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..and to a degree, making better armies, less better.

Not sure how much stock people put into the Chapter Tactics podcast from Frontline, the recent episode, 103, had an interesting discussion on their best to worst factions/books, not surprisingly, Knights, Ynnari, dark eldar and GSC made their top, Bottom factions tended to gravitate towards Necrons, GKs, CSM, Wolves, Blood Angels - one of the hosts famously said that BAs have two good units, smash captains and scouts.

Curious to know what people think these lower tier books need to be brought into line and what the knights, ynnari, et all need to make them less of a powerhouse?

If GW droped all GK units by 33% they could be good. If they made them cost 50% less, so a GK strike would cost less then a sister of battle, they would be top tier.

Otherwise, in case of GK, they need point drops and rules changes. Now GW can do point drops, as rules changes goes they seem to have a rather random results. sometimes they make good rules, that are fun to play, at other times one wonders why the army exists.

They just need to make Grey knights operate againgst demons/chaos just like DW operate againgst xenos.


Bring strikes down to match DW veterans in efficiency (they can give whole army psybolt ammo instead of SIA) and points costs.

Give a reboot to the vehicles list they can take (redemptors and repulsors allowed).

Bring the characters and gear down in points to be more in line with other marine gear.

Give them a whole new set of strats on par with DW strats only anti-chaos.

GW would have to commit to changing statlines and rebalancing old marines. Fact is, there will never be a non-primaris marines release ever again, and all future balance changes will be tilted towards making primaris better.

The intent is a soft-squatting of old marines, with a transition to primaris.

You will see this when a primaris codex drops later this year.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
They just need to make Grey knights operate againgst demons/chaos just like DW operate againgst xenos.


Bring strikes down to match DW veterans in efficiency (they can give whole army psybolt ammo instead of SIA) and points costs.

Give a reboot to the vehicles list they can take (redemptors and repulsors allowed).

Bring the characters and gear down in points to be more in line with other marine gear.

Give them a whole new set of strats on par with DW strats only anti-chaos.

But DW "operate" well against everything. A SB vet is high cost, but it is good high cost unit like custodes bikers. DW primaris pre bolter change were actually worth taking. If GW gives GK a re-roll to deny vs powers used withing 6" by deamon models, it won't make them even meh tier.

All GK gear that is shared with other marines is already same cost. We just kind of a miss out on the good stuff. We have no plasma weapons, no stormshields other then the one on draigo. strats should be an icing on the cake. It isn't very viable to build an army around a stratagam, when two types of vect exist, and both can be souped in and the games are 2000pts, which means that even in GK case there is more then 2 units on the table. IK pull it off, because their cheat on traits and their pre game stuff is really good. Plus they always take IG.

Malfurious wrote:
..and to a degree, making better armies, less better.

Not sure how much stock people put into the Chapter Tactics podcast from Frontline, the recent episode, 103, had an interesting discussion on their best to worst factions/books, not surprisingly, Knights, Ynnari, dark eldar and GSC made their top, Bottom factions tended to gravitate towards Necrons, GKs, CSM, Wolves, Blood Angels - one of the hosts famously said that BAs have two good units, smash captains and scouts.

Curious to know what people think these lower tier books need to be brought into line and what the knights, ynnari, et all need to make them less of a powerhouse?

Yeah the only thing that really was obnoxious about that was the blatant disregard for the 1k plus of guard it's just oh a Castellen this and that nerf knights. Really were ignoring the 1.4k of guard in the list realy?

Heck even the guy who won LVO said he doesn't see what GW can do to stop an Auxiliary Raven Castellen being broken while not nerfing knights to be the next blood angles codex. As he didn't see primary knights lists as unbalanced.

GK need better rules, are a big points drop.

In theory they should be good, storm bolters are better then regular, force weapons can pack a punch (if you wound) and they are called psykers.

But... None of their units are particularly specialist, their rules are very bland, basic... There nerfed smite really are not all that great in practice.

Give the force weapons a big strength modifier, add some better rules, points... I'm somewhat against a further points drop as they are supposed to be an elite secret chapter, not a horde army.

