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Short answer, no. Long answer, nope.

Tbf +1w would sort out all issues. They would be more durable against small arms and plasma, yet still die just as easily to a melta or lascannon blast to the face. Would also get to swing more powerfists in combat as there would be more left, plus power fists/claws would still put them down.

Oblitorators aren't too tough to take down and they habe a 2+/5++ t4 2w.

Good points by many, I think they hit the nail on the head:
Too many models have taken their job they have to compete with.
Between Sternguard and Centurions they are out of the race for points vs. capability.
I agree removing unwieldy or making it a rule for terminator armor that it does not apply would seem appropriate (what, the armor is not augmented enough??).
Somehow making their ranged attack better would help but I think emphasis on survivability should be the other consideration.
I still think some means of increased protection from massed light arms fire is key (AP3 or worse can only wound on 6's?).

 vipoid wrote:
When you say that Strike Squads were better, you seem to be neglecting the price drop GK terminators got.

GK termies lost a base 4+ invo from NFS, and 2+ CC invo from staff. They also lost Int 6 halberds. Their price drop was in line with what they lost. Miss those days though. It was REALLY fun to put 40 strike squad marines out there with razorbacks and 3 dakka dreds and just shoot em up. Can't do that anymore as all our guns lost +1 str. Relegating them to usless status when at +1 str they were just good enough an option to use. It's cool - they reduced dreadknight cost and buffed the heavy psycannon and now I just use those instead - I get a lot more complaints about the dreadknights.

 Xenomancers wrote:
GK termies lost a base 4+ invo from NFS, and 2+ CC invo from staff. They also lost Int 6 halberds.

Whilst I get your point, you must have been playing Schrödinger's terminators if you had all 3 of those.

 vipoid wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
GK termies lost a base 4+ invo from NFS, and 2+ CC invo from staff. They also lost Int 6 halberds.

Whilst I get your point, you must have been playing Schrödinger's terminators if you had all 3 of those.

Well typically I did include many of those option in mixed units of terminators. Just standard with NFS ended up being the best because they were cheapest and had at initive high str power weapons with 4+ invo. They were pretty dang strong.

With my nids, it was the Halberds I used to hate.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
In that case we're talking about as many dead marines as from 4 or 5 double-tapping plasma guns,and as many HP's on AV14 as 9 BS4 Lascannons, while still packing enough anti-horde firepower to average 11-12 IG/Ork/Eldar/Tau infantry a turn.

And? Pask in a Punisher does as much damage to MEQ as thirteen heavy bolters, and can mulch MC's and vehicles up to AV14 to boot.

And he's an HQ SC who's unit costs, at a minimum, 330pts before any upgrades (can't just take one tank), and while he *can* hurt up to AV14, averaging 0.74 HP's a turn with that main gun isn't going to make too many things particularly scared, that 5 Assault Cannon unit is easily going to exceed the firepower of his tank.

"It does as much damage as X weapon" is a terrible metric for gauging whether something is overpowered.

We're putting that firepower into context here. When you say "oh, well it only does X" and then "yeah, and you need huge amount of dedicated weapon Y or Z to get those same results", it shows you how many of other units you need to duplicate that.

It's not just about the raw firepower (which isn't unimpressive), but the versatility of being incredibly effective against *everything*.

Well, they aren't incredibly effective against everything- as the math shows- they're middling against everything.

Vaktathi, it's easy as hell to prove me wrong - name any other CC unit, which is weaker than the wraths and playable in present meta.

elotar wrote:
Vaktathi, it's easy as hell to prove me wrong - name any other CC unit, which is weaker than the wraths and playable in present meta.

Jump pack DC, but they are not as good admittedly. But playable.

elotar wrote:
Vaktathi, it's easy as hell to prove me wrong - name any other CC unit, which is weaker than the wraths and playable in present meta.

How are we defining this? Are we talking ultra top tier tournament worthy (in which case we can cut anything that *isn't* broken), or are we talking "playable" as in, they can have a use in an average pickup game?

If the latter, all manner of Bikers, Meganobz, TH/SS termi's (I still see these in like half the SM armies I see around), Death Company, Dreadknights, GKT's, all manner of MC's, etc

GW gave Necrons something to stand up to Tau/Eldar firepower, and now the rest of us have to deal with it.

Martel732 wrote:

elotar wrote:
Vaktathi, it's easy as hell to prove me wrong - name any other CC unit, which is weaker than the wraths and playable in present meta.

Jump pack DC, but they are not as good admittedly. But playable.

Yea, 2 DC costs like wraith, got 2W with fnp and 3+, and 10 S5 attacks on the charge, with many options and possible bonuses from formations and blessings.

