Bladestorm is really nice and hopefully the Dire Avenger Exarch will have the ability to "activate bladestorm" whenever he arrives in the far future.
But... that's dumb. It should just have 22,5m range and Fusion gun stats, nothing beyond that, 100 extra LP cost tops. Hell, it could probably be a moddable unique weapon, instead of a fully separate entity.
The firepike can't work like a multimelta unless they disable the melee weapon and the melta bomb, or FD will be really broken as AV. So, imho, it could work as a fusion gun with multimelta range and a higher cost, so you can't equip the melta bundle. This way you can go: a) fusion gun with melta bundle b) fuegan + melta bomb c) firepike + melta bomb (for increased range)
The 22,5 m range would fit with the TT range, but I kinda believe they might be a Mod at some point which increases the range of the Melta Weapons, so it might be a bit redundant to have "only" 7,5 m extra range on the Fire Pike. If they went with that range I hope they will give it a bit more damage too and make it cost 200 LP more than the Fusion Gun. Just having the Fire Pike be a Fusion Gun with 7,5m extra range would be boring imo.
Thank you @Noromiz for posting that. I see this from a 7e perspective, firepike is a longer range fusion gun that stays mobile. The midpoint to multi-melta. Why does it have to be stronger? I think there's a lot of value to be had from a slightly more expensive melta that shoots farther, especially now that melta deals full ailment past half range. It's not as bad as it looks. It's like adding a single plasmagun that's dispersed among the squad. Here we can see 3 different groups shooting at space marines. Top is 10 guardian defenders/Dire Avengers, middle two is a 10-man tactical squad with boltguns and a single plasmagun (where's the heavy weapon? some marine fanboy asks, it's a mobile footslogging team, shut up), and bottom is a 10-man tactical squad armed only with boltguns (probably poor Marine Malevolents) to give a baseline to compare rending against. But critically it means a group of Dire Avengers can, even lacking special/heavy weapons, tackle anything that isn't a vehicle (bladestorm isn't true rending), from terminators, plague marines, to monstrous creatures. And unlike a special weapon, it can't be priority targeted to take away a squad's punch. The above is from http://www.mathhammer40k.com/ I use it for super easy wound calculation, and I credit it with saving me time when doing theory work.
Oh, you mean like current multimelta, which is longer range, higher strength meltagun? Sorry, don't expect it to ever be elite only, not with how many weapons Dragon has access to.
I'm just curious... But what if the firepike delivered heat in the form of reskinned Starswarm missiles? Might make sense as to why it's been in the game files and RL is still being looked at.
I really can't understand why people feel the need to compare everything to the TT equivalents. Can't we just take stuff from the lore and adapt it to the game instead? Seems ludicrous to compare a boardgame to a 3rd person MMO Shooter.
