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SemperMortis wrote:
They buffed the HB to give Imperials more stopping power against Marines. The problem is that in doing so they accidentally made it 100% more effective vs. vehicles, which is why the aforementioned SoB list featuring 15+ of the things did so well for a bit; it was good vs. everything.

My point is that it didn't change. It has the exact same impact against Marines that it always did. Yes, the rule changed from D1 to D2, but the net gain was zero. It does as much to Marines as it always did, and certainly no more damage to lesser targets because they've only got 1 wound anyway.

SemperMortis wrote:
But the main point i was making is that Marines complained about durability so GW gave them a 2nd wound for 2ppm, and then immediately complained that they weren't doing enough dmg to kill things and so GW buffed weapons which made Marines less durable. So Marines complained and then they came out with AoC which completely destroyed the usability of entire weapon selections...hell, it completely removed my factions biggest buff in 9th edition (AP-1 Choppas). But it didn't work because what happened to the meta? Players took fewer AP-1 weapon and went hard into AP2+. So now GW's answer is to make everything free for Marines and say screw it until 10th drops.

I agree with you here, except the complaint isn't about Marine durability, it's about durability in general. AoC existed because GW doesn't know how to write rules and/or isn't willing to correct the actual core mistake that exists in 9th: There are too many weapons with save modifiers.

SemperMortis wrote:
Read my comment about Big shootas above, I could also point out the bog standard Ork Boyz model equipped with a slugga/pistol....

So your logic of "if X then Y should happen otherwise headscratcher" seems to only apply to Marines and Marine weapons.

They upped the Shuriken Cannon as well. Whether the Big Shoota should have been buffed is a matter of debate. It doesn't make the change to Heavy Bolters wrong.

My prediction:
In 3 months it'll change with another points update or balance datasheet update.

And then in 6th months we'll have 10th edition with a bunch of new Space Marine kits for people to munch on.

And then 3 months after that it'll change again and whatever faction was released then will be the OP broken thing.

(The solution is to not care, build and paint what you think is cool, and just wait for your faction to have its 15 minutes of fame)

drbored wrote:
The solution is to not care, build and paint what you think is cool, and just wait for your faction to have its 15 minutes of fame)

Recommending that we not care is, to me at least, akin to the way 4Chan outright mocks anyone who dares to show any passion towards any topic.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

drbored wrote:
The solution is to not care, build and paint what you think is cool, and just wait for your faction to have its 15 minutes of fame)

Recommending that we not care is, to me at least, akin to the way 4Chan outright mocks anyone who dares to show any passion towards any topic.

I think they mean don't worry about whats happening or get worked up too much.

Enjoy what you enjoy, have passion and your favourite army will have it's time.

But there is a difference between passion and obsession. Passion = good. Obsssion = bad.

 SeanDavid1991 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

drbored wrote:
The solution is to not care, build and paint what you think is cool, and just wait for your faction to have its 15 minutes of fame)

Recommending that we not care is, to me at least, akin to the way 4Chan outright mocks anyone who dares to show any passion towards any topic.

I think they mean don't worry about whats happening or get worked up too much.

Enjoy what you enjoy, have passion and your favourite army will have it's time.

But there is a difference between passion and obsession. Passion = good. Obsssion = bad.

I think this is largely true for most long term hobbyist/casual players, have a broad collection of a faction you care about and you'll have ability to react and enjoy it regardless of the current competitive shenanigans playing more laid back games. It's only those wanting to chase wins/titles/event win rates etc. that might really be that bothered.

At the end of the day marine units cost what they cost, that price can can be reached through a few methods, they took the lazy route and threw any semblance of looking in control out the window, likely as they know it'll get binned and reset shortly. It doesn't by default mean marines will be stomping about winning everything everywhere, I'm not convinced they'll rocked past everyone else as a whole it'll be a couple of special sub-lists who benefit more than others. But enjoy playing what you play and it'll be all change again in 3 months.

