Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2022/10/20/warhammer-40000-metawatch-unpacking-the-latest-balance-dataslate/


A few tweaks, but seems quite a soft touch from a first glance.

Reddit is booting off at it being underwhelming, but given the game is fairly balanced it seems wise.

Yhea. I aggree they've sorta wrestled the unruly beast of 40k into the best shape, balance wise, its Been in for years, which they are trying to no tweak too much. Their willingness to roll back the nerds to admech speak volumes about the general raise in power level of the game, given how oppressive they were when those nerds were added.


It will be interesting to see if their are many changes to points when the update for that drops in the near future.

It's hilarious to me that they just keep nerfing/unnerfing AdMech.

It's like...guys? The problem isn't points or rules interactions. It's that you took what was an elite army and slapped it into a horde framework.

I could fix Skitarii units in a night of caffeine-induced fervor. So could they. But it would involve really, really actually invalidating the codex in one pass.

Dudeface wrote:
Reddit is booting off at it being underwhelming, but given the game is fairly balanced it seems wise.

Unless you play space marines.

Cute changes. I like how 39% win rates for ad mecha means reverting of all nerfs, and for marines with same win rates, they get a +1VP on a secondary which only works if you happen to play Nephilim. But it ain't my army, so I can have a laugh at this.

My favourite quote is the bit where they say they've removed Core from Necron vehicles to prevent Technomancers resurrecting Command Barges...which was never a thing because that's not how the Technomancer works. Do you even read your own rules, GW?

Overall this feels like far too small of a set of changes and many of them feel like the wrong changes. Several places have shown their assertion that SM winrate is down to being a new players' army is simply wrong. Their poor winrate is due to being generally bad. I don't think nudging one bad secondary up a few points per game will help. This also won't help make Necrons actually interesting to play with or against. I think Nids will either just stick with Leviathan as it's still really good, or pivot to some other Hive Fleet and remain at the top thanks to having so many OTT units and rules.

Was really hoping my Broadsides would get Core back. If Redemptor Dreads, Bladeguard, Eradicators all get Core, why can't Broadsides? We only have 6 Core units, of which 3 and 5 are pretty much the same, wouldn't hurt to give us a bit more.

 Kanluwen wrote:
It's hilarious to me that they just keep nerfing/unnerfing AdMech.

It's like...guys? The problem isn't points or rules interactions. It's that you took what was an elite army and slapped it into a horde framework.

I could fix Skitarii units in a night of caffeine-induced fervor. So could they. But it would involve really, really actually invalidating the codex in one pass.

Which isn't terribly practical.

They didn't waffle between nerfing and un-nerfing Admech. They hit them down the number of times it was needed to keep them from murdering the game and they've been slowly peeling it back. There are significant changes ( i.e. CP ) that make prior nerfs no longer sensible.

It's good that GW is now mentally able to take a scalpel to the game rather than the very heavy nerfs to stabilize. I think this is the first time we've seen a nerf to a relic as well.

How they clean up the still messy dataslates going into 10th is anyone's guess.

The outcome of these decisions should be very interesting to watch.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slipspace wrote:
My favourite quote is the bit where they say they've removed Core from Necron vehicles to prevent Technomancers resurrecting Command Barges...which was never a thing because that's not how the Technomancer works. Do you even read your own rules, GW?

They could resurrect menhirs. No idea how people were doing barges.

Overall this feels like far too small of a set of changes and many of them feel like the wrong changes. Several places have shown their assertion that SM winrate is down to being a new players' army is simply wrong. Their poor winrate is due to being generally bad. I don't think nudging one bad secondary up a few points per game will help. This also won't help make Necrons actually interesting to play with or against. I think Nids will either just stick with Leviathan as it's still really good, or pivot to some other Hive Fleet and remain at the top thanks to having so many OTT units and rules.

They are definitely marine players that are successful. And being the largest portion of their sales it stands to reason that statistically marines will be more of the starting armies. There's no data to truly prove any of those, but I find it dubious to claim it's not possible.

