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Moving the discussion from the gencon champs thread to here. Darth_Reignir wrote:Daala was depowered. Yes. Gha Nackt and the 12+ Mouse Droids is NOT addressed. Just because there are some people who also find it disgustingly low and obviously an NPE, means in no way that "those issues have been addressed."
Mace and Bane can be taken out. Shooters. Yes. But we're at a point in the game where we're all trying to figure out the best way to reintroduce melee into the game, having been severely underwelming since the twilight sets of wotc. With that in mind, it seems counterproductive and frankly, ignorant, to say, "Dude, just use Boba Fett! Issue resolved." Sure, you may have dealt with one terribly imbalanced melee piece, but in the broader scale, you're ignoring the problem by putting a quick fix on it.
Bane doesn't make it in the tournaments, sure. Mace made it to the top in one of the WI regionals; Lord Krayt made it to the top by amazingly declaring that dead force spirits are in fact "living," but none of this is any reflection of the balance of the piece or the competiveness of it.
And lastly, while I appreciate you acknowledging my emotions, I'm not sure you understand now NPE works if you think that emotions don't change the rules. Nobody *enjoys* NPE. Hence the, "N." It goes without saying that the Gha Nackt/Mouse Droid combination is a major source of NPE. But as you said, somehow because a couple people support the cause to change those rules, the issue is resolved. So what you're telling me is that NPE helped change the rules -- yet, emotive arguments do nothing?
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Thank you for moving it, and thank you for the title. I think you at least understand the argument I am making, even if you don't agree with it.
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First off, thank you atmsalad for your continual hard work in keeping threads on track by providing new threads for the off-track conversations - even though they often go unappreciated. Secondly, thanks Reignir for posting some thoughts on this. I've responded to a few of them below. Thirdly, thanks to atmsalad for the brilliant thread title and to Reignir for confirming that is what he means  Lastly, sorry for the hugely long post. I hope it's worth reading  Darth_Reignir wrote:Gha Nackt and the 12+ Mouse Droids is NOT addressed. Just because there are some people who also find it disgustingly low and obviously an NPE, means in no way that "those issues have been addressed."
Mace and Bane can be taken out. Shooters. Yes. But we're at a point in the game where we're all trying to figure out the best way to reintroduce melee into the game, having been severely underwelming since the twilight sets of wotc. With that in mind, it seems counterproductive and frankly, ignorant, to say, "Dude, just use Boba Fett! Issue resolved." Sure, you may have dealt with one terribly imbalanced melee piece, but in the broader scale, you're ignoring the problem by putting a quick fix on it.
Bane doesn't make it in the tournaments, sure. Mace made it to the top in one of the WI regionals; Lord Krayt made it to the top by amazingly declaring that dead force spirits are in fact "living," but none of this is any reflection of the balance of the piece or the competiveness of it.
1st Paragraph: It's in the process. I don't have any 'inside information,' but there have been posts in the last month about a balance team being formed, and I'm sure the Mouse Droid situation near the top of their list. There was a post about the Commando Droid Officer and Klatooinian Assassin being banned. Those pieces are going to be reviewed by the balance team and altered to better suit the game. They intentionally decided to wait until after GenCon to do that so that the pieces would have time to settle into the game before being thrust into competitive play. I'm sure there is a similar reason for the apparent lack of response to the Mouse Droid situation. At least one thread (I think probably two) has shown that the community at large seems to be in favor of a floor rules change banning 2-point pieces, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's what ends up happening. 2nd Paragraph: In light of the title, I think the best thing I can say in response to this is that it may be a good idea for your playgroup to make house rules regarding those pieces. I'm not certain, but I believe that the NZ playgroup decided to ban Admiral Daala - even post-errata (could an NZ person confirm this?). Mace could be easily toned-down be removing Flurry Attack. Bane could be toned down by raising his cost a little and/or removing a Force power. I know that probably strikes you as a Band-Aid rather than a fix  , but it would stop the problem on both sides - casual players in your group don't have to worry about over-powered beats, tournament players don't have to defend a sub-competitive piece they don't view as a problem. More on this at the end of my post. 3rd Paragraph: The way's it's been explained, I agree with the rules on this one. The only hope I can offer is that even though it may be weird, it still helps a melee piece be competitive. I think we need to take what we can get for melee help right now (having not seen the full power of v-set 10 yet). Some closing thoughts: To a certain extent, casual play is just going to be weird. By the very definition of a casual game, you are playing to have fun, not necessarily beat the tar out of everyone else's squad. By the very nature of a casual game, then, you are playing at a level below the "best" squads, and thus, there will always be room for improvement. Am I making sense?  The point I'm trying to make is this: casual games with the v-set pieces must be somewhat self-regulatory, because the easiest way to beat a good squad is to make a better squad. The easiest way to beat a better squad is with one of the best squads. If you're playing to win with the pieces as-is, then eventually you will end up with something like the GenCon competitive meta, because "Fun Casual Squad" < "Fun semi-competitive Squad" < "Competitive Squad." If Bane is a problem in your area, but not in the 'Competitive Meta,' then that means there's something somewhere in between Bane and the meta that will beat Bane without being necessarily being competitive. But that will just push the problem back to another (slightly more powerful) squad, that is just that much closer to being competitive. All that to say: I would highly recommend house rules for Bane.