"Nothing matters" isnt the most fun prediction.
I mean if you dont think Marines will be top tier thats fine. It just raises the question of who you think will be. And why its Guard.

Tyel wrote:
"Nothing matters" isnt the most fun prediction.
I mean if you dont think Marines will be top tier thats fine. It just raises the question of who you think will be. And why its Guard.

I think some marine lists will punch up to top tier, but just not with some disastrous win rate annihilating all before them. Iron hands might end up looking like late 8th lists again and both death/raven wing lists benefit a lot from the changes. But as it stands, I agree it'll be guard.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

So don't bring Heavy Bolters to a GT if that's what you expect.

They already don't because the power creep has gone well past Heavy Bolters.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

I don't care about your whining about Orks because literally everyone and their mother knows the Ork codex wasn't done well. That seems to be more your motivation to defend a D2 Heavy Bolter than anything else.

I'm not defending Heavy Bolters going to D2, I was stating how they came about and the ridiculous cyclical logic that got us to this point. And honestly I don't think the arms race has worked nor has it been good for the game balance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dudeface wrote:

The ideal game state imo should be that if you only ever build to face marines you lose more regularly into everything else. The state of the game as it is means building into marines has no negatives for nearly all decisions. You highlight it yourself by pointing out green tides works by being counter meta. The game should be encouraging people to bring TAC lists not "lets make sure I beat marines and then figure the rest out from there", which in turn might be a symptom of 2k games come to think of it.

I actually agree with you on the first statement, but it will never happen because when you show up to a GT or a regular event the plurality of opponents you are likely to face will be rocking a 3+ save and likely be T3-5 so any weapon that is good against that profile is going to do well. Not to mention by upping Marines to 2W, hitting them with a heavy weapon doesn't seem as silly anymore. But that also ties into my comments about Heavy bolters and weapons in general. I've sat in these forums and watched players complain ad nauseam that their weapon of choice isn't good enough against *Insert thing it wasn't designed for*. The heavy bolter should never have gone to D2, the Shuriken version shouldn't have gone to D2. A lot of the weapon upgrades in 9th shouldn't have happened because all it did was feed into the cycle and now every other army that isn't being given a 100% durability boost is suffering, Marines are suffering because they are the default setting and GW will have to eventually realize there isn't anything they can do to balance Marines and their 27 cousin variants until fewer people play them to the point where I'm not immediately incentivized to take D2 weapons with high AP as much as possible. Putting it simply, giving Marines upwards of 800-900pts of free weapon upgrades isn't going to help the game balance and yet again, my best guess is that Marines are going to be Top tier, and when I say top tier i'm not talking about ALL Marines ALL the time. I'm saying at GTs you are going to see Marines constantly in the top 4 (8 for bigger events).

SemperMortis wrote:
I'm not defending Heavy Bolters going to D2, I was stating how they came about and the ridiculous cyclical logic that got us to this point. And honestly I don't think the arms race has worked nor has it been good for the game balance.

Yeah. To put it bluntly: If you try to make the most commonly encountered defensive profile in the game resilient to all but a few specialized weapons, the end result is not that that defensive profile starts to feel tough.

It's that everything besides those specialized weapons collects dust.

The increase in the number of weapons with D2 didn't devalue Marine durability so much as open up more viable options for participating in a game that is majority-Marines and where 'take-all-comers' translates to 'kills Marines'. They're not an outlier, they're not unique, they're not special, they're not tough, they are the bog-standard middle-of-the-road yardstick by which everything else is judged, and until/unless T4/W2/3+ actually becomes an outlier rather than the baseline, there's no getting away from that.

I don't know how it "open up more viable options for participating in a game", where each time marines become easy to kill. Marines bounce between minimum marines in a marine army, like it was through out most of 8th to hope that your faction can do something marine+, like it was in 9th.