I'm happy with the changes. It being boring is probably best for the game.

I am surprised by the lackluster marine change, and that necrons didn't get some change to their objective secured army trait. Just to enable more variety in subfactions used.

My first impressions are that I think this was too light of a touch to the factions languishing at the very bottom of the list and that we won't see them improve their win rate by anywhere the near the minimum 6% that the design team (and we as players) would like to see.

Admech:
I'm not sure I care much about the change to the single stratagem for admech. I thought the original nerf to enriched rounds was OTT, being a double whammy of increased CP cost and reduced effect. The version in the last balance data slate felt fine, this change makes it feel like a good stratagem, and maybe that's ok.

I find it odd that they made a point to note that their ultimate aim was to make the game balanced for all subfactions and then the big change to the adeptus mechanicus rules was to revert the Lucius dogma back to its old wording. I'm sure I know what this will mean - an apparent increase in the overall admech win rate, being propped up by a subfaction that gets an improved save. Will it get the faction as a whole a 6% bump? I don't know. But if it does then they've achieved the wrong thing and all the players using Mars, Agrapina, Stygies, etc will still feel left out in the cold.

What admech actually need is some improvements to the cult mechanicus units and the onager to improve internal balance and then maybe a slight points and power level reduction.

Space Marines:
The change to space marines is frankly crap. It will only affect Nephilim and even then self-evidently the additional VPs gained will be very minimal, if any (you may have already maxed it out). Again the change favours certain subfactions (those focused on melee this time), not the codex as a whole. Its unlikely to improve how imperial fists or iron hands are faring.

I'm not sure what I'd change. I did hear a rumour that they were going to allow the army to be more flexible about switching and retaining which doctrine it was using - maybe that would be sufficient for the more ranged focused armies, whilst also improving the codex as a whole.

Necrons:
The necrons are still left overly reliant on a single custom subfaction and strong secondaries rather than the datasheets or their faction rules as a whole. The changes to the silent king may have some effect, but my guess is that he'll also still be propping up the best lists. As they've revisited CORE again, couldn't the doomstalker have gotten CORE?

Despite a good win rate in nephilim I still think the faction as a whole is pretty dire. For a quick fix I'd slap armour of contempt or another resilience buff on them, buff a couple of their big guns and then scrap the wonky secondaries.

I have no experience against nids or harlequins, so I have no comment about the changes there.

I don't think the changes in this dataslate will have any impact on the games I play aside from a few more wounds when I use the enriched rounds strat (hoooray.....)

Colour me unimpressed.

The Black Adder wrote:
My first impressions are that I think this was too light of a touch to the factions languishing at the very bottom of the list and that we won't see them improve their win rate by anywhere the near the minimum 6% that the design team (and we as players) would like to see.

Admech:
I'm not sure I care much about the change to the single stratagem for admech. I thought the original nerf to enriched rounds was OTT, being a double whammy of increased CP cost and reduced effect. The version in the last balance data slate felt fine, this change makes it feel like a good stratagem, and maybe that's ok.

I find it odd that they made a point to note that their ultimate aim was to make the game balanced for all subfactions and then the big change to the adeptus mechanicus rules was to revert the Lucius dogma back to its old wording. I'm sure I know what this will mean - an apparent increase in the overall admech win rate, being propped up by a subfaction that gets an improved save. Will it get the faction as a whole a 6% bump? I don't know. But if it does then they've achieved the wrong thing and all the players using Mars, Agrapina, Stygies, etc will still feel left out in the cold.

What admech actually need is some improvements to the cult mechanicus units and the onager to improve internal balance and then maybe a slight points and power level reduction.

Space Marines:
The change to space marines is frankly crap. It will only affect Nephilim and even then self-evidently the additional VPs gained will be very minimal, if any (you may have already maxed it out). Again the change favours certain subfactions (those focused on melee this time), not the codex as a whole. Its unlikely to improve how imperial fists or iron hands are faring.

