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What changes would you make to the Eldar to make them more in line with the rest of the codices?

Personally I have a couple of smaller ideas:

- Make the Serpent Shield one use only and not twin-linked by Scatter Laser
- Make Bladestorm AP3 instead of AP2
- Make Scatter Lasers 10 pts instead of 5

I'd nerf the wave serpants and make them armor 11 in the front. I'd make jet bikes 25 points a piece. And I'd lower the toughness on wraith knights to 6. I'd also make it so that wave serpants were not a dedicated transport.

Add another Dedicated Transport option more in line with the Dark Eldar Venom or Ravager. But I wouldn't change a thing about the Wave Serpent. Only the people that abuse it. But there is no question that Eldar need an open topped or assault vehicle transport option so the Striking Scorpions, Howling Banshees and Storm Guardians have a reason to exist again outside of footdar.

I would give the Dire Avengers either a buff or something and force squad size to be 10+ models, not a 65pt 5 man squad. Make them really seem like more elite troop choices and make them cost more.

And some changes to the Corsairs would be nice, but that's just waiting on Forge World.

 SharkoutofWata wrote:
Add another Dedicated Transport option more in line with the Dark Eldar Venom or Ravager. But I wouldn't change a thing about the Wave Serpent. Only the people that abuse it. But there is no question that Eldar need an open topped or assault vehicle transport option so the Striking Scorpions, Howling Banshees and Storm Guardians have a reason to exist again outside of footdar.

I would give the Dire Avengers either a buff or something and force squad size to be 10+ models, not a 65pt 5 man squad. Make them really seem like more elite troop choices and make them cost more.

And some changes to the Corsairs would be nice, but that's just waiting on Forge World.

That's the problem, people abuse it all the time. 5-6 wave serpants, everything objective secured? C'mon, 115 points they are better than most Leman Russ.

I'd drop the range on the wave serpent's weapons too, to keep them from sitting back in a gunline. I agree on the toughness nerf on the wraithknight too...I play nids and would seriously love a S8 MC that can move shoot and run...Maybe even give it hull points like a walker, because...it's a walker. Oh, and limit its movement to 6 inches.

 SharkoutofWata wrote:
Add another Dedicated Transport option more in line with the Dark Eldar Venom or Ravager. But I wouldn't change a thing about the Wave Serpent. Only the people that abuse it. But there is no question that Eldar need an open topped or assault vehicle transport option so the Striking Scorpions, Howling Banshees and Storm Guardians have a reason to exist again outside of footdar.

I would give the Dire Avengers either a buff or something and force squad size to be 10+ models, not a 65pt 5 man squad. Make them really seem like more elite troop choices and make them cost more.

And some changes to the Corsairs would be nice, but that's just waiting on Forge World.

The Wave Serpent is built for abuse and as there is no alternative to it for DT it makes the spaming of it worse.

Its a broken unit and needs adjusting and there have been numerous threads on it to do with making the serpent shield one shot, template or short range. Most of these would make it palatable to use and play against it.

A assault transport like the Venom would be prefect for Banshees and they might even see the table rather than the usual cut and paste Wave serpent armies.

I'd not change a thing about wave serpents other than pointcost. +20 pts base (like a battlewagon got) is gona bring it in line.

Scatter lasers need to cost more.

Warp spiders definitely need to cost more.

Banshees need some sort of protection.

WK go down to T7 and cost a bit less. What about a 30 pts drop for being T7 instead of T8? Still usable and decent but not unkillable for s4 guyz anymore.

Snipers need to cost a bit less.

Rangers, Banshees, Storm Guardians and Vaul's Support Batteries need a buff, as do some of the equipment options for the Exarchs. The codex has good internal balance for the most part, but some of these units and equipment choices are downright bad.

The Serpent's Shield's needs a nerf (reducing it's range significantly would be my choice - maybe even as short as 12"). It's just strange how you can use your dedicated transport as long-range gunships.

Almost everything else in the codex needs a moderate point increase.

-Wraithknights reduced to T7
-Scatter laser changed completely. It's current ruling is dumb. Maybe only TL is every shot hits? (BS4 with TL has a high chance of that happening anyway)
-Wave Serpents becoming AV11, or removing the Serpant shield and putting it on the Falcon to give people a reason to use them.
-Someone mentioned making Bladestorm AP3. I agree with this.
-Make the Jetbike upgrade more expensive. Seriously.

