AoS Power Creep

[Skreech Verminking]

25 minutes ago, Yondaime said:

yeah playing a lot vs kharadron

they have2 major problems imho

1)the skaven spell

2)the mobility, they can deploy in a angle far away turn 1 and then teleport all in your face and shoot with the whole 2000pt

 

 

Which could both be easily fixed per an faq.

1. Disallow them to use any faction specifics endless spells in the bottle.

2. If they fly high, the ship can be set up on the battlefield the next turn, rather then immediately.
 

although I’m certain that there are a few people out there screaming their lungs out that this is what the Ko need to function, and I don’t know if we even will get an FAQ any time soon for aos.

Or if it is coming, there might be a chance that gw won’t  address this problem.

[Beliman]

[Kharadron offtopic]

2 hours ago, Yondaime said:

they have2 major problems imho

1)the skaven spell

2)the mobility, they can deploy in a angle far away turn 1 and then teleport all in your face and shoot with the whole 2000pt

I must say that the main KO's structure is the issue here:

1. We don't have bodies nor defensive tools to capture objectives. So, we need to remove enemies before capturing it or take the most far away objective in the game. 
2. We area at the low end of damage and we need one-use artefacts/aether-gold to accomplish point 1. Ex.:  1060 points (Khemist+Ironclad+20 Thunderes) with Flarepistol (reroll all failed hits to the same target) do an average of 27 wounds to 4+ save target (<18" range). Thunderes can do a bit more using 1 aether-gold to reroll wounds. In other words,  we can do one big punch but we need to spend our whole army and one-use artefacts/abilities. But it's worth it (Imo, that's the problem).
3. Only one batallion has heroes (ignore Intrepid Prospectors) and it doesn't have any Thunderer nor Gunhaulers in it (6+FNP for Ironclad and maybe the best warscroll that we have) and thanks to point 1 and 2, it seems that we must build our lists with that in mind (just look at how many Iron Sky Command Batallions participated in the last tournaments).

I think that after Zilfin nerf, Mhornar will be at the top, using exactly the same principle as Zilfin (ergo, shoot first and hard, and don't let the enemy counter-punch you by any way), because it's the only way that KOs can (but shouldn't) function: Shooting people before they are being engaged. And Imho, that's bad, because nobody has fun pew-pewing everything without any interaction between.

1 hour ago, Skreech Verminking said:

1. Disallow them to use any faction specifics endless spells in the bottle.

2. If they fly high, the ship can be set up on the battlefield the next turn, rather then immediately.

Yep, that screams Mhornar too (maybe Urbaz+Admiral with cunning fleetmaster? time will tell). A re-deploy could do the trick instead of a High Fly (or double move with zilfin footnote for 20" normal movement).

[End of Kharadron offtopic]

My 0.5cents about KOs.

Edited January 4, 2021 by Beliman
Grammar

[Enoby]

11 minutes ago, Beliman said:

because it's the only way that KOs can (but shouldn't) function: Shooting people before they are being engaged. And Imho, that's bad, because nobody has fun pew-pewing everything without any interaction between both players.

I think this was the exact issue 2019 Slaanesh had. The army book was built in such a way that you chop your opponent up very quickly with keepers and summon any losses back, or you play something else and struggle. 

Not many Slaanesh players enjoyed playing a one dimensional army, and not many opponents enjoyed facing three - four keepers. 

I think it's an issue with GW's high damage design philosophy. Personally, I think all damage should be toned down to allow more interaction between players as opposed to rocket tag.

[yukishiro1]

I agree AoS has a big lethality problem, but the trouble with toning down damage is that in a game where the winner is determined by how many objectives you can control each turn, without extreme lethality, games then just become about who can force one more model (or counts-as one more model) onto an objective than the other side.

GW has kind-of backed themselves into a corner here with the way scoring works. It needs to change to something more dynamic in order for lethality to be able to come down significantly. 

