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I have an idea about nerfing blast weapons - bring back 4th ed rules on them (roll to hit) but continue to use 5th edition and onwards' scatter rule.

So, for example to fire a frag missile you first roll to hit (3+), then you roll the scatter die - if it is a direct hit, that's that, and if it scatters, you subtract the firer's ballistic skill.


5th edition's buff of doing away with having to roll for partially hit models and 6th edition's buff of no longer having to half the weapon S if the central hole scatters away from a tank can both be kept as otherwise it would be too hard a nerf.

But I think the above change will make people return to Heavy Bolters, Heavy Burst Cannons and the like instead of everyone taking Plasma Cannons, Ion Accelerators etc.

thoughts?

Your examples given are unfortunate in that the reason plasma cannons and ion accelerators are preferred over heavy bolters and heavy burst cannons is that the former two are AP2 and the latter two aren't. With 6e's nerf to power weapons AP2 shooting is really, really valuable, if you nerf blasts' scatter people are still going to go for the AP2 weapons over the non-AP2 weapons in a lot of cases.

A better answer to the issue of a lot of heavy weapons being left on the shelf in favour of better ones would be to drop the linearity of the AP scale such that a plasma cannon wasn't six times better than a non-AP2 weapon when shooting at a Sv2+ target, but that's less likely to work well with 40k as it stands.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
A better answer to the issue of a lot of heavy weapons being left on the shelf in favour of better ones would be to drop the linearity of the AP scale such that a plasma cannon wasn't six times better than a non-AP2 weapon when shooting at a Sv2+ target, but that's less likely to work well with 40k as it stands.

Bring back save modifiers!

 Platuan4th wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
A better answer to the issue of a lot of heavy weapons being left on the shelf in favour of better ones would be to drop the linearity of the AP scale such that a plasma cannon wasn't six times better than a non-AP2 weapon when shooting at a Sv2+ target, but that's less likely to work well with 40k as it stands.

Bring back save modifiers!

Which was in point of fact my solution in http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/592293.page but applying that in a vacuum to modern 40k is not likely to work well.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
A better answer to the issue of a lot of heavy weapons being left on the shelf in favour of better ones would be to drop the linearity of the AP scale such that a plasma cannon wasn't six times better than a non-AP2 weapon when shooting at a Sv2+ target, but that's less likely to work well with 40k as it stands.

Bring back save modifiers!

only after bringing back "to hit" modifiers

I never thought blasts were that bad, especially small blasts. I've rarely seen a small blast hit more than one model since it is so very small. Additionally on average it seems to hit that a model at roughly a 2/3rds chance so to me its really not much different than a 1 shot gun.

Do blasts even need nerfing?

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Do blasts even need nerfing?

S7/AP2 Large Blasts need their S/AP worsened (Looking at you, Riptides), but blasts in the abstract aren't too terrifying.

I'd argue that's a problem with the Riptide in general, rather than blasts. And before anyone starts, no, we don't need another one of those threads.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
I'd argue that's a problem with the Riptide in general, rather than blasts. And before anyone starts, no, we don't need another one of those threads.

It's specifically a problem with consequence-free AP2 Large Blasts which show up in many more places than they should in recent Codexes.