A regular marine player, using actual marines, in a setting where a marine is easily killed and on top of that anti marine weapons are okeyish vs vehicles and monsters too, is not going to have much fun. And it shows in stuff like green wing or other regular marine armies. Now for non marine players it is great, because they can farm easy wins, and in case of store events get store credit more easily. But for the marine players that actualy are getting blown up on the tables or tabled without really doing nothing, it is not very fun.

If marines, for the sake of game play situation caused by their popularity are supposed to get armies that don't feel tough and unique aka like space marine armies. Then why does GW does that to for other factions. GW has no problems with letting nids or orks play swarm one time, then force them to spam big monsters or vehicles. Eldar always get the above everyone +1 rule set etc. If marines are suppose to be the way they are in game, then other factions should be adjusted to it too.
Especialy as making marine player unhappy, means that GW is making the majority of their player base unhappy. And doing that, on top of doing that, so that a minority can have fun is just evil. And if GW has and wants to keep this as policy, they should be open about it. Make a video or Q&A , and some DT person can openly say that marines are suppose to be the bad army for noobs to buy, but if you want to have fun, you should buy something else or wait for those 4-5 months at the end of an edition when marines are okey. Which kind of a seems to be the norm with what GW does.

Karol wrote:
I don't know how it "open up more viable options for participating in a game", where each time marines become easy to kill. Marines bounce between minimum marines in a marine army, like it was through out most of 8th to hope that your faction can do something marine+, like it was in 9th.

A regular marine player, using actual marines, in a setting where a marine is easily killed and on top of that anti marine weapons are okeyish vs vehicles and monsters too, is not going to have much fun. And it shows in stuff like green wing or other regular marine armies. Now for non marine players it is great, because they can farm easy wins, and in case of store events get store credit more easily. But for the marine players that actualy are getting blown up on the tables or tabled without really doing nothing, it is not very fun.

If marines, for the sake of game play situation caused by their popularity are supposed to get armies that don't feel tough and unique aka like space marine armies. Then why does GW does that to for other factions. GW has no problems with letting nids or orks play swarm one time, then force them to spam big monsters or vehicles. Eldar always get the above everyone +1 rule set etc. If marines are suppose to be the way they are in game, then other factions should be adjusted to it too.
Especialy as making marine player unhappy, means that GW is making the majority of their player base unhappy. And doing that, on top of doing that, so that a minority can have fun is just evil. And if GW has and wants to keep this as policy, they should be open about it. Make a video or Q&A , and some DT person can openly say that marines are suppose to be the bad army for noobs to buy, but if you want to have fun, you should buy something else or wait for those 4-5 months at the end of an edition when marines are okey. Which kind of a seems to be the norm with what GW does.

So to summarize your entire rant "I want my special toys to be better than everyone else's toys, otherwise GW is evil". I do love your rants though Karol, its always so lacking in self reflection that it genuinely puts a smile on my face.

"Wait for those 4-5 months" umm I hate to tell you this, but most factions don't even get those 4-5 months. This edition a lot of armies were top dog for a bit, Harlequins, DE, AdMech, Tau, Necrons hell, Orkz were at one point the 3rd best army in the game. Marines though universally have not had a single edition where they weren't Top tier for at least a bit, including 9th. Is that true for every single special snowflake chapter? No, but in the broader sense that All Marines are the same with minor differences (mostly paint scheme).

The entirety of 7th edition Orkz and DE were bottom of the barrel hot garbage. 8th Edition you had IG and Tau suffering...Chaos Marines....Holy crap, they got like 10 minutes of good play in 7th and 8th and then, bam new edition. Sorry that your army is only top tier for 4-5 months (2/3rds of 8th....most of 7th) in an edition, don't worry though, based on my prediction ....you know the thread's purpose, I think they will again be Top Tier for the last 4-6 months of 9th.

To be fair to Karol, as weird and tone deaf as that was, the entire thread is based on "it's stupid marines get free upgrades! Look at my army! Look how evil and dumb GW is!"

