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LuminethMage

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Posts posted by LuminethMage

  1. 9 hours ago, Aren73 said:

    Ah you're right, Blood Knights also needed resculpts 100%. 

    Really, the resculpts are not my issue with this release, they bring those units up to speed with the rest. 

    I do just wish we didn't get so many named characters. I'd happily sacrifice Anika, Belladamma and Radukar the Beast for one new vampiric unit like the Bloodborn. 

    If it was up to me I'd have probably done the resculpts as is, also had a new kit for Grave Guard, ditched the above mentioned named characters, kept Lauka and the Vengorian Lord and added just one new unit. 

    This would bring the release from a 7/10 to an 8-9/10 for me. 

    I don't get the feeling that people are hating this release, rather I think the general feeling is "it's ok, it's a bit meh, probably not as good a release as Lumineth or OBR". 

    Just saying - half the people in the LRL chat hated the first release. Almost everything about it. There is also a bit of "the grass is greener" effect. And OBR weren't uncontroversial either. LRL didn't have a melee hero, 3 sculpts most people at the time actively hated, and no real re-sculpts that many of you seem to like with the vamps, which are much closer to the original than what the LRL got. Everyone who liked dragons, eagles, heavy cavalry, chariots etc. has been still left without anything to go for even now. 

    They might not have done what you wanted them to do, but it doesn't have to mean it's better or worse than other releases. If you really like a faction - you'll also see the problems much more, if it's not exactly what you wanted. For some - like myself - the LRL are all I ever wanted, but many HE fans are still not really happy with them. 

    • Like 3
  2. On 4/30/2021 at 7:43 PM, wayniac said:

    As good as that is to know,that raises even more concern for why we keep seeing them sneak in. It's usually been considered the crazy imbalance is either intentionally put there to allow for "mastery" or it's lack of design skill/knowledge and they keep being missed.  I imagine it's a combination of things (hard to test all the combos when you need to get it out the door) but still the fact it keeps happening after years and years....

    You see the same kind of mistakes creeping into computer games, where they have much more data and more extensive beta testing. Mistakes happen. And there are so many variables in a game like AoS. External balance is just not the only thing that counts. 

    And if they try to go on the save side with Battletomes which can draw easily from a whole range of other battletomes and books (eg. Chaos) many people aren’t happy either because their own battletome alone feels lackluster, and not everyone wants to have to venture outside of their book to have a competitive list. You could restrict this with keywords, but then some people complain that keywords are too restrictive and so on.

    And all the while, despite threads like that, most people think that AoS is in a good place anyway (at least according to the surveys I have seen like Warhammer Weekly).

    Let’s see what AoS3 brings, likely it will be a big mess at the start with some super powerful armies and a few that won’t work at all anymore, if 40k is an indication. 

    • Like 1
  3. On 4/29/2021 at 5:02 PM, Yondaime said:

    Yeah you are right, its a really solid city

    i  should have elaborated better that statement

     since syar won a lot of tournament at the beginning everybody and theyr mom went full syar

    i often read a lot of tournamet report because i like to see were all is going, and 80% of the list are the good ol' syar auralan legion, the some zaitrec outsider and the only ymetrica lista that i saw was teclis and the alarith batalion, i never seen somenthing much different (maybe ymetrica+ sentinels, or some more elaborated zaitrec)

     

    its not wrong, i am not saying that, and at the end people bring the most performing list that they already know its good, but i have the feeling that there is some fear to try some different nation/list and see how they perform at tournaments (and this its for all armies)

     

    Sure thing if people still play the same lists after the new tome it will be very boring xD

    Yeah sadly would be very boring, but right now - to me it looks like that’s what’s going to happen (although who knows with AoS3), because none of the new stuff does look really strong compared to the Teclis, Auralan Legion, Endless Spells build.

    But if the battalions are gone with AoS3, that alone would cause some changes and make the above build far less good for tournaments). 

