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From the previous rules reset in 3rd edition, scatterlasers have changed role in combat: in 3rd with the random D6 shots were outclassed by the mighty starcannons, in 6th became a premium laser pointer for the other weapons, in 7th the favorite weapon for the infamous scatbikes (4 shots a turn). Now in 8th are outclassed by shuricannons that are able to advance and shoot without modifiers.
What do you think is the role of scatterlasers now? or do you think they have a role?

You might still want to use them on your scatbikes as 36 range is great. Especially with a loss of jsj.

Maybe they could be useful for a long ranged weapon in the Wraithknight (to complement a Suncannon?) now Starcannons are overpriced for what they do.
Due to WK rules they won't get a -1 to hit if it moves.

Strength five, six and even seven have lost a lot of their power against the lower end of the toughness scale, they don't murder toughness four troops on a 2+ the way they used to, most toughness three troops have had a price drop, some have had stat rises, particularly in the movement department and they don't take morale checks until the end of the turn.

Look at Genestealers(biggest difference from 7th in my humble opinion) - last edition a unit with a few Heavy Bolters would have looked at a Genestealer unit thirty five inches away and the thought would have been "Do I deal with them this turn or is there something more threatening?".
Now those Strength5 shots wound the Toughness4 Genestealers on a 3+ instead of 2+, those Genestealers are moving at least nine inches a turn, more likely eleven, possibly fourteen on a normal turn, even twenty six inches on a successful twelve inch charge rather than eighteen inches with a successful twelve inch charge, they have a 5+ invulnerable save where they used to have a t-shirt armour save the Heavy Bolter laughed at and will always dig into your armour save, they ignore armour and invulnerable saves on a roll of six to wound.
Those Genestealers aren't something you brush off as trivial anymore.

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
Strength five, six and even seven have lost a lot of their power against the lower end of the toughness scale, they don't murder toughness four troops on a 2+ the way they used to, most toughness three troops have had a price drop, some have had stat rises, particularly in the movement department and they don't take morale checks until the end of the turn.

Look at Genestealers(biggest difference from 7th in my humble opinion) - last edition a unit with a few Heavy Bolters would have looked at a Genestealer unit thirty five inches away and the thought would have been "Do I deal with them this turn or is there something more threatening?".
Now those Strength5 shots wound the Toughness4 Genestealers on a 3+ instead of 2+, those Genestealers are moving at least nine inches a turn, more likely eleven, possibly fourteen on a normal turn, even twenty six inches on a successful twelve inch charge rather than eighteen inches with a successful twelve inch charge, they have a 5+ invulnerable save where they used to have a t-shirt armour save the Heavy Bolter laughed at and will always dig into your armour save, they ignore armour and invulnerable saves on a roll of six to wound.
Those Genestealers aren't something you brush off as trivial anymore.

Nice, but...could you be less cryptic? Is that a jab against Scatter Lasers? Are you favouring one weapon over the other? I suspect it's dug within your paragraphs, but I can't find it.

Yesterday I had a pair of scatters on two Falcons and was disappointed. With the change to the wound chart, they just don’t spam wounds like they used to. And don’t have another gimmick to help shore them up.

I was already paying for the CTM, so the heavy didn’t bother me. But I think even the simple shuican cannon would have done better. If I can get them cleaned/primed/painted in time, I’ll try starcannons next. Or go back to brightlances.

They're not useless, more like equally mediocre against everything. There are few platforms that really benefit from them though - mainly bikes if you want to keep them back and WK for few extra shots.

 DanielFM wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
Strength five, six and even seven have lost a lot of their power against the lower end of the toughness scale, they don't murder toughness four troops on a 2+ the way they used to, most toughness three troops have had a price drop, some have had stat rises, particularly in the movement department and they don't take morale checks until the end of the turn.

Look at Genestealers(biggest difference from 7th in my humble opinion) - last edition a unit with a few Heavy Bolters would have looked at a Genestealer unit thirty five inches away and the thought would have been "Do I deal with them this turn or is there something more threatening?".
Now those Strength5 shots wound the Toughness4 Genestealers on a 3+ instead of 2+, those Genestealers are moving at least nine inches a turn, more likely eleven, possibly fourteen on a normal turn, even twenty six inches on a successful twelve inch charge rather than eighteen inches with a successful twelve inch charge, they have a 5+ invulnerable save where they used to have a t-shirt armour save the Heavy Bolter laughed at and will always dig into your armour save, they ignore armour and invulnerable saves on a roll of six to wound.
Those Genestealers aren't something you brush off as trivial anymore.

