Tacticals in the lore and tabletop are balanced fighters, equal in melee and ranged combat. They are not a dedicated ranged class, though they may loadout to be better either way. There is no reason at all to nerf knives.

Also, they are walking tanks compared to regular humans. They are fighting peers in EC, and again the the lore and tabletop, regular Astartes die often in big fights.

personally I think an increase in the "ricochet" animation would suffice for making players feel more "tanky",

nothing says tank like seeing shit bounce off you ... the current animation of blood does make it look like your weaker and taking real damage from the get-go

So, someone clarify for me:

If a Power Fist light attacks me and I DB with a Knife, should my knife lose any durability on it?

I felt like this was supposed to be a thing and came from the "Weapon Tier" and anything 2 Tiers above the weapon you were using still kind of "overpowered" your weapon, if even in only durability damage and not actual HP damage.

Is this a thing, was it a thing, is it gone(was it ever a thing or did I make it up in my head haha)?

if I understand it the DB (defense bash) is outside of the tier system .... its part of the RPS system,

the tier system only applies to "clangs" .... when both players use the same type of RPS move vs each other,

so if you both FA'd (fast attack) and "clanged" a PF with a knife youd be holding a busted knife (and probably your spleen)

but if you DB'd their FA then theyd be "staggered" and youd take no damage

I believe @TARL68 is correct, and that is always how I saw it.

But we could ask @BrentEllison if this has changed. I know something funky happened with Axes/Mauls and Force this patch.

Considering we don't have 'regular humans' in EC, I don't think you've made your point. Since the TTK to kill another Space Marine is only about 2 seconds if that, how long will a human survive (in the game?) less than half a second? A Second? If so... in terms of 'balance' how would you get around that? Control a flock of humans with an aggregate health pool?

My point being is even the basic weapons can kill a space marine in a time that feels far too quick. That being said; saying they are 'walking tanks' while there is a lack of anything in game as a comparison (besides vehicles themselves I suppose!) is a bit.. naff.

As a complete aside; is it just me who thinks that you can basically snipe with a Heavy Bolter from halfway across the map a bit... stupid? It's accuracy is absurd.

The TTK is about par for a shooter. Melee TTK needs to be a bit shorter so it's harder to interrupt fights or have respawns come from behind. I think it's just about right the way it is. Increasing it would only lead to more issues with melee.

In the lore Astartes are described as being able to destroy dozens of humans every second. Descriptions of Astartes killing with every part of their body and weapons, every strike a killing crushing blow at a speed that mere humans can't match. Unenhanced humans should never be in this game. A human in the game would die from a single bolt graze as it would blow apart half his body... (I never asked for humans to be in the game, simply using them as a comparison lore wise)

My point was they are fighting their Peers in EC. Astartes against Astartes also CAN die in one shot/strike, but usually it is a lucky/skill shot. One Bolt Round to the eye will take down any of your "tanky" marines. This wouldn't be very fun to have the possibility of instantly dying, so they skewed it a bit and balanced it to make it more fun. As @GodKingWashington states, too high of a TKK will render ranged weapons impotent. I guess unless we reduce movement speed as well, but people complain about how slow and tank-like Astartes are already... On a side note, I really don't consider Space Marines walking tanks, not compared to Termies and Dreadnaughts, and Monstrous Creatures like Carnifexes. Marines die often and easy in the Lore and Tabletop, its accurate that they die often and easy here too. (The difference being in the Lore / TT, the battle ends fast, while here we respawn endlessly)

Heavy Bolters are pretty OP yup. We are talking about that here.

Oh good re: Heavy Bolters.

Lorewise and TT I think aren't truly valid reasons to argue from a balance point of view for a computer game. On the TT Space Marines have 1 Wound and T4, so it's quite hard to accurately place a point on how much that's worth other than trial and error. Furthermore; a computer game is a completely different kind of beast. Lore and TT may be good starting points, but that's all they should ever be: starting points.

Also bear in mind that armour in lore/TT doesn't really work like how you would expect armour should in 'in the real world' (for example; did you know that plate armour from our own medieval period was completely impervious to cutting actions? Maybe wear and tear *eventually* but we're talking eventually over a very long extended period of time with no maintenance). While that may be neither here nor there; I would agree that maybe it is supposed to be a lucky shot/skillshot, but given that so, there seems to be a massive discrepency by implication: All shots are lucky shots/skillshots.

As to your other point, I agree there's degree's of relativity. To a *human* a Space Marine is a tank (clad head to foot in armour after all), while to a Space Marine; a Terminator; to a Terminator; a Dreadnought and so on and so forth.

This reminds me of a long discussion I had over D&D rules. If HP is considered anything like real life health, cause how can you have a normal person with just 2-3Hp and and average adventurer starts with 6-8Hp and can have 10x over time. Well when you think about it it's more like endurance and evasion points. So you are more lucky not to get hit by shit. So what I mean to say 1 wound is just that... a hit chance on a d6. Shouldn't be treated as ingame stats here.