Also, increase the minimum squad size for guardian bikes, having two three-man bike squads cover two troops choices is silly.

And drop turbo-boost to 24", being able to instantly traverse the entire table to contest or cap an objective on the last turn is crazy.

Serpent:
Serpent Shield a 6" range, and downgrades on a 3+. If it were AV11, it'd have to drop in points by about half, so I'd leave that. And one-use-only doesn't hurt the Alpha, so that would be suboptimal.

Any av11 or lower Transport for Craftworlders would feel far too unfluffy.

Battle Focus:
Only for those on a Path of Khaine. Aspects, Autarchs, and the Avatar. Also, change it so it can be used by those who have it in a mixed unit (so a Farseer doesn't slow down a DA squad). Note that Reapers would gain Battle Focus (and should), but would be unaffected (again, as it should be).

Guardians (all non-pilots)
Well trained militia, but not the focus of an Aspect warrior. WS/BS 3. Tanks have better targeting systems, so would be unaffected.
Combined with the Battlefocus change, might warrant 8ppm Storms and Defenders.
Possibly give Storms the option to take power non-swords at +1 more point each.

Jetbikes
Confer a 4+ instead of a 3+ (note - Spears would still have a 3+ from other gear). Bikes might be somewhat sturdy, but are certainly not as protective as Power Armor.

Wrathknights:
Lord of War. Some loss of mobility too.

With Blade storm, remember that the units that get it end masse are either 12" range t3 5+, which dies in droves to bolter fire (boltgun shot kills more than twice as many Guardians per shot than shurican rounds kill Marines), or 18" t3 4+ on a unit that costs only 1 ppm less than a Marine, bit cannot take any specialist/heavy weapons, and has no Krak grenades (each bolter round is still more deadly to a DA than a shiriken round is to a Marine). I don't think they really need a nerf. If they're that bad, take more small arms?
I think that would fix the bulk of the the problems.

 DanielBeaver wrote:
Rangers, Banshees, Storm Guardians and Vaul's Support Batteries need a buff.

I agree with many of the suggestions in this thread, but I somewhat disagree with these.
- Rangers I would just make cheaper, maybe increase their range. Sniper weapons weren't great before and they got an undeserved nerf in 7th, so if you wanna make snipers flat out better then I agree with you.
- Banshees I think are well costed and if they get to melee then they are very good. They simply suffer from not being able to get into combat in the first place which is symptomatic of 40k rather than anything specific to Banshees.
- Storm Guardians I don't think are too bad, especially if you give them a couple Fusion Guns in a Serpent.
- Vaul's Support Batteries I think are good, but you don't see them because they are competing with some excellent units in Warwalkers and Wraithknights and the models are expensive per point. Three S6 (7 vs vehicles) barrage blasts for 90 points isn't too bad at all, and they have a lot of T7 wounds to get through.

ryuken87 wrote:
- Rangers I would just make cheaper, maybe increase their range. Sniper weapons weren't great before and they got an undeserved nerf in 7th, so if you wanna make snipers flat out better then I agree with you.
- Banshees I think are well costed and if they get to melee then they are very good. They simply suffer from not being able to get into combat in the first place which is symptomatic of 40k rather than anything specific to Banshees.

I feel like we have the same opinions about these two units... so I don't really understand why we're coming to opposite conclusions. Rangers are overpriced for what they do, and Banshees don't have a way of doing their job - ergo, they deserve changes to make them more effective (whether that be through a modification to the sniper rules, a lower price point, access to an assault transport, whatever. A buff).


The Vaul's Support Batteries are an okay unit, but they are easily the worst of the Heavy Support choices - and so they really deserve a buff, or everything else in the slot needs to be hit with the nerf bat.

I don't agree at all about Storm Guardians (the ability to take special weapons is their only redeeming quality, but they're a pretty poor platform for that IMO). Honestly, I wouldn't mind just eliminating them from the codex.

Banshees are mathematically terrible in melee. Wounding on 5's and 6's against almost everything in the game hurts them far more than AP3 can compensate for.

- - - - - -

As far as toning down the Eldar, only two major changes need to be made, imo.