Dudeface wrote:
To be fair to Karol, as weird and tone deaf as that was, the entire thread is based on "it's stupid marines get free upgrades! Look at my army! Look how evil and dumb GW is!"

More like "It's stupid that ANY army gets free upgrades. No way is a lascannon the same worth as a basic boltgun" (these weapons used as examples since everyone knows what they do because , guess what, Marines are the most commonly played faction)

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
To be fair to Karol, as weird and tone deaf as that was, the entire thread is based on "it's stupid marines get free upgrades! Look at my army! Look how evil and dumb GW is!"

More like "It's stupid that ANY army gets free upgrades. No way is a lascannon the same worth as a basic boltgun" (these weapons used as examples since everyone knows what they do because , guess what, Marines are the most commonly played faction)

I don't recall an outrage at lasguns being replaced with lascannons for free. But as shown in here you also cannot balance the points out to get the units to where they are now without screwing it up in some other way. If they'd just cut every point value for Marines by 30% giving us the units at the price they're at in this hypothetical meta but with numbers attached, I suspect you'd be less upset.

I can see the obvious issues for internal balance but the entire premise of the thread is the concern with external balance. Do 4 lascannons and a thunder hammer seem a problem at 115?

Dudeface wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
To be fair to Karol, as weird and tone deaf as that was, the entire thread is based on "it's stupid marines get free upgrades! Look at my army! Look how evil and dumb GW is!"

More like "It's stupid that ANY army gets free upgrades. No way is a lascannon the same worth as a basic boltgun" (these weapons used as examples since everyone knows what they do because , guess what, Marines are the most commonly played faction)

I don't recall an outrage at lasguns being replaced with lascannons for free. But as shown in here you also cannot balance the points out to get the units to where they are now without screwing it up in some other way. If they'd just cut every point value for Marines by 30% giving us the units at the price they're at in this hypothetical meta but with numbers attached, I suspect you'd be less upset.

Hammer of the Emperor was even more stupid, but free lascannons being stupid was part of the discussion as well. I don't know how you can show that it's impossible to balance points without screwing it up in a way, care to elaborate? I don't get what you mean by the 30% comment. Making a reasonable points cost decrease to every bad option on a datasheet is obviously going to be more popular than imitating PL.

Dudeface wrote:
I don't recall an outrage at lasguns being replaced with lascannons for free.

You don't? Seriously?

I mean, it certainly wasn't the only thing people were talking about with Hammer of the Emperor and Armour of Contempt also added at the same time, and Guard wargear getting changed doesn't affect nearly as many players as Marine wargear getting changed, but go back to April/May of last year and you will find plenty of people complaining about Guard weapons suddenly all becoming free.

Dudeface wrote:
But as shown in here you also cannot balance the points out to get the units to where they are now without screwing it up in some other way.

'You can't get it perfect so it might as well be terrible' has always been a poor argument.

Especially when the problems relating to wargear costs had in large part to do with GW deciding that wargear needed universal costs, rather than costs appropriate to the unit receiving it. This is a step in the wrong direction.

Dudeface wrote:


I don't recall an outrage at lasguns being replaced with lascannons for free. But as shown in here you also cannot balance the points out to get the units to where they are now without screwing it up in some other way. If they'd just cut every point value for Marines by 30% giving us the units at the price they're at in this hypothetical meta but with numbers attached, I suspect you'd be less upset.

I can see the obvious issues for internal balance but the entire premise of the thread is the concern with external balance. Do 4 lascannons and a thunder hammer seem a problem at 115?

then you have very selective memory, theres been a vocal group on here that were against free upgrades

 vict0988 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
To be fair to Karol, as weird and tone deaf as that was, the entire thread is based on "it's stupid marines get free upgrades! Look at my army! Look how evil and dumb GW is!"