    Luckily most of us don’t have to play with the most competitive tournament lists, and for others - the nations all look viable, I love my Zaitrec, and had a lot of fun playing with it so far. I’m sure Alumnia/Huron will also have many fans. 

    In terms of tournaments, I hope someone will find good alternative lists, without Teclis, would be sad, if you could only compete with Teclis builds - because although it doesn’t really affect most games, the perception will be colored by it. 

    • Like 2
  4. 11 hours ago, Yondaime said:

    Syar is so overrated imho, ymetrica can be really strong provided you use the alarith batalion and zaitrec can cast like hell

    Syar has been the GN with the highest win rate so far (almost 60% before the new units dropped). Ymetrica was low (mid 30s), and Zaitrec in the 40s. I love Zaitrec and almost play it exclusively, but the double quartz is really good. So much flexibility and helpful in clutch situations. Over a game you might be able to cast more and better with Syar, than with Zaitrec if you use your double Aetherquartz accordingly. In casual games I think all those factions are valid (and I really enjoy playing Zaitrec), but sadly competitively almost only Teclis builds have done well so far, and those profit the most from the -2 to save. This might change though with the new rules.

    On top of this Syar benefits all units (well except Eltharion...), while Zaitrec and Ymetrica only effect some. Lots of spells are great, but we almost only have 1 cast Wizards, and more spells won't help you much if you have a mixed list where half the army can't cast any spells (another point where I'm salty about the Bladelords). I still play with lists like that though ^^. Ymetrica is great for your Alarith, but everyone else sees no benefits at all. Shiny Syar on the other hand ... . 

    @Jeremierty I wasn't writing about NPE, I find the whole topic very difficult, you asked how we might profit from a cap on minus to save, that's all : ). It's just that Syar has seen by far the best results, and in competitive play has outdone our other Great Nations. Which often leads to nerfs in similar situations. If all the rumors are true there will be huge shake up come AoS 3, so how we'll end up in the end is impossible to say right now. Right now, it's best to just enjoy playing and don't worry too much about what AoS3 will bring. 

  5. 59 minutes ago, Jeremierty said:

    How would a cap to +1 save improve our units ?? 

    In Syar getting Teclis or a unit of wardens to 2+ save for a turn was really good when you were about to get charged by a heavy hitter (provided you already casted the ethereal blessing on something like a war cow for example ) 

    Not everyone plays Syar, and we also  have to get through the saves of others. It’s one of 6 factions. We are not the only ones who can stack saves. If you play mostly Sentinels and Warden in Syar, then it likely will end up as an overall negative, if you play more with Alarith and Hurakan it might come out as a positive. 

    In the end Syar might also profit from it, because right now it would have been the likely main target of any nerfs coming our way. Without the double save, Syar might keep the double quartz. 

  6. 25 minutes ago, Marius au said:

    Yep, the souls she took were some Cythai (the original lummineth) which also raises the question do Aelf souls still end up in Slaanesh if they die now?

    Lumineth seem not to - as it was mentioned in BR Teclis that Nagash destroys their afterlife, and that was one reason to get rid of him. 

    DoK also don't seem to be afraid of this. It's not mentioned anywhere afaik. And the City aelves never came out of Slaanesh in the first place, so likely they don't either. 

    So I think for most of them at least we can say that they don't. 

  7. 19 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

    The point is not whether there are good or bad players, or good or bad factions. It is obvious that the answer is an unambiguous yes to both.

    What we are trying to find out is the weight of lists / factions in the odds of "winning", as a roundabout way to assess whether factions are properly balanced or not.

    I am just explaining how the current metric is flawed. Maybe I was right, and the very top players are mostly choosing top factions. Or maybe the data says otherwise. But the flaw that I pointed out remains, which means that this is not a good metric. It cannot ascertain correctly the "power boost" for players that stick to factions of a similar "power level". It is a flawed estimator of the power of a faction.

    I focused on the results for the very top players because they were very flashy and attracted lots of attention. However, the exact same problems takes place among the bottom players, for which JP reports a similar result. If bottom players are people mostly sticking to flavor outdated armies (or other "low power" armies), listbot will incorrectly assume they are "bad players". Because they perform poorly across armies, but those armies are mostly "bad" armies.

