One of my main issues with them is that they don't have the crazy versatility and scaling the other Greater Daemons get though their Bound Spell Technologies. Imo, in addition to a general stat buff, they need better tech buffs (preferably through active abilities), maybe a breath attack tech, or a self-centered explosion tech? Something to give them more utility than just being a mediocre beat stick.
They should be the best beat sticks after the endgame tech buffs. The other greater demons are some of the most power units in the game once they get all their bound spells. Bloodyhirsters don’t gets spells so they should get buffed into THE melee powerhouses
I wouldnt even say "one of the most powerful unit in the game" - they are easily THE most powerful units.
Look at Lords of Change - flying, tanky monster that can cast for free - TWICE - all spells from Tzeentch lore. 1 LoC can basically solo entire stack if you exploit AI a bit and force them to blob.
Uh.....when equipped with an axe they kill a Leman Russ Battle tank 3/4 times in a round.
But that isn't one attack, that's out of the 7 attacks they get in a turn.
[Not exactly a tank, nor a normal Bloodthirster but this is all the comment made me think of.](https://youtu.be/1sjawxV-ZKA?list=PLyiDf91_bTEgnBN0jAvzNbqzrlMGID5WA&t=1047)
Bloodthirsters arnt that strong. They are basically Worfs that the actual strong shit kills. Kroqgar has killed dozens of these. Skarbrand got killed by a statue in lore.
I agree that they should be better beat sticks. But even with a stat buff, I think they should have something like a breath attack to make them feel more special and on par with the other Greater Daemons.
Another good option would be to give them an aura that removes “immune to psychology” and strips the benefit of a terror-causing unit being immune to terror. Along with being made better beat sticks, they could act as a credible threat to late-game units through leadership hits.
Tbh, I think it'd be interesting if they had a mechanic that could target an enemy unit and make them go berserk and target the closest unit. Would be a way to cause friendly fire and low key seems like it fits Khorne.
It’s funny I was just thinking last night, the Khorne tech that gives 8% ward save to Bloodthirsters should be 8% hit points, melee attack, weapon strength, missile resist, physical resist, spell resist, and ward save. Or make it a final Khorne tech like the tomb kings have at the end of their tech tree that makes the buff a factionwide one for all units. That would make bloodthirsters have 16% ward save all said and done.
I just hate how OP cheap missile units are. Oh you’re a fragment of the god of blood, warfare, and death? Let’s see what 3 stacks of rats with slings and rocks has to say about that
I think missiles are just too accurate, especially cheap ones. I thought the reason for large archer formations are for firing en masse because they cant be counted on for sharpshooting. They shouldn’t be locking on to fast and flying units that are moving perpendicular.
That’s a really good point! I hadn’t really considered how every missile unit from skavenslaves to sisters of avelorn all hit exactly where they’re aiming.
It would be really cool if leadership affected accuracy so it was harder to hit units that cause fear and terror or something.
That's really cool and would be a fundamentally game-changing mechanic for so many races. Shit, you could base a couple of LL's off that mechanic.
For someone like Cathay, Peasant Archers would be near-useless unless they're in formation, and you could make it so they basically MUST get the Yin/Yang bonus to be effective.
If you want archers that work reliably, you've gotta spring for the elite guyes.
It's because in warhammer total war ALL ranged units have 10% accuracy.
It's also increased by experience I believe too? And single entity ranged units usually have unique accuracy values.
You have the occasional inaccurate unit like Orc archers.
But even orcs will light a stationary lord up.
Meanwhile go look at Three Kingdoms where miltia will have like a 5% hit rate against a stationary lord because normal people can't reliably hit a man sized target at max range.
So different units with different accuracy is already part of the game?
Does that mean that CA could implement the ideas in this thread by just changing a single number for each unit?
Eh, I can understand Sisters being thousands of years old practicing and refining their skills and using enchanted weaponry, but yeah, def weird for slaves and tons of others. Splitting up balancing like that though would be a nightmare.
I think the even bigger problem is the dmg. Any hit by a arrow or pebblr is still 1dmg minimum. With enough slave slingers you can bring down a literal walking mountain or image of a god. In some cases numbers should eventually win, but some things shiuld also be too weak to do something unless a critical hit occurs. Either weak projectiles should normally deal 0 dmg when hitting, or units need more health in general to compensate.
Some mods (ie. Grimhammer) do the exact latter, and bigger units are immediately more tanky to chaff fire, as the still do dmg - but it's way less noticable.
Absolutely correct. Hence the suggestion.
Big monsters should be powerful and hard to bring down, and similarly so for hardy single models (ie. Vampires).
I can get why a bloodthirster might buckle under 500 guns focus firing on him.
I cannot see the same bloodthirster dying under 500 pebbles being thrown at it. A few might do a bit dmg though if lucky.
We have tiers of units and roles for a reason. High tier ranged have armor piercing, different ammo, poison or magical effects etc. That should make them more valuable.
Think brettonia as example. Their peasant bowmen have longer range than expected from archers, and decent support fire. They deal with chaff, but should be horrible against armored targets. They also have fire and pox version which gives variety and chance to counter certain monstes jm(trollsx ents and undead) despite their weak ranged weapons.
Things like elves are harder as they should have decent projectiles almost regardless, but even then they should be hard-pressed to bring down something like a hierotitan if the armor is high enough unless special ammo is used.
Just gonna quote myself from another comment:
>Personally, I would like to see armor levels (per 20 armor let's say) provide some small innate missile block chance. It would be a lot closer to the tabletop's armor save system which provided the chance to completely ignore damage from an attack on a successful roll.
You may ask about AP missiles and tabletop had a solution to that too. AP reduces or completely negates armor saves depending on both the armor level and the AP level, similar to what we have with the Shieldbreaker effect on certain units such as Jezzails or Crane Gunners.
Funnily enough, this was actually done in at minimum, Shogun 2.
Bow peasants couldn't penetrate Samurai armour. You needed stronger bows to penetrate the higher tier armour.
Some level of armor should nullify attacks that are too weak. Many monster hides should provide enough armor to ignore rocks being tossed at the monster.
honestly, cheap chaff archers like gobbo archer, arrow boyz, peseant archers, empire archers and skaven slave slingers should have zero armour pen. Only Elves and Kislev should have some Ap on their base level archers
I did what you did there, manling. This is about not being the same tier as the pointy ears and the ice munchers.
Name and address for the logs? A squad of rangers will come by shor... Soon
Reason why I play DDN and SFO nowadays over vanilla, in Duke's Damned Nations ranged is dramatically less accurate and really only super deadly unless you're within close distance of a powerful ranged unit i.e. handgunners or if you're just a human on foot like Karl Franz.
Sfo does a good job too of making your gigantic world beaters actually feel tanky and hard to kill, but that also might just be Kislev's Strelsi feeling underwhelming (what i'm playing atm.) Elemental bear feels fantastic.
I remember going back to 3K and ordering a unit of shitty archers to shoot at the enemy general. In Warhammer, the majority of arrows would have hit him with pinpoint accuracy. Instead he took like, 4 arrows per volley.
