OP you can start the whole progress over until the game is won or lost on the first turn, then people grow bored of the current edition and wish for a new one. Nerfs are necessary to keep the game healthy, I never suggested people implement this change without further ado, if it nerfs Thousand Sons Characters too much then that's another discussion to take. But look at it this way, Sorcerers are real good according to the Falcon article you posted earlier, Thousand Sons Sorcerers are better than Sorcerers because their Chapter Tactic is more relevant in most cases and they cost the same, do Thousand Sons Sorcerers need to cast unmodified Smite? No, they don't. It might not be as broken as other things in the game currently, that doesn't mean a discussion of nerfing them cannot take place until I have put in place every suggestion I will ever make for nerfing stronger or more popular factions.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
No, I do not, read the rules of the forum or create a Reddit sub or something where you can go around being a dick to people for your own amusement, I'm not here for your entertainment or education.

Cute, somebody who has no convincing arguments so they hide behind forum rules and a veneer of civility to mask their inability to suggest rules that are of use to anybody.

I agree this thread would have been better and far more convincing had I done that

Then perhaps you should work on that rather than engaging with me.

However, according to the rules you are supposed to provide constructive feedback and make no personal attacks on the OP.

I provided just that in my first post in this topic:

"you rarely put in the depth of thought required to make a good suggestion. In this thread, you suggest a massive nerf to a pair of armies and yet haven't designed the rules to compensate them for these nerfs."

I also didn't insult you as a person, I said that your threads all suffer from the same issue, detailed above and clarified in another post, which is 100% in line with forum rules. If you dislike the answer, try putting in the work.

I'm not being civil, I'm calling you an ass, I'm not hiding behind anything. What work? The work you have put in? Oh wait, you have posted... Zero, zilch, none, freaking fething zero rules proposals on Dakka. You're just here to be a dick and you have no creative or game-design skill to speak of. Shut off your keyboard until you go and produce a 5-page paper on something you want to change about the game, proof the current paradigm is making the game worse with tournament data and optionally a questionnaire for noobs, entirely unambiguous wording for your new or rectified rule, verified by a rules lawyer to work as intended 100% of the time and then personal accounts from your opponents whom you've playtested the rules against.

So when people disagree with you, the thread is ruined? It sounds more like you don’t have any good arguments left. For the record, I don’t field any 1000 Sons or Grey Knights models when I play.. If you think my points came from a personal attachment to the army, you are sadly mistaken. If your solution to a problem causes more problems you do not have a solution. In this case the proposed rule would cut the legs from underneath two factions. You keep alluding to rules to help either faction in place of this nerf but have provided no example for it. In genera, sweeping needs across a faction are not as useful because they are not precise. With a few examples this action brings down the quality of good models but it also makes mediocre and bad one worse.

I agree heretic astartes sorcerers are a good unit. However they are good because of their powers and the units they can target. A +1 to hit is far more useful on a unit of double tapping Obliterators or Havocs then it is on a single predator or squad of rubric marines. The -1 to hit and the 5+ FNP are not even available to the 1000 Sons. Thousand Sons sorcerers can cast smite more efficiently but the regular sorcers can synergize with their army better. If all three thousand son sorcerers cast smite and succeed (and after all three roles there is a 41% chance they fail) then they will deal an average of 6 mortal wounds to the unit of cultist input in front to eat the first round of smites. Over 240 points sorcerers kills 24 points of cultus. In return I can fire off a support unit that hits on 2’s and can possibly fire twice. The superior option seems clear. Even if you add in 3 exalted sorcerers, you’d only get up to 12 mortal wounds for about 600 points. And that still assumes that every smite is successful.

At the end of the day people can only comment about the rule proposals you have posted. You may have the perfect rule set for 40k that anyone has ever seen but if all you’re going to do is tell people that you have it, it’s not going to help. I’m open to options, sell me on what would make up for the nerf. Be open to criticisms on your rules. No one is picking on you. Think of it like a thesis. You propose it and then you defend it.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

"you rarely put in the depth of thought required to make a good suggestion. In this thread, you suggest a massive nerf to a pair of armies and yet haven't designed the rules to compensate them for these nerfs."

