The heavy hand of GW balancing returns...

[Zanzou]

5 hours ago, NinthMusketeer said:

It may seem heavy handed because other nerfs are too light or miss the point (Slaanesh Depravity or Hearthguard Berzerkers, for example) or even more frequently simply do not occur at all (a whole swathe of units & mechanics across the top third of armies).

I have reached a point where I feel that not only does GW not prioritize balance, they do not even know what it is.

Yes sorry, as you said the inconsistency is the main issue and I'm still not over 2019.  Sure, the one potential issue that stood out to everyone for this StD book was knee-****** rewritten so that basically 90% of unit types will likely all suffer the same 1d3 damage (Sure this is much more balanced, but strategy is dull) and yet:

-Slaanesh was given free reign to terrorize tournaments untouched all year (with the complained pricey/boring model spam still being meta)

- what happened with bonereapers

-^Legions of Nagash battalion, and FAQ/errata/commentary are still left in a contradictory state after the bonereaper warscroll updates,  making some unplayable rules that have never been bothered to be updated for months (or even actually rebalance for LoN)

etc

Edited January 14, 2020 by Zanzou

[Kramer]

14 hours ago, Forrix said:

Why STD? Why this particular command ability? Is this a sign of GW changing design philosophies again

but seriously what’s the complaint? That they  change something that you admit was over the top? Or that they didn’t do that for other things last year?

 

[Galas]

Who was the whistleblower that told them Varanguard can't be from more than one Circle?!  Who was it?! 

So a mediocre unit and a mediocre batallion have become an even worse unit and a useless batallion. Ok. 

[NinthMusketeer]

36 minutes ago, Kramer said:

but seriously what’s the complaint? That they  change something that you admit was over the top? Or that they didn’t do that for other things last year?

 

It isn't a complaint, it's just curiosity; GW rarely makes proper balance decisions to nerf an OP element so quickly OR so effectively. This change was not only within weeks of the battletome dropping but is entirely reasonable and puts the ability in an area where it is a useful tactic to have but not over-the-top. Such a sensible response so quickly is such a rare occurrence from a GW that it sparks confusion when it actually happens.

IMO? A broken clock is still right twice a day.

[HollowHills]

I think most people would agree that the demon Prince command ability was not intended to constantly spam d3 mortals into your opponent. I also thought this faq was the original intent of the rule. 

That said I think it's fair to feel aggrevied when you see nonsense like bonereapers come out and then your army book you've waited for is so kuch worse. 

This is how I imagine the office... 

Rules Guy One: "Hmmm if I give them reroll 1s vs 2 wound units that gives an extra 2 to 3 wounds, I think that's OK". 

Rules Guy Two: *hits crack pipe* EVERYONE GETS PLUS ONE SAVE ALL THE ****** TIME. AND REND AND AN EXTRA ATTACK AND ALL SPELLS ARE CAST ON 5 AND ****** SCENERY PLACEMENT JUST PUT IT ANYWHERE! ****** ME I LOVE THIS JOB. 

[RuneBrush]

+++ MOD HAT +++

Should be no surprise to see this one folks.  Can we please veer away from slating GW rules writers for their FAQs.  I appreciate that the StD FAQ may have in your eyes changed one command ability to be weak, but there's a way of phrasing that without taking stabs at people, especially when the vast majority of FAQs actually resolve issues that exist!

Probably also remembering that it's always beneficially to wait until the FAQ before building an army around that super powerful unit/ability 😉

[XReN]

29 minutes ago, HollowHills said:

I think most people would agree that the demon Prince command ability was not intended to constantly spam d3 mortals into your opponent. I also thought this faq was the original intent of the rule. 

That said I think it's fair to feel aggrevied when you see nonsense like bonereapers come out and then your army book you've waited for is so kuch worse. 

This is how I imagine the office... 

Rules Guy One: "Hmmm if I give them reroll 1s vs 2 wound units that gives an extra 2 to 3 wounds, I think that's OK". 

Rules Guy Two: *hits crack pipe* EVERYONE GETS PLUS ONE SAVE ALL THE ****** TIME. AND REND AND AN EXTRA ATTACK AND ALL SPELLS ARE CAST ON 5 AND ****** SCENERY PLACEMENT JUST PUT IT ANYWHERE! ****** ME I LOVE THIS JOB. 

I like Rules Guy Two

[SleeperAgent]

17 minutes ago, XReN said:

I like Rules Guy Two

I hope rules guy 2 writes all the battletomes from now on.

[Eldarain]

2 minutes ago, SleeperAgent said:

I hope rules guy 2 writes all the battletomes from now on.

If everyone is broken, no one is. This would be fine. It's the up and down and releasing books that would get you laughed out of a homebrew discussion that is so aggravating.

