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Post by steeltitan on Oct 4, 2020 11:58:47 GMT
Should Khador jacks get an ARM increase to keep up with the POW creep and their faction identity?
If so, what do you think is the right adjustment?
If not, why do you think that a bump in ARM is not justified considering how much the POW level has increase since MK2 (I dont know about MK1)? Base POW on both melee and ranged weapons has increased IMO (POW14 is the new black) as have the number of available STR buffs.
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germanicus
Junior Strategist
No jokes round ear...
Posts: 358
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Post by germanicus on Oct 4, 2020 15:06:28 GMT
No, I don't think Khador jacks should get an ARM buff, not across the board at least. Other factions' heavies haven't changed in basic ARM values by that much hovering around the 17-19 mark for virtually all concerned. For the Destroyer chassis, DEF 10 ARM 20 *was* fine, along with 34 boxes (the 'was' I'll get to in a sec). The Berserker chassis should really get its lost boxes back (27 is bloody ridiculous) and could go to ARM 19 and not break anything. Same with the Spriggan going to 10/20 (+S). The main issue for Khador jacks is that in the average joe list, they're always getting hit first before they get to do anything (SPD 4, even though buffs exist, long threat ranges are all the rage) with souped up pieces and the general philosophy is that one-rounding heavies is a must.
IMO opponents need to work again to bring down Khador jacks, but I don't believe increasing their ARM basic is the right way to do it. Having solo- & caster-based defensive tech (whether it's ARM buff spells, distant repairing effects etc.) is a better solution.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2020 17:36:15 GMT
Apparently PP feels that needing maybe one more hit to kill on an average dice is good enough to represent robust Khador engineering on the tabletop.
We are possibly the toughest base statlines for jacks in the game (which isn't saying much as pretty much everything gets one-rounded now), so it's probably best to work with wot we got. I've found that if one wants to play jacks, quantity is a quality in itself.
Wanna play jacks? Lots of Berserkers and Marauders. Don't take anything else unless it has a very specific role in your plan. Worry less about winning and just go full silly, rocketing jacks into your opponent's face and see how many ye can blow up.
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Post by hocestbellum on Oct 4, 2020 18:26:31 GMT
I'd love to see the Spriggan become ARM20, and Behemoth regain ARM21, but I don't think across-the-board buffs are needed.
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Post by Soul Samurai on Oct 4, 2020 19:37:39 GMT
I'd love to see the Spriggan become ARM20, and Behemoth regain ARM21, but I don't think across-the-board buffs are needed. I've been saying the Spriggan should be base ARM 20 (with a downgrade to a buckler if need be) for years. And Behemoth is SO expensive (and his name is BEHEMOTH ferMorrow'ssake), an additional pip of ARM hardly sounds unreasonable. And hey, maybe give him one of those "immovable" rules or whatever. Dunno about an across-the-board buff, I don't have a good enough sense of the game to have an opinion on that. Although judging by how some people reacted when PP was testing the cost increase for the Juggernaut, there's a lot of non-Khador players who would scream bloody murder about the end of the world as we know it if Khador got a buff like that; some people seem to think that reliably one-rounding a Khador heavy should be the bare minimum acceptable performance for an unbuffed cheap melee heavy of their faction of choice. OK, I'm exaggerating, but you know what I mean.
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Post by Soul Samurai on Oct 4, 2020 19:40:51 GMT
Apparently PP feels that needing maybe one more hit to kill on an average dice is good enough to represent robust Khador engineering on the tabletop. I guess where ARM 20 shines is against being nickle-and-dimed to death by low-POW shooting?
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Post by steeltitan on Oct 4, 2020 20:40:41 GMT
Thats exactly my problem with it. ARM20 was awesome when most shooting was POW10...pff, I remember reading the spell venom and thinking POW8 was a tad low.
Now every model that comes out has POW14. (Why does Yuri have a POW14 bow?! Since when is a bow stronger than a Destroyer cannon which is the size of Yuri?) Everyone runs Hermit. Troll CID was full of POW buffs (spells, animi, Bumbles) Ok, I exaggerate but you catch my drift...
...I felt Khador was starting to claw its way back a little when Sorscha0 was released...the extra threat helped push the alpha or at least the piece trade in our favour here and there. Since then, threat ranges has increases a lot so that benefit hasnt sustained itself much.
Like was said before, the bench mark is to one round a Khador heavy...which happens trivially easy these days. ARM below 23ish has lost much of its value vs competitive lists so what do Khador jacks do for their points besides getting auto-hit?
I should really stop playing against Flames, it's ruining my enjoyment for the game.
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Post by michael on Oct 4, 2020 20:54:01 GMT
The fact that “one-round a Khador heavy” has become the de facto benchmark since (roughly) CID began in 2017 is unfortunate.
