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So I have been playing Eldar a little against some Tyranids. Usually I just bring Eldrad and the Avatar as my HQ choices but I have been experimenting with swapping the powers out for the book powers which seem better than the codex. The Telepathy ones are especially brutal and between Eldrad and a seer council I can bring almost all of them! I have only tried this once or twice though so I can't be sure if it is really a good swap. What do you guys think? Is it worth the trade off or do you just stick with the codex powers?

Divination is more popular, but Telepathy is good as well, no doubt. I personally like Eldrad with Divination and a cheap back-up Farseer for Fortune, as it is still awesome.

Don´t forget that the Warlocks on your Council can´t switch out their powers for BRB powers. From your post it kind of sounds like you might be playing it that way.

Nah, not worth the risk if you ask me.
From Telepathy, Dominate and Invisibility seem good - but you only have half a chance of getting them AND the latter uses up 2 Warp Charge. The rest of the powers have their uses, but they're nowhere near as good as the Codex powers.

You need to remember that Eldar psykers are designed to be force multipliers. They don't cause massive damage or problems all by themselves - they steer the battle to make the enemy easy pickings for your other units. There's a reason so many people clamour after Prescience from Divination - but there aren't really any Eldar units to take full advantage of it as your units mostly aren't designed to do well at shooting AND assault. Guide, Doom and Fortune have similar levels of effect in their casting, and you don't even have to risk not getting them. Never underestimate the power of rerolls, particularly with large numbers of dice.

I run a Seer Council with two Farseers. One takes the four cheapest powers and swaps for Telepathy. My goal is to get Invisibility and Hallucination, but I also like Terrify a whole lot. Mental Fortitude and Puppet Master have uses as well. If I do get what I want early, then I take Prescience as well. The other Seer keeps Fortune.

Whether or not you should swap depends on what you want to do. Fortune is still an absurd power. Doom is as well, as even your non-Eldar allies benefit from it. The rest of the Eldar powers are pretty mediocre though. Telepathy and Divination, on the other hand, are really excellent disciplines. It really depends on your list and what you want to support.

I play eldar on foot. If I played a mounted council, i'd definitely try for invis.

On foot, I typically take Eldrad, and keep codex powers. Unless of course, i'm playing a deathwing/grey knight army. In that instance i'll roll on divination, and tryf or misfortune. It basically doubles casualties against such an army, if you use it well.

At 1500-2000 points, I either take 2 seers, or a seer+autarch. I always keep a seer with fortune though, it's too valuable.

Eldrad + Divination is always good because even on really bad rolling (Precognition and Scrier Gaze suck) you got 2 other good powers, one of which can be cast twice.

See, cuz' 4i save, reroll shots and hits, ignoring cover and making enemies reroll passed saves are always good in any take-all OR gimmick list.

Eldrad with telepathy is good as he's the only farseer who can cast invisibility and another power. It's a shame as he's also the only farseer who can cast fortune twice.
I've tried both and I prefer him with codex powers.
I've not tried divination yet - But the best I've found so far - I liked running eldrad with book powers and then another farseer with 4 powers, swapped for telepathy.
Invisibility, with two fortunes and a guide makes wraithwall tough to kill, adding in a wraithseer and another wraithlord gives cc armies some pause when they think about assaulting too. The 4+ fnp is useful too. I'm thinking about DE allies and using the baron with this.
The downside is its about 1200 points. Keeps objectives though...

 Super Ready wrote:
You need to remember that Eldar psykers are designed to be force multipliers. They don't cause massive damage or problems all by themselves - they steer the battle to make the enemy easy pickings for your other units.

This here. We aren't going to use farseers as roaming grim reapers, we use them to make our regular units roaming grim reapers. Eldrad is literally the BEST force multiplier in the game and vanilla farseers aren't far behing. Use Guide on Bladestorming Dire Avengers and anything the Dire Avengers shoot at is probably doomed. Farseers are designed to support, not kill.

It's hard to justify trading out Eldrad's powers for book powers. Casting Fortune twice is just godly.

For the most part, as people have said, it depends on what you're doing as to if you can get away with book powers or not. However, as you are running Avatar + Eldrad, you're gonna want to have fortune. It's the difference between your Avatar getting nailed in the first turn, and tanking 2+ turns of AT fire from your opponent. Being as most Avatar + Eldrad armies are footdar armies, the fearless bubble tends to be important. Gotta keep big red and mean alive as long as possible.

Any army with 2 Farseers can do as others have suggested and trade out cheap powers for book powers on one of the Seer's. Even still you want Eldrad to be double Fortuning things generally speaking, and let the vanilla Farseer do the swap. (IMO the only reason to not run Eldrad is if you want all your seers on a bike. There is NO reason to take a foot seer over Eldrad)

I prefer using the Codex Powers. There are some horribly effective powers in the rulebook, which you can kind of guarantee, but I always find the Codex Powers are more reliable - you always know what you're going to get and can built your plan around that.

I also find that the Codex Powers synergise better with the army - which is to be expected, really. If you want something taken down, Doom it, then cast Guide on a shooty unit (or two, if your name is Eldrad) and blow it to smithereens. If you want to hold out, cast Fortune.

I run Eldrad on the codex powers and a cheap farseer for divination. It's a good set-up imo.