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Fluff aspect aside - heavy mass targets like bio-titans should be murdered by grav weapons - I do agree that crunchwise grav weapons need to be toned down against GMCs.

Against GMC's there is nothing in the game that puts out a comparable amount of damage for their cost as as grav weapons.
Grav has high rate of fire, decent range (it certainly isn't effected by bubble wrapping as much as meltas are), totally ignores toughness and has a great AP value.
Salvo is not a drawback when the weapons come on relentless models.

That said, grav is my go to weapon to deal with Wraithknight TFG's. Nothing I have comes close to being as an effective counter to WK's as this.

This tells me 2 things: 1) Gravguns are too powerful vs GMC's. 2) Wraithknights are too powerful vs almost everything else which is not a gravgun.
Some kind of balance is needed.

With regards to the OP, the Hierophant was priced up in a rather conservative nature. Compare it to the new WK to get an idea of how different the units you can receive for your points are.
Saying you lost a 1000 point unit to a 300 point unit is true....but is the hierophant really worth that much in today's meta?

Martel732 wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
I actually agree that Marines do not need Grav, which should have appeared as an AdMech weapon system rather than as the Marine go-to heavy weapon. In AdMech list, Grav makes sense, and normally can't be taken in large numbers without a pretty huge tax.

SJ

We need grav to kill GK faster.

No need to hate, we're the ones that tote your Teletubbies around. /wink

SJ

BA don't have teletubbies. In fact, WE'RE the ones that tote around the AdMech.

 Bodacious2182 wrote:

 winterwind85 wrote:
... No way to avoid!!!!!

That isn't true at all. There is castling and bubble wrap. Gaunts are probably the cheapest bubble wrap in the game.

If your opponent has pods of any kind I say it is your fault for using poor tactics and not considering threat.

I dont Know, but a plant is big, i Kran realy realy big...
Grav canons Are 24' Range, i Cant Cover an, taking in the size of he phant 60 inch Radius of the board with gants.
Also the phant Cant charge then

You don't have to cover the entire area.

You can leave a few inches between the Biotitan and the gaunts. and you only need to cover most of the distance.

Which will leave a very narrow window where he can plant his Gravcents. And given scatter he has a limited area to where he can scatter and still hit you.

BrianDavion wrote:

stopcallingmechief wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
When are you ever not going to ignore its 2+ when you fire at a T9 model?

2+ is extremely overrated unless it's on a cheap MC like a riptide.

And the Hiero is not cheap.

It's GRAV WEAPONRY.

It's amazing against models with high armor saves, but trash against things with low armor saves.
So while Grav might slaughter that Hierophant, it's wounding Gaunts on a what now?

who even fields gaunts? your meta must be full of forge the narrative kind of players if they do.

so basicly you have a tool to help address the issue and refuse to consider using it? this is why I tend to roll my eyes at these kinda chicken little issues half of em amount to "OMG! THE GAME IS CHANGING AND I MIGHT HAVE TO ADAPT TO A NEW META! IT'S HORRIABLE!"

.

You gonna take 500 points in guants to provide a 24' diameter around your titan? Gl with that.

Don't forget you have to invest in some synapse (so the gaunts can move) and some cover save providers (so the gaunts aren't worthless bubblewrap)

This is what all titans have to do to survive... right?

/s

You don't need to do 24", only about 18".

Have a 4" lane between the gaunts and the titan.

This leaves only a 1" window in which their models can stand and be within 24" on the Titan.

I haven't read the whole thread so I'm sorry if somebody has adressed this:
Bubble wrap against a 24" weapon on a relentless platform that can be podded in anywhere? What are a load of you smoking?
Pi x R x R... 3.14... x 24 x 24 = 1810 inches squared... WHO OWNS THAT MANY GAUNTS? (I should say who plays that many gaunts as we all know the old tervigon farm back in mid 6th meant that most nid players actually DID own that many gaunts).
And thats the area if the biotitan was the size of an atom. It is actually far, far greater when you include the actual base size of the bio titan!
On a more constructive note - Frozecrones idea mentioned earlier on about a venomthrope in the sac and toe in cover seems the best bet.

Poly Ranger wrote:
I haven't read the whole thread so I'm sorry if somebody has adressed this:
Bubble wrap against a 24" weapon on a relentless platform that can be podded in anywhere? What are a load of you smoking?
Pi x R x R... 3.14... x 24 x 24 = 1810 inches squared... WHO OWNS THAT MANY GAUNTS? (I should say who plays that many gaunts as we all know the old tervigon farm back in mid 6th meant that most nid players actually DID own that many gaunts).
And thats the area if the biotitan was the size of an atom. It is actually far, far greater when you include the actual base size of the bio titan!
On a more constructive note - Frozecrones idea mentioned earlier on about a venomthrope in the sac and toe in cover seems the best bet.