Oh well. What are you going to do?
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Post by Havock on Oct 4, 2020 21:30:56 GMT
One round two Khador heavies is the standard since colossals became a thing.
It's also the nature of the game; barring exceptions -which usually do so by stacking rather than innate abilities- offense > defense by game design.
Which is fine, but whether you have an Ironclad or a Juggernaut, the thing is probably dead after a bunch of Dawnguard/Banes/Battle-Lusted Pikemen/another souped-up-heavy goes in. Repairing only goes so far because if they wreck your cortex that's basically it for your retalliation.
It;s less our stats than our absolutely atrocious independent warjack support. Everyone was hot for the Forge Seer but it's honestly trash; once again we are paying for stuff (it has better survivability and melee punch than practically all other focus batteries, woohoo!) you don't use. And we don't get multiples of them for a requisition point, and it only goes in two themes, one of which does nothing else for jacks.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 5, 2020 0:11:35 GMT
One round two Khador heavies is the standard since colossals became a thing. Despite our sizeable warjack stable, we have a lot of redundancy and far less utility compared to other factions; all our jacks are just beatsticks at the end of the day. I tried to prove that the faction has depth by building a highly efficient, power attack-centric jack-heavy assassination list in mk 2 and how was I rewarded? By getting every single model in my list nerfed until the list could no longer function as I intended in mk 3. It's clear that they don't want us to be the tough, durable faction, but the doggedly determined, low-tech doodspam faction. I think the solution is to just go cheap. Hear me out; in my experience of gaming weekly in mk 3, the Juggernaut chassis takes about 3 whacks by a buffed heavy to kill on average dice, 2 if your opponent's damage rolls spike. The Devastator takes 4/3 respectively and if it opens, it has the same survival odds as the Juggernaut. The Berserker takes about 2 to kill, spike or no. So, knowing that your opponent will always need a minimum of 2 hits per jack to kill it, try to make sure that there's too many jacks for him to kill. The majority of our stable is actually quite middling in terms of P+S; you'll notice that by and large, we're P+S 16 on our jacks. Berserkers are P+S 16 and if you're lucky, deals an additional POW 14 explosion or gums up your opponent's line. They are also 8 points and thus, cheap and expendable. Go in, wail on the target, explode or get in the way. Send in the next one.
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Post by Soul Samurai on Oct 5, 2020 6:41:59 GMT
Well this topic got real depressing.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 5, 2020 7:20:34 GMT
Well this topic got real depressing. Ye kidding? Berserkers are FUN! Look at it this way; we like jacks. We joined this faction to play jacks. Now that they're done nerfing and re-buffing the Berserker chassis we can run MORE jacks! Kitbash EVERYTHING into Berserkers and Ragers!
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Post by P'tit Nico on Oct 5, 2020 8:04:14 GMT
Thats exactly my problem with it. ARM20 was awesome when most shooting was POW10... Which was... never? Everyone was hot for the Forge Seer but it's honestly trash; once again we are paying for stuff (it has better survivability and melee punch than practically all other focus batteries, woohoo!) you don't use. And we don't get multiples of them for a requisition point, and it only goes in two themes, one of which does nothing else for jacks. It goes in 3 themes actually: Jaws, AK and Wolves. but it's still trash. @squee stop trying to make Berserkers happen. They have victim stats, they only have MAT 6 so they'll miss way more often that other better jacks, and they don't hit hard. Also, Unstable is bad. If you want to run lots of jacks, take Marauders and Juggernauts.
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Post by Havock on Oct 5, 2020 8:27:28 GMT
I actually took up Khador because Iron Fangs.
Well, those are in an even worse place than our 'jacks now.
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Post by hocestbellum on Oct 5, 2020 8:56:32 GMT
It's not that Khador jacks have gotten any worse (archaic chassis notwithstanding) but that since the introduction of colossals there has been a need for the capability to absolutely bust something significantly more durable than a Khador jack. If memory serves there's only one colossal with ARM lower than 19? Even Cryx, the faction of fragility, has ARM19.
On top of that because of their nature they're great for single-target buffs. ARM buffs send them through the roof.
So it's not that Khador jacks are bad in and of themselves, it's that when you have to tool up for a model that is equivalent to two ARM-boosted Khador jacks strapped together on steroids, killing one unbuffed heavy is pretty trivial.
(Disclaimer; I've pretty much thought that colossals were bad for the game since their release, so I'm highly biased on this point!)
It's part of why I'm super keen to play more BrawlMachine when global circumstances allow. No huge bases, and in a game of limited resources those extra hits needed to take down a Khador heavy could be more meaningful.
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