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Darth_Reignir wrote:Thank you for moving it, and thank you for the title. I think you at least understand the argument I am making, even if you don't agree with it. Your welcome, and I do agree that something doesn't have to win in order to be bad for the game. We may differ in what we think is bad for the game, but that we can agree on.
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Darth_Reignir wrote:Daala was depowered. Yes. Gha Nackt and the 12+ Mouse Droids is NOT addressed. Just because there are some people who also find it disgustingly low and obviously an NPE, means in no way that "those issues have been addressed." There was a considerable consensus agreeing to the change to restrict rapport lowering pieces below 3 points - the main reason, as I understand, that it hasn't happened already, it that there have already been several changes prior to GenCon this year, so it was too much and too close to make it happen. Darth_Reignir wrote:Mace and Bane can be taken out. Shooters. Yes. But we're at a point in the game where we're all trying to figure out the best way to reintroduce melee into the game, having been severely underwelming since the twilight sets of wotc. With that in mind, it seems counterproductive and frankly, ignorant, to say, "Dude, just use Boba Fett! Issue resolved." Sure, you may have dealt with one terribly imbalanced melee piece, but in the broader scale, you're ignoring the problem by putting a quick fix on it. If you look at the GenCon winners (which admittedly isn't the entire picture, but it's a convenient snapshot), shooter based Rebel squads actually won in 2008, 2009, and 2010. In 2011, an all melee Old Republic squad won, in 2012 a mostly melee Republic squad won, and in 2013 an all melee New Republic squad won. The 2012 and 2013 v-sets provided a relatively melee friendly meta, it's just more recently that the meta has swung back to high activation squads. Again, you haven't provided data like squads etc that you're concerned about. So it's Mace and Bane that are the two problems for your group? What's the optimised build you've found for each? Darth_Reignir wrote:And lastly, while I appreciate you acknowledging my emotions, I'm not sure you understand now NPE works if you think that emotions don't change the rules. Nobody *enjoys* NPE. Hence the, "N." It goes without saying that the Gha Nackt/Mouse Droid combination is a major source of NPE. But as you said, somehow because a couple people support the cause to change those rules, the issue is resolved. So what you're telling me is that NPE helped change the rules -- yet, emotive arguments do nothing? Something might have irritated you in a game, but by the time you're on Bloomilk, you've probably had time to think about it and present a rational argument. If you use caps, make snarky remarks, etc, you come across as petulant and immature, and you're going to have a harder time convincing people to listen to your arguments. CorellianComedian wrote:I'm not certain, but I believe that the NZ playgroup decided to ban Admiral Daala - even post-errata (could an NZ person confirm this?). Daala was banned from competitive play in NZ for the entire 2014/5 season, before being allowed back in for Nationals.
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CorellianComedian wrote:Some closing thoughts: To a certain extent, casual play is just going to be weird. By the very definition of a casual game, you are playing to have fun, not necessarily beat the tar out of everyone else's squad. By the very nature of a casual game, then, you are playing at a level below the "best" squads, and thus, there will always be room for improvement. Am I making sense? The point I'm trying to make is this: casual games with the v-set pieces must be somewhat self-regulatory, because the easiest way to beat a good squad is to make a better squad. The easiest way to beat a better squad is with one of the best squads. If you're playing to win with the pieces as-is, then eventually you will end up with something like the GenCon competitive meta, because "Fun Casual Squad" < "Fun semi-competitive Squad" < "Competitive Squad." If Bane is a problem in your area, but not in the 'Competitive Meta,' then that means there's something somewhere in between Bane and the meta that will beat Bane without being necessarily being competitive. But that will just push the problem back to another (slightly more powerful) squad, that is just that much closer to being competitive. All that to say: I would highly recommend house rules for Bane. Also - I think this post is very onto it, and want to bump it below mine.
