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I'm afraid I think -1 cap has been a great benefit to the game. There will need to be balance changes around it (like... so many things) - but stacking -2/3 to hit wasn't clever by the person doing it, or fun for the person who had to try and shoot into it.

Tyel wrote:
I'm afraid I think -1 cap has been a great benefit to the game. There will need to be balance changes around it (like... so many things) - but stacking -2/3 to hit wasn't clever by the person doing it, or fun for the person who had to try and shoot into it.

-1 to hit is a symptom of a vastly to deadly edition.

I feel that the caps are too restrictive, particularly in light of 6s now auto hitting. GW's response to the 'Eldar Flyer Problem' has been too blunt, and a better way to go would be to have a couple of categories of bonus/penalty, and not allow stacking within them; the Alaitoc penalty and the aircraft penalty could have been non-stacking, but it isn't a problem (IMO) allowing Lightning Fast Reactions to increase it to -2.

I think that some of the hate toward hit penalties is ill-considered and kneejerk. Those penalties are generally compensation for a vehicle having low Toughness and Wounds, and alows for a bit of variety in the game design.

 harlokin wrote:
I feel that the caps are too restrictive, particularly in light of 6s now auto hitting. GW's response to the 'Eldar Flyer Problem' has been too blunt, and a better way to go would be to have a couple of categories of bonus/penalty, and not allow stacking within them; the Alaitoc penalty and the aircraft penalty could have been non-stacking, but it isn't a problem (IMO) allowing Lightning Fast Reactions to increase it to -2.

I think that some of the hate toward hit penalties is ill-considered and kneejerk. Those penalties are generally compensation for a vehicle having low Toughness and Wounds, and alows for a bit of variety in the game design.

No, the real issue was, that stacking them, especially on Aeldari planes, or possessed for that matter, was too cheap.
Especially on aeldari flyers. Vice versa hiking the price without the stacking associated to be an issue would have ended in the obliterator syndrome.

-1/+1 is far too small and at least for GSC Half of the +1 to hit bonuses that you could have with Stratagem straight up do not work with an Alphus in your list (and even the +2 to wound relic has become useless now).

They need to up it to -2/+2 to avoid stupid and slowed interactions

 harlokin wrote:
I feel that the caps are too restrictive, particularly in light of 6s now auto hitting. GW's response to the 'Eldar Flyer Problem' has been too blunt, and a better way to go would be to have a couple of categories of bonus/penalty, and not allow stacking within them; the Alaitoc penalty and the aircraft penalty could have been non-stacking, but it isn't a problem (IMO) allowing Lightning Fast Reactions to increase it to -2.

I think that some of the hate toward hit penalties is ill-considered and kneejerk. Those penalties are generally compensation for a vehicle having low Toughness and Wounds, and alows for a bit of variety in the game design.

that's how D&D works. differant bonuses are differant types and the same type doesn't stack. so a magic ring that gives a +2 defelection bonus to AC doesn't stack with a magic amulet that gives a +3 deflection bonus to AC. it could get complicated fast though

Count me among those who feel making 6s auto-hit was enough. It creates a point of diminishing returns without hard-capping on angle of benefit. In such a case, being -4 to hit against a 4+ BS opponent is a wasted effort (when -3 would have the same result) but against a 3+ BS opponent it remains useful so one must evaluate the costs & benefits.

Karol wrote:
Yes. I don't remember xeno players being sad that marines were laughable . There was a ton of L2P and "you take gulliman and a lot of razorbacks" which of course didn't help one bit, if you played IH or DA.

I am genuinely suprised, that people think that after 8th people are somehow going to have much sympathy to eldar player. And that them being at -3 to hit should be the natural way.

It doesn't sound to me much like non marine players being worried about balanced. They only worry that their armies aren't the best of the best right now.

Eldar players win ratios were what, 2-3% under that of IH, and they went mental about it, as if this was the end of the world.

Seems to me that w40k is swingy as hell. The difference is that, armies like eldar were in the very powerful camp for a very long time, and now act suprised. As if they didn't knew that other armies were unplayable bad for a very long time. I am all for eldar getting a GK level of fun for 2-3 editions. After then they can go back to being super powerful. Yeah, eldar being back to good, when I hit 21 sounds nice.

This kind of attitude is really one of the most discouraging things I've ever read for a hobby community in my life.

Yeah I agree, auto 6's was enough.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Count me among those who feel making 6s auto-hit was enough. It creates a point of diminishing returns without hard-capping on angle of benefit. In such a case, being -4 to hit against a 4+ BS opponent is a wasted effort (when -3 would have the same result) but against a 3+ BS opponent it remains useful so one must evaluate the costs & benefits.

