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Post by darkangeldentist on Mar 29, 2021 11:19:42 GMT
I've not been able to play for a year, my connection to the game is tenuous at best and these boards have been so quiet it's been like wandering around a mausoleum.
After the recent update to Retribution I took a look at the game again was just left feeling very forlorn about Cygnar as a faction with particular concern directed at our jacks. The Ret CiD certainly did a lot for their jacks and comparison makes me rather bitter. However I've been away from the game and my perspective on such things isn't the best so I'd like to hear other opinions about it.
Are Cygnar jacks overpriced? Feel free to mention examples of ones you think are worth their points as well but I'm struggling outside of the Centurion and our colossals.
Is it a problem that can be fixed by lowering their point costs, or do they need complete reworks in order to have a place? (Please give examples if you can.)
Cygnar also has now become a faction with one of the poorest, most limited set of options for jack support (certainly as far as the main factions). Particularly in regards to buffs, Cygnar has Arlan Strangewayes and that's about it I think?
To extend the range a bit, what is the view on our battle engine?
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sorokin
Junior Strategist
Posts: 775
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Post by sorokin on Mar 29, 2021 15:13:04 GMT
I think the lights are most definitely worth their points.
In case of the heavies i very much agree with you though. Bar Triumph most of them struggle and even the good one could do with a points drop or two.
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Post by Soul Samurai on Mar 29, 2021 16:23:56 GMT
Cygnar also has now become a faction with one of the poorest, most limited set of options for jack support (certainly as far as the main factions). Cygar has three four five Juniors, I think that's more than any other Warmachine faction (I think the other factions have two each at most)? I think the jack marshals have decent abilities too? I suppose you're talking about heavies, and I don't think anyone runs heavies on jack marshals - or even on most of the juniors? I dunno.
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Post by darkangeldentist on Mar 29, 2021 16:46:52 GMT
(This was written before Soul Samurai corrected his post.) Do juniors count as jack support? (Cygnar has 4-5 depending on how you count things. There's the Junior, Jakes, Caine0, the trencher journeyman and if you count mercs Gastonne Crosse.) However I'm uncertain about counting them as jack support unless they have specific spells that can help the warcaster run their jacks. (Although even from that criteria junior and Caine0 would count I guess.) Juniors run jacks in the same way real warcasters do, so I think of them as needing jack support rather than providing it, even if they have a spell that specifically buffs warjacks. My thought regarding jack support was that is was something to help the warcaster run their jacks. Be it via focus efficiency, damage buff or any other form of tangible benefit. Cygnar's juniors and jack marshals, although common, take jacks away from the warcaster and demand their own investment into getting real value for money out of them. This creates a high point cost investment which can bring nice rewards but independently from the warcaster and the main battlegroup. Success here depends even more on the innate quality and value of the jacks taken. Which brings us back to the question of the cost of Cygnar's jacks and their abilities.
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Post by michael on Mar 29, 2021 17:21:54 GMT
I really think there’s a bit of a framing challenge here. Journeyman casters, by definition, are jack support. The whole concept of “jack support” is answering the question “How can we make warjacks do more without further taxing the warcaster’s focus resources?”
With even a single Journeyman, you can have up to two fully-fueled warjacks without spending a single point of the caster’s focus.
Despite the fact that I usually only haunt the Khador forum, I do actually own and even occasionally play my modest Cygnar army!
True facts comparing the factions:
- Cygnar heavies have a higher average P+S than Khador jacks. It’s true! Bear in mind that I haven’t looked at the spreadsheet for a while now, but as far as I recall, Cygnar’s heavies have an average P+S of roughly 18, while Khador’s average P+S is something just below 17!
- Cygnar actually has more warjack damage buffs available in-faction than Khador. I really don’t remember the numbers here, but it was a non-trivial difference, something like 30% more than in Khador.
- Not that it needs to be said, but both the quantity and quality of Cygnar jack shooting is far superior.
So, I guess the question is: what are you trying to accomplish with Cygnar’s jacks that you feel like you’re having trouble accomplishing?
