I kinda like the Ork pistol a lot more than any other sidearm in the game. If it had a main weapon tier magazine, ammo capacity, and reload speed, it would be my personal favorite surpassing the Autocannon.
*Vote, look at the result,... Why am I not surprised?" That's the problem, they generally launch the grenade then start to shoot. They complain about not having buff but it's just because they prefer to dakka. And a buffed Apo as near the same EHP compare to a tact. And since Apoth generally never forget to buff themselves. The heal ratio given by the beacon give even more survivability in fight and since it's instantly deployed. At the end Apoth get a strong main weapon, a sidearm and a good melee weapon altogether (narcessium is faa[...]aar from being shit) while keeping full healing/buff potency.
It does feel satisfying to use, doesn't it? More fun than the bolt pistol, wwaaayyy more fun than the Shuriken pistol, more fun than the plasma pistol (although I do loves me some plasma pistol.) I think it's the ROF and the sound. At short range you can actually watch the progression in player reaction to being shot by it, go from "Hah, a pistol!" to "Alright gotta get serious" to "WTF man is every shot hitting to!??!" to "OMFG I'M---." I just love getting close and circle strafing people while shooting them in the head with it. Can't seem to do that with any of the other pistols except the plasma pistol, because it's got the damage that gets people's attention.
Hands down Apothecary is the biggest baddest healer on the block. In combat they are unrivaled (in terms of medics) with an actual rifle giving them the best ranged damage hands down. Narths are solid enough melee weapons in their own right better than a combat knife atleast. Medicae Grenades are amazingly strong ranged aoe combat heals, combined with vials that give buffs you have are basically dipping into every single healers pool of toys while having arguably the best of it in many situations. Warlocks as #2. Enhance is a strong buff and is integral to a well oiled Eldar machine. Ontop of this their healing as far as ranged healing is solid enough. The bigger issue with warlocks is that due to the general fraility their healing isn't as useful as their buffs. Shuriken pistols are also pretty shit which makes them one of the weaker healers in straight up combat. Really this is mostly just carried to #2 by the strength of Enhance. Sorcs vs Painboys is a toss up in my opinion and its really about what you are doing. Defensively I'd favor painboy because vials + dok bomb is a much better camping healer setup. Conversely Sorcs do have a bit more to work with offensively both in terms of damage and in terms of supporting an attack. I think both Apothecaries and Warlocks are in more or less a solid place. I could see buffing Shuriken Pistols to have comparable total damage to a bolt pistol per magazine so they are a bit more usable and stack up to every other factions pistols a bit better. For Painboys I'd want increased ammo reserves on the sicky slugga, like doubled... make it have the ammo reserve comparable to a primary weapon so they have staying power comparable to an Apoth even if its not quiet as potent as a bolter. I'd also like to see sicky bombs changed to a charge system, with the upgraded sicky bombs having a 100% uptime potential, while the basic sicky bombs having a 50% uptime. For Sorcerers they need a lot of tweaks. Firstly their offensive spells need comprehensive buffs to make them atleast comparable to using a bolt pistol or plasma pistol, it should NEVER cross a Sorcs mind to remove their offensive spell so they can equip a plasma pistol as its strictly better... mostly this would be about giving their offensive spells bigger AoEs not so much increasing their power directly, or possibly decreasing costs so its not worth it to unequip it. Hysteric Frenzy needs to a reduced charge cost/drain, as it stands its slow healing combined with expensive charge cost makes it almost impossible to revive someone to full health without draining all of your charge and then some. Trying to use Hysteric Frenzy I often have to res people manually instead of using my healing spell that costs 200lp the most expensive primary heal in the game because I am out of charge. Overall I just feel the Apothecary is such a "balanced" healer. He can heal at range in an AoE with medicae grenade, he can drop medicae at his feet in a pinch and self res, he gets a full bolter and a strong melee weapon making them arguably just as strong as primary combat classes unlike the rest of the healers. Some people have problems using vials, but thats never seemed much of an issue to me, granted I'm generally either ressing people in cover, using medicae to res them in a dangerous location, or focusing on the fighting instead of worrying about healing/ressing and then going back if anyone is left downed. I feel like a master of battle on the Apothecary, I can carry the fight itself, I can pickup the random people who drop, and if people are working with me I can make them more durable and provide both healing and fire power in real numbers. Hands down as far as healers go its an Apothecaries world, and all the other healers are just interns in his Apoth corporation.
