matsif
BattleBox Champ
Posts: 54
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Post by matsif on Dec 14, 2018 13:12:21 GMT
How does he have to spend focus to land mortality exactly? You either staple Sylys to him, and why not since with a 14 inch gun and repo 5 you are probably never going to need anything else, or you just Witchmark "the thing" and never have to worry about hitting it anyways. I don't see how he's not effectively removing heavies every turn by himself and two quality guns. Leaving you all the rest of your points for whatever. Sylys and G2 run themselves, Arcanists take care of warjacks, Profit? Something, and I'm not sure where or what it is exactly, in this iteration makes him too good. But, as that appears to be the entire point of CID warlocks/warcasters I don't know that it is a "problem" per se'. where are you getting 2 quality guns in your list outside of your own heavies, or at least a harpy? maybe a rifle crew, maybe a CRA from strike force (into a jack), maybe a battle engine, that's about it. is having to dedicate your caster and 2 of those things to kill a heavy not already a lot of turn investment? is using a cheap beater heavy (which ret doesn't really have btw, not compared to the slayer or crusader or whatever) for trading up into heavies in melee in a single activation fine, but using your caster and 2 banshee shots (18 point heavies, so 36 points of your list instead of a single 10 point crusader) not fine? how about your caster+32-34 points of battle engines? we can go down the line. maybe he is too powerful right now, maybe he isn't. I haven't tested this version yet and I don't have an opinion. but at least on paper he fits the intended "mobile sniper" role a lot better now, something his old iterations absolutely were not accomplishing. with only aiming for AP and GW on the gun, he was absolutely incentivized to sit in a spot behind a screen and chunk a heavy every turn, and the prowl version was incentivized to go sit in a forest since ret has 0 way to generate clouds outside of casters. and even if he takes some nerfs after testing, I'd rather have this version of him (that accomplishes his stated purpose) than the last 2 versions, which pretty objectively were not accomplishing his purpose.
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germanicus
Junior Strategist
No jokes round ear...
Posts: 358
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Post by germanicus on Dec 14, 2018 13:34:05 GMT
How does he have to spend focus to land mortality exactly? You either staple Sylys to him, and why not since with a 14 inch gun and repo 5 you are probably never going to need anything else, or you just Witchmark "the thing" and never have to worry about hitting it anyways. I don't see how he's not effectively removing heavies every turn by himself and two quality guns. Leaving you all the rest of your points for whatever. Sylys and G2 run themselves, Arcanists take care of warjacks, Profit? Mis-type... meant 'cast', rather than 'land', in the context of paying for the spell (was discussing Witch Mark vs Blood Boon with my local group earlier).
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Post by Dirhavel on Dec 17, 2018 11:54:38 GMT
Well I tried the newest version twice over the week-end and he certainly doesn't seem overpowered to me. He is definitely strong with a good amount of options every turn, but all of his abilities have a lot of counterplay so it’s not as bad as it can look on paper.
For exemple the feat can be played around by a number of defensive feats like Kolgrimma, Rask, Zerkova1, etc.; your opponent can use terrain to get concealment, cover or elevation or even to block LOS entirely; since it’s unboosted shots anything def 13 and up has an innate 50-50 chance to be missed and can only be shot once. Even with the +2” the feat is only 14” wide and because Garryth often wants to aim the feat area is kind of telegraphed a turn in advance so you can play around it. Also guns can mostly still do work just as if there was no feat. It’s the kind of feat that can be intimidating the first time you play against it, but after a game or two your opponents will get used to it and figure how to really play around it.
Mortality also has it’s share of counterpale. First off it’s limited by all the anti-spell tech out there like Arcane Vortex, Spell Ward, etc. You also can’t really use witch mark to put it on light infantry, and if you do need witch mark for a bigger target it’s fairly easy to shield guard the AP shot, so you force Garryth to use Spitfire and spend a lot more resources than he wants to or bring an arc node which into his worker model points and still requires a hit roll which have been known to fail once in a while. Even just his regular gunshots suffer the same problem with shield guards whether you want to use witch mark or not.
Lastly I think this caster walks the fine line of wanting to be forward to be in a good aiming position and apply pressure on the opponent with his shots and the feat, but he will often be camping very little so you have to carefully balance offense vs defense. As they say distance is the best defensive stat and it feels like if you want to contribute with him you will get him killed more often than you’d like just because of his intended playstyle puts him danger.
All of this is to say this is a good caster as written right now, but most of his abilities have caveats and counters common in today’s meta so I’m not at all worried about him breaking the game. If anything I think his feat could get a bit of help but the rest of his kit is fine.
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isotope
Junior Strategist
Posts: 634
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New epic?
Dec 17, 2018 21:41:41 GMT
via mobile
Post by isotope on Dec 17, 2018 21:41:41 GMT
While i haven't had time to test him, if he was released as is id buy him but doubt he'd replace either list in my pairing.
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