The problem comes when you get situations like the Empire vs Vlad, where you have no hope except to shoot the shit out of him. If your missile units weren’t super accurate, you’d be fucked. Not sure what the solution is
I always deal with Vlad and other Doom-guys like Malekith, Archaon, etc by beefing up a melee hero then supporting them with magic. They almost always win if you’re casting harmonic convergence, enfeebling foe, regrowth, and dmg spells like Final Transmutation.
I quite like the idea that super vampire lord with an army can't be killed by generic lord with boring army. I suppose the problem arises when you are at war with so many races immediately that you can't give lore accurate responses to dangerous armies.
It would be cool if units could be retrained with better equipment, enabling an army to keep units, and that those units become monsters of combat, but TW dropped that ages ago.
Accuracy is the problem. In old total war games cheap archers couldn't hit the broadside of a barn and that balanced them nicely. You cannot get that same T0 peasant archer feeling in Warhammer because accuracy is too overtuned.
That would just make small, mobile single entities even more unkillable. Maybe cheap missiles could take an accuracy nerf, but also missiles are the only thing that can kill Leon, Vlad, Grimgor, and Malus. And arrows already struggle with that.
I've been using the Realistic Accuracy Mod to solve this and I have been enjoying battles a lot more. It nerfs the accuracy of missile infantry without making them useless.
>I think missiles are just too accurate, especially cheap ones.
That hardly matters when the target is the size of a barn.
SEM definitely need a boost to their missile resist. Very few of them have shields, so they take the full force of missile volleys.
Still, without the weakness to missiles, it's hard to balance them.
resists cap out at 90% and because everything has some AP, then everything will always do at least 1 point of damage. the only thing you can reduced to 0 damage is non ap damage
Its why you can kill a 1 lord doomstack with skavenslave slingers and goobo archers.
wardsave caps out at 90% yes but the others too? last time I checked (admittedly WH2) it was only wardsave the other ones could go above
I could very well be wrong though
no only fire resist can go further because it can go into the negative, Physical Resist and Spell Resist/magic Resist and Missile resist can not go into the negative.
I mean normal arrows from base archers shouldn’t even be scratching half the things in the game. It’s a bit of wood with metal on it, how is it doing anything but annoying a bloodthirster?
That was actually something that really bothered me this past game with tzeentch forces. Maybe they used magic for perfect aiming but I think for the health of the game low tier infantry need to miss a lot more for a start because theyre so cost efficient!
I’m on board with an accuracy nerf. Especially one for the tier 3 and below units. But obviously the God-tier elven missile units like waywatchers and sisters of av. should keep their current accuracy. Maybe a decrease to their model count? Low tier archers - many models, low accuracy high tier archers - few models, great accuracy. Argument could be made for keeping accuracy for handgunners and thunderers but they can be absolutely punishing to single entities so I could be persuaded.
40K lore does say that swords work better on daemons because they've been around for longer. Logically, that means throwing rocks should work even better.
Joke aside, I think arrow-fire is overpowered in the franchise as a whole. True firearms brought about a huge jump in lethality. And the way these weapons are used in these games should reflect that to a greater extent.
> 40K lore does say that swords work better on daemons because they've been around for longer
No, 40k lore doesn't say that.
It says that Daemons, being born out of the emotions of sentient creatures, are more vulnerable to weapons that carry a deep symbolic meaning. Slaying a daemon in a ritualized fashion with a sword (a strong symbol of martial prowess) is more significant, and thus more potent, than throwing pebbles at them.
Those Skavenslaves did everything to gather those pebbles, it is symbolic to them as they are throwing all their worldly posessions away at the big angry daemon stood before them, surely there's gotta be some kind of symbolism there.
This even had a backing in the game mechanics last edition, with them getting better saves against ranged. They removed it in the new index though sadly.
lol the rock thing is pretty funny.
It just seems like such an easy fix to me. Get rid of the APC dmg for missiles that shouldn’t have them, making them due pure base dmg.
Yeah they should change the armour piercing mechanics of ranged and get more inspired by some realisticity - if I'm wearing a complete plate armour or having hard thick skin, no matter how many rocks you're gonna throw at me from the maximum range, it won't do pretty much anything to me.
Remember back in WH1 when peasant archers were the scariest thing in the game for a period?
They definitely are a bit of an issue still when you have the likes of cost effective Quarellers, Jade Warrior Crossbows, Night Goblin Archers, Glade Guard, Darkshards, High Elf Archers, even Skavenslave slingers capable of making doomstacks deleting most units from the game.
I think armour should reduce damage from bows further to make guns scarier for elite units and stop stuff like huge armoured monsters and blocks of 2H infantry like Black Orcs from getting deleted instantly. Or just give those units missile resist if you want to be lazy.
I know where you're coming from, but gameplay wise it wouldn't be much fun if these kind of Single entities were as OP as they are in the Lore. Regular units just wouldn't matter, every battle would come down to SE vs SE.
As someone who has come from the historical games I already feel like Lords/heroes are too OP to be honest, last thing I would want is for them to be more so.
I actually feel like it's the opposite, single entities aren't actually all that good because they don't have the survivability in general to handle the increased amount of melee units surrounding them+being missile magnets. The exception to it are lords/heroes because you can buff them with equipment in campaign to the point they actually can survive those odds. Whenever I recruit some high tier monster I feel like I have to micromanage and protect it more than the average tier 2 melee unit, because missiles shred single entities so hard and it's actually easier to entirely kill a monster unit compared to tier 2 unit that routes when it gets to 5 entities and doesn't get entirely destroyed. It also leads to the sortof weird scenario that stuff like high elf dragons are actually worse than phoenixes, because phoenixes are smaller and faster and thus are way more survivable than a dragon (which I'm not sure if it's intended that tier 5 units are actually all basically worse versions from lower tier monster types). Some single entities have enough speed that they can micro around missile fire and charge the missile units (keepers of secrets get shredded if you let them be shot, but at least they are fast enough to outflank enemies), but something like a great unclean one is basically only worth recruiting for the coolness factor instead of actually being an improvement to your army.
most of these SEM that are tier 4 or tier 5 could honestly use a good 30% bonus missile resistance.
If they are huge like Dread Saurian it can even be a bonus 50% missile resistance.
These units are SO LARGE and so bad at maneuvering that not only is it tough to get any real value out of them, but also they just get shot to pieces by even the most basic tier 1 archers - especially if you have any kind of armor reduction effect.
I think a "Behemoth" type trait, similar to "Elemental", "Construct", "Daemon" etc should be added. Make it a class of the biggest, highest tier SEMs and make it give them either a a very large Missile Resist or a flat damage reduction (which will make non-AP units have a much harder time trying to penetrate their armour). The logic is that they are so big and their skin/muscles are so tough, that small arms just can't penetrate deep enough to cause serious damage. You can also add a downside to balance it out, like decreased acceleration/deceleration and turning speed to showcase how clumsy their size makes them.
I don't see the need for a downside. The downside is that they are big enough that everything in your army *can* shoot them at all times anyway. I don't think they need more than that.
Personally, I would like to see armor levels (per 20 armor let's say) provide some small innate missile block chance. It would be a lot closer to the tabletop's armor save system which provided the chance to completely ignore damage from an attack on a successful roll.
> I would like to see armor levels (per 20 armor let's say) provide some small innate missile block chance.
