Looks like I was yet again mistaken. The new mystic shield/resurrection for wizards and priests shown as examples in the book are not universal. I wonder which lores those belong in now...
They're really cutting magic into small chunks with these lores. And so far, they haven't really shown anything to justify that. Have there been any leaks revealing a full lore yet? So we can at least estimate what GW wants a lore to be?
I don't think we'll see one until the faction packs start dropping on warcom, there's no universal lore and the launch box doesn't actually come with full aos rules for either faction (just the core rules) so the only place we'd see it are in those upcoming pdfs. I think there's supposed to be like six spells per lore or something though? I don't imagine we'll see any that do anything overlapping with the warscroll ones
Six seems terribly low, especially without a generic lore to provide basic functionalities to every wizard. Either that means that we're going to see lores that lack basic tools, like not having a generic attack spell, or every lore is going to have to waste precious slots on those basic tools.
Searching back through some of the articles I don't know where I got that number from, i'm fairly sure it was somewhere but I have no idea where and could just be tricking myself with it. I think inherently the removal of basic lores and arcane bolt/mystic shield do mean that we're going to see some factions not have access to certain spell archetypes outside of warscroll ones, but I also don't think that's necessarily a bad thing either.
I think a lot of the older/current lores had 6 options, so maybe you got there based on that? The issue with not having certain basic spells; like a basic attack, a basic defensive spell etc. is that you are quickly going to end in situations where your wizard is forced to just sort of awkardly stand around doing nothing. It's kinda lame when all you need is damage, any damage whatsoever, but all your wizard has is defensive spells and an abysmall melee attack. From a purely competitive point of view; that can be fine. Competitive players don't necessarily care all that much when a unit is useless 99% of the time; so long as it is still worth taking for that 1%. But for less competitive minded players tend to not like it when their unit is just a fancy paperweight standing around doing nothing. Generic spells like arcane bolt & mystic shield, ensure that wizard had at least some basic tools & minimizes the amount of time they're just awkwardly standing there (or well... assuming the rule of one doesn't get in the way ) There are of course alternative solutions. You could just give every wizard a decent ranged attack instead of giving them arcane bolt. Or give all wizards a defensive ability that doesn't count as a spell. Honestly, wouldn't be the worst solution and it would help distinguish wizards from priests and martial heroes. But given the warscrolls shown so far, GW is very definitly not doing that. So yeah... doesn't look good for wizards based on what's shown so far.
Free manifestations means this is likely to never happen unless you're running an extreme number of wizards and/or casts. 3 casts from your lore, with often 1 being unlimited on top of 3 manifestations at a bare minimum (not including any warscroll spells you might have) means you're very rarely going to run out of spells.
The point isn't that you'll literally run out of spells (though 6-ish spells isn't even that much...) The point is that you'll run out of useful spells given the current situation. With 6-ish spells that is pretty likely to happen; especially when considering the fact that GW likes to specialize its spells and refuses to give them halfway decent baselines (e.g. tide of serpents is a decent anti-horde spell; but struggles to kill a lone skaven because of that refusal to establish a baseline.) Anyways, for example, let's say we have a skink starpriests We give him the current Lore of the primal jungles, assuming it will remain largely unchanged. And we give him the lore of Twilit sorceries (spellportal, geminids, prismatic palisade). Spellportal has often been a favoured spell for us, and both prismatic pallisade and geminids have seen use at one point or another, so let's assume that lore ends up being a decent pick for us with largely its current effects. And let's assume we keep summon twilight (though given the lack of personal spells on warscrolls I doubt that...) This gives us 7 spells, with a grand total of 1 offensive spell to work with; and it's an anti-horde spell. It's not difficult to think of scenarios where we need our starpriest to cast an offensive spell. But unless the target is a horde, he doesn't actually have any useful options. So what is it supposed to do in those scenarios? Similarly, we saw Mystical unforging with it's -1 to rend and unlimited casts. That should mean we always have a defensive spell available right? Except there are plenty of enemies that don't rely on rend; like pink horrors. So what are you supposed to do if all you have is mystical unforging and a horde of horrors are about to shoot you? Which is precisely why arcane bolt & mystic shield were introduced in the first place. To ensure you at least have a basic offensive and defensive option that is always relevant.