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Post by Soul Samurai on Mar 29, 2021 18:11:37 GMT
Do juniors count as jack support? Linguistically speaking, as Michael has explained I do think they fall under the general heading of jack support as they support your army's ability to bring more jacks or to effectively utilize specific jacks that your caster doesn't run well enough (e.g. bringing a speed buff for melee jacks if your warcaster doesn't). But obviously if what you're looking for is support for your battlegroup jacks then no, they generally don't qualify (although Arcane Shield...). Perhaps we need more specific terminology? As far as Cygnar heavy warjack power levels, I really don't have a sense for power level in general these days.
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Post by darkangeldentist on Mar 29, 2021 19:37:41 GMT
I really think there’s a bit of a framing challenge here. Journeyman casters, by definition, are jack support. The whole concept of “jack support” is answering the question “How can we make warjacks do more without further taxing the warcaster’s focus resources?” With even a single Journeyman, you can have up to two fully-fueled warjacks without spending a single point of the caster’s focus. Despite the fact that I usually only haunt the Khador forum, I do actually own and even occasionally play my modest Cygnar army! True facts comparing the factions: - Cygnar heavies have a higher average P+S than Khador jacks. It’s true! Bear in mind that I haven’t looked at the spreadsheet for a while now, but as far as I recall, Cygnar’s heavies have an average P+S of roughly 18, while Khador’s average P+S is something just below 17! - Cygnar actually has more warjack damage buffs available in-faction than Khador. I really don’t remember the numbers here, but it was a non-trivial difference, something like 30% more than in Khador. - Not that it needs to be said, but both the quantity and quality of Cygnar jack shooting is far superior. So, I guess the question is: what are you trying to accomplish with Cygnar’s jacks that you feel like you’re having trouble accomplishing? I appreciate the information, although I'd like to ask for some clarifications on some things. Are you using the mean or the modal average for your P+S? If you go by the mean then Cygnar is closer to 17. There are also things to consider such as the situational damage buffs that some weapons have built in such as Behemoth's armour piercing fists (which despite their efficacy would count as just P+S 12 for your average) or the marauder's bonus against huge bases. (A niche buff but a quite incredible one if it applies.) Another factor that I wasn't sure how to include is the difference between jacks with a single melee weapon vs those with two. There are also special attacks available to Khador jacks that change their basic damage output, such as the marauder's combo-smite or the devastator's Rain of death special attack which gives it a POW 18 attack. Are these factored into your averages? (No criticism here, just trying to understand your figures.) Multiple decent melee weapons can shift the average output up a bit because of the extra attack(s). For your numbers on damage buffs available to Cygnar, are you going by the total number of different options available or the number of buffs that can be put into a list? On a related note, do you count boundless charge as a damage buff? I accept that Cygnar has quite a lot of casters with a damage buff, some are tied to feats whereas others are spells but both are tied to the caster and mean that you can only get that buff if you take that caster. Whilst the range of buffs may be greater the applicability of them can be much more niche. There are also situational damage buffs like the fireflies ionisation which only count for electrical typed damage rather than melee. Would that have been included in your list? The quality of Cygnar shooting is certainly higher as a base standard but quantity I'm less sure on, particularly when you factor in cost. Coming back to your point on numbers, Khador jacks vary quite a bit dependant on the chassis but do cost less than Cygnar heavies on average. If you include character jacks then Khador jacks (this does include the berserker chassis jacks) average a little under 15pts in cost, Cygnar (just heavies) it's a little over 16pts. If we exclude character jacks then the averages go down a bit with Khador coming out at 13.1 to Cygnar's 14.75. The difference narrows if you exclude the berserker chassis jacks but they can perform similar work, especially against jacks like Cygnar's. Overall Khador jacks are cheaper and often more resilient to boot. In answer to your final question I usually fail to accomplish anything decisive with my Cygnar jacks besides being an expensive roadblock for a turn or so. (List and opponent dependent of course.) That is if I even manage to get them across the board. Cygnar jacks have 30 boxes and many can lose to a system after as little as 8 boxes of damage. The cheapest a Cygnar heavy can be is 12pts (for the ironclad or the hammersmith) whereas Khador starts at 8pts for the berserker or 11 for the marauder. If we stick with Khador as the imagined foe here then without buffs a charging ironclad is likely to deal 20 damage to any of the ARM 20, 34 box heavies that Khador is famous for. That leaves 14 boxes on the khador jack and spread out between 4 attacks from the ironclad. I've had a lot of games where that's failed to cripple anything but unless the cortex on the khador jack is crippled the ironclad is going to receive as much or more damage back to it's 30 boxes. Edit: I'll concede that I'm wrong to dismiss juniors as jack support.