Ice_can wrote:

Malfurious wrote:
..and to a degree, making better armies, less better.

Not sure how much stock people put into the Chapter Tactics podcast from Frontline, the recent episode, 103, had an interesting discussion on their best to worst factions/books, not surprisingly, Knights, Ynnari, dark eldar and GSC made their top, Bottom factions tended to gravitate towards Necrons, GKs, CSM, Wolves, Blood Angels - one of the hosts famously said that BAs have two good units, smash captains and scouts.

Curious to know what people think these lower tier books need to be brought into line and what the knights, ynnari, et all need to make them less of a powerhouse?

Yeah the only thing that really was obnoxious about that was the blatant disregard for the 1k plus of guard it's just oh a Castellen this and that nerf knights. Really were ignoring the 1.4k of guard in the list realy?

Heck even the guy who won LVO said he doesn't see what GW can do to stop an Auxiliary Raven Castellen being broken while not nerfing knights to be the next blood angles codex. As he didn't see primary knights lists as unbalanced.

Well, for the overall sake of the game maybe that's just what they need to do. 40k is too bloated to be properly balanced and requires these sort of extreme measures. GW had the chance to really fix the game for 8th and instead pretty much doubled down on what they have done from 6th onward, resulting in how fast this edition (which isn't even 2 years old yet) has become ridiculously bloated and is already spiraling out of control.

Ice_can wrote:

Malfurious wrote:
..and to a degree, making better armies, less better.

Not sure how much stock people put into the Chapter Tactics podcast from Frontline, the recent episode, 103, had an interesting discussion on their best to worst factions/books, not surprisingly, Knights, Ynnari, dark eldar and GSC made their top, Bottom factions tended to gravitate towards Necrons, GKs, CSM, Wolves, Blood Angels - one of the hosts famously said that BAs have two good units, smash captains and scouts.

Curious to know what people think these lower tier books need to be brought into line and what the knights, ynnari, et all need to make them less of a powerhouse?

Yeah the only thing that really was obnoxious about that was the blatant disregard for the 1k plus of guard it's just oh a Castellen this and that nerf knights. Really were ignoring the 1.4k of guard in the list realy?

Heck even the guy who won LVO said he doesn't see what GW can do to stop an Auxiliary Raven Castellen being broken while not nerfing knights to be the next blood angles codex. As he didn't see primary knights lists as unbalanced.

The unbalanced part of that list is the imperial guard. They are just too good at what they do, and are far too cheap.

Compare Imperial Guard to any other army. Orders are the best mechanic imaginable. What do Blood Angels, Space Wolves, and Dark Angels get that compares with orders? Nothing. They get essentially something equivalent to a regimental trait, but nothing else.

And Brandon Grandt was winning with a Shadowsword in essentially that same list before the Knight codex was released.

it may be too "mechanical" or without soul... but i really think points should be adjusted via an algorithm.

plug ITC tournament results and any other actual events into a spreadsheet. factor for win/loss ratio with said unit, if it is sitting over 55% adjust points up, if below 50% adjust points down, set a limit to like a 10% max swing quarterly in either direction and round points on the client side, keeping to the tenths server side.

IE if a tac marine is 13 points now and the algorithm sees they are not in winning lits or able to compete it may at the end of the quarter adjust it down 1.3 points. meaning at the end of that quarter they are now updated for 12 points. (11.7 per backend) if at 12 points they are still doing horribly then it may get a full 10% down so -1.2 points for 10.5 backend, up front 11 points and likely needing min the future. Alternatively if 12 point tacticals are doing better but not great still (like say in lists at a 45% win rate now) then maybe next drop is only 5% on the backend so they become 11.1 on the backend, 11 points in game but we are probably closer to where they should be.

Basically to make those armies better you have to reduce the cost of their units across the board or give power armored units a better stat line or special rules.

Blood angels would also instantly be good if they got rid of the deepstrike beta rule, that rule made them go from a solid mono codex army to low tier. Then they had to add salt to the wound by increasing the price of On Wings of Fire, and then change to fly in the charge phase when really they only had smash captains and scouts that was sprinkled into every guard/castellen list. They should've nerfed allies in general more instead of the weakest codex in that list.