In my opinion at least: Apothecary -> Sorcerer / Warlock -> Painboy Apothecary: Instaheal with Buff of your Choice, long range AoE Healing together with Poison on Melee attack and the best ranged Damage Spell there is: Bolter. For me the best Support, as it can also fight properly and hold his own with no problemo Sorcerer: In Terms of Healing with Foul-Regeneration better then Apothecary, but in almost every other category weaker. Damage Spells are all bad or highly situational, Melee is only good if you sacrifice a spell for it, healing apart from Foul Regen can be done quicker with the standart Apo-nade and safer. Buff his Spells! Warlock: Quite similar to the Sorcerer, but with less options. What makes the Warlock awesome is the Enhance and Embolden spells, as well as how quick they are. But they lack options, lot of spells to play around with. Give it to them! Painboy: The worst of both worlds, Healing like an Apo, shooting like a Sorcerer. While Orks generally have good pistols, the Painboy does not really have a place where it shines. Lack of different Healing-Nades, lack of different vials, and no good close range weapon either. The Painboy is just rejected since it's implementation, lot of work to be done on him...
I like sorcerers more than warlocks but I have to go with Apo -> Lock -> Sorc -> Painboy Sorcerers are fun™ with flickering fire doing actual fire damage (comboing with melta or Abby's Disgrace if it doesn't one shot someone), flesh circle and stream of corruption being usable if not all that great, hysterical frenzy and lash being great for pushing with other slaaneshi marines, whipping up their damage to very strong levels and having an infinite ammo pistol that makes people take more damage, and warp instability working just as well as jinx and the option for a plasma pistol. That said, 40 sec buff uptime on Enhance is absurdly amazing. Protect is okay but drains hella fast. Destructor is pointless. Embolden and Renewer are both good heal spells and jinx is... well jinx. Basically, never leave home without enhance. It makes or breaks Eldar teams by bringing them up to competitive levels and the assist xp just pours in. It's nice to have jinx locks, but having an enhance lock in every squad and keeping that buff up is mandatory.
Apoth: Remove poison on narth. It gives far too much flexibility to the class, especially when equipping bolter. Heal grenades shouldn't rez but prevent bleed out. Besides that they are solid with chainsword or bolter. Sorcerer: Has redundant spells and some are either too efficient or just burn through warp. The spells aren't chaosy enough and need a revamp. Like Stream of corruption should have an alt fire to buff allies with plague or flickering fire can be charged into a fireball. MoT isn't even very good on the sorcerer. It is like some sort of twisted joke. For a faction that craves power and souls they are remarkably good healers and poor sorcerers. Warlock: Embolden best spell and overshadows all the others with enhance being close second. The rest drain warp like crazy or just don't have much use like destructor. Painboy: Poison builds are insanely good. People haven't tapped into its power yet; and yet, poison is very easily countered especially if they have MoN or a lot of apoths. As a healer, they are terrible. A lifesteal vial in an already weak melee meta, and a giant ass Flagon which is easy to spot, shoot, and is clunky throwing it. Besides them having an ork pistol and some poison, its really a weak class and lacks anything remarkable that truly deviates it from an apothecary. TLDR: Remove poison on Narth, more Chaos touch to spells, Offensive spells need a lot of loving, Painboy needs way more work. Edit: I heard embolden was stealth nerfed so even that is up in the air now.