I'm not sure what I'd change. I did hear a rumour that they were going to allow the army to be more flexible about switching and retaining which doctrine it was using - maybe that would be sufficient for the more ranged focused armies, whilst also improving the codex as a whole.

Necrons:
The necrons are still left overly reliant on a single custom subfaction and strong secondaries rather than the datasheets or their faction rules as a whole. The changes to the silent king may have some effect, but my guess is that he'll also still be propping up the best lists. As they've revisited CORE again, couldn't the doomstalker have gotten CORE?

Despite a good win rate in nephilim I still think the faction as a whole is pretty dire. For a quick fix I'd slap armour of contempt or another resilience buff on them, buff a couple of their big guns and then scrap the wonky secondaries.

I have no experience against nids or harlequins, so I have no comment about the changes there.

I don't think the changes in this dataslate will have any impact on the games I play aside from a few more wounds when I use the enriched rounds strat (hoooray.....)

Colour me unimpressed.

But the win rates game wide are fairly stable, 6% of a step up isn't going to be too hard for admech I'd imagine, it'll be impossible for marines I imagine, the only real explanation is that there is indeed a v2 book round the corner. You've deemed it unimpressive but it needs to be. If there were sweeping redesigns of faction abilities or core limitations, especially for some forces that are ok currently, that's the opposite of stability.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Overall this feels like far too small of a set of changes and many of them feel like the wrong changes. Several places have shown their assertion that SM winrate is down to being a new players' army is simply wrong. Their poor winrate is due to being generally bad. I don't think nudging one bad secondary up a few points per game will help. This also won't help make Necrons actually interesting to play with or against. I think Nids will either just stick with Leviathan as it's still really good, or pivot to some other Hive Fleet and remain at the top thanks to having so many OTT units and rules.

They are definitely marine players that are successful. And being the largest portion of their sales it stands to reason that statistically marines will be more of the starting armies. There's no data to truly prove any of those, but I find it dubious to claim it's not possible.

There's some fairly good analysis here:

https://www.stat-check.com/blog/do-new-space-marine-players-lose-more-than-other-factions

Obviously the data is hard to tease out here, because we need to define veteran vs casual (or whatever terminology you want to use), but that does seem to show that GW are not correct about what's causing the poor winrate for SM. Maybe they have other data to dispute it, but they haven't shown it. In the absence of that data, we try to draw what conclusions we can from the data we have available.

 Kanluwen wrote:
It's hilarious to me that they just keep nerfing/unnerfing AdMech.

It's like...guys? The problem isn't points or rules interactions. It's that you took what was an elite army and slapped it into a horde framework.

I could fix Skitarii units in a night of caffeine-induced fervor. So could they. But it would involve really, really actually invalidating the codex in one pass.

Yes, I can't wait for your fandex where Rangers can't take Plasma because that's broken and entirely the reason GW limited the options in the squads, not based on what's in the kit.

Slipspace wrote:

Obviously the data is hard to tease out here, because we need to define veteran vs casual (or whatever terminology you want to use), but that does seem to show that GW are not correct about what's causing the poor winrate for SM. Maybe they have other data to dispute it, but they haven't shown it. In the absence of that data, we try to draw what conclusions we can from the data we have available.

I thought that as well as poor win rates they don't get on the winners podium?

Dudeface wrote:


But the win rates game wide are fairly stable, 6% of a step up isn't going to be too hard for admech I'd imagine, it'll be impossible for marines I imagine, the only real explanation is that there is indeed a v2 book round the corner. You've deemed it unimpressive but it needs to be. If there were sweeping redesigns of faction abilities or core limitations, especially for some forces that are ok currently, that's the opposite of stability.

I think the start of my previous post didn't reflect my real issues which I set out in the rest of the post. That's my fault.

The issue I have is that they're making the wrong changes slowly. If admech get a 6%+ boost because the top players pile into a single faction - that's not good balance. If marines get a similar boost because only the assault oriented chapters get a boost, that's not good balance either. If necrons maintain their standing due to a wonky subfaction and tournament specific secondary combination, that's not great either.

