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ccs wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Kind of a weird take. No one promised perfect balance, but we weren't led to believe that they would position things this out of whack.

??
Really? Your not new to this game & yet given the past, you didn't expect the present?

I hoped for a little more caution. I'm willing to give leeway for covid and the pace of releases, but this is potentially as bad as GK back so many years ago. 9th started off quite sane.

But at Adepticon - removing mirror matches and any Harlie player that opted to use Starweavers over Voidweavers the win rate is....96%.

Funny thing is, the same people saying this is "the most imbalanced edition ever" were the same ones saying this was the "Best edition ever" last year, or more to the point, dog piling people who were saying that 9th sucked and it was imbalanced, LAST YEAR. Remember the whole dust up over Eliminators, or Ad-Mech Cogni-weapons? Before any of this "ignores invulns crap" there were 100pt units that could take down knights. There were infantry units that could one shot a LoW. There were units that straight up had special rules (that broke the game) like Combat Transports, that could advance then deploy.

This isn't something that's been OMG the CUSTARDS ARE TOO POWERFUL...This edition has been doodoo since launch.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

ccs wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Kind of a weird take. No one promised perfect balance, but we weren't led to believe that they would position things this out of whack.

??
Really? Your not new to this game & yet given the past, you didn't expect the present?

I think you can certainly argue that 9th is the most imbalanced edition 40k may have ever had.

I still give that award to 7th, but you can argue it podiums for sure.

I can't argue 7th as imbalanced due to the fact formations allowed anyone to take anything from any army basically. Riptide was a broken unit but anyone was able to take them in some capacity.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

ccs wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Kind of a weird take. No one promised perfect balance, but we weren't led to believe that they would position things this out of whack.

??
Really? Your not new to this game & yet given the past, you didn't expect the present?

I hoped for a little more caution. I'm willing to give leeway for covid and the pace of releases, but this is potentially as bad as GK back so many years ago. 9th started off quite sane.

But at Adepticon - removing mirror matches and any Harlie player that opted to use Starweavers over Voidweavers the win rate is....96%.

Ok, I'm not one for sudden reactions, but if that's true, then gw needs to do some serious "balancing" where Harlequins are concerned. But we can't forget about the codexes that got this thread started in the first place: Custodes and Tau need a serious look as well.

Question Daed: What percentage of the top placings were made up of those three factions? Anyone else place highly? DE perhaps?

I would love to see someone who has the raw data do a flat file and do all sorts of spread sheets to broken units selling more, vs speed at which GW can actually alter the rules to make them less borked.

A Good example to put this all to bed is the release of the "broken" DE. All the units that were broken couldn't have driven up sales, because there were no units to actually sell.

Unless we are counting the 3rd party market, you can't say GW made DE broken to sell units, because they didn't. You can say it about Space Marines and Paint though. GW releases new rules for Primaris and they are horribly broken, but their units are already on the shelves, as is their paint.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Funny thing is, the same people saying this is "the most imbalanced edition ever" were the same ones saying this was the "Best edition ever" last year, or more to the point, dog piling people who were saying that 9th sucked and it was imbalanced, LAST YEAR. Remember the whole dust up over Eliminators, or Ad-Mech Cogni-weapons? Before any of this "ignores invulns crap" there were 100pt units that could take down knights. There were infantry units that could one shot a LoW. There were units that straight up had special rules (that broke the game) like Combat Transports, that could advance then deploy.

This isn't something that's been OMG the CUSTARDS ARE TOO POWERFUL...This edition has been doodoo since launch.

Not even close.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:


Question Daed: What percentage of the top placings were made up of those three factions? Anyone else place highly? DE perhaps?

Looks like top 10 on BS was as below. Of course that terrain might make for some weird results, so who knows. Also I think they're still doing game 8 for the top 4 right now so no official results that I can pull yet. Another weird thing is top cut after only four rounds.

Harlies
Tau
UM
Necrons
Custodes
Custodes
Aeldari
Tau
Tau
Harlies

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Looks like top 10 on BS was as below. Of course that terrain might make for some weird results, so who knows. Also I think they're still doing game 8 for the top 4 right now so no official results that I can pull yet. Another weird thing is top cut after only four rounds.