You don't actually need to have bubble wrap within the area the biotitan occupies...

You can bubble wrap a biotitan to give it a cover save (which would work well if you combine it with a malenthrope).

However, anybody thinking that they can completely prevent a gravsquad from dropping in and firing off a volley is fooling themselves.
A squad firing at full potential out to 24 inches arriving by deepstrike/drop pod is, barring unlucky scatter rolls, almost impossible to stop.

The only reason bubble wrapping works well with vehicles/super heavies is that the most dangerous weapons are meltas, which need to get within 6 inches.

You don't actually need to have bubble wrap within the area the biotitan occupies...

You can be pedantic and argue his maths, but his point is completely valid.

Rihgu wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:
I haven't read the whole thread so I'm sorry if somebody has adressed this:
Bubble wrap against a 24" weapon on a relentless platform that can be podded in anywhere? What are a load of you smoking?
Pi x R x R... 3.14... x 24 x 24 = 1810 inches squared... WHO OWNS THAT MANY GAUNTS? (I should say who plays that many gaunts as we all know the old tervigon farm back in mid 6th meant that most nid players actually DID own that many gaunts).
And thats the area if the biotitan was the size of an atom. It is actually far, far greater when you include the actual base size of the bio titan!
On a more constructive note - Frozecrones idea mentioned earlier on about a venomthrope in the sac and toe in cover seems the best bet.

You don't actually need to have bubble wrap within the area the biotitan occupies...

No you don't, but it still increases the area. Lets say it is 10" across, so has a radius of 5".
3.14 x 29 x 29 - 3.14 x 5 x 5 = 2564 inches squared. This is because the area is increasing exponentially due to the squared so the bigger the base the bigger the area you need to cover even though you take that base area out. Teaching maths is literally my job.

But if you stick it in a corner that quarters the size of your bubble wrap needs. So just make your enormous super uber creature cower in the corner.

Thats obviously not the answer, but sending it up a flank isn't a bad idea. You only have to bubble wrap half the area, plus your opponent will risk losing his pods off the board edge(they don't ignore that)

Another option is of course to put one claw in some ruins for a 2+ cover save. It's not perfect, but between the 2+ cover/5+ FNP you should be able to endure a turn. Then you murder those Centurions.

The flanking idea is probably the best idea though; hug one edge, bubble wrap as much as possible (you can even Infiltrate units up ahead to further deny space...) and then respond accordingly. Fortunately, a Hierophant is fast enough to make an impact even if it does have to cross most of the board.

The need to bubble wrap just raises the cost of your already terribly-overpriced model to absurd proportions.

Didn't we just establish you don't need to bubble wrap? Just get a 2+ cover save as mentioned above. I wish I could get 2+ cover on my vehicles.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Thats obviously not the answer, but sending it up a flank isn't a bad idea. You only have to bubble wrap half the area, plus your opponent will risk losing his pods off the board edge(they don't ignore that)

Was meant in jest. The idea of an super expensive, supposedly super killy death machine hiding in a corner all game with a bunch of minions protecting it is humerous to me.

Hugging Cover with a Model that excels in CC? I dont know...gonna Post a picture of my try to bubblewrap the titan

As far as I'm concerned the bio titan got roflpwned by its hard counter. Sucks to be you. But this happens ALL THE TIME in apoc. I've seen reaver Titans get dropped by entropic strike scarabs before they got nerfed. A thunder hawk full of hq get shot down by 200pts of AA. Guns. The game is full of big impressive high cost super units getting fed thier kneecaps by a cheap suicide counter unit.

Deal with it.

Or learn to make an army that dosent rely on said super unit running the table. Maybe balance out the list so if you lose that big super unit its not game over. Whining about it on forum won't change a thing.

 DarthSpader wrote:
As far as I'm concerned the bio titan got roflpwned by its hard counter. Sucks to be you. But this happens ALL THE TIME in apoc. I've seen reaver Titans get dropped by entropic strike scarabs before they got nerfed. A thunder hawk full of hq get shot down by 200pts of AA. Guns. The game is full of big impressive high cost super units getting fed thier kneecaps by a cheap suicide counter unit.

Deal with it.

Or learn to make an army that dosent rely on said super unit running the table. Maybe balance out the list so if you lose that big super unit its not game over. Whining about it on forum won't change a thing.

That's one way of looking at it. For me it seems uncinematic for the massive bug to die to one small unit's one round of shooting. It should play out so that over multiple rounds several units pour fire into it while it rampages through multiple units until finally some plucky hero puts it down for good. I'm not a tyranid player (used to play Eldar before the wraithnight which I despise) and I don't like titans in standard 40k (they should be reserved for apocalypse in my opinion) so I don't have a dog in this hunt.

*Edit, bad grammar.