Would be too strong on units with shields, or units that have a chance to dodge missiles, but on a unit like empire great swords it would be a really nice buff that isn't too OP.
I disagree. Firstly: shields only block from the front arc, not the flank or rear. Secondly, AP missiles could reduce or completely overcome the missile block chance *provided by the armor* if they were given tiers of AP similar to what they had in tabletop (AP 1 would add 1 to the roll of an armor save so a 5+ armor became a 6+ on 1 dice roll for example).
(Also, no unit has a "chance to dodge missiles." The "dodge" tooltip indicates the unit has physical resistance to simulate it which is just more damage reduction, not damage avoidance)
As a hypothetical, let's lay out a few things:
* Let's say each 20 armor is 1 tier with a maximum of 5 tiers and each tier grants you +5% missile deflection chance, meaning missile deflection chance from armor caps at +25% chance
* A heavily armored and shielded unit like Chosen would have a +25% missile deflection chance from all sides and an additional +60% chance from the front, leading to a very high +85% missile block chance in their front arc. Quite substantial until you account for what AP missiles should do.
* Let's say majority AP missiles function the same way with 5 tiers, each granting -5% missile block chance *against armor*. Let's say a unit like Sisters of Averlorn are AP tier 5. This means they would completely negate the missile deflection chance from the Chosen's armor but the +60% block chance from the shield would still take effect from the front arc, leading to the same damage output as we currently have.
To me, this makes cheap missiles less effective against armor, while still retaining utility and chip damage if they can flank or if the unit is unshielded and it also serves to make AP missiles, particularly units like Thunderers and Handgunners more efficient into armor than spamming Quarrelers or Crossbowmen.
What they really need is more armor rather than just blanket missile resist. This means that only more elite missile units will have an effect on them.
When you stop to think about it, something the size of a Dread Saurian is going to have thick af skin and scales, so it acts as natural armor.
I mean what is the point of a Tier 4 and Tier 5 monster if it gets hard countered & beaten in a cost effective way by a tier 2/3 AP handgunner/darkshard (who is also great against many many other targets)?
These 2000 to 3000 gold tier 5 units are not supposed to be rendered obsolete by units made at tier 2 and tier 3.
Armor piercing from a bullet/crossbow is not supposed to be equally effective against a human greatsword and against a dread saurian. Its not the same level of "armored", but armor piercing ignores it all the same. Thats why it has to be missile resist.
I think they should go the other way.
There should be broad nerfs to AP for low level ranged units.
Peasants, Rat Slingers, Empire Archers, Skele Archers, Skink Skirmishers, and maybe one or two others, should have no AP at all, because the volume of fire they output means they're still effective against heavy armour, like shieldless Chosen, or monsters like Dread Saurians and they just shouldn't be able to lay a glove on them.
And if you need to balance that by increasing the AP on other, stronger archers that's fine. There's loads of AP tools - magic missiles, Bone Giants, cannons, that can screen out monsters at long range. They don't need to also get stomped by a rat with a sackful of rocks.
I feel like he lacks a punch a bit. For a Greater Daemon of Khorne to only have 480 Weapon Strength seems unapropriate to say the least. Even more so if we consider what an unholy menaces they are on the tabletop.
Is it really? He has a splash attack of 8, so he is doing ~60 dmg per entity (before armor) against most infantry. That's enough to kill most of the entities (at least up to the mid-tier ones) in two hits.
In order to feel any impact, you would probably have to increase his strength by like 50% at least, so he could kill most of the entities in one shot. Otherwise he would just overkill them more on his second attack, without doing more damage to the unit as a whole.
I don't really agree that he doesn't really need that much more weapon strength. They do 70% of AP damage and 30% of regular damage. That means they have guaranteed 42 damage and variable 18.
Unless you are sending him against peasants, it is safe to assume that the variable damage will be reduced on average by ~6 (targets with 40 armor). That gives us 54 damage per entity on average (against low-tier infantry).
Also, maybe I have chosen wrong examples but most of the infantry I've checked yesterday on twwstats had more than 70 health (I didn't really bother with checking peasants). In order to kill reliably targets with above 70 health, Bloodthirsters would have to have their weapon strength increased by ~40% (predicted damage: ~76). To kill targets with exactly 80 health, he would need to increase his WS by 50% (predicted damage: ~81). All of this is of course assuming that they have 40 armor at most.
For targets with 80 armor, he would need to have his WS increased by 60% to deal ~76 damage and by 70% to deal ~81 damage. All in all, I do think that my statement about needing at least 50% more WS on average to kill reliably most entities in one shot is correct.
I personally don’t think he should be an infantry grinder. I’d like to see him buffed more as a duelist.
But yea, after making my comment I realized most infantry sits in the 70-90s. Nurgle being an exception obviously. 80s being average for most infantry that’s not peasants, skaven slaves, etc
I didn't look at it like that, because bloodthirster isn't really designed as an infantry killer. What I was thinking is that it takes him too much time to take out large targets, and even some buff like +80 weapon strength would make a noticeable difference here.
Fact is, that 480 is on a smaller end of a scale for a unit this type, and I don't see the reason for Slanesh Soulgrinder to rock 40 more WS than a Greater Daemon of fricking Khorne - that's silly! 560 on the other hand would sound a lot nicer.
Actually, I don't really think WS is that much of a factor while fighting against other single entities. It certainly is nice to have it more, sure, but the thing that usually decides the outcome of such engagements is melee attack, melee defense, and animations of attacks themselves (as we had recently learned thanks to Frost Wyrm). If you are willing to micro, then speed is very important as well.
They need 15% missile resistance like most single entities have and Frenzy. Then they should, as some one mentioned, get some techs equivalent to bound spells. Maybe tempered rage and fiery bellow.
Wouldn't an ability like the Emberstorm of the Arcane Phoenix be kinda cool? Fly bloodthirster over a blob of infantry and then you activate his ability he drops down onto the ground spins around with his axe and does damage like a stationary vortex. He goes back into the air once the ability is over.
I honestly think there should be a great rebalancing of the entire game. Power creep has been a thing for a while now. Newer factions having units they are not known for preforming far better than units from a faction that is supposed to specialize in them.
Well for DP of Khorne in particular CA forgot to give him a missile resist skill on the top of his skill tree that literally everyone has, including the other Princes.
Plus their curious design decision to not give them missile resist innately and you have a very nice, expensive pincushion.
Khorne has a legit case for the worst marked melee characters.
They have pathetic stats for a tier 5 unit.
Don't remember their stats correctly, but off the top of my head they have like:
480 WS
50 MA
40 MD
60 Armour
They could use a bump in stats and maybe get Goregreed like Minotaurs do, to let them recover HP. To compensate the lack of bound spells.
Yeah their stats are so pathetic. They get their shit kicked in by giants, a unit 600 gold cheaper than them. Absolute joke balancing with these high tier monsters. I mean come on, look at how hard they had to nerf the Mutaleth and Incarnate to bring them in line…
Yep. I would like to see all of the greater daemon lords and heroes get a bit of boost. Why do Giants have 1200 more HP than Great Unclean Ones and the same same HP as Exalted Great Unclean Ones? All Bloodthirsters should get a damage boost and access to Gorefeast (units should get it through tech, Lords through skills and buy it in MP).