More like "It's stupid that ANY army gets free upgrades. No way is a lascannon the same worth as a basic boltgun" (these weapons used as examples since everyone knows what they do because , guess what, Marines are the most commonly played faction)

I don't recall an outrage at lasguns being replaced with lascannons for free. But as shown in here you also cannot balance the points out to get the units to where they are now without screwing it up in some other way. If they'd just cut every point value for Marines by 30% giving us the units at the price they're at in this hypothetical meta but with numbers attached, I suspect you'd be less upset.

Hammer of the Emperor was even more stupid, but free lascannons being stupid was part of the discussion as well. I don't know how you can show that it's impossible to balance points without screwing it up in a way, care to elaborate? I don't get what you mean by the 30% comment. Making a reasonable points cost decrease to every bad option on a datasheet is obviously going to be more popular than imitating PL.

You need to drop their points from where they were, you drop the marines too much and they become a pseudo horde which unbalances the wider game. If you cut the cost of the weapons, there isn't a large enough point bracket to accurately create decisions as there's either too much overlap in weapons purpose or too few point difference to actually make it a choice.

An example is if you want a 115 point lascannon dev squad with thunder hammer, accurate as per the manual, they were 165 with wargear. If you leave wargear untouched the marines in the unit need to be 40 points, or 8 points each. You can't facilitate a bolter guy at 8 points. If you assume they bake some of the heavy weapon cost in and make heavy bolters/grav free and default loadout, move the lascannon/thunderhammer to a 5pt upgrade you get 18pt marines. Is a lascannon worth 5 points more than a heavy bolter? Is it worth the same as a plasma cannon? Is a multimelta worth 5 points more than a lascannon? If you need to differentiate lascannons from missile launchers, how do you do that inside a 5pt window?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Can people park the free wargear thing for a second. Is a lascannon unit currently fairly priced at 115? If so what is a heavy bolter squad worth?

I think this doesn't go far enough, Marines should get some sort of configuration (a formation even) that gives them free transports and the ability to attach characters to their units. Then maybe they could get a psyker that can give some sort of negative to hit for the unit they're attached to. That should make them worth playing again and it can't be any worse than pre-nerf DE, Tyranids, AdMech, or what was planned for the Squats.

Dudeface wrote:
I don't recall an outrage at lasguns being replaced with lascannons for free.

There absolutely was outrage. The only reason there wasn't more outrage was that a lot of people assumed it was a one-time emergency balance fix to the worst army in the game without a point cut that would enable 400+ conscript spam. The assumption was that it would be removed as soon as the new codex was published (which was assumed to be coming much sooner IIRC) and therefore there was no need to worry about it too much. I don't think anyone ever thought it was a good rule or wanted it to stay.

If a 5 man Devastator unit with 4 grav cannons, TH and plasma pistol is 115 pts then Guardsmen should be 4 pts. So even if the naked Devastators were only 12 pts each, they'd still be 3x the cost of a Guardsman. WS/BS 3+ 2W T4 3+ Sv models are never going to be a horde.

5 Devastators with 4 lascannons and a cherub should be 126 points. With plasma pistol and TH 131 pts. It'd be worse than a lot of units and better than a lot of units. 115 for any loadout is inherently unfair. The goal shouldn't be to make every army list competitive because that'd lead to blatant power creep like in Yugioh. If you have 3 factions that are A tier, 5 B tier, 10 C tier, 2 D tier and you buff every B, C and D tier army up 1-3 tiers, you're going to end up with a couple A+ tier armies and now every army has to catch up to those two new overpowered armies. Next you'll have A++ armies that then get power crept by A+++ armies and before long you have 5W Space Marines and free Rhinos.

People are quick to discount the Heavy Bolter. Especially when it can be AP2 in marine hands. Here's a comparison on an AP4 LC squad and AP2 HB squad against various targets ( not cherubs or anything else to keep the setup simple ).

In short the HB is a bit worse at boats, worse into tanks, marginally better vs TEQ, and entirely better vs MEQ and GEQ. TEQ is perhaps the only (slight) surprise there.