He's supposed to cast the endless because endless are, at bare minimum, free screens that you can put in front of your army to eat up banishes or fire from your opponent. Or -1 hit is basically always useful. The best spells are often buff spells anyways, having access to "only one offensive spell" is irrelevant. Sometimes a tool isn't useful for every scenario. It is what it is. Manifestations add a ton of flexibility because their quality isn't necessarily just linked to their ability. Just them existing is often a good thing. And even in an army that utilizes pink horrors, there will be plenty of other models that will utilize rend to use that spell on. It's pretty universal. I imagine your concern will only be a concern in theory, not practice. 7 spell casts on top of more limited warscrolls spells is going to be fine for all but the most heavy casting armies and they will probably have ways to solve that issue.
For non-competitive minded players it is a practical concern. Whenever they find themselves in scenarios where for example they have say 10 skinks and a starpriest trying to contest an objective against some random enemies without rend, and all the starpriest has available in that moment is mystical unforging. The only thing the player will be thinking is "well this starpriest is useless" You as a more competitive player will then retort with something like Or in other words; "well your starpriest should be elsewhere, targeting something else, clearly this player played badly if he can't find a good target". And while this may be entirely true; players that aren't competitive minded simply do not care. The only thing they see is their wizard standing there being useless for an entire turn because GW couldn't be bothered to give them the basic functionality needed to ensure a vaguely decent baseline. Hell, there are even scenarios where mystical unforging is technically still doing something; but not enough to make a it worth the effort of rolling the dice. For example, let's say you're trying to slow down a SoB with your skinks & a starpriest. Sure, that mystic unforging technically makes the giant do less damage, but it's still going to annihilate your skinks without any effort, it's not even going to slow it down a single turn (not unless you have a truly outrageous amount of skinks ready to eat blow after blow. Though the number of skinks will be doing more than your starpriests' spells). Your starpriest is again just standing there looking impotent. Similarly, what is a starpriest supposed to when fighting 4 clanrats? We got a 130 points worth of wizard vs 20 points of clanrats; and the starpriest struggles to actually win because he put 99% of his power into his spells, and none of his spells actually help him against this enemy. And this gets worse the more specialized your abilities are. Which is why you want that baseline functionality by giving generic abilities like arcane bolt & mystic shield to everything. To ensure that your fancy wizard isn't regularly forced to spend an entire turn being useless and looking stupid. (for the record there are other ways to ensure that baseline. For example giving all wizards an appropriate ranged attack would achieve similar results as giving them arcane bolt.) And again; I am very much aware that you won't consider these scenarios particularly relevant because you'll be of the opinion that either they represent bad plays and the player deserves for his starpriest to be useless; or view it as the tradeoff for getting that 1 game-changing spellcast. But that's a very competitive focused view of things; and is not how a lot of players will view things. The only thing they see is their wizard being useless dead weight with frightening regularity. O; and the worst part is that GW realizes on some level that they need that baseline functionality. Because there are various places where you can see them provide certain archetypes have similar baselines (E.g. nearly every hero shown having a variant of a 5/4+/3+/1/1 as the weapon they wield). Wizards/magic is just one of the mechanics where GW for some reason consistently refuses to actually set a functional baseline.
Completely off topic, but with the rework to priests, I kinda wish the Starpriest was, well, an actual priest again. Oh well. More on topic, I can absolutely see both sides of the argument. As a more "causal" AoS player but a "competitive" enthusiast, I absolutely see the value in taking the most optimal spell lores but concur with having casters feel useless. That happened a bunch with my Starseer, he'd be a little too far away to use any of his set spells, so Arcane Bolt was helpful to have in a pinch. One thing that I've noticed though is that several units seemed "good" or "bad" in theory on paper, but during play actually performed the complete opposite. For example, as a Coalesced player who didn't field a Slann, the Starseer was a must-include due to the 2 casts, the 5+ ward ability, and Speed of Huanchi. In practice, I continually failed half of the rolls to apply the 5+ ward and rarely succeeded or needed the Speed of Huanchi, leading to basically a wizard not worth its point cost. On the other hand, I've seen multiple people state how fantastic their Bastiladons with Solar Engines performed, despite their average damage output being somewhat underwhelming. I'm not really sure what my point is, but I'm at least highly impatient for the full Index release which is presumably next week. I really can't wait to start list building and seeing what units are potentially more viable in AoS 4 than 3. If anything, the Slann reveal has convinced me to buy and paint one up, same as the Kroxigors.