[SleeperAgent]

14 minutes ago, Eldarain said:

If everyone is broken, no one is. This would be fine. It's the up and down and releasing books that would get you laughed out of a homebrew discussion that is so aggravating.

I'm perfectly fine with each army having super strong powers and abilities. Its way better than everyone being mediocre together and one book (or 2-3) coming out to dominate the rest.

[Eevika]

Its a CP for d3 mortal wounds right now. Thats pretty bad seeing CP is hard to get. 

[Kasper]

It was obviously completely bonkers before and anyone caught by surprise that they nerfed it.. Well I don't know what to say. I think it is good that they made a swift nerf to secure people don't purchase and plan their army around it. Then take some more time to figure out a proper spot for it to be in a future FAQ.

It is a nobrainer now to make all your DPs Khorne marked.

Edited January 14, 2020 by Kasper

[Qaz]

I don't find these changes surprising or heavy handed at all when it's somewhat unintended. I prefer releases such as S2D, KO, DoT, CoS where they enter into 'mid-tier' compare to Hedonites, FEC gristlegore, and OBR Petrifax (with clearly written powerful combination of rules) who are dominating when released.   

I wonder if it's the same person that wrote these book.

[Kramer]

1 hour ago, Eldarain said:

If everyone is broken, no one is. This would be fine. It's the up and down and releasing books that would get you laughed out of a homebrew discussion that is so aggravating.

If everything is broken enough it will end up only mattering if you win the roll off to set up first... Which I don't need a €400 set of plastic mini's for 😂

2 hours ago, NinthMusketeer said:

It isn't a complaint, it's just curiosity; GW rarely makes proper balance decisions to nerf an OP element so quickly OR so effectively. This change was not only within weeks of the battletome dropping but is entirely reasonable and puts the ability in an area where it is a useful tactic to have but not over-the-top. Such a sensible response so quickly is such a rare occurrence from a GW that it sparks confusion when it actually happens.

IMO? A broken clock is still right twice a day.

Fair enough then.
There are some more examples out there. i.e. Thunderers actually getting a warscroll re-write in 3 months, but I get the point. But shouldn't this thread then be a discussion that they seem to have learned? Maybe? Something is turns out to be used differently than they meant and they changed it asap. Seems like a good thing to me.

But for what it's worth: i'd rather have them wait a bit longer with real changes and the two weeks FAW for unintended things. So for example the petrifax thing. Give it two months see if the players don't adjust if it remains too strong and not simply an adjustment period. Then gently change it. The Slaanesh change overshot it a bit imo. The problem wasn't the 4+ locus for mortal/lower daemon heroes. It was the +2 to the roll for greater. Could have changed that to a +1 to the roll. Same effect on the greater daemons. Wouldn't have hurt the other heroes. 

[Charleston]

I was also in the spot where I asked myself which way to read that nurgle CA. I went for the weaker reading that is now confirmed. My opponent said striaght that that can´t be because the rule would be utterly trash and we proceded the game with the other, now confirmed false, ruling. The impact of the CA wasn´t that big at all, putting my opponent just into the spot of selecting what he was about to charge more carefully. The biggest way I was able to utilise this was a buffed marauders unit I ported right into the enemy t1, but even this together with the plaguetouched battalion was merely enough to kill 2x 3 wound-models.

Yeah, we StD players are actually a bit sensitive about rules and nerfs as we had to wait 5 years for this book. Now it is full of restrictions and limitations while other factions seem less bound to such. Getting then the disadvantaging ruling to one of the more promising abilities is in my eyes quite natural to heat the temper.

[Smooth criminal]

Every book this year got a nerf (if it had something worth nerfing in the first place). Sometimes it was in the first faq, sometimes it got delayed until the next faq.

Fec, khorne skullcannons+mongers, hallowheart, slaanesh, obr deathriders, etc. Rats even got a full scroll change, imagine being the guy with 200 plague monks when that came out.

At this point it's safe to expect all the weird or broken rule outliers being nerfed and not rely on them to carry you. And that's a good thing.

Edited January 14, 2020 by Smooth criminal

[Eevika]

27 minutes ago, Smooth criminal said:

At this point it's safe to expect all the weird or broken rule outliers being nerfed and not rely on them to carry you. And that's a good thing.

6 months for OBR nerfs tho... if they even come

[Mikeymajq]

Ugh. No. I'm so tired of these knee ****** reactions to game balancing. The Nurgle Dp'w command ability was way too strong. It's a good thing for the game that it was reigned in.  Especially since the nurgle battalion combos well with it to create a pretty punishing situation to attack the s2d unit with those buffs. Especially on top of the Mark of nurgle buffs were for example a  brick of chaos warriors become very tanky with a 3+ rerollable save on top of doing damage to the attacker on their activation. D3 mw + a few extra mw when the enemy attacks is still really good.