Ultimately the problem with marines is that if you buff core marines you will also buff marines that are doing better.

In the last 6 weeks Salamanders and Iron Hands have been hovering around the 45% winrate, but then you have Imperial Fists at 29%.

Let's then boost the core book so the Imperial Fists reach up to 45%. Now the side effect of that could mean that Iron Hands and Salamanders reach 55%+ winrate.

At some point I think GW needs to divorce the points from the core SM book and have individual cost for every SM datasheet bound to each specific subfaction. Terminators cost X for core marines, Y for Ultramarines, Z for Dark Angels, and so on and so on. Same would have to go for every single supplemental subfaction in the Space Marine codex, because otherwise you risk side effects.

In fact, I think it would be good at this time to not print point costs in the codexes as they get updated so frequently and immediately(Votann) that they are ultimately pointless(pun somewhat intended), and instead have a master document that gets updated every time a new codex comes out and with each balance update.

GW could have easily boosted individual SM factions.

 Eldarsif wrote:


At some point I think GW needs to divorce the points from the core SM book and have individual cost for every SM datasheet bound to each specific subfaction. Terminators cost X for core marines, Y for Ultramarines, Z for Dark Angels, and so on and so on. Same would have to go for every single supplemental subfaction in the Space Marine codex, because otherwise you risk side effects.

In fact, I think it would be good at this time to not print point costs in the codexes as they get updated so frequently and immediately(Votann) that they are ultimately pointless(pun somewhat intended), and instead have a master document that gets updated every time a new codex comes out and with each balance update.

Yes, but then a IF player or DA player will not buy 2 books, but instead only buy one book. But if GW didn't care about itself, and only about the players and the game. They would be dropping updated rules day 1 of each new edition. Codex would be books with different builds like the ones some factions get in WD right now, maybe some adjustments or new units, characters etc added. And then mid edition. GW would overhaul the factions that came at its begining and adjust them depending what ever they are too good or two bad. CA books would be books for scenarios, maybe more specific forces, more stuff for narrative and open players. FAQ and maybe a word from designers, who instead of smoke and mirrors, would give clear text what they think army X should be and what they are going try to make army Y in the future. But the chance of something like that nears zero.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

The_Real_Chris wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

Obviously the data is hard to tease out here, because we need to define veteran vs casual (or whatever terminology you want to use), but that does seem to show that GW are not correct about what's causing the poor winrate for SM. Maybe they have other data to dispute it, but they haven't shown it. In the absence of that data, we try to draw what conclusions we can from the data we have available.

I thought that as well as poor win rates they don't get on the winners podium?

That difference between marines of the regular type and ad mecha, was that post nerfs, only the best of the best players could still make an impact with the ad mecha army. Regular folks were having as much success with theirs as marine players, to a degree of course. The difference is that IF players have taken probably zero GT, and I would be suprised if they had over 10 top 8s in big tournaments, through out the entire edition. The ad mecha on the other hand , had a few weeks of being broken, and a few months of being very hard to play.




Regarding the sm=noob army=low win rates, yet somehow BA seem to be full of veteran players. I wonder what would happen if GW came out and said, only the best of the best, and the cream of the cream of world players play this three winning armies. In order to have a more fair game, we decided to give those 3 armies bad rules in the future, so the noobs have a better chance to have fun, and the rules difference will be equalized by the superior skills of those 3 armies. And they could pick those armies at random. I would love to see what would happen then.

Slipspace wrote:

There's some fairly good analysis here:

https://www.stat-check.com/blog/do-new-space-marine-players-lose-more-than-other-factions

Obviously the data is hard to tease out here, because we need to define veteran vs casual (or whatever terminology you want to use), but that does seem to show that GW are not correct about what's causing the poor winrate for SM. Maybe they have other data to dispute it, but they haven't shown it. In the absence of that data, we try to draw what conclusions we can from the data we have available.

Yeah, I love talking gak about Astartes fans but to give them a fair shot at the game they should have done more here.