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@corelliancomedian That is a great point and one that I completely agree with. To add to the discussion from my point of view, the squad I have the biggest problem with is naboo death shots. I find it lacking in strategy for the person playing it and causing massive headaches for the person playing against it. It punishes you for engagement/killing pieces and encourages stall tactics and all manners of BS.
With that being said, it is not tier 1 and if it is tier 1.5 it barely makes the grade. There are multiple squads it struggles with and even has practical auto losses against (little chance of winning with a 3 point win). My arguments for why it should be dealt with doesn't come down to tournament results, but on how I think it impacts the game in general.
However, if I had to pick 1 thing to change right at this very moment, naboo would not be it. It would not even be the 2nd or the 3rd. There are other more pressing issues, whether it is glossary, erratas or rules changes. Other pieces that warp the game/Competetive play even more than the na-douches. It is, however, on my wish list... ;)
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The Naboo are good for the game. I was having a chat with a good friend who stopped playing after Wizards called it quits. He is a big Phantom Menace fan, so I told him that he should come back and play, because he can run Naboo Troopers competitively. Needless to say he was very excited. So in my opinion, Naboo are good for the game, it draws in all of the Phantom Menace fans. I know when I started playing I spent many hours daydreaming about Captain Panaka leading a charge, dazzling us all with some thrilling heroics and taking the fight to the Villainous Darth Vader.
And that kids is when I knew I needed to check my self into rehab.
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It's great to hear the reflections and sheer ideas people are coming up with to solve some of the more 'asymmetrical/technical' pitfalls that have crept into the game. That min-maxer, technical optimisation-y mindset has led to too many 'counter-intuitive' outcomes on all levels of the game, due to CE stacking effects... As far as the seps are concerned - just errata Gha Nackht - Rivalry - cannot be in a squad with any Separatist faction pieces (this prevents Paratus mirror squads from using non-unique sep droids and Gha Nackht). Rapport (allies named mouse droid cost +2 points in a squad with this character, and gain speed 4). or, simply limit how diminutive ultra-small things work for targetting, LOS and cover etc, so that mouse-ies can't gum up the works. As a separatist player and aficionado, and having shamefully abused those combos in the past... it's time to put that behind the Seps and the game. The Separatists have a lot of options competitively already, cutting that stuff out helps keep separatists more "flavorful" (fluff-consistent?) and forces different kinds of squads to be made. No spamming of ridiculous 2 and 3 point fodder, or there'll be future VSet pieces with 1pt and "Disintegration" as well as Satchel Charge and Force Immunity in a future set But, so too must the "deathshot" counter-intuitive squads be nerfed. Its already too shooter-rich in many modes of the game - which is somewhat expected, in realworld - bringing a knife to a gunfight or cluster munitions-over-horizon-fight is often not going to end well that said, although in real-world, there are reflexes which can still function after death, it's pretty rare to see realworld 'deathshots'... No deathshot stuff, just errata with "defeated character takes a deathshot with base printed statcard stats; no other modifiers can be used in conjunction with the deathshot (such as Extra Attacks/s, Twin, +ATK/+DMG modifiers etc). If the attack misses or fails to deal damage, the nearest allied piece to the deathshot piece is defeated" with or without a "save 11" clause. Job Done, hehehe. We could talk about ridiculous "aggressive negotiations/diplomat" or "superstealth 3.0" squads at various points caps being nasty, but that's another story.
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Is the problem with Gha really he separatist angle? They faction needs him to be able to bring in most of their pieces competitively. Let alone through reserves/reinforcements. Especially with the worst piece in the game I. My opinion Wuher making it difficult to play reserve teams. I love battle droid swarms but they very rarely do well anymore and are the weakest non-melee swarm out there pretty much. A 3 point battle droid swarm is a favourite option with both myself and many separatist players and as there are a dozen counters or more to neuter them I think that there should just be a rule that a character can't cost less than 3 points. 3 points is reasonable and Gha has a place in the game. Heck even make the mouse droid errated to cost 4 points and have insignificant or something like that.