The question on whether or not HB are better than LC relies entirely upon what you expect to face. Tons of marines with MM? Better take some HBs. Grav Cannons outclass HBs except in the "narrow" circumstances that you will face multi-wound models with 4+ or worse saves -- Warriors, Raveners, DE Grots, Elf boats, Squigosaurs, Daemons, GSC Technicals/Bikes, Necron Scarabs/Spiders, etc

So the goal isn't to determine which loadout is most efficient. It is to pay 115 points and pick the weapons that will be more effective to your battle plan and opponent pool.

Aecus Decimus wrote:
There absolutely was outrage. The only reason there wasn't more outrage was that a lot of people assumed it was a one-time emergency balance fix to the worst army in the game without a point cut that would enable 400+ conscript spam. The assumption was that it would be removed as soon as the new codex was published (which was assumed to be coming much sooner IIRC) and therefore there was no need to worry about it too much. I don't think anyone ever thought it was a good rule or wanted it to stay.

Exactly!

Free weapons and 6 to hit = auto-wound were both absurdly stupid (and lazy and poorly designed) changes that we assumed were a stopgap until the new Codex came out.

None of us expected that free weapons would suddenly become the latest mid-edition paradigm shift, and certainly none of us expected Hammer of the Emperor to become the Guard's core rule.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

drbored wrote:
The solution is to not care, build and paint what you think is cool, and just wait for your faction to have its 15 minutes of fame)

Recommending that we not care is, to me at least, akin to the way 4Chan outright mocks anyone who dares to show any passion towards any topic.

Sorry let me explain. By 'not care' I mean - don't get too invested in the crunch of the rules, since they change every few months. Don't go chasing the meta, don't try to always have the most competitive army at all times, don't try to crush every opponent you meet.

I personally would prefer that Warhammer doesn't get closer to Magic the Gathering, where every 3 months a new set of cards comes out, invalidates the oldest set of cards from a year ago, and if you want to chase it you have to buy increasingly rare products that...

wait a minute...

Oh god, it's already too late.

drbored wrote:
Sorry let me explain. By 'not care' I mean - don't get too invested in the crunch of the rules, since they change every few months. Don't go chasing the meta, don't try to always have the most competitive army at all times, don't try to crush every opponent you meet.

Ok, right, I see what you meant.

I would say though, that these kind of constant (and often completely nonsensical/illogical/outright boneheaded) changes don't just impact those that "chase the meta". Like a few others have stated in this thread (and others), I'm tired of having my army messed with because a tiny minority of tournament players can't help but stretch this game to the limits of what it's capable (and incapable) of handling.

And groups can differ. I'm firmly of the mindset that I want to say "No, feth it. I'm using my Tyranid Codex, that I purchased, and the Tyranid cards, that I purchased, exactly as they are presented. Munitorum Manuals and "Balance" Dataslates be damned!", but not everyone in my group will see it that way. We have one guy who is big into tournaments. I had my group around to play 40k a while back, and specifically asked everyone in advance to not bring tournament lists. He showed up with a Trajan-led Custodes netdeck list. *shrugs* So... what can I do?

Essentially, when the people who write the game keep fething with the game, it impacts everyone, whether you're a tournament gamer or not. I care not because I care about tournaments - that time in my life has long since passed - but because I'm tired of seeing the potential of this game get squandered time and time again by people who should know better, refuse to improve, and then bluster away on "Metawatch" articles about win-rates and other things that they pretend matters.

drbored wrote:
I personally would prefer that Warhammer doesn't get closer to Magic the Gathering, where every 3 months a new set of cards comes out, invalidates the oldest set of cards from a year ago, and if you want to chase it you have to buy increasingly rare products that... wait a minute... Oh god, it's already too late.