Grey Knights are the only real dumpster fire at this point and they just need a total redesign. Dropping their cost kind of misses the point. Mostly, they just need to... not have the things that make them special arbitrarily hamstrung to be worse than everyone else. It would also probably help if Daemons didn't arbitrarily have a super niche ability that makes Grey Knights a tremendous liability against the one thing they're supposed to be good at facing. There's no small fix for them; they need to be completely rethought.

I'd argue GK are better than BA after the bolter change.

-fix blood angels and Grey knights. Exempt them from the deep strike rule so they can get a propper alpha strike. Thats their army trait. Maybe increase their base attacks.

-nerf knight soup. Knights can olny be your warlord in a pure knight army. You can only use 1 knight strategem, chosen at the beginning of the game, unless your knight is your warlord.

-ynarri? Obviously something to do with Word of the phenoix.

I think it's a pretty fair statement to say that most armies have 2-3 "hyper effective" units. These initially relegate all of the other codex entries to the shelf. In allied armies, these hyper-effective units in turn relegate the allied codex entries to the shelf as well ---- whilst teaming up with the allied codices' hyper-effective units, etc.

I'm not a tournament gamer, nor a meta-math-hammer guy, but it doesn't take any special training to look at Unit A and Unit B and acknowledge that one of the two is heaps better than the other for little or no cost difference etc.

Now, take some of these hyper-effective units...then multiply that strength with auras, stratagems, etc. This is why you have an Ork Boy unit that can in theory produce 420 attacks at Strength 5, hitting on 2+...coming from 30 models that cost 210 points. This isn't good game design. It's not clever, strategic, tactical or interesting. It's just gak.

This is one of the reasons why Index-hammer was so highly thought of, because if anything codices had a fair share of underperforming units, but we saw very little of the hyper-effective units which negate almost everything else in the book. I'd rather see the more egregious units curtailed and penalized (points increase, or rules changes). I think the second round of codices may fix a little bit of this, but power-creep will continue. If anything turns me off about 8th edition, it's the astronomically absurd number of dice/attacks/shots rolled in a normal game, and the super-mega-violent-everything-dies-immediately nature of the game. This is all serving the GW bottom line of making more profit of course, so it's a logical game design decision.

Headlss wrote:
-fix blood angels and Grey knights. Exempt them from the deep strike rule so they can get a propper alpha strike. Thats their army trait. Maybe increase their base attacks.

I was thinking this, just give all units +1 attack, probably solve the problem. Maybe, increase some of the strength modifiers on some of the force weapons, focus them more on CC then shooty, unlike say Tyranids, they dont move super fast so dont think they would be completely OP.

But meh, I have a GK army, they are terrible, playing against my other Tyranid army (and believe me, its far from a competative Tyranid list!) but they just get slaughtered.

Yeah when the word came out that Grey Knights were getting a buff, I didn't think a points drop was what they were intending. Still, I get GW logic, make everything cheaper in points, whilst slowly increasing the cost of the plastic and profits theoretically go way up. I cynically wonder if that's the entire reason hordes have gotten so popular recently? Encourage a play style that rewards larger armies to milk model profits. Even Space Marines and Knights armies are throwing down big numbers of lil plastic dudes all the time with Guard allies.

Gotta say though, as a Blood Angels player myself I didn't feel the change to Deep Stikes on turn one hurt us much more than any number of other armies, and I think there are a lot of good units in the Codex. I will freely dmit to building a Smash Captain and a could more squads of Scouts since the Codex release, mind, but a psychic, flying Dreadnought and better equipped Vanguard Vets with a FNP are pretty nice. Even the priest with his aura is a bonus over the normal apothecary. Flying and charges hurt though. Still can't wrap my head around that one.

Part of the problem is also the cost of marines is uniform even though the quality of their units isn't uniform.

For example, Razorbacks were nerfed not because they were great in Grey Knight, Space Wolf, and Blood Angel lists, but because a Guilliman parking lot was really good prior to anyone else having a codex.