Nice, but...could you be less cryptic? Is that a jab against Scatter Lasers? Are you favouring one weapon over the other? I suspect it's dug within your paragraphs, but I can't find it.

Not jab and nothing cryptic, just an observation on Heavy Bolters that applies to a fair number of heavy weapons.
They've been neutered to encourage troop usage.

At least heavy bolters have AP-1.

Scatterbikes have clearly taken a big fall (and a wholly justified and fair one). Where they used to wound marines on a 2+ and he'd have a 3+ save, now they suffer a penalty to hit for moving, wound on a 3+ and the marine might get a 2+ save if he's in cover.

Going from hitting on a 3 and wounding on a 2 to hitting on a 4 and wounding on a 3 means going from a 55% chance to wound to only 33% - before saves. If the marines are in cover you now have only a 5.5% chance of killing one for each shot, compared to 18.5% in 7th. You could now easily fire 3 scatter bikes at a tactical squad in a wood and do no damage.

And of course at the same time they've lost JSJ. Sad, sad times!

The interesting part is that scatlasers haven't really changed. But the game mechanics has.

Previously, you needed 13.5 scatlaser shots to down a rhino in the open. Now you need 135. Exactly 10 times more.

You needed 5.4 shots to kill a marine - now you need 6.75 if he's not in cover and 13.5 if in cover.

Mandragola wrote:
At least heavy bolters have AP-1.

Scatterbikes have clearly taken a big fall (and a wholly justified and fair one). Where they used to wound marines on a 2+ and he'd have a 3+ save, now they suffer a penalty to hit for moving, wound on a 3+ and the marine might get a 2+ save if he's in cover.

Going from hitting on a 3 and wounding on a 2 to hitting on a 4 and wounding on a 3 means going from a 55% chance to wound to only 33% - before saves. If the marines are in cover you now have only a 5.5% chance of killing one for each shot, compared to 18.5% in 7th. You could now easily fire 3 scatter bikes at a tactical squad in a wood and do no damage.

And of course at the same time they've lost JSJ. Sad, sad times!

Everything that was successful last edition got neutered.
Scattbikes, Wraithknights, Storm Surges Riptides, TWC, Allied psychic nonsense, Marker lights, Template Weapons, Daemon Summoning, Formations.

TWC lived on two things, three attacks at S10 AP1 and Invisibility.
Now they have neither, the best they can do is two attacks at S8, Invisibility is no more, they cough up character prices for Storm Shields which Space Marine libbies can negate completely and Mortal Wounds never cared about in the first place.

The game has changed.

 koooaei wrote:
The interesting part is that scatlasers haven't really changed. But the game mechanics has.

Previously, you needed 13.5 scatlaser shots to down a rhino in the open. Now you need 135. Exactly 10 times more.

You needed 5.4 shots to kill a marine - now you need 6.75 if he's not in cover and 13.5 if in cover.

And to add to that, the "niche" targets that the Shuricannon was better against in 7E are way more prevalent in 8E
What I mean by that is that even in 7E the Shuricannon had better damage output against targets with high T and good armour saves, like most MCs
The Scatter laser was better at stripping HPs, but now that HPs are gone and all vehciles have high T and good armour, the Shuricannon can shine

Scatter lasers are still decent on WKs as they are the only platform that can move without -1 to hit.

-

I don't play elder, but I play IG, and the math is pretty clear that the multilaser is simply worthless. The scatter laser has the extra shot, but outside of bikes it competes with genuinely good heavy weapons. And on bikes, I would give the nod to the assault shuricannon.

Mid strength, poor AP weapons were great because they could strip hullpoints from light vehicles, while also laying a lot of wounds on infantry. Vehicles became far more resilient against Damage one weapons, and a lot of infantry is now wounded on 3s instead of 2s, with cover helping!

It's a sea change, and at this point every time I see scatter lasers (or multilasers, or even to a lesser extent, Autocannons) I take it as a sign that they haven't adapted to 8th edition yet.

In general the most baffling thing about 8th is that Eldar don't seem to be broken. I've been playing since 1st edition so I've seen lots of changes to 40k. But you've always been able to rely on Eldar having a top tier codex until now.

Maybe normality will be restored when their proper book comes out.

Mandragola wrote:
In general the most baffling thing about 8th is that Eldar don't seem to be broken. I've been playing since 1st edition so I've seen lots of changes to 40k. But you've always been able to rely on Eldar having a top tier codex until now.

Maybe normality will be restored when their proper book comes out.

Eldar are still pretty nasty. I've seen them in action.

