With highly decisive ARO options becoming more and more common (especially the likes of Fireteam enhanced Missile Launcher and Multi Sniper units) the need for truly top tier active shooting is becoming more of a factor. That makes the edge which Yu Jing pulls (admittedly, second to PanOceania but up with ALEPH and Combined Army as the next strongest) a significant element which shouldn't be overlooked. Why does it matter? Because in the Sectorial with overwhelming active turn firepower as its defining feature, NCA, there are few to no high quality specialists to exploit the fact that battlefields will be swept clear of opposition. Trading only a very little of that "edge" in return for substantially better specialist options makes for a strong balance. And that's the space Vanilla Yu Jing, ISS and (it certainly appears) Invincible Army sit in.
Agreed with the first point. Not so much on the second. I find that B3+, BS 12 + some sort of modifier ( camo, mimetismo, TO, surprise shot from holoprojector, Marksmanship lv2....) is enough to win 95% of the fights in the active turn in infinity - considering both you and your oponent are in cover and in your respective +3 ranges. In the few cases where that BS12+mod does not give you a winning hand, well.... you have the active turn. You really should be using it to exploit rangeband differences, or using another approach altogether ( disposable chain rifle, for example). The cost of being better than that start raising off exponencially, and the benefit only really shows up in a very marginal amount of cases. I find that once you are in that patamar, your attacking pieces are going to be loosing ftfs more to crit than normal hits. And at that point, anything that was spend on them giving them more ARM, defense, mods or whatever was wasted. There are exceptions, yes. Suppressive fire ODD troop, MMlv2 Q-Drone, TO Sniper.... On all of those cases you need to use the fact that you have the active turn ( and access to smoke ) to actually out/underrange them. It is much more effective than brute forcing., although having the option to brute force it is always good.
Gosh, I didn't expect to have to defend that point, of all the points I made. Ok. Riot Grrls, Harumaki, Magister Knights, Grenzer + Securitate, Kamau + Fusiliers, Bagh-Mari + Regulars, Father Knight + Order Sergeants, Apsaras + Dakini etc. Dangerous reactive fireteam threats are getting a lot more common, and a lot more deadly. The fact that Yu Jing is one of only a handful of factions which can confidently bully straight past them makes everything else that much easier, and increases the comparative value of high Wip specialists who can exploit the clear field that firepower provides.
Out of curiosity could you name a faction for me that can't bully past the afore mentioned obstacles? I will also remind you the discussion thread here is about Vanilla YJ, not ISS, nobody thinks ISS is weak. No link team bonuses for what's being talked about here.
Also, their effectiveness and the way you have to fight them is highly dependant of the kind of board you play on. You won't always be able to get close enough with a CC specialist or a DTW, but you can be damn sure that straight-up walk in front him and blast his pretty face will be an option... as long as you have the good weapons for the job. Ariadna might have a hard time fighting a kamau sniper. Even a spetznaz, or a kazak vet with AP HMG in 5-man team won't get really good odds against it. But true, everyone else can, even haqquislam can get good enough odds against pretty much anything with a Djanzaban HMG and some nimbus from a druze. However it tends to seriously reduce list building flexibility, and the current ARO arm race is slowly but surely reducing the number of models capable of fighting head-on the top-tier ARO units.
Very few units are going to bully past any of those aforementioned units very easily. You're really asking for trouble if your game plan centres on facing off against a 5 man Riot Grll linked missile. That said, I agree that I think Yu Jing is better equipped to deal with reactive dominance than some.
Nimbus Grenades are still a thing Vanilla has easy access to, and perhaps the very best equipment for hurting defensive links in the whole game. Saturation Zones are even better, but table dependent.
Fair enough on the ISS question, but it does deserve to be at least mentioned as being find during the overall discussion. I'd argue that Haqq, Ariadna, Tohaa and even Nomads in many cases will struggle against these kinds of defensive setups without perfect preparation (and in some cases even with it). That's the only point I'm making, Yu Jing is better equipped to deal with this kind of dominance than most other generic factions (I'd argue any other than PanOceania).