The second sentence is constructive criticism. The first sentence is more of an attack on the behavior of the poster.

If you consider the first sentence to be an attack then you must have really thin skin since that's more of a factual statement at this point given the OP's pattern of posting. Given his very heavy bias towards most non-Necron armies (which I guess makes sense when you're playing one of the weakest armies in the game atm) wouldn't it make more sense to give Necron's more ways of dealing with psychic powers beyond gloom prisms and one warlord trait as part of the solution? I don't see Smite being the main problem in the game at the moment given that I don't see most armies spamming it and for both TS and Grey Knights, it's not only incredibly harmful to the flavour to their army as others have mentioned but in the case of GK, their super-smite is not always turned on since most GK armies will be shifting what tides they will be using, so taking that option away from them will basically be taking away an entire tide option for them for no real reason.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
So when people disagree with you, the thread is ruined?

No, when Canadian 5th tells me almost all my suggestions are terrible because I don't put in enough effort then the thread is ruined.

It sounds more like you don’t have any good arguments left. For the record, I don’t field any 1000 Sons or Grey Knights models when I play.. If you think my points came from a personal attachment to the army, you are sadly mistaken. If your solution to a problem causes more problems you do not have a solution. In this case the proposed rule would cut the legs from underneath two factions.

Yes, I was mistaken about you playing Thousand Sons, I don't know why you'd get upset about a tiny, tiny nerf to Thousand Sons and Grey Knight Characters as part of a rules change. Did the Reinforcement changes take every bad unit into account or were units balanced over the course of the next couple of CAs? I'm glad you think I had some good arguments.

You keep alluding to rules to help either faction in place of this nerf but have provided no example for it. In genera, sweeping needs across a faction are not as useful because they are not precise. With a few examples this action brings down the quality of good models but it also makes mediocre and bad one worse.

How many times must I explain that any changes I would like to see to Thousand Sons are irrelevant to this thread and have nothing to do with the thread.

I agree heretic astartes sorcerers are a good unit. However they are good because of their powers and the units they can target. A +1 to hit is far more useful on a unit of double tapping Obliterators or Havocs then it is on a single predator or squad of rubric marines.

Rubrics can double-tap with a 20-man squad, assuming you are re-rolling 1s to hit that's 15,6 extra S4 AP-2 hits, which is about on-par with the 7 extra hits you get with Slaanesh Obliterators.

The -1 to hit and the 5+ FNP are not even available to the 1000 Sons.

No, but they get access to 6 spells instead of 1. Not to mention Weaver of Fates is pretty good, although I'd agree the other two powers are better.

Thousand Sons sorcerers can cast smite more efficiently but the regular sorcers can synergize with their army better.

Thousand Sons Characters can cast Prescience on Alpha Legion Obliterators same as an Alpha Legion Sorcerer can, except they can do so at greater range.

If all three thousand son sorcerers cast smite and succeed (and after all three roles there is a 41% chance they fail) then they will deal an average of 6 mortal wounds to the unit of cultist input in front to eat the first round of smites. Over 240 points sorcerers kills 24 points of cultus. In return I can fire off a support unit that hits on 2’s and can possibly fire twice. The superior option seems clear. Even if you add in 3 exalted sorcerers, you’d only get up to 12 mortal wounds for about 600 points. And that still assumes that every smite is successful.

If you're casting Smite three times with +0 then you currently deal an average of 5,38 mortal wounds. With the nerf you deal an average of mortal wounds 4,65 mortal wounds. That's less than 5 pts of difference in the amount of models you kill.

At the end of the day people can only comment about the rule proposals you have posted.

No, the rules proposal, not proposals. If this proposal is bad, fair enough, but I don't accept that it's fair to attack me, which I very much find saying that all my suggestions are low effort and terrible.

Be open to criticisms on your rules. No one is picking on you. Think of it like a thesis. You propose it and then you defend it.