    Is he around? Of course, I appreciate his effort to bring data to the matter and I am sure we could come up with a better measure of skill. I insist, the current one is, in my opinion, flawed.

    He is around on Twitter I think, not here afaik. Contact should be in the video of WW. 

    I understand what you want to point out, but have a look at the results. Its not that tournaments are always won by obvious strong factions (and not only a few exception in the top three for example). So you'd have to verify your underlying assumptions (which generally also make sense to me, but that doesn't mean they are true). The same is true for the bottom players, even more so, because the player pool is much larger, and you'd have to show that most of them stick to outdated list and flavorful armies, which in the larger tournaments that the bot is tracking is probably not the case for the majority of the players. 

    I think generally there is a problem how much a tool like that can show in a game as varied as AoS, and I don't think the bot is perfect by any means. There are so many variables, but I think it likely can help point into directions (including the skill).

    I think though he'd appreciate the input - and maybe even wholly agrees with you : ) 

    11 hours ago, Kasper said:

    I dont know if Im completely in the wrong here but I simply cant help but to find all the stat-talk a little abstract. Been watching a lot of HonestWargamer recently and Rob have had an increased focus on stats/win percentages and some of it just seems so meaingless to me. I have deep respect for the work being put in, but I just find it people are boiling it down to something seemingly so simple despite Warhammer simply not being that way.

    Talking about THW. In the latest analysis he is doing - they have a new tool which can show results by list, subfaction, battle plan etc. They still haven't got enough data yet to make it meaningful, but I think this is a good direction. 

    Of course you still would have the issue how relevant all that data is for your normal local game, but it would be still better than just - I heard on the internet faction A is OP and my friends agree. It might also help GW to make better changes in case something is really OP/UP. 

     

     

    • Like 1
  8. If you don't play in tournaments, most of the time, you'd have just a -1 to hit on your troubles anyway (at least in my games), because many of our -1 to hit are situational. It'll have a negative impact on some things (like if you were planing to use the Loreseeker with all kind of stacked bonuses). It also gives only a max of plus 1 to save which will profit some of our units (and the rest ignores save anyway). 

    I wouldn't get worked up about this just yet, before we see the full picture of changes. From what I heard, there will be a whole lot: How you score, how battalion work etc. Very difficult to judge if how these work out in the end for LRL. 

     

  9. 7 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

    I was curious, so I looked into it.

    https://aoslistbot.herokuapp.com/sotm/

    So, it is exactly what I said. If a player picks only top factions, they'll perform similarly across factions. This will lead you to believe that faction doesn't "power boost" that individual player. When listbot is giving you that famous plot, they are potentially falling for this very same thing.

    As long as the very top performing players are more likely to pick "top factions", then scores across factions for them will vary "relatively" less than for others that choose factions with more power diversity. In other words, the method is as good at identifying skill as the variety in power between factions picked by the players.

    This is problematic and, based on what I have seen, a possible reason behind "skill is all that matters at the top" conclusion.

     

    Wouldn't be a player picking any good faction and having good results with it be a "proof" of their skill, and that skill mostly matters at the top end? I mean if I pick-up Tzeentch tomorrow and go to a tournament in a month or two with the Archaon list, I wouldn't expect good results for myself. And then pick-up Seraphon in 6 months or something. 

    You also assume that the top players just pick up top factions - which isn't a bad assumption mind you - but several tournaments have been won by people using factions which aren't thought to be that powerful (but maybe the actual lists are, and other people just haven't found out, shrug). 

    You could ask JP (the guy who made the listbot), he seems to be happy to discuss things like that. 

  10. On 4/25/2021 at 6:00 AM, Koradrel of Chrace said:

    Question: has anyone else painted/assembled the Twins yet?  If so, how many sub assemblies did you use?  I'm staring at the sprue at the moment trying to wrap my brain around it.