One, lower the Serpent Shield's range down to 12''. As they're fast vehicles, they can move at cruising speed and still fire two weapons at full BS- that means that even on a 12'' gun, they're still packing a 24'' threat range. Is that still much shorter than the retardo 60'' gun they have now? Yeah, but there's no reason for them to have such a massive threat-range anyway. A) the serpent shield is a defensive feature, so it makes sense that its offensive capability would be short-ranged. B) It's a troop transport. Troop transports are used for... transporting troops- that means that the Wave Serpent, like all transports, is nominally a front-line vehicle. It shouldn't be cowering in the back of an advance taking pot-shots, it should be delivering troops to the front-line. Reducing the range of the shield will lower the Serpent's ability to reach out and touch the enemy from so far away, forcing it to assume its intended role of being a front-line transport. With how durable the Serpent is, its effectiveness should remain the same, with merely its function being adjusted.

Two, bladestorm needs to be nerfed. Instead of the current iteration, where any to-wound roll of a 6 makes the shot AP2 and auto-wounds, I'd change it to any to-hit roll of a 6 makes the shot AP2, but does not auto-wound. Even with the shot being a 6, and AP2, the weapon is its normal strength.

The reason for that is that right now its too effective against TEQ and MC's nominally, though it gaks on MEQ as well, and this has resulted in a meta-dependency on it. There is a number of high-strength weapons available to Eldar, but no one ever uses them (beyond the SS and the wraith-cannons) because why bother? Two dire avenger squads will cripple a 10-man terminator squad or a Carnifex in one round of shooting on average. Plus, combined with battle focus, it too easily allows a unit to kite enemies to death, whittling them down with rending shots little by little. Nerfing it so that it doesn't auto-wound still allows even the most basic Eldar troops to threaten Terminators and Space Marines, but will also lessen the effectiveness of them enough to force Eldar players to use their (pretty damn awesome) heavy firepower units, like Dark Reapers, Vaul's Wrath batteries and War Walkers.

And from a fluff/abstraction context... it really makes no sense for bladestorm to auto-wound anyway. The description and justification for why Shuriken Weapons can pierce armor so well is that they're extremely sharp, extremely small and travel extremely fast. Those are all good reasons for they should be able to penetrate strong armor, but none of them are good reasons for auto-wounding. We have a separation between armor saves and toughness for a reason. Armor saves represent the durability of external surfaces that protect your inside body from damage, such as armor or hardened, thick skin. Toughness represents having a robust physiology that allows you to shake off damage that pierces your armor. This can be redundant organs, a very fast healing ability, being semi-dead already and not caring about ruptured organs/blood less, etc. For those types of things, a weapon simply being "very sharp" shouldn't matter at all. It's like killing a zombie. It doesn't matter how sharp a sword is, if you shove it through the zombie's stomach it's not gonna care.

Anyway, making both of those changes would lower the more ridiculous aspects of Eldar and bring them more in line with other codices.

I'm confused about knocking the Wraithknight to T7. Why does it need to be less durable then a Wraithlord?

Just make the bloody wave serpents less tanky, and I won't mind anything else in that dex.

 Happyjew wrote:
I'm confused about knocking the Wraithknight to T7. Why does it need to be less durable then a Wraithlord?

Why should either be more durable than any Tyranid MC? And faster, and have invo's and better weapons, and be able to move shoot and then move again?

In no particular order what I would enjoy seeing as a lover of the space elves

1) A nerf to serpent shields ofc, many have been said here, I'm a fan of reduced range maybe 24, though with a small price drop as well
2) Change to Scatter lasers loosing target lock and gaining something else, maybe going to STR 7 and having skyfire for some AA in our dex
3) Nerf the wraithknight down to T7 though I'd also prefer some trimming to the Riptide and NDK first as they are equally as scary with a 2+
4) Make Autarchs actually useful somehow, possibly through good wargear and interactions with chosen aspects, at least give them the special rules of an aspect they join like acrobatics with Banshees or skyleap with hawks
5) Make our warlord table not terrible, remove the no scatter from DS one at least, give us something more palatible all around like the IG ones, or more selective like the tau ones
6) I could see a nerf to bladestorm down to AP 3 and probably wouldn't complain
7) And for goodness sake help out the poor banshees somehow, furious charge at least, probably something more substantial, I love the ladies but they suck so much

 Gavik Dross wrote:
In no particular order what I would enjoy seeing as a lover of the space elves