Despite you claiming that I'm in this just to nerf a faction so hard that it cannot perform it's core function, I still engaged with every arguement you had and lots of people are picking on me, stop gaslighting me.

 Grimskul wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

"you rarely put in the depth of thought required to make a good suggestion. In this thread, you suggest a massive nerf to a pair of armies and yet haven't designed the rules to compensate them for these nerfs."

The second sentence is constructive criticism. The first sentence is more of an attack on the behavior of the poster.

If you consider the first sentence to be an attack then you must have really thin skin since that's more of a factual statement at this point given the OP's pattern of posting.

How about if I said all your posts are dumb and all your Ork suggestions are OP. Would that not be an attack? You also didn't properly quote the quote, but that's par for the course for someone that regularly engages in dishonest discussion, so here you go:

"Vict, your proposed rules are almost universally bad because you rarely put in the depth of thought required to make a good suggestion. In this thread, you suggest a massive nerf to a pair of armies and yet haven't designed the rules to compensate them for these nerfs."
The: "Vict, your proposed rules are almost universally bad because" is kind of important, don't you think? I was going to say "I don't have time for dealing with you Grimskul, if you wrote anything of value I am sorry, but due to our earlier run-ins I'm assuming you're just here to pile on the hate and stupidity."

I checked your comment anyways, I gave you the benefit of the doubt, can you honestly say I was right to do so?

Given his very heavy bias towards most non-Necron armies (which I guess makes sense when you're playing one of the weakest armies in the game atm) wouldn't it make more sense to give Necron's more ways of dealing with psychic powers beyond gloom prisms and one warlord trait as part of the solution?

Necrons are not weak, Necrons are strong, I have no problems with most lists and despite you probably ignoring this fact I'll reiterate that I think several Necron units and Stratagems need to be nerfed. Gloom prisms are fine, they're 5 pts, that's pretty damn cheap, the units they're on aren't too great. I'm also starting to play with other factions a bit, I take great issue with people's mischaracterization of me as a sore loser that wants to nerf everything not Necrons. I want to nerf everything not fun unless it's not fun because of how weak it is, then I want to buff it to make it more fun.

I don't see Smite being the main problem in the game at the moment given that I don't see most armies spamming it and for both TS and Grey Knights, it's not only incredibly harmful to the flavour to their army as others have mentioned but in the case of GK, their super-smite is not always turned on since most GK armies will be shifting what tides they will be using, so taking that option away from them will basically be taking away an entire tide option for them for no real reason.

I agree Smite isn't the main problem in the game, but if you read my initial suggestion you'd see this is not just a nerf to Thousand Sons and Grey Knights, it's a buff to a tonne of units, Monster psykers like Greater Daemons, Tyranid Hive Tyrants and Maleceptor not to mention all the psyker units like Warlock Conclaves, Pink Horrors, Zoanthropes and Wyrdvane Psykers. When someone said that Thousand Sons were not a problem I was open to the suggestion and tried to ask which are the actual problem units that the smite nerf needs to hit? I did not get a clear answer, even without smite nerf the Renegade Psykers are 70 pts I believe so they'd never see play regardless. I'm open to removing the smite nerf entirely if there are no relevant units it needs to hit. What my objection to the current paradigm is that between Zoanthropes and Thousand Sons characters, Thousand Sons characters are closer to the problem we had with Renegade Psykers spam and yet it is Zoanthropes that was hit. Either
*Zoanthropes should be excempt like Thousand Sons characters.
*Zoanthropes should not get hit, but Thousand Sons characters should.
*Only cheap psykers should get hit.

Assuming you have 5 Grey Knight Characters, that's 9,17 mortal wounds vs 6,94 mortal wounds, a drop in the bucket considering you'll have tonnes of other units casting smite and you could always cast other powers with a couple of the characters.

 Grimskul wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

"you rarely put in the depth of thought required to make a good suggestion. In this thread, you suggest a massive nerf to a pair of armies and yet haven't designed the rules to compensate them for these nerfs."

The second sentence is constructive criticism. The first sentence is more of an attack on the behavior of the poster.

