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Post by paradox on May 26, 2017 12:17:27 GMT
There sure are alot of salty beaches around here. I fully acknowledge I am salty about how Protectorate has changed from mk2 to mk3. What do you feel is the role of the faction and where do you feel the faction shines the most? I really feel Menoth is back to the MKI feel. Admittedly, jacks are far better now than then, so you can run jackspam and not feel stupid. Plus, the cataloge is much deeper, and we have themes off the bat. MKIII factions as a whole have been given defined sub-factions. If I can sidetrack a second, Circle was kinda like this anyway, but drawing a line under wolfsworn and druids as distinct groups sharpens that focus. I feel you can do this now too in Protectorate. And it sounds like theme books are going to make this a real live option. Cygnar getting trencher longgunners and trencher mechs. Ret getting alt-house mechs. We too will see role diversity within subfactions. We'll get exemplar versions of support. We'll ger scrutator units to prop up priest themes. We'll get harder hitting, durable flameguard. That said, maybe that doesnt help you now. So what do I play? Mixed arms gunlines. Or silly spam lists. Sometimes both at once. The Sevy1 list I stumbled into in the CID grew out of a double vessel list I made before we even had Creator's Might. The theme just improved it (added Tristan1 and a reckoner wall). It was a gunline that handled itself up close. When I realized the pre-CID change to Doors allowing basic attacks, I jumped out of theme to add cleansers and sunbursts. Shoots even better, doesnt melee as well. You can WM spam too. Vindy does this best IMO. Especially now in theme. So whats our place? What would you like it to be?
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Cyel
Junior Strategist
Posts: 685
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Post by Cyel on May 26, 2017 12:38:38 GMT
Very strong. Coming back in after the last 6 months of MKII and first 6 months of MKIII in Circle, I definitely feel Menoth is in a very good place. We got some tradeoffs in the transition, but also picked up great new pieces. I get a very strong sense that many folks have alot of exploring left to do. Ive already unearthed some great gems that seem largely ignored. That's my experience as well so far. Surprisingly devastating things include Testament, Cleansers. My mk2 favourites - Daughters and Idrians have become so much more potent. Almost the entire stable of casters offers something great to play with, even if you shun the strict top of Amon/Sevvy2/Reclaimer1. Then, there are some things that are just crazily universal and powerful like Flamebringers or the Eye of Truth. I feel like I have twice the choice I had in mk2 when it comes to building pairings.
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Post by 36cygnar24guy36 on May 26, 2017 12:44:52 GMT
I played against Sevvy 2 with a unit of Flameguard and UA, with Sacred Ward those guys are as obnoxious as hell
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Post by streetpizza on May 26, 2017 13:05:21 GMT
Some other things that have had my opponents on tilt:
- Punch monks with Harbinger - Defender's warded idrians with tough - Sacred or defender's warded flamebringers - Occultation on flamebringers - A Malekus feat turn with half his army on fire
We have a ton of strong combos in faction. I feel like I've only scratched the surface of list building here.
As for the role of the faction? I see Protectorate as the defense faction. We play a defensive game on a level matched only by Skorne at the moment. That's not to say we don't also play offensively when we want to but if protectorate builds for defense on the approach it can be very potent.
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Post by dazzla on May 26, 2017 13:34:28 GMT
I like mk3 and believe that pp has improved game balance in a lot of ways. However I do not think that Menoth is in a good place. Some specific issues: Some models just seem overcosted relative to similar models in other factions. Happy to go into specifics if people like. Fire immunity is big among my play group. Lots of Menoth models become of limited value against fire immunity. I believe Menoth jack support is less efficient than, say, ret. choir is good but magic weapons and wraithbane are readily available to a number of factions making passage of limited value. The vassal is expensive relative to the ret archanist that is an efficient tool kit that provides better jack support. As a slow faction, Menoth is placed at a relative disadvantage in premeasuring.
I think Menoths recent tournament record shows there are issues with the faction. You can still have fun playing the game and pp is a great company that strives for balance. But right now I feel that Menoth is not well placed.
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spideredd
Junior Strategist
Summer Gamer
Posts: 588
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Post by spideredd on May 26, 2017 13:54:41 GMT
In my opinion, the only things that anyone should really avoid are Bastions and Deliverers.
And there are people that can get Deliverers to work, but I don't have the patience for that right now.
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Post by knapsen on May 26, 2017 13:56:23 GMT
In my opinion, the only things that anyone should really avoid are Bastions and Deliverers. And there are people that can get Deliverers to work, but I don't have the patience for that right now. Bastions with new BE sounds like a synergy.
