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GW has aggressors listed as fire support and I’m here to say they 100% fethed that classification up.
Aggressors are 100% close support. Let’s tally it up.

Fire support-lots of low S no AP and low D shots.

Close support-short ranged shooting, base 3 attacks, high S melee, high AP melee, high damage melee.

Even with their shoot twice rule i think they’re better used in melee than in shooting from outside of melee.
Personally i also think their guns should be treated like pistols in melee as well.

I might agree that Aggressors should be classified as Close Support, but as a point of order they no longer get to shoot twice. That was an 8th edition thing.

As for how they got misclassified, it could be because most Close Support options (which used to be called Assault) are fast moving. Assault Squads, bikes, that type of stuff. Aggressors are slow-moving and tough. Yes, I'm aware that Assault Intercessors exist and don't have jump packs, but they do move faster than Gravis-armored Aggressors. Fire Support units (formerly Devastator) are typically units that want to stay still and shoot, like, well, Devastators, and Aggressors were originally rewarded for doing just that with their 8th edition "shoot twice if you don't move" rule. Nowadays they do behave a bit more like a Close Assault unit, but at this point they've already been codified as Fire Support and I guess GW doesn't feel like changing it.

 ZergSmasher wrote:
I might agree that Aggressors should be classified as Close Support, but as a point of order they no longer get to shoot twice. That was an 8th edition thing.

As for how they got misclassified, it could be because most Close Support options (which used to be called Assault) are fast moving. Assault Squads, bikes, that type of stuff. Aggressors are slow-moving and tough. Yes, I'm aware that Assault Intercessors exist and don't have jump packs, but they do move faster than Gravis-armored Aggressors. Fire Support units (formerly Devastator) are typically units that want to stay still and shoot, like, well, Devastators, and Aggressors were originally rewarded for doing just that with their 8th edition "shoot twice if you don't move" rule. Nowadays they do behave a bit more like a Close Assault unit, but at this point they've already been codified as Fire Support and I guess GW doesn't feel like changing it.

posted late last night, meant “when they had shoot twice rule”

Lol yeah it seems like they really messed that one up lol

I love the consistency that the Melta Gravis dudes kept shoot twice but nothing else has it.

I respectfully disagree OP.

A.) As others have said, you’re looking too much at their current rules. Rules change a lot and don’t always reflect lore well.

B.) All Close Support Units are either fast moving and/or pure melee or mostly melee oriented.

Most are both, but Inceptors are pure speed with no special melee. While Assault Centurions are nigh pure melee IIRC whilst being quite slow.

Aggressors aren’t fast moving and they aren’t even mostly melee on a conceptual level. They’re a heavy, short range fire support unit that can tough it out if things get too close, which is arguably needed with specialty.

Another way to think of it is that devastators don’t become close support just because they’re only equipped with only heavy flamers or multi-meltas with a sergeant armed with two melee weapons and a pistol.

EviscerationPlague wrote:
I love the consistency that the Melta Gravis dudes kept shoot twice but nothing else has it.

Only if they *checks notes* all shoot at the same target? Sometimes I wonder who writes this game

TreeStewges wrote:
I respectfully disagree OP.

A.) As others have said, you’re looking too much at their current rules. Rules change a lot and don’t always reflect lore well.

B.) All Close Support Units are either fast moving and/or pure melee or mostly melee oriented.

Most are both, but Inceptors are pure speed with no special melee. While Assault Centurions are nigh pure melee IIRC whilst being quite slow.

Aggressors aren’t fast moving and they aren’t even mostly melee on a conceptual level. They’re a heavy, short range fire support unit that can tough it out if things get too close, which is arguably needed with specialty.

Another way to think of it is that devastators don’t become close support just because they’re only equipped with only heavy flamers or multi-meltas with a sergeant armed with two melee weapons and a pistol.

There would have to be MASSIVE rules changes to make aggressors worth it in a fire support role.

Even with last edition’s shoot twice ability they were just barely a decent fire support option.
They are clearly a better melee option than shooting option, and as initially released they were slightly better as melee.

Assault intercessors aren’t fast, and sorry 1” of extra movement doesn’t make them fast, and on an individual basis an assault intercessor is hands down worse than an individual aggressor.
Minimum squad size there’s 1 more attack for the AIs, however most of those attacks aren’t hitting as hard.

Aggressors lose out in the fire support role to both intercessors and heavy intercessors, which aren’t even fire support.

if you're using your aggressors to shoot the whole game, you are wasting their potential against an overwhelming number of factions and/or subfactions, as in off the top of my head, i can't think of any faction where using them to shoot and not getting them into melee is the clearly superior option.

even against guard you're better off getting them into melee, since the guard's special and hvy weapons will likely shred a squad of aggressors fairly quickly.
against any type of marines aggressors are much better off getting into melee to kill a marine than trying to spam S3/4 shots into them.

maybe tyranids? i don't know much about that faction in general but i get the feeling they're fairly weak at shooting, and much more dangerous in melee.

You mention they’re short range fire support, what’s another way of phrasing that? Close fire support, same as inceptors as you mentioned.
Fast doesn’t matter because I don’t believe suppressors are close support despite being fast. No, they’re pure fire support.

Suppressors support by fire at long range, inceptors support by fire at short range, both are fast, yet one is fire support and the other is close support.

Now we have aggressors, slightly slower than assault intercessors, but significantly better in melee than assault intercessors. Yet one is close support while the other isn’t. It makes no sense.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
if i did my math right(which i very well may not have)

spamming 21 S4 AP0 D1 shots at a MEQ unit results in about 3Ws

meanwhile 10 S8 AP-3 D2 attacks at a MEQ unit results in about 4-5Ws on average.


and the break down gets even better in melee against GEQ, due to the lack of Sv they'll get.

about the only place where they might average out evenly would be against units with invulnerable saves, since the AP0 attacks wouldn't trigger the invuln at all, but the lower accuracy of the fists and likely worse save afforded by an invuln save might even things out depending on how good the invuln is.