 

[NinthMusketeer]

KO can work just fine in melee and have plenty of tools to succeed there both offensively and defensively. But the melee is still in support of shooting. Which is fine, that is how the army is supposed to function. However, certain factors (namely the strength of fly high and double-turn shooting) make going all-in on shooting stronger by a large enough margin to render other builds much less attractive.

But without those factors they would not "struggle" just as Slaanesh does not struggle without a keeper-centric build. You know where they would struggle? Getting top rankings at tournaments. A trait shared by every army build that is not game-breaking cheese.

Anything consistently pulling top tourney rankings is overpowered. A balanced army/build will not consistently pull top tourney results. I cannot stress this enough.

[Beliman]

1 hour ago, NinthMusketeer said:

KO can work just fine in melee and have plenty of tools to succeed there both offensively and defensively. But the melee is still in support of shooting.

I think that I disagree. Can you elavorate this? I'm curious because I was playing Barak-Zon since June, and now I moved to Thryng (Zon is a trap) and I really want to succeed with a mix of melee and ranged (60/40 or 70/30, to say something).
I know that there are some "good" lists (ex.: GHB+smitter+IronSkyCommand) but I find that you lose a lot against our classic counterpart (anything with Zilfin, Mhornar or Urbaz).

[NinthMusketeer]

Well the other part of the post was basically '...buuut it isn't as good as the fly-high-and-shoot builds right now.' Which is the point; any KO build WILL be worse than that, but it is a problem with the one build being OP not the other ones being too weak. Melee-focused KO are going to struggle against top-tier builds. Which is perfectly fine because any balanced army will. Many players slip into the hyper-competitive mindset of 'if it doesn't win tournaments it is bad' often without even realizing it, but that stance doesn't make sense, and more importantly is toxic to the community.

As for specific advice, I'll put some pointers over in the KO discussion thread since it isn't really on-topic here.

Edited January 4, 2021 by NinthMusketeer

[PlasticCraic]

8 hours ago, Enoby said:

I think it's an issue with GW's high damage design philosophy. Personally, I think all damage should be toned down to allow more interaction between players as opposed to rocket tag.

I would agree with this - and I think it has a knock-on effect that is even worse.  There is power creep on the defensive side, but only in a handful of cases: Seraphon brought us the first ever 1+ save, and Broken Realms has significantly improved the saves of IDK turtles and Liberators.

Broad damage creep, followed by an attempt at offsetting it with narrow save creep, just creates mismatches and blowouts.  To use the Stormcast and Ogors example from above, if the Ogors get into combat they will either wildly overkill Shootcast, or fail to do anything whatsoever to a big block of 30 Liberators that deployed onto an objective with 2+ saves rerolling 1s.  And probably not much inbetween.  

So for that reason I'd personally agree that most damage should toned down, which would hopefully also unlock the possibility to tone done the (less common) janky saves that are cropping up.

[PlasticCraic]

10 hours ago, Yondaime said:

Problem is that playing vs heavy shooting is a coin flip and not fun at all, and the power creep dosnt help at all since the latest releases are all ultra shooting armies (lumineth, soon slaneesh)

And not forgetting that DOK just got a huge boost to their shooting too.  I'm honestly a little bit sad that those two combat powerhouses are getting all the dakka too.  Makes me wonder if there is any intent to recalibrate from shooting back to combat in the foreseeable future.

[Eldarain]

For a company that thrives on new kits I've always found it odd they have factions that are "the shooting one", "The melee one" etc. Beyond the balancing headache it creates it limits their space to add before they're just invalidating units that came before.

Maybe they're trying to get  everybody some shooting options for when every phase goes alternate activation like the combat phase? Of course then we'll end up with "these units shoot at the beginning of the shooting phase" activation shenanigans and the wheel just keeps turning.

[Greybeard86]

7 hours ago, Enoby said:

I think this was the exact issue 2019 Slaanesh had. The army book was built in such a way that you chop your opponent up very quickly with keepers and summon any losses back, or you play something else and struggle. 

Not many Slaanesh players enjoyed playing a one dimensional army, and not many opponents enjoyed facing three - four keepers. 