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Post by michael on Mar 30, 2021 2:21:22 GMT
Lots to reply to, but I won’t be able to get into it much tonight. One thing to note: I last updated my spreadsheet for the jack comparison not long after MK III released. I left characters out, because once the theme forces dropped in early 2017 it got weird. Like, sure, we can point out that Behemoth’s Armor Piercing is a huge damage buff, but how do you account for the fact that he’s overpriced as all heck and only available in one theme force, you know? (Behemoth is not worth 75% of a colossal.) Er, anyway, point is: I can’t find my spreadsheet. I looked for it a few weeks ago because I was trying to find an expected damage calculator I’d put together to compare the Decimator and Juggernaut, but I just flat-out don’t remember where it is. 2017 was...an annoying and stressful year. For P+S, as far as I remember, I literally just counted the initials and their P+S. For Cygnar damage buffs, I think I counted both quantity and frequency. I’m pretty sure Cygnar has Khador beaten in both sheer numbers of buffs as well as number of casters with buffs. In Khador, many of the buffs are concentrated in a handful of casters (Butcher1 gets Fury and his feat, Kozlov — at least now — has both Fury and additional dice on charge damage, and so forth), so you end up with, what, something like 9 out of 15 casters who rely on the jack’s base stats all day every day. You do have to make allowances for stupid cases like Butcher2, who technically has Fury, but is honestly a detriment to the player using him. (Spoiler: having a caster who breaks the baseline functionality of a warcaster — you know, getting focus points — , without getting severely compensated elsewhere, means it’s a paperweight and not an actual viable candidate.) I don’t remember how I treated Boundless Charge. Most likely I counted only spells that gave a direct numerical modifier to the damage roll somehow, like +3 POW or -2 ARM or whatever. The explosion of mercenaries and Riot Quest and ARM-manipulating models really screws up the calculations now too. Back when I did this, like, Gorman’s Rust was still basically the only debuff available. At the moment, I don’t even want to try to consider parsing how many combinations of caster-independent 4+ damage point swings are readily available to basically any faction besides Khador. Thinking about it makes me upset. One last thing: when considering the Ironclad vs. Juggernaut matchup, you also really need to remember that the Juggernaut is going to be (should be!) missing a few chunks due to all the shooting it took on the way in, and the fact that Khador jacks really are more likely than not to be receiving the charge. At least, I’m almost always able to engineer that when I play Cygnar (or any of my other factions) against Khador. That’s all I’ve got for now. Sorry to basically say “I’m going on memory because I lost my spreadsheet”, but that’s what happened.
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Post by Soul Samurai on Mar 30, 2021 6:49:41 GMT
In answer to your final question I usually fail to accomplish anything decisive with my Cygnar jacks besides being an expensive roadblock for a turn or so. (List and opponent dependent of course.) That is if I even manage to get them across the board. Cygnar jacks have 30 boxes and many can lose to a system after as little as 8 boxes of damage. The cheapest a Cygnar heavy can be is 12pts (for the ironclad or the hammersmith) whereas Khador starts at 8pts for the berserker or 11 for the marauder. Berserkers are so weird when it comes to this sort of thing. Yeah, they're heavies that are priced like lights but are kind of worse than either? Like, you don't take them as your heavies, or as your lights. You take them if you have less than 11 WJP and don't want to spend any of your normal points on a warjack (or as a tax for bringing S0 for her Boundless Charge). The Marauder is great, but for one point more the Hammersmith can do the same job of slamming things around, but do it much better, dealing a WHOLE lot more damage. Of course the Marauder pulls ahead against huge bases, so is situationally better. That sounds fair to me?