World of difference!

Or really not...




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Are we talking ultra top tier tournament worthy...

obviously...what the point of discussing unit effectiveness in pickup games?

elotar wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

elotar wrote:
Vaktathi, it's easy as hell to prove me wrong - name any other CC unit, which is weaker than the wraths and playable in present meta.

Jump pack DC, but they are not as good admittedly. But playable.

Yea, 2 DC costs like wraith, got 2W with fnp and 3+, and 10 S5 attacks on the charge, with many options and possible bonuses from formations and blessings.

World of difference!

Or really not...

Their 3+ is not invulnerable, they are not T5, S5 on a charge is different than native S6 all the time, don't have Rending (they have to buy upgrade weapons), and jump packs are not as all-round useful as Beasts (that always get 12" move and fleet in the Assault phase), and the DC don't ignore the effects of terrain entirely the way Wraiths do. Also, if we're talking DC with Jump Packs, then we can toss Whip Coils onto each Wraith as well and still be 3pts under the cost of the two DC and get to fight at I5 *every* round (not just one in which you charge if the DC are using the BA force org)

elotar wrote:

obviously...what the point of discussing unit effectiveness in pickup games?

If we're only talking top tier tournament worthy, then most units in the game aren't "good", CC or no, and only the most powerful things count, which is largely the stuff that's completely out of balance sync with everything else. If you look at the thread up right now for what people are bringing to the LVO, there's a whole lot of copy-pasta of the same small handful of units.

There's a difference between a unit not being able to match that environment, and being actually bad. Rough Riders & Ogryn are truly bad and useless CC units. Just because say, Paladins or TH/SS termi's don't quite match Wraiths doesn't make them bad or in need of a buff however. By the same token, nobody is going to consider, say, a Fire Prism as an objectively bad unit, but because the Wave Serpent can fill much of its role without using HS slots, and the Wraightknight is so powerful, mobile and resilient, you're just not going to see them in things like LVO lists. That doesn't mean the Fire Prism needs a huge buff, it means some of the other units need some toning down.

I would love to see Terminators get a rule akin to the Bullgryn's "Slab Shield" personally.

 Vaktathi wrote:
And he's an HQ SC

So?

who's unit costs, at a minimum, 330pts before any upgrades (can't just take one tank),

For these terminators to do equivalent damage to 13 plasma guns, they would end up costing 500 points. And then get removed from the table by a Riptide turn 2.

and while he *can* hurt up to AV14, averaging 0.74 HP's a turn with that main gun isn't going to make too many things particularly scared,

Neither is 5 dead space marines a turn.

that 5 Assault Cannon unit is easily going to exceed the firepower of his tank.

So?

We're putting that firepower into context here.

Your context is extremely arbitrary, and not very consistent. Case in point:

it shows you how many of other units you need to duplicate that.

How many heavy bolters would you need to match the damage of Punisher Pask?

Except they weren't, they were putting out as much, or more, firepower as many dedicated purpose units, particularly against AV14.

So? That doesn't make the results particularly effective, just more effective than those specific weapons. It's still pretty bad for 250 points.

TFC's are heavy support units that rely heavily on units being bunched up and take valuable FoC slots you'll often need for other tasks, but yes are very good. Grav is a little harder to quanity, since it effectively makes anything 2 HP's, but to get those 2 immobilized results, you need an average of 18 shots, and to get that many, you either need Centurions (at 250pts for 3 dudes to get that many shots), or 288pts minimum in Sternguard, or multiple units of other units like Bikers or Tacs.

Right, thus why 250 points for the damage they do is hardly game breaking.

Your sidestepping the point by referring to the minutiae here.

No, I'm directly addressing your concern Your point isn't a valid point because its a non issue. "The unit will have an optimal configuration that people will be compelled to take!" And?

The point is that you're effectively completely re-writing what the unit is supposed to be, turning it into another Heavy Support heavy weapons unit, and at that point you might as well just drop the powerfists and powerweapons and just make them a whole new unit.

I don't see how this is the case at all.

A heavily armored dedicated fire support unit?

So they're basically terminators?


We seem to be having a communication break-down here, because your argument looks to me like nothing more than a series of red herrings- statements that technically are true but are completely irrelevant. "250 points of terminators do as much damage as 4 plasma guns!" Okay. So? etc.

What am I missing?

BrianDavion wrote:

Da Stormlord wrote:
I've decided to start a GK army sometime in the near future. Looked at termie stats and I think they actually need a 3+ armour.

those are called strike squads.

No, I mean there to OP.