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@Gen Grievous, thanks for sharing, and those sound like good ideas for errata and going forward. Regarding Gha... I'm afraid it is really the angle. That's the most abused use, followed closely by lame Paratus mirror squads... or rebel-dodonna/K3P0, or OR/SITH... Gha wasn't on screen as a sep, and isn't sep faction - yet he's like a scalier, rotund-er version of Lobot, a 2 or 3 minute character that is a bigwhig, big kahuna, disproportionate influence on the game... that's plaguing the seps, after "Lancer-gate" and "GG:DAC-hate" and rapport with the Mouse-ies (as Jak called em, Mouse Turhds ehehehe) are just too problematic. The seps do have many other tier one options available, it's time to shelve the ridiculous discount and ditch the trandoshan, in favor of all kinds of awesome aliens and robots (moar robots). The separatist players need to take a leaf from Prof. Farnsworth's book "I suppose I could lose a few doomsday machines and still be feared" |and Gen Griev. a) I couldnt help but laugh at the irony of my screen name telling your screen name an unwinnable scenario, very meta... b) I too am ashamed to admit, swarms of droids is fun , or geonosians. Check out my custom statcards of recent on my custom thread, and you'll see a lot of fan-droids hehehe. 3 or 4 attacks with gonk droids positioned on main LoS to gambit, and 3pt battle droids defeated big beat jedi easily... just because we 'could' TKO and use a broken combo, does that mean we 'must' or 'oughta' break the game to win, at the sake of fun or other objects to the game? No. That's what SEP-a-rates us from them - the deathshot squads, the ultra-gimmicky squads, with the CEs and the swapping, gl'a-vin I mean... I can remember, before Boba BH, back to the Clone Strike Era, and the Seps being lame back then... autoloss to the moviestar squads, because Main Character Plot Hacks... Door closed because R2D2 - override was a big thing for a long time. Game autowon because Tarkin. it was horrible. Then, we got awesome pieces, and became ultrapowerful in the RotS/BH era onwards... and we've never as a faction ever dropped since. It's always been up and up for the Separatists... not so much for other factions. And what Gha and 2pt/3pt Mouse Droids are doing to the game, what the Ugnaught Demolitionist or the YV faction as a whole did to the game... meh. (Ysalamiri was good, then annoying, now its good again - it's where it should be.|
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Haha yes the name bit is funny. And I hear what you are saying and we do have other good options (though personally I don't use broken combos and so I have never touched the lancer or Durge after playing them once, and I'm not a fan of the living seps) but the issue I see is that Gha's ability of the rapport for droids is critical to fielding battle droid swarms and especially reserve teams. Yet both of those teams are extremely uncompetitive right now as it is, easily a tier 3 and are only really good when you play a casual game and get lucky against a rock team or take off the time limit.
I do agree with you that Gha (while he did very briefly do some contract work for me during the clone wars show) isn't truly a separatist and his rapport for droids would be more realistic on a piece like a new San hill or separatist council member (a change I would support though again it really just moves the issue and I think the only actual issue is the 2 point high defence mouse swarms which can be corrected by changing those little monsters by increasing cost and/or adding new abilities to weaken them. Also on the point of randoms being staples for a faction it's not a strong argument because look at all of the current random barely any if at all screen time tier 1 characters exist:
Dodonna
Sith spirits
Mas Ameda
Yularen
San Hill
Rieekan
Palleon and Thrawn are both EU only characters that are unknown to casual fans
Ganner Rhysode
Basically every mandalorian and Vong unique
Most of the big fringe shooters and Karrde
And if the Separatists lost their blanket rapport for all droids, it would be the final nail in the coffin for separatist reserve teams. This is because any intelligent opponent would just bring in Wuher against you and you would be double cursed, for your reserve options you could pick:
3 vastly overpriced battle droids
2 B2s (probably the only other good option)
1 BX droid or IG86 and that's it (the best option)
And on top of that you couldn't bring in even if you wanted too:
A series assassin droid
Battle droid LT
SBD Commander
BX spotter (unless you already built a sniper into your base squad which is almost impossible to do when you need every point to bring in reserves support)
Droideka
ADSD Spider droid
Tactical droid
YVH Droids
(And the above list is just for separatist teams, republic reserves would have the same issue but around the 29-31 point mark for droids)
And again the bigger issue is that you could never recreate the battle of naboo or any other droid swarm. Right now battle droids are awful, just barely competitive if you get lucky and your opponent has nothing to counter them, but all of these have been built to decimate the 3 point battle droid:
Auto Loss:
ABM
Blaster barrage (your team is done when you bring the swarm against this on an accurate shooter)
Rolling attacks
Rolling fire
Strafe (on so so many pieces)
Galloping attack
Shien style (which basically every republic Jedi has now and combined with RCE)
Spinning Blade Attack
Furious Razor bug assualt
And it's extremely difficult for anyone but a skilled player to do well with a battle droid swarm against these:
Presence of the dark side
Disruptive
Distraction
Furious Burst
Unleash the force
Force repulse
Sith battle illusion
Ranged defence expert+soresu
Evade (and when combined with survival expert)
Frag Grenades assault
GMA multiple shots (I.e. All clones, boba Fett, Mandos, etc...)