Just adding "6 always hits" can't help creating too many bizarre situations. I thing the people advocating for a "to-wound table solution" for to-hit rolls and modifiers applying to the stat instead of the roll have the right idea.

...actually that should probably go for all the to-wound modifiers, and replacing all the "reroll 1s/fails" abilities with "improve the stat by x" would probably be a significant improvement as well.

BlackSwanDelta wrote:

Karol wrote:
Yes. I don't remember xeno players being sad that marines were laughable . There was a ton of L2P and "you take gulliman and a lot of razorbacks" which of course didn't help one bit, if you played IH or DA.

I am genuinely suprised, that people think that after 8th people are somehow going to have much sympathy to eldar player. And that them being at -3 to hit should be the natural way.

It doesn't sound to me much like non marine players being worried about balanced. They only worry that their armies aren't the best of the best right now.

Eldar players win ratios were what, 2-3% under that of IH, and they went mental about it, as if this was the end of the world.

Seems to me that w40k is swingy as hell. The difference is that, armies like eldar were in the very powerful camp for a very long time, and now act suprised. As if they didn't knew that other armies were unplayable bad for a very long time. I am all for eldar getting a GK level of fun for 2-3 editions. After then they can go back to being super powerful. Yeah, eldar being back to good, when I hit 21 sounds nice.

This kind of attitude is really one of the most discouraging things I've ever read for a hobby community in my life.

Its Karol. Sadly their gaming group seems to be the most toxic one around so thats all they know and theyre probably just parroting what they hear at the LGS.

I play eldar and i never did the Alaitoc Airwing list. I found that too many people at my LGS found it unenjoyable. I still think that the nerf was clearly too much and specifically targeted at these lists.
With autohitting on 6's and the airwing detachment gone, spamming planes now has a real cost in 9th that i consider enough of a nerf by itself.

The blanket cap just fethed many different armies' strategies :

Alpha legion Clandestine warlord trait was clearly made "with 9th edition in mind"
Admech's Doctrina imperiatives with datatheter now can't give +2 to hit like they used to.
Eldars classic infantry now are the uber glasscannons that don't actually dish out damage (wraiths are an exception to eldar's fragility and an army only having a subset playable sucks)
Harlequins already have -1 to hit on basically everything except their troupes, so now they basically give their opponent more mobility by negating the penalty to move and shoot heavy weapons.

Again, i might be biased but when i see intercessors tearing through any of my eldar units with their full rerolls, i really feel like i should be allowed to put a -2 to hit on my stuff.

Right, CWE wasn't a problem 3 units where. Why nerf a full armies potential b.c of a few bad units? I've had -2 on many units and vs marines it didn't matter with all of their re-rolls they Fing get while my Quins has almost no re-rolls other than 1 HQ just for melee.

Instead of a cap, 6's auto hit and maybe change Alaitoc and its all good.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Right, CWE wasn't a problem 3 units where. Why nerf a full armies potential b.c of a few bad units? I've had -2 on many units and vs marines it didn't matter with all of their re-rolls they Fing get while my Quins has almost no re-rolls other than 1 HQ just for melee.

Instead of a cap, 6's auto hit and maybe change Alaitoc and its all good.

Yeah, make Alaitoc not affect Aircrafts and Eldars are basically fixed. Then find a way for possessed bombs and disco lords to not be able to get so many negative to hits and that whole problem is basically fixed.

The reason these strategies work is that its the only defense these units can have thats actually worthwhile. The exception being the disco lord.
Possessed suck unless youre giving them 2 codexe's worth of buffs. Elfs in general die to regular bolter fire (and thats before the good bolters of primaris + doctrines).

Niiru wrote:
This came up in a conversation today, where the basic premise was that currently in 9th edition Eldar (a race that designs all its technology and training around being as evasive as possible, to the point where they no longer wear 'protective' armour) are easier to kill than an ork in a tshirt.

So as a caveat - I personally did not like the 8th edition shenanigans of stacking up -4 / -6 etc to-hit modifiers, making units impossible to hit. It was too much, and it made things boring. Blame GW for leaving so many obvious loopholes and stacking opportunities open.

My opinion, and it is certainly fair to criticize this opinion as being naively over-optimistic, is that GW has designed the Core Rules to have +1/-1 as the max hit roll modifier, but plans to have some race(s?) have an ability or abilities that break the rule. I say this based on the T'au ability to natively fire overwatch without the stratagem. The Core Rules says if you want to overwatch, you have to spend a Command Point and use the Stratagem, but the T'au can do it as much as they want. I think Eldar will end up with some abilities that allow them to penalize shooters To Hit rolls by -2 or even -3.

I'll frankly be surprised if it doesn't come out that way, but like I said above - I can't deny that this idea could fairly be criticized as overly optimistic.