Harlies
Tau
UM
Necrons
Custodes
Custodes
Aeldari
Tau
Tau
Harlies

So, 8 out of the top 10 are from the 3 most recent codexes. That....doesn't look good, weird idiosyncrasies or not. If gw let this go on as long as they did Dark Eldar (and we don't even know if they're "fixed" yet, or just being pushed down by the new books), then we're headed straight for another trainwreck like late 5th edition or 7th.

If someone wants to check if an army was fixed it is good to check their win rates vs mid tier armies. If an army has some crazy60%+ avarge win rates vs marines, and only loses to armies with 90% win rate, then it ain't fixed.
We got an example of it with DE, where after the ad mecha and ork nerf, they suddenly got catapulted back to the top.

Also it is ironic to see harlis beat out DEs, considering it was DEs that dethroned them after getting their new book.

At this point I’m disillusioned with the state of the game. We went from balanced books at the start of 9th (where you could see them try to taper the power of things in many ways) to a mix of OP and fine books (drukhari started this), to now just pure powercreep. You could argue that drukhari and/or admec where too good due to design failure, but recent books power isn’t that. I, and many others, could tell Harlequins where going to be OP at a glance. I played DE in the past, but never any other space elves. I can tell you Tyranids are going to OP. Honestly, none of these factions are really OP, they just exist in a different game than books released before 2022. I play custodes, who went from a mid-tier army pre-book, to a meta-defining one, and back to a mid-tier book in 2 months. Mid-tier in the fact that I expect we almost never be able to beat competitive hariquins (and I expect Tyranids as well), but still good enough to stomp all pre-2022 armies.

This is a long way of saying GW has stopped caring about balance in order to push inventory/sell models. Any other “E-sport” type game would never allow a 70% winrate faction/character/thing exist for more than a month. The last 3 book releases have exceeded this % despite other 2 existing.

Salt donkey wrote:
Any other “E-sport” type game would never allow a 70% winrate faction/character/thing exist for more than a month. The last 3 book releases have exceeded this % despite other 2 existing.

40k is not and has never been that. 9th was ruined the moment the first 9th edition points update was released.

Tyel wrote:
I think 120 would be pushing it for a starweaver. Its only got 6 wounds.

But also 4++ and -1 to hit if I'm not wrong. The razorback has 10 wounds and +1sv but neither of those additional saves, and against anti tank T5 and T7 are exactly the same. It really can't be less than 100.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ordana wrote:
I think you can certainly argue that 9th is the most imbalanced edition 40k may have ever had.

I think it's among the most balanced ones instead.

6th, 7th and even 8th (for a large portion of it at least) were all much more imbalanced.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

So, 8 out of the top 10 are from the 3 most recent codexes. That....doesn't look good, weird idiosyncrasies or not.

Typically armies with a new codexes get better results that they deserve though. They're new, people don't know them really well (you know the infamous "gotcha moments" that many posters hate here) and most importantly people haven't tailor their lists against them yet. A new codex, assuming it's not really bland, always shakes up the meta but eventually things settle down unless the new codex really is OP. Most of the times it isn't.

Were there many armies in history that ended up with 98% win rates pre 8th ed? Because even if harlis dropped 20%. They would stil be at 78% which is broken as heck. a 78% win rate when playing an army with a 50% win rate, means you practically don't have to play the game to know which army will win.

I don't know about "worst ever" - because the CWE book has effectively been in the competitive space for only a few weeks, and GW could (whether they will or not) do a "we screwed up hard, here's an instant nerf" FAQ. Especially on the back of Adepticon. The weeks on Custodes and Tau are however growing long, and there's no indication GW think this is an issue.

But really - its just points.

Much like DE. The issue wasn't really the rules (silly Succubi combos and mass DT liquifiers aside perhaps). It was that almost every datasheet was obviously undercosted relative to 40k's average. If everything (and I mean everything) in the book had been 10-20% more points there wouldn't have been half the issues. In classic GW style, they have eventually got half way there, after kicking and screaming for 9 months.

I.E. Wyches at 12 points - rather than 10. Incubi at 18 rather than 16. A Dark Lance raider at 105 rather than the laughable 85 it was on release. Talos should never have gone down 10 points - worrying about internal balance on the most broken book in the game is *crazy*. Grots shouldn't have gone down 5 either for the same reason. The Court of the Archon and Wracks should have both got a point or 2 more per model etc.