    That’s how I’m going to paint them. Just flowing with how they are built. 

     

    2BEE796D-2899-4BEB-8276-CFE3D92E141D.jpeg

    • Thanks 1
  11. 14 hours ago, Yondaime said:

    Its not in the rulebook but in the tome (as in every), there is no need of faq, its pretty clear

     

    Page 135 lumineth tome, pitched battle profile "unique units are named characters", thus they have the same restriction as described in the core rule

     

    Ofc is good and fun if i could give him relics and traits, but you cant

     

    Even facehammer got it wrong,

    if you ask me they could put it in the core rule instead in the point profile (since not so much people read that page, me included)

     

     

     

     

    It's apparently not clear, because a lot of people do get it wrong. Even people who play a lot, and it looks like even game testers. So it would be good if it's spelled out in an FAQ, then it's clear, and yeah update it in the core rules next time.

    If they don't do touch it, agreed, I also think you can't give him traits and artifacts because of what's written in the pitched battle profile. 

    But there is no harm putting it into an FAQ. 

  12. 2 hours ago, Yondaime said:

    Personally i found the loremaster to be incostitent, what if you got a mission with falling objective? also he is to much fragile

     

    Also since is a unique character he cant neither have artifacts and command traits

     

    i know in the builder he can but the builder its screwed, the hurakanb spirit its listed as hero lol

    According to them - GW says he is unique but not named, and therefore can have artifacts and traits. They have access to GW, so it could be true, let’s wait for the FAQ replies. I was talking about their video, not my opinion on the Loreseeker. 

    If you find Loreseeker inconsistent then go with something else, we have a lot of options now. I’ve played him twice now, and found him good and fun. But likely depends on your build and playstyle. The useful new will vary between scenarios for sure. 

    1 hour ago, adboyslim said:

    Hi all! I wanted to feedback a bit on my first battle! Some of you helped me to understand how to perform against Skaven. It went pretty good as my opponent concede at turn 3. 
    The only think that disappointed me is the shrine. It was a mission with 6 objectives (and diagonale setup) and I had to setup it very very far. So not useful. 
    Loreseeker was gold. He was alone and survived 3 turn. He cast the rune between his unit (thanks to aetherquartz) on t1. A lot of damages, took 1 objective (only for 1 turn) and killed a flamethrower T1. Then he distracted some clan rats. And cast ambient light next turns for max damages on acolytes. 
    I realized how the cathallar was good when she died because of vermin lord on T3. The next battleshock was terrible. 
    Bladelord was very good as well. They was only 5. They well protected my cathallar and the 3 remaining for close combat did 19 attacks on rats!

    Dawnriders with speed of hysh did a very good T1 but died after. 
    Calligrave was soso but I made the mistake to keep it in the shrine. 
    It was a great party. Very tricky to think about everything (especially during setup) but I liked playing LRL!
     

    Great that you enjoyed them! 

    Concerning the Shrine, none of your units (no Sentinels for example) where within 24 of the Shrine to use a casting/unbinding/dispelling roll? You couldn’t use any CA ability, like ignoring battleshock or re-rolling 1 for free? If so that’s likely the exception. 

  13. 11 hours ago, Battlefury said:

    We know for a fact, that AoS isn't balanced like this and never was. But there where time, where it was better. And to call that out, we discuss here.

    Is that based on "fact"? Or just conjecture, personal perception? As you seem to base most of your assumptions on your local meta and experience with Khorne, which might have been more balanced in the past for you, but doesn't tell us much about the game as such. It might just have been that the armies/lists you played at that time performed better in your local meta and therefore your perceived it to be more balanced. 

    What you wrote about LRL seems to sum it up to me:  My friends and I just had a few games against LRL, none in a tournament setting, but we all agree that LRL will be No. 1. 

    How can you base a neutral discussion about balance on arguments like that? It might be even true in the end because the LRL player is the only one who brings a competitive list, is the best player or both, but as such is pretty meaningless as a wider discussion about balance. 