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spideredd
Junior Strategist
Summer Gamer
Posts: 588
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Post by spideredd on May 26, 2017 14:01:14 GMT
In my opinion, the only things that anyone should really avoid are Bastions and Deliverers. And there are people that can get Deliverers to work, but I don't have the patience for that right now. Bastions with new BE sounds like a synergy. I'm going to try it, but I don't think it'll be as good in reality as it appears on paper. Bastions are just too slow and have too low a POW in my own experience and are far too easy to do enough damage to that it's not worth sharing it out.
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Post by paradox on May 26, 2017 14:22:06 GMT
Some models just seem overcosted relative to similar models in other factions. H Welcome to MKIII in general? My than ravagers and blood pack say hi. IMO, only deliverers are in this place right now.
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Post by gargs454 on May 26, 2017 14:54:00 GMT
In my opinion, the only things that anyone should really avoid are Bastions and Deliverers. And there are people that can get Deliverers to work, but I don't have the patience for that right now. Bastions with new BE sounds like a synergy. Problem with that theory is that this is the same synergy they have with Tristan 2 and that still didn't get them on the table. The problem is that all too often, even with sanguine bond, they still just die before you can get them healed. They need something to keep them alive. Whether its increasing the range of sanguine bond, adding hit boxes, or some other defensive tech/stat they still just take too long to deliver and tend to just be dead by the time you get a chance to heal them. As for Protectorate in general though. I don't think we're in a bad place specifically, but we're also not in a so-called great place. Rather, I think we are pretty much right on the curve. Our biggest strength lies in the fact that we have such a deep stable of usable casters and models which means that its hard to specifically tech against Protectorate. The flip side though is we really don't have anything so powerful that it forces other factions to tech against us. Being right on the curve means that we can do relatively well in tournaments, but makes it difficult to win major tournaments when there are other factions/lists out there that are notable above the curve because in order for Protectorate to win, it really is a case of everything must go absolutely right. I do understand the lack of identity issue though. The problem is that much of our identity is stuff they either wanted to give to other factions too (Jack Faction) or was something that became an unpleasant game experience for our opponents (Faction of No). I completely understand PP's thinking on the jack front. They had jacks to sell in other factions too and making more jacks necessary/playable is a great way to increase revenue for PP. You can complain about the corporate outlook, but at the end of the day PP is still a business and as a business they still need to make money. As for Faction of No, I'm a bit more salty about that, but again, I can also understand the frustration, especially for new players. When you are not really allowed to do much, it can be very boring. As an example (and a bit of an aside) I remember a Magic Deck that I built one time that focused on removing your opponent's cards from play. Well, I finally got it to work one time and literally, every card my opponent put out, got removed. Making matters worse though, in order to get the deck to work right, I had to sacrifice a lot of offense, so it ended up being a really long game because I was dealing one or two points of damage at a time. Even for me, it was incredibly boring. Now to be fair, I am pretty salty about the whole Fire thing. I get that there are flavorful reasons that it makes sense for other factions to get some bit of fire in their arsenal, but it does tend to hurt Protectorate more than I think PP realized -- especially as fire immunity becomes more prevalent. Fire immunity isn't a huge deal if only Protectorate can really bring a true fire threat (i.e. probably not worth building against it for most tournaments). But as more and more factions get it, then immunity becomes increasingly attractive. All that said though, lack of identity in and of itself, isn't the same as lack of competitiveness. Rather, what it does is make us long for what we used to do, and long to use models that use to be popular but now are no longer as strong, etc.
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Post by streetpizza on May 26, 2017 15:02:29 GMT
Some models just seem overcosted relative to similar models in other factions. H Welcome to MKIII in general? My than ravagers and blood pack say hi. IMO, only deliverers are in this place right now. War beasts in general say hi. On bastions I look at it this way. For 16pts you can have a reckoner. The reckoner is arm 19 with 34 boxes and has a potential for 4 pow 17 melee attacks. Bastions are 16pts at arm 16 with 20 boxes and a potential for 5 pow 11 blessed weapon master attacks that could potentially all be boosted on a charge. If the bastions were that much easier to deliver their damage potential really starts to overshadow comparable warjacks with a lot less resource investment. Infantry can become unbalanced very quickly if you start giving it the kind of buffs people are asking for in these forums. 8 boxes just puts them way out of wack with similarly priced options in faction. I do however see increasing the range of sanguine bond being a thing though. 5" shouldn't be out of the question as it would at least allow you to run them in block that can reach all members by all members. Remember to that something like defender's ward gets a lot more mileage on bastions as any excess damage done to them can be wasted as you just allow the member hit to die. At arm 18 they will draw fire from a lot of the higher quality damage sources. Double unit with a caster like Vindictus could have some play. How many points would people be willing to pay for them at 8 boxes with a 5" bond distance? 22pts+ cause that's where they'd have to land to be balanced with those stats.
