Eh, most of the serious complaints I've heard (once you get past all the initial whining and have an honest conversation about it) have been pretty focused on "that army can field too many threats" which points changes actually would do something about. We had teleport and summoning in the last book but no one cared cause our army did no damage. But yeah, people will complain about everything if you give give the opportunity to I'm not too worried about seraphon getting crushed with nerfs. Kroak might, but they never balance him well. Not very many armies recently have been nerfed out of existence. Tzeentch got some pretty heavy handed point and battalion changes and they are still a top 3 army. Skaven got across the board point increases and was still a top tier army until tzeentch came out. Actually most of the good armies have gotten nerfed at some point or another and still stayed relatively good. The only armies they really hammer are ones with mechanics that just dont work. Slaanesh, old KO, sylvaneth.
Pretty much this. Sometimes a points adjustment works, in the case of Salamanders, but other times, it won't fix a bad warscroll (ripperdactyls). I think GW is reluctant to modify warscrolls because they sell the physical cards, but it would go a long way in terms of balancing if they would tweak some of the values. For example, giving the jaws attacks on rippers -1 rend would be a really nifty change to making them a better unit again.
lol what, most of these would completly break the respective unit. Plus most of these aren't exactly problematic or even special. Like why would you want skinks to have 12" blowpipes without horde bonus? What'd be the point of skinks then? Are there people actually arguing that these things need to be done? Yes and no. In the most absolute sense, yes making stuff more expensive will mean less threats in a list. But, the army relies on having multiple threats. Because we are 1) quite squishy with many moving parts so removing a threat or two (or at least hamstringing it) isn't super difficult. 2) Most of our threats individually aren't super impressive. We often need multiple threats to do what other armies do with 1 super powered unit. And 3) Everything we have that isn't considered a "high threat" is generally kind of bad, so if our main threats get removed we quickly don't have anything left. We have very few secondary units that can clean up or try to hold the line after our big threats have been destroyed. So simply taking out a threat or two by changing the point values is liable to make the army collapse in on itself as we kind of need the multiple threats by design. And if we don't have multiple threats we very quickly run into issues due to our inherent weaknesses. So meh, pure point changes might make those people happy as we can no longer field as much. But it'd also be very liable to send us back to the bottom as it'd screw over the core design of the army if we can't field enough threats to make up for those 3 weaknesses.
This concern over us going from top of the pack to a useless army over a few small point increases is way overblown. I've seen it pop up a few times on this forum and it's just not an opinion that's grounded in any kind of evidence. I'd be interested to know what experience people are having that indicates to them they are winning games because skinks are 60 points instead of 70 or 80. This is a typical fangs list: Allegiance: Seraphon - Constellation: Fangs of Sotek Leaders Lord Kroak (320) - General - Spell: Stellar Tempest Saurus Astrolith Bearer (140) - Artefact: Serpent God Dagger Skink Priest (70) Skink Starpriest (120) - Spell: Hand of Glory Battleline 40 x Skinks (240) - Boltspitters Celestite Daggers & Star Bucklers 40 x Skinks (240) - Boltspitters Celestite Daggers & Star Bucklers 5 x Saurus Guard (100) Units 3 x Salamander Hunting Pack (330) 3 x Salamander Hunting Pack (330) Endless Spells / Terrain / CPs Balewind Vortex (40) Extra Command Point (50) Total: 1980 / 2000 Wounds: 147 Let's say skinks go up to 80, priests go up to 90 and kroak goes to 400. Probably totally realistic changes. This army would need to drop a total of 260 points. Aka 2 salamanders and 10 skinks if you wanted to keep this exact same list. You could probably finagle some things around and do something even more optimized if you thought about it a bit. This army is still disgustingly good without 2 salamanders and 10 skinks. It is not winning because it has 2 extra salamanders and 10 skinks. All that point change does is slightly alleviate the overwhelming number of threats a seraphon army can field. We are a squishy army, but its not even a weakness given how we can build lists. This obviously doesn't do anything to make bad units better, but if Saurus were 80/290 instead of 90/320 you'd probably see them more too.
Haha yeah. I have heard all of those complaints from streamers on Twitch, people covering TTS events, youtubers, forum peoples. These are all things people complain about. Mostly its salt I think. People just dont want us to be good at all.
Definitely, I also think people are just bad at subtlety. They know seraphon are too strong, but its hard to understand how much is too much when it comes to the push and pull of balance. Seraphon is truly an army where the whole feels much greater than the sum of its parts, so I think it's harder to understand how small changes here and there will have a more drastic impact on how the army starts to come together, alleviating their issues.