The other thing to consider is that yea a 300 pt unit kills a Titan. But that same unit can be wiped out and made useless by 90pts of gaunts charging them. Trade offs everywhere.

If they kill the titan when they deep strike so what if they are tied up the rest of the game. They've already done more than their share. Can't counter before they do their thing.

I feel like outside D weapons, grav is possibly the most OP weaponry in the game. There is very little in the game that isn't worried about it, and those things have easy counters in that virtually everything else kills them with ease. a unit or 2 of Grav cents is more than enough to deal with basically any tough high armour target your opponent may have. Meanwhile, you still have Tac marines, devestators, bikes, etc. to deal with chaffier units. The amount of utility grav gives you is insane, and most things that you would put it on has SaP or Relentless anyways, so salvo is a moot point.

There is very little in the game that isn't worried about it,

Except everything with a poor Armor Save or that relies on a Cover Save in general.

Grav is *designed* to kill vehicles, GMCs and other huge things like that. The plaforms Grav comes on, however, can be devoured by things costing 1/3rd their points. That's kind of the balance there. Grav is a fairly one-trick pony.

 Psienesis wrote:

There is very little in the game that isn't worried about it,

Except everything with a poor Armor Save or that relies on a Cover Save in general.

Grav is *designed* to kill vehicles, GMCs and other huge things like that. The plaforms Grav comes on, however, can be devoured by things costing 1/3rd their points. That's kind of the balance there. Grav is a fairly one-trick pony.

Even things with a 5+ save are going to take serious casualties from a unit pumping out 15 shots that get to re-roll wounds. Not sure about your meta, but in mine, the norm is to put a divination librarian in with them for some ignores cover and/or prescience as well. It gets pretty out of hand pretty fast.

Also, why bother with plasma when Grav can do what it does with no risk of overheating? When you factor in drop pods, the salvo range becomes far less of a factor, as you can pretty much end up in range of what you want to shoot with no risk, so why bother shooting plasma guns, when Grav guns are better a good 80% of the time? Personally, I just think it's a poorly balanced mechanic that invalidates a huge amount of units, almost all of which pay a premium for aspects that are simply nullified (or sometimes work against them). Maybe its just my meta, or just the armies I play (all but orks have generally at least a 4+ save), or maybe its the fact that Grav's only weakness is mitigated by the fact that you still have an army's worth of small arms fire that makes up for it (or in the case of centurions, hurricane bolters or frag missiles that can put a good dent in low save stuff). Whatever the reason, I've found that grav is extremely powerful in most situations, and the fact that you see it so frequently seems to back up my sentiments.

Well then the only fix to the issue is for gw to say "oh turds! A guy had his 1000pt tyranid titan killed by 300 pts of grav space marines. This will not do! From now on all tyranid Titans have a 2+ rerollable invun save against everything. That should fix the problem!"

In fact - why not just make everything have that 2++ this way nothing is op against anything. And no one whines.

Or you could just accept the fact this is a game. It's got a lot of rock paper scissors stuff - and your rock just got papered. Next time maybe bring scissors?

Jus sayin.

Even things with a 5+ save are going to take serious casualties from a unit pumping out 15 shots that get to re-roll wounds. Not sure about your meta, but in mine, the norm is to put a divination librarian in with them for some ignores cover and/or prescience as well. It gets pretty out of hand pretty fast.

And then you return 45 shots from that IG blob or horde o' Boyz back onto the 5 guys with the Grav Guns. Bury them under weight of fire, because they *will* fail those saves.

 Psienesis wrote:

Even things with a 5+ save are going to take serious casualties from a unit pumping out 15 shots that get to re-roll wounds. Not sure about your meta, but in mine, the norm is to put a divination librarian in with them for some ignores cover and/or prescience as well. It gets pretty out of hand pretty fast.

And then you return 45 shots from that IG blob or horde o' Boyz back onto the 5 guys with the Grav Guns. Bury them under weight of fire, because they *will* fail those saves.

And those guardsmen are still going to come out worse.

Grav Cents shoot

Grav - 15 * ([4/6 * 2/6] + [4/6 * 4/6 * 2/6]) * 2/6 = 1.8 dead 3+ cover save guardsmen
Huricane bolters - 9 * (4/6 + [2/6 * 4/6]) * 4/6 * 2/6 = 1.77 dead 3+ cover save guardsmen

And we see that even here, grav is better than twin linked bolters vs 5+ armour dudes.

Guardsmen return fire with your 45 shots

Lasguns - 45 * 3/6 * 1/6 * 1/6 = 0.65 wounds, you've mildly inconvinienced 1 centurion, maybe, who is still alive.

I see the thread title and I feel like someone from the DoW games should be shouting it.

Can we meme this? I can just see Big Grin Hive Tyrant done up like aggressive Wolf...

... Someone should meme this...