By contrast, and I know some people may disagree with me, but I remember thinking the DG codex was a thing of exceptional design. It had clear competitive builds for crunch players. It had however enough power so casual "just grab what I've got" players weren't going to just get crushed against people of relatively similar skill/interest levels doing the same. And it had plenty of fluffy options for people to use their imagination on. But now its been crept to hell (and needed to be nerfed, for reasons.)

Oh well. And yes - if the Tyranid book leak is accurate, things are just continuing. Roll on 25 point Tyranid Warriors. That seems fair and playtested.

Tyel wrote:

Oh well. And yes - if the Tyranid book leak is accurate, things are just continuing. Roll on 25 point Tyranid Warriors. That seems fair and playtested.

Seems like it's not the warriors that you should be afraid of though.

 Blackie wrote:

Tyel wrote:
I think 120 would be pushing it for a starweaver. Its only got 6 wounds.

But also 4++ and -1 to hit if I'm not wrong. The razorback has 10 wounds and +1sv but neither of those additional saves, and against anti tank T5 and T7 are exactly the same. It really can't be less than 100.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ordana wrote:
I think you can certainly argue that 9th is the most imbalanced edition 40k may have ever had.

I think it's among the most balanced ones instead.

6th, 7th and even 8th (for a large portion of it at least) were all much more imbalanced.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

So, 8 out of the top 10 are from the 3 most recent codexes. That....doesn't look good, weird idiosyncrasies or not.

Typically armies with a new codexes get better results that they deserve though. They're new, people don't know them really well (you know the infamous "gotcha moments" that many posters hate here) and most importantly people haven't tailor their lists against them yet. A new codex, assuming it's not really bland, always shakes up the meta but eventually things settle down unless the new codex really is OP. Most of the times it isn't.

please provide evidence of 6,7 or 8th edition armies with an 80 to 96% winrate.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

ccs wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Kind of a weird take. No one promised perfect balance, but we weren't led to believe that they would position things this out of whack.

??
Really? Your not new to this game & yet given the past, you didn't expect the present?

I think you can certainly argue that 9th is the most imbalanced edition 40k may have ever had.

I still give that award to 7th, but you can argue it podiums for sure.

Speaking of podiums - if 7th and 9th are some combination of gold and silver, who picks up the bronze?

 Dysartes wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

ccs wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Kind of a weird take. No one promised perfect balance, but we weren't led to believe that they would position things this out of whack.

??
Really? Your not new to this game & yet given the past, you didn't expect the present?

I think you can certainly argue that 9th is the most imbalanced edition 40k may have ever had.

I still give that award to 7th, but you can argue it podiums for sure.

Speaking of podiums - if 7th and 9th are some combination of gold and silver, who picks up the bronze?

Late 5th.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Funny thing is, the same people saying this is "the most imbalanced edition ever" were the same ones saying this was the "Best edition ever" last year, or more to the point, dog piling people who were saying that 9th sucked and it was imbalanced, LAST YEAR. Remember the whole dust up over Eliminators, or Ad-Mech Cogni-weapons? Before any of this "ignores invulns crap" there were 100pt units that could take down knights. There were infantry units that could one shot a LoW. There were units that straight up had special rules (that broke the game) like Combat Transports, that could advance then deploy.

This isn't something that's been OMG the CUSTARDS ARE TOO POWERFUL...This edition has been doodoo since launch.

Not even close.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:


Question Daed: What percentage of the top placings were made up of those three factions? Anyone else place highly? DE perhaps?

Looks like top 10 on BS was as below. Of course that terrain might make for some weird results, so who knows. Also I think they're still doing game 8 for the top 4 right now so no official results that I can pull yet. Another weird thing is top cut after only four rounds.

Harlies
Tau
UM
Necrons
Custodes
Custodes
Aeldari
Tau
Tau
Harlies

note, Adepticon ran the singles event on Thursday Friday. 4 rounds each. and Saturday Sunday is the team event.
It was a cut to top 16 after 4 games on Thursday and the ro16-finals were played Friday.
Top 16 was 4 Tau, 3 Harlequins, 2 Necrons, 2 CWE, 2 CWE+harlequins, 2 Custodes and 1 Ultramarine.
top 8 was 1 Tau, 1 Necron, 3 Harlequins and either 2 CWE and 1 CWE + Harlequin or the other way around, not 100% sure.
Top 4 was 1 Tau, 3 Harlequins.
finals was 2 Harlequins.