The underlying problem that can't be fixed is that terminators have lost their job. Back in fourth edition they were solid becuase units like sternguard and centurions didn't exist. They were your mobile heavy weapons platform and put out more dakka per model at 24 inches than anything else in the book. But with every new edition marines got a new book, and with that new bling. But Ohh no, you can't take out the old stuff, but it can't be made as cool as the new stuff or the new stuff won't sell. Rince and repeat for 20 years and you have units like terminators and tactical squads that just can't keep up. And you end up with tbey current codex that has way too many cooks in the kitchen. 40k needs a knife, not an upgrade. Too many codexs just have too many units. Old Units that just fattened the book without actually doing anything.

I agree with you absolutely.

Something I was thinking about recently, was that perhaps we should be looking at changing how 'mobile' units work in terms of defence.

My problem is that we seem to be ending up with mobile units that don't sacrifice any durability (and, in some cases, even gain durability over footslogging units).

I wonder if perhaps more armies should be like Orks - where a character can have a Warbike or Mega Armour. i.e. They can be fast or they can be durable, but not both. Allowing fast units to take 2+ armour saves and/or 3+ invulnerable saves - on top of the durability their bikes/mounts already provide - seems like a bad idea. And, note that this doesn't just apply to characters - 2-wound models with a 12"move really shouldn't have T5 and 3++ saves. My opinion is the same regarding MCs - in that we really shouldn't have incredibly durable MCs with 12" moves or JSJ. Same for skimmers - having them be more durable than most ground vehicles just seems wrong.

I guess I just think that we should be changing round a lot of durability. As it stands, we seem to have a lot of slow, (relatively) fragile footsloggers, and a lot of fast, durable units that can move 12+". It seems like we should be spreading those advantages out a bit.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
And he's an HQ SC

So?

To go along with the rest, he's unique (you can only have one), and fills a different FoC role. You can't take just him alone, you have to take him with at least one other tank, who will be much less effective, making the unit as a whole far more expensive and less effective than Pask alone.

For these terminators to do equivalent damage to 13 plasma guns, they would end up costing 500 points. And then get removed from the table by a Riptide turn 2.

Where is this 13 plasma gun relation coming from?

LIkewise, how are we assuming a Riptide is going to evaporate 500pts of Terminators in two turns? Are you bunching them all up in neat little pieplate circles and the Riptide failing to scatter at all? Even with a direct hit with a 5" blast hitting 5 terminators at a time and them only getting their 5++ invul (absolutely top optimal conditions for the Riptide), it's killing 2.77 Terminators a turn on average. With some unit spread and/or any sort of scatter and/or any cover 4+ or better, that kill output is going to drop drastically. Killing 10 in two turns would require significantly statistically out of the ordinary rolls. If it's just firing its multi-shot mode, it's averaging 0.833 dead terminators a turn.

Neither is 5 dead space marines a turn.

Depends on the marines in question, but again, you need 2 units worth of plasma weapons, usually ~200+ or so points in most cases, to get that sort of kill output from plasma guns, almost always on far less resilient units. The dreaded Wave Serpent is only killing ~2.1 marines a turn on average, more if it's including a Shuriken Cannon, and that puts it on par with the dreaded Riptide above, so 5 dead SM's a turn from one unit is pretty damn good.

5 Dead marines a turn is a pretty spectacularly high kill rate for a shooting unit.

BlaxicanX wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:that 5 Assault Cannon unit is easily going to exceed the firepower of his tank.

So?

You were the one making the comparison there, not me, if it's not a good matchup, why'd you make it?

Your context is extremely arbitrary, and not very consistent. Case in point:

Only if you detach it from the fact that to get such numbers of weapons requires significant investments in units to carry them.For example, when I point out you need 9 Lascannons to achieve the same average AV14 HP's as with those 5 Assault Cannons, the availability and cost of Lascannons should tell you that that's a pretty fearsome amount of firepower.

How many heavy bolters would you need to match the damage of Punisher Pask?

Against what type of target? Against Marines? Two minimum sized Devastator units with Heavy Bolters come pretty close for roughly the same cost as Pask's tank alone (but remember, you can't just take him alone, the second tank will be drastically less effective).

So? That doesn't make the results particularly effective, just more effective than those specific weapons. It's still pretty bad for 250 points.

It makes them about as effective as 2 units dedicated to one role, while being equally capable against almost *any* target as opposed to those other units which have to specialize.

5 Assault Cannons can be dropped anywhere and be highly effective against anything, be it lemming infantry, elite infantry, tanks, or MC's. They're about as good at engaging AV14 and 3+ or 2+sv heavy infantry as two Lascannon kitted Dev squads, while also being about as good at engaging muppet hordes compared to two Heavy Bolter kitted Dev Squads, and about as good at engaging Flyers within their range as a Flakk MIssile equipped Dev Squad.