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Post by paradox on May 26, 2017 15:35:39 GMT
Problem with that theory is that this is the same synergy they have with Tristan 2 and that still didn't get them on the table. The problem is that all too often, even with sanguine bond, they still just die before you can get them healed. They need something to keep them alive. Whether its increasing the range of sanguine bond, adding hit boxes, or some other defensive tech/stat they still just take too long to deliver and tend to just be dead by the time you get a chance to heal them. As for Protectorate in general though. I don't think we're in a bad place specifically, but we're also not in a so-called great place. Rather, I think we are pretty much right on the curve. Our biggest strength lies in the fact that we have such a deep stable of usable casters and models which means that its hard to specifically tech against Protectorate. The flip side though is we really don't have anything so powerful that it forces other factions to tech against us. Being right on the curve means that we can do relatively well in tournaments, but makes it difficult to win major tournaments when there are other factions/lists out there that are notable above the curve because in order for Protectorate to win, it really is a case of everything must go absolutely right. I do understand the lack of identity issue though. The problem is that much of our identity is stuff they either wanted to give to other factions too (Jack Faction) or was something that became an unpleasant game experience for our opponents (Faction of No). I completely understand PP's thinking on the jack front. They had jacks to sell in other factions too and making more jacks necessary/playable is a great way to increase revenue for PP. You can complain about the corporate outlook, but at the end of the day PP is still a business and as a business they still need to make money. As for Faction of No, I'm a bit more salty about that, but again, I can also understand the frustration, especially for new players. When you are not really allowed to do much, it can be very boring. As an example (and a bit of an aside) I remember a Magic Deck that I built one time that focused on removing your opponent's cards from play. Well, I finally got it to work one time and literally, every card my opponent put out, got removed. Making matters worse though, in order to get the deck to work right, I had to sacrifice a lot of offense, so it ended up being a really long game because I was dealing one or two points of damage at a time. Even for me, it was incredibly boring. Now to be fair, I am pretty salty about the whole Fire thing. I get that there are flavorful reasons that it makes sense for other factions to get some bit of fire in their arsenal, but it does tend to hurt Protectorate more than I think PP realized -- especially as fire immunity becomes more prevalent. Fire immunity isn't a huge deal if only Protectorate can really bring a true fire threat (i.e. probably not worth building against it for most tournaments). But as more and more factions get it, then immunity becomes increasingly attractive. All that said though, lack of identity in and of itself, isn't the same as lack of competitiveness. Rather, what it does is make us long for what we used to do, and long to use models that use to be popular but now are no longer as strong, etc. So I'm reading you, and I get what you're saying, but this devolves down to: -deliverers suck (I mean, yes. Since about 2004 really) -bastions kinda suck (to be honest, I have not hit the field with them yet in MKIII. I agree troops in general got more costly by comparison, so bastions cost more, and they lost ALOT. They probably warrant a buff). -Fire Immunity Bad (I get it. It makes for some rough matches, but we have a string fire theme and it's not the most terrible thing ever. Jut occasionally challenging) -Loss of flavor. (IMO this is a personal thing. Can;t help you here. Know when else I heard this? In the MKII field test. People quit the game over loss of faction flavor from MKI.) So maybe deliverers and bastions will make a CID. This is not unique to Menoth, lots of factions have some weak or outright garbage units. I honestly have not hit a game yet where fire immunity totally hosed me in MKIII. I did with Feora vs Trolls in MKII though, so it's hardly new. Normally it's one piece presenting a challenge (like Azrael). But that cuts both ways. The Vessel having a boostable bounce that is specifically non-attack damage has helped me hose an opponent's whole defensive plan (Unhallowed, Stealth, Vengeance) repeatedly in CID games. Honestly, being right on the curve is good. We certainly have pieces above it too. CID Vessel, EoT, monk, flamebringers. Hell, my dogganm 3pt monks make people cry bitter tears. It's friggin ridiculous what this 3pt solo does.I mean, seriously. Get ready for a Dynamic Update to make this guy 4pts. We're also packed with Blessed and Magic Weapons.In addition to Fire, which is way better than people would have you believe. On paper it doesn't do much to jacklines and casters with camp. But chip damage adds up. It breaks systems. It fries support. It weakens casters such that overboosting won't save them. Warlocks are normally far lower ARM, so transfer punish beasts with Fire through a backdoor. If you're salty, feeling we're too weak, or just lost flavor, I suggest you take a weekend or whatever and totally dump MKII from your brain. Come back and look at it like a new faction. Start fresh. Play things you'd never play, and when it doesn't work the first time give it at least 4 more games and try tweaking your play to make it work. Don't let bad dice skew your vision of possibility. Shit, I take a year off to play Circle and the whole community drowns in the oceans.