One thing that's a little more prevalent in Cygnar jacks than Khador's at least is having a good gun and also a good melee weapon. Other than Behemoth (who is super expensive), we have P+S 17 weapons on our proper gunjacks (with Sustained Attack and Crit Amputate). Which are fine, but not quite "melee jack" territory. Meanwhile the Defender is P+S 17+1, so practically P+S 18 with the guaranteed ability to cripple a jack's cortex in melee during it's activation. That's terrifying, and better than a vast number of pure melee jacks. The Avenger is P+S 18 Stall; not only is that really good generally (better than a Spriggan or Nomad), it has also been a real problem for me as it has prevented me from even trying assassination runs as a single freestrike just shuts me down. Dynamo is P+S 17->21, so up to P+S 19 average in melee with average luck on attack dice (sure, it's not guaranteed, but it's still better than just P+S 17 and has the potential to be very powerful). If we stick with Khador as the imagined foe here then without buffs a charging ironclad is likely to deal 20 damage to any of the ARM 20, 34 box heavies that Khador is famous for. That leaves 14 boxes on the khador jack and spread out between 4 attacks from the ironclad. I've had a lot of games where that's failed to cripple anything but unless the cortex on the khador jack is crippled the ironclad is going to receive as much or more damage back to it's 30 boxes. If an unbuffed cheap heavy could reliably one-round a Khador jack - one of the toughest base jacks in the game - then that wouldn't be very balanced (as Cygnar heavies are faster and therefore have the advantage when it comes to getting the charge), but also it would mean that the game was too basic as there wouldn't be any need for buffs or combining attacks, meaning no need for synnergies and coordination between models. You're SUPPOSED to need to coordinate your firepower and/or layer on buffs in order to get the advantage. Cygnar has good shooting, Khador jacks are easy to hit; you soften them up before you go in. Or send in something else to help your heavy, like a weaponmaster or a cav model or something. And yeah, that's not easy and not a guaranteed win; it's not supposed to be.
I'm not trying to say that "Cygnar jacks are priced fine" or anything like that, I actually have no idea. I just wonder if you're looking at things from the wrong perspective? There's a real "grass is greener on the other side of the hill" thing that happens in all wargames, and I'm very guilty of it myself. For example, to me Cygnar's gunjacks look really cool, with powerful guns and also powerful melee weapons, often with good control effects (knockdown, stall, cortex damage). And even the cheap jacks feel like they have a lot of utility, with knockdown a knockdown AOE or the ability to push and slam a heavy a very long distance without sacrificing the ability to make their full complement of melee attacks (unlike our push/slam jacks). And then you have those lights. Perhaps that's Cygnar's warjack's strength: slightly pricey but very good gun jacks that punish you for staying back then punish you when you close in, along with affordable utility jacks? Meanwhile Khador's jack's strength is basic melee jacks with good stats that you can afford to be aggressive with because they are relatively cheap compared to the damage they can do?
After all, factions aren't supposed to be good at everything. Khador jack shooting being mediocre is the faction "working as intended".
Sorry, Khador fanboys coming to your forums to tell you that your stuff is fine is probably very annoying. I just feel like it's so easy these days to feel like our models should be better, what with constantly hearing about models getting crazy buffs in CID, that it's easy to get dissatisfied with your own army. I just think it's better to accept that some of our models are a little behind the curve and some are a little in front of it, then move on and get back to enjoying the game, than to sit around dreaming about how our models could be better. It's a bit of a rat race, you know?
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Post by droopingpuppy on Mar 30, 2021 13:06:16 GMT
Cygnar warjacks are not so expensive at all. They are just fragile - technically, without Journeyman Warcaster. And you will bring one if you are not prevented to do.
I think that most lights are fine as it does. Hunter and Charger are our formidable ranged assets that not much factions can mimic(if they could, of course). Lancer is expensive a bit but so do many other Arc Node jacks of the other factions. The only bad one other than it are Sentinel and Grenadier, but even these two are, situationally usefu. Sentinel is bad because of its unreliable d3 attacks, not because of its cheap cost and Shield Guard. Grenadier needs annoying setups and its short range hurts, but otherwise it is not THAT bad jack.
The problem is heavy, but that's not because these are expensive. All of them, save for poor Cyclone, and perhaps also Reliant, able to does what it should do. Yes Stormclad is expensive as hell, but you know P+S 19 combined with SPD 5 and ARM 22 without any caster buff means 17+4 points is not so expensive for what it could. Even for Cyclone and Reliant, they are bad because their performance is lackluster, not because they are simply expensive. Simple discount of few points won't save them.
What Cygnar heavy warjack needs is an overhaul that does not needs Journeyman Warcaster to survive, that is unlikely to be happened for it is a kind of fundamental structure of Cygnar. Our heavies are designed to be squish, and needs Arcane Shield from Journeyman Warcaster to survive. That's not that bad, actually, since while unbuffed Cygnar warjacks are pitiful defender, with Arcane Shield it easily turns to cause the ARM skew problem. And, for your opponents, what you didn't is not so important than what you actually can and did.
