Isnt it too much?

Remember a repeater has an 8" range, and that people rarely offer big aro pieces because they tend to fail against dedicated active turn guns. It's not hard to find one angle that gives you los to a spot 8" from your target, it really isnt but we wish it was.

 

Fair enough, I see your points, even if I maintain that "nearly impossible to kill" is an exageration, and that it is expected a very good hacker should be hard to kill using hacking.

Also, you're only considering hack as a method to take her out. Other solutions exist and are as valid as against any other linked hacker in the game.

P.S : about the 18/22 points thing, she's indeed costed 22 now. Her firewall isn't free either, neither is the Fireteam she's surrounded by. Not trying to say she's overcosted at all but to analyse the situation honestly, we have to take that into account, because this is that ensemble that gives her her strenght. Jazz alone has not a way better life expectancy than any other hacker in the game.

 

as someone that has been doing this regularly and playing against it for the whole edition so far you really dont.

With a 6-4 rem that can slice on a spot of dirt within 8 of the target then stick it on 2 dice on 14's. then its lights out for the Big scary aro piece,or primary assault piece or their netrod out spite you can do what ever you want and barring shitty dice they cant stop you. the only thing not worth missile striking is a tag but if they have a tag you steal it then light their DZ on fire instead (or if they are dumb enough to leave something B2B with it missile that and clip the tag without the ECM kicking in).

and even if it takes an extra order to move into position its more than likely still less orders than trying to engage conventionally, infinitely less risky and if you are at 300 more than likely to swing tempo waaaaaaaay in your favour.

 

In CJC thats all stuff youre more than likely taking anyway, and make her REALLY difficult to deal with.

In vanilla she is much easier to deal with (camo hacker with surprise and a friendly firewall has a decent chance at it, or just dogpiling her with multiple hackers) as the nomad player needs to be much more cagey about their physical defense and where they put her and how they leverage her, at least until they can cyber mask her.

 

The changes in fireteams have drastically changed all that though.

 

not really, the numbers I gave were with the FT rework and in the last week or so it has not had any impact on that aspect of the game, and I dont see that changing.

 

Regarding GML

To summarize the discussion, it seem to me that when it comes to the GML tactic, the problem isn't spotlight, or Jazz, or GMLs, but pitchers. If pitchers weren't as powerful or as easy to deploy for some factions like Nomads or CA, all GML plays would still be viable but harder to pull off. Which would put them back into the bracket they are supposed (and allowed) to have.

Let me know if I'm overlooking something here.

Regarding the Meta in general

What I'm confused by the most is this: Wouldn't the easiest way for CB to make sure the game is and stays competitively balanced (for casual plays it will always be) to have regular surveys with the top 50-100 ITS (and TTS, if that makes such a big difference) players and ask them where the imbalances lay? Make surveys, invite some of them to playtest etc.

@psychoticstorm is CB doing this already? It just seems so obvious to me. This forum is and always will be a subfaction of the player base and not representative of the whole, that's logical. Neither is any other local meta. But CB has the data from ITS, so why not make a survey, send it out to the top 100, find out which problems most of the top players agree upon, propose solutions, get feedback on those solutions, then playtest (preferably with a bunch of top players again) and then implement the changes.

It just doesn't seem so hard to me to get a relatively objective take on if and where the game is competitively unbalanced.

Again, if I'm missing something obvious here, let me know.

 

The fact its non interactive as hell, in a game where you should always have options to fight back you straight up dont, you just have sit there, watch it happen then pick up your models. now there are trains of thought on how to do that but it always devolves into a shit show of people being stupid, misunderstanding and having a knee jerk reaction to something returning from N3.

 

Pitchers did exist and were used before (and they actually didn't change at ll from N3 to N4), still GML bots were generally played mostly in every 20th list (just check the 2019 data Ieldin Soecr provided) thus I honestly doubt those are the sole problem here.

 

@Tourniquet Pitchers performance has been reduced due to mixed fireteams, I estimate that a core fireteam Vostok now is roughly equal in performance to an intruder, having a Brigada just to babysit Jazz seems excessive now when before it was also providing protection to other ARO pieces in the fireteam.

I am not sure how the sectorial will perform now, its main strength was how mixed its fireteams were and how much performance it could draw from mixing cheap units to buff expensive ones, now while the versality is still there, all Corregidor fireteams are mixed if they choose to do so, and 10% performance drop is significant in shooting duels.