1) A nerf to serpent shields ofc, many have been said here, I'm a fan of reduced range maybe 24, though with a small price drop as well
2) Change to Scatter lasers loosing target lock and gaining something else, maybe going to STR 7 and having skyfire for some AA in our dex

Because the Wave Serpent isn't completely bat-gak insanely OP as it is...Why not give them interceptor as well, and make them MC with 10 wounds?
The range on a shield should be base to base, or maybe 6-12 inches, the thing is incredible for negating pens...does it need to be a sniper as well?
As for skyfire, WS are more than capable anti air as is...you have to be trolling haha

 mekugi wrote:

Because the Wave Serpent isn't completely bat-gak insanely OP as it is...Why not give them interceptor as well, and make them MC with 10 wounds?
The range on a shield should be base to base, or maybe 6-12 inches, the thing is incredible for negating pens...does it need to be a sniper as well?
As for skyfire, WS are more than capable anti air as is...you have to be trolling haha

Serpent's aren't "bat-gak insanely OP", overused at the moment and very strong considering the ease they can be spammed, but jink changes began to chip away at their power base and super spammy lists have slowly gone away as they lack needed flexibility. They are good however yes, though much of that goodness stems from laser lock twin linking the shield for a lot of S 6-7 firepower in a single turn allowing you to easily mop up light vehicles and infantry. Without laser lock and with shorter range the shield will still be useful but now require more risk assessment as you said the 2+ downgrade of pens is nice and without twin linked shots you'l get a lot less mileage from blowing shields.
In addition yes atm serpents are our main source of AA, again mostly granted through mass twin linked shots provided by laser lock. Taking that away removes that possibility and making SL a viable and cheap AA option gives us more chances to see other heavy weapons all around (ever see a serpent with anything but SL) and the ability to put AA on a multitude of platforms including WW and guardian teams.

Though 10W MC transports would be nice so if you want to go that way feel free

Is Blade storm really that big of a deal right now? Yes, it is useful, but only in bulk on units that can't take specialist weapons, and fold like paper to lasgun fire?

As for MCs, wouldn't a PG/combiPG/Krak grenade be more of a threat than 5 Shurikats?

I think some people here want too strong of a nerf

proposing:

- Waveserpents get a 10pts price increase and serpent shield range goes down to 36"

- Windrider jetbikes Armor Save goes down to 4+

- Wraithknight 250pts base (+10pts)

- War Walkers only 2 per unit max

thats it.

maybe a few buffs for the unused models like striking scorpions and banshees, the Eldar codex is already full of great units, they just get overshadowed by the star players.

This would be more then enough nerf on the overplayed units Eldars use> Making them consider using other stuff then 80% of their army in these guys, and if they still want to use these guys because they are still great in comparison to other codexes options, then at least its gonna be a fair fight instead of an auto-win.

It´s funny ,that Eldar are getting the imaginative nerfbatting like this. Yes WS´s are powerful, but do you have to be that douche bag who brings six of them? Yes Wraithknight is T8, but it has 3+ armorsave ad drops like a fly if you Force Weapon it (i know, Mephiston likes to do that kind of things...) and fe. Tau Riptide has 2+ armorsave...

Hmm yeah I wondered how long before Wave Serpent Apologists turned up...........

Its a overly powerful unit that is almost always spammed partly due to the sheer OP nature of it, almost as much due to it being the only DT the Eldar have.

Need to Fix both things:
New DT options for Eldar - Falcon and an "assault transport" to make banshees work
Serpent shield 12" range (max).

It should not (as well as being a heavily armoured transport and gunship) also be an AA platform - there should be the Firestorm as a dedicated AA platform that complements the excellent flyer the Eldar already have to counter enemy flyers - you know like in the fluff.

If it were more like the fluff, wouldn't the Falcon be anti-air too? And be more akin to a Flyer than it currently is? But yes, the Serpent being tied with Spiders for our main AA isn't right.

As for serpent apologists, what about serpent haters? This thread has seemed mostly even-keeled about the beast. Not many saying its fine.

Perhaps some nerf suggestions don't go far enough (36" would keep its crazy gunboatness, IMO, and raising the points I don't think fixes it right).

But more so in this thread are the absurd nerfs.
Just remove the shield altogether? So the Serpent is just a flying brick, without the survivability of a brick? Wow. I could see removing the shooting, but the defense? It's the main Eldar schtick. Yes, it can get a 3+ jink, but AV12, while good, still goes down readily to s7.