A single wizard with a bonk stick simply should not out fight 10 clan rats. That's the whole point. If the player thinks a starpriest is useless because it doesn't do what it wasn't supposed to do, I simply do not know what to tell you. During the end times, slann are literally ripped apart by clan rats in the lore once they've been overrun (which it sounds like our starpriest friend has). Regardless, you said we need universal spells so every wizard has a defensive and an offensive option. This still exists and has literally been magnified. As stated, wizards will quite literally, know more spells in fourth than in third. That starpriest has a WAY better chance in fourth of doing something because it not only knows a potential scroll spell, but also an entire lore of spells and an entire manifestation lore you didn't need to pay for!! The starpriest could surround himself in endless spells that are all better than arcane bolt ever was. The starpriest will not be missing arcane bolt, that's for sure. Also, giving a unit -1 rend, which it can, is kinda, almost giving you +1 save, with the bonus that it's an unlimited spell so all your wizards can cast it. Why need universal spells when they've given you better universal options with manifestations and opening up the spell lore? Also id be willing to bet a smaller gap exists between competitive and casual players than you think. I play pretty competitively in some circles, but casual on complete others. I don't find the way you talk about the divide to be very reflective of my own personal experience.
I've definitely noticed that. If I had to guess, I think that's sometimes because players confuse a units strength with the "how well did I roll two dice" strength. A models impact is often a lot more dynamic than that, but it's harder to notice and harder to put your finger on.
I said 4 rats; not 10. And imho, any hero should be able to defeat a MSU of basic troops that has been reduced to 20% strength. However, that's not even the important thing. The important thing is that the starpriest; a unit who has put 99% of his points into magic; only has heavily specialized spells, and has no (halfway decent) generic tools in its toolbox (spells or otherwise), so it just ends up standing there being useless even against some of the weakest enemies in the game. Even if you don't think the starpriest should win against this particular amount of rats; it should at least be able to reliably do something. But with its lack of useful spells; and abysmal attack stats, there's a reasonable chance it won't even manage to land a single hit over multiple turns. Which is silly. I'm not saying it needs a massive buff; all I'm saying is give it some generic tools so it can at least do something. Even a single point of reliable damage per turn, against something as minor as a handfull of clanrats, would already be enough. Spoken like a true competitive player Anyways, yes in theory it's equivalent to a +1 save. Which is great and all. Until you face an army that doesn't rely on rend. Which is kind of the problem with all of these variants of minor buffs that give a +1/-1 to a stat. In theory they should all be equivalent. But that's only really true in a vacuum when looking at a generic 4+/4+/1/1 style attack. In practise; when interacting with other rules/warscrols/stats, they can wildly fluctuate in terms of utility depending on the specific scenario you happen to be in. -1 rend is great; until the opponent has no rend. -1 rend is great; until an opponent has too much rend (e.g. 2 rend and you have a 5+ save) -1 to wound is great until an opponent has crit (auto-wound) -1 to hit is great, until an opponent has a baseline 6+ hit and is relying on nat 6's anyway Anti-infantry is great; except you already have 1 rend and your opponent only has a 5+ save. etc. Which is fine if your unit offers more than that 1 single buff. But wizards often end up in situations where that single buff is their only contribution for a whole turn. And if your sole contribution is useless forcing you to stand around for a turn doing nothing then that is lame. Because the spells revealed so far are all heavily specialized; and over-specialization results in scenarios where your wizard is a useless paperweight. This is the most visible in the manifestation lores where they've arbitrarly cut things up into little groupings. I get seperating the Krondspine from the others; but the others really didn't need to be cut up into 5 seperate groups. And especially lores like "forbidden power" which for some reason has 0 offensive spell, but it does have 2 teleports, are just overspecialized. If they had at least said you get 1 generic lore + your faction manifistations as endless spells; this might've been acceptable. But we don't even get that (plus; it'd still screw over the factions without their own manifistations but at least that can be fixed with new releases ) And of course, it is possible that the manifestations & spell lore end up having decent generic tools in their kit. Maybe each lore is going to get 10 spells, ensuring there are enough spells in the lore to give something usefull in every scenario. But that seems unlikely. Also for the record; having manifestations be "free" and giving the entire spell lore is an improvement