Warlocks, even more than other eldars, seem really hard to hit... It's the support that scares me the most anyway. But Apothecaries have bolter so... I overall have an issue with healers: They promote one shot weapons, which in EC, reeeeeally don't help for enjoyable gaming experience... But that is another issue entirely
Best to worst: 1. Apo 2. Warlock 3. Sorc/Painboy I honestly have allot more fun on the Painboy then the Sorcerer, and feel pretty useful all things considered. I wonder why more people dont use the Sicky Nade though, i love this thing (and am mad jelly that Nurgle characters dont have this thing...), so much that i used the Painboy exclusively with the Sicky Nade equipped from rank 1 to rank 6 on my Ork. Slap on the poison resistance accessory and go to town. You can: - plop it in a room, if you dont drop it square in the middle where everyone is painfully aware of the "center" it can do some nasty stuff before getting removed -plop it under yourself, especially enjoyable as multiple melee attackers try and get at you. with the poison resistance accessory you can really sit there duking it out with them till they get a fatal dosage -plop it anywhere as you advance. this things is a damn smoke grenade, if you pop it as you are advancing towards a group of enemies that see you they wont see squat till you are running out of the cloud. some FF might happen but thats why you run after allies you see have a strong dosage (can see by the intensity of the poison VFX) or even drop the heal over time vial to greatly undermine the potency of your FF on allies. its also amazing if you plop it on a window that enemy heavy weapons are camping, they either have to move and be unable to attack you from that window for the duration of the Sicky Nades life, or they fall over dead. That being said, i agree that the Painboy needs love. Id start off by making the Urty Syringe have more durability, make it somewhere in between knife/Narth and a chainsword. This thing looks allot sturdier then a knife, and as such should have more durability. They also, as other have mentioned, need more vial options. Off the top of my head: Mad Juice: Increases the allies movement speed. Unstable Fuel: Make the allies emit an explosion on the downed state that staggers nearby enemies and does some damage The Warlock and the Sorcerer have two major issues that i feel need addressing: Lack of quality ranged options: If you want us to be in the backlines supporting by design then you need to make our offense powers good. Our powers are very underwhelming, and even the most """useful one""" (Lash of Slaanesh) forces a class nerfed in EHP to get into handshake range. Thats why i love my Stream of Corruption, because even if it isnt that great i can still engage from actual range and not be forced to go into melee. Would be awesome if we got a Force Staff for the Sorcerer and a staff for the Warlock (or do Spiritseers only get staffs?). That way, when you add more powers, you can make a range build (staff + ranged powers) and a melee build (sword/axe + melee/PBAoE powers) for these classes, similarly to how you can get a ranged and a melee build going on the Apo atm. Overtaxed Warp Charge: This is one of the bigger reasons the Apothecary is better. The Apothecary can "do everything at once" because all his actions draw from a different resource pool. Your offense draws from one pool (bolt rounds), you healing and buffing draw from another (vials) and your secondary healing draws from a third one (healing station/healing grenade). So none of the Apos mechanics step on each others toes, which is why he is so fun to play. Compare that to the Warlock and Apo, and the overtaxed Warp Charge. Want offense? Warp Charge. Want to heal? Warp Charge. Want to debuff? Warp Charge. Soon when they make Force Power into a toggle it will be yet another thing that partakes of the Warp Charge pool. So what this means is that the Warlock and the Sorcerer have to balance between the two, but in our current iteration trying to balance means you will suck and both. If you actually do good healing you wont have Warp Charge left over for "offense" and debuffing. And if you spend your Warp Charge attempting to do the latter you wont be healing worth a damn. This is nicely seen by the fact that people just forego the second power alltogether and just slot a heal and more armor for the rest of the loadout points. So we either need a major rebalance in the Warp Charge consumption of powers across the board or there needs to be a "benevolent" and "malevolent" Warp Charge pool respectively, each draining when you use the power tied to it rather then having a generic Warp Charge pool every mechanic draws from.