And the idea to then it into AV11? outside Eldar superheavies, there aren't a lot of AV11s over 100 points, and for good reason. They aren't hard to blow up.

And by trying to replace it with a Venom/Raider equivalent? The safety of their transports are a key part of Craft world mentality and combat doctrine.

Just because not everyone wants the serpent removed from the game doesn't warrent the charge of 'appologist'. That just serves to dismiss any argument instead of meet it.

Eldar should probably have more reasonable access to ground AA outside the Serpent and Spiders. WarWalkers, Reapers, and Falcons seem like the ideal candidates. Simply giving them the option for Skyfire would be a bit much, but something. But that isn't in the codex, and Eldar aren't exactly struggling.

And I still don't like the concept of a Craft world assault transport. Perhaps something else (let Banshees run out of a Transport after flat out perhaps? Still gives the opponent the round of shooting they deserve, but gives you a way to get them into place fast). Assault transports just feel too... direct for craftworlders. To me anyways.

(Noticed after I wrote this that its a bit hostile. I do mostly agree with you.)

The most sensible WS nerfs proposed so far IMO would be

- Lower range on shield to 12"
- Make the shield one use only (it's supposed to be a last resort)
- Make the shield not twin-linked from Scatter Laser
- Raise Scatter Laser price by 5pts

That would make it serve its purpose as a durable troop transport, delivering it's payload and getting out, firing its shield only in a desperate situation. It would also mean you would see weapons other than Scatter Laser on it.

Making it AV11 is way too harsh. I also don't see any need to nerf the Scatter Laser except by raising its price, the Wave Serpent is the only one getting such a huge benefit from it (since the SL itself is twinlinked and its also twinlinking two multi-shot weapons).

@ Mr Lost Vyper:
if its considered to be a douche move to use 6 of them then that is because its OP, no one will ever complain about you using 6 units of banshees because that doesnt amount to much. but a loaded up WS are really tough, really powerfull, very maneuvarable AND have OS (plus the guys inside it have it too) all for about 200pts so all of this for realtively cheap.
It does deserve a bit of a nerf.

Riptides also deserves a nerf so using him as an example is not helping your cause. start by comparing him to units people dont have an issue with but that see the tabletop sometimes. like the exocrine or the dakkafexes, both of which are fine in terms of power but defnetely fall short, proportionnally speaking, when you compare their versatility or touphness to the wraithknight.

@ Mr Mymearan:
what you are proposing is a massive nerf, I dont even play eldars and I find that much too harsh. I find a lot of people dont realise the consequence of light changes in the power they represent, even a light nerf like reducing the range of the shield a bit (not down to 12", thats filling down its teeths till its only nubs, and making it one use only on top of that, plus not TL and increasing the points!!! really!!!?? lets propose reasonable changes that will still make people happy to use it but not ridiculous) to remove the feel that its an across the board sniper (reconsidering it I think that 30" (or maybe 24") range would be perfect, this gives the WS a 24", 30" and 36" range gun) and increasing the points value by 10pts would make it a lot less likely to be spammed since if someone uses 6 of them, then thats 60pts he lost and no more does he have the ability to snipe across the board. this will make people consider using other guys or at the very least remove one unit from his list.

maybe also making the dire avengers need to start as 7 or 10 man units, to compensate for this nerf (since dire avengers themselves arent broken) they could also they get access to heavy weapon platforms like guardians.

My biggest issue with the WS is the weird way the SL works with everything else on the WS. I think getting rid of the twin-linking on the SL would unnecessarily nerf other Eldar units, yet right now the WS just seems like it has the perfect combination for trouble. A nerf to the serpent shield could work, but maybe there's other ways to bring the thing more in line?

Maybe just completely get rid of the SL as an option for the WS, but leave everything else? I'm just trying to think of options for the WS that don't involve nerfing the serpent shield, because it seems like alot of other people who understand the game better than I have put thought into that.

completely getting rid of the serpent shield is a big slap in the face to eldars, they need a tap on the hands, not a bitchslap

 fartherthanfar wrote:
completely getting rid of the serpent shield is a big slap in the face to eldars, they need a tap on the hands, not a bitchslap

Agreed. It's not a matter of one thing being HORRENDOUSLY OP, its a matter of several smaller things combining into one big hot mess.