    Here is how CanCon/LVO looked in 2020, over two years ago. Two of the largest events in AoS: 

     483561218_ScreenShot2021-04-22at14_00_45.png.5a81895eaefaf9dd0d40ea6f694c8995.png

    That doesn't look better (although this is only a snapshot in time, it's difficult to get more broad data from that time, at least for me). But if you played Khorne it might have felt better, because almost all the armies on top were melee heavy armies, where you might have felt that you have a better shot at winning, even if you didn't. And your battletome was newer two years ago. 

    It's really difficult to talk about balance if you mostly base it on personal perception and experience. I'm sure Khorne does feel and play outdated right now compared to some of the newer armies - because that's the case, it's three years old. Hopefully they'll get some rule adjustments during BR. But that doesn't have to mean overall balance is worse now than it was in the past. 

  14. 5 hours ago, Grailstorm said:

    The ballista has an ability that lets you pick a unit within range of a hero and +1 to hit vs that unit. But the way it’s worded, it explicitly says pick 1 enemy unit and 1 friendly ballista.

    Do you read this as you can only pick one unit total no matter how many ballista you have? So you can only do this ability once, at the beginning of your shooting phase?

    Or can all ballista do it?

    That seems to be what the majority thinks right now - that you can only pick 1 ballista which get's the +1 hit bonus. Several of us have sent this in as a questions for the rules team, and hopefully we get an official clarification. It's unintuitive, so likely a lot of people would get this wrong unintentionally. 

  15. On 4/19/2021 at 7:07 PM, silverstu said:

    Loss of the silver towers maybe gives Kharadron an edge in the skies? Tzeentch is their primary aerial foe and he just lost 2 fortresses. If they fix/workaround the realm gates- longer term it could be a win.

    Genuine question - afaik, the main aim was to kill the guy inside the Tower who worked for Archaon. This might have zero impact in Tzeentch, and more on the KO, as they likely also lost a lot during the battle with Belakor. 

    I might be wrong though. 

  16. 6 hours ago, Koradrel of Chrace said:

    Well, since I killed the discussion for a bit, I'll leave this link here.  Facehammer did a pretty good breakdown of three potential lists, it's worth a listen.

     

    I love this alone for the pure Loremaster enthusiasm extraordinaire. It's basically - you know what would make this list better? A Loremaster. How can we improve on that list - let's add a Loremaster. This list here is good, but a Loremaster would be an improvement. And you know what you could do with a Loremaster .... spells, items ... . Weeeeee. 

    Finally a just fun review as Siegfried mentioned. It's possible to do those for the Lumineth, so thumbs up! 

    • Like 1
  17. 1 hour ago, stratigo said:

    They had the third highest number of top finishes in literally the THW link you posted. Which is roughly where they sit fairly consistently. 

     

    Third is just because I like numbering things, the top five or so factions tend to be a very rough place, I think Seraphons and IDK show up so consistently at the top that they are the best, while LRL also show fairly consistent next to the other three armies (KO, Tzeentch, DoK). 

     

    Legit I just wanted to know where you were getting your numbers because I couldn't find them, and am disappointed that they get presented with so little context given via twitter. 

     

    Ok, yes, that fair, the LRL were in the top three there. They were also the second most played faction during that period on TTS, which means just by total numbers if the faction isn't bad would mean that it's not surprising that they had a good amount of top 10 entries (only one win though). That's why a combination of tournament wins and the general win rate are important. Even THW didn't rate them top 5 in their own review at that time. That's what I also meant with perception is important. THW was one of those who were responsible for the "LRL so OP" train - and then had to dial it back a bit when they didn't sweep everything in front of them. I'm sure you watched the show - and they were surprised that LRL weren't better. 

    If you look at the in-person statistics (which AoShorts has), you can see they haven't been top 3 or 5 in terms of tournament wins so far. They haven't been bad and very likely got stronger (I guess especially the already strong Teclis in Syar build will be even better now), so it might come to a point where GW has to look into the Syar for example. 