Journeyman Warcaster is our Choir, our Beast Handlers, and our Krielstone Bearer. And you know, Arcane Shield targets one model/unit, and warjacks are not the unit. It is nothing wrong that the whole faction just choose to not bring the heavies and simply put a colossal, even on the era of allocate one free focus point for each warjack. If you can't put more than two Arcane Shield, surely you will need a most huge badass.
Even for some odd theme that does not allowed to use a Journeyman Warcaster(which is normally sucks, except for one), it means your choice is limited to the warcasters with the buff to protect your colossal, rather than go something else.
Also when you want to spam the jacks, you can spam Hunters and Chargers instead. Seriously, if you can spam either Hunter of Ironclad, then what is your pick?
An another reason is we prefer ranged games, due to our general 'elite'istic expensive units and fragility for points. In this doctrin, there is few place that seriously consider a heavy spam list, which is usually using cheap melee heavies. Let's be honest. Using more than two heavy or heavier warjacks is already a waste of time on us. Or strictly say, using heavies on the most times(there are some exceptions, such as using Triumph with Brisbane, though).
So, honestly, why we are bothered to use more than one heavy, or at least one heavy? It's not the matter of the point cost. It's the matter of the faction design. I wasn't surprised that most tournament Cygnar lists has only one warjack - either Stormwall or Hurricane - on the warcaster. Even now, even on the new edition that doesn't suffered by focus inefficiency too heavily. Lights gains huge bonus for the Power Up. Colossals are dominate the Cygnar's entry since the day of the release of Warmachine: Colossals. But heavy is simply eliminated because you need to put the Arcane Shield on the colossal. Over the nine years, it hasn't changed at all.
A fun fact - if you want a REAL Hunter spam, Infernal does it far better in Hearts of Darkness, than on Cygnar. Normally Sloan1 does not have enough focus to fuel all the second shot of the Hunters, but on Hearts of Darkness all the Hunters can enjoy Accumulator[Soulless].
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Post by droopingpuppy on Mar 30, 2021 13:23:57 GMT
For battle engine, I can say exactly same thing with our heavies - plain ARM 19 to survive without Arcane Shield is nothing but kidding. Not to mention that its unreliable Build Up Power hurts. If you spend two more points and you can get a pair of Hunters, sir. They don't use up a lots of space on your formation and blocks your own line of sight as well.
What is ironic is, Storm Strider is an usable model, at least. Its ranged firepower surpass Defender, provided the strider rolls good on the Build Up Power. Also it works well with Firefly too, although it means you needs an additional spend for the support.
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Post by Soul Samurai on Mar 30, 2021 15:15:06 GMT
plain ARM 19 to survive without Arcane Shield is nothing but kidding I'm curious: are your ARM 19 jacks getting wiped out in melee or at range? At the start of MkIII I felt that PP had toned down ranged armour cracking so that taking out an ARM 18+ heavy at range was less viable (so Cygnar ranged heavies shouldn't have been too reliant on defensive buffs). But I have no idea these days; I've completely fallen behind. If ARM 18+ heavies are easily being taken down at long range, then that sounds like a problem.
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Post by droopingpuppy on Mar 30, 2021 16:27:02 GMT
Ranged, I mean. If your list can't one-rounded an ARM 20 warjack in melee, you are in trouble to deal with most functional lists, and surely such tools can dismantle an ARM 18~19 jack quite easier than that. After all, melee have far higher damage output than ranged, consider their heavier opportunity cost.
Reckoner chassis is a good example to compare the survivability against ranged attacks. - it is also SPD 5, and it has ARM 19. Also it can benefit from Hymn of Passage to ignore non-Magical ranged attacks. While Centurion chassis only have SPD 4, ARM 19 and it has to endure all the ranged attacks by its own(apart Centurion itself - net ARM of 21 makes Centurion one of the few Cygnar heavy that does not needs much to survive against ranged attack). SPD 4 of Centurion chassis makes them difficult to reach to the target as well. Even if you change Reckoner to SPD 4 Crusader, Safe Passage still kicks in. And while Hymn of Passage can be bestow on many Protectorate warjacks, we have only one instance of Arcane Shield aside your caster pick.