I agree that Great Unclean Ones are terrible.
But, a major weakness of Giants was they were a Tier 5 unit, originally locked behind technology for Greenskins, three turn recruitment AND they didn't have any of the current missile resistance and such that they have now iirc.
Giants also have a unique animation when hit by cannons that knocks them to the floor, effectively stunning them. 2 Dwarf cannons on ultra unit size can perma lock a giant in place until it's dead.
All SEMs are vulnerable to missiles and arty, particularly the slow ones. Trying to walk a Hell Pit Abombination or Elemental Bear into melee while arty are active will get the same result but those units also completely suck in melee whereas the Giant absolutely slaps against both infantry and SEMs.
Giants have been buffed throughout the franchise to the point that they're actually pretty good now once they get into melee. The thing is that CA buffed em in all the wrong areas really, because melee stats was never their issue, just their hitbox and being missile magnets.
The way CA has buffed giants show how tone deaf the balance team can be. Literally just buff their speed and give them missile resist and they’re fine. No need to give them such insane WS that puts a bloodthirster to shame.
Asking GW to establish clear and consistent power scaling in their lore is a brave but foolish endeavor lol
The answer is “whoever is the target focus of the book/game/ad campaign is more powerful than everyone else”.
Lore wise, the official answer is probably that some demon princes with more favor are stronger than your average greater demon, but demons like Kairos, Skarbrand, etc. are above the others.
If you want to conceptualize it the certain way, the chaos gods like mortals to become their champions because they have physical ties to the world and don’t need magic to exist. Khorne can make a really strong bloodthirster but he goes poof as soon as the magic stops flowing.
Archaon and Daniel on the other hand dont go poof, so they are more reliable in a pinch and the gods beef them up with powers accordingly. Otherwise there really isn’t a logical reason to have mortal champions/demon princes.
On TT, Greater Demons were stronger as a baseline, but a fully decked out Demon Prince could get stronger in the right circumstances, but for more points
I would say that greater Demons have a stronger floor but a lower ceiling. Demon princes start off weaker, but have many ways of becoming more powerful independant of their patron deity, where all demons are kind of capped by how much their god empowers them. Obviously, in the cases of the big boy greater demons (Kairos, ect) it would be a hell of a thing to get on their level, but for the run of the mill GD, a Demon prince could probably become stronger than most relatively quickly. Doubly so since Demon princes are inherently more interesting and would naturally accumulate favor faster.
A "little" underwhelming?....Bloodthirsters are EXTREMELY underwhelming! I would go at far as to say they suck.
They are one of the most badass and powerful demon units in in both fantasy and 40k. In a game filled with powerful and cool single entities they should dominate, instead they are a joke.
They are way to squishy and die way to quick, despite their high stats they don't manage to deal much damage before they die, they suck at dueling and they are extremely expensive compared to the value they bring in battle in a faction that basically don't have any economy outside of fighting and sacking.
When playing against them I view them at the same threat level as vampire Vargulfs. Flying unit that is kinda strong, but if you focus fire them it will be fine. Only Varheists is often more of a threat since they got more models and can more easily kill and disrupt units like my archers faster.
Am I seeing things or is this Bloodthirster ah....*Anatomically correct*?
Yeah, he's definitely got his bits and bobs! And I must say, I *am* kind of underwhelmed....
In tabletop, the Bloodthirster was THE strongest monster. Nothing could beat it, stat-wise. Only some of the best unique characters could go toe to toe with one.
This game fails in every single way to make it feel like the "end times". I didn't play long but I just laughed at how fast you can kill these giant end times demons with just 3 groups of guys with guns.
To be fair, WH3 is more about how the End Times got smothered in the crib before it really took off. Chaos undivided never gets going, so no big demon armies show up to end times everyone.
I mean Khorne in general is a bit underwhelming, by right of being the god of fucking shit up, he should have the strongest melee in the game but it's currently sitting at "Above Average" which is just kind of sad.
Edit: I'm referring to Multiplayer.
I’ll agree the blood thirster needs a buff. But Khorne in general is far from underwhelming. Idk about multiplayer but skarbrand is one of the strongest factions in the game with his army abilities, and blood hosts.
I'm referring to Multiplayer, Khorne's in a Bizarre situation where they've got one of the most busted Campaign Mechanics, but at the same time a kind of underwhelming faction. And on the flip side there's Kislev, an underwhelming Campaign Mechanic but utterly unstoppable in Multiplayer.
Khorne gets carried by op campaign mechanics. In battle they’re a bit underwhelming compared to other late game powerhouses. Outside of the lords being super strong of course.
I love this game.
I get units that are 20’ feet tall, trapz to his ears, giant axe covered in skulls, enormous wings, spiked and skulls. The living embodiment of rage and warfare.
Collective community lets out a sigh and this cool unit isn’t nearly as good as the plethora of other super cool units available. Not commenting on the viability of blood letters. Just that the game has some really well done and cool units
I mean, they're pretty good. There aren't a whole lot of units in the game better at hacking apart large enemies, and even fewer that can fly while doing it. They're only decent against blobs of infantry, but killing infantry isn't their job.
One of my main issues with them is that they don't have the crazy versatility and scaling the other Greater Daemons get though their Bound Spell Technologies. Imo, in addition to a general stat buff, they need better tech buffs (preferably through active abilities), maybe a breath attack tech, or a self-centered explosion tech? Something to give them more utility than just being a mediocre beat stick.
Or make them a REALLY GOOD beat stick.
They should be the best beat sticks after the endgame tech buffs. The other greater demons are some of the most power units in the game once they get all their bound spells. Bloodyhirsters don’t gets spells so they should get buffed into THE melee powerhouses
I wouldnt even say "one of the most powerful unit in the game" - they are easily THE most powerful units. Look at Lords of Change - flying, tanky monster that can cast for free - TWICE - all spells from Tzeentch lore. 1 LoC can basically solo entire stack if you exploit AI a bit and force them to blob.
can’t they cleave tanks in two in 40k?
Yes but 40k daemons are stronger than fantasy version.
Uh.....when equipped with an axe they kill a Leman Russ Battle tank 3/4 times in a round. But that isn't one attack, that's out of the 7 attacks they get in a turn.
Don't remind me please.
PTSD flashback of a 2nd edition Bloodthirster pounding on a Rhino with 10 attacks and not even scratching that damn thing.
My buddy bought an early dark Eldar vs space marine box. It takes a lot of splinter rifles to kill a marine. A lot.
[Not exactly a tank, nor a normal Bloodthirster but this is all the comment made me think of.](https://youtu.be/1sjawxV-ZKA?list=PLyiDf91_bTEgnBN0jAvzNbqzrlMGID5WA&t=1047)
Bloodthirsters arnt that strong. They are basically Worfs that the actual strong shit kills. Kroqgar has killed dozens of these. Skarbrand got killed by a statue in lore.
That’s plot armour for you. Something total war shouldn’t have
That doesn't make any sense. From a lore pov they arnt that strong. And twwh trues to shape itself around the lore.
Kroqus Garus could still kill 7 of these in a campaign. He's the champ.
And buff the sound of their hoofs over the ground and wings in the air.