    All I meant to show was that so far - if it's really about balance (not talking about NPE), I don't think LRL are the most pressing issue, and haven't been as powerful as many people thought at first. 

    It would be good if we had more statistics easily available. That's one thing GW could do much better, instead of leaving it almost completely to the community. And the problem is of course that right now, there is an overall lack of data because there aren't that many larger events and TTS isn't always representative. And we have constant changes because of Broken Realms. 

    If I'm not mistaken tomorrow's Warhammer Weekly show has the guy behind the Listbot as their guest and will talk about these things (balance, skill etc.), if not it should be next week. 

  18. 10 hours ago, stratigo said:

     

    Who is he? You mean AoSshorts. He's using twitter to update his graphs?

     

    *Checks*

     

    So he is... wow. So, yeah, iunno, but twitter is NOT a good place to store information. It is incredibly ephemeral and prevents any form of long form information. Like, I wanted to see where he, essentially, showed his work and gave an explanation of his process, but you can't really do that on twitter. If there anywhere else he posts this that includes analysis? 

    I'm really craving some analysis to these graphs. And, like, I know this isn't an exhaustive list of TTS tournaments. It just makes me feel like there's this lack of organization among TOs and commentators/analyts in getting good date collection in a way that 40k has nailed down much better. 

     

    Wait, this DKHM graph is labeled april 2020? What does that mean? I mean is that a type and they mean april 2021? Or is this all data SINCE april 2020? XD also there's a lot of spanish and I don't read that. There's actually a lot of weirdness going back to the original source of the dataset, so I don't know what to make of this and can't follow the explanations well.

     

    I did mean the honest wargamer. Dunno why I keep abbreviating it as THO, I've done it a lot. Is weird. But THW does show tournament wins after the winrates.  But this dataset is getting increasingly dated now. There are some newer ones via their streams/youtube with their reoccurring Age of Sigmar stats segment, which come with analysis, but aren't written down (that I can find). Which does frustrate trying to link it for easy consumption.

    So, you got nothing, right? Where are the 11 tournament wins? What makes you think they are top 3, when even the TTS based on THW statistics you watch and apparently think are the gold standard on data analysis in AoS aren’t showing it? I know they update them every week, I’m watching those shows regularly myself. Please point me to one where Lumineth are wining many tournaments and come over as exceptionally strong. You can easily link to a Twitch/YouTube video, I'm happy to watch it. 

    DKHM obviously means since the GHB 2020 was released until now (April 2021, 2020 is a typo). Which you can see from the file showing which tournaments they included in their analysis (which they included in the same tweed as reference). 

     

    13 hours ago, Battlefury said:

    Also, I had a chat with my local GW store manager about growing the community. For about 3 years we only had 2 new players here.
    The manager told me, that a lot of people come in, buy something they like and don't show up again.
    I asked, what the last bought. It has been 2 friends, who wanted to play together. One bought FEC with the new Battletome ( pre errata ) , the other bought Nighthaunt.

    We can already see, why they didn't come back.

    This is true the other way round too though - where people complain about new armies being OP or NPE without ever having played against them themselves. Just repeating something they heard from others or a video by someone who isn't neutral themselves. This all shapes your impression. If you heard that army X isn't fun for several weeks and then play against them, it's likely you'll find something that's not fun.

    Even in this thread you have someone who said they can't/won't use their new Lumineth army because of the impression they are un-fun or OP, and goes back to playing his Nighthaunt. In my case I'd just stop playing the game, if I had the same problem. Which luckily I don't have.

    A substantial part of all this balance/NPE talk functions intentionally and unintentionally as gatekeeping. You think you'd come back if you finally got your shiny new army and everyone refuses to play with you because they are OP, or NPE? And that's with almost every new army that comes out. OBR had the same problem, Mortek Guard can't be killed easily - no fun. People don't like shooting, or magic or getting alpha-striked or anything they don't enjoy playing themselves and therefore don't do. But would like the opponent also to adhere to their own standards, because apparently otherwise it's not fun for them.  

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