Mandragola wrote:
In general the most baffling thing about 8th is that Eldar don't seem to be broken. I've been playing since 1st edition so I've seen lots of changes to 40k. But you've always been able to rely on Eldar having a top tier codex until now.

Maybe normality will be restored when their proper book comes out.

That.
That was a jab.
It was a pretty good one too.

I think the shurikan cannons are better now that you don't have relentless on the bikes.

 luke1705 wrote:
I think the shurikan cannons are better now that you don't have relentless on the bikes.

They are. And as it turns out, shuricannon bikes are probably undercosted! But not so bad that Eldar autowin.

Scatterlasers are ok on stuff that either wants to sit still, or doesn't get penalized for moving, AND is shooting at lower armor save infantry/vehicles.

Falcons set for anti-infantry, wave serpents, war walkers if you intend to hang back, that sort of thing. Otherwise take something else.

Like a shuriken cannon.

Shuriken cannons are pretty much the go-to weapon for eldar at this point. Scatter lasers and starcannons suffer from higher costs and the heavy weapon penalty.

Bright lances are completely different role, but want to be stationary. Crystal target matrixes are pretty indifferent- largely you won't want to be firing at the nearest target.

I have posted a question about the battle focus rule in the FAQs submission thread about how is written the rule: I hope the heavy weapons exception is only for advancing, in this case on battle focused unit (bikes are included), Scatter Lasers would be able to shoot as stationary with better results.

 Dakka Wolf wrote:

Mandragola wrote:
At least heavy bolters have AP-1.

Scatterbikes have clearly taken a big fall (and a wholly justified and fair one). Where they used to wound marines on a 2+ and he'd have a 3+ save, now they suffer a penalty to hit for moving, wound on a 3+ and the marine might get a 2+ save if he's in cover.

Going from hitting on a 3 and wounding on a 2 to hitting on a 4 and wounding on a 3 means going from a 55% chance to wound to only 33% - before saves. If the marines are in cover you now have only a 5.5% chance of killing one for each shot, compared to 18.5% in 7th. You could now easily fire 3 scatter bikes at a tactical squad in a wood and do no damage.

And of course at the same time they've lost JSJ. Sad, sad times!

Everything that was successful last edition got neutered.
Scattbikes, Wraithknights, Storm Surges Riptides, TWC, Allied psychic nonsense, Marker lights, Template Weapons, Daemon Summoning, Formations.

TWC lived on two things, three attacks at S10 AP1 and Invisibility.
Now they have neither, the best they can do is two attacks at S8, Invisibility is no more, they cough up character prices for Storm Shields which Space Marine libbies can negate completely and Mortal Wounds never cared about in the first place.

The game has changed.

Not Bobby G... that bastard is an autoinclude now - LAME

No. Why would they be useless?

Scatter lasers are OK on a Wraithknights shoulders. He ignores the -1 to hit for moving, the range synergises better with his other weapons and now that Starcannons are only D3 damage rather than 3, they are looking rather overpriced.

Vanilla Scatter Lasers on most platforms aren't that great.

On Wave Serpents with the CTM, a Twin Scatter Laser is very nasty. Anything T3 or lower can be mum he'd with volume of fire, and the extra shots and range help against vehicles as well.

I don't think so. They aren't the auto-option anymore, but they still put out a lot of firepower, and I use them in my army to a decent extent.

 Gangrel767 wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:

Mandragola wrote:
At least heavy bolters have AP-1.

Scatterbikes have clearly taken a big fall (and a wholly justified and fair one). Where they used to wound marines on a 2+ and he'd have a 3+ save, now they suffer a penalty to hit for moving, wound on a 3+ and the marine might get a 2+ save if he's in cover.

Going from hitting on a 3 and wounding on a 2 to hitting on a 4 and wounding on a 3 means going from a 55% chance to wound to only 33% - before saves. If the marines are in cover you now have only a 5.5% chance of killing one for each shot, compared to 18.5% in 7th. You could now easily fire 3 scatter bikes at a tactical squad in a wood and do no damage.

And of course at the same time they've lost JSJ. Sad, sad times!

Everything that was successful last edition got neutered.
Scattbikes, Wraithknights, Storm Surges Riptides, TWC, Allied psychic nonsense, Marker lights, Template Weapons, Daemon Summoning, Formations.

TWC lived on two things, three attacks at S10 AP1 and Invisibility.
Now they have neither, the best they can do is two attacks at S8, Invisibility is no more, they cough up character prices for Storm Shields which Space Marine libbies can negate completely and Mortal Wounds never cared about in the first place.

The game has changed.

Not Bobby G... that bastard is an autoinclude now - LAME

Poster-boy exemption.