Shields/Damage Reduction/VCA/dark armour
Painful Screech
War Throat
Any of the better swarms (OR, Naboo, clones, Vong, Imperial Dalaa, tantive IV troopers, SS)
Super Stealth
Covert Ops training
EMP grenades and other area weapons
Energy Shield
Molecular shielding
Force barrier
Cleave/rolling cleave
Chain Lightning
Force burst
And if that's still not enough supporting evidence, the following are the many many counters to reserve teams that keep them at tier 2 at very best:
Doellin's Luck
Sense the Future
Never Tell Me The Odds
Munn Tactics Broker
Wuher! (The bane of my existence and most hated piece in the game for me even above lancer)
And all of this is just off the top of my head. Battle droid swarms are not tier 1, as they are now if you don't run into any of the above they would barely be a tier 2. They need Gha or someone like him to be effective. As the added numbers do make a difference to help make them playable. And it's actually a classic style of Star Wars, the slow methodical brainless shooting swarm of weak battle droids. There has been many times where sheer numbers overwhelms a single Jedi or so and it fits the game as they counter hard rock teams. Host of scissors and other counters aside:
-they don't have charging, mobile, stealth, death shots, self destruct, or any other CE to boost then other than straight stats or double/twin which gets expensive and cuts down on the swarm. If we lose Gha then the very spirit of the separatist faction will be lost and all that's left will be BXs, Nightsisters, Cad, and strafe. And that in my opinion is far worse for the game then simply errataing the mouse droid if that's what everyone wants.
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I agree with General_Grievous - 3 point battle droids are absolutely fine, and I don't know if people would even play them if Mouse Droids were 3 points as well. It would at least be a choice between a cheap fodder shooter and a 20 defense blocker.
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@Gen Griev., well said  yeah... I can empathise with some Seps players (quite a few locally) that feel it can be a precarious balance, but not to the extent that, if we nerf 2 or 3 more of these things, it would render the faction neutered... The Seps are still awesome in the options, and most of the nerfing would hurt the faux-separatist and Paratus Mirror squads moreso. Hopefully though, there'll be more Squad Assault options and different kinds of droids for the seps, and something which gives the 20-40 point costed sep stuff a rapport reduction of 3-5pts, to get more in. Something which gave battle droids avoid defeat would also help with attrition... (if that isn't verging on too Necron-y Resurrection-Orb-y) I can see Seps sans San Hill being very hard to work with, and activations being a problem if Nackht was taken care of... Do I like 3pt Battle Droids? Yup. Do I like that Paratus and co can use mirror droids along with Zann-Consortium Droidekas? nope. Do I like 3pt Mousies... nope (but as many have suggested, an Errata of the Mouse Droid would solve that) I just don't like the fact that Gha Nackht has a better CE/Rapport utility than most of the Separatist Council and most of the named pieces who were in the picture a lot longer than Nackht... the list of EU characters, sure, they weren't "on screen", but they have a lot more presence in the EU than Nackht. (save for the "neoMandalorians" and Vong, which I'd concede, they're pretty obscure for stuff that was never on screen hehehe) That, and it is a lot of points on Nackht that could be extra droids crammed in Hopefully, future pieces will bring even more to the seps...
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