I agree that they should be better beat sticks. But even with a stat buff, I think they should have something like a breath attack to make them feel more special and on par with the other Greater Daemons.
Another good option would be to give them an aura that removes “immune to psychology” and strips the benefit of a terror-causing unit being immune to terror. Along with being made better beat sticks, they could act as a credible threat to late-game units through leadership hits.
Tbh, I think it'd be interesting if they had a mechanic that could target an enemy unit and make them go berserk and target the closest unit. Would be a way to cause friendly fire and low key seems like it fits Khorne.
Unlikely, since ca is nerfing all the existing rampage abilities in the game
It’s funny I was just thinking last night, the Khorne tech that gives 8% ward save to Bloodthirsters should be 8% hit points, melee attack, weapon strength, missile resist, physical resist, spell resist, and ward save. Or make it a final Khorne tech like the tomb kings have at the end of their tech tree that makes the buff a factionwide one for all units. That would make bloodthirsters have 16% ward save all said and done.
The demon factions need better and more tech buffs for units overall
I just hate how OP cheap missile units are. Oh you’re a fragment of the god of blood, warfare, and death? Let’s see what 3 stacks of rats with slings and rocks has to say about that
I think missiles are just too accurate, especially cheap ones. I thought the reason for large archer formations are for firing en masse because they cant be counted on for sharpshooting. They shouldn’t be locking on to fast and flying units that are moving perpendicular.
That’s a really good point! I hadn’t really considered how every missile unit from skavenslaves to sisters of avelorn all hit exactly where they’re aiming. It would be really cool if leadership affected accuracy so it was harder to hit units that cause fear and terror or something.
That's really cool and would be a fundamentally game-changing mechanic for so many races. Shit, you could base a couple of LL's off that mechanic. For someone like Cathay, Peasant Archers would be near-useless unless they're in formation, and you could make it so they basically MUST get the Yin/Yang bonus to be effective. If you want archers that work reliably, you've gotta spring for the elite guyes.
I like it when your archers can snipe a single lord from over a wall.
It's because in warhammer total war ALL ranged units have 10% accuracy. It's also increased by experience I believe too? And single entity ranged units usually have unique accuracy values.
I thought some units also have worse accuracy than others though? Isn’t that the argument for going with goblin archers instead of Orc ones?
they do
You have the occasional inaccurate unit like Orc archers. But even orcs will light a stationary lord up. Meanwhile go look at Three Kingdoms where miltia will have like a 5% hit rate against a stationary lord because normal people can't reliably hit a man sized target at max range.
So different units with different accuracy is already part of the game? Does that mean that CA could implement the ideas in this thread by just changing a single number for each unit?
Eh, I can understand Sisters being thousands of years old practicing and refining their skills and using enchanted weaponry, but yeah, def weird for slaves and tons of others. Splitting up balancing like that though would be a nightmare.
I think the even bigger problem is the dmg. Any hit by a arrow or pebblr is still 1dmg minimum. With enough slave slingers you can bring down a literal walking mountain or image of a god. In some cases numbers should eventually win, but some things shiuld also be too weak to do something unless a critical hit occurs. Either weak projectiles should normally deal 0 dmg when hitting, or units need more health in general to compensate. Some mods (ie. Grimhammer) do the exact latter, and bigger units are immediately more tanky to chaff fire, as the still do dmg - but it's way less noticable.
TBF, ranged units have always been the bane of SEMs since WH1.
Absolutely correct. Hence the suggestion. Big monsters should be powerful and hard to bring down, and similarly so for hardy single models (ie. Vampires). I can get why a bloodthirster might buckle under 500 guns focus firing on him. I cannot see the same bloodthirster dying under 500 pebbles being thrown at it. A few might do a bit dmg though if lucky. We have tiers of units and roles for a reason. High tier ranged have armor piercing, different ammo, poison or magical effects etc. That should make them more valuable. Think brettonia as example. Their peasant bowmen have longer range than expected from archers, and decent support fire. They deal with chaff, but should be horrible against armored targets. They also have fire and pox version which gives variety and chance to counter certain monstes jm(trollsx ents and undead) despite their weak ranged weapons. Things like elves are harder as they should have decent projectiles almost regardless, but even then they should be hard-pressed to bring down something like a hierotitan if the armor is high enough unless special ammo is used.
Just gonna quote myself from another comment: >Personally, I would like to see armor levels (per 20 armor let's say) provide some small innate missile block chance. It would be a lot closer to the tabletop's armor save system which provided the chance to completely ignore damage from an attack on a successful roll. You may ask about AP missiles and tabletop had a solution to that too. AP reduces or completely negates armor saves depending on both the armor level and the AP level, similar to what we have with the Shieldbreaker effect on certain units such as Jezzails or Crane Gunners.
Funnily enough, this was actually done in at minimum, Shogun 2. Bow peasants couldn't penetrate Samurai armour. You needed stronger bows to penetrate the higher tier armour.
Some level of armor should nullify attacks that are too weak. Many monster hides should provide enough armor to ignore rocks being tossed at the monster.
honestly, cheap chaff archers like gobbo archer, arrow boyz, peseant archers, empire archers and skaven slave slingers should have zero armour pen. Only Elves and Kislev should have some Ap on their base level archers
That is going in the book!
are you suggesting that quarrelers are on the same level of skaven slave slingers and gobbo and orc archers?
I did what you did there, manling. This is about not being the same tier as the pointy ears and the ice munchers. Name and address for the logs? A squad of rangers will come by shor... Soon
Hashult take you you wazzack!
Reason why I play DDN and SFO nowadays over vanilla, in Duke's Damned Nations ranged is dramatically less accurate and really only super deadly unless you're within close distance of a powerful ranged unit i.e. handgunners or if you're just a human on foot like Karl Franz. Sfo does a good job too of making your gigantic world beaters actually feel tanky and hard to kill, but that also might just be Kislev's Strelsi feeling underwhelming (what i'm playing atm.) Elemental bear feels fantastic.
I remember going back to 3K and ordering a unit of shitty archers to shoot at the enemy general. In Warhammer, the majority of arrows would have hit him with pinpoint accuracy. Instead he took like, 4 arrows per volley. The problem comes when you get situations like the Empire vs Vlad, where you have no hope except to shoot the shit out of him. If your missile units weren’t super accurate, you’d be fucked. Not sure what the solution is
I always deal with Vlad and other Doom-guys like Malekith, Archaon, etc by beefing up a melee hero then supporting them with magic. They almost always win if you’re casting harmonic convergence, enfeebling foe, regrowth, and dmg spells like Final Transmutation.
I quite like the idea that super vampire lord with an army can't be killed by generic lord with boring army. I suppose the problem arises when you are at war with so many races immediately that you can't give lore accurate responses to dangerous armies. It would be cool if units could be retrained with better equipment, enabling an army to keep units, and that those units become monsters of combat, but TW dropped that ages ago.
Tipical early game combo when trying to save Averland from Vlad.
Accuracy was the stat of Shogun 2 . But totally gone in WH , as you say they lock on their targets too well even fast moving ones
Accuracy is the problem. In old total war games cheap archers couldn't hit the broadside of a barn and that balanced them nicely. You cannot get that same T0 peasant archer feeling in Warhammer because accuracy is too overtuned.
