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Well, they're the folks the Black Ships nabbed and trained *and didn't hand over*. Which, in theory, is the worst of them.

SM powers seem to think SM are a "Shoot then charge" army. Where your guns kill some guys, but the game ends with everyone in CC. Some of those powers are top-tier in that situation. But Marines don't have the tools to push that situation.

A lot of these issues stem from the basic design of Psychers and the Psychic phase in 40k working differently and having different priorities than the designers expected. They didn't suspect that people would prefer to spam smite over using any buff powers. The Librarian powers reflect this, as the Space Marine codex was the first codex to be released. Really, though, the way that the Psychic phase works right now is a mess. Mortal Wounds are a boring mechanic that should have been reserved for large, powerful weapons or overwhelming psychic attacks. Not the standard damage type. I also don't like the Warp Charge system, as there's no real decision making It's just luck whether or not you get your power to work.

For those that are of the opinion that the librarius discipline isn't the bottom of the pile in terms of utility and power, which do you think are worse?

What effect do people think the base unit has on the utility and power of the disciplines - obviously making a libby cost 20pts would make librarius seem alot better so perhaps it is just the ineffectiveness of marines in general that makes librarius bad

As bad as librarius is, psychic fortress in not useless. Its situationlly very handy.

Darsath wrote:
A lot of these issues stem from the basic design of Psychers and the Psychic phase in 40k working differently and having different priorities than the designers expected. They didn't suspect that people would prefer to spam smite over using any buff powers. The Librarian powers reflect this, as the Space Marine codex was the first codex to be released. Really, though, the way that the Psychic phase works right now is a mess. Mortal Wounds are a boring mechanic that should have been reserved for large, powerful weapons or overwhelming psychic attacks. Not the standard damage type. I also don't like the Warp Charge system, as there's no real decision making It's just luck whether or not you get your power to work.

I agree wholeheartedly on the mortal wound mechanic overall. Could you imagine how amazing some of the old witchfires could be with the new AP system?

 WisdomLS wrote:
For those that are of the opinion that the librarius discipline isn't the bottom of the pile in terms of utility and power, which do you think are worse?

The Inquisition discipline is a bit of a one trick pony.

Now if you can conspire to dominate your opponents castellan and open up with cawls wrath or a volcano lance on his own units it's quite a good trick, but most of the time your options are limited.

Bharring wrote:
Well, they're the folks the Black Ships nabbed and trained *and didn't hand over*. Which, in theory, is the worst of them.

SM powers seem to think SM are a "Shoot then charge" army. Where your guns kill some guys, but the game ends with everyone in CC. Some of those powers are top-tier in that situation. But Marines don't have the tools to push that situation.

Well, the Astra Telepathica actually uses the worst of them for the Astronomicon, and IIRC they don't hand anyone over to the Astartes.

Astartes Librarians are the psychically-talented to the pool of recruits they collected. If a would-be scout happens to have psychic powers, he instead joins the Librarius.

The Primais Psykers attached to the Imperial Guard should be near the best the Astra Telepathica has available. Their lessers become astropaths, wyrdvanes, [and below them, fodder for the Golden Throne and Astronomicon]. The real best of the best probably become property of the Inquisition, but they're probably better than the vast majority of even Master Librarians..

Anyway, since librarians are pretty much everybody from a limited pool of candidates, while the primaris psykers are the top of a much larger pool of candidates, it's entirely reasonable that your average member of the librarius is probably weaker than your average primaris psyker. Astartes augments don't enhance psychic ability, so the spread of librarius members mirrors the spread of telepathica members. Basically, the Primaris Psykers should be equivalent in power to the higher ranked librarians.



Anyway back around to the power quality. While much of the tree is a dud, because you're not really going to have enough psykers to use the whole tree, it's not a major obstacle. As long as there's 1 or 2 powers worth using, it's better than the Grey Knights, who will almost certainly have to also pay for and rely upon the dud powers. One or two libbies can get you Null Zone with redundancy, and a backup like Might of Heroes.

It would obviously be better if it's wasn't the Null Zone Discipline, but that makes it probably-not worst. Also, Null Zone is a really good power.

Martel732 wrote:
As bad as librarius is, psychic fortress in not useless. Its situationlly very handy.

It's one of the better powers but competition isn't stiff

 fraser1191 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
As bad as librarius is, psychic fortress in not useless. Its situationlly very handy.

It's one of the better powers but competition isn't stiff

If it is an aura, even with a reduced range, will make it good. When you trying to protect friendlies, you want to protect as many as you can.

In contrast, Null Zone is better as a longer range target pointing power, like Death Hex. When you try to kill, it is better for focused attacks.

However, what we get is the reversed design.....

A.T. wrote:

 WisdomLS wrote:
For those that are of the opinion that the librarius discipline isn't the bottom of the pile in terms of utility and power, which do you think are worse?

The Inquisition discipline is a bit of a one trick pony.

Now if you can conspire to dominate your opponents castellan and open up with cawls wrath or a volcano lance on his own units it's quite a good trick, but most of the time your options are limited.

The fact you HAVE to list an Index army says it all.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

A.T. wrote:

 WisdomLS wrote:
For those that are of the opinion that the librarius discipline isn't the bottom of the pile in terms of utility and power, which do you think are worse?

The Inquisition discipline is a bit of a one trick pony.

Now if you can conspire to dominate your opponents castellan and open up with cawls wrath or a volcano lance on his own units it's quite a good trick, but most of the time your options are limited.

The fact you HAVE to list an Index army says it all.

Even still in index even at this moment there is some army having better psychic power, look at Genestealer Cult