I think it's an issue with GW's high damage design philosophy. Personally, I think all damage should be toned down to allow more interaction between players as opposed to rocket tag.

I feel that this would work if there were multiple smaller units, instead of the current blobs. The reason being that if an expensive blob does not delete things fast, then it may end up doing extremely little over the course of a battle.

Also, I very much prefer multiple "small" units of different troops that uber buffed blobs, but that's purely personal taste I find it quite disheartening to paint a 30 models blob of the same thing, with minor variations in the sculpt. It is one of the reasons why I am taking it slow with fyreslayers...

[NinthMusketeer]

2 hours ago, Eldarain said:

For a company that thrives on new kits I've always found it odd they have factions that are "the shooting one", "The melee one" etc. Beyond the balancing headache it creates it limits their space to add before they're just invalidating units that came before.

Do they, though? We can all say that Kharadron Overlords are "the shooting faction of AoS" but no one would call that an appropriate summary of the army, and it is possible to have certain builds from other armies be shootier than the average KO build. KO have several models that fight far better than they shoot, and they have a unique transport mechanic no one else does lending high mobility to otherwise slow units. And that is the reality; the design space available may not be unlimited but it is so vast that GW would run out of release windows before they ran out of unique army mechanics. Something GW has done exceedingly well in second edition is ensure every army has a special 'thing' that is theirs and makes them different to play than other factions.

[stratigo]

6 hours ago, Skreech Verminking said:

Which could both be easily fixed per an faq.

1. Disallow them to use any faction specifics endless spells in the bottle.

2. If they fly high, the ship can be set up on the battlefield the next turn, rather then immediately.
 

although I’m certain that there are a few people out there screaming their lungs out that this is what the Ko need to function, and I don’t know if we even will get an FAQ any time soon for aos.

Or if it is coming, there might be a chance that gw won’t  address this problem.

The second change would make sure ko are real bad at the game I guess

 

1 hour ago, NinthMusketeer said:

KO can work just fine in melee and have plenty of tools to succeed there both offensively and defensively. But the melee is still in support of shooting. Which is fine, that is how the army is supposed to function. However, certain factors (namely the strength of fly high and double-turn shooting) make going all-in on shooting stronger by a large enough margin to render other builds much less attractive.

But without those factors they would not "struggle" just as Slaanesh does not struggle without a keeper-centric build. You know where they would struggle? Getting top rankings at tournaments. A trait shared by every army build that is not game-breaking cheese.

Anything consistently pulling top tourney rankings is overpowered. A balanced army/build will not consistently pull top tourney results. I cannot stress this enough.

KO don’t have strong melee options though. It just isn’t a thing. The subfaction about trying to buff their melee is one of the worst. The best melee a KO army can have is to literally steal from other armies in thryng 

KO’s problem is mobility plus shooting is very strong. I feel you need to ditch out of sequence movement from zilfen, out of sequence actions have always been very strong, and the ability to toss a rat trap and the army goes from being the best to just good. 
 

GW tends to either under of overshoot nerfs though, so I’m prepped to be in the dumpster again
 

 

[Skreech Verminking]

33 minutes ago, stratigo said:

The second change would make sure ko are real bad at the game I guess

Maybe add something in where they could put their ships high up in the sky before the battle begins, and maybe add something like only half of your army points-wise could be up their if you do so, in addition to what I already have mentioned 

It would prevent a first turn i shot you from the table

although What I would like to see changed doesn’t necessarily mean it will happen, 

Edited January 5, 2021 by Skreech Verminking

[yukishiro1]

The only thing KO realy needs is: (1) can't use fly high with hero-phase moves, and (2) can't use WLV with spell-in-a-bottle.  Without those two abilities, and particularly the wombo combo created by the interaction, the faction goes from oppressive to fine. 

 

[stratigo]

Just now, yukishiro1 said:

The only thing KO realy needs is: (1) can't use fly high with hero-phase moves, and (2) can't use WLV with spell-in-a-bottle.  Without those two abilities, and particularly the wombo combo created by the interaction, the faction goes from oppressive to fine. 