Are we talking Vanilla only for these listed factions? Because anything with a core link can quite probably brute force on the same level as vanilla Yu Jing. To be honest I'm not quite sure if I agree Tohaa deserve to be on there, since yes, they can struggle to take a F2F with a linked Riot Girl at range and their odds are about 10% worse than a Hac Tao. On the other hand they literally have eclipse and close combat/DTWs everywhere and can pretty feasibly just run straight up to that link and either engage it in much more favourable range bands, or beat the shit out of it in CQC which in a way is its own style of brute force solving the situation.
Are you really arguing that Vanilla Yu Jing aren't good at clearing out enemy ARO threats, even high quality ones?
Best odds I could find for Ariadna vs the Kamau was a core Marauder link, mildly better than the Vet Kazak. Wasn't great odds, on the other hand it was basically on par with a Hsien, so I don't know what we're taking away from this other than maybe the Kamau link is just fucking disgusting.
I'm arguing that I don't see your logic in them being head and shoulders above most other factions at it, "top 3" as you put it, given anything with access to a Core link is basically rolling very similar if not better numbers. Can you quantify some stats here? Yu Jing can kill shit, no argument there, but I don't see the logic in trying to argue that they are extra good killy at this shit because the odds don't reflect that. They have better than average order efficiency being able to bring alot of orders to the table, is that what you're actually trying to get at?
Well, vanilla YJ has... Hac Taos, Daofeis and even a Guilang Sniper if you need to kill a TR bot. HRMC Yan Huo can overpower stuff by rule of "The more dice I roll, the more dice that can potentially hit." Su-Jians can 8" cautious about the place until they get within "Hello, I have a BS14 shotgun on a 2STR NWI platform. Would you like to hear about our most benevolent Emperor?" range. Or just into a very annoying spot with the Spitfire and slice a nice lead pie out of the enemy team. Rui Shi and a Shaolin. That is all. No need to mention more about it. Not really sure just how well we could eliminate fireteams, but... TR HMG bots never really felt threatening to me when playing vanilla. So das a plus, I suppose.
I'm going to be bold enough to say that Hac Tao HMG vs most of those links (not vs the Kamau link!), and Hsien+Nimbus or Lunah+Nimbus against Kamau sniper qualifies as very specific setup (and yes, you absolutely must have Nimbus to go from even to barely decent odds). It sure isn't as common to see those capabilities in a Yu Jing list as it is to see Al-Djabel or a Fiday in Haqq, Speculo in CA, or simply cheap AP Mine equipped infiltrators of some description. Not that any of these are sure-fire ways of solving those links, but against most defensive Fireteams you need to be able to flank the softer parts, which is particularly true for Kamau, and most armies will, so to speak, Happy Little Accident already have those tools. Simply bullying past those links just doesn't work well. Particularly not the Kamau link.
Ok, so you agree that IN THIS CONVERSATION ABOUT VANILLA (remember earlier when I got called out for even mentioning ISS?) Yu Jing have a very strong capability to eliminate enemy AROs, even those presented by Fireteams. Now, can you ALSO agree that Yu Jing have excellent high quality specialists?
Yes, I'm still not seeing where this places them top 3 at killing stuff, as once again, any sectorial I would find equally able to brute force their way through a link at tthe very least being on par with vanilla YJ.
Right, so you agree that Vanilla Yu Jing is excellent at eliminating even the most dangerous ARO threats in the game. And you agree that Yu Jing has excellent specialists. Now, I'd like you to consider that being able to eliminate ARO threats means that those excellent specialists can do their job effectively without being challenged, which further improves their value. Don't get too obsessive over an inherently subjective "ranking" THIS was my point all along.
Defining 'Most Dangerous ARO threat in the game' as Linked Kamau MSR, there is very little indeed that can kill that with over 50% odds. only a BS15 HRMC has OK odds, a BS14 HRMC does not. Yu Jing has good average-ARO counters. YJ does not have good counters to Extreme AROs like the Linked Kamau or Yan Huo 2xML Neurocinetics.