If you consider the first sentence to be an attack then you must have really thin skin since that's more of a factual statement at this point given the OP's pattern of posting.

Nah. It doesn't matter whether the statement is factual or not. It's a comment on the poster rather than the post. Classic ad hominem fallacy. Someone makes you a sandwich. It might be a tasty sandwich or it might not. You might be reluctant to eat the sandwich if you didn't like the previous sandwiches the person made for you. You might not like the sandwich maker because you know he kicks a puppy before every sandwich he makes. But neither of those things are a basis for disliking the qualities of the sandwich at hand.

Regardless of how you feel about Vict's previous posts or how he's responding in this thread, there's no need to insult past posts. It doesn't contribute to this conversation. It's just being a jerk to the poster.

Even if Canadian 5th was trying to communicate some sort of trend he's noticed in Vict's posts, the words he used failed to do that. Instead, his comment was just a rude jab at another poster. The world is crummy, guys. Let's not be dicks to each other while discussing toy soldiers.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Nah. It doesn't matter whether the statement is factual or not. It's a comment on the poster rather than the post. Classic ad hominem fallacy. Someone makes you a sandwich. It might be a tasty sandwich or it might not. You might be reluctant to eat the sandwich if you didn't like the previous sandwiches the person made for you. You might not like the sandwich maker because you know he kicks a puppy before every sandwich he makes. But neither of those things are a basis for disliking the qualities of the sandwich at hand.

Nowhere did I make any comments about Vict as a person, thus it cannot be an ad hominem fallacy. That would be along the lines of me saying, 'Oh look, another Vict thread, do I even need to read it before saying that it's awful?'; that would be bad. What I did was used past behaviour to support my main criticism of his current rules proposal; which is a healthy debate tactic.

Vict, and most users of this section of the forum, would do well to develop their ideas more completely before showing them to the world. Most suggestions made in this subforum are unusable due to either lack of complete rules text to make such suggestions playable, a gross lack of balance, a lack of understanding of what makes a game fun. Further even the better rules ideas often lack sufficient support for why a change should be made at all. Moreso than most areas of this site, this section is mostly just shouting frustrations into the void in hopes that a friendly voice will shout back. I'm not a particularly friendly voice, I'm the voice of logic and reason and will tell you harsh truths about your ideas.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
Nah. It doesn't matter whether the statement is factual or not. It's a comment on the poster rather than the post. Classic ad hominem fallacy. Someone makes you a sandwich. It might be a tasty sandwich or it might not. You might be reluctant to eat the sandwich if you didn't like the previous sandwiches the person made for you. You might not like the sandwich maker because you know he kicks a puppy before every sandwich he makes. But neither of those things are a basis for disliking the qualities of the sandwich at hand.

Nowhere did I make any comments about Vict as a person, thus it cannot be an ad hominem fallacy. That would be along the lines of me saying, 'Oh look, another Vict thread, do I even need to read it before saying that it's awful?'; that would be bad. What I did was used past behaviour to support my main criticism of his current rules proposal; which is a healthy debate tactic.

Vict, and most users of this section of the forum, would do well to develop their ideas more completely before showing them to the world. Most suggestions made in this subforum are unusable due to either lack of complete rules text to make such suggestions playable, a gross lack of balance, a lack of understanding of what makes a game fun. Further even the better rules ideas often lack sufficient support for why a change should be made at all. Moreso than most areas of this site, this section is mostly just shouting frustrations into the void in hopes that a friendly voice will shout back. I'm not a particularly friendly voice, I'm the voice of logic and reason and will tell you harsh truths about your ideas.

It's an abusive ad hominem attack. It's like saying "but he's a drug addict what does he know?" You try to undermine the idea proposed by saying that previous ideas I've had were almost entirely bad. If your conclusion after discussing how my idea would negatively impact the game and had no redeeming qualities was that the idea should have had more work and that you'd appreciate if I put in more thought to my ideas before posting them then it wouldn't have been an ad-hominem attack.

This forum would benefit from you trying to be a little nicer and sticking to the topic of the thread before attacking the OP.