over 3th. But removing arcane bolt and mystic shield is step back. Also, the removal of nearly all warscroll spells on units shown so far doesn't help either. Basicly; 4th seems to be 1 step forward, 2 steps back in terms of magic. Ironically every competitive player I've ever met; in every single game, is convinced they are totally down with the casuals. It's funny to see how insistent some tournament going players can be that they are totally casual. Seriously, I've seen people claim to be casual because they never won a "big" tournament and "only" win small local tournaments. It's hilarious . Anyways; the reason you won't really notice it, even if you play with a lot of casuals, is because most casuals won't really put this much thought into things, and won't be able to put it into words. If they are even consciously aware of it. They're more likely to just stop using their starpriest when it's been useless once too often. Or possibly just quit the game entirely. Or just be perpetually mildly dissapointed in their starpriest. And occasionally, they're lucky enough to largely avoid the problems. For example, if their prefered playstyle happens to naturally fit around the potential problems. It requires a rather specific type of player to both notice and care about this kinda stuff. This is part of what I keep talking about; things like baseline performance & having the generic ability to do something are very important for how good a unit feels. A unit that reliably does something mediocre will often feel better than a unit that occasionally does something great, but is frequently just sitting around doing nothing. Even if on paper that 2nd unit is "better". Solarengines don't have particularly great damage output, but they pretty reliably hit at least 1 shot per turn. Which makes them feel good, cuz every turn they did something. On the other hand, that starseer only gets to to apply his ward-save once per game. Fumbling that 1 attempt due to a bad dice roll feels bad, obviously. But even if it works, it's still only once per game. The other 4 turns your starseer needs to find something else to do. The same can be said for speed of Huanchi; sure occasionally it's very useful, but in between failed casts, and turns where you simply didn't need it, there's going to be a lot of turns where again; your starseer isn't really doing anything. And not doing stuff feels bad. Competitive minded players often don't mind; they tend to focus on that 1 turn the Starseer did something extremely useful. More casual minded players instead tend to focus on the fact that the solar engine was at least a little bit usefull every turn while the starseer spend a lot of time doing absolutly nothing. O, and the further you need to look to see the "value" of a unit the worse this effects gets. A unit that is useful every turn feels better than a unit that's only useful once per game, which feels better than a unit that is only useful once every 10 games. Even if that last unit is the single best unit in the game and wins all the tournaments, it will feel like a terrible unit.
Dude, i feel like we are falling farther and farther down the rabbit hole of more hyper specific scenarios that ultimately are pretty irrelevant. Your characterizations are so extreme they become meaningless. The starpriest WILL do "a single point of meaningful damage." They actually quite literally have d3 damage on their attacks. Regardless, we've seen enough to know that the damaging endless spells are 100% better than arcane bolt. If you want offensive options, there will be offensive manifestation options for you to choose from. If -1 rend is occasionally useless, so is mystic shield. You've done nothing to refute that wizards simply have more defensive and offensive spell options than they've ever had. The situation you are criticizing is literally better in fourth. There is 0 reason it is not. Unless you are just upset generics are gone for the sake of generics being gone, which is totally fine it just doesnt feel like thats necessarily reflective of the argument you seem to be making. But more importantly... I'm always fine to agree to disagree on our opinions about spell casting or this or that. I'm absolutely not okay with you saying things like "spoken like a competitive player" and implying i dont know what i'm literally experiencing first hand. IN MY EXPERIENCE what you are describing as a casual or competitive attitude is so far from the truth it's hard to rationalize it. If you have different lived experience i am happy to hear and talk about that. I asked you several times about your gaming experience earlier that you neatly sidestepped. I'll be blunt, it feels like you're implying something negative with your broad assumptions and definition of "competitive player." I just dont think its necessarily doing the discussion any favors. In general, your characterization of competitive players is not accurate with my own experience. However, i'm all ears and extremely interested what interactions have led you to these conclusions. As i said earlier in this thread, i say that not to pick on you specifically, but to understand. It's such a difference to my own lived experience, i need to understand your context to truly appreciate where you are coming from, i think.