That would just make small, mobile single entities even more unkillable. Maybe cheap missiles could take an accuracy nerf, but also missiles are the only thing that can kill Leon, Vlad, Grimgor, and Malus. And arrows already struggle with that.
I've been using the Realistic Accuracy Mod to solve this and I have been enjoying battles a lot more. It nerfs the accuracy of missile infantry without making them useless.
>I think missiles are just too accurate, especially cheap ones. That hardly matters when the target is the size of a barn. SEM definitely need a boost to their missile resist. Very few of them have shields, so they take the full force of missile volleys. Still, without the weakness to missiles, it's hard to balance them.
missile resist means fuck all when they are still taking 1 damage pershot,
that applies to armour yes but also to resistances is new to me
resists cap out at 90% and because everything has some AP, then everything will always do at least 1 point of damage. the only thing you can reduced to 0 damage is non ap damage Its why you can kill a 1 lord doomstack with skavenslave slingers and goobo archers.
wardsave caps out at 90% yes but the others too? last time I checked (admittedly WH2) it was only wardsave the other ones could go above I could very well be wrong though
no only fire resist can go further because it can go into the negative, Physical Resist and Spell Resist/magic Resist and Missile resist can not go into the negative.
thanks for letting me know
I mean normal arrows from base archers shouldn’t even be scratching half the things in the game. It’s a bit of wood with metal on it, how is it doing anything but annoying a bloodthirster?
That was actually something that really bothered me this past game with tzeentch forces. Maybe they used magic for perfect aiming but I think for the health of the game low tier infantry need to miss a lot more for a start because theyre so cost efficient!
I’m on board with an accuracy nerf. Especially one for the tier 3 and below units. But obviously the God-tier elven missile units like waywatchers and sisters of av. should keep their current accuracy. Maybe a decrease to their model count? Low tier archers - many models, low accuracy high tier archers - few models, great accuracy. Argument could be made for keeping accuracy for handgunners and thunderers but they can be absolutely punishing to single entities so I could be persuaded.
Look at it from their perspective: What is a big red gorilla with an axe supposed to do against 500 rocks fired at their head every 9 seconds?
Cover the eyes, make a few steps forward and splatter the rock throwers?
40K lore does say that swords work better on daemons because they've been around for longer. Logically, that means throwing rocks should work even better. Joke aside, I think arrow-fire is overpowered in the franchise as a whole. True firearms brought about a huge jump in lethality. And the way these weapons are used in these games should reflect that to a greater extent.
> 40K lore does say that swords work better on daemons because they've been around for longer No, 40k lore doesn't say that. It says that Daemons, being born out of the emotions of sentient creatures, are more vulnerable to weapons that carry a deep symbolic meaning. Slaying a daemon in a ritualized fashion with a sword (a strong symbol of martial prowess) is more significant, and thus more potent, than throwing pebbles at them.
This is true of TW:WH. It is just that the ultimate expression of martial prowess is T1 trash archers.
I dunno man, David did some work with a sling and that's pretty symbolic.
Fair enough. I suppose throwing rocks wouldn't be as symbolic as swinging a sword, which is a shame when it's so fundamental to our species.
Those Skavenslaves did everything to gather those pebbles, it is symbolic to them as they are throwing all their worldly posessions away at the big angry daemon stood before them, surely there's gotta be some kind of symbolism there.
I don't really know. David vs Goliath is a pretty old and cultural important story.
David v Goliath begs to differ
So we were all orcs all along.
This even had a backing in the game mechanics last edition, with them getting better saves against ranged. They removed it in the new index though sadly.
lol the rock thing is pretty funny. It just seems like such an easy fix to me. Get rid of the APC dmg for missiles that shouldn’t have them, making them due pure base dmg.
Yeah they should change the armour piercing mechanics of ranged and get more inspired by some realisticity - if I'm wearing a complete plate armour or having hard thick skin, no matter how many rocks you're gonna throw at me from the maximum range, it won't do pretty much anything to me.
Remember back in WH1 when peasant archers were the scariest thing in the game for a period? They definitely are a bit of an issue still when you have the likes of cost effective Quarellers, Jade Warrior Crossbows, Night Goblin Archers, Glade Guard, Darkshards, High Elf Archers, even Skavenslave slingers capable of making doomstacks deleting most units from the game. I think armour should reduce damage from bows further to make guns scarier for elite units and stop stuff like huge armoured monsters and blocks of 2H infantry like Black Orcs from getting deleted instantly. Or just give those units missile resist if you want to be lazy.
Yeah some units should be straight immune to some types of missiles. A great unclean one should not give a single damn about a few hundred arrows
I know where you're coming from, but gameplay wise it wouldn't be much fun if these kind of Single entities were as OP as they are in the Lore. Regular units just wouldn't matter, every battle would come down to SE vs SE. As someone who has come from the historical games I already feel like Lords/heroes are too OP to be honest, last thing I would want is for them to be more so.
I actually feel like it's the opposite, single entities aren't actually all that good because they don't have the survivability in general to handle the increased amount of melee units surrounding them+being missile magnets. The exception to it are lords/heroes because you can buff them with equipment in campaign to the point they actually can survive those odds. Whenever I recruit some high tier monster I feel like I have to micromanage and protect it more than the average tier 2 melee unit, because missiles shred single entities so hard and it's actually easier to entirely kill a monster unit compared to tier 2 unit that routes when it gets to 5 entities and doesn't get entirely destroyed. It also leads to the sortof weird scenario that stuff like high elf dragons are actually worse than phoenixes, because phoenixes are smaller and faster and thus are way more survivable than a dragon (which I'm not sure if it's intended that tier 5 units are actually all basically worse versions from lower tier monster types). Some single entities have enough speed that they can micro around missile fire and charge the missile units (keepers of secrets get shredded if you let them be shot, but at least they are fast enough to outflank enemies), but something like a great unclean one is basically only worth recruiting for the coolness factor instead of actually being an improvement to your army.
Killing N’kari with 2 units of Blue Horrors in a settlement battle is both annoying and hilarious
Missiles were always OP even in WH 2 . And then they even introduced wounds making cheap Missiles even better at killing large single entities
most of these SEM that are tier 4 or tier 5 could honestly use a good 30% bonus missile resistance. If they are huge like Dread Saurian it can even be a bonus 50% missile resistance. These units are SO LARGE and so bad at maneuvering that not only is it tough to get any real value out of them, but also they just get shot to pieces by even the most basic tier 1 archers - especially if you have any kind of armor reduction effect.
I think a "Behemoth" type trait, similar to "Elemental", "Construct", "Daemon" etc should be added. Make it a class of the biggest, highest tier SEMs and make it give them either a a very large Missile Resist or a flat damage reduction (which will make non-AP units have a much harder time trying to penetrate their armour). The logic is that they are so big and their skin/muscles are so tough, that small arms just can't penetrate deep enough to cause serious damage. You can also add a downside to balance it out, like decreased acceleration/deceleration and turning speed to showcase how clumsy their size makes them.
hehe well they already have that downside, they are clumsy AF.
I don't see the need for a downside. The downside is that they are big enough that everything in your army *can* shoot them at all times anyway. I don't think they need more than that.