[Myrdin]

If you want to see a heavy handed nerf go take a look at the pre-BoC Jabberslythe, which was an autopick for many GAC armies, and compare it to the useless overnerfed flying frog that keeps warming up the shelf post the BoC release (huge nerf to initial design via changed rules, points hike and few FAQS later further nerf due rule clarification on how the Wound pool and wound distribution should be done from there on.) 😛  From auto include to be never seen again. Thats what I`d call heavy handed.

This particular change doesnt really seem like intentional nerf just to ****** people off but actually make sure people dont buy into dozens of Nurgle stuff and then get hit hard, causing only negative reputation for GW. And yes I agree there are armies that are desperate for some nerfs to tone down a bit some of the nonsense thats visible to all but the people who can actually make such changes happen.

If something looks to good to be true, most likely it is, and wont be that way for long.

Edited January 14, 2020 by Myrdin

[Dead Scribe]

Doesn't bother me.  Saves me money and I don't have to worry about that army being competitive enough to care about facing either.  

[Televiper11]

GW should just get it right the first time.

[Saturmorn Carvilli]

Well mistakes happen, and I personally would rather GW (or any entity) own up and work to fix it.  It never really helps when someone says something to the like of, 'see they even admit _______ because they went back and changed __________.'  That kind of expression makes it a whole lot easier to let something like GW just let it be broken for longer/forever since in the grand scheme of things it isn't really affecting anything. 

The Nurgle DP thing should have been expected by anyone that has been playing GW games for awhile.  Even the 'over-correction' should be understandable by anyone that has played Chaos for awhile.  In the grand scheme of things it was only one Command Ability.  The Varanguard Battalion feels like pretty much wasted ink now since the circles themselves aren't really at the same level of power nor flexibility in my opinion.  I can't comment of Archaon as I haven't fielded him nor really even thought about it. 

The weapon loadout was also to be expected.  This is where I was most disappointed in GW.  Not with the decision, I figured that was always going to be the case.  No, I was disappointed that the writers/editors/proofreaders didn't see those sections (or previous warscrolls and I want to say FAQ/Errata) and write it so that it reads as they intended not the opposite.  It already seems this is a perennial issue.  Let's hope they update all the Warsroll files so this can finally be put to rest.

So the battletome was weakened in very specific areas, but not nearly enough change its status to me.  In time, I wouldn't be surprised to see a roll back on unit points costs.  I also wouldn't be entirely shocked if they stayed the same.  However, I get the impression GW likes to start a little high on the points and shave them back with their big FAQs.  Well, at least that was how they seem to liked to do it in 40k.

[Forrix]

6 hours ago, HollowHills said:

Rules Guy Two: *hits crack pipe* EVERYONE GETS PLUS ONE SAVE ALL THE ****** TIME. AND REND AND AN EXTRA ATTACK AND ALL SPELLS ARE CAST ON 5 AND ****** SCENERY PLACEMENT JUST PUT IT ANYWHERE! ****** ME I LOVE THIS JOB. 

Having finished American Horror Story Apocalypse last night I can't help but imagine Rules Guy Two as one of the coked out dude-bro silicon valley guys.

[whispersofblood]

If I'm being completely fair there are only two things that I found surprising or disappointing. 

No mixing weapons, it was unique and thematic imo

And Dark Prophecy, which to me was the most characterful ability the Grand Marshal had access to. 

The rest of the rule re-writes are pretty consistent with how the rest of the times in AoS were written, and the general bell curve in the S2D tome. And sometimes you reconstruct a sentence to say what you want rather than just saying a new sentence to clarify. 

Most of the rage is probably in reality general disappointment with the quality of the S2D book and no a small amount of desperation for the book to have something in it.

It's funny because the general personality of the author really comes through in this tome. Once you fully implement the FAQ and errata. And, it's clear the author wrote this tome from a deeply conservative, and defensive perspective. Rather than the aggressive go win the game types that are generally drawn to chaos factions imo.

 

[Kirjava13]

2 hours ago, Saturmorn Carvilli said:

No, I was disappointed that the writers/editors/proofreaders didn't see those sections (or previous warscrolls and I want to say FAQ/Errata) and write it so that it reads as they intended not the opposite.  It already seems this is a perennial issue.

Yes, it's this. Having gone through the entire thread, I am struggling to find all that many people who are unhappy that a broken ability was reigned in and brought in line with what the intention was. Instead, by and large, it is people increasingly struggling to cope with what appears to be a shotgun approach to balancing the game. Why did this particular case get such speedy attention, when other far more egregious examples have gone far longer with less notice? Nobody is grumbling that something broken was fixed- rather, that the resources devoted to fixing it seem disproportionate to the scale of the problem when other problems go unresolved. So... perhaps we could put that particular straw man back in the barn.