 

I love spell in a bottle conceptually, but even without the rat trap, I imagine a new op thing will be found

[NinthMusketeer]

The ability to fly high and redeploy vast amounts of the army at will would remain a problem, but one that IMO can be managed via point changes. There is a bit of a skill curve there, so I am willing to forgive GW for not realizing quite how strong fly-high transports are.

@stratigo with all due respect, I do not feel you understand the army very well. Do you play KO, or have the battletome? Regardless, the nuance of KO strategy is outside this thread's topic but I am happy to discuss it in the KO thread.

[dekay]

6 minutes ago, stratigo said:

I love spell in a bottle conceptually, but even without the rat trap, I imagine a new op thing will be found

Limiting it to 'basic' endless spells only (ones that any WIZARD can cast) would make it much easier to balance it. Because now, spell in a bottle is one of those bad rules that grow more powerful any time any faction gets an update. It's basically impossible to balance it, because since KO battletome came out, every single faction locked endless spell should have been balanced taking KO using it into account. And that's impossible to do well, really.

If it was locked to basic spells only, the problem is gone.  They're (in theory) designed with multiple factions in mind, KO don't make that much of a difference. What's the strongest thing they could've used now if we're limiting ourselves to malign sorcery and forbidden power only?

[stratigo]

Just now, NinthMusketeer said:

The ability to fly high and redeploy vast amounts of the army at will would remain a problem, but one that IMO can be managed via point changes. There is a bit of a skill curve there, so I am willing to forgive GW for not realizing quite how strong fly-high transports are.

@stratigo with all due respect, I do not feel you understand the army very well. Do you play KO, or have the battletome? Regardless, the nuance of KO strategy is outside this thread's topic but I am happy to discuss it in the KO thread.

Yes. In fact it is my army. Outside of futzing with cities to make my fantasy collection work, I don’t play another

 

i suspect I understand how the army works on the table better than you do mate. The armies all tearing up the meta are mostly using the same tools, and they use them the same way. It’s ko’s triple keepers.  As entertaining as it is to theory craft other ways to rock KO, for competitive meta, none of them matter until the dominant way is nerfed and new ways to play are actually gone through the ringer.

[NinthMusketeer]

Still not going to get into KO specifics, but that does touch on something relevant to the thread.

More than once I have seen players insist that while one strategy for an army is dominant, other ways of playing the army cannot be properly examined. I think I understand the mindset behind this, but it isn't true. First there is the obvious; alternate strategies are not only entirely available to play they are extremely common on the tabletop. Not everyone playing a given army will use the meta-dominant build, but since those players are the same ones not likely to attend tournaments (read: most of them) they can be near-invisible from an outside perspective without close examination.

Secondly, the battletome itself can be examined by experienced players even without actual games. It is not uncommon to know the most OP options in a battletome the same week it lands, and while the specifics may take time to crystallize (if they even do at all) it still shows that mathhammer and theoryhammer can be strongly predictive of results. But again, where is the discussion focused on this? The OP stuff. I remember discussing with a decent degree of detail the week of the Slaanesh 'tome as to exactly why keepers were OP, and how triple-keeper could be a dominant tourney build. I was far from just fooling around with myself on that one. I spent much less time talking about the huge girth of non-cheese army builds the battletome opened up despite them being both harder and deeper in tactics. Because that kind of build simply did not whip up the same level of excitement.

Moral of the story is that armies exist outside of their meta builds. In fact, most of a given army generally exists outside of its meta build. A significant portion of those options are viable, commonly seeing play, and very important to include when evaluating the overall power of an army.

Edited January 5, 2021 by NinthMusketeer

[stratigo]

50 minutes ago, NinthMusketeer said:

Still not going to get into KO specifics, but that does touch on something relevant to the thread.