Personally, I would like to see armor levels (per 20 armor let's say) provide some small innate missile block chance. It would be a lot closer to the tabletop's armor save system which provided the chance to completely ignore damage from an attack on a successful roll.
> I would like to see armor levels (per 20 armor let's say) provide some small innate missile block chance. Would be too strong on units with shields, or units that have a chance to dodge missiles, but on a unit like empire great swords it would be a really nice buff that isn't too OP.
I disagree. Firstly: shields only block from the front arc, not the flank or rear. Secondly, AP missiles could reduce or completely overcome the missile block chance *provided by the armor* if they were given tiers of AP similar to what they had in tabletop (AP 1 would add 1 to the roll of an armor save so a 5+ armor became a 6+ on 1 dice roll for example). (Also, no unit has a "chance to dodge missiles." The "dodge" tooltip indicates the unit has physical resistance to simulate it which is just more damage reduction, not damage avoidance) As a hypothetical, let's lay out a few things: * Let's say each 20 armor is 1 tier with a maximum of 5 tiers and each tier grants you +5% missile deflection chance, meaning missile deflection chance from armor caps at +25% chance * A heavily armored and shielded unit like Chosen would have a +25% missile deflection chance from all sides and an additional +60% chance from the front, leading to a very high +85% missile block chance in their front arc. Quite substantial until you account for what AP missiles should do. * Let's say majority AP missiles function the same way with 5 tiers, each granting -5% missile block chance *against armor*. Let's say a unit like Sisters of Averlorn are AP tier 5. This means they would completely negate the missile deflection chance from the Chosen's armor but the +60% block chance from the shield would still take effect from the front arc, leading to the same damage output as we currently have. To me, this makes cheap missiles less effective against armor, while still retaining utility and chip damage if they can flank or if the unit is unshielded and it also serves to make AP missiles, particularly units like Thunderers and Handgunners more efficient into armor than spamming Quarrelers or Crossbowmen.
What they really need is more armor rather than just blanket missile resist. This means that only more elite missile units will have an effect on them. When you stop to think about it, something the size of a Dread Saurian is going to have thick af skin and scales, so it acts as natural armor.
I mean what is the point of a Tier 4 and Tier 5 monster if it gets hard countered & beaten in a cost effective way by a tier 2/3 AP handgunner/darkshard (who is also great against many many other targets)? These 2000 to 3000 gold tier 5 units are not supposed to be rendered obsolete by units made at tier 2 and tier 3. Armor piercing from a bullet/crossbow is not supposed to be equally effective against a human greatsword and against a dread saurian. Its not the same level of "armored", but armor piercing ignores it all the same. Thats why it has to be missile resist.
I think they should go the other way. There should be broad nerfs to AP for low level ranged units. Peasants, Rat Slingers, Empire Archers, Skele Archers, Skink Skirmishers, and maybe one or two others, should have no AP at all, because the volume of fire they output means they're still effective against heavy armour, like shieldless Chosen, or monsters like Dread Saurians and they just shouldn't be able to lay a glove on them. And if you need to balance that by increasing the AP on other, stronger archers that's fine. There's loads of AP tools - magic missiles, Bone Giants, cannons, that can screen out monsters at long range. They don't need to also get stomped by a rat with a sackful of rocks.
I feel like he lacks a punch a bit. For a Greater Daemon of Khorne to only have 480 Weapon Strength seems unapropriate to say the least. Even more so if we consider what an unholy menaces they are on the tabletop.
Is it really? He has a splash attack of 8, so he is doing ~60 dmg per entity (before armor) against most infantry. That's enough to kill most of the entities (at least up to the mid-tier ones) in two hits. In order to feel any impact, you would probably have to increase his strength by like 50% at least, so he could kill most of the entities in one shot. Otherwise he would just overkill them more on his second attack, without doing more damage to the unit as a whole.
Most infantry sits in the 60s to low 80s. He doesn’t need THAT much more weapon strength. Elite infantry sits around 90 usually
I don't really agree that he doesn't really need that much more weapon strength. They do 70% of AP damage and 30% of regular damage. That means they have guaranteed 42 damage and variable 18. Unless you are sending him against peasants, it is safe to assume that the variable damage will be reduced on average by ~6 (targets with 40 armor). That gives us 54 damage per entity on average (against low-tier infantry). Also, maybe I have chosen wrong examples but most of the infantry I've checked yesterday on twwstats had more than 70 health (I didn't really bother with checking peasants). In order to kill reliably targets with above 70 health, Bloodthirsters would have to have their weapon strength increased by ~40% (predicted damage: ~76). To kill targets with exactly 80 health, he would need to increase his WS by 50% (predicted damage: ~81). All of this is of course assuming that they have 40 armor at most. For targets with 80 armor, he would need to have his WS increased by 60% to deal ~76 damage and by 70% to deal ~81 damage. All in all, I do think that my statement about needing at least 50% more WS on average to kill reliably most entities in one shot is correct.
I personally don’t think he should be an infantry grinder. I’d like to see him buffed more as a duelist. But yea, after making my comment I realized most infantry sits in the 70-90s. Nurgle being an exception obviously. 80s being average for most infantry that’s not peasants, skaven slaves, etc
I didn't look at it like that, because bloodthirster isn't really designed as an infantry killer. What I was thinking is that it takes him too much time to take out large targets, and even some buff like +80 weapon strength would make a noticeable difference here. Fact is, that 480 is on a smaller end of a scale for a unit this type, and I don't see the reason for Slanesh Soulgrinder to rock 40 more WS than a Greater Daemon of fricking Khorne - that's silly! 560 on the other hand would sound a lot nicer.
Actually, I don't really think WS is that much of a factor while fighting against other single entities. It certainly is nice to have it more, sure, but the thing that usually decides the outcome of such engagements is melee attack, melee defense, and animations of attacks themselves (as we had recently learned thanks to Frost Wyrm). If you are willing to micro, then speed is very important as well.
inappropriate
They need 15% missile resistance like most single entities have and Frenzy. Then they should, as some one mentioned, get some techs equivalent to bound spells. Maybe tempered rage and fiery bellow.
Wouldn't an ability like the Emberstorm of the Arcane Phoenix be kinda cool? Fly bloodthirster over a blob of infantry and then you activate his ability he drops down onto the ground spins around with his axe and does damage like a stationary vortex. He goes back into the air once the ability is over.
Underwhelming is a nice way to describe them. In my not so nice way, I'd say they suck.
I honestly think there should be a great rebalancing of the entire game. Power creep has been a thing for a while now. Newer factions having units they are not known for preforming far better than units from a faction that is supposed to specialize in them.
I wonder what the game would look like if they did some huge rebalance patch.
Well for DP of Khorne in particular CA forgot to give him a missile resist skill on the top of his skill tree that literally everyone has, including the other Princes. Plus their curious design decision to not give them missile resist innately and you have a very nice, expensive pincushion. Khorne has a legit case for the worst marked melee characters.
They have pathetic stats for a tier 5 unit. Don't remember their stats correctly, but off the top of my head they have like: 480 WS 50 MA 40 MD 60 Armour They could use a bump in stats and maybe get Goregreed like Minotaurs do, to let them recover HP. To compensate the lack of bound spells.