So they're as good at some jobs as two units kitted for such purposes and still pretty capable as a single dedicated unit at a niche role, while being able to do all of these at once.

Right, thus why 250 points for the damage they do is hardly game breaking.

And again, missing the point that they're able to do *all* of these things without having to specialize like these other units.

Your sidestepping the point by referring to the minutiae here.

No, I'm directly addressing your concern Your point isn't a valid point because its a non issue. "The unit will have an optimal configuration that people will be compelled to take!" And?

 AegisGrimm wrote:

The underlying problem that can't be fixed is that terminators have lost their job. Back in fourth edition they were solid becuase units like sternguard and centurions didn't exist. They were your mobile heavy weapons platform and put out more dakka per model at 24 inches than anything else in the book. But with every new edition marines got a new book, and with that new bling. But Ohh no, you can't take out the old stuff, but it can't be made as cool as the new stuff or the new stuff won't sell. Rince and repeat for 20 years and you have units like terminators and tactical squads that just can't keep up. And you end up with tbey current codex that has way too many cooks in the kitchen. 40k needs a knife, not an upgrade. Too many codexs just have too many units. Old Units that just fattened the book without actually doing anything.

I agree with you absolutely.

Terminators didn't lose their job; they can't DO their job anymore.

Martel732 wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:

The underlying problem that can't be fixed is that terminators have lost their job. Back in fourth edition they were solid becuase units like sternguard and centurions didn't exist. They were your mobile heavy weapons platform and put out more dakka per model at 24 inches than anything else in the book. But with every new edition marines got a new book, and with that new bling. But Ohh no, you can't take out the old stuff, but it can't be made as cool as the new stuff or the new stuff won't sell. Rince and repeat for 20 years and you have units like terminators and tactical squads that just can't keep up. And you end up with tbey current codex that has way too many cooks in the kitchen. 40k needs a knife, not an upgrade. Too many codexs just have too many units. Old Units that just fattened the book without actually doing anything.

I agree with you absolutely.

Terminators didn't lose their job; they can't DO their job anymore.

They barely did their job in 4th when I played that edition. The adding of Sternguard didn't change anything, and Centurions never made Terminators worse.

It'd be interesting to see Centurions and Terminators combined into a single choice.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:

The underlying problem that can't be fixed is that terminators have lost their job. Back in fourth edition they were solid becuase units like sternguard and centurions didn't exist. They were your mobile heavy weapons platform and put out more dakka per model at 24 inches than anything else in the book. But with every new edition marines got a new book, and with that new bling. But Ohh no, you can't take out the old stuff, but it can't be made as cool as the new stuff or the new stuff won't sell. Rince and repeat for 20 years and you have units like terminators and tactical squads that just can't keep up. And you end up with tbey current codex that has way too many cooks in the kitchen. 40k needs a knife, not an upgrade. Too many codexs just have too many units. Old Units that just fattened the book without actually doing anything.

I agree with you absolutely.

Terminators didn't lose their job; they can't DO their job anymore.

They barely did their job in 4th when I played that edition. The adding of Sternguard didn't change anything, and Centurions never made Terminators worse.

Clearly you never played against an Imperial Fist army with 5-6 units of five man terminators with assault cannons. Extremely effective when fire was concentrated, and durable back in the day.

I skipped 4th, but can tell you that terminators were bad in 3rd and 5th.

I thought TH/SS terminators were used a lot in 5th?

 vipoid wrote:
I thought TH/SS terminators were used a lot in 5th?

They were, but they still really weren't good. Moving vehicles were only hit on a "6", and so mech owned them. Loyalist terminators haven't really been good in 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, or 7th. That's not a good track record and I'm not sure what these other posters are remembering.

 vipoid wrote:
I thought TH/SS terminators were used a lot in 5th?

They were used. New LRR came out that edition and storm sheilds got 3++ and effected shooting attacks (not sure if there were aways 3++ I think maybe they were just 4++ in CC before then.) They did great against my crimson fists.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
I thought TH/SS terminators were used a lot in 5th?

They were used. New LRR came out that edition and storm sheilds got 3++ and effected shooting attacks (not sure if there were aways 3++ I think maybe they were just 4++ in CC before then.) They did great against my crimson fists.

}

There was a metric ton of melta in 5th, as that was the only way to get vehicles off the table. That was very, very bad for terminators.

Martel732 wrote:
GW gave Necrons something to stand up to Tau/Eldar firepower, and now the rest of us have to deal with it.

'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.'

I strongly doubt the GW guy who did the wraith stats ever went that far as to actually think how said units would perform in actual games.

And not everything needs to be about Tau