He (currently) has 2/4+/3/1/D3. Even against a 6+ save he will only succesfully land an attack 55% of the time. Nearly half of the turns it spends in combat it will do absolutly nothing, no matter how puny the opponent is. That is correct no? And that's what I am complaining about. That half the turns it fails to do anything. It doesn't really matter that when it does hit it gets a D3. It could do 10D3 damage for all I care; 45% of the time it's still doing 0 damage. And a hero in AoS failing to hit something that often is lame. To make things clear I'll summarize what I've been saying for a while now. Getting "free" endless spells: Good. Getting an entire lore of spells instead of picking 1 spell: Good. Losing (most) warscroll spells: Bad. Losing generic spells WITHOUT getting replacements: Bad. Getting more spells overal: Good. Being stuck with lores and spell-variants that are quite specialized and will show wildly different performs depending on situation: Bad. So yeah, there is some good stuff in there. And maybe we get lucky; and the lores will actually contain enough options to avoid that over-specialization. But based on what's shown so far, I wouldn't hold my breath. Like I said early, it's one step forward, two steps back for magic in 4th. The point I'm making is that the totality of what a starseer did is essentially that single turn where he used his ward save. A competitive player sees that ability winning the game a couple of times and decides it's "worth" having the starseer doing nothing most of the time for the potential that 1 ability brings. A non-competitive player sees the starseer doing very little most of the time and decides it's not a particularly fun unit; even if that ability does occasionally win a game. The individual dice rolls don't really matter that much (assuming the average performance is acceptably reliably). It's the fact that even on a good day that starseer simply isn't doing much a lot of the time. And doing nothing isn't fun. The competitive player is willing to deal with 4 turns of "unfun", in return for the "fun" of that 1 winning move. The non-competitive player is not. Also, this isn't specific to AoS players, this is a general trend you can notice across pretty much every game. Competitive players are willing to put up with individual mechanics that are a certain degree of "unfun" because they are focused on the "fun" of the overall competition. An individual mechanic being "unfun" is an acceptable sacrifice for the balance/challenge/fun/etc, of the overall competition. Non-competitive players are the inverse, and will start complaining about that individual mechanic much earlier since they don't care as much about the overall competition. Which is also why I said you spoke like a true competitive player when pointing out that -1 rend and +1 save are theoretically equivalent. Cuz that's exactly the aspect a competitive player would focus on; the fact that on paper these two are the same. It's the same on paper, so it's fair. Whereas the non-competitive player is much more likely to question why his spell has a limitation compared to the generic equivalent his opponent has. That doesn't seem fair to him, even if they're the same on paper, and even if that limitation is relatively minor. Obviously this isn't quite black and white. It's all on a spectrum; make the mechanic annoying enough and even the most competitive player will start complaining eventually. But that's roughly the distinction you can see. Also, for some weird reason; competitive players usually don't realize just how competitive they, and their surroundings, are. And have great difficulty imagining non-competitive players think different from them. Honestly no idea why that seems to be such a consistent thing. O; and it has nothing to do with "casual" a casual player can still be competitive. It just so happens that competitive players rarely stay casual for long if they like the game.
Hey man, just wanted to say that i truncated my message a bit cause i felt like i was getting a little off track and personal. Looks like you caught it before that, so just wanted to apologize! I'll come back to this later when i have more time Edit: sorry it's taken so long and for the fact this update will be a little underwhelming. I don't necessarily think anything you've reiterated here changes my mind or effects what I've gleamed from my personal experience. You continue to side step my pretty pointed questions about your aos experience and I feel like until I have that context I'll continue to have difficulty understanding where you are coming from. But I'll keep trying!
Goonhammer is putting out faction focus guides (which sort of implies we'll get them dropped today) but it looks like spell/prayer lores are just 3 options for all factions from the ones they've shown off so far. One unlimited spell then two that're limited but often more impactful, with skaven and stormcast those unlimited spells are direct damage ones but that's not the case for gloomspite so probably not a universal trend. It does seem like Seraphon gets a choice between two different bespoke lores of magic though, same as tzeentch, so we have that magical flexibility.
Really hope we actually have a good damage spell outside of Kroak's personal spell this edition, lol!