More than once I have seen players insist that while one strategy for an army is dominant, other ways of playing the army cannot be properly examined. I think I understand the mindset behind this, but it isn't true. First there is the obvious; alternate strategies are not only entirely available to play they are extremely common on the tabletop. Not everyone playing a given army will use the meta-dominant build, but since those players are the same ones not likely to attend tournaments (read: most of them) they can be near-invisible from an outside perspective without close examination.

Secondly, the battletome itself can be examined by experienced players even without actual games. It is not uncommon to know the most OP options in a battletome the same week it lands, and while the specifics may take time to crystallize (if they even do at all) it still shows that mathhammer and theoryhammer can be strongly predictive of results. But again, where is the discussion focused on this? The OP stuff. I remember discussing with a decent degree of detail the week of the Slaanesh 'tome as to exactly why keepers were OP, and how triple-keeper could be a dominant tourney build. I was far from just fooling around with myself on that one. I spent much less time talking about the huge girth of non-cheese army builds the battletome opened up despite them being both harder and deeper in tactics. Because that kind of build simply did not whip up the same level of excitement.

Moral of the story is that armies exist outside of their meta builds. In fact, most of a given army generally exists outside of its meta build. A significant portion of those options are viable, commonly seeing play, and very important to include when evaluating the overall power of an army.

You rocked in with “I bet you don’t even lift bro”. Shocker I wasn’t super interested In engaging. Theorycrafting is fun. I enjoy it. But you can’t test it, which is kinda a problem. Everything you do about KO gets suppressed since one build is clearly the best one. Unless you have a KO army yourself and are trying things out, your input is gonna be limited. Not enough people are gonna put builds other than the optimal one through enough repetitions in places anyone can see to make an actually strong conclusion about other lists and how powerful or not they are. I have tried other lists. They aren’t as strong as the drop list. What a shock. I haven’t been able to play them against someone else running competitive lists though, so I have limited input on if there’s another variation of KO that works well enough to be actually competitive. 
 

I listen regularly to people who ARE trying things out on the margins,  seeking out the competition from other builds. It’****** and miss and one uniform conclusion is, obviously, the zilfin drop list is still better. So My conclusion here is that KO without the drop list are a strong, but not entirely meta dominating army. Which is, to me, a good thing to balance towards

 

So, to circle back Around to the origin of this conversation chain, GW should target nerf the two features that most enable the zilfin drop list specifically, and not nerf the army more generally until the state of the army shakes out after the dominant list is removed. 
 

 

[Nasrod]

On 1/4/2021 at 7:17 AM, Enoby said:

I think this was the exact issue 2019 Slaanesh had. The army book was built in such a way that you chop your opponent up very quickly with keepers and summon any losses back, or you play something else and struggle. 

Not many Slaanesh players enjoyed playing a one dimensional army, and not many opponents enjoyed facing three - four keepers. 

I think it's an issue with GW's high damage design philosophy. Personally, I think all damage should be toned down to allow more interaction between players as opposed to rocket tag.

The only reason I'm okay with how much additional love Hedonites are receiving with the upcoming models and book is because in my eyes, it's GW's way of saying "Sorry."

I love the Keeper of Secrets sculpt but own none of them because of how cheesey they are at 1000 points which is what I play them at. Previously I did okay, but now after the continual nerfs I legitimately have higher win rates with my Nighthaunt than I do HoS with no Marauders and no KoS. 

Heck, my 40k Tyranids army has better win rate against my band wagoning Necrons buddy than I do with HoS...

[NinthMusketeer]

17 minutes ago, stratigo said:

You rocked in with “I bet you don’t even lift bro”. Shocker I wasn’t super interested In engaging. Theorycrafting is fun. I enjoy it. But you can’t test it, which is kinda a problem. Everything you do about KO gets suppressed since one build is clearly the best one. Unless you have a KO army yourself and are trying things out, your input is gonna be limited. Not enough people are gonna put builds other than the optimal one through enough repetitions in places anyone can see to make an actually strong conclusion about other lists and how powerful or not they are. I have tried other lists. They aren’t as strong as the drop list. What a shock. I haven’t been able to play them against someone else running competitive lists though, so I have limited input on if there’s another variation of KO that works well enough to be actually competitive. 
 