Speaking of balance. Give trog a CA Give Eternity Warden a new CA that isn't just a worse version of the Old Blood CA Give Rippers more damage. Edit: Whether through -1 rend, maybe an extra jaw attack as well. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I actually think the best list in the game right now uses a trog in draco's tail CA should be +1 cast for all seraphon wizards obvi. OR something that lets saurus teleport. Or run and charge. Or something saurus specific.
At this rate I'll take anything for the Trogolodon. It's not a bad warscroll imo, but the lack of a CA really sticks out on such a badass model. +1 to casting, +1 save, maybe give units rend cause of acid stuff, idc I'll take it
Im surprised people are still using the Trog. I started with it but found it underwhelming and replaced it in my DT lists.
It essentially just removes kroak's one weakness and does so much to extend his already sizable impact on the battlefield. It's basically the fangs list i posted above but with either less skinks or less sallies to make room for the Trog. The small amount of ranged damage you lose you more than make up for with the extra utility and having a behemoth for some of the battleplans that need it is SO SO clutch. Totally. I'd love for it to have some kind of saurus specific effect just because everything is already buffing skinks and being able to run an oracle instead of a slann in saurus lists would be dope. Feels like it fits the vibe, a fast dino running side by side with your other fast dinos trying to press into melee range.
Yeah fair enough. For me, I really want it to work in Thunder Lizard (I'm a big coalesced fan). Unfortunately, as I mentioned, there isn't a big reason to bring the Trog so I settle on the Stegadon Skink Chief (which is an awesome warscroll). I could still theme it in for funz and make good use out of it, but it would be nice to have a little bit more synergy there with a CA.
Just skinks going to 80 points won't be a big enough impact to remove any real threats though. Taking your example it'd only cause you to lose a 160 points,dropping say 20 skinks and making it 2x30 would already cover that entirely. And that is such a minor change to the list it wouldn't really remove any threats from the list. Hence it'd do nothing to fix the complaint that we have too many threats. It might bump down our winrate slightly, cuz those missing skinks are going to be a deciding factor in some matches. But ultimatly it does nothing to the percieved problem. We still have kroak, 2 blocks of buffed skinks, & 2 salamander units as threats. The same as before. And even with this bigger point change we still have the same amount of credible threats: Kroak, 2 blocks of buffed up skinks, 2 salamander units of 2. Two of the threats have weakened, there's less salamanders and one of the skinks is at only 30. But the amount of threats remains the exact same. So it still doesn't do much to solve the main complain people have. It won't kill the list cuz the crucial parts of the list remain essentially intact. Small point changes like that won't kill any lists, nor will they actually please those complaining. For that list to actually lose a threat you'd need to get a (combined) point increase of around 300 points, maybe even a bit more, which is a much bigger point increase than what even you seem to think would be reasonable. Which is kind of my point. Any point change big enough to actually cause us to lose a complete threat in a specific list would be severe overkill (not to mention the amount of suboptimal lists that might drop to completly unviable with such a nerf). And any small "reasonable" pointchange won't be enough to actually cause us to lose any threats so it won't solve the complaints, even if it might make the tournament scene happy cuz our winrate drops a few percentage.
The idea isn't to please those complaining (which i know you're aware of) but to achieve a better sense of balance. People complaining is indicative of a problem but how much of a problem and what should be done requires a more nuanced, gradual take. People still complain about tzeentch (arguably justified, but whatever). And yes, technically there are the same "number" of threats, but those threats are drastically reduced in efficiency. You're removing a third of the power in each of the salamander units (which is huge) and removing some of the pure wound efficiency out of the entire list. Those small changes help add up to a list that's far more manageable. Again, I don't know if theres any actual evidence showing that to be the case. There's nothing that shows point changes are essentially a choice between nothing or "you suck now." This type of hyperbole makes having genuine conversation around changes extremely difficult because it constantly feels like any suggestion is useless. You don't necessarily need to lose "a" threat, just lose some of your threat (you could also reorganize the list to actually literally lose a threat, but thats neither here nor there). These changes accomplish that. Personally, I think fangs and dracos tail meta lists could lose about 500 points worth of units and still be a very strong but i wouldn't advocate for that all at once. Winrate dropping a few percentage points is essentially all you're looking for, and this argument that losing 260 points of ranged damage from a list isn't going to "do anything" again, just doesn't feel very grounded in reality or in the nature of the games that are happening. A single round of point changes generally don't get much worse than that and i'm not suggesting these 3 changes fix the entire games shooting issue. It's simply making that books most offensive list slightly less offensive, nothing more and nothing less. I think there are smarter changes that could be made, but they involve warscroll changes and allegiance changes, and GW simply doesn't do that very often.
