I mostly do it because I personally find it fun, without any expectation of it being implemented that way. That said, I find the lore provides a very open interpretation and wide range of what things are and how powerful they are. For all that the TT is broken, it provides a much more unified view of how powerful something is and what it can do. In this case, what does the firepike do? For TT it fits between the fusion/meltagun and multi-melta in range, but without sacrificing mobility. It might be implemented like that or it might do something different, and I'm not going to be upset either way, but it's interesting to me to work out how that might be portrayed. As an example of me agreeing that the TT is not some magical standard to hold everything to, I think removing the double damage/half range for melta was a good choice. It added an arbitrary line that I found was more annoying than meaningful, and I'm glad that it was removed. *As a background, I got into 40k because of the books. I only recently got into the TT, and I can't even say that I play. What I do is help friends/acquaintances with understanding the rules, help build fun armies for casual games, and come up with counters to powergamers in the local group.
I agree with you in principle, but unfortunately the Eldar seem to come off second best too often when TT is ignored. If Eldar gear was balanced against LSM gear in a similar fashion to TT, then you would see a lot of happy Eldar in the forums. At this point I see a lot of unhappy Eldar (me included).
To be perfectly honest. They could nerf Fugan's from 1 heat per shot to 2 heat per shot and it still would be worth the extra LP cost. After using it a bit i think it woudl be fair to say its OP when paired with the melta bomb. As for the fire pike, its rimary advantage would be longer range maybe even higher than a multimelta. this can be balanced by either giving it al onger "charge up" time makign it harder to sue in a pinch and/or simply increasing the equip cost to the poitn you cant equip melta bombs with it. In which case they can also buff its damage to at least match the multimelta. Of course if they go with the "no more exarch only weapons for everyone" aproach then they can just make it an outright superior but expensive option.
Normal fusion gun has 3 heat per second. It should still be cosniderably better. BUT to be conservative. 1.5 per second? In its current state you can pop a melta bomb on a rhino and then finish it off within 1 overheat no problem. Actualy, isnt 1 heat per secodn the rate at which multimeltas overheat?
Multi meltas should have more range in addition to having more damage, they can also take krak grenades, and I think is 100lp cheaper than Fuegan too, also considering that 2 melta bombs auto kills a tank I think 1 bomb and a full burn time is rather generous in comparison as it does offer counter play. The faction also needs this option as Dragons are basically the only usable AV class in the faction, we need some cheese since we don't get flying power fists, krak grenades, multi melta's and our Reaper Launcher being worse at AV than a lascannon which is already bad.
Basically this. As far as I get the impression from codices, the Fire Pike is just a longer ranged fusion gun. Unlike a multi-melta, I don't suspect it will ramp more heat than fusion gun, since it's always described as simply longer-ranged. Extended range is already extremely powerful on an Eldar team where short range is normally their mode of anti-vehicle.