I'd also be very surprised if we see any changes before the May version of the balance patch - given they're going to need to think about what, if anything, they want to change on the back of those results, get some form of playtester feedback (ideally), and get the file updated.

 Ordana wrote:

please provide evidence of 6,7 or 8th edition armies with an 80 to 96% winrate.

Don't need to. How long do those win rate last? Months? Weeks? Definitely not years.

In older editions we had OP stuff dominating for whole years without touching a single thing in the list. 98% win rate for a couple of tournaments (if not a single tournament) means such list doesn't exist for the real life players. In 9th meta is constantly shuffled and even the factions that remains OP (see drukhari) have to change their lists pretty much significantly if they want to stay so.

In 7th eldar, tau and SM pretty much had 100% against the majority of the other factions, for years and using the very same lists. It never happened and can't happen in 9th. In 8th we had index vs codex for half edition which was much more imbalanced than 8th codex vs 9th codex.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

Pickled_egg wrote:
The game is so broken right now since the launch of Custodes, CWE, Quins and T'au I don't even know where to start.

I played a GT test game earlier using an Ork board pressure list, Some Trukks because there is too much indirect fire, triple warboss mostly durability buffs, Some Stormboyz & Kommando's for secondaries into a CWE match. His list not even particularly tuned. It didn't even feel like we were playing the same game system.
It's just laughable the disparity level between the codexes. Strands of Fate and Luck of the Laughing god are two of the most straight up busted, ill thought out. dumb army wide rules I can ever remember.
T'au are just as oppressive with unkillable crisis suit bombs and ridiculous amounts of indirect fire.
Basically armies that you cannot meaningfully interact with.
I could have had another 500 points in my list and it still wouldn't have been a battle.

As people have already pointed out, some of the points costs are laughable. A farseer at 90 points vs. an Ork Weirdboy at 70. Starweavers at 80 vs Trukks at 70.

The game is utterly broken.

I don't even know where to start to balance these new codexes to bring the older codexes remotely onto an even footing.

It makes the bevvy of Ork nerfs look even more ridiculous, When they made all those ork nerfs theGW rules writers were armed with all of the information and knew that the Asuryani & T'au codexes were about to land, and the power levels of those books and they still went ahead and nerfed Orks (a codex with terrible internal balance that was surviving off 1-2 power builds into the dirt)

Just boggles the mind.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sasori wrote:
I suspect we are going to see Starweavers go up 5 PPM and Voidweavers 10 PPM, with a possible +5 points to the prism cannon.

That being said, while they overperformed at Adepticon the terrain there was horrendous. https://twitter.com/Saesneg40k/status/1507014215109779457

They need to go up a lot more than that.

Just so I understand your point, is the game broken because you can't beat the new factions with your Ork lists, or is it broken because they are too powerful? Because that is two very different statements.

One you are advocating for Orks to be as strong as the current meta, which is funny, because they are doing fine currently. Let's not make orks out to be Guard or Daemons.

I admit fully that the current meta has so far eclipsed the older factions as to be literally a joke. But that is not even a point. You are just screaming the game is unbalanced. No one ever promised anyone a balanced game. Ever. They claim they make efforts to "increase" balance, but never achieve complete balance. Because that would be chess, and even that is inherently unbalanced because of who goes first.

Point cost is not the way to balance this game. It's the way to ruin it. Just make all weapons USR, Bolters are Bolters, Melta are Melta, Melee is Melee. Going back to the AV system. Look at the way OPR does it. FAR more balanced, but you have no standout pieces. Everything is roughly similar, compared to 40k.

You misunderstood my point.
I used Orks as an example as that's the faction I testing for GT but my point can be equally applied to any of the earlier Codex releases that aren't part of the latest wave to hit.

Those books simply do not stand up on any level to T'au, CWE, Harlequins or even Custodes, and the fully spoiled Tyranid codex looks to be on a similar power level though probably not as abusive as Codex Asuryani.

I think its obvious to anyone who plays the game even semi competitively that the new wave of codexes are broken from a balance perspective. So broken in fact that I don't even see an easy fix. With Drukhari when they eventually increased points on the problem units and nerfed thicc City the codex came back to something at least bearable and while still a very powerful codex the earlier codexes can at least have a game into Drukhari now.