If marines see a price adjustment because deathwatch start doing well, that will just make anyone who isn't deathwatch worse than they already are.

The balance team has shown that they do not care about the balance of marines in this edition, though. They have been bottom tier for nearly the entirety of this edition and they're getting worse with each passing month.

The best thing you can do is build a bridge and get over it. If you don't plan on playing primaris only, you may as well shift to Xenos, or something else. Literally any Xenos is in a good place right now, only Necrons are struggling a *bit* but they're still rapidly approaching mid tier.

 Marmatag wrote:
Part of the problem is also the cost of marines is uniform even though the quality of their units isn't uniform.

For example, Razorbacks were nerfed not because they were great in Grey Knight, Space Wolf, and Blood Angel lists, but because a Guilliman parking lot was really good prior to anyone else having a codex.

If marines see a price adjustment because deathwatch start doing well, that will just make anyone who isn't deathwatch worse than they already are.

The balance team has shown that they do not care about the balance of marines in this edition, though. They have been bottom tier for nearly the entirety of this edition and they're getting worse with each passing month.

The best thing you can do is build a bridge and get over it. If you don't plan on playing primaris only, you may as well shift to Xenos, or something else. Literally any Xenos is in a good place right now, only Necrons are struggling a *bit* but they're still rapidly approaching mid tier.

Or you could stay imperial and play Astra Millicheese.

Ice_can wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Part of the problem is also the cost of marines is uniform even though the quality of their units isn't uniform.

For example, Razorbacks were nerfed not because they were great in Grey Knight, Space Wolf, and Blood Angel lists, but because a Guilliman parking lot was really good prior to anyone else having a codex.

If marines see a price adjustment because deathwatch start doing well, that will just make anyone who isn't deathwatch worse than they already are.

The balance team has shown that they do not care about the balance of marines in this edition, though. They have been bottom tier for nearly the entirety of this edition and they're getting worse with each passing month.

The best thing you can do is build a bridge and get over it. If you don't plan on playing primaris only, you may as well shift to Xenos, or something else. Literally any Xenos is in a good place right now, only Necrons are struggling a *bit* but they're still rapidly approaching mid tier.

Or you could stay imperial and play Astra Millicheese.

You could. But if balance doesn't change soon all you'll be playing is Astra Militarum.

 G00fySmiley wrote:
it may be too "mechanical" or without soul... but i really think points should be adjusted via an algorithm.

plug ITC tournament results and any other actual events into a spreadsheet. factor for win/loss ratio with said unit, if it is sitting over 55% adjust points up, if below 50% adjust points down, set a limit to like a 10% max swing quarterly in either direction and round points on the client side, keeping to the tenths server side.

IE if a tac marine is 13 points now and the algorithm sees they are not in winning lits or able to compete it may at the end of the quarter adjust it down 1.3 points. meaning at the end of that quarter they are now updated for 12 points. (11.7 per backend) if at 12 points they are still doing horribly then it may get a full 10% down so -1.2 points for 10.5 backend, up front 11 points and likely needing min the future. Alternatively if 12 point tacticals are doing better but not great still (like say in lists at a 45% win rate now) then maybe next drop is only 5% on the backend so they become 11.1 on the backend, 11 points in game but we are probably closer to where they should be.

ITC tournaments do not actually play by the book, so balancing to what are effectively house-rules and custom missions would be odd to say the least.

The GW tournaments play by the book and show up rather different results. What is missing is the vast amount of data on GW tournaments, GW have all the lists and stuff but it is not published for everyone else to see.

 LunarSol wrote:
Grey Knights are the only real dumpster fire at this point and they just need a total redesign. Dropping their cost kind of misses the point. Mostly, they just need to... not have the things that make them special arbitrarily hamstrung to be worse than everyone else. It would also probably help if Daemons didn't arbitrarily have a super niche ability that makes Grey Knights a tremendous liability against the one thing they're supposed to be good at facing. There's no small fix for them; they need to be completely rethought.

FW indexes


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Marmatag wrote:
Part of the problem is also the cost of marines is uniform even though the quality of their units isn't uniform.