Imagine trying to be a modern Necromunda player.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
and then bluster away on "Metawatch" articles about win-rates and other things that they pretend matters

The worst thing about it is they openly admit they only care about faction win rates. Your faction has a 52% win rate with a single very specific netlist that abuses the units we gave an excessive dataslate buff to and a 20% win rate with anything else? Build diversity is nonexistent because free gear makes all but one choice obsolete? 52% win rate is within the 45-55% target range and nothing more needs to be done! Who cares if the game is a miserable experience for the majority of players of that faction, we have some pretty graphs that show everything is fine and you can't disagree because we have data!

I disagree though that it's the tournament players that deserve the blame for pushing the game beyond its limits. The blame belongs with GW for continuing to employ horrifically incompetent writers long past the point where any other company would have fired them, resulting in a constant dumpster fire of errors followed by hasty overreactions followed by sweeping changes across the entire game, all of it built on a foundation of "we had the intern write this book on his lunch break". It shouldn't matter that tournament players will always look for the best way to win games because the books we're spending hundreds of dollars on should not be this hilariously dysfunctional.

Aecus Decimus wrote:
I disagree though that it's the tournament players that deserve the blame for pushing the game beyond its limits.

Oh oh oh, wait, wait, wait. I can see how what I've said might be interpreted that way, but let's be very clear: I'm not pulling a Kanluwen here, blaming the players for everything wrong with the game. This is entirely on GW for treating the opinions of a small minority of players in such high regard.

Tournament players were doing what they were doing long before GW knew what the word 'meta' was, but all this crap now is only because GW is listening to them (and no one else, it seems). It's still all on GW's shoulders. I'm totally fine with tournament players, as I said, "stretch[ing] this game to the limits of what it's capable (and incapable) of handling". I just wish GW wouldn't listen to them as much, or to the exclusion of all else.

Your point about "The win rate is now 52%, so everything is clearly completely fixed!" is one I hadn't considered, and a good one, and depressing...

It's demonstrative of the lack of understanding I keep mentioning. And we see people here (I can think of some specific names) who really do just go "But the the winrate is XX%, so what's the problem?".

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Oh oh oh, wait, wait, wait. I can see how what I've said might be interpreted that way, but let's be very clear: I'm not pulling a Kanluwen here, blaming the players for everything wrong with the game. This is entirely on GW for treating the opinions of a small minority of players in such high regard.

Ah, gotcha.

Tournament players were doing what they were doing long before GW knew what the word 'meta' was, but all this crap now is only because GW is listening to them (and no one else, it seems). It's still all on GW's shoulders. I'm totally fine with tournament players, as I said, "stretch[ing] this game to the limits of what it's capable (and incapable) of handling". I just wish GW wouldn't listen to them as much, or to the exclusion of all else.

I think it's the opposite actually: GW isn't listening to tournament players enough. They're listening just enough to get into this weird cargo cult of "competitive" 40k where the know enough to parrot some of the language but don't understand any of it. It's why you get nice self-congratulatory win rate graphs but no apparent understanding of more advanced metagame analysis statistics, how to fine-tune a metagame without sweeping overreactions like the plane ban, or how to apply a competitive mindset to pre-release playtesting and keep the egregious balance mistakes from making it to print. Or how GW's cargo cult version of competitive play has quarterly balance updates because a competitive game is supposed to have regular balance updates, but they're still insisting on constraining those updates with the need to protect the cash cow of printed rulebooks and creating abominations like AoC and HotE because they aren't allowed to publish better solutions. And I'm sure in a couple months we'll see a Metawatch article on how everything is the best it's ever been because lots of people went to the LVO.

Dudeface wrote:

Tyel wrote:
"Nothing matters" isnt the most fun prediction.
I mean if you dont think Marines will be top tier thats fine. It just raises the question of who you think will be. And why its Guard.

I think some marine lists will punch up to top tier, but just not with some disastrous win rate annihilating all before them. Iron hands might end up looking like late 8th lists again and both death/raven wing lists benefit a lot from the changes. But as it stands, I agree it'll be guard.

