Cyris wrote:Torpid wrote:It is why the RA/LA wargears were left unchanged - they do need chagne but I wasn't able to test them properly so left them, better to do no bad and no good, than to risk doing bad for only a little good, right?
Yeah, nids changes read like they were written by someone who wishes nids never existed, and has never played them.
I'm not sure where you get that from given that the nid changes were mostly proposed by me and Big Mathis who were arguably the best nid players around - at least back then in January when the change proposals were being drafted.
I understand that there is a real internal balance issue with regards to the HT vs RA/LA and a lot of that is the design flaw of the LA being super cheesy with flesh hook+infiltration (which has subsequently got nerfed to the ground hard) and then the RA lacking synapse so the HT is infinitely better. Increasing tunnel capacity is just one way to make the RA a tad more viable, giving more returns for the amount of micro investment required. Myself, I would encourage the community to be very open to changes to the wargear of the RA and the LA as I do not believe at the moment they are well balanced. Yet, I don't have the play-time in the current meta to strongly suggest any changes on it.
Another concern about tyranids is the lack of the focused warp blast snare. Myself, I love this. Yes, nids struggle against transports? And so what! They destroy every other race in T1, utterly utterly destroy and the tyrant guard's pressure, if used appropriately, should more than compensate for the pain that you suffer as a nid at the hands of transports. They are not impossible to defeat, although they do hit the LA the hardest, yet as can be seen in this replay, the LA can still more than deal with them:
https://www.dawnofwar.info/esl/match/23152237I think this has resulted in an epic meta for nids wherein you HAVE to push your pressure really hard in T1 in order to get enough of a snowballable advantage to storm through T2 and crush your opponent before they get the option to go T3 and get any tanks. I love it. It's fast paced and fun and you can't just a-move ranged blobs successfully anymore, because of how weak the zoans are as AV. You need to actually micro and have skill to play nids! This is a novel thing we've never had before the change was made. I personally think it is amazing. (spore mine usage withstanding, they still are a bullshit unit with too high reward for no risk)
The ravener change is the obvious next step. They were too strong before due to how early they came out. The devourer upgrade was a no-brainer but to leave them without devourers in t1 would make them useless there, like retail. Therefore, the changes. And the better melee potential they now have in T2 means you can use them really well, microing their stance swapping in T1 then swap to full on melee and overwhelm your foe in T2 with melee spam + TGs so you get the eco advantage or just win on VPs before the game can get to T3. And you swamp their transports in numbers to make them obselete.
The venom cannon carnifex does need some looking at though, it's very meh atm and nearly always overshadowed by the TB/BS fex.
Cyris wrote:Torpid wrote:My proposal changes for heretics were as follows:
Heretics -
Experience yield reduced from 50 to 45.
Aspiring champion upkeep cost reduced from 12.5 to 8.
Hp increased from 75 to 80 per model.
Cost increased from 190 to 210.
This reads like nerfing melee tics even further :/ To follow your theme but focus on helping out melee more, I'd propose something like:
Heretics -
Experience yield reduced from 50 to 45.
Aspiring champion cost increased from 90/25 to 100/25
Aspiring champion health bonus increased from 20% to 25%
Aspiring champion population decreased from 5 to 4
Aspiring champion upkeep cost reduced from 12.5 to 10.2
Also worth considering would be a small reduction in the GL tics autogun damage.
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I don't really see how? A 20 req increase to initial cost is very minor and they would get that extra hp so bleed less. The difference between mine and your proposals essentially is that you want the initial tic squad to perform as they do now, a very cheap but very frail unit. I want the initial tic squad to be slightly more expensive but perform quite a bit better in combat - my changes, despite how deceptive the percentages may seem - do significantly buff the default tic squad while also buffing the AC variant but less so than yours precisely because the initial variant is stronger. I don't see much of a discrepancy between our changes either way. I think they'd do mostly the same thing.