For example, Razorbacks were nerfed not because they were great in Grey Knight, Space Wolf, and Blood Angel lists, but because a Guilliman parking lot was really good prior to anyone else having a codex.

If marines see a price adjustment because deathwatch start doing well, that will just make anyone who isn't deathwatch worse than they already are.

The balance team has shown that they do not care about the balance of marines in this edition, though. They have been bottom tier for nearly the entirety of this edition and they're getting worse with each passing month.

The best thing you can do is build a bridge and get over it. If you don't plan on playing primaris only, you may as well shift to Xenos, or something else. Literally any Xenos is in a good place right now, only Necrons are struggling a *bit* but they're still rapidly approaching mid tier.

Even marines in the same book are vastly different in Performance, same on the regular csm side, why would you ever pick WB f.e or NL.

Malfurious wrote:
Curious to know what people think these lower tier books need to be brought into line and what the knights, ynnari, et all need to make them less of a powerhouse?

The top end of the knights power comes from their stratagems (typically fuelled by non-knight allies) and Cawls Wrath. Without them they are like chaos knights - which is to say perfectly decent but by no means indispensable.
So they are mostly fixed by GW fixing the rest of the game with regards to CP generation and relic power/cost. In so far as any of the apocalyptic scale units can really be said to be working at 40k scale.

In terms of GK, they have too much gear on too little marine. If they get much cheaper you'll just end up with a psychic tactical marine carrying a free force sword and stormbolter.
The models need to arguably be more expensive, but also more elite and able to move around and protect themselves with abilities like the old shrouding. Either somewhere between marines and custodes or as a part of the talons faction itself.

Headlss wrote:
-fix blood angels and Grey knights. Exempt them from the deep strike rule so they can get a propper alpha strike. Thats their army trait.

First turn alpha strikes of all kinds are not good, as much as gunlines sometimes seem to demand them.

Unpack your models, pack up your models, start your first turn.

I wouldn't really classify Necrons as straight up "bad" exactly, the rules for this edition just doesn't really mesh with a MEQ army. With point reductions from the recent CA, I would argue the biggest issue with Necrons, anti-armor weapons, has been solved. The only real way to make them "better" is to cut point costs to an even more insane level, or tack on some OP rules.

My only real gripe with the army is that HQs are kind of useless outside of being buffbots. I'd really like if Overlords at least had an extra attack, or Crypteks could use more than a staff of light for dishing damage.

A.T. wrote:
The top end of the knights power comes from their stratagems (typically fuelled by non-knight allies) and Cawls Wrath. Without them they are like chaos knights - which is to say perfectly decent but by no means indispensable.
So they are mostly fixed by GW fixing the rest of the game with regards to CP generation and relic power/cost. In so far as any of the apocalyptic scale units can really be said to be working at 40k scale.

I'm not sure you even need to go that far. Cawl's Wrath alone seems to be the breaking point for Knights. That thing is so meta warping its hard to really tell how everything else measures up and I'd hate to go crazy on changes without fixing it first.

 LunarSol wrote:
I'm not sure you even need to go that far. Cawl's Wrath alone seems to be the breaking point for Knights. That thing is so meta warping its hard to really tell how everything else measures up and I'd hate to go crazy on changes without fixing it first.

Depends on the power level you are aiming for.
The regular plasma decimator has barely more firepower than the rapid fire battlecannon when supercharged. Making all decimators cawls wrath would give GW the opportunity to hike the cost of the knight as part of the buff, and then cawls wrath itself could be changed to something more mundane and in-line with the other relics.

Marmatag wrote:Part of the problem is also the cost of marines is uniform even though the quality of their units isn't uniform.

For example, Razorbacks were nerfed not because they were great in Grey Knight, Space Wolf, and Blood Angel lists, but because a Guilliman parking lot was really good prior to anyone else having a codex.

If marines see a price adjustment because deathwatch start doing well, that will just make anyone who isn't deathwatch worse than they already are.