I listen regularly to people who ARE trying things out on the margins,  seeking out the competition from other builds. It’****** and miss and one uniform conclusion is, obviously, the zilfin drop list is still better. So My conclusion here is that KO without the drop list are a strong, but not entirely meta dominating army. Which is, to me, a good thing to balance towards

 

So, to circle back Around to the origin of this conversation chain, GW should target nerf the two features that most enable the zilfin drop list specifically, and not nerf the army more generally until the state of the army shakes out after the dominant list is removed. 
 

 

Woa, calm down there! I certainly never meant to come off as hostile and I apologize if it seemed that way. Like I have said before, I am perfectly willing to discuss the specifics of KO in a place where it is not off-topic, and actually did detail out my earlier post over in the KO thread yesterday when someone else asked about it.

As for the rest, I totally agree. I am unsure how you got the impression I was suggesting otherwise. Perhaps I did not word things very clearly.

[NinthMusketeer]

16 minutes ago, Nasrod said:

The only reason I'm okay with how much additional love Hedonites are receiving with the upcoming models and book is because in my eyes, it's GW's way of saying "Sorry."

I love the Keeper of Secrets sculpt but own none of them because of how cheesey they are at 1000 points which is what I play them at. Previously I did okay, but now after the continual nerfs I legitimately have higher win rates with my Nighthaunt than I do HoS with no Marauders and no KoS. 

Heck, my 40k Tyranids army has better win rate against my band wagoning Necrons buddy than I do with HoS...

Looking from the rear I can see GW's logic. The mortal stuff wasn't ready to expose yet, but Slaanesh needed and players really desired a battletome much sooner than it was going to be. I think it is plausible their original plan was to simply thrust the warscrolls for the new stuff in a broken realms book--it would slide perfectly fine into the existing battletome after all. But they opted for a whole new 'tome because of the core design issues. Here's hoping they nerf the Keeper's healing hand so the other equipment options are viable!

It does arouse my interest though especially because of the larger meta context. Normally a battletome is treading new ground with completely new or very reworked mechanics and/or new models. This time will likely be similar, but it is a very short period after the first where the core game has not changed in any significant way. While the meta may be shaken up a little, AoS now still plays like AoS did when Hedonites1 hit. So Hedonites2 will give more direct insight than normal into the power level AoS devs expect a battletome to have.

[Arzalyn]

23 minutes ago, Nasrod said:

I love the Keeper of Secrets sculpt but own none of them because of how cheesey they are at 1000 points which is what I play them at. Previously I did okay, but now after the continual nerfs I legitimately have higher win rates with my Nighthaunt than I do HoS with no Marauders and no KoS. 

Just using your example to get to a point that worry me a little as the discussion moved to the nerfing the "too strong" armys. When we start to discuss Faqs and other changes to try to make the meta better, most of the time  we look more at trying to bring things down than trying to make what is bad better. Sure, when you have  army list dominating most of the meta (like 80% or more, like petrifex did) you need to do something for the tournament scene. Its a problem for the tournament scene, but for the majority of the game (that is made of casual games), its not something that problematic (unless you play against someone that you can't talk about  using a more friendly list). When you have the opposite, a army that is really weak (like Sylvaneth e BoC seens to be now, as a example), it affects the game much more than having a super broken list. If you have a army that you can't normally win normal casual games because the rules are underpowered it's much more frustating for the player base in genera. Maybe now that everyone got a battletome its will start to change, but I would argue that in the long run fixing the things that arent working would be more healthy for the game than just waiting to seen which will be the next "big bad list" that we should bring down via nerfs.

On 1/4/2021 at 10:17 AM, Enoby said:

I think it's an issue with GW's high damage design philosophy. Personally, I think all damage should be toned down to allow more interaction between players as opposed to rocket tag.

Totaly agree, I would say that mortal wounds in particular are becoming a little more comum than they should be...