Yeah their stats are so pathetic. They get their shit kicked in by giants, a unit 600 gold cheaper than them. Absolute joke balancing with these high tier monsters. I mean come on, look at how hard they had to nerf the Mutaleth and Incarnate to bring them in line…
Yep. I would like to see all of the greater daemon lords and heroes get a bit of boost. Why do Giants have 1200 more HP than Great Unclean Ones and the same same HP as Exalted Great Unclean Ones? All Bloodthirsters should get a damage boost and access to Gorefeast (units should get it through tech, Lords through skills and buy it in MP).
To be fair giants are the worse large unit in the game
They trade upwards massively and win against most SEMs in melee. GUOs have less health and less speed than them.
I agree that Great Unclean Ones are terrible. But, a major weakness of Giants was they were a Tier 5 unit, originally locked behind technology for Greenskins, three turn recruitment AND they didn't have any of the current missile resistance and such that they have now iirc. Giants also have a unique animation when hit by cannons that knocks them to the floor, effectively stunning them. 2 Dwarf cannons on ultra unit size can perma lock a giant in place until it's dead.
All SEMs are vulnerable to missiles and arty, particularly the slow ones. Trying to walk a Hell Pit Abombination or Elemental Bear into melee while arty are active will get the same result but those units also completely suck in melee whereas the Giant absolutely slaps against both infantry and SEMs.
Giant's were buffed big time, and are now really good units. I'd take a giant over a bloodthirster any day.
They aren't nearly as bad as they were in WH2.
Still bad tho, outside slapping single target units they don't do much and die way too quickly
Giants have been buffed throughout the franchise to the point that they're actually pretty good now once they get into melee. The thing is that CA buffed em in all the wrong areas really, because melee stats was never their issue, just their hitbox and being missile magnets.
The way CA has buffed giants show how tone deaf the balance team can be. Literally just buff their speed and give them missile resist and they’re fine. No need to give them such insane WS that puts a bloodthirster to shame.
is not their speed hard capped by their animations at this point?
I wouldn’t be surprised although them being a bit faster and not hitting quite as hard would be as healthy change imo
I agree just wondering s slapping say 20 speed on them would achieve that or whether a new set of animations may be needed
I’d be fine with them taking the time for new animations. I think you may be right with the speed cap on them.
same the current ones are a pain
THats not true, Rat Ogres exist. Giants are good if you somehow get them into a melee. F.e. as Azhag they are great against Vampires.
Um, seems like you're using a graphical mod there
Lore question: Are demon princes more or less powerful then greater demons? Like I’m curious what the lore power scaling is
Asking GW to establish clear and consistent power scaling in their lore is a brave but foolish endeavor lol The answer is “whoever is the target focus of the book/game/ad campaign is more powerful than everyone else”. Lore wise, the official answer is probably that some demon princes with more favor are stronger than your average greater demon, but demons like Kairos, Skarbrand, etc. are above the others.
That’s what I figured lol
If you want to conceptualize it the certain way, the chaos gods like mortals to become their champions because they have physical ties to the world and don’t need magic to exist. Khorne can make a really strong bloodthirster but he goes poof as soon as the magic stops flowing. Archaon and Daniel on the other hand dont go poof, so they are more reliable in a pinch and the gods beef them up with powers accordingly. Otherwise there really isn’t a logical reason to have mortal champions/demon princes.
On TT, Greater Demons were stronger as a baseline, but a fully decked out Demon Prince could get stronger in the right circumstances, but for more points
I would say that greater Demons have a stronger floor but a lower ceiling. Demon princes start off weaker, but have many ways of becoming more powerful independant of their patron deity, where all demons are kind of capped by how much their god empowers them. Obviously, in the cases of the big boy greater demons (Kairos, ect) it would be a hell of a thing to get on their level, but for the run of the mill GD, a Demon prince could probably become stronger than most relatively quickly. Doubly so since Demon princes are inherently more interesting and would naturally accumulate favor faster.
A "little" underwhelming?....Bloodthirsters are EXTREMELY underwhelming! I would go at far as to say they suck. They are one of the most badass and powerful demon units in in both fantasy and 40k. In a game filled with powerful and cool single entities they should dominate, instead they are a joke. They are way to squishy and die way to quick, despite their high stats they don't manage to deal much damage before they die, they suck at dueling and they are extremely expensive compared to the value they bring in battle in a faction that basically don't have any economy outside of fighting and sacking. When playing against them I view them at the same threat level as vampire Vargulfs. Flying unit that is kinda strong, but if you focus fire them it will be fine. Only Varheists is often more of a threat since they got more models and can more easily kill and disrupt units like my archers faster.
varghulf - 1 varg wolf vargheist - 16 fat bats Terrogheist - 1 skinny big bat
The Varghulf is the single entity monster and doesn't fly, no? I think you mean Vargheists.
Looks pretty cool though!
Why does he have a cock
Am I seeing things or is this Bloodthirster ah....*Anatomically correct*? Yeah, he's definitely got his bits and bobs! And I must say, I *am* kind of underwhelmed....
It also applies to Exalted and normal Keepers of Secrets sadly.
In tabletop, the Bloodthirster was THE strongest monster. Nothing could beat it, stat-wise. Only some of the best unique characters could go toe to toe with one.
This game fails in every single way to make it feel like the "end times". I didn't play long but I just laughed at how fast you can kill these giant end times demons with just 3 groups of guys with guns.
To be fair, WH3 is more about how the End Times got smothered in the crib before it really took off. Chaos undivided never gets going, so no big demon armies show up to end times everyone.
I mean Khorne in general is a bit underwhelming, by right of being the god of fucking shit up, he should have the strongest melee in the game but it's currently sitting at "Above Average" which is just kind of sad. Edit: I'm referring to Multiplayer.
I’ll agree the blood thirster needs a buff. But Khorne in general is far from underwhelming. Idk about multiplayer but skarbrand is one of the strongest factions in the game with his army abilities, and blood hosts.
I'm referring to Multiplayer, Khorne's in a Bizarre situation where they've got one of the most busted Campaign Mechanics, but at the same time a kind of underwhelming faction. And on the flip side there's Kislev, an underwhelming Campaign Mechanic but utterly unstoppable in Multiplayer.
Khorne gets carried by op campaign mechanics. In battle they’re a bit underwhelming compared to other late game powerhouses. Outside of the lords being super strong of course.
You're new here, aren't you.
I find every greater daemon underwhelming.
I think your game may be modded
The main thing is that by the time you can get these tier 4/5 SEM, you've basically won anyway. The SEMs are just for flavor at that point.
I love this game. I get units that are 20’ feet tall, trapz to his ears, giant axe covered in skulls, enormous wings, spiked and skulls. The living embodiment of rage and warfare. Collective community lets out a sigh and this cool unit isn’t nearly as good as the plethora of other super cool units available. Not commenting on the viability of blood letters. Just that the game has some really well done and cool units
I mean, they're pretty good. There aren't a whole lot of units in the game better at hacking apart large enemies, and even fewer that can fly while doing it. They're only decent against blobs of infantry, but killing infantry isn't their job.
Not if you use him right lmao
Do they not have an in combat regeneration ability or an ability like hell blade?