What changes do you think Deathwing benefits from? I mean a few points drops to their Command Squad characters, but that was pretty universal across the board. Ravenwing got the old school speeders, new speeders as generic price drops, and aircraft drops. The Freebie upgrades for Terminators?

 Daedalus81 wrote:
People are quick to discount the Heavy Bolter. Especially when it can be AP2 in marine hands. Here's a comparison on an AP4 LC squad and AP2 HB squad against various targets ( not cherubs or anything else to keep the setup simple ).

In short the HB is a bit worse at boats, worse into tanks, marginally better vs TEQ, and entirely better vs MEQ and GEQ. TEQ is perhaps the only (slight) surprise there.

The question on whether or not HB are better than LC relies entirely upon what you expect to face. Tons of marines with MM? Better take some HBs. Grav Cannons outclass HBs except in the "narrow" circumstances that you will face multi-wound models with 4+ or worse saves -- Warriors, Raveners, DE Grots, Elf boats, Squigosaurs, Daemons, GSC Technicals/Bikes, Necron Scarabs/Spiders, etc

So the goal isn't to determine which loadout is most efficient. It is to pay 115 points and pick the weapons that will be more effective to your battle plan and opponent pool.

Spoiler:

The weapon that is more effective for your battle plan and opponent pool is more points efficient. Paying 40 points for multi-meltas if you're staying so far back with your Devastators they cannot shoot turn 1/2 would be inefficient and taking heavy bolters on your drop pod Devastators you need to clear out monsters would be inefficient. Mathhammer is meant to model this.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Aecus Decimus wrote:
There absolutely was outrage. The only reason there wasn't more outrage was that a lot of people assumed it was a one-time emergency balance fix to the worst army in the game without a point cut that would enable 400+ conscript spam. The assumption was that it would be removed as soon as the new codex was published (which was assumed to be coming much sooner IIRC) and therefore there was no need to worry about it too much. I don't think anyone ever thought it was a good rule or wanted it to stay.

Exactly!

Free weapons and 6 to hit = auto-wound were both absurdly stupid (and lazy and poorly designed) changes that we assumed were a stopgap until the new Codex came out.

None of us expected that free weapons would suddenly become the latest mid-edition paradigm shift, and certainly none of us expected Hammer of the Emperor to become the Guard's core rule.

I checked the Guard codex to make sure HotE was gone but they just changed the name T_T

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Aecus Decimus wrote:
I disagree though that it's the tournament players that deserve the blame for pushing the game beyond its limits.

Oh oh oh, wait, wait, wait. I can see how what I've said might be interpreted that way, but let's be very clear: I'm not pulling a Kanluwen here, blaming the players for everything wrong with the game. This is entirely on GW for treating the opinions of a small minority of players in such high regard.

Tournament players were doing what they were doing long before GW knew what the word 'meta' was, but all this crap now is only because GW is listening to them (and no one else, it seems). It's still all on GW's shoulders. I'm totally fine with tournament players, as I said, "stretch[ing] this game to the limits of what it's capable (and incapable) of handling". I just wish GW wouldn't listen to them as much, or to the exclusion of all else.

Your point about "The win rate is now 52%, so everything is clearly completely fixed!" is one I hadn't considered, and a good one, and depressing...

It's demonstrative of the lack of understanding I keep mentioning. And we see people here (I can think of some specific names) who really do just go "But the the winrate is XX%, so what's the problem?".

The experience of tournament players don't really matter, the only reason to care about what they're doing is because it's the easiest way to get data about the game to improve it for casual players and find out which combos are broken to make sure that casual players can build whatever lists they want without the game breaking. When Grey Knights are terrible or Space Marines overpowered it makes the game worse for players.

One yearly update to the game ought to be enough to make the game reasonably balanced assuming new releases are playtested prior to release and should create little fatigue and keep the game interesting. The old model where the only way the game got interesting was with a new edition or the release of an OP codex was a bad idea because the system necessitated OP codexes to not get stale.