Personally I am very curious how they are going to address the "flimsier" races considering the hit mod cap and the increase in lethality of Marines. Currently the Aeldari codexes rely on a small subset of units to save the day, but overall the units are weak.

I think the hit mod cap was a good change due to how negatively it affected the player experiences, but it goes against the design paradigm of earlier codexes that now have to be updated sooner rather than later.

Too restrictive or not, the problem is they didn't introduce the cap to all rolls.

Charging a Caladius through a forest and a Tanglefoot grenade getting you at worst a -1 to charge, for example, would off-set some of that. But there the new rules-paradigm somehow doesn't apply.

Which obviously skews stuff against the armies that relied on the type of modifiers that are now capped and in favour of armies that can (ab)use modifiers that are not capped.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Admech's Doctrina imperiatives with datatheter now can't give +2 to hit like they used to.

Sure they can. You just only get +1 out of it.

Remember, as it was explained repeatedly by Stu Black of the rules team on the livestreams and repeated here and elsewhere:
The +1/-1? That's just the cap of your benefit. Further modifiers are still counted.
If you have -3 to hit and I have +2 to hit, you still get your -1.

Personal take:
I like the new setup. No more stacking modifiers to make yourself unhittable or able to never miss.

Also, it's about time that Eldar Camocloaks did the same thing as Imperial ones. Imperial ones have been an armor save while in cover modifier rather than the negative to hit that the Eldar ones have been.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Admech's Doctrina imperiatives with datatheter now can't give +2 to hit like they used to.

Sure they can. You just only get +1 out of it.

Remember, as it was explained repeatedly by Stu Black of the rules team on the livestreams and repeated here and elsewhere:
The +1/-1? That's just the cap of your benefit. Further modifiers are still counted.
If you have -3 to hit and I have +2 to hit, you still get your -1.

I know you technically do, but the cases where its gonna be effective are pretty much gone since stacking - to hits isn't a viable strategy anymore. And anyway, they nerfed dragoons to only explode on unmodified 6's.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Also, it's about time that Eldar Camocloaks did the same thing as Imperial ones. Imperial ones have been an armor save while in cover modifier rather than the negative to hit that the Eldar ones have been.

? both pieces of equipment come from races with different approaches on battle and they represent where they get their survivability from. Marines from armor saves, eldars from not getting hit in the first place.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Personal take:
I like the new setup. No more stacking modifiers to make yourself unhittable or able to never miss.

The unhittable part has already been fixed by making 6's always hit.
The unable to miss is already in the game with the full rerolls of space marines.

Objective based scoring system killed the Eldar air force

The equivalent of an air wing costing 6 CP killed the Eldar air force

Always hitting on 6s killed the Eldar air force

The +/- HR/WR cap would have been manageable at 2, and probably could have not even been implemented with all the other changes

It's too bad, a Hemlock heavy army makes a nice lore-friendly Iyanden list, it should at least have a little bit of viability.

BlackSwanDelta wrote:
Objective based scoring system killed the Eldar air force

The equivalent of an air wing costing 6 CP killed the Eldar air force

Always hitting on 6s killed the Eldar air force

The +/- HR/WR cap would have been manageable at 2, and probably could have not even been implemented with all the other changes

Too bad, a Hemlocks heavy army would make a nice lore-friendly Iyanden list

i run a single Hemlock in my custom iyanden army (wrath of the dead + headstrong because the iyanden trait sucks major ass) and its tons of fun.

god the math and immersion here is all fucky too

a -2 to hit means nothing, unless the enemy has +1 to-hit, in which case you are a total of -1, just like you were if the enemy didn't have +1 to-hit in the first place.

if you have +2 to hit and the enemy has -2, you're hitting normally. If the enemy has only -1, you're hitting with +1, which you would be if the enemy just didn't bother.

So things like "lightning reflexes" do literally nothing if the enemy has +2 to hit - using and not using it is exactly the same. wut

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

I know you technically do, but the cases where its gonna be effective are pretty much gone since stacking - to hits isn't a viable strategy anymore. And anyway, they nerfed dragoons to only explode on unmodified 6's.

Once again: you don't get the full benefits by stacking, but it's not like the -1 to hit benefit that some armies can natively get is bad.
And it's not like some of the popular units didn't come with a -1 to hit as part of their rules.

? both pieces of equipment come from races with different approaches on battle and they represent where they get their survivability from. Marines from armor saves, eldars from not getting hit in the first place.

Then they could have been called something different.

The unhittable part has already been fixed by making 6's always hit.
The unable to miss is already in the game with the full rerolls of space marines.

Oh great, let me just always roll 6s!

 Kanluwen wrote:

? both pieces of equipment come from races with different approaches on battle and they represent where they get their survivability from. Marines from armor saves, eldars from not getting hit in the first place.

