I can't make him tanky or offensive. I'm locked into taking a pistol, Narthecium and a crozius no matter what, that's a base investment of what? 500 points? On top of that, in order to be even remotely useful have to take a beacon because healing with narthecium as an Apo in this ttk is extremely difficult in combat. So in reality I have 600 points spent before I can make any real choices. How are you not getting this? On my tactical, I can choose to load up on tanky wargear or better weapons with gear. On my Wolf priest I can only nudge him slightly one way or the other because armor / health - increasing wargear is so overcosted that at best I can add ONE item to increase survivability. In the past I could take on my Wolf Priest RoF, with red armor, beacon, some slight added armor, and +1 stamina. Now? I can take a basic beacon, RoF and red armor. My vet Wolf Priest had red armor, a halo, beacon, RoF, and still had some flexibility to take a variety of ites. Now? gold armor, RoF, beacon, and one armor item. That's it. If I wanted to take even the BASIC, CHEAPEST Iron Halo, I would have to take the basic armor. That makes no sense. Why would I trade +armor, +armor regen delay, +toughness for an item that just adds +armor? That's hardly making a choice for tanky or offensive.
Or you could just take the armor below the top one and fit your grenades. The entire point is its just side grades, You default loadouts are balanced between all the roles the class can play along with keeping it balanced between damage output and Tank. Your tree lets you unlock upgrades to branch out and personalize your character. You can make yourself do more damage but you wont be able to make yourself tankier at the same time along with reducing utility you bring to the field. Tanks are possible to make but they have basic weapons and no utility. The same way you can make a guy with utility options but average damage and tank. The idea is you cannot be a super soldier capable of doing everything at once, You have to choose between them or find a balance that works for you. The AP required is fine, Its the only sense of progression in the game and currently I have not felt like im not getting anywhere. Every game I get significantly closer to what I want in the tree, I am going to be able to get my first Veteran class the moment I hit level 5 and thats with me branching out into other areas. The large XP needed towards the end is there for a reason so you don't just aim straight to one thing, instead branch out a bit and your AP will be put to use without leaving you short when you hit the next level.
You are trying to argue that you should be able to fit the highest level of gear and still take utility or some damage mods. Ignore the lower wargear slots for relics and stuff they are a waste of upto 50 points. The Support classes can be built tanky but they are not exactly designed for it with the low starting Armor you are only going to get basic levels of infantry survivability. I run with the Unique flaming hammer, Red Armor, Beacon, 3 round burst pistol and the melee bonused Healing item on my normal Wolf Priest, That is more then enough to do my role. This healing combo and the Hammer allow me to one shot all but the tankiest of built tank hero's with a charged attack behidn them. All the eldar classes get one shot, The ranged & Jump pack chaos and orks get 1 shot, Traitor Assaults and ork equivilant can survive. Can survive if they have enough tank. Elite Eldar classes still die in 1 hit to the back. What more damage do you want? If you really want damage or survivability pick a class that is designed and intended to be able to do it. The 3 round burst pistol has the smart function built in and is very powerful under 8m. The Wolf Priest is not a DPS class. If you want to be able to reliably kill people as a support you need to play the apothecary simply due to how powerful a standard Bolter is. All the support classes are considerably weaker in damage output and survivability. The apothecary is the only one really capable of killing reliably.
I disagree because this grind feels worse than WoW at launch with how slow the progression is. I get 3-10 AP per match (because LSM is a bunch of idiots) and it takes me so damn long to hit my next unlock that I find myself becoming frustrated at the prospect of getting my vet classes. On top of that, the customization is next to moot thanks to RNG chest giving you gear and literally burning thousands of req through each tier of chests until you have all the unlocks. It would be better if the chests gave you the uniques or special items rather than basic mods or fine tuning items. Those should be able to be purchased. As for the choice of gear, in the current patch you need T2 armor at the minimum. Gold if you want to not implode as JPA. But then you're limited to a Chainsword and you won't even be able to take enough mods for it to make it good. I run the hyper jump pack because I need three jumps to do anything and hope to dodge or survive.
Your thinking of halos I genrally go for ammo packs but in the rare case i am using a dev load out with nade i usally toss when i dbash some one or mange to get far enofugh away from a melee for the 2 secs it will take me to throw it at my feet. It works about 50/50 time
Well there's also the other issue of "hey since tanks are already too durable we decided to jack up meltabomb costs." Which is beyond stupid cause now it's a case of do you grab the melta or the bomb
Because relic armor gives an awful lot of stats. It's a choice, do you want relic armor and nothing or do you want maybe artifcer armor with a grenade and weapon mods? The relic armor probably means another bullet, maybe two, taken and faster armor recharge, the other gives some utility. I don't see a problem here.
Well without a quantifiable yard stick to actually calculate and rank costs and points we're SOL. It's times like this I wish I could datamine everything needed to run a private server and run my own tests on balance ideas.