Also, it is not that difficult to take some ARM 20 warjacks in ranged as well. Around six shots of Hunters is enough to silence an ARM 20 heavy, and there are more solutions. Around two Dire Troll Bombers are able to cripple even the Arcane Shield'ed Stormclad by one turn(although two Bombers costs dearly for Trollbloods). To Khador, it may means only lose a Juggernaut. But to Cygnar, losing a Stormclad is not so light as losing a Juggernaut. Sure Stormclad is generally better than Juggernaut in melee, due to its SPD 5, Electro-Leap to clear out annoying weak models, and RNG 2 melee weapon, but a Juggernaut costs 13 points while Stormclad costs 17. For Ironclad, it is no secret that usually it charges first but got retaliated and downed first by Juggernaut. And it's yet to include Khador's Berserker scrap shield.
Well we do have some cheap melee heavies as the other factions - namely Ironclad and Hammersmith. But I don't think that they are expected to run like the other faction's jack heavy list. ARM 18 is so easy to punch even in ranged. So do SPD 4 and ARM 19 without any defense tech such as Hymn of Passage - while it is slightly durable, but it is still somewhat lacking and low SPD allows your enemy more time to shoot.
That's the difference with the other factions. The other factions gains either good raw ARM, attack denial, ARM buff aura, and we have target model/unit spell. Unlike the others, we can't spread out it, and it means we have to use one big durable one to maximize its effect. The other factions are also choose to go big giants, but for us, I don't think that we have an option.
Don't get me wrong. I don't think that we are in disadvantage and we do have our advantage over the others - after all an ARM 22 colossal free from the caster choice is a disaster for someone didn't prepared for it. But our mechanism feels that we are unfit to spam heavies and only stick one of them which must be followed by a defensive buff. And if you have limited numbers of models, and only the numbers, and you are always choose to buff the biggest one first.
I don't think that need to stick with defensive buff in order to run the jack seems extreme. Protectorate plates their warjacks by Hymn of Passage. Trollbloods protects their men by Protective Aura. And for Cygnar, ours is just called 'Arcane Shield.' That's all. It's how to live with ARM 18 warjacks.
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Post by michael on Mar 30, 2021 16:47:46 GMT
(As a random aside, as far as I remember, the false dichotomy of “one round a Khador jack” originated with Circle Orboros players way back on the old forums. It morphed from its origins of something like “Hey a buffed Ghetorix can do this!” to “well our heavies are trash if they can’t all one-round a Khador heavy without any support, buff our stuff” during the 2018 Circle CID and beyond.
Seeing people lament “well my X can’t one-round a Khador heavy, it sucks” is annoying. Unsupported models aren’t supposed to one-round a Khador jack. That is the sole gimmick of Khador warjacks! Like, folks, you know the Khador player wants to play the game too, right?)
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Post by droopingpuppy on Mar 30, 2021 17:03:46 GMT
(As a random aside, as far as I remember, the false dichotomy of “one round a Khador jack” originated with Circle Orboros players way back on the old forums. It morphed from its origins of something like “Hey a buffed Ghetorix can do this!” to “well our heavies are trash if they can’t all one-round a Khador heavy without any support, buff our stuff” during the 2018 Circle CID and beyond. Seeing people lament “well my X can’t one-round a Khador heavy, it sucks” is annoying. Unsupported models aren’t supposed to one-round a Khador jack. That is the sole gimmick of Khador warjacks! Like, folks, you know the Khador player wants to play the game too, right?) Well, can remove a Juggernaut must be viewed as list level, NOT model level. Generally, even a Crusader with Hymn of Battle can't one-round a heavy by one turn. Usually two heavies are required to silence a heavy in melee. It is usually true for against same chassis.
You know, every single model in the game can be killed. How much you need in order to do so is the only problem. ARM 20 can be standard not because we hate Khador too. ARM 20 is rather common, and is hard but not hard enough to rely on damage buff to crack. Crack something like ARM 22(such as Cygnar Colossal with Arcane Shield) requires you to bring some sort of damage buff or you are surely in a hard time, but most factions have heavy with P+S 18 or more melee weapon, that is enough to crack ARM 20. Also able to crack ARM 20 means you can crack ARM 19 or less much easier, and ARM above 20 is not so common or usually it is formed by put the defensive buffs exclusive for some casters as well.
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