Then they could have been called something different.

Space marines are : Camo Cloaks
Eldars are : Cameleoline Cloaks

 Kanluwen wrote:

The unhittable part has already been fixed by making 6's always hit.
The unable to miss is already in the game with the full rerolls of space marines.

Oh great, let me just always roll 6s!

IMO any modifier that you impose on yourself (moving heavy weapons, advancing and shooting assault, shooting both sides of a combi-weapon, firing into combat, etc) should reduce your BS instead of being -1 to hit, so those stack with -1 to hit modifiers.

Outside of that, I think the cap is fine as stacking those modifiers are an inherently broken mechanic as units punished based on their ballistic skill, not on their effectiveness. 300 points worth of ork shooting get reduced to 150 points by -1 to hit, while 300 points of eldar or marine shooting only goes down to 225.

I think that we should differentiate between the competitive balancing scenario and the narrative scenario.

I can understand that in a competitive context this kind of contradictory thing might happen and then points can be readjusted.

Narrative wise I agree that makes no so much sense, and probably I will house rule something about as some people in my meta play Eldar.

In my opinion, and this is in the side of house ruling, I think that it would be cool something like max cap to -2 / +2 been natural 6 always a 6.

That would boost orks, but I don't care, as orks also don't care about aiming. They just dakka dakka randomly in the air. Their accuracy is the same as bad for a ranger hidden behind a brush or a guardsman confused wandering in the middle of the battlefield

Ork have been hitting everything on sixes since their codex was released.

I agree that its unfun to play against, no doubt about that. My main complaint is that at the moment, elfs lost what little durability they had for most of their codexes. Popping LFR on a unit holding a site was a key part of their strategies and now its efficiency is diminished and sometimes even helps your opponents (moving infantry heavy weapons in range to shoot them since theyll still only have -1 to hit anyway). If GW wants to go away with stacking +/-, they need to figure out a way to counterbalance the nerf.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

? both pieces of equipment come from races with different approaches on battle and they represent where they get their survivability from. Marines from armor saves, eldars from not getting hit in the first place.

Then they could have been called something different.

Space marines are : Camo Cloaks
Eldars are : Cameleoline Cloaks

Camo Cloak is short for Cameleoline.

 Kanluwen wrote:

The unhittable part has already been fixed by making 6's always hit.
The unable to miss is already in the game with the full rerolls of space marines.

Oh great, let me just always roll 6s!

it used to be possible to make a unit LITTERALLY unhittable. The fact that this isnt the case (even if modifiers were uncapped) means that yes, they did fix this problem.

Count me as one of those (possibly hopeless) optimistic people who thinks maybe the codexes will address this in some way. The question is, how?

I'm not a fan of the cap either, and it's been a little disheartening to hear so many respected community podcast leaders talk about how great it is. Why? What was the real problem here? Like ... maybe 4 units across the entire game? Just fix those units! Classic GW over-correction.

Right now there are just so many abilities, powers, etc, that ... just don't matter. At all. Because of the cap. And the justification is often "Well, if you have enough to stack a -2 but I have enough to get a +3 it balances out". Honestly, that's setting us up for a lot of needless addition and subtraction and that's my fear. The codexes will end up creating something akin to the 2nd ed to-hit modifiers. I've played long enough to remember the days of "Well, I'm at long range so that's -1, but you're in the open so that's +1, but it's Tuesday so that's-2, but my super-scope gives me +3 ....". It wasn't fun then, and it will be even less fun now - while doing all of that just to see if you end up at +1 or -1 ...

Or even worse, the first few books out the gate will abide by it, and then GW will realize it's a mistake and allow the subsequent books to ignore it. #codexcreep.

Eh - guess in retrospect, I'm not actually that optimistic ...

 Kanluwen wrote:

Camo Cloak is short for Cameleoline.

No, camo is short for Camouflage.

 Kanluwen wrote:

The point that you missed is that saying they "fixed" the ability to make a unit unhittable by making 6s always hit is goofy.

Do 6s always hit? Yeah, they do. That doesn't mean that leaving stacking modifiers in is a good idea.
If you're able to make it so that 2s through 5s don't hit at all? That is a problem.

Its a combination of factors that fixed it, the biggest one being that 6's autohit. Airwing being gone and missions being much more objective based got rid of the flyer spam.
Making it +2/-2 wouldve kept the clearly intended design of codexes like the Alpha legion supplement, Anything alaitoc and harlequins, while still making some sense fluff-wise.

I know the mechanic is unfun, which is why i basically never used more then -1 to hit except on my quin bikes to give them -2 to hit so they could actually survive.

Again, when stuff like full rerolls are in the game, getting -2 to hit on a key unit seems fair, especially when the second -1 to hit comes from the attacker moving with heavy weapons