Yeah it'l make it more manageable. But it doesn't actually solve the problem. And plenty of people will remain frustrated, especially those at lower skill levels as those generally don't benefit nearly as much from these kind of balance changes. And quoting just this bit as it essentially all hinges on this; Yeah it'l change something No it will probably not be a major change, however when it is major it's most likely going to be problematic (either making something too expensive or too weak because you happened to cross the boundary where the unit becomes ridiculously (in)efficiently costed) Yeah some small point changes will change the winrate. Yeah this will make those happy who think keeping everyone around 50-ish% winrate is of paramount importance No it does nothing to fix the actual underlying issue, leaving a lot of people just as frustrated as the only difference to them will be that now they lose to the annoying broken nonsense slightly less, but the difference is probably so tiny that this could just be blamed on the dice anyway so they might not even notice. Plus it'l still be just as much of a pain to play against (or with). And assuming you agree with those people that our threats are an actual problem cuz it's not fun to play against, and it's not just a case of us winning an arbitrary 2-3% too often, you'l need to do more than just move some points around to fix it. If however all you think that needs to be changed is that our winrate needs to go down a couple % then yeah, sure. Well they probably should do those smarter changes more often. And imho with the previous GHB's they've set a precedent for that, especially allegiance abilities, but even battalions, artifacts, spell lores. Pretty much anything except for individual unit warscrolls has been changed in there.
I think seraphon is unfun to play against because it wins too often. That's just me personally, but reducing the win percentage solves both problems for me. This conversation is slowly morphing from "what changes do you think seraphon will get that won't leave them bottom tier" to "how do you fix age of sigmar." I think the second question is far to complicated to solve with anything as simple as subtle point changes. I also don't think AoS necessarily needs fixing. People complain about shooting and magic, and they always have. I dont really care that people are complaining, I care that the army wins too much and provides an unfair advantage to the players using it. Point changes can, and will, help alleviate those issues. I dont think we have to pretend like we can't offer a few simple changes to seraphon without also trying to overhaul the entire game. I think a few subtle point changes helps seraphon go from an army that too often can win without strong play, to an army that at least needs to be played well to win. Also, considering people on this very forum can hardly agree with the "underlying issue" is, and i've gotten into extensive discussions about changes ranging from point increases to warscroll changes, with the response always being some form of "yeah but that'll ruin the army," i'm not really sure that's a fair argument either. You can't tell me it won't fix the "underlying issues" when no one can even agree on what that underlying issue is. Hell, we can't even agree that seraphon needs changes at all! There have been several arguments on these forums decrying ANY changes. Ultimately, it just doesn't feel like to me that "you can't make changes without fundamentally ruining the army and point changes don't solve the underlying issue" is still supported by any actual evidence or consensus. Changing points will move the needle on win percentage, and to me that's whats important. Thats why the changes i suggested were suggested, and there's plenty of evidence to support minor point changes reducing win percentage of powerful armies. That feels realistic and tangible. Other stuff starts to drift too far into "well, this is what the ideal version of AoS looks like to me" and i'm just not confident my vision of what AoS should look like is what everyone thinks AoS should look like. Either way, we'll obviously see. I just don't think worrying we'll get nerfed into oblivion is a justifiable concern given how reluctantly GW changes things, for the most part. That was the initial argument, and I think i supported that.
Fair enough, personally I find winrate to be the absolute least important statistic and the obsession certain players/designers have with it can lead to some outlandish balance decisions (this isn't a purely AoS thing, happens everywhere). So I tend to argue back against anyone arguing to do X purely to correct winrates. Plus, aggregate statistics are often very bad indicators for what is healthy as by their nature they average things, and it's the extremes where you'l find most problems. So it can very easily end up hiding problems simply because you only look at aggregate results. Anyway, imho, what's far more important than winrate is that it's fun to play against (or with) a particular playstyle. And it's far more common for me to find myself frustrated at a game cuz I have to deal with annoying playstyle X yet again than being frustrated simply because I lost one too many times. So I would nearly always rather see the frustrating playstyles changed to something less annoying than seeing it's winrate slightly changed. Mwha, I just hope they don't put us back in a similar situation we were in before the new tome were we had 1 basic viable list and most of our playstyle seemed to revolve around physically drowning our enemies in skinks or a similar degenerate playstyle. And given some of the complaints appear to be the same (especially surrounding Kroak & our magic in general...) I'm worried...