You can't even have a game against Aeldari/Quins or T'au right now with those earlier codexes, they are just so much more powerful on every level.

So, This isn't about me being butthurt about losing a game with Orks as you suggest.

And your argument that the game has never been balanced and isn't intended to be balanced so therefore we just suck it up....wow....just wow....

We shouldn't strive for equality because things have never been equal. What a great take.

Salt donkey wrote:
This is a long way of saying GW has stopped caring about balance in order to push inventory/sell models.

No, they just don't have a system to handle these sweeping changes appropriately. I guarantee you these balancing issues put a huge freeze effect on lots of people. Far more will drop out rather than buy a different army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dysartes wrote:
I'd also be very surprised if we see any changes before the May version of the balance patch - given they're going to need to think about what, if anything, they want to change on the back of those results, get some form of playtester feedback (ideally), and get the file updated.

Yea anything in a dataslate is going to be a heavy handed mess ( if anything at all ) like 0-1 Voidweavers, because they won't adjust points.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:
Were there many armies in history that ended up with 98% win rates pre 8th ed? Because even if harlis dropped 20%. They would stil be at 78% which is broken as heck. a 78% win rate when playing an army with a 50% win rate, means you practically don't have to play the game to know which army will win.

The terrain didn't help. I wouldn't draw ultimate conclusions about Adepticon and Harlies even if they are busted as all get out. Not that it really matters at this point.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ordana wrote:
note, Adepticon ran the singles event on Thursday Friday. 4 rounds each. and Saturday Sunday is the team event.
It was a cut to top 16 after 4 games on Thursday and the ro16-finals were played Friday.
Top 16 was 4 Tau, 3 Harlequins, 2 Necrons, 2 CWE, 2 CWE+harlequins, 2 Custodes and 1 Ultramarine.
top 8 was 1 Tau, 1 Necron, 3 Harlequins and either 2 CWE and 1 CWE + Harlequin or the other way around, not 100% sure.
Top 4 was 1 Tau, 3 Harlequins.
finals was 2 Harlequins.

Thanks - I appreciate the clarity.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Salt donkey wrote:
This is a long way of saying GW has stopped caring about balance in order to push inventory/sell models.

No, they just don't have a system to handle these sweeping changes appropriately. I guarantee you these balancing issues put a huge freeze effect on lots of people. Far more will drop out rather than buy a different army.

Of course they have a system to handle things getting better stats/abilities. It's called: Playtesting them and then giving them appropriate points costs. How can they justify a Starweaver costing the same as a Rhino? And a Voidweaver only 10 PPM more? I fear they've abandoned whatever system they previously used to determine unit prices, and are simply allowing the codex writers to price units however they want to.

Is there a slight possability this is part of a badly ham fisted attempt to get more people to use Power level? For instance, if this whole time GW is completely ruiniung the points balance, has anyone asked if the PL balance is any good/better? What would happen if GW started making PL the competitive standard? Obviously highly customizable units like Space Marines would be broken, but that's a quick CA, but things like Custodes and Knights, or even Harlequins would suddenly drop off the top slots, because they don't have a ton of variation, correct?

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Is there a slight possability this is part of a badly ham fisted attempt to get more people to use Power level? For instance, if this whole time GW is completely ruiniung the points balance, has anyone asked if the PL balance is any good/better? What would happen if GW started making PL the competitive standard? Obviously highly customizable units like Space Marines would be broken, but that's a quick CA, but things like Custodes and Knights, or even Harlequins would suddenly drop off the top slots, because they don't have a ton of variation, correct?

If CA20 didn't do it, nothing will.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Of course they have a system to handle things getting better stats/abilities. It's called: Playtesting them and then giving them appropriate points costs. How can they justify a Starweaver costing the same as a Rhino? And a Voidweaver only 10 PPM more? I fear they've abandoned whatever system they previously used to determine unit prices, and are simply allowing the codex writers to price units however they want to.

okey. So you have an eldar list and a design team that writes rules by feeling how the army should be, and for some faction they just copy past stuff. You have a playtest team which includes top tournament players, and some said narrative players. Narrative players will tell you nothing how the rules impact the game, because they live in a world of agree with opponent, build wierd lists etc. The tournament players will the harlis, test them vs the best of other stuff they are testing, and will come to the conclusion that they are very good, but beatable with other top tier lists. They may even get exited about stuff, as it seems GW doesn't show them all the rules units get. DE famously were being playing liquires and dark lances with old style rules as far as the weapon damage goes. They don't really get the data, and I don't think they can reliably get it, from the legions of people who play the game at stores, start the game etc. A narrative tester will not care what the optimal load out for an army works, the event player will see nothing bad in the fact that an army may consists of 5x one type of unit and 30x of another.