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Post by paradox on May 26, 2017 15:38:21 GMT
For 16pts you can have a reckoner. The reckoner is arm 19 with 34 boxes and has a potential for 4 pow 17 melee attacks. Bastions are 16pts at arm 16 with 20 boxes and a potential for 5 pow 11 blessed weapon master attacks that could potentially all be boosted on a charge. If the bastions were that much easier to deliver their damage potential really starts to overshadow comparable warjacks with a lot less resource investment. Infantry can become unbalanced very quickly if you start giving it the kind of buffs people are asking for in these forums. 8 boxes just puts them way out of wack with similarly priced options in faction. I do however see increasing the range of sanguine bond being a thing though. 5" shouldn't be out of the question as it would at least allow you to run them in block that can reach all members by all members. Remember to that something like defender's ward gets a lot more mileage on bastions as any excess damage done to them can be wasted as you just allow the member hit to die. At arm 18 they will draw fire from a lot of the higher quality damage sources. Double unit with a caster like Vindictus could have some play. How many points would people be willing to pay for them at 8 boxes with a 5" bond distance? 22pts+ cause that's where they'd have to land to be balanced with those stats. I think PP kinda equated like you did here, and that's why troops generally feel a tad too pricey. Reckoners also have still-amazing guns, which is 90% of why I take them still.
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Post by Demeritus on May 26, 2017 15:44:23 GMT
I fully acknowledge I am salty about how Protectorate has changed from mk2 to mk3. What do you feel is the role of the faction and where do you feel the faction shines the most? I really feel Menoth is back to the MKI feel. Admittedly, jacks are far better now than then, so you can run jackspam and not feel stupid. Plus, the cataloge is much deeper, and we have themes off the bat. So whats our place? What would you like it to be? I want to zoom in on that, I used to love running jack spam in mk2 and I ran it very successfully. I tried doing it in mk3, I tried doing combined arms and each time I had 0 enjoyment in running it. Where it got really bad for me was when I was playing a game with Sev2, proxying Revelator and I was handily beating my opponent and about halfway through the game I realized I had 0 fun playing the army or the faction anymore. I almost quit that match right there because I was having no fun. I haven't touched Protectorate since. I realize in a new edition things change, but take Retribution (my other faction/main faction now) it feels like a lot of the themes that defined them were overall reinforced in the new edition combined with adding new tools for diversity, whereas PoM had a lot of its themes heavily diluted and didn't get the same kind of treatment. I really would like PoM to get a Skorne like overhaul because I feel like it was handled in a similar style in that an edition based around the battlegroups they had to tone down the support heavily but when they did the Skorne revamp they restored a lot of the utility and flavour that was lost. So to answer your question, I want the jack theme back, I want the denial and synergy aspect back (even though in my post I focused exclusively on the jack aspect).
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Post by streetpizza on May 26, 2017 15:55:30 GMT
I really feel Menoth is back to the MKI feel. Admittedly, jacks are far better now than then, so you can run jackspam and not feel stupid. Plus, the cataloge is much deeper, and we have themes off the bat. So whats our place? What would you like it to be? I want to zoom in on that, I used to love running jack spam in mk2 and I ran it very successfully. I tried doing it in mk3, I tried doing combined arms and each time I had 0 enjoyment in running it. Where it got really bad for me was when I was playing a game with Sev2, proxying Revelator and I was handily beating my opponent and about halfway through the game I realized I had 0 fun playing the army or the faction anymore. I almost quit that match right there because I was having no fun. I haven't touched Protectorate since. I realize in a new edition things change, but take Retribution (my other faction/main faction now) it feels like a lot of the themes that defined them were overall reinforced in the new edition combined with adding new tools for diversity, whereas PoM had a lot of its themes heavily diluted and didn't get the same kind of treatment. I really would like PoM to get a Skorne like overhaul because I feel like it was handled in a similar style in that an edition based around the battlegroups they had to tone down the support heavily but when they did the Skorne revamp they restored a lot of the utility and flavour that was lost. So to answer your question, I want the jack theme back, I want the denial and synergy aspect back (even though in my post I focused exclusively on the jack aspect). This post sticks out for me because it echos what I read in almost every faction (Khador, Cygnar, and sometimes Ret excepted). Almost everybody feels like their faction isn't what it was from MKII and a simple faction switch reinvigorates them. That's not just a protectorate phenomenon and doesn't speak to the faction being under powered. Its more of a new edition malaise syndrome.
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