@burlesford pitchers are not such an easy option to deploy, but are definitely an easy, or non interactive, as it has been described here, way to get a repeater were it will hurt, infiltrators with deployable repeaters and airborne troops can produce the same effect.

As far as surveys goes, Infinity Army provides to CB access to all lists been build and committed to official tournaments CB has access to what models are used and how often and what options are preferred, there is a wealth of data to be mined and analyzed from this alone, but it is not toe only form of feedback CB uses.

 

We got it. But for the eleventh time, even if she was properly impossible to hack (which she is not), you would still have all the classic non-hacking solutions to deal with her.

 

Despite the nuances and complaints on the forums, I do believe that Infinity is one of the most balanced miniatures games out there as far as competitive goes. I also think its a bad idea to have direct player input, because in my experience that leads to even more complaints and griping. Not everyone can be objective about the state of the game, such as in this thread where its "Down with Nomads, down with Jazz!!", when it seems what people are arguing is a tactic other sectorials and factions can use as well.

Can balance be better? sure. Does CB listen to community at times? they do (remembers the "What you would like to see in N4?" thread- which no one said "remove the GML Pitcher interaction") . The fireteam as a whole revamp was good move, not perfect, but it did shake the meta up IMO. I still trust CB when it comes to balancing this game.

 

That's because U-Turn rendered guided attacks useless in N3. It didn't become an issue until the hacking overhaul was introduced.

 

Their effectiveness has been reduced but just not in a meaningful way, they are still incredibly reliable. Intruders arent great and havent been since about mid to late N3, they are too expensive and too fragile, and the vostok still out performs it most of the time with added durability and flexibility as well. Against non linked and other mixed linked target the vostok is just as effective as it was before. The Brigada does a number of things, it protects Jazz such that she is nigh on invulnerable in the hacking sphere, it protects the LT and ARO piece from getting pitcher hacked thanks to the -6, it is also a big multirifle wielding bruiser with a flame thrower that is a real effective secondary gun platform for the team.

I agree their strength is in their mixed teams always has been for this edition, and the base core team is not changing anytime soon out side of the two flex spots.
However, with a handful of exceptions (unless it happens naturally forcing pure teams is probably a trap for negligible gain) almost everyone is also running mixed teams so the math DOES NOT CHANGE in that regard (Something @Triumph pointed out last week), meaning they have zero reduced effectiveness in shooting duels, unless it's something that could take the fight previously and come out on top anyway.

 

It really didnt, the thing that kept it down was the likelyhood of the hacker trying to spotlight something (at -3 minimum) was likely to get it's brain melted by a KHD if you hadn't managed to make everything safe for your hacker first.

Most people only ever ran a single hacker for buffs and maybe an evo, which were probably dead before the missiles started flying (Unless like me you ran on average 5 and even then Uturn was hardly a good or viable option).

 

IMHO the real problem here guts move or lack thereof. This also the same reason low ARM troopers make poor ARO pieces.

In N3 you could guts move even if you won the f2f roll with Reset. In N4 you can’t. The trooper just stands there until it fails the f2f roll vs spotlight.

Solution1:
Allow 2” move if you pass a Reset roll. This will also increase the number of non-AROble moves slightly (because WIP is higher than PH). Alternatively allow only 1” move with successful WIP check.

Solution2:
Reactive trooper must pass a guts roll every time it wins a f2f roll, because getting shot by by high burst weapon is scary when you have burst of 1. Also allow trooper to guts move wherever it wants if hit by no-LoF weapon or hacking attack.

 

Reading the comments on U-turn, I am surprised people mix "hacking guided ammunition" from second edition (face to face roll) with the actual N3 U-turn that was a simple -3 cumulative modifier, all had the same issue, two or more hackers in the list made guided ammunition fairly unusable.

And do we really need to regress to the N3 hacking environment were KHD dictated no hackers other than killer hackers would roam the battlefield?

 

You have already been repeatedly told that top ranked players frequently used AHDs and HDs in competitive environments in N3, you keep ignoring @Hecaton everytime he points that out. He literally tells you everytime you stumble into a thread running your mouth about a game mechanic you clearly have next to no level of understanding on how it functions. Seriously this is like what, the fourth or fifth time now? It's getting sad.

Yes, low tier players who didn't understand the hacking game in N3 and how to support AHDs in casual environments struggled to use anything other than KHDs effectively certainly moaned about them alot. Those people are also a terrible metric on how the hacking metagame actually functioned and when CB dumbed it down to our current idiot proof iteration here we are with massive metagame issues caused by N4 hacking getting abused.