At the size the game is right now they can't really balance it. Army are so killy that if they get the drop on someone turn one, the other player starts their turn 1 or 2 with 2/3 or less of an army. They could fix, although it doesn't mean they would, if the game was 25-30 infantry models and max 3 bigger models. But that isn't their army sell model.

Harlequins running roughshot over everyone, including CWE, unnerfed Tau and buffed Custodes kinda makes it hard for me to accept that the these codexes were balanced against eachother in test.

And before harlies it was Tau beating everything else. And before that it was Custodes, and before that it was Orks, and before that...

Most new codexes roflstomping everything that came before, even without changes just tells me that GW designers are in an uncontrolled arms race to the moon with themselves with absolutely no oversight or guidance.

So would it be easier to bring everything else UP? rather than nerf down?

Primaris Snipers now pass invulns on wound rolls of 4+. Eliminators now do MWs to vehicles.
Ork boys now get +1 strength per 10 models in a unit. Gretchin now ignore invuln saves.
Adeptus Mechanicus MAgos' can now heal knights and vehicles for 3d3 wounds per turn that they are within 6" of them. Sisters of Battle now get an extra 5 Miracle dice flat, across the board.

/s (For those who take this too seriously.)

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Salt donkey wrote:
This is a long way of saying GW has stopped caring about balance in order to push inventory/sell models.

No, they just don't have a system to handle these sweeping changes appropriately. I guarantee you these balancing issues put a huge freeze effect on lots of people. Far more will drop out rather than buy a different army.

Of course they have a system to handle things getting better stats/abilities. It's called: Playtesting them and then giving them appropriate points costs. How can they justify a Starweaver costing the same as a Rhino? And a Voidweaver only 10 PPM more? I fear they've abandoned whatever system they previously used to determine unit prices, and are simply allowing the codex writers to price units however they want to.

Yea, but they're clearly not doing that. They just don't have the process or the people to make it work under this release timeline.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So would it be easier to bring everything else UP? rather than nerf down?

Primaris Snipers now pass invulns on wound rolls of 4+. Eliminators now do MWs to vehicles.
Ork boys now get +1 strength per 10 models in a unit. Gretchin now ignore invuln saves.
Adeptus Mechanicus MAgos' can now heal knights and vehicles for 3d3 wounds per turn that they are within 6" of them. Sisters of Battle now get an extra 5 Miracle dice flat, across the board.

/s (For those who take this too seriously.)

To answer the question seriously - reducing points for other armies would be bad, however, increasing points too much for Tau/Custodes/Nids/Elves would cause them to be unstable as glass cannons. The solution needs both points and rules changes, but to have to do so much just after books came out is just utter chaos.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Is there a slight possability this is part of a badly ham fisted attempt to get more people to use Power level? For instance, if this whole time GW is completely ruiniung the points balance, has anyone asked if the PL balance is any good/better? What would happen if GW started making PL the competitive standard? Obviously highly customizable units like Space Marines would be broken, but that's a quick CA, but things like Custodes and Knights, or even Harlequins would suddenly drop off the top slots, because they don't have a ton of variation, correct?

PL just has different problems than points do, it still needs to be balanced. The biggest difference to a game using points is that everyone has those little silly upgrades which you would never bother to pay a single point for.

The customization issue is mostly something that people keep parroting who have never really played any significant number of games using PL. There are too few units which can truly exploit it or even exploit it to a level of regular top competitive units. No matter how many upgrades you slap onto nobz or vanguard veterans, they still aren't going to be as good as spending the same amount of PL units that are actually competitive.
It's also worth noting that PL isn't "free upgrades". Worst case, it's upgrades at 50% off since it is calculated by adding the costs of the base unit to the cost of the most expensive configuration and dividing it by 40.