And this is why scientists should not be allowed in to areas where arguments happen. They destroy any fun and joy from them, with their factors, logic and data.

 Eldarsif wrote:


At some point I think GW needs to divorce the points from the core SM book and have individual cost for every SM datasheet bound to each specific subfaction. Terminators cost X for core marines, Y for Ultramarines, Z for Dark Angels, and so on and so on. Same would have to go for every single supplemental subfaction in the Space Marine codex, because otherwise you risk side effects.

Absolutely a terrible idea. We don't need special snowflake crap for everything, because that's how we end up with 4+ Terminator unit entries. And now you want to add DIFFERENT point cost per faction as though Dark Angels don't do that to begin with for terrible results?

Karol wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:

Regarding the sm=noob army=low win rates, yet somehow BA seem to be full of veteran players. I wonder what would happen if GW came out and said, only the best of the best, and the cream of the cream of world players play this three winning armies. In order to have a more fair game, we decided to give those 3 armies bad rules in the future, so the noobs have a better chance to have fun, and the rules difference will be equalized by the superior skills of those 3 armies. And they could pick those armies at random. I would love to see what would happen then.

The best of the best will simply play something else & do quite well.
Meanwhile noobs will still pick up bad (now worse?) armies & continue having a bad time.

Karol wrote:
And this is why scientists should not be allowed in to areas where arguments happen. They destroy any fun and joy from them, with their factors, logic and data.

Remember, GW hires for attitude and not competence

Karol wrote:
And this is why scientists should not be allowed in to areas where arguments happen. They destroy any fun and joy from them, with their factors, logic and data.

I'm glad that most Poles aren't as anti-science as you lol

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Karol wrote:
And this is why scientists should not be allowed in to areas where arguments happen. They destroy any fun and joy from them, with their factors, logic and data.

Remember, GW hires for attitude and not competence

Seems to be a British core trait nowadays

Not sure if Karol is joking or actually serious though, but I'm leaning towards "joking".

nekooni wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Karol wrote:
And this is why scientists should not be allowed in to areas where arguments happen. They destroy any fun and joy from them, with their factors, logic and data.

Remember, GW hires for attitude and not competence

Seems to be a British core trait nowadays

Not sure if Karol is joking or actually serious though, but I'm leaning towards "joking".

Karol was definitely joking

As others have said, it kind of just highlights GW's issue.

Yes some factions are still a bad spot (although new codex for Guard soon) - but balance is broadly in a good spot. So just spinning the wheel would feel something like an act of vandalism.

But if you are increasingly burnt out with 9th edition tournament meta, this just feels like "no big changes until 10th edition this summer". Its not even all that interesting to read about because you can't moan about faction X being OP and winning all the tournaments.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slipspace wrote:
My favourite quote is the bit where they say they've removed Core from Necron vehicles to prevent Technomancers resurrecting Command Barges...which was never a thing because that's not how the Technomancer works. Do you even read your own rules, GW?

They could resurrect menhirs.

They still can. Menhirs aren't CHARACTER models, and thus, keep CORE.

Tyel wrote:
As others have said, it kind of just highlights GW's issue.

Yes some factions are still a bad spot (although new codex for Guard soon) - but balance is broadly in a good spot. So just spinning the wheel would feel something like an act of vandalism.

But if you are increasingly burnt out with 9th edition tournament meta, this just feels like "no big changes until 10th edition this summer". Its not even all that interesting to read about because you can't moan about faction X being OP and winning all the tournaments.

Simplifying it down loads, they've passed the first exam on maintaining balance. They now need to work on the internal stuff inside books as noted, but as we know there isn't much point at this stage as you say. Fingers crossed they'll learn and 10th will start at this level of parity.

I was not joking. We could have had a good 5-6 pages of argument about how much does the marine noob effect impact the marine win rates. I could learn new words, and see pages of text and have a good time reading it.

And here one dude sits down, takes a few thousand results of games. Makes a graph, and say this is how it is, if you don't agree show your graphs, and lets face it, no one is going to do that. Lost content IMO.