The balance team has shown that they do not care about the balance of marines in this edition, though. They have been bottom tier for nearly the entirety of this edition and they're getting worse with each passing month.

The best thing you can do is build a bridge and get over it. If you don't plan on playing primaris only, you may as well shift to Xenos, or something else. Literally any Xenos is in a good place right now, only Necrons are struggling a *bit* but they're still rapidly approaching mid tier.

with guilliman the answer was (and still is) that he is pretty broken. he should have more than 10 wounds rather than giving this untargetzable character that you can see behind a rhino. he also was too cheap fo rthe points at launch by a lot. he is closer to where he should be now at 400, but still should probably have a bit more of a tip up

happy_inquisitor wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:
it may be too "mechanical" or without soul... but i really think points should be adjusted via an algorithm.

plug ITC tournament results and any other actual events into a spreadsheet. factor for win/loss ratio with said unit, if it is sitting over 55% adjust points up, if below 50% adjust points down, set a limit to like a 10% max swing quarterly in either direction and round points on the client side, keeping to the tenths server side.

IE if a tac marine is 13 points now and the algorithm sees they are not in winning lits or able to compete it may at the end of the quarter adjust it down 1.3 points. meaning at the end of that quarter they are now updated for 12 points. (11.7 per backend) if at 12 points they are still doing horribly then it may get a full 10% down so -1.2 points for 10.5 backend, up front 11 points and likely needing min the future. Alternatively if 12 point tacticals are doing better but not great still (like say in lists at a 45% win rate now) then maybe next drop is only 5% on the backend so they become 11.1 on the backend, 11 points in game but we are probably closer to where they should be.

ITC tournaments do not actually play by the book, so balancing to what are effectively house-rules and custom missions would be odd to say the least.

The GW tournaments play by the book and show up rather different results. What is missing is the vast amount of data on GW tournaments, GW have all the lists and stuff but it is not published for everyone else to see.

ITC was mroe of a starting point and I absolutely think those results should be included. overall though just collect tournament data in general and see what is being out performed. It just feels like now they do it to much by "this feels like" and "our play testers feel like" that is how you end up with things like the Ork Stompa (probably the worst unit for the points in the game right now) getting pushed as being "back" and "strong" but then never wshowing up and when people do take it it is a 1k point model that always loses to a 600 point one or 2 400 point ones. (and it is not even close, the stiompa scratches the paint of the imperial knights and gets scrapped to its last bracket unable to do anythign effective for its last 10 wounds) in an ideal world that means in this exampls stompas are not showing up at all... hmm maybe drop them the 10% to 900 and see if they show up and how they do. (spoiler they are also not worth 900 points) and then adjust from there is needed.

Big steps in fixing Necrons (Not necessarily all changes need to happen, some are different ways of addressing the same issue).

- Reduce minimum warrior size to 5

- Increase Ghost Ark capacity to 11 or 12

- Allow Immortals and Lychguard to ride in Ghost Arks

- Give back the open-topped rule to Ghost Arks

- Give Monoliths either a decent inv save or quantum shielding

- Tesla Destructors need to be dmg 2 or D3 dmg

- Points drop on Flayed Ones

- Spyders need a either a decent profile or a hefty points drop

- Rez Orb and reroll 1s on RP strat effects swapped and orb becomes an aura rather than a 1 shot item.

- Rez Orb instead allows a destroyed unit to roll for RP once per game. Models stand up within 6" of bearer.

- Overlords (and named equivalents) and Destroyer Lords gain +1 attack.

- Bring back the specialty weapons for crypteks such as the voltaic staff...and not as relics.

Make GK Psybolt ammo a standard thing, not a strat. Make it ONLY apply to Psyweapons, so no super Storm Bolters. Drop their point cost per model. Revise their crap psychic game (which passes understanding) which is hammerhand or gtfo. Make their melee weapon selection less all variations of the same thing. Give them a warlord aura for re-rolling wounds against psychers.

Then they will be relatively decent, until they get squatted like Marmatag said.

Am not sure if a +1str worse hvy bolter is the way to fix GK. But then again, I have no idea how to fix them right, so in the end everything is better then it is now.