Sorry to say but there wasn't any bonsai Rumour Engine left to solve. True, I haven't spotted it anywhere either. Grrr, Imrahil
I dont necessarily disagree, i just think that's a much larger, much different conversation. I think there are a lot of playstyles in the game that people can criticize as "unfun." I also think its crazy hard to quantify that, which makes it hard to create changes that address the "underlying problems" as you put it before. I dont necessarily agree on certain playstyles being unfun (altho I can understand why people think that way), so its not an argument i tend to get involved in. I fundamentally like Age of Sigmar, and haven't really played against an army style that i don't enjoy playing against. The thing i don't enjoy is feeling helpless, which generally comes down to the "an army is unfun because it wins too much" vibe. For example, i didn't hate the old slaanesh strike first mechanic or even their summoning. I hated that regardless of how i played and more or less regardless of how they played, I was always going to lose because the army was just that poorly tuned. On the flip side, i've played against A LOT of hallowheart,, a style that most would consider to be "unfun" and have always enjoyed my games against it. Same as KO or tzeentch. I don't think this is a big concern because the fundamental strengths of our army are in a healthier spot than they were before. The old book was basically strong on the back of janky rules, not synergies or solid warscrolls. Getting relatively easy access to full hit, wound, and save rerolls on bastis, or being able to drop rippers and terradons outside of 3 instead of outside of nine, being able to drop chamo skinks literally into combat, and then obviously a summoning mechanic that was bolted on afterwards as a band aid fix to none of our warscrolls doing anything. I'd also argue no one really ever complained about our magic, they complained about Kroak being able to do 100+ mortals over the course of the game when his spell had a larger range, hit everyone, and did d6 to demons... which i'd argue was pretty understandable. "Seraphon magic" has never really been a larger issue. We have fundamentally good mechanics at the moment, which is why I think it'll require a very unusual take from GW to truly make us bad. Armies that rely on janky mechanics always struggle to live through a nerf (old KO, slaanesh, FEC, sylvaneth) and armies that have fundamentally good warscrolls usually do alright (DoK, Fyreslayers, Tzeentch, OBR, IDK). We are definitely more aligned with the second grouping of armies than the first. I will say, Kroak is one warscroll I don't care if they nerf into the ground. It's problematic and always has been. I don't know why they simply refuse to change celestial deliverance into something less difficult to balance around.
Didn't know that one was already solved. Anyway, the terrain piece has another bonsai so it fits there too. Slaanesh is a great example because they first introduced a special mechanic that is very frustrating to deal with if you play the "wrong" army that has no response to it. Now obviously they were numerically overpowered but there's also 2 other issues that can made them infuriating to fight. Which are indeed their summoning and first strike mechanic. Now their summoning was simply overpowered, and a numeric change there was sufficient. However, their strike first ability will always remain annoying for opponents who don't have any way to activly combat that. For examplea ranged list like a skink list won't be too bothered about Slaanesh's ability to strike first. And a faction that has its own strike first mechanics, or at least something to soften up potential targets before charging into them will be able to at least pick favorable targets. But if you take something like say a pure saurus list. Which has neither activation war shenanigans nor any other tool to create an advantage before charging into the melee. And it becomes a very frustrating matchup. Even if the saurus player plays well and has the advantage, even if Slaanesh would have the worst warscrolls ever, the fact that they always get to strike first means it takes a lot more effort to deal with them than it should. Because he'l always have to play around striking second. And that is a very weird and frustrating situation to find yourself in, which can quickly make you hate that sort of matchup. Stuff like that imho matters more than your ability to actually win. If you're always forced to play reactive, trying to avoid something they can do. Even when you hold a large advantage that isn't fun. Kroak is 99% of our magic, so I'd say seraphon magic has been an issue . But yeah outside of Kroak it's been fairly underwhelming. Also, imho the issue isn't Kroak, the issue is magic in general. Magic always dealing mortal wounds means a lot of interesting a powerfull effects (like celestial deliverance) will just scale out of control super quickly. It's why nearly every spell is limited to D3 damage. Much more and you start running into problems very very quickly. meh, imho we rely too much on synergies to be fundamentally good. It's no longer as gimmicky as before, but we still have very little that can stand on its own legs. Which in turn means that even small nerfs here and there can have quite a lot of cascading effects. Nerf one part of the synergy too much, or nerf too many parts, and the entire synergy collapses. We need some stuff that's actually decent independently of external sources. Without a solid, independent core, we'l